Ragstock Vintage Halloween

After that virtual trip to Spirit Halloween, I'm going to share a little more of the mall with you guys. Do any of you have a Ragstock store nearby? These stores might just be a Wisconsin thing. Ragstock is actually a surprise for me to see in a mall, because it's a vintage clothing store. I don't recall us having a vintage store in the mall before this. I would have probably been here a lot back when I was looking for Halloween costumes at Goodwill. So, here's the entryway:

I took a few pics of the window displays too. The ladies side:

The gentlemen:

I love how they decorated the store this year! I don't remember this much effort being put in before. How great is that vintage looking sign? "All Weirdness Welcome" These decorations at the door remind me somewhat of the way I've seen dime stores decorated for Halloween in old photos. 

And the decorations don't stop inside! This is the table display you first see when entering the store. For the groovy alien. 👽

How about those boots! I think David Bowie would have worn those.

They have a lot of used leather jackets. I'm not sure how they end up with so many similar items, but sometimes there are racks of many of the same used thing. This looks like a good place to find some vintage motorcyclist pieces. Looking at this pic, high five to whoever managed to tack those cobwebs to that type of ceiling. Those ceiling pieces like to pop off if they're so much as touched. 

You could do a lot with these furry vests too. That first vest is pretty wild. Those almost look like little feathers all over it. 

OK, I love the names on these. "Tiger Mullet" "Celebrity Chef" "Groovin' Guy" and "80's Tinsel" Not that we can't figure out who these are! (Aside from 80s Tinsel) Oh man, look at the facial hair upon facial hair on Celebrity Chef! I wonder if that's all one piece? I can't stop laughing at Groovin' Guy, even now. I wonder if the beard is attached to the wig? I was actually watching an old episode of The Joy of Painting the other day, and heard Bob Ross say that he received some fan mail from a lady who told him he should get a different wig to match his beard! 

Lots of critter accessories:

Have you guys ever seen these whiskers attached to a little nose? I wonder how well that little button nose stays attached to your actual nose? I dressed as a cat for Halloween years ago and painted some whiskers on my face. I have a feeling I'd get annoyed by these, but they might be cute. 

Some of the neon 80s/90s section here looks similar to what I shared from Spirit Halloween. Check out that Viking helmet on the shelf!

No comment on this shirt. Haha! We're between the hippies and the Good/Evil section here.

The makings of a Tinker Bell or butterfly/fairy costume are on the left.

I have never seen a mask with this much going on above it. It looks like you could maybe spread out that "Laser Fringe" so it looks kind of feathery? This looks like a good Mardi Gras mask to me.

So there's Ragstock's Halloween selection this year! Although you could argue that anything in that store could be part of a Halloween costume. I enjoy seeing costumes that people have put together with vintage pieces. Do any of you have memories of thrifting for Halloween costumes? I used to have access to some really old clothes in vintage/antique stores. I never knew what I would find!

I also wanted to share some pics of the mall's train! We have a train that scoots around the mall carrying kids and any adults that can squish into the cars. There's a friendly conductor and everything. Depending on who is conducting, this train can get pretty wild. You hear that choo-choo and you better get out of the way! It's not like it's on a given track or anything. One time I had to jump into a store as the train zoomed up behind me. 

As you can see, this train is decked out for Halloween. Last Christmas, there were little trees, snowflakes, and lights on it. Here's an idea of how long it is. 

In keeping with the vintage theme, here are some books I picked up from the library last night. The girl at the bottom reminds me of Adele. 

I recently joined our town's historical society, which has involved looking at a lot of old photos. I've been seeing a number of different hairstyles in those photos. Those hairstyles got me thinking that it might be fun to try out some of those same looks or at least a modern variation of them. So, I looked through the library system to find some inspiration, and there was a lot of it! There were far more books than these!

How about the Beatnik's ponytail? I got a kick out of that. The book with the "Twenties... Then and Now" has a section for every decade in style from the 1920s to the 1980s. I can't wait to try some of these hair and makeup techniques!

If you are going for a vintage Halloween look this year, a trip to the thrift store and your local library would be a great start! 💄👠🎩

Close Encounters and a Clown ~ I'm Loving IT!

Some of you may find this hard to believe, but I just watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind for the first time! I'm not sure why I hadn't watched it yet, but the reason I watched it now is because I won the Collector's Edition of the movie from TheGreatWhiteDope, whose blog can be found here:

http://thegreatwhitedope.blogspot.com/

The DVD set would have been a generous prize in itself, but that's not all I received!

I also received a book titled The Splendid Magic of Penny Arcade: The 11 1/2 Anniversary Edition. Prior to opening this book, I knew absolutely nothing about Penny Arcade. So that was something else new for me!

My third gift was an I'm Loving IT t-shirt from http://tshirtbordello.com

For anyone who doesn't recognize the clown as Pennywise from Stephen King's IT...

I've actually never seen Stephen King's IT, which is odd since I've seen a lot of King's movies. I probably should watch IT, if I'm going to be wearing this t-shirt around. I did look up a few YouTube clips from the movie, but I couldn't get over Tim Curry being under all that clown makeup! Recognizing him was just making me laugh. You have to give Tim Curry credit for trying the many different looks we've seen him in!

Here I am modeling the shirt. I ended up with several similar photos, so I put them together to make my first gif!

While I was taking the photos above, I saw a runaway dog zip past the window. I ran outside to see if I could catch it and ran into a neighbor. She was asking me if I caught the dog, even though I was standing there alone. She was also saying various weird things about how "that dog better get caught before he's a splat on the highway", when she got distracted by my shirt. She was kind of looking at my eyes and then down at the shirt. Eyes. Shirt. Eyes. Shirt. She finally just stared at the clown and went "Uhh". So it's getting attention already!

Back to Close Encounters. I'm going to give you a few of my thoughts on the movie. I'll try to leave any spoilers out, on the off chance that I wasn't the last person on earth to see this!

I really enjoyed Close Encounters. Two things that struck me were the optimistic attitude behind the movie, and the slower pace in which it moved. I'm not really complaining about the pace, it's just that I think I'm used to the fast paced, action packed style of more modern alien movies. In a way, Close Encounters showed me a lot of what I expected from a Steven Spielberg film. I say that because the movie was supernatural and magical, but at no point did I feel threatened or fearful of what might happen. Close Encounters was surprisingly nonviolent for a movie involving aliens landing on earth.

The earth in this movie is a planet filled with people who are curious about the aliens and would rather communicate with them than kill them. In fact, I don't remember seeing one gun through this entire movie. There might have been one, I just don't remember it. The closest we got to any aggression was one cynical army officer who plans to spray people who get in the way of his mission with something that will put them to sleep for six hours. Even he is not remotely mean spirited.

Like another supernatural Spielberg project Poltergeist, the plot of Close Encounters involves a family with several children. Unlike the children in Poltergeist, who I found sweet or funny in a sassy sort of way, the kids in Close Encounters are a loud, bratty bunch of little gremlins.  I kept wishing the aliens would appear and somehow beam them up, except I didn't wish them on the aliens. Anyway, these children belong to our main character, Roy and his wife, Ronnie. Without spilling too much of the plot, Roy has an encounter with a UFO and is completely fascinated by the experience. His wife and kids, not so much. Although, in Ronnie's defense, it would be hard to be thrilled with the whole experience while your husband is acting like a nut.

Meanwhile, across town, a woman named Jillian is having her own experiences with the aliens. Her experiences are more scary than Roy's, as her son is abducted. You'll notice that the aliens chose to abduct the sweet, quiet child, and not the brats mentioned before. Here you'll see Jillian and her son Barry during the spooky abduction scene. 

I found Jillian to be really likeable. I kept thinking what a nice person she was, without realizing where I've seen her before! I didn't recognize her as Melinda Dillon, the woman who played another nice mom in one of my favorite movies: A Christmas Story.

Both Roy and Jillian start to see the same visions after their encounters with the aliens. This leads them together on an adventure to learn more and retrieve Jillian's son. I'll stop there and not reveal any more about the characters, in case some of you haven't seen this movie.  I do want to mention the alien's spacecraft, though. It was really beautiful. It was covered in blinking lights and made little musical noises which were a means of communication. The music reminded me a lot of that old game, Simon. Do you guys remember that game? You had to hit these big colored buttons to mimic the noise the machine just made. 

The game even kind of looked like a spaceship! 

I wanted to show you the Close Encounters spaceship in action, so you can see what I mean about the musical noise communication:

This DVD set included a disc full of extras. There was a making-of documentary that was really lengthy and full of interviews and trivia. A highlight of that for me was seeing the little boy, Barry as an adult. He had a lot of cute stories from his days as a four year old, working on this movie. 

Thank you TheGreatWhiteDope for this generous prize pack! I really enjoyed finally seeing this movie and weirding out my neighbor with my new t-shirt. This is a generous bunch of gifts, and believe me I had to work for them! TheGreatWhiteDope really puts together a challenge. I was actually proud of myself for being able to answer the questions necessary to win this!

I'm interested in hearing all of your thoughts on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stephen King's IT, The Simon Game, or whatever else relates to these prizes!