So I make costumes. Not your average fitted attire. I mean I do that too, but not just that. I make BIG costumes. Like with metal and shit. So about October-ish, I contacted a costume making studio that does work with a convention called “Dickens-fair”. Maybe You’ve heard of it. It is a Christmas fair that turns the whole center into a replica of Dickens’ London, complete with actors who represent his characters. I had always wanted to go and was just trying to think of ways to help out.
I contacted the head person for costumes for the actors and I told her I make period pieces and I specialize in weird stuff, but also in turning old thrift store items into period attire. She emailed me back and was like “Come meet me” and so I did. I came out to her studio and was sitting with her folks, showing her pictures of all the stuff I’d done I was proud of. Then she says…”Wait…I have an idea.”
She tells me that every year, Dickens-fair has this one performer who is a fiddling Christmas tree. Like What? yes. A tree…that fiddles. Apparently it’s like the fucking Mickey of Dickens-fair. Only, her outfit was made a few years back from fabric, and kind of looked like a dunce cap with streamers. She told me that this year, the Fiddling Tree wanted a new costume. She says “Can you make a Christmas tree that can fiddle?”
I’m like…no. “If she can fiddle and wear a tree, then I can build a tree that can be worn by a fiddler. Hell yeah.”
And she’s like…”It can’t touch her shoulders, and it has to fit over her normal costume, and it has to be period accurate, so all period ornaments.”
And I’m like…bitch, “I got this.”
She says “Come back in a week and meet her and give us your idea.”
So I designed…because I make costumes and I have Christmas in my blood. My mom always tells this story about how when I was like 4, I was with her at the train station in LA and I saw this man sitting on a bench. Now this man wore blue denim overalls, with a long sleeved red shirt, had a white beard, and carried a wooden cane carved with Rudolph, who had a gemstone nose…He was fucking Santa. Admit it. And 4 year old me was like……SANTA? My mom always says I stared at him hard and then tried to climb in his lap, like for real Tim Allen from Santa Clause style, but he was cool, and pulled me into his lap and had a whole conversation with me about whether or not I was being good…in July. According to my mom, he told her he was a professional Santa and this was something he always got from kids, and that he loved it. He then got picked up by a woman in a convertible and drove away.
My mom has been telling me this story since I was five.
So this year, about 3 years ago, I was like…A Christmas tree that fiddles…I got this.
I mean, I drew this shit. I went to hardware stores and craft shops and I priced out this shit. There were emails about what I could expect to be the substructure. I made a barbie doll scale model with pipe cleaners. I came in with a fucking Plan.
And they laughed and said… “We love the barbie…OK.”
So I had a budget. I had an idea. And I went with it. I made measurements and all sorts of stuff. Let me tell you about this costume…
This woman is 6′2″. She fiddles. She wears, beneath the tree, a full period costume. This means a bell hoop skirt and a corset. I made sure they had a hoop for her that was carved from fucking PVC pipe and a steel boned corset, and I went to work. I had frames…on fucking chains…from MY CEILING. I had the whole thing mapped out.
A lightweight metal skirt in a grid pattern made from chain, linked together in a mesh. gathered at the waist and clipped like a belt. Over the head, a cone-like structure carved out of mesh, mounted on braces that were lashed to the torso with straps bolted into the metal cross-braces. A light aluminum frame. And over this…a cape, made from long dangling chains. Every inch of chain was coated in weatherproofing green paint. Every few links…a limb hacked off a fake plastic Christmas tree. Woven amidst these? A series of handmade and donated ornaments, including fake cookies made from clay, fake candles with a remote control that controlled the flicker. I had paper ornaments, streamers, instruments made of brass, birds, candies made from plastic…I mean I had everything, and all to period. I worked and worked on this for months and had numerous fittings.
The aluminum headpiece came along. I was stressed. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make this fucking cone mount on her chest so her shoulders would be free. I mean I had ideas – like a cone, but with a back and front piece that came down her torso and to which, straps were fixed that clipped at the sides. This would distribute weight evenly through the corset and allow for freedom of the shoulders. But! I didn’t have a firm plan. I went to the hardware store.
Me. Three months pregnant. All cute and glowy and shit.
And I walked into the section where all the plumbing and flashing is. Now I know my way around. I hate going here because I’m usually hassled by a dude who thinks girls can’t know shit about hardware. But this time…this time it was a nice old man with a snowy white beard, wearing a red shirt and a green apron. I’m like…he’s a Santa…this is fate.
He comes over and says “What can I help you with today?”
And so I tell him the whole story. About the tree, and the odd parameters, the physics, the complexities. I tell him what I’m trying to create, this cone of metal lashed to the chest, and he…
Smiles.
He tells me, “I’m a Santa. I do it every year. I love this project! I want to help!”
As we are brain storming, and he’s showing me all the products that might work, he mentions to me that he isn’t the first Santa in his family.
“My dad did it for most of his life.”
“Man, I have such respect for Santas. My mom always tells this story about me meeting this man who looked like a Santa at a train station and trying to sit on his knee.”
The man got very quiet. “At a train station?”
“Yeah, like he was wearing overalls and a red shirt and had this carved cane…”
“I remember that cane,” he says.
I turn to him… “The one with Rudolph?”
“With a ruby nose. Yeah. After he died I looked everywhere for it, but I couldn’t find it.”
I stopped. Like straight up stopped moving, with like my limbs all cold as snow. “Wait a minute? What? Are you telling me you know that Santa?”
“I think that was my dad. He is exactly as you say. He worked on the railroad as a conductor for most of his life, and when he retired they gave him free travel. He was always taking trips, and he always went as Santa, because after he retired, he did that full time.”
“Did your mom own a convertible? Like a sleek one?”
“Yup.”
I lost it. I’m in the middle of fucking Ace Hardware, talking to Santa, about my Santa, the one I can’t remember, but always knew existed, and that man is this Santa’s daddy. And here I am…shopping for parts to a fiddling Christmas tree. I cried like a little kid. He hugged me. I apologized and told him I was in my first trimester. He said it was fine. He gave me his card. Told me he was glad to hear his father had had such an impact on kids. He helped me pick out my tree pieces and then checked me out.
I built the best fucking tree you ever saw. I wove metal. I bent aluminum. I used riveters. I worked with saws, and vices, and paint, and glue, and fucking plastic clay. I did everything wearing gloves and a mask because of baby. I did it all like I had a fire under me, because fuck that…I’m not letting Santas down.
And this is what I made.
This was the dry fitting, the trial run. We fluffed it out with more limbs, added bits here and there, or planned for more. I strung this fucking thing from my rafters on a mannequin and we had a tree decorating party, putting ornaments on it like it was a real tree. Then we had her put on the whole thing, and we watched her play “O Tannenbaum”
And it was the best Christmas moment ever, for me.
That year, I had free tickets to Dickens-fair. I went and caught sight of my Christmas tree fiddling around, playing songs for kids and spreading the spirit. Then later I saw the fiddler dancing in Fezziwig’s ball, with her tree skirt still on over her dress. It was awesome, seeing this 7.5′ tall tree gliding around, this thing I made, with help from My Santa’s Son.
I was Santa that year. It made my holiday.
So the next time you meet a Santa… it might not be the real guy… but you needed to meet him. And if you are a Santa… this is what you do. This is your legacy.
Keep it up.
Ok, but wait, because that’s not the last of this moment.
So what I didn’t tell you is that when I went to meet the costume lady the first time, I was chatting with her, and she made some comment about Mark Twain, and how she has to make a Mark Twain costume for an actor who plays him at some Sacramento history festival. Like, if you don’t live in California, you don’t know, but Sacramento is our capital city and it has an historic downtown, and they have a costumed fair every year. Now she tells me she has to make this costume.
And I am gushing because I love Twain. And then she mentions something, like I don’t remember, about Back to the Future.
I said, “I love that movie.”
She goes, “Oh, well…then hang around for a minute.”
So a bit later a guy walks out of the back, and he kinda looks familiar, but I don’t really know. I’m still sketching my Christmas tree. Anyway, she walks him over and introduces him to me, and I’m like Hey, yeah how’s it going.
Then he mentions how he has to have all these fittings done before his charity cruise. And I’m like….who is this guy that he has a fucking charity cruise? And then she says to me, all grinning…”Remember how you said you like Back to the Future?”
“Yeah, so?”
“After the actor who played Marty McFly’s dad left…who do you think played him?”
And I’m like…..WHHHHHAAAAATTTTTT?
And the guy is like hahahahah
And my phone rings…Now this is Important. Because my husband is a doctor. A doctor whose last name is BROWN…and his ringtone is the theme music to Back to the Future.
And it was like fate. And I said OMG and answered the phone and told my husband who I was talking to and he goes “Why are you still talking to me. Hang up”
And so I chatted with the guy about his costume, his life during the films, what it was like coming in after the previous actor and all that. I asked him about his current work. And then he mentions the cruise, and I’m like, “Oh man, is it all the actors from the original films?”
And he’s like “All but Michael, because of his health.”
And I was like “I have meeting Chris Lloyd on my bucket list, because I fucking love that man so god damn much. My 30′s Bday was a couple yars ago, and we had a Christopher Lloyd costumed pub crawl, where everyone came as their fav Lloyd character. We had two Doc Browns from two different films, a Klingon, Fester, Me as Judge Doom, and a taxi driver.”
He goes…”Oh my god, Chris would love that. Send me the pictures you guys took and I’ll show him”
So I did, not thinking anything of it. I mean actors always say shit like that right?
Until an envelope came in the mail one day and inside was an 8×11 of my fucking group photo from the party…SIGNED BY CHRISTOPHER FUCKING LLOYD.
Sometimes, my life is magical.
I’ll reblog with a pic of the shot if I can, but I’m away from home right now.
You’re joking. That is absurd good fortune. You must be charmed.
Yeah…I mean I’ve had some crazy shit happen to me. I’ll have to have a “crazy shit” hashtag on my blog just to tell all these weird ass things that happen to me. Like meeting Elvira at a con, telling her that I only knew how to put on makeup at all because I watched her show and she once did a behind the scenes that shoed how she put stuff on. And she invited me to audition for her reality show, and my number was 13666, and I got on the show, because she liked me and my scream was the loudest they ever heard. Like…that was fun.
Then there was the time my friend was dressed as Anakin Skywalker at a con, and he was standing by a curtained wall, when all of a sudden a hand shot out and tapped him on the shoulder, and it was CARRIE FISHER and she pointed to the cigarette behind his ear and goes “Can I borrow a cigarette?” And he totally gave it to her and I got to see Anakin give Leah a cigarette?
Or like, one time when I was cosplaying as Gaara, my favorite manga artist who was the guest of honor at the conference walked up to me and asks to take a picture with me because it was the best gaara she’d ever seen?
Oh wait no…Ok, the time I went to a con dressed as Flame Princess and the entire artists team behind Adventure Time autographed my matching handbag by drawing characters on it?
Or when my friend called me while I was talking to the guy who voiced Invader Zim and he answered my phone as ZIm and freaked my friend the fuck out?
NO no no…The time I was at Fanime con as The Mysterious Stranger, from The Adventures of Mark Twain (google that shit) and some random guy on a bike wrecked his bike, leaped off it, flew at me and goes “DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE?” And then later me and Raptor Jesus got a Christian protestor arrested?
Oh shit…no…omg no…The time I went back to my hotel room to change out of costume to come back and go to an event. I walked to the door I’d left from, only it was locked, and I knocked, and some guy answered the door, and I was like, “I wonder what his costume is, because it has blood on it and that’s odd” and the hall was really crowded and I was trying to get through people and then I stopped at th door to the room I thought my event was in and the girl at the door goes “Oh no, this is the zombie ball.”….WHICH IS FUCKING AWFUL BECAUSE I AM LEGIT TERRIFIED OF ZOMBIES IN AN IRRATIONAL WAY. And I got chased down the hall by zombies like I was the girl from the Thriller Video.
Oh no no no. Ok, this is the last one, I swear. SO one time, my fam and I were at Universal Studios, back when they first put in the walk through Van Helsing haunted house. At the gate I asked the man if this attraction had any zombies. He goes “None.” and I said “I’m not shitting you, I need to know because I will kill whoever you send” And he shakes his head and goes “NO ZOMBIES>” But then when we are deep in the maze, this fucking monster reaches out from darkness and grabs my sister, and so I fucking punched it right in the rotting face and grabbed her and hoofed it. I get to the end, and we are both wheezing and scared shitless, like we just did a stint in fucking Silent Hill, and this motherfucker with a radio comes over and says “Ma’am, did you punch one of our actors? We have a strict policy…” And I was like…”Look…when I went in there, I asked about zombies and he said there weren’t any, but then that thing grabbed my sister.”
And he straight up looks at me, huffs a sigh, and goes “Those weren’t zombies…those were ghouls.”
The Brain Squirrel Monologues 