Hateoween

There are a number of topics on which I disagree with John Q. America, one of the main ones being, Halloween.

I hate it.

We Americans spend five billion dollars annually on this latex-scented schlock-fest. Right. Five billion dollars on Dum Dums, grease paint, and rubber Freddie Krueger masks. I have nothing to add to that, it is so criminally embarrassing.

And yet there I was today, at the mall of death, looking for some feeble skeleton decoration to pin to my front door, since I live in the suburbs, where Halloween is in no way an opt-out event unless you want lookalike teenage boys with retro Chris Makepeace hairstyles slashing your tires. Go on, I'll wait while those of you residing in the city congratulate yourselves for living in a neighborhood that scares parents of school-aged children.

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Ok, where were we? Right, I'm lurking in the Halloween Hut, looking for some closeout sale cardboard skeleton with little metal brads for joints to inform the suburban tweens that yes, we will give them chocolate bars in exchange for not having to hose shattered pumpkin shards off our walkway in the morning.

The Hallo-hut stinks of cheap rubber, like a giant toy factory in Hsinchuang. Makeshift walls of spook-merch have been temporarily propped up inside of the gutted retail space (most recently a Gottschalks, possibly during the Nixon administration). Paint-gunned rubber face masks lie in quivering, picked-over piles. Lamely ghoulish life-sized monsters slump against mannequin stands, wearing paper signs that scold you break it, you buy it. A plastic butt lies abandoned in the middle of an aisle.

A plastic butt.

I drift down the aisle of adult-sized costumes, just to see what the well-dressed idiot is wearing this season. Women's costumes fill two entire aisles, many of them torn and falling out of plastic flat packs and wadded up in piles of black spandex on the floor.

I survey the choices. Dominatrix. French Maid. Bride of Frankenstein with really tight bikini underwear. Playboy bunny. Bimbo cheerleader. Half naked police officer. Basically, this stuff. These are the only choices. This is the entire scope of available women's Halloween costumes.

Allison Glock was so not kidding.

Yet another reason to hate Halloween.