I used the harness and basic "bones" of the puppet known as Igo Yugotoo 2 that was first constructed for the Burning Man Festival in 2000. That version was 'skinned" in newspaper soaked in boric acid solution in the hopes of creating a lightweight skin resistant to fire. Flame resistance is a good idea if you are tied to a bulky costume, that might be around people flailing chains ending with flaming kerosene soaked rags. My safety in this costume mostly depends on the ease of getting out of it. And with the help of Velcro and quick release catches it is pretty easy to cast it off with just a couple of quick quick grabs at my chest and waist. But it is much harder to get the damn thing on. Though I do mostly have it down to a weird science, and can don it without assistance if needs be.

But this year I opted to augment this nation's petroleum dependence and skinned Igo with 11 square yards of bubble wrap, and several rolls of clear packing tape. I'm not sure if I ended up making a lighter puppet but it was definitely less dense. The bubble wrap is fairly easy to sculpt, as bulges and smooth contours can be layered on piece by piece, and if it gets too fat you can take an x-acto knife, pop some bubbles and tape the area down flat. I also used bubble wrap to insure that I could not hurt anyone If I accidentally whacked someone in the head while dancing around like a fool, as is this character's wont.

Igo Yugotoo is a character I've been playing with, especially for the Halloween parade for many years. This was my 24th consecutive parade. Igo in one form or other has been in more than half of them.

This year Igo Yugotoo the Happy Clone from the Future grew some spare parts.

This is one of the older versions of Igo. Cut up and put in a trash bag on Nov 1, 2002. What a sad ending for the puppet, veteran of several parades. But there is no room in my tiny apartment for this bulky, painfullyl, constricting and in some ways disgusting-to-wear costume. Sweat and spit build up from condensation in the mask. Yuk. It was made of sculpted foam rubber, on a wooden and wire frame, covered in latex and acrylic paint. It weighs way too much to let me be as mobile as I like. And I was never able to get the mouth to move when I talked. But you couldn't hear me anyways through all that rubber. And the wires left over from the framework for the mouth-that-never-moved would stick me in in the face whenever they could.

You can see it in use in this Flash movie of the 2001 parade Aliens Love New York. My friend Gary Heidt inhabitted this now dearly departed puppet that year. He says it was not as bad as I make out.