The fastest reflexes modern technology has to offer. On-board computer-assisted memory. And a lifetime of on-the-street law enforcement programming. It is my great pleasure to present to you: Robocop.

The boy insisted for months that he wanted to be a robot for Halloween. His sister was a robot when she was his age. We looked at various robot images on the computer and he was most intrigued by Robocop. After I showed him the trailer, there was no convincing him otherwise. He was going to be Robocop. Which was good, because Detroit has a Cancer. That Cancer is Crime.

The original 1987 Paul Verhoeven-directed Robocop is actually a pretty great movie. But I was at the bar with my friend and his female companion the other day talking about working on this costume and she was like, "Wait, who's Robocop?" Turns out she was born only a year before the movie came out, so maybe I need to set the stage here:

According to its Wikipedia entry, Robocop takes place in a terrifying "dystopian future, [where] the city of Detroit, Michigan is on the verge of collapse due to financial ruin and unchecked crime."

. . .
[cough]
. . .

"The mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products enters into a contract with the city to run the police force while the company makes plans to destroy 'Old Detroit' to replace it with the utopia of Delta City." As part of OCP's plan to privatize the police force, they unveil the cyborg Robocop as a transition to the more sinister fully-robotic police force that will soon put Detroit's beleaguered public safety officers out of a job.

Robocop walks pretty slow and the technology running his systems seems about as sophisticated as what was inside a Sega Genesis, but he has a really powerful gun and the bad guys can shoot him all they want and he keeps coming. Basically, he's everything a little boy thinks is cool.

After the boy decided he wanted to be Robocop, I set about trying to figure out how to make a costume. I found a couple of adults online who had made themselves Robocop costumes, but there was a whiff of that Tron Guy about them and they described multiple trips to Home Depot. So I decided just to make it out of crap I had in my basement.

The helmet is an old bike helmet that didn't really fit him anymore, so I ripped out all the padding inside and glued on a piece of plastic I cut out from an old bucket to make the front visor part. The circles on the sides were orange-juice-container lids. The chest piece is made out of an empty laundry-detergent bottle and the back is made from milk jugs. The arms and legs are cobbled together out of 64-oz Trader Joe juice containers. I made the boots by gluing a bunch of plastic crap to his old rain boots. Then I painted everything metallic gray.

 

Underneath he's wearing a child-sized wetsuit that I won on eBay for $5.49 (plus $7 shipping). And that's all the money I spent on his costume. The other day we attended an early Halloween party, and later we walked around Detroit taking pictures in various locations that looked like a dystopian-future. Robocop was happy to keep riders of our futuristic public transit system, the People Mover monorail, safe from criminal elements:

Who dropped this pudding cup? That is a violation of Sec. 22-2-83 of the Detroit City Code, punishable as a civil infraction by a fine of up to $100. . . Ease up, there Robocop, have you seen this town?

On our walk back home, Robocop met up with some real police officers and had a confab about something. Crime-fighting, I guess:

Or maybe candy?

They even let him sit in the police car. He in awe during the whole encounter. Detroit's finest were there to help protect a movie or TV Show that was filming on that block. While we were talking, some Hollywood-type rushed over to take a picture of the kid with his camera phone. "I'm good friends with Peter Weller, the guy who played Robocop on the movie," he said. "He's gonna get a kick out of this." The guy proceeded to e-mail the photo to Weller, so chances are the real Robocop has seen my little Robocop. Then we headed back to the first precinct for some repairs (after such an eventful shift, the paint was peeling off the suit and parts were falling off). 

A few more cops came out to talk with us, joking that they were going to have to call their union because it looked like they were being replaced. "Don't worry," I said. "He's just a prototype."

And that's true. I still have a lot of work to do on this suit to get it Halloween-ready. This was just sort of a test run, but it was a pretty fun and epic father-and-son adventure. I should have a movie of him in the suit done by Halloween, and today the girl and I are going to go out to do a photo shoot in her Mama-made costume. Those should be up by Friday. So stay tuned for more Halloween fun.

I had some serious concerns about Halloween this year, mostly because Juniper insisted on being a robot, something she came up with on her own, as far as I know, with no instigation from either of us. I was concerned because I had to relinquish control over her costume. A robot, I knew, would involve cardboard boxes and wires and electrical tape, and that's not my area, it's her father's. I can hold my own with thread and fabric, but he's always on the lookout for an excuse to spray paint something or bust out the hot glue or staple guns. I knew she couldn't wear a robot costume during school, so we let her be Medusa in the morning, which was easy because she already had the hat.

Over the last week, my husband actually started pulling together a robot costume. Each day, I would come home from work and the costume would be even more complex, covered in wires and LED lights and circuit boards. He was so proud that everything cost less than $3. This did nothing to alleviate my concerns. There were so many pieces that looked so incredibly uncomfortable. It didn't help that the little tunic I sewed from a metallic fabric was way too tight. I was sure Juniper wouldn't wear the costume for more than two minutes, if she ever let us squeeze it on her in the first place. But I need not have been concerned at all, it seems. She loved it:

So strong was her desire to be a robot, she wore that whole thing and walked around the neighborhood for two hours. She didn't cry when people looked at her, talked to her, or tried to touch her. Instead, she said trick or treat, umprompted, in her little robot voice.

When we got home from trick-or-treating, she still had the stamina to make this little video:

This month's edition of children's books that you wish celebrities would write: "Come Sail Away" by Styx. I was a one-year old when this song was released in 1978, but my parents must have played it a lot because I freakin' love it, man. It's the kind of song that should conclude every drunken wedding. But have you ever thought about the lyrics? I think it would make a great kid's book: arena-prog-rock pirates, ninjas, robots, angels, aliens. That is the stuff children's books are made of.

Okay, I am taking nominations for future editions of children's books you wish celebrities would write. It doesn't have to be musicians, just celebrities who don't suck, or, like Styx, who do suck but are awesome for complicated ironic reasons (like mustaches). Also, here is the flickr set with downloadable images.