Recently, I re-posted this pic on Facebook:

Man, I can relate. I had such lofty hopes for decorating my house this year for Halloween. I had these big plans to make my house up with a Pirates of the Caribbean theme (I can NEVER spell Caribbean right on the first try! Thank the lord for spell check).

I have a friend who used to really go all out to make his house look like the Haunted Mansion with the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay. It was pretty epic…

Even if my video/editing skills were…less than epic.

So even though I knew my house wouldn’t look as cool as that, I did have some ideas that I thought were cool. I bought an inflatable skeleton to be like one of the many skeletons you pass in the early part of the pirates ride. I made a custom Jolly Rodger poster for my front door. Then, the trick I thought would be so cool, I was going to turn my garage into a pirate prison. The plan was to use my Surface tablet to project a video of me in a pirate costume demanding to be let out. My plan was that this would all come together for an overall cool effect.

Then came reality…

Granted, it’s daytime so it doesn’t look its best. However, it’s not like there’s some mood lighting that’ll be going on at night. Look at the sad little skeleton…

He’s all slumped over, the sword that is supposed to have “killed” him is barely visible and his pirate hat keeps falling off.

The “Beware” sign looks like a diaper box that was painted by a 3 year-old and then set on fire…because that’s totally what happened…

And the garage just looks like a garage with a few random things on it. (In my defense, pirate decorations are really hard to find. It’s all about zombies now)

Speaking of the garage, as I mentioned, I was planning to film myself making pirate taunts that would hopefully scare passers by. Luckily, I was able to nab an eye patch more than a month before Halloween. I was going to film with it and then put it on the skeleton guy. Well, 4 days before Halloween, I lost it. So I had to make do with…gorilla tape. (It’s like duck tape, but black. Wait…is that racist?)

This would definitely scare passersby.

Eh…I have a few more touches to add before the big day…we’ll see if that helps.

UPDATE: 10/30/14 10:37PM
Well so much for extra touches.

My wife found the eye patch…which is great news. So I went to record my jump scare pirate bits over again on my Surface. I did a pretty good take. A nice 10 minute loop. I went to check it. As I was grabbing the tape to secure the Surface to the garage window I hear it crash to the ground…

As you might imagine the touch screen doesn’t work anymore. It DOES embed tiny shards of glass in your fingers now, so there’s that. But Microsoft will repair it for me for $200. Then again, I can get a whole new one on Amazon for $209.

I ruined a $200 piece of technology to do a stupid gag that no one but me even really cares about. You can not imagine how dumb I feel right now. Oh wait, did I mention the Surface was a Christmas gift from my mom. Yeah, it’s not even a year old.

Good night, sweet Surface. May a flight of angels sing thee to thy rest. (Surface Tablet 12/25/13-10/31/14) https://t.co/C7sqIH1HP0

— TimBabbComedian (@TimBabbComedian) November 1, 2014

I throw the world “fail” around a lot, but tonight, I really achieved it.

Happy Halloween