All Hallow's F'n Weak

Around the corner from where I work, a new Halloween-pegged costume store swung open its front doors a couple weeks ago. You know, the kind of business that stays open throughout October and then fizzles into oblivion around the second or so week of November. Sort of like a makeshift Party City, if you will. But month-long or not, I've always loved these places. Where else can you walk in from a routine city setting and be greeted by gents such as Leatherface, Ronald Reagan, and Dracula, or catch flirtatious glances from sirens the likes of Female Ghostbuster, French Maid, or Zombie Girl?



[if only these chicks actually did greet me, and not just their likenesses on packaging....oh, to dream a little dream]

I took a quick walk-through in this particular costume nook the other day, on my lunch break. Not to purchase a get-up or anything, though. Just to bask in the fun that is, or at least I'm starting to feel like was, Halloween, my all-time favorite holiday.

Growing up, most kids prefer Christmas, for the obvious toy-stocking-tree menage a trois of adolescent euphoria. And I sure did love Santa's busiest day of the year, too, don't get me wrong. But Halloween always appealed more to me, simply due to the imagination that oozes out of All Hallow's Eve. Think about it....I get to dress up as some sort of sick-looking creature, no questions asked, and then also get free candy for doing so?! Strangely, such a prospect possessed such a gleeful power in my mind, that mightily outweighed the toy-stocking-tree triple threat.

There I was, a pre-teen-age dude who'd rush home from school just so I could fast-forward directly to the third act of Dawn of the Dead, when the zombies finally overtake the Monroeville Mall and feast on those sleazy bikers. Or, I'd opt to re-watch The Monster Squad instead, cherishing such profound dialogue bits as "See ya later, bandie-breath!" or "Wolfman's got nards!" And if I wasn't watching one of my prized films on illegally-copied-VHS, I was toting around my toy rifle, acting out classic horror movie moments in my bedroom. Only, my bedroom would become something else entirely more-fantastical---sometimes a boarded-up farmhouse, other times an easily-penetrable cabin overlooking Camp Crystal Lake. The monsters would try breaking in, but I'd always buck 'em down with my Toys-R-Us-issued shooter, reloading at will as brains and limbs sprayed across my walls. In the best possible way, even, since no clean-up was required in a slaughter's wake. 'Twas only mind-spray, not actual organ-spray.

And Swiffers hadn't been introduced at the time, so that was for the better, anyway.

But, as I hovered around the costume store the other afternoon, I started realizing just how inconsequential Halloween has become in my life. Sure, some friends and I still dress up for the occasion, but its only to get free drinks at a holiday-minded bar the preceeding weekend. Trick-or-treating is no more, which certainly reaks. And my family stopped decorating somewhere around nine, ten years ago. And we used to get it in, decoration-wise. The front porch was guarded by foot-and-a-half moving statues of Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula, and the Phantom of the Opera, all moaning and groaning in hopes of scaring burglars away. Effectively so. And then there was the scarecrow-ish dummy we had sitting on the outer porch, stuffed with newspaper and made to look like a creepy hobo.

But those fun times are nil, now. I can't help but wish I was a kid again, just for one Halloween week, so I could put in heavy work on a kick-ass costume, trick or treat around my cousin's hilly-neighborhood. I was such a dumbass, I'd always fall for my one cousin's grimy trick....he'd notice that a house had left a basket on their porch of full-sized candy bars, with a note reading "Please only take one," and he'd be like, "Okay, you hit that house, I'll hit this house," and I'll fall into the trap, only to see his pillowcase overflowing with giant bars, with an empty basket left behind. Scoundrel. But that shame was endearing, in hindsight.

Pee-Wee Herman....Mr. Hyde....Jason Voorhees....The Mummy....The Three-Headed Werewolf....those were just some of the costumes I chose as Young Meezy. And even though Jason Voorhees seems a bit unoriginal, please believe, I made it my own, for real. Blood smears all over the hockey mask. Crimson-dyed plastic machete. The works......these days, I dress as either Napoleon Dynamite for two years in a row, or as a Ghostbuster. That's it. Fucking lame, right? Where's the fun in that?

[this is what I looked like for Halloweens 2005 and 2006....yes, it is]


In my newly-invigorated spirit of things, I'm now vowing to wow-and-whoa the celebratory denizens of Hoboken this year's H-ween weekend with a truly standout-ish costume. No clue what it'll be yet, but as Rod Serling as my witness, I'm digging deep into my imaginative melon to scoop up something show-stopping.

If the holiday itself is going to suck for me, I might as well give it my best shot of being good times, right? Granted, I'll get to see Gianna and Nick dress up, and smile and enjoy the wonders of youth. But as far as my holiday will be concerned, what's to get excited about? I drink every weekend as is, costume or not.

And there's hardly any good new horror movies hitting theaters, in what seems like the worst October in Hollywood memory....forget those fucking Saw movies, they're tired and should've stopped at the better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be Saw 2. The only other one worth seeing will be Quarantine, and the limited releases of Fear(s) Of The Dark and Let The Right One In. Last year wasn't much better, with the only genre flick I remember actually seeing and liking in a cinema was 30 Days of Night. Come on, Hollywood.....try harder, for fuck's sake!

Television better step up its G. There was a time when Channel 11 (way before its teenybopper-serving CW daze) held its yearly 'Shocktober' scheduling, where every weeknight at 8pm the network would air some older, infintely-entertaining horror joint, most likely made in the wonderous '80s....The Wraith...Return of the Living Dead 2....The Gate....Nightmare on Elm Street....Night of the Creeps...Creepshow 2.....Christine....Deadly Friend (starring Kristy Swanson, one of my original celeb crushes)....just to name a few.



Now, we get shitty H-ween-themed episodes of How I Met Your Mother and Gossip Girl. Scary, sure, but for all the wrong reasons. Thank the heavens for the Monsters HD channel, though. I'm sure the October programming on Ch. 777 will be a 666-injected dose of viewing goodness.

So, here, I say, definitively.....forget about all that "bring hip-hop back" mumbo jumbo, which seems to be working as well as a smashed cell phone these days anyway....let's all rally together and shout at the tippies of our lungs: "Bring Halloween back, for all ages!!!"

No? Okay, well, I'll just do it myself, then. Keep an eye out for me on the local news.
[And, just for good measure, why not one more "sexy costume," this time the girl from Harry Potter? Yay, I say. If Hermiona, or whatever her fucking name is, looked like this, I'd actually give a shit about the Potter movies]


Cast a spell on me, baby!