Costumed Musings

What follows are some random, assorted, mix-n-match, fun-sized musings on Halloween.

Trick-or-Treat, you sexy bastard.

* Thanks to the incessant, unending media hype, I am absolutely petrified of even the prospect of driving anywhere, for any distance, at any time on October 31st, for fear of turning a local child into a speed-bump resembling a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

* I want to buy a huge caterer-sized platter of crudite and offer cucumber slices and grape tomatoes to children who ring my doorbell tonight.

* When I was in elementary school, I made every Jewish mother's nightmare come true when I asked my mother if I could dress as Hitler. I even parted my hair and put a small square of black construction paper underneath my nose to show her how much I looked like him.

* Speaking of being Jewish, when you're a Jewish kid, your parents try to convince you that Purim is just as cool as Halloween, but you soon realize that that's a bunch of cockshit.

* In fourth grade, I went to my elementary school's Halloween Parade dressed as Richard Nixon. Not resembling Richard Nixon at all, especially at age 9, I had to buy a mask from Halloween Adventure.

* There's that unsettling part of my psyche that wants to open the door to trick-or-treaters and TASE them.

* When we were in middle school, this kid in my neighborhood, Bill was his name, and his entire family would freak their whole house up for Halloween, with coffins and shit inside and they would make themselves all up like dead people and scare the fuck out of everybody who came over. They don't live there anymore. Every time I pass their house, I think about how much I miss Halloween at their house, and how I wish I'd bought Bill's sister's green 1978 Plymouth Fury when I had the chance at age 18. They're probably all in prison now.

* I wonder if there ever really was a guy putting razor blades in apples and, if there really was, where does he live, and what kind of razor blades were they? Because I use MACH-3's, and those motherfuckers are expensive. I could use some free ones, even with apple schnazz on them.

* Have you ever wanted to stick your finger down your throat and throw up into some kid's trick-or-treat pillowcase?

* I guess you won't be bringing your kids to my house, huh?

* If pre-pubescent girls show up at my door dressed as Naughty Nurses, Naughty Metermaids, Naughty X-Ray Technicians, Naughty Non-Profit Executive Directors, etc... I'm calling their parents. No joke. And then I'm going to TASE them.

* It is inherently wrong to dress as the following for Halloween:

Hitler, (thanks for the early ethics lesson, Mom!)

anybody in blackface,

a child with Asperger's Syndrome,

a crack-addicted prostitute,

a Ukranian cleft-palate baby,

Rush Limbaugh,

a porno-nun,

Helen Keller,

an Orthodox Jew,

Crazy Horse,

The Twin Towers,

Charles Manson,

Joseph Merrick (the "Elephant Man"),

an (infected) vagina/penis,

any recently-deceased relative,

Kunta Kinte, though that might fall under the aforementioned blackface category.

* A couple years ago, my wife and I attended a play on Halloween in costume. We were the only ones in the audience who had dressed up. I was a constable, and she was a prostitute (but not a crack-addicted one, and we didn't black out her face or any of her teeth.) We were, of course, handcuffed together.

* Tonight, for shits-n-gigs, when you open your door to trick-or-treaters, pretend you don't speak or understand English. Make up a language and try to communicate with the children. When they get exasperated and just thrust their baskets, bags, or pillowcases in your face, grab them and start pelting them with mini Snickers bars as they flee screaming. Proceed to eat all their candy.

* If anybody comes to your door tonight in a costume and you think they look too large to be a child, they are undoubtedly recently-graduated theatre-majors, and, thus, need to be TASED.