see, the greatest part about the martin mystery tv show was not even the characters themselves, or the plots or ...well... anything. no, the greatest part about martin mystery was the fact that it was one of the afore mentioned mega bombs, cancelled shortly after it started. 15 episodes made up the first season, but only 6 found their way to the airwaves, with the final two being reshuffled and rescheduled to such an extreme that even the twelve existing fans out there gave up looking for them. within days after debuting on the fox box and american television, martin and company were fired, and immediately removed from our sight.
thus, my biggest and grandest of inspirations.
with the addition of 10 design days, 2 cans of yellow (green?) hair spray, a pair of drawn on sneakers, 8 consecutive days without shaving, 2 ripped shirts, and dozens of handfuls of potting soil mud for greater effect... i was humbly transformed into recently unemployed martin mystery (or, perhaps, the gayest of gay homeless men).
i was absolutely playing the high-concept card with this item. martin last aired sometime in july, so i assumed that in the past few months, he had shopped around for other jobs, then slowly stopped getting return calls. his agent would no longer support him. he was forced to the streets, digging for food, and mysteries, in dumpsters.
i went nuts with this costume. it took me 90 minutes to properly soil my shirt with ...well... soil, and scissors. my unbuttoned and cigarette stained yellow shirt was a regular shirt cut in half then spraypainted for effect. the stubble was home grown and freakishly awful and uncomfortable. the spray paint hair was... pretty bad. but yellow enough. the jeans were gray and covered with stains. i was workin the finger-less gloves, and boldly displayed my standard, homeless man sign: will solve mysteries 4 food.
and would i.
the idea took quite a while to devise, and almost as long to actually carry out, once i had everything set into place. the whole thing maybe cost me $40, most of which was totally wasted, as i completely ruined everything for the legitamate homeless look. and, truth be told, i remember getting pants or sneakers dirty as a kid as being a pretty easy job.
not so for a halloween costume wearing young adult. some of that stuff was really hard to crapify!
whatever the case, i macked out that costume to perfection. and, sadly, the task was so beautifully and accurately accomplished that i unexpectedly suffered the same fate as the icon i was representing.
