 | mobile - desktop |
|
| mobile - desktop |
|
 |
 Contact Sales! |
News & Events:
|
Posted by desiree on October 23, 2002 at 09:45:34:
DEBORAH SILVER staff photographer
Lizard Man
The lizard king
Palm City man's mix of imagination and materials pays off
By Ike Crumpler staff writer
October 23, 2002
Fort Lauderdale police have certainly seen their share of strange sights, but there's one that likely tops the tales told over early morning coffee and doughnuts.
It's the one about the 12-foot-long iguana that crawled from a parking garage, wiggled around gawking passersby, waited for a shocked cop to stop traffic, and slowly advanced across the street into Shooter-Bootleggers bar and restaurant.
Brent McAhren, 39, remembers it well. The Palm City resident wore the homemade, overgrown reptile suit to the bar's costume contest. There he received a welcome fit for a lizard king.
"There were 300 to 400 people," he recalls. "There were all these elaborate costumes. When I crawled in, the crowd literally parted."
In four years, Brent McAhren, an advertising page designer by day, has netted more than $30,000 in cash and prizes, including round-trip airfare to anywhere in the nation, free stays at luxury hotels, Dolphins tickets, a trip to the Bahamas, Cuban cigars, pricey bottles of champagne, limo rides, massages and tanning sessions.
"The prizes?" asks Brent's wife, Jennie McAhren. "The prizes are fantastic. Every year for the past three years we've taken vacations with our children; we've given our friends quite a few bar tabs. Then there's the cash, of course."
Jennie McAhren says her husband's fascination with costumes of the reptile-insect kind began as a hobby.
He says: "I got so tired of the vampires, the witches and the ghosts."
Armed with earth-friendly materials and an imagination that would make George Lucas jealous, McAhrens crafts creature creations that include scorpions, flies and a few insects. Then he regularly waltzes, er, crawls, out of costumes contests across the state with his head held high (waist-high, that is), duly rewarded.
"Actually," says Brent McAhren, who's never spent more than $40 on a costume, "I'm going to the Keys and staying free on one of my costumes."
The trip's not solely so he can bask by the equator; he's going to compete in the Pretenders in Paradise costume contest, which takes place Thursday during Fantasy Fest.
"Brent's in the amateur and professional contests," says Sue Sellers, contestant coordinator. "We're expecting big things from him."
Last year, Brent McAhren crept into Pretenders in Paradise under the radar of recognition, capitalizing on others' low expectations of him. "I saw part of (his costume) when he brought it in, and I thought, "This ain't much,'" Sellers remembers. "Then he put it together and crawled onstage. The audience roared."
Pretenders in Paradise is unique because a panel of judges picks winners based on design, originality and presentation. In most costume contests, the audiences award a winner -- merely for design -- through applause. Depending on the intoxication level of the crowd and inhibitions of the contestant, the latter method can backfire.
In a 1999 contest at The Ashley in downtown Stuart, McAhren's toughest competitor, a woman dressed -- barely -- as a nurse, dropped her dress and lifted, well, the audience's approval to an amount that registered on the Geiger counter.
"The things I've seen," he says.
McAhren, who grew in Shelbyville, Ind., before moving to Florida in 18 years ago, traces his bug love back to his boyhood days.
"In 4-H, I was the entomology king," he says. "I would stop at the gas stations and get the massive grasshoppers on the side of the road."
On Halloween, young Brent would switch masks several times, hide behind a group of trick-or-treaters and ring the front door of his own home. After getting the goods without getting caught, he'd run off cackling in delight for having duped his mom and dad out of extra helpings of candy.
Competing in 10 contests this year from Melbourne to Key West, the father of three boys -- ages 8, 9, and 14 -- faces challenges when it comes to taking his sons door-to-door.
"If he can squeeze in an hour or two on the way to a contest," says Jennie McAhren, "that's usually what we do."
Hunting and gathering for the costume parts, however, is a family affair. Brent McAhren, who spends up to 40 hours making one costume and makes many for the boys, brings everybody along on his searches -- strategic or spontaneous -- for materials.
"It gets quite interesting with the way he collects various items," says Jennie McAhren. "If we're at a park, he's looking around. He'll pick up things from trees, from the ground, where ever. We just never know when we're gonna pull off of the road if he sees something. Sometimes we take trips to comb the beach for items for the costume."
For effects, he relies on silly string, candy cigarettes (for smoke) and red lights for the eyes.
Yet the key to being convincing lies in his method acting. To pull off his prize-winning lizard, Brent McAhren studied an iguana's walk on Discovery Channel, mastered its movements and remained in character. After winning the Shooters-Bootleggers contest in Fort Lauderdale, he celebrated with a drink -- in fitting reptilian fashion.
"I wound up hanging around the pool," he says, "and just lapping the water with the tongue."
