"BOO!!"

Unless you are a hermit or have only recently been washed ashore from some far distant deserted island, you know full well that Halloween has become a major event in America's festival allegiances, rivaling even Christmas for the degree of consumer attention it is afforded. In Tampa's artsy-craftsy district, known as Ybor City, a week long Latin-style celebration entitled "Guavaween"is celebrated, replete with several parades and costume contests. Those festivities are as mild as a picnic on the church grounds when compared to the far more bawdy and risque annual Fantasy Fest in Key West, where costumes are minimal if not forsaken altogether in favor of full body, spray painted "artwork." "Art," it is said, "is in the eye of the beholder," and there are untold dozens of female canvasses walking about to behold. (That's what I've been told, anyway)

One of these years we will perhaps be invited to attend a Halloween costume party where creativity is the rule. Nothing store bought. Everything made from scratch. I've already have mine and Judi's costume planned. I'll find two large appliance cartons, paint them to look identical to giant Almond Joy candy boxes and label them "Plain" and "With Nuts." I'll let you figure out who gets to wear which costume.

With our daughter now out on her own, our recognition of Halloween night consist of little more than putting a plastic pumpkin out on the front steps filled with candy and a sign that says "Help Yourself." It will be a rather uneventful Halloween night for us. Guess I'll just spend the better part of the evening looking through the Party City catalogue at the Halloween costumes and masks. Below are three of my most disturbing favorites...

If these three creatures don't scare the crap out of you...nothing will. Happy Halloween!!