My Halloween Suggestion Box

I don't much care for Halloween. Pretend to be surprised by that. I hate adults getting dressed up, and I hate kids, period. However, I've decided that I can at least respect adults who really make an effort, who become actor-for-a-night and totally embody their otherwise puerile game of dress-up. Unlike Mom, who got dressed up as a hippie because all the other teachers in her school were doing it. (Because that's an important lesson to impart on our impressionable kids: always cave into peer pressure and follow the crowd.) Mom stole one of my white t-shirts, tie-dyed it, and told everyone she was a hippie. Lame! Where's the Grateful Dead wig? Where's the anti-war poster? Where's the hemp?

But my point is that Halloween needs to grow the hell up. You go through phases: First, you're harassing your neighbors for candy. Then, you're vandalizing. Finally, you're hiding by the side of your house with a garden hose, spraying people who walk by. (Only the teenage punks, though. Even I'm not mean enough to hose down innocuous trick-or-treaters.) We need an adult Halloween, and that's why I think we should give out Kit-Kats to the kiddies and flaming tequila shots and Xanax and condoms to the poor parents forced to take them out.

I wish I thought of this back in college when the condoms were free.

I'd like to see Halloween turned back into the devil-frightening bacchanalia it's supposed to be, with drugs and orgies and thrash metal. Fanwood's Halloween parade is so saccharine it would even make Jesus feel like He'd just eaten a whole bowl of candy corn. We can only listen to "Monster Mash" so many times before we regret the killer in Saw II is only a fictional character. Even the big dogs, the "Nation’s Most Wildly Creative Public Participatory Event in the Greatest City in the World" somehow got perverted into a mindless anti-Bush, gay-rights, puke-till-you-drop puppet show shelling out free ad space for the Chocolate Buddha (which I'm tempted to get Anne for Christmas). I want to see the village banding together as a community for one night against the Devil's minions, and also against those retarded-ass inflatable Frankensteins that my idiot neighbors with bad taste put on their lawn.

Seriously, someone should inform the zoning board.