A Douchey Halloween

In the cumulative 16 hour drive between Oxnard and Portland, I had a lot of time to ponder my Halloween costume. It's been a while since I've dressed up for the holiday (which, fun fact, was supposed to be my birthday; I popped out two days late, unfortunately) -- the last time I recall was either my senior or junior year of high school, in which I combined a blue thrift store snow suit, a ripped Hulk Hogan T-shirt, multiple ties and a stylishly mussed hairdo into a costume I deemed "New Millennium Sex Symbol." Since this'll be my first Halloween away from home and in a major city, it sounds like a decent idea to get back into the spirit. I considered being a "hipster," but figured it'd be too much work, and I don't think I have enough time to find the "Vote" McCain shirt from The Colbert Report, which was my initial inspiration.

So I decided to leap to the opposite end of the cultural spectrum: douchebag.

Now, as with so-called "hipsters," there are several different species of douche out there: frat douches, club douches, rocker douches, even hipster douches. But I think I'm going to go with the prototypical douche: the guido douche. Being 50 percent guido myself, I feel like I can get away with it. All I need is hair product, a striped shirt, some kind of stupid-ass gold chain, designer jeans and, of course, bronzer.

In scouring the Internet for a quintessential douche to model my costume after, there were a lot to choose from. I sort of had Joey from the last season of The Real World in my head, but I'm afraid I'll give myself a stroke if I go around trying to act like him all night. Of course I studied the Web's definite douchebag archive, hotchickswithdouchebags.com, but the choices there are too overwhelming. A quick Google Image search brought up this pic, and I think this gives the general idea of what I'm going for:



This could turn into an interesting sociological experiment, too. I anticipate a bunch of actual douchebags -- dressed as pimps, most likely -- coming up to me asking, "Aye, where's your costume, boss?"

Of course, I'm hoping there's a party or something worth going to on Halloween. Otherwise, I'll just end up sitting around at home like a douchebag.