Plan Your Halloween Fun & Fright

It's coming, folks. My favorite time of the year. That wonderful day when the barrier is broken between the living and the dead and ferocious carnage ensues to prey on the innocent....

You know, Election Day.

But before that, it's my favorite day of the year: Halloween. And if you're like me, you wanna make sure your Halloween celebration goes as planned to maximize your enjoyment of the most spiritual and mythological of all the holidays. That being said, the good folks here at XC (well... it's pretty much "folk," singular) have created a small list of things you can do to have a happy, appropriately haunting Halloween. Just follow this daily schedule.

Midnight
For maximum scare factor, now is when you watch that everlasting cult masterpiece The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the definitive midnight movie. I mean, if Tim Curry in that get-up doesn't scare you, for crying out loud, what will?! If you live in a fairly isolated locale (as in, a house with a good two or three hundred yards between neighbors), you can crank up the volume and participate as you so choose. But if you're going to do that, you are required by law to do the Time Warp, if nothing else. That's right. Look it up in the Constitution. If you never pause the movie, it will be over at...

1:40 am
Go to bed. It may be Halloween, but you still need your sleep. Otherwise the Great Pumpkin won't come.

Noonish
After lunch, bake all your Halloween treats. Recipes for these will be located in several newspaper sections for the past month and a half. Take this opportunity to get your trick-or-treat stuff ready. If you're handing out candy, put it in the bowl, put the bowl by the door. If you're going out, secure your costume and make sure your flashlights (stress: plural) have plenty of fresh batteries. I know it's tempting with all the paranoia about H1N1, but avoid SARS masks at all costs (unless they're part of your costume). They have to be changed, like, every twenty minutes to be effective.

1:00
Read that immortal, chilling masterpiece: The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe. If preferable, listen to it read aloud. But if you live alone, I don't want to encourage that sort of behavior....

1:30
Take this opportunity to watch a good, lighthearted horror flick. Nothing with severe scream value-- it's broad daylight, after all-- but something comic. My recommendations? Shock Treatment (the sequel to Rocky Horror), Young Frankenstein, Beetle Juice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, or the best Halloween specials & episodes of serial TV: Peanuts, Garfield, That '70s Show, 3rd Rock from the Sun, etc.

6:00
Expect the first trick-or-treaters, if you're staying at home. If you're going out, leave around this time. If you see a guy in the bushes with a William Shatner mask and a knife, do not talk to him! His name is Michael Myers, and he's... well, he's a bad man.

9:00
The tail end of trick-or-treating. If you're out, come in. If you're in, check for toilet paper and egg innards on the outside of your house. Then lock the door.

10:00
Now's your chance to see something really scary. Conventional classics for this occasion include the Halloween series, but nothing scares me like a good religious chiller: particularly The Exorcist. Rule of thumb: the higher the numeral in a series like Halloween, the worse it probably is. Stick with the 1978 original.

And that concludes our Halloween. Now to Thanksgiving. You thought Michael Myers was scary, wait until you see Aunt Phyllis & Uncle Wally stuffing themselves with turkey and cranberry sauce. You'll run the other way.