Halloweenie!

It's 9:31 on Halloween night here in Burbank, CA. I just fed lots of inappropriately-dressed tweens a bunch of candy and you know what? They weren't cold! It's about 65 degrees outside. The neighbor down the street who is a DJ (DJ Timbo!) has been blasting Thriller and the Ghostbusters theme since dusk. It's off now, since he has a baby.

We weren't sure when the trick or treaking started here, so Evan came home early, around 3:30. Oscar's bestie C. came home with us in case there would be some early TOTing. There wasn't. Not a soul out until it went dark at 5:45. So we carved pumpkins.

We didn't know when the TOTing would happen, so we got ready for 5ish. But I guess nothing happens until dark. Oh well. C. wasn't able to TOT with us, but we got some good pictures.

Pikachu!

Lucy couldn't decide on a costume. Oscar was 100% on being Ash of Pokémon fame. So we convinced her to be Ash's Pikachu, and Oscar was surprisingly grateful.

Arlo fell in love with the idea of being a policeman, so he could have a flashlight and lead everyone around on Halloween night. So when we found the SWAT Team uniform at Costco, I thought we were done (first store-bought costume in 7 years!). But then he decided that he wanted to be a cat. A police cat. So, the SWAT Cat.

The SWAT Cat is deadly serious. Except when he's not.

The mustache reminds Evan and I of CHIPs and Eric Estranda. We get a kick out of seeing seeing the CHIPs on the motorcycles.

Ash and his Pikachu.

C. was dashing!

SWAT Cat was again READY TO GO.

(Evan and I just turned off the porch light and sat down with baked ziti [from the freezer]. He gave me a choice: The Shining, The Omen, Shaun of the Dead, or The Return of the Living Dead. I let him pick.)

Pikachu is READY TO GO!

ZOMBIE TOURIST DADDY is ready to go!

They went. I spent a blissful hour in my front living room reading Absolute Sandman vol.3, listening to the Children of the Corn soundtrack on vinyl, and doling out lots of candy.

That was our first bowl.

Backup.

After they'd made a full round of the block, Lucy. Was. Done.

The boys dropped off Lucy and she put herself in charge of doling out candy. Every time somebody approached our door, she sidled up with the huge bowl of candy and said "Take two please! happy Halloween!" Let me tell you, the tweens MELTED. The Pikachu costume was the hit of the block.

My favorite costume of the night was No-Name from Spirited Away. The teenager that was in it was thrilled that we knew who she was, and even more thrilled when I told her that my middle guy was Totoro a couple years ago. So I brought out the Totoro costume and wore it on my head a bit.

I only had one kid who I had to ask "So what's your costume?" He was in jeans and a hoodie with a camo scarf, about 11 years old. He said I dunno, a gangster? I told him that he looked nothing like a gangster and that he was obviously the Unibomber. I then had to explain to him who the Unibomber was and that he wore a similar hoodie. He nodded his head, took his candy, and then took off with the rest of his party shouting "Unibomber! I'm the Unibomber!"

The boys came home around 8pm (their usual bedtime, if not their lights-out time) and happily sorted their loot.

I realized then that it was even more fun to let the kids answer the door and dole out the candy.

So even though we were warned to expect 500-700 kids, we probably had 300-400, still more than we ever dreamed of in NJ. They came only between 6-9:15pm. They were unfailingly polite and grateful. They loved The Goose handing out candy in her Pikachu costume. That's a generational sign right there. The neighbors had haunted houses, music, dry ice, the whole shebang. Evan says the 60% of th houses in our neighborhood were actively welcoming trick-or-treaters tonight, which is far more than our old neighborhood.

Our neighbors across the street also came over and introduced themselves -- they've lived here for a year, no kids, easily 15 years younger than us. But they are lovely, and he is a designer for Disney, so we're going to have drinks in the back yard soon. Hooray for neighbors!

Final tally of the nght: 18 DC-based costumes, 6 Marvel-based costumes. More than half of the DC Comics costumes were female. No female Marvel costumes. In the ten years we've kept a running tally of DC vs. Marvel costumes, we've never had a Marvel female costume. There's something there, I just don't know how to tap into that zeitgeist. If I counted Disney costumes, which I probably should, they would blow us comics folk away -- lots of Princesses© plus a lot of Minnie Mouses and plenty of tiny Jack Sparrows. The most common costume was probably the Scream ghostie. We saw at least 40 of them tonight, all on kids I would deem waaaay too young to see the movie. Am I some kind of weird prude that I won't let my kids deal with the commercial crap from movies they are too young to see? I saw kids this evening wearing Batman and Joker costumes that were clearly Dark Knight related. Dude, there's plenty of age-appropriate Batman stuff out there. I also cringed at the 4- and 5-year-olds wearing Transformers costumes. AGAIN, totally inappropriate subject matter for little guys.

It was a lovely neighborhood Halloween. The kids loved their costumes, I was proud of their costumes, and we had a great trick-or-treat through the neighborhood, plus hundreds of gracious and friendly kids visiting our house.

By the way, we're watching The Omen. Well, I am. My darling husband is passed out next to me. Too many indiviual sized boxes of Dots filtched from his kids' bags. He hit the wall sooner than the kids.

Happy Halloween, y'all.