This is not the worst thing you've caught me doing

CosPlay they call it, dressing up as a favourite character from a film, or TV Show, or cartoon.

It's like playing dress-up, but for adults (Using the term incredibly loosely) or for the kids of incredibly cool parents.

It's very popular at 'Cons' - Conventions where comics or sci-fi fans get together and get their collective geeks on.  Sounds perfectly horrid and a little sad to your more vanilla types doesn't it? And in fairness, a lot of it is - There are only so many 25 Stone plus men dressed in a Lycra Captain America costume that even a broadminded man like myself can stand.  And I don't know how many of you are actually Sci-Fi fans, but you're a better person than I am if you can name a single female hero or villain, that you would want to dress up as (should you be blessed with mammary glands and 'innie' reproductive organs) - that is more than a size 10-12 (UK Size) - But that doesn't stop ladies twice that size dressing up as them.

Now, before I'm torn to shreds by a frenzy of vicious estrogen-toting feminists, I'm all for empowerment, and I'm sure that every single one of these wonderful ladies has an amazing personality, is inwardly beautiful - In fairness, a lot of them are outwardly beautiful too - Skinny-bony women do nothing for me personally - But if you're going to dress up as a well known character, male or female... You'd be more believable if you were of roughly the same body-type... Just sayin... But who am I to judge, right? As long as we're all having fun and no-one (especially me) gets hurt.

OK, it's time that you all went and did a Google image search for CosPlay... Be sure to open it in another tab though, wouldn't want you getting lost.

Yeah, I know, Boobs... Especially if you pep it up a level by Googling 'CosPlay Morrigan'

But in amongst the fluff, and the hardcore Japanese Manga/Anime stuff that most of you have probably never heard of, there are some amazing works of art.   Really, these guys must spend months, or possibly even years designing and building these costumes so that they can go to an exhibition centre somewhere and have their photos taken by people who live in their parents basements.

I have an amazing amount of respect for these people, they are true artists .. I can only assume that the best of them go on to work for companies providing costumes for big-budget movies and use these 'Cons' as advertising media for their chosen (or potential) career.

Then we have the people like you and me, the people who sit looking at the pictures going 'Whoa!' and 'Wow!' and hurling superlatives about with gay abandon.  And then you think 'I wouldn't mind having a go at that'.  Now, as my good friend Kanye may have said once - 'I'm really proud of you for wanting to do that, and I'm gonna let you finish' but... Most of us really shouldn't bother.

And if you want to know why, just do a Google Image search for 'CosPlay Fails'

See, just exactly the same number of Boobs, but mostly on men.

That's what most of us would look like, I know it's what I would look like.  It leaves you with few choices.  The first, and most sensible, is to just not bother - Really, just go to the convention as yourself.  You won't have as many pictures taken of you, but in most cases that's a good thing, believe me - I know from personal experience that the camera is not always your friend.

Your second option, and it's a good option if you really, really, want to be part of the scene is:

Body Armour.

I know a couple of people who dress up as Imperial Stormtroopers an awful lot of the time, they do an awful  lot of work for charity and raise an awful lot of money, there's even a group that you can join if that's your bag, called the 501st Legion (Named for the group of Stormtroopers directly commanded by Darth Vader)

Beware though, these guys take it really seriously and will vet your costume before they allow you to join... they can be really sniffy about your armour being made up of bits from different films and everything. But still, you can play dress up and help the helpless all at the same time.  Stormtrooper armour, to an extent, can cover a multitude of sins, you can squeeze into it if you are more generously proportioned (to an extent - I mean, Jabba the Hutt might be a better bet for some of us) or you can bulk it up if you are 'A little short for a Stormtrooper'

But my favourite, the coolest of the cool, the bestest, most desirous (to me at least) Body Armoured CosPlay subject of them all... is... The one and only... Superhero's Superhero...

Iron Man

OK, first thing, forget the fancy-dress costumes.  They mostly look like onesies painted red and gold by a blind marmoset.  Instead, take a look at the fan-made, fibreglass and foam, LED studded, motorised faceplate, slabs of awesomness that you can find.

I mean... Wow! Right?

There are some talented modellers out there (all of whom that I hate - because they are so gorram talented and they have Iron Man suits) Really, really talented... Sigh!

So, I have made a decision, I am going to make myself a suit, It may take me years, I may get halfway through and give up, and it will get put in the loft and then I'll find it years later and I'll pick up the helmet and the light will catch the edge so that it looks like it's crying and then I'll carry on and I'll finish it in time for my Grandson's 6th Birthday... *breathe*... And I will be awesome!

Yes... I... Will... Be... Awesome...

Knock-Knock-Knocking on... Oh, next door? Right, sorry.

Death...

There's a subject worth exploring.

I don't mean the nice anthropomorphic Mr Death, one of the little men from the Village, who seemingly hasn't come about the hedge.

I mean The End, the moment your brain no longer produces electrical impulses, the bit in the medical dramas where there's that 'Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' noise and someone with an infeasibly chiseled jaw turns to a nurse who would be badger-velcroingly beautiful if only she's take her hair out of a bun and take off her glasses and says 'I'm calling it!'

So, there you are (because it's your death we're talking about) lying on a slab, peaceful for the first time since you were declared an adult - Enjoying whatever afterlife you've picked for yourself, whether it be all vikings and naked ladies, or wandering about in white robes, rubbing shoulders with the great and the good of the entirety of history.

What happens to the stuff you've left behind?

The meat, the bits that look like you but really aren't you any more.

Recent traditional history has convinced everyone in the English Speaking world that they've got two choices:

You can get buried in a wooden box and eventually become wormfood, helping to fertilise the planet with the (on average) 155lbs of starstuff that we're all made from - As Elton John sing... The Cir-her-hercle of LiIiIiIife.

Or you can get cooked at gas mark 900 (1700 F) for 90 minutes, then tumbled in the Cremulator (TM) for 20 minutes until thou art dust - It's a great way to lose weight though, at the end of the process, you weigh about 5lbs.

But it's a fascinating subject, if you're into the macabre, or you're a Goth - Do a bit of research, you'll be hooked.

If you go back a bit further, you'll find that most cultures have, or in some case still do, practice the Funeral Pyre - Which is sort of like an open air cremation, whether it's on a big pile of wood a'la Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi, or or on a boat, as in every viking movie ever.

In other countries, they have their own quaint little foreign ways of making sure they haven't got a dead body stinking up the place for too long (or not).

Your actual Mongolians have a practice called 'Air Sacrifice' which involves them starving a load of feral dogs, taking the corpse out into the wilderness and then giving it the old 'Off you go Fido, fill your boots' (Not that I'm implying that the Mongolians force the dogs to wear boots - they're odd, not cruel)

The Tibetans, revered by thousands of up their own sphynchter students with no experience of the real world as the most wonderfully spiritual race in the whole of the multiverse, do pretty much the same thing, but leave out the dogs... So their funeral practice essentially involves taking the body away from the village, putting it somewhere out of site, and nonchalantly wandering back whistling and saying 'Body? What Body? No idea what you're talking about me old flower.' The Maasai in Africa do the same thing - No-one ever claims that they're all spiritual and what-not do they?

The Haida people of North America / Southern Canada used to throw all the normos, like you and me into a big pit behind the village and let nature take its course.  But if you were a chief, or other important person, they would take your corpse, beat it with clubs until your bones broke sufficiently for you to fit into a small wooden box which would then get nailed to the top of a totem pole so that you could help guard the village along with all your ancestors (By ancestors, I obviously mean rotting shoeboxes of suppurating flesh)

The Vikings were great too... (Hang on, I hear you say, you've done the Vikings havent you? Up there, with the ship and the fire and the Up Helly Aa business?) Well, just think about that for a moment, if you were a traditionally seafaring race, what you wouldn't want to do was go around burning the ships every time someone popped his furry bootees.  So what they actually did was dig a hole in the shape of a boat and fill it with rocks... Not sure why, I mean it wasn't like it was in any immediate danger of floating away or anything, then put you in it with a selection of your goods and chattels - Chattels in this case including your recently gangraped and strangled wife, then they'd cover you over and do a bit of light pillaging in your honour.

The people of Kiribati, one of the Gilbert islands, East of Australia, bury their dead, just like real people do... But then after a while, they dig up the bodies, remove the skull, oil and polish it, and keep it on the shelf in the family huy as a knick-nack, whilst occasionally offering it tobacco and snacks - To date, none of the skulls has ever been reported as having partaken of these offerings.  Someone thought one had once, but it turned out to be the island's only professional ventriloquist, who is now on a shelf, in the chief's hut...

But what if you're not in a country? What if you're between countries?  What if you're on a boat?  Did you know... That any Captain of any ship of any nationality can legally perform a burial at sea. OK, only on dead people, but otherwise they're pretty much all powerful.  So how would they do it? They certainly wouldn't stick you in a coffin and then slide it over the side, you'd probably get sewn into a burlap sack with a load of rocks... As a final test of your continuing deathness, they'd put a stitch through your lip, reasoning that if that doesn't wake you up, nothing will.  I think they actually show this in that Russell Crowe film, Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World, shows this in detail... Great film, you should watch it.

As yet, I understand that no-one has tried to carry this type of funeral over to the Trans-Atlantic air routes, for which long-haul pilots are quite rightly upset.

Although they'll happily shoot you into space... Or compact your ashes into a beautiful diamond for, like, £5,000

But what about me? How would I chose to be interred?

What if you could choose anything to happen to you after your metabolic processes are history, when you've dropped off the twig, kicked the bucket, shuffled off your mortal coil, run down the curtains and joined the bleedin' choir invisibule?

There was a craft-related toy in the 70's, which, unfortunately, I can't remember the name of, (I'm sure one of you knows what I mean) that let you encase household items into a clear, rubbery plastic, to make things like ugly broaches or very small paperweights.  That's what I want doing with my corpse... I'd like to be cast into a block of clear plastic, in a rugged pose, possibly something out of the Freeman's catalog's 'moustached men pointing at something in the distance' section, and then placed on a slowly rotating plinth outside a public library.

Naked.

I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle

I like a good party, me.  I'm a great fan of the alcohol and the moving of parts of the body in a rhythmic style to phat, dench, beats and so forth.  But more and more, recently, I've found myself being invited to parties hosted by people I don't know hugely well.

I mean, I know these people, don't get me wrong... I don't just wander up to any building that sounds like it contains people 'Getting their groove on', knock on the door, hold up a four-pack of Carling and say 'Dave invited me' ('cos there's always a Dave around somewhere isn't there?).  But I've probably only seen them a couple of times a month, over a few years.  I guess I'm maybe what they used to call in the olden days 'a face'.  Someone you see around the place and nod at who you think might be more important/mysterious than they actually are.

Actually, it could be that it's actually Mrs Dandy who gets the invite and I just tag along, but I couldn't possibly comment.

Anywho.

They usually follow the same sort of timeline:

• We (because it's invariably a 'family' invite.) arrive about 15-20 mins after the posted start time, because you don't want to seem too keen.
• We look suspiciously at all of the other 100+ people in the room, few of whom we know.  We get scowled at quizzically in return.
• Eventually, someone we know quite well turns up and we annexe a couple of chairs/tables and set up court, where we can be visited by other party-goers (including our original inviter or the person for whom the party has been thrown) at their leisure.
• We have a few beers
• Dancing ensues
• The decision is taken whether to leave the car at the venue and get a taxi home is discussed and summarily rejected.
• I drink more Coke / Lemonade than is strictly good for me
• I comment pointedly on the tightness of / lack of clothing on some of the female guests to any of my male compatriots within earshot.
• I further research the above subject until I'm noticed doing so by the wife.
• We go home, in the car, in a generally frosty atmosphere.

But we got invited to an 18th Birthday last year which went a little bit differently.  First of all, the invitation contained those two words specifically designed to stab fear into the heart of every right-thinking Englishman. (No, not that, Bring Your Own Bottle is four words)

'FANCY DRESS' - But at least there was a theme, 'Heroes and Villains'

So we all went and had a bit of a think... The MicroDandy was fine, he had a Darth Vader costume already, The MiniDandy wanted to be a Jedi (we have the Force-FX lightsabres and everything, so it was just a case of making her a costume - Good job I can sew innit?).  Mrs Dandy has a fine selection of Goth stuff, so 'Generic Vampire' was her choice.  So it was left to me, I really wanted to go as Iron Man, but there wasn't enough time, or money, or talent available to make a decent costume in time (which I wasted  a significant proportion of sulking about it) So I had to go with something I already had.  Now my normal, day-to-day wardrobe contains all the items required for a decent Neo or Morpheus, Connor Macleod of the Clan Macleod or H.P. Lovecraft, but I fancied something different.

I decided to go as 'The Terminator', which I had the clothing for but not the prosthetics, because of course, I wanted to be a battle damaged T800 (and who doesn't deep down?) - So I searched the web and saw many, many videos of Americans with too much time on their hands sticking LEDs and theatrical PVC appliances to themselves and thought 'bugger that I'll just paint it on'.

So, if you'll picture the scene, I had my selection of acrylic paints that I once used for painting toy soldiers, in the upstairs bathroom, with one of those shaving mirrors screwed to the wall, you know, the ones with the comedy extending boxing glove type fitment.  painting my face, right-handed (I'm left handed) without my glasses on (I'd tried just painting over my glasses, but it didn't look very effective) - This was the result... Ah, yes, I forgot to say that I'd ran out of silver, so had to use gold...

So we got our accessories together and took some pictures, the smaller Dandies grabbed their lightsabres, Mrs Dandy grabbed our new puppy (that I had made a pair of bat-wings for) and I picked up my shades, the freshly painted, over and under Nerf shotgun and my .50AE Desert Eagle... For how does one terminate properly without devastatingly powerful projectile weaponry?

We then started on the party timeline as described above.  We got as far as the 'Someone we knew turned up' stage when suddenly there was a massive influx of Darth Vaders and Jedi.  Now, my son took umbrage at this because he'd had the idea of coming as Darth Vader first and he did no more than to storm across the room to set about these poor people with his lightsabre.  I don't know if anyone here's ever been twatted by a seven year old, full of righteous indignation, overarm, with a solid blade lightsabre - But it bloody hurts.  And I admit I felt sorry for these poor teenagers trying to defend themselves with the little plastic extendy-blade lightsabres, or in one case, the cardboard core of (I think) a roller blind with the end painted red.

Not sorry enough to stop laughing and do anything about it of course, but sorry all the same.

Then things went downhill, the guns got borrowed and they danced around the room for a good hour or so and spent their time being discharged into the faces of villains by heroes, or slightly more often, vice-versa.  As did the puppy, who, even if I say so myself, was incredibly cute dressed as a vampire fruitbat.  And I seem to remember at one point having a lightsabre duel, with the MiniDandy, between songs, in the middle of an empty dancefloor.

The night wore on, more coke was drunk and the number of people in PVC hotpants dancing to 'Gangnam Style' seemed to multiply every time I looked up.

I took a few minutes out to write something on the 'guestbook', well, I say write something.. What I actually did is stand there for ten minutes with my mouth open, thinking of some edifying advice for someone who'd just entered adulthood, then gave up and drew a dragon wearing a cowboy hat, which I then mislabelled as a dinosaur wearing a cowboy hat and wandered back to our little group of tables.

Can you think what had happened in my absence?  Have a guess...

Nope, wasn't that.

Not that either.

It certainly wasn't that, but only because I don't think that there's that much oil-based lubricant in the East Midlands area.

What had happened was that a number of our friends had turned up a little more than fashionably late and had, as a group, dressed up as 'The Scooby Gang', complete with improbably attired, lizard based villain.

Oh yes, and my seven year old son had field stripped the Desert Eagle into it's component parts and spread it out on one of the tables, he'd had an encouraging audience and everything.

I tapped him on the shoulder and said:

'Dude, you gonna put that back together?'

'Nope.'

'And why not?'

'I don't know how...'

So after the slowest sliding facepalm in the world, I sat down and set about re-assembling the gun, it took longer than I'd expected, as the breech cover had fell off the table and rolled away, and it was dark, and I had the same drunken audience.

On the whole, a great party, I need to go to more like it. And so do you guys, you owe it to yourselves.

And if you do, don't forget to send me an invite.  Oh yeah, you need to mingle, the mingle's the thing(le)