Mad Atoms

I can remember one of the greatest Halloweens I ever had was at age 10, when I dressed up as the grim reaper, employing the use of a soft and thin skull mask that glued to my face. I recall the forehead had skeletal cracks that spelled out “R.I.P.”and the package touted the disguise’s ability to be worn while eating. Paying special attention to that claim, I made a point to eat a whole hot dog while wearing the mask, and as I was able to consume the food, I ended up with a bunch of condiments and bun crumbs trapped between the mask and my mouth area. I spent the rest of the night inhaling a special blend of lip sweat, face glue, and hot dog detritus.

Halloween remains the coolest holiday because it doesn’t make you remember stuff like colonialism, the government, the working class, dead soldiers, history, emotions, or religion. It’s mainly about dressing up as something kooky and screwing around for a night. If you’re a kid, that means collecting free candy, which is rad. Later on you learn to combine the consumption of treats with “tricks,” namely vandalism, which remains a pretty good time until you find something social to attend. Then come the decisions: will you dawn a costume that only .0001 percent of the population can recognize, and creepily consume Jell-O shots alone in the corner dressed as Rorschach?

Contrariwise, you could use the holiday to be legally ass naked, stumble through the gay night riot that is West Hollywood, amid outfits more elaborate than most champion floats in the Rose parade, and vomit rum and burritos into a mailbox outside Studs.

For the socially anxious, it can be just as fun to stay indoors, get baked to Danzig, slice up pumpkins, and dole out candy. A bit of advice on this matter. Some of the worst memories I have are of the terrible treats I’ve received on Halloween, including pennies wrapped in Saran wrap, a singular stick of gum fished out of a pocket right there on the doorstep, and a coloring book decrying the satanic origins of Halloween from the wealthier-than-thou neighborhood Christians. These sort of stunts are liable to get your house egged, your pumpkins smashed, or your cat sacrificed, and if you’re really lame, you could be the recipient of the illustrious “human dump mashed through the screen door,” a trick I warmly refer to as “Ghost Shits.”

Basically, if you don’t murder virgins and scald your genitals shut in the name of Samhain, I would count your holiday a spooky success, and wish all you ghouls and goblins the happiest Halloween this side of Hades.