At a loss for ideas

I have two creative projects that I need to complete this week:

1. A funny presentation at work
2. A Halloween costume

I’m having a tough time coming up with useable ideas for both. I have never been good at this. Even back in high school when I made funny videos, I was rarely responsible for coming up with the initial idea. I loved to help develop other ideas and do anything else for a project, but I never really cared if it was my idea.

This is my third year of having to deal with the recent burden of coming up with a Halloween costume. Until I joined Google, I had not dressed up since sixth grade. I had 10 years off, but at Google, Halloween is a pretty big deal so I’d feel bad if I didn’t participate.

I thought that I would have a good Halloween costume this year. I was going to be Zeke the Plumber from Salute Your Shorts, because referencing minor characters from Nickelodeon shows is cool. For months, I thought I was all set. I even had a document with screenshots from the show, things I could say, and a list of items to buy. This past weekend, when I was about to start picking up items for my costume, I realized that it was stupid. Not only did nobody remember Zeke, but I would have to wear a mask. Wearing a mask is fine if one is going trick-or-treating. I did that many times when I was a kid. But this year, the only times I’ll be wearing my costume are at parties where I’ll want to be able to eat and drink. So now I need to come up with an idea that doesn’t require a mask. Here are some ideas I’ve had:

• Someone wearing a suit
• Hatman, the guy who wears a hat
• Mustache guy, who wears a fake mustache
• A Halloween costume, which would be something simple like a ghost, but with a hanger and price tag attached. Maybe the entire thing covered in plastic wrap and some sort of label if I want to go all-out. (This was my alternate idea when I came up with the Play on Words costume.)
• Anything from that old SNL sketch where Dan Aykroyd plays the salesman pitching children’s costumes

The funny thing is, my first year at Google, Matt was basically a combination of Someone wearing a suit and Mustache guy.

If you have any suggestions for what I should be for Halloween this year, please leave them in the comments. If it involves chef pants and/or a hard hat, that’s cool, because I already have them.