With Kentuckians and Missourians and god knows who else crowding my Times Square-adjacent block in anticipation of tomorrow’s ball drop, my brother and I will instead be escaping down to the East Village to celebrate New Year’s Eve at FEVA‘s Bedazzle Ball.

The problem: a costume’s required. So, in a burst of do-it-yourself ingenuity, we headed down to Home Depot to purchase Tyvek Hooded Coveralls, 3M Woodworking Respirators, green latex gloves and a Sharpie marker.

Back at my apartment, we emblazoned the back of the coveralls, “Times Square Dirty Bomb First Response Unit,” then drew nuclear warning symbols and a slew of official sounding nonsense (“Alpha Squad 4HQ3”) on the front and arms. I wrapped an old handheld digital metronome in white paper, scrawled “Dirty Bomb Geiger Counter” across the top, and cut a hole in the paper to allow us to turn on menacing beeping at the touch of a button.

Let the 2005 hilarity begin.