For Halloween this year, I decided to be Rick Astley. With a little bit of hair spray, spray-on hair color, and some make-up for a widow’s peak, it looks like this:
What fun. To make the costume complete, I took my Android G1 phone and bought a copy of Never Gonna Give You Up from Amazon for $.99. Then I put the song on continuous loop and turned on the external speaker. The G1 can really belt out music! Presto, not only do I look like Rick Astley, but I’m Rickrolling everyone who comes within ten feet of me!
In order for you to fully appreciate the experience, I’ve added an “embed” code into this blog so you can experience the costume for yourself. Let me know if it works for you. 
(Update: Apparently Firefox and Chrome don’t like embedded MIDIs and other Web 0.1 technology, so I’ll spare you the audio experience of getting rickroll’ed.) Thanks to my wonderful wife for the idea and for her help with the costume this year. She also made a special treat for people at work:
Yummy mummy cupcakes!
Other Halloween fun from previous years.
{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }
LMAO! good one… are you using the IR function as radar to auto rick roll?
LOL…poor Rick Astley! He gets no respect.
Uhh…why is your hair purple?
Matt, what a great costume. I hope you have the dance moves to pull it off. You have the look, LOL
RICK ROLLED! ARRRRRRRRG!
>> I’ve added an “embed” code into this blog so you can experience the costume for yourself. Let me know if it works for you.
Thank god, it doesn’t
Happy, happy Halloween…
greetz
Robert
btw.: Funny Google robots.txt and very, very funny German SERPs.
I can’t believe I just got Rickrolled. But could you at least give us some controls to shut the music off? :p
I think the problem with the Rickroll music was the nesting of the embed tags, you just has it poorly formatted and the embed wasn’t closed.
That being said I only glanced at it quickly before tweeting, it might have been another issue.
I feel sick and I dont think it was all the candy I ate today.
I’m seeing double
You picked my idea. You did a good job with it.
Steve, that color was as close as I could get to Rick Astley’s red locks.
Dante, my dance moves really came into their own during the 80s, so that part worked out perfectly.
I heared 1st time About Rick Astley. Is he a musician ?
Wow
Now I knew that Halloween was all about scaring people but dragging poor old Rick back from the crypt is surely going a bit too far !!
I’m off to lie down in a darkened room – Never gonna give you up indeed
Cupcakes look good though !
Gordon
Oh my goodness…you actually look like the original Rick Astley…ROFL …
Never gonna give, never gonna give!
Love it.
Awesome costume. We hope you’ve been voting for Rick too! (bestactever.com)
Hi Matt,
Very nice costumes.
In the first picture, you look exactly like Rick Astley. And for the last picture, it would really be nice if we could hear the song which Rick Astley was singing.
And the cupcakes look very delicious
Yummy
Regards
Hitting these trends at the peak, eh?
“…She also made a special treat for people at work…” Awww, lil Google Bots! :]
I wish this story hadn’t of been dugg yet. I was wanting to do that, with a title on the lines of, ‘Big G’s HofS becomes RickRollin Viral Spam’. Come on Matt – do a rendetion of Never Gonna Give You Up so we have something to work with over at the ‘tube! :]
Wow, that is pretty cool.
http://www.anolite.echoz.com
Woohoo! I suggested Rick Astley in your post the other week.
Although it sounds like you more were… T-Rick Astley!
OMG:
Matt, you are way better looking than that panzy. Perhaps you should get into show business.
Haha nice one! I love his songs but I’m not a personal fan, just the songs. It was a hit in the 80s
Touche, Matt – touche.
Nice costume lol
You guys wrecked your index on Friday and all you can do is go on about Rick Astley.
Many excellent authority sites were ditched from the index, home pages going missing, and you think this is a good move for Google?
I guess people who consider themselves important, lose site of reality, and make changes that aren’t needed. It’s common for a company to get too big for it’s boots and end up wrecking their own business.
Leave things alone, or you will ruin your own business, along with that of many hard working webmasters.
Shame on you people!!
Matt you should get a job as a Rick Astley look alike I can’t tell you both apart! (I am joking folks!)
BTW Some little know search engine that nobody ever heard called Google??? listed my forum in first place for the search terms “Interviews with the best SEO experts” and “Interviews with the best SEO” and even though SEO is a complete mystry to me I posted the thread in my name above!
As dissapointed and ditressed as I am to be listed so highly on such a little know search engine what with SEO being such a complete and utter mystery to me I wondered if you coul offer any advice on how I can stop geting page 1 and link 1 Google listings?
If you don’t get my humour people please Google “Virgle” or “Pigeon Rank”
April Fools and Halloween Cools – hmm now there is something to think about anf consider!
Who the heck is Rick Astley? Never heard of him before today.
Ronald R, you may not have noticed but I commented on that topic over on WebmasterWorld. There was a temporary issue, but it should be fixed now or later today.
Then get on your knees and thank the baby Jesus that you haven’t.
He’s a generic British pop star/one-trick pony from the mid-80s famous for recording one of the most annoying songs in recent memory. He was recently brought back to “life” by a bunch of sick twisted bastards who used the song and video (Matt’s got a few stills posted of the video) to “Rickroll” other people and annoy them to the point where they wanted to set their eyes and ears on fire in order to go blind and deaf.
Dude, I’m a senior in high school and my friends and I dressed up as Rick Astley. I went as trench coat Rick with another friend, and another one went as the blue collar, jean Rick. Needless to say I brought my boombox to school and we Rickroll’d the hallways. The teachers loved it and the true nightmare of having “Never Gonna Give You Up” in everyones head was a success.
I love your costumes btw, great work.
Those cookies look like the talking hamburgers from Perfect Hair Forever.
wow nice roll man
nice one! I love the thrid one, almost the same!LOL!
hehe. I do love Rick Astley when I was on junior school. Btw, where is he now? Still singing? Salaam.
Jjajjajajajaja, esta vez si que me rei, buen aporte haces Matt, reirse de uno mismo es bueno para la salud, interna y externa…..jajaja…pobre Rick….jajajjaja
Saludos
Then you are the only here who can hold their head high
Someone here (not Matt) here know too much to claim they haven’t any of RA music
Matt, you look like Freddy Mercury in the second photo.
lol. why didnt I think of this :/
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you!
One of those songs that gets stuck in the head. =P
A physical rickroll? That’s low… What’s next, going as a Star Fox character, so you can “Do a barrell roll”? Actually becoming a lolcat?
Okay, that costume is just frickin’ disturbing!
Really cool!
You make an excellent Rick Astley, Matt (:
Matt,
You are aging yourself. Wasn’t he popular around 1986? 1987?
Dang Matt, your looking trim these days!
I think we all know what’s really going on here – Rick Astley retired to become Matt Cutts! It all makes sense.
Can you please write a filter like Safe-Search which stops me getting Rick-Rolled?
This is like so totally post-modern its unfathomable!
It’s amazing how Rick Astley all of a sudden became relevant again–about 20 years after his initial pop stardom. Sure, you can still here his songs from time to time on easy listening stations, but I can’t tell you how many times I got “rick rolled”–and if anyone can explain the term to me, I’d be grateful.
But having said this, I think you really pulled the Astley look off well from the red hair to the Canadian Tuxedo.
reminds of the 80′s song…”too much time on my hands.” :p cool costumes though.
I Found You from an old costume on this site…
LOL
http://flashyourstache.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/stachebattle3.jpg
Hey all!!
isnt that guy from the very first picture David Gahan from Depechec Mode ???
a 20-year flashback
Awesome stuff! This is the first time i’m seeing you without your spectacles btw..
I’m making the same costume (the one with the trench coat), and I wanna know: Did you use a black shirt or a black sweater? which one?
Thought you might like this:
http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N35/graphics/notehack.html
Whoa! There’s a blast from the past. Your last picture shows that you mastered Rick’s look (I’m not sure what to call it).