Halloween in Walmart Country

As anyone who knows us knows, Doug and I love Halloween.  We both had Halloween pictures posted on our internet dating profiles, and recognized early that Halloween (and other associated events that allow for ridiculous dress-up opportunities) was an area of common interest.  The first year were were dating, our costumes were equally ridiculous in different ways--Doug went as Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons and spiked his then-long hair out in mohawks all over his head, and I went as "Baby got Back" (Yes, the Sir-Mix-a-Lot song!) by dressing up as a baby and padding my ass out as far as I could.

Naturally, we both feel we have a lot to live up to for Halloween, and last year we did.....nothing.  We had nowhere to go, no reason to dress up, other than possibly dressing up as a farm animal to get a free burrito from Chipotle, which ultimately felt too sad to actually do.  Since then, we've talked repeatedly about what we should be this year, but conversations stalled when we realized that yet again, we really had no where to go and no Halloween parties to attend.

That is, until the week before Halloween, when some friends of ours said they would be holding a chili-party the night of Halloween.  The cook of the house makes a damn fine chili, so we decided to go, and heavens forbid if we are going to go out on Halloween night and not dress up.

So, we scrambled a bit to come up with some last minute costume ideas.  We ended up going as George Bluth and Kitty Sanchez from the TV Show Arrested Development.

Or, to be more specific, Doug put on an orange jumpsuit and a black do-rag type thing to emulate this:

And I sewed foam false boobs to a white T-shirt so that I could have weirdly mismatched nipples like this:

Also, importantly, the character of Kitty is known for saying some kind of line akin to "Say goodbye to THESE!" and then flashes one of the other characters. She does this a lot.  So, I thought it would be funny if I could do the same, which is the other reason for the foam false boobs on the white t-shirt....I could "flash" people during the party.

As it turns out, the majority of the party-goers were Walmart and Sams-Club folks who are lovely people, but I don't think they watch much Arrested Development and they looked highly uncomfortable with the flashing.  Eh, this is what they get from a creative academic type.

In other news, trick-or-treating in Walmart Country is a weird event.  According to Doug, who manned our door until he left to come pick me up for work, we got no trick-or-treaters at all.  There was a trick-or-treating event downtown, a few blocks away, so perhaps all the kids went there.  Or they got smart and went to the fancy neighborhoods.  My colleague, who lives in the historic district, said that he spent $35 on candy and it was all gone by 7:30pm.

The same thing apparently happened near downtown Bentonville.  Friends of ours, who live 4 blocks from the square, said they got almost no trick-or-treaters, but people they know who live right off the square had over a thousand trick-or-treaters.  There may be a bit of hyperbole going on here, but not as much as you might think.  I guess there are some zones for candy-getting and some zones of safety.  As usual, Walmart Country does things its own way.