I stumbled across it quite accidentally and quite honestly, I almost missed it if it hadn't almost slapped me in the face. My niece wanted to go to Comicon which is where some teenagers, and mostly immature adults, dress up like comic book characters and superheroes as if it’s Halloween. It's also the opportunity for skinny nerds to get their picture taken with random hots girls - a chance for girls to dress like hookers, which is called Tuesday at my local high school.
It’s a day where people can take themselves a little less seriously; I’ve always been on the more goofy side and in the past, when asked what I was going to be when I grow up, I wouldn’t answer because maturity was never a goal of mine.
This year I chose to be Ally McBeal’s husband. Well not her husband exactly, but rather a character who is the ultimate combination of brains meets brawn: Indiana Jones.
The Indy costume was quite easy to put together: first, khakis were purchased at Old Navy. In watching the Indy movies, the pants were more ancillary rather than front row so I went as cheap and functional as possible. The man purse I already had and no, it was a gift. Indiana did have one and somehow he’s a badass with it draped across his chest like a beauty pageant sash and when I carry mine, I look like an effeminate German tourist.
The shirt was a tough find and you’re probably wondering how hard could it be to find a beige shirt with two front pockets with flaps? A helluva lot harder than one might think. Most men’s shirts have one pocket just over the heart and Banana Republic is now donning the no shirt pocket which begs the question, where am I supposed to put my pocket protector? Beige was a tough find as designers have chosen to avoid neutral color shirts as pants, not shirts, are supposed to blend with the shirt being the sole stand out.
After visiting Macy’s, JC Penney, H & M, Old Navy, Aeropostale, Forever 21, and a half a dozen other places, I settled on Sears who had a shirt that would work: beige with two flapped pockets and little strappy things that could be buttoned with the sleeves rolled up.
In the movies, the boots are not really focused on or discussed so I figured I’d just go with my Doc Maartens. The hat and the whip I realized would have to be Google searched and shipped. I found the whip quite easily, and I had it within a few days and for under 20 bucks. The hat was a different story.
The fedora has had quite a lot of exposure on television and in the movies. Dick Tracy had a yellow one, and Jim Carrey wore one in The Mask. Harvey Keitel wore a fedora in From Dusk Till Dawn and even Freddy Krueger try to enhance his extra cheese-like appearance with one. In the greatest love story of all time, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman wore male and female versions of the same hat which begs the question why Bogie ended up walking off into the sunset with a dude.
The fedora should have been easy to get a hold of but a walkthrough of one of the largest malls in the country had me exiting with a slight breeze flowing over my naked chrome-domus. I went online for that as well and dropped in on fedoras.com, of all places, that had an official Harrison Ford rain gutter.
I ordered the hat on a Saturday and Comicon was the following Sunday which gave the schmoes from fedoras.com a full week to get the hat to me. It took a few days to confirm my order and a few more to get confirmation that the hat would arrive on a Friday night just in time to be five days late.
On to Plan B... to be quite honest, I only had a Plan A as I thought Amazon could get an aircraft carrier delivered to my house in under a week. I thought about nixing the hat; when Indy’s not so secret identity Dr. Jones was teaching, he didn’t wear a hat but I’d be like Clark Kent instead of Superman. The saturday before the event, I headed to the local mall hoping I could find something that might someday resemble an Indy bald spot concealer.
I checked a number of stores and Macy’s, of all places, had a hat that would do, so I was all set to move. I tried on all of the separate components but the whole outfit wasn’t fully united until the next morning. The ride over was whipless as I knew it would be difficult to use a seatbelt with a whip; Indy never had these issues.
When I stepped out of the car and fastened the whip to my belt, I was a changed man, or at least the people around me were. On the platform waiting for the train, people stood aside and let me pass. In Grand Central Station, crowds parted as if I were Moses.
Comicon came and went without a hitch. I drew far more attention than I expected. But those without costumes, stood out like sore thumbs broken backward. At Comicon, people around me seemed immune to the whip but that all changed once we hit the street. The Starbucks line dissolved when we entered. Cars suddenly emptied for us on the train.
On the way home, I thought about my whip experience and how I had not seen it until then. Halloween was a few weeks away and I work for a progressive company where Halloween is just another excuse for not doing your job.
I went as Indy which was pretty close to what I wear on a daily basis. A few meetings were scheduled so I figured I could lose the hat, the whip, and the man purse and sort of blend in. The first meeting went off without a hitch but I did attend it with hat head, quite literally, as I shave my head on a daily basis.
The second meeting in the aptly named bored board room is where things changed. I typically attend meetings with a room full of muckety-mucks whose bonus is more than I make a year. I’m the new guy on the executive team and I get the whole ‘the new guy has to earn his own stripes’ thing. The hat was left on my desk and the man-purse was draped over my chair, but the whip was affixed firmly to my belt.
By the time I realized it, it was too late to take it off and I walked into the meeting a few minutes late, well ‘walked’ probably isn’t the proper term. As I reached for the meeting room door, I stepped on the whip and actually tripped quite aggressively into the room with the whip flying up and cracking the air. The whole room stopped and one person quite literally jumped out of his chair.
I explained nothing and took my seat and within a few minutes, the whip found itself leaving my belt and coiled like a snake on the edge of the table. The meeting couldn’t have gone better, at least from my perspective, and the whip was my grail.
The whip, the hat, and the man purse didn’t leave my side for the rest of the day even though I had three more meetings. I’m quite certain no one actually thought I would use the whip but, after the board room incident, they weren’t taking any chances.
The whip has found a permanent place on the corner of my desk and I hold as many meetings as I can in my office. Since Halloween, my stock has risen since I have chosen to speak softly and carry a big whip.
