Vindicated

Halloween is a strange time when people wear crazy outfits, drink like the key to life is hidden at the bottom of a bottle of cheap vodka, and desperately try to seem attractive.

So it’s college, basically.

Fitting, then, that ten years ago I got to enjoy my first college Halloween. For the record, I failed pretty spectacularly at those three tenets of the Halloween tradition: 1) my costume was “emo kid” which a number of people failed to realize was even a costume at all, 2) I didn’t drink anything more exciting than soda, and 3) I – with my sprayed-black hair and cheap eyeliner – was most certainly not attractive.

Not everyone sucked at Halloween as much as I did, though. One of my friends, Brent, wore what remains to this day as one of my all-time favorite costumes: he went as Chris Carrabba of Dashboard Confessional.

I don’t love that costume because we used Sharpies to mock up tattoo sleeves on Brent’s arms or because when he donned a t-shirt that was a size too small and greased up his hair into that trademark Dashboard pompadour he actually looked like a pretty convincing Carrabba facsimile.

No.

I love it because, in the fall of 2004, only months after Spider-Man 2 was the biggest summer movie to ever be a movie in the summer, Brent carried around an acoustic guitar and strapped tiny speakers to his belt that played ‘Vindicated’ – a song so terrible that it was allegedly written in ten minutes – on loop. All night.

 

By the time the 100th drunk party-goer asked Brent where that horrible song was coming from, we were all in stitches.

Because the fourth tenet of Halloween is simply having a good time. Happy Halloween, everyone!