Finally Recovered from San Diego Comic-Con

So before some of my fellow Geek Girls get on planes to head to Dragon-Con, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk a little about San Diego Comic-Con!

For those of you not familiar with Comic-Con, it is an overwhelming four-day pop culture extravaganza!  You want to see your favorite TV celebs (they are there...in an upcoming post), want to see upcoming movies, love urban vinyls, cosplayers, or just crave a serious lack of sleep or personal space...then Comic-Con is the place for you!

For now I will end this post short with some pics of the banners for ongoing/upcoming shows, movies, and just a taste of the sights in beautiful downtown SD.

To check out more photos (as I am able to get them up...stupid day-job) click here. 

Til next time geek-ettes!  --Heather

Line to get into the exhibit hall in the morning.

Walking Dead booth...can't wait til October's premiere!!!

City-wide and exhibit hall banners

Evil Clown Autopsy Buffet: The Tutorial

With Halloween around the corner its time to get the creative juices flowing and start thinking of ways to gross out your party guests. As I pondered this last year I flipped through Pinterest and Halloween DIY sites for inspiration. I saw a lot of food turned into extracted organs (you can even buy your own brain shaped jello mold) and it got me thinking... what about the actual autopsy?

I needed a body.

A body under a sheet... open cavities for various dips... I started brainstorming. I tend to come up with an abstract idea and sort of work out the details as I go along, it makes for some pretty good lightbulb moments. I decided that I didn't want to conceal the whole body and maybe it could be an alien autopsy or something like that. I went to my nearest Halloween store and wandered the aisles looking at costumes trying to figure out if I wanted alien hands or monster hands sticking out from under the sheet.

Then I saw them.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do the moment I spied those oversized red shoes. Afterall, what's scarier than a clown? An evil clown, that's what. And what's the best kind of evil clown? A dead one.

I snatched the shoes and gleefully skipped down the aisle to the mask section. My clown needed a head peaking out from under the sheet. And oh did I find the perfect mask...

Ain't he beautiful?

Not only was he creepy as hell but he also already had a beautiful lobotomy scar already in place that I could cut around and fit a little bowl of salsa in. Sick sick sick. I loved it.

And that is how the Evil Clown Autopsy Buffet was born. If you would like to make one yourself or if you have another cadaver in mind to be your buffet here is a how-to guide on making the centerpiece of your Halloween party.

Making an Autopsy Buffet

What You'll Need:
Fillers- spare towels, clothes, sheets, socks, plastic shopping bags
Masking tape
2 banquet sized table clothes (white)
At least 3 bowls (stomach, chest, and head sized; clear plastic works best)
Full head mask (the creepier the better- clown, alien, zombie, Dick Cheney)
Shoes or novelty feet to match the head theme
Large, plastic skeleton ribcage

Making The Body
You'll want to do this ahead of time to give yourself room for error, aim for a few days before the party at the very least.

1. Measure the area that is going to be your autopsy table whether its a dining table, counter, or side table. You want to make sure your body isn't too long or wide. Mark out on the floor with tape the dimensions of the table.
2. Place your 3 bowls roughly where the head, chest, and stomach are going to be. The one for the head should be deep and big enough to fit snugly inside the mask. The chest bowl should be more oval (I got a cheap plastic one at Party City) and the belly should be like a medium sized punch bowl no wider than what you want the torso to be.
   
3. For autopsies the chest is cut open and the ribs are split so take the plastic ribcage (mine came in a bag of cheap, crappy skeleton parts) and if you need to, cut it up the middle through the sternum. Tape them to the outside of the chest bowl, splayed open enough for people to reach in.
4. Start rolling up all the towels and sheets you have and place them around the 2 torso bowls creating a rough outline of the body and limbs (don't worry about the feet, hands, or head just yet). Keep in mind it will be under a sheet so it doesn't have to be perfect, you're just look for proportions. Fill a shirt or pants with them if you need a better guide.
5. Now its time to use a LOT of tape! You're going to wrap it around the body you have laid out to give it structure and secure the bowls, not forgetting to tape underneath it too. I found masking tape to work the best, its easy to correct errors and is softer if you need to reshape. No need to be stingy, I used nearly a whole roll to get the shape I wanted. *Make sure it's not too flat! When the body is rounded it looks better under the sheet.
   

You should now have a sturdy body that you can pick up and move to your autopsy space or out of the way.

Head, Hands, and Feet
You might want to do this when you know you aren't going to have to move the body off the autopsy space, day before the party is good.

1. For the head you'll want a full mask- one that doesn't just cover the face but slips over the whole head. If you need to, trace the width of the bowl you'll be using for the head where you want the lobotomy hole to be when the head is lying down, facing up. You can either cut and remove the whole circle or cut it like a flap with the back of the head pulled over the face.
   
2.  Once you put the bowl in the mask it will probably not fill out the face so take plastic shopping bags, dish towels, whatever, and stuff them into the gaps between the bowl and inside of the mask until the bowl feels tightly in place and mask is shaped.
3. Roll up a dish towel for the neck and using your masking tape, secure it to the body and then to the head. Remember that your sheet will probably only expose the forehead and up so don't worry about it showing too much.
4. For the hands you can either keep them under the sheet or if you have some cool monster hands or befitting gloves, have them poking out. Fill in your gloves with the filler or make a hand sized patty of bags or fabric and tape it into shape. Tape to the end of the arms and you're done.
5. Depending on the weight of the shoes you'll probably want to give them a little more support by putting something a little sturdy in like wrapping paper tubes, rods, or even those boot inserts that help them keep shape. 
6. When you put the filling the shoes, with the tubes or rods coming out,  tape them to the legs and then tape the ankles together so the feet will keep pointing up and not flop to the sides. It's a bit of a challenge but again, don't be stingy with the tape.

You now have a full cadaver ready to be gussied up for presentation.

"Dressing" the Body

Sheets can be expensive so if you don't have some white sheets lying around that you don't mind messing up I would suggest ordering these cheap, polyester, banquet sized table cloths. Easy to wash and they come in all sizes so just measure your autopsy space (The one under the body should go to the floor).

1. The sheet under the body can be slid underneath (with some helping hands if needed) and should be long enough to cover the cabinets or table legs underneath it.
2. The second sheet can be smaller so it just covers the body. Drape it over the body and gauge where the chest and belly bowl are. Make a cut in the fabric, either a slit, hole, or X , taking care that it isn't bigger than the bowl opening. You don't want to show the masking tape body afterall.
   
3. Fold the bottom of the sheet so the feet stick out without showing the taped legs and ankles. Smooth the sheets over the hands or fold up so your gloves stick out.
4. The sheet should be folded down from the head so just the forehead sticks out. If you want to show more of the face you can fill in the eye holes with novelty eyes, white plastic, whatever looks best for your creation.
   

Finishing Touches

Now that your body is ready for the party its time to fill its cavities appropriately. Go for some color contrast between the three, there are some suggestions:

Belly- guacamole, pesto, herb and cheese dip

Chest- spinach artichoke dip, hummus, onion dip 

Head- salsa, crab dip, pate

Add some complimentary touches to the autopsy if you have the space. Nestle a bowl of chips into the crook of his arm or place a bowl with the brain jello mold next to the head. Dress it up with some novelty tools whether surgical instruments or some gruesome looking prop knives and torture devices, you can even hang them on the wall behind the body or off the light fixture above your table.

If you can, hang a blacklight bulb over the body or replace the bulbs in the light fixture above with some colored ones to give everything a creepy glow. I also ran some green LED light strips under the counter around it which made those white sheets glow green which would work for an alien autopsy pretty well.

Your guests will be grossed out and absolutely love it so get creative, make it gruesome or funny, whatever works for your party theme. Nothing is too much!