Halloween in the ‘Ham

It’s been a long weekend of partying and posing during this Halloween / Daylight Saving four-day fest. And while the spooky stuff ends tonight, another scary holiday is just around the corner: the Birth of Bahá’u’lláh (Nov. 12).

Oooooohhhhh…

But before we stick a hatchet in Halloween, let’s highlight the costumes of 2005.

The first party on Saturday night had a theme. Don’t get me wrong: We love seeing folks (especially the gals) out in their festive finery, and Halloween has always had a special costume theme.

Dress slutty.

Slutty cat. Slutty nurse. Slutty accountant. Whatever.

We don’t judge here.

So what’s up with these Halloween theme parties? I gotta make a costume just for your affair, and then another, and another. C’mon! I can barely be bothered to rent the Dora the Explorer get-up.

We even heard about a theme party that insisted folks come as their favorite White House guest from 1960 to 1964. No joke — though we suspect the hostess just wanted an elaborate cover to dress as either Jackie O or Marilyn Monroe (slutty first lady or slutty first mistress).

Back to Saturday night, party No. 1.

The theme: Isms. Yes, isms.

Our limited imagination immediately jumped to ageism, sexism, racism, lookism. The classics of contemporary campus PC movement.

But among the attendees were an emerging butterfly out of a restrictive cotton-ball foot shackle (metamorphism), a complex illustrated Krebs cycle (metabolism) and a medieval maiden (our favorite, romanticism).

Yours truly didn’t bother to come up with an ism ahead of time, but among the fleeting notions were:

nihilism: when surrounded by meaninglessness, surrender.
escapism: when surrounded by theme costumes, hide in your head.
antagonism: when surrounded by TV-phobes, fight back.
Fauvism: we’re not nuts about modern art, but we’ll take this one over cubism.

Not surprisingly, no less than three guests picked plagiarism as their costume theme. You could cut the irony with a knife.

At the next party, the Halloween crowd was in full force. And the iPod-based costumes for 2005 were way cooler, as one couple showed up as wild dancing robots, complete with disco soundtrack.

Marie Antoinette made an appearance, along with one token Vulcan. The host dressed as an old-school Boy Scout, same as last year. The Gen X remember when award goes to the gal dressed as Rainbow Brite (though we had to be prompted, since we spent our childhood with Cabbage Patch Kids and My Little Pony).

Also hanging out was our man BJ as a ’70s coke dealer. The other guests insisted he was, in fact, Howard Stern. Alas, in a nod to democracy, the king of all media won out over seedy drug supplier.

Al Roker (pre-surgery) arrived, as did slutty devil and corpse bride. Too bad no one topped last year’s power duo of Pvt. Lynndie England and Iraqi torture prisoner.

The Sunday neighborhood party was far more crowded, but tamer for family-friendly fun. We spotted babies dressed as pumpkins, ladybugs and other cutesy creatures. The neighborhood president came as an astronaut (or a NASA technician), while most adults skipped the costumes and slipped into free booze. As much as we love the dress-up, slutty or otherwise, we love non-mandatory costumes even more. Free will, baby.

The power duo for this party was a clear winner: chef and walking stove (complete with pregnant belly visible through the door, i.e. bun in the oven).

Next year, maybe the baby will be in a burlap sack marked “Joy.”