This year, Halloween is on a Thursday.

Which makes this Sat., Oct. 26, Halloween for Adults. When the treats come in shot glasses rather than plastic jack-o-lanterns. When the only real fears are of making an ass of oneself at the party, or of wondering why the pizza delivery guy is looking at one funny on Sunday, before remembering one still has about a pound of makeup caked on half of one’s face.

You know, Saturday night is just a few days away. And you promised, despite your better judgment and general disdain for such things, to dress up for the party this year. It’s been a busy several weeks, and now you’re finding yourself up against the wall, having to choose between grabbing a Sexy Casper The Inexplicably Horny Male Pre-Teen Ghost-Nurse costume at the pop-up Halloween store over on 66th Street, or not wearing a costume yet again, and — let’s face it — coming off like a humorless sort of fun-sucking joy vampire.

Yet again.

Listen: Getting caught without a costume at the last minute doesn’t have to be a disaster. In fact, an enterprising sort might actually snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by taking a cue from the ephemeral nature of our digital age, and doing something timely. Something ripped from the blog-headlines. Something right-freaking-now. This way, while everyone at the party pretends not to notice they’re all dressed as zombified Walking Dead versions of the characters from Mad Men, they’ll actually be talking about how clever and plugged-in you are.

Check out just a few of the possibilities:

Read the rest at Creative Loafing …

Halloween is kind of a downer when the economy sucks.

It’s supposed to be a time of joyful excess for the overly imaginative and emotionally stunted. We drink too much. We go to parties dressed as demons and personified puns and sexy everythings. We turn our homes and yards into what we think is a scene out of a Tim Burton movie, but actually resembles an explosion in a factory that used to make plastic spiders and low-quality pillow batting.

We spend a ton of money, and don’t think about it until it’s time to start ordering Christmas presents online.

This year, a party was out of the financial — not to mention temporal — question for my wife and me. We haven’t decorated, inside or out. I was even worried about having to shell out for candy for the neighborhood kids, because we always buy way too much accidentally on purpose because I have a pretty serious candy problem. In any case, I’m not going to leave the kids with nothing at all, but I thought it would nice to be able to cut the Halloween budget back even further if possible.

Then I remembered there’s a trick in that old Halloween tradition, as well as a treat.

Read the rest at Creative Loafing …