If you’re like me, you like to have a Halloween costume that makes an impact. I’ve found that of all my homemade costumes over the years, nothing had such an impact as the time I was Jabba.

Being that Halloween is mere hours away, I thought I’d share with you my process for making a Jabba the Hutt costume (or, for the ladies in the house, Gardulla The Hutt) in two hours flat.

YOU WILL NEED:

• An old baseball cap
• An old belt
• A khaki or tan shirt, & pants
• Miles of packaging tape, clear or tan-colored
• Yards of tan construction paper, brown butcher’s paper, scrap wallpaper, etc.
• Many magic markers - green, brown, blue, red, orange, etc.
• Many garbage bags - the cheap, lightweight, white ones
• A whole lot of scrap paper - newspapers, PhD dissertations, anything that can be disposed of
• A desire to avoid open flame - this costume is heavy on the paper!

Basically, there are two parts: the head, which you wear as a hat, and the body, which is slung off the belt. First, put your baseball cap on a stand - I used my vacuum cleaner. Start filling garbage bags with balled-up scrap paper, and tape them onto the hat. Keep going until you’ve built up a rough shape of the dome-like head.

You’ll want a big gut on the front and a big bulbous back, but leave space on the sides for your arms to stick out. You can start drawing on the paper with your markers - use horizontal lines to give the impression of overlapping layers of fat. Now you can start cutting smaller pieces of paper and forming the face. I made mine so that I could see out of the nose holes. Again, your process is a continual application of paper, marker, & tape. Eventually you may end up with something like this.

Be sure to put in a red tongue, lolling out the side of his mouth! Use flaps of brown paper to cover the tops of your arms; this will completely sell the illusion that you are in fact a 1000 pound intergalactic crimelord slug . Tape is your friend; you can always pull off and redo any part that you don’t like.

The process for making the body is basically the same, and should go a lot quicker. Cram your scrap paper into your garbage bags, tape them to the belt, repeat. Use as much as you possibly can - you want to have BULK! Cover the body & tail with the brown paper, secure with tape, and keep drawing on it with your markers. Having a few reference photos of Jabba is handy, but not necessary. Eventually you’ll end up with your costume’s two parts: head & tail.

Put it all together, and you should look something like this:

Now, if I had it to do over again, obviously I would make the tail quite a bit bigger. At the time, I was under a serious time crunch. Plus I ran out of paper. You’re looking at me, circa May 1999, entering the Waterloo, Iowa KFMW Rock 108 Episode 1 Costume Contest. Did I win? Frak yeah! I got like 90 bucks worth of stuff, including the Phantom Menace soundtrack, a Sammy Hagar CD, two t-shirts, and a ballcap, which was handy, seeing as how I destroyed a ballcap in making the costume!

Seriously, if anyone out there attempts this costume, send me some pics and I’ll post them here! I think you’ll find this is a lightweight, impressive, disposable, and above all CHEAP costume that will definitely make an impact. Try to stay in character by uttering deep evil laughs; say “wookie nipple pinchy” a lot; or, better yet, get a chained up slave girl!

One thing I am fairly certain of is the fact that I exist; however, this site claims that there are exactly 0 people named Jad in the United States. Now I don’t know about you, but I do know that you are not me, and that I am me, and that the reflection in my mirror proves that the me that I think I am is really me. And not you.

Another thing that I am certain of is that I am not him, the ‘him’ in question being Jad Davenport. This Denver-based Jad seems to have lived the life we all dream of - international photographer, travel writer, war correspondent, scuba diver. I wish I could hire this guy for something, if only just to meet him and get some photography tips.

In the world of other Jads, here’s another journalist, Jad Mouawad, who writes for the New York Times about OPEC matters . This Jad is currently my favorite blogger from the country of Jordan. Looking at his cartoon icon is like staring into a MIRROR UNIVERSE! As an entirely true and moderately interesting aside, my cousin grew up in Washington, DC and went to high school with the Prince of Jordan. Could this Jad actually be that same Prince of Jordan? No.

Jad Choueiri seems to have a promising career as a Lebanese pop star. He’s played for a crowd of 15,000 in Ouarzazate (pronounced kind of like ‘where’s his at?’) Morocco, toured around Egypt, Jordan, and Dubai, and apparently has written a children’s story found in the book Tell Me A Story, a collection dedicated to children with cancer. Creative and generous, he has done Jads proud the world over. If anyone knows how to get an english copy of the book, please contact me!

Along with the prior two Jads, here we have Jad Rahbani, who seems to contribute infrequently to his company’s blog about IVR services, which has something to do with, “helping businesses optimize their phone-based customer service.” Uh, good for them! Another Jad who has taken to writing, English medical journalist Jad Adams, M.A. has authored a book called AIDS: The HIV Myth, which suggests that AIDS and the HIV virus aren’t necessarily related. I can only imagine that it would be an uphill battle to put forth such a viewpoint in today’s world. I can’t say as I agree with this Jad, though I do admire his tenacity, and ability to write a whole book.

Coming back to America, Jad Dean has been an outstanding placekicker for the Clemson University Tigers in Clemson, South Carolina. Though I’ve never been there, I feel the need to go to their homecoming someday. I’m sure I’d be welcome on the campus, once I point out that I share the same first name as their undoubtedly famous placekicker. Go Clemson Tigers! I don’t know what Jad’s major is, but if my research is worth anything, he must be studying Photography of OPEC-Sponsored Lebanese AIDS-Debunking Pop Star Telephones.

For all of our geographic & societal differences, I feel a kinship with these Jads. I’d like to think that they too wouldn’t mind having an afternoon chat, preferably all at once, schedules permitting. So what have we learned about the world’s Jads? There are none in the United States, except for the ones that are. We find many successful Jads in the Middle East; must be the climate. We are either creative types or science nerds, or both, or neither. And, finally, there are absolutely no secret plans to take over the world with Jads as exclusive leaders, reforming the Earth into a Jadtopia of our making.

No plans that you know of.

In order to fund this little website & campaign, I’m going to need some funds.  Moolah.  Scratch.  Dough.  Piz.  Felgercarb.  That’s why I’m saying goodbye to some of my most cherished personal treasures, and giving YOU a chance to own a small, small piece of Jad.  Bid with gusto!

Battlestar Galactica Titanium ships

Star Wars Titanium ships

Star Trek Worf costume trading card

Micro Machines Boba Fett playset

Micro Machines Royal Guard playset

Set of 5 gold Micro Machines cars

Set of various Micro Machines cars & playsets

Fellowship of the Ring super awesome DVD set 

Recent news stories have purported to claim that George Lucas ‘hates movies,’ which is a rather silly misrepresentation of his comments. Lucas believes content is king, and states that for the same price of one of the big studio tentpole pictures, he could have produced 50-60 hour-long episodes. Hence, the upcoming TV show. Lucas may not have been very charistmatic on his recent appearance on The Colbert Report, but no one can deny that he’s a shrewd businessman.

He also comments that the populace is out of the habit of going to the movies, and I find that I have to agree. I pretty much only pay for a night out at the big EVENT movies, like Pirates of the Caribbean. I did just see The Departed, which brilliantly used pop music in ways only Scorsese can pull off. And to the couple who were obviously theater-hopping: if you’re going to cheat the system, at least have the decency to plan out your afternoon against the movie times. DON’T sneak into a theater and ask my buddy how far into the movie we are!
Meanwhile, another news story has revealed a few juicy tidbits about the TV show. First, nothing yet has been named ‘Jad’ (C’mon George, why the delay?). Second, the show will begin production in 2007 and take place between episodes 3 and 4, and will focus on background characters seen briefly in the Star Wars films. Now that may sound to you like ‘no Vader,’ but come on, there’s GOT to be at least a little Vader here and there.

The Powers That Be have clearly gotten wind of my little web site and have decided that civilians can be allowed to start naming Star Wars characters. Click here to check out their latest contest, where YOU get to propose a name for a major character’s Dark Side incarnation. The book is Star Wars: Sacrifice by Karen Traviss, which is book # 5 in the Legacy of the Force series. Here’s the catch - you’re naming a Sith, so the name has to be Darth _________. Now, the contest actually tells you what character will turn to the Dark Side, so if you’re a spoilerphobic spoilerphobe like me, then tread lightly.

My entry? No, it wasn’t Darth Jad. That would be ridiculous. It was Darth Atrocitus.

I’m totally going to win.