Category Archives: Pop Culture

Cupcake costume with Miss Rotten Frosting: Part one, easycake

Oct 10, 2010

So you know my friend Miss Rotten Frosting, yeah?  She’s not just any old baked good.

Miss RF at WK

She’s a special creation, a knitting, rollerskating powerhouse of feminine energy.  Check her out here, teaching you how to make a scarf via the good folks at W+K Entertainment.  She may suffer from a bit of internal conflict, but her heart is pure gold.  Let me show you how to make your own Miss Rotten Frosting Tribute Idol.

Boots
First, get some sexy boots.  You CANNOT make a cupcake costume without the right boots.  If you disregard this rule, you go to hell when you die.  No purgatory can save you and no prayers or good deeds will help.  Wear New Balances with this outfit and have weevil pus dripped in your eyes for eternity.  So get the boots and make a cupcake over the top of it.

The best thing about making a Rotten Frosting : we run the skill gamut from easy to intense, but the initial ingredients are all cheap and excellent!  No bummer pimp hat costing you fifty bucks.  Just fun props from the dollar store.

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The cake part is easy as cake.  It’s an entry level costume job.  You need:

Two differently sized hula hoops

Camping Pad- cheaper than foam from the fabric store!  Get it from an Army Navy or a big grocery store.  You can spend as little as $20!

Garden gloves- the bigger, the better to emphasize the cartooniness

2 pairs of SAME COLORED pantyhose or tights, color relevant to flavor

Fun noodles (note:  Noodles must be fun; somber noodles are not appropriate)

Jump Rope

Heavy needle and strong thread

Wire- floral wire is OK!

Zipties

Suspenders- thick straps and strong clasps to hold up a camping pad!  Rainbow suspenders are extra joyful.  Expect to pay around $20.

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Belt- use an old belt you can cut up. Cheap vinyl ones are good– leather’s going to destroy your scissors.

Whitebelt

Yes, honey, that one is perfect.  Let’s make cake, shall we?

Cake is the base.  Use the hula hoops to encircle your camping pad in funnel-shape with a cupcakey-angle.  Please note—if you lost me with those directions, you will NEVER MAKE IT AS A CUPCAKE CREATOR.   I’m sorry, it’s just true.  Find a cardboard box and be a Catholic communion wafer for Halloween.

Use the floral wire to loosely stitch the cupcake cake together.  Then tightly, tightly, ever so tightly, sew the exterior of the camping pad together with an upholstery needle.

If you’re doing a last minute Rotten Frosting, come back later.   Move on to the frosting (instructions coming tomorrow; go get your ingredients NOW!).  You have drying time to think about.

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Miss Rotten Frosting’s arms are made of fun noodles.  Fun noodles are hollow, so you can easily cut your jump rope in half and run the rope through to the end.  Leave the handle on the jump rope.  You’ll be hanging on to these inside the costume (arms crossed over your chest) and pulling them to make her arms move up and down.  That’s right.  When you put on your Miss Rotten Frosting, your arms will be enclosed in the cake.  No holding drinks.  No steadying yourself while tottering around on those sexy boots.  No one said being a cupcake was easy.

So one end of the noodle-arm is inside with a handle.

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The other end needs a hand.  Tightly tie the rope to a piece of plastic about five inches long.  You want the rope inside to be taut, so Miss Frosting’s arms respond quickly to your jerks from inside the cake.  Since the large hula hoop isn’t needed to hold the camping pad in position anymore (because you stitched it so tightly), cut it apart and use that for the plastic end-holder.

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Stuff your gardening gloves with a firm material, like a cut-up Tshirt, and they’ll feel nice and handy and cartoony.  Your plastic hula-hoop end-holder should fit nicely in the glove from thumb to pinkie, and the elastic at the wrist will cinch closed around the fun-noodle nicely.  Make sure the arms have a nice weight to them, and the hands are weighted naturally so they rest easily on people’s body parts:

Feels nice…

Hello…

Fine, then. Be like that. I’m out of here.

You’ll eventually slide your flavor-relevant pantyhose over the brightly colored fun noodle.  It gives a nice skinlike, cakey consistency in addition to keeping the flavor consistent.

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Save any scraps from the panty-part of your arm-skin.  You’ll need them for eyelids.  Put your arms aside for now.  You’ll cut arm holes in the cake-tube later.  This paragraph is insane.

The second pair of tights will be worn by you, on your legs, in the boots, in the costume.  Keep them run-free.  Be classy for once.  For me?

Get those amazing double-rainbow suspenders out. Drape them over your shoulders.  Grab a marker.  Now put on the cake.  Like this.

 

Get the cupcake comfortable.  Get the top of the cake about eye-level.  Mark where the suspender ends hang inside the costume, right on the foam.  Take everything off.  Grab that old belt and cut off the buckle.  Cut it into four pieces.  Punch a hole in each corner of each piece.  You’re going to use zip ties to secure the four belt pieces over the marks you made.

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Just push the zip ties through the foam and secure ON THE INSIDE.  Trim the ends.  Secure the suspenders to the belt.  Grab your marker and put the cake back on.  Does it feel right?  Remember, you can adjust the suspenders.  Mark the spot you want the arms to jut out from.  Remember, you are holding your arms crossed in front of you, gripping jump rope handles.  Like a power ranger.

Powerranger

Now take it all off and cut the arm holes.  Go small at first.  You want the foam to be tight, holding the arm-noodle in place.  Make the holes bigger until you can squeeze the arm in tightly.

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You just cooked the cake.  Now let it cool and get to part two, the frosting!

 

For the Love of Gaiman

Sep 9, 2010

“It feels weird that this beloved author who hardly anyone i know except people i’ve met over the internet have ever heard of is now making movies with these big famous people in them. (Okay, yes, i know he’s pretty well known, just no one in my everyday life except people i’ve introduced to his work know of him.) I find myself feeling very happy for him the way you would be pleased for a family member or old friend who became big and successful.”   

         -From a Neil Gaiman fansite

Treed

Neil Gaiman is a well-known fantasy writer with a cult following- an obsessive group of fans dedicated to discussing and collecting his work, life, and speculating about future projects.  I personally discovered his universe on accident, while working at a library during my Las Vegas high school years.  The Las Vegas library district has a killer administration system that allows each branch to select a focus.  Our library specialized in African-American Studies (I loved that section so deeply), but for some reason, had a pretty awesome graphic novel section.

Las-Vegas-Ladies

Graphic novels fell under PN.  Know your Dewey Decimals, people.  It was lower down on the shelves, meaning they got less play and escaped the debasement of Crazy Tommy, the crackhead with one dread and a leopard fur coat.  Crazy Tommy would often and enthusiastically pick a book at random, copiously lick it, cover to back, then replace it backwards and upsdide down.  So on my shelf-checks, I’d often grab an out-of-place book, to find wet, smelly, crack-tongue saliva all over my hands and a two-toothed pervy smile from Crazy Tommy.  I will never, ever forget that hideous smell.

Dewey
So, relief, then, that the graphic novels were fresh and nice, unbuckled by water damage and cleverly altered to hardcover by the library district.  After finding this treasure trove, I devoured amazing series, one by one:  Preacher Gone To Texas, Hellboy, Black Orchid, The Invisibles, Sin City.  My most beloved:  Sandman.

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Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman captured my mind for hours on end.  I tore through the novels, binging on the joy of a solid story.  Good books keep you up all night, absorbed until the sun comes up, genuinely saddened as the pages thin, and completely satiated as you close the cover.  Every Sandman novel’s given me that joyous fulfillment, thanks to Neil Gaiman.  Gaiman is admired for solid storytelling and realistic characters, but to his cult fans, he is loved for much more.  He functions as a master storyteller, allowing readers to identify with modern gods, keeping old traditions alive.

Sandman

Neil’s stories fall into traditional sci-fi formats.  A lone warrior collects friends on their journey to combat a larger opponent.  A fallen hero struggles to make amends.  Kingdoms, planets, time-travel, magic, kings, queens, and ESP are all the norm in Neil’s universe. An awesome aspect of his work:  Neil’s characters all populate the same universe, with pop-culture references sneakily tucked in.

His longtime visual partner Dave McKean has a dark, eerie, mystical aspect to his work.  He’s heavy on the symbols, muted tones, antiquated collage, photoboxes, skulls, feathers, and smudged edges.

Davemckeandeath

Neil’s female characters are brave, sassy, mean, flawed, gorgeous, ugly, wicked, catty, demented, evil, calculating, dishonest and noble.  They’re well-developed female characters who hold their own in confrontations. Neil also includes well-developed gay characters, not afraid to explore sexism and racism. In the male dominated comic/fantasy culture, his novels are a world where girls can feel safe in knowing Neil understands them.

Delirium

Neil is a master storyteller.  His books and stories appeal to the literary fan.  He’s named in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers.  He’s not merely a cult writer; he’s a great writer who appeals to several cult fanbases simultaneously.  His command of mythology and history is impressive.  Traditional gods, faeries, mythologies, Shakespearean characters, and historical figures are realistically brought to life.

Sand_Gal_Death

Clearly, I’m a fan.  I’ve gone out for Halloween dressed as Death and spent way too much money collecting the Sandman series one by one.  Replacing books I’ve given out to friends while attempting to spread the love adds to the grand total.  But it’s OK.  I’m so lucky to have stumbled upon this series, a benchmark of creativity.  Thank you, Las Vegas Library District, for keeping culture alive.  And thank you, Neil, for keeping our gods and heroes relevant.

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