Devils and vampires may be Halloween standards, but most years it's the topical costumes that really stand out. Late Clinton-era Halloweens were full of Monica Lewinskys; the mid 1990s saw people dressed as John and Lorena Bobbitt; and after Taiwan's 1999 earthquake, a few even donned refrigerator boxes and posed as toppling buildings.
Tasteless? Perhaps. But Halloween seems not only to be a time to let the age-old goblins roam the earth, it's also an occasion to unleash their contemporary counterparts -- and only for a night.
This year, there can be no question as to who will corner the market of Halloween fashion: Osama bin Laden.
Fortunately, his is a pretty easy costume to make, much easier than, say, that of an anthrax spore. All you need is a turban, desert clothing and, of course, the beard. To help you along with this last and most vital accessory, here are our 10 suggestions on beard-making for those of you who haven't had the foresight to grow one naturally.
1. Buy a beard from the costume store. Not only is this option lacking in creativity, it also costs money. True Halloween mastery lies in putting together your costume MacGyver-style, using mainly innocuous household materials to come up with some miraculous result. But if you must, you can find a near approximation in most any fake pirate beard at the costume stores lining Hsimenting's Hanchung Street for NT$150 and up.
2. Construction paper. The polar extreme of a store-bought beard, construction paper is cheap and will look like crap. Though it is possible that intensive scissor work could produce something passable, any paper beard will still fall apart if you try to drink anything. So in the end, this option is best left for your preschool English class, which you can transform into an entire platoon of Chinese 5-year-old bin Ladens. And once they're all dressed, you can have them wave plastic AK-47s and chant: "Death to the American Satan!"
3. Spray paint your Santa Claus beard black. Don't worry, you can spray paint it white again in December. Or better yet, figure out a way to mix costumes and go as O-Santa bin Laden, that jolly old eggnog-slurping terrorist. You know, it's like the song says: You better not shout/ you better not cry/ you better not pout/ I'm telling you why/ bin Laden is coming to town/ He might be on your airplane/ or in the daily mail/ he don't care if you've been bad or good/ because you're the in-fi-del ...
4. Glue together your own fake beard from barber shop clippings. The hair of almost everyone in Taiwan is black, which just happens to be the perfect color for a bin Laden beard. Moreover, local barbers tend to be extremely easy going, and though they will probably find your request for the contents of their wastebaskets to be a bit strange, most will happily accede once you explain things properly.
5. Your air conditioner filter. If you live in any of Taiwan's major urban areas, your air conditioner's filter is bound to be either black or some very dark shade of gray. It is also made of spongy foam and big enough to pass the Taliban's minimum-size requirements. Another perk is that losing the filter is no big deal, because you probably need to change it anyway.
6. A black Russian fur hat. Look, the Cold War is over. This year, it will be hardly apropos to go as Vladmir Putin, Ivan the Terrible, a Cossack horseman, or anything even vaguely Russian. Remember, this is Halloween. It's important to be timely and have a sense of history.
7. Pumpkin entrails. When carving your pumpkin, you won't have to let the innards go to waste for once. Instead of tossing the stringy pulp and seeds into the garbage, you can smear them onto your face and let the guck hang down like a beard. Of course this conglomeration will be orange and pumpkiny, not black. However, orange is an acceptable Halloween color, and you can also explain it away saying your costume has something to do with hell, the devil, demons, etc. -- themes that all mesh well with bin Laden.
8. Hello Kitty dolls. Combining two icons as disparate as Osama bin Laden and Hello Kitty cannot fail to make you look clever. People will appreciate how you take advantage of Kitty's evil undertones and bin Laden's pop potential. A guaranteed hit!
9. Photos of George Bush. Take magazine and news photos of the US president and fashion them into the shape of a beard. Truly, this will confuse the heck out of everyone. By no means should you explain how or why you decided on this perplexing costume.
10. Taipei Times' bin Laden cutout. Well, you waited until the last minute to find a costume -- that's okay. We've solved the problem for you! Just cut along the dotted lines and then attach this mask to your face with a string. Happy trick-or-treating!
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