Image via Complex Original
Lead
It's actually here, people. Yup, even though you've spent this entire weekend drunk and in costume the calendar page has only just flipped to October 31. Feeling burnt out? Take solace. We have hate in our hearts too.
Here are the 10 Worst Things About Halloween.
Sleeping in your costume
10. Sleeping in Your Costume/The Morning
Dressing up is almost always fun and one of the best parts of Halloween (and, consequently, any good costume party), but the more you go for broke, the more devastated you will look the morning after. Halloween hair dye and makeup have a dirty habit of being almost caustically burned onto your skin and pillows. And that sexy or hilarious outfit on the night of can turn into a straightjacket in the early morning of the day after. There is really no walk more shameful than that of the sexy cop walking her beat back to her house, tights torn, makeup running, hair unable to be removed from hat, pale and hissing at the light. Unless you're just watching it from across the street, in which case it's rather glorious.
Bad Candy
9. Bad Candy
People claim to still like candy corn, but no one's really sure why. None of the candies given out on Halloween are anything special. The fact that kids consider the regular or king sized Snickers and Reese's to be the grand prize of their endeavors speaks to how shitty all the other candy truly is. No matter how palatable Tootsie Rolls are (a debate akin to abortion in terms of fiercely argued opinions), most of the candy that kids get are things they would throw away on any other day of the year (Necco Wafers, you fucking suck). But because the pillowcase represents a loot bag and the candy the product of their fierce plundering of terrified neighbors, they use their imagination to pretend that sweet tarts are better than they are. Brave little guys.
Bad Horror Movies
8. Bad Horror Movies
There's no excuse anymore for how base and talentless horror movies often are, especially as of late. Embarassing drivel churned out for next to nothing, allowed to survive on the almost charitable kindness of horror fans who just want to support the blood syruped, oatmeal makeup-ed, chain-less chainsaw arts. But that doesn't keep people from releasing their overwrought travesty onto the world in the name of all things Halloween. Taking advantage of people's love of being scared to profit on your otherwise terrible film is shameful. You're part of the problem, and why lists like this exist. For shame.
Halloween Music
7. Halloween Music
Somehow this is actually a genre of music. It doesn't boast the deepest catalogue, but it does contain just enough songs to make it only slightly more repetitive than Christmas music (though somehow not as cloying). Certain '80s cuts better forgotten have been consumed by Halloween, creating forced connections between Halloween and the song's content ("Sunglasses at Night"?), along with original works that make for some of the campiest and most uncomfortably lame songs this side of Star Trek. Any song sung in a Dracula voice that is not teaching you how to count or peddling you cereal is not to be trusted. That is, with the exception of "Monster Mash," which is actually a pretty badass song.
Vandalism
6. Vandalism
There's something about Halloween that unleashes the public's desire to trash shit. It's not hard to imagine why, especially when you have the double team of sexually-frustrated, candy-addled adolescents and sexually-frustrated, intoxicated adults. Windows receive bricks, trees dress in toilet paper, eggs wind up everywhere but on your breakfast plate the next morning, pumpkin entrails line the sidewalks, the stoops, flood the streets, people's treasured scarecrows are pulverized. Et cetera.
But it's Halloween, right? Let's go kill a fucking mailboxes with a baseball bat, am I right!? Right.
Sugar OD
5. Sugar OD
In America, we treat all holidays as an excuse to consume ungodly amounts of cane and corn sweetness. If there's a holiday, then there are cookies and cupcakes needing icing in the shapes of bats and pumpkins. There are punches to be made, cakes to be baked, oh my, oh yes!
But Halloween seems to literally be all about sugar. If you're a kid, it's the night your parents allow their better judgment to waiver and you get to eat yourself into the sugar coma you've been dreaming about since this time last year, or since the last major holiday (which was Easter? the Fourth of July? Labor Day?). As a grownup you're just as likely to consume too much sweetness on this night above others—someone is always over-eagerly baking things at work, pumpkin pies and muffins and monkey bread that looks like brains and the dreaded candy apple rears its ugly head more often than not. And you'll be drunk on top of everything. Bring on the rainbow vomit.
Timing
4. Timing
The thing about Halloween is that it never falls on the same day of the week. This year's Monday showing allows for potentially four days of costumed revelry before Halloween proper even hits. And next year, it falls on the even more disturbing Wednesday. Those who can't get enough of the festivities should rejoice but the rest of us are bracing for the overwhelming sensory rape and exhausting schedule. Good luck making it to Monday, friends.
Costume Pressure
3. Costume Pressure
Everyone who takes it even relatively serious has some bout of anxiety on the first of October every year. Consider what you want to be. Then consider how much money it will cost. Regroup. Make a list. Go shopping. Make a new list. Look through your closet like a madman and pull something out of your hat last minute. It's happened to everyone. Some people start thinking about it months in advance, simply to avoid the stress. It keeps some people from leaving the house at all, as it is seriously, really, intensely frowned upon to leave the house on Halloween dressed like yourself.
"What are you supposed to be, some kind of loser?" says the guy who must be Charles Manson as he tips back his forty, the remnants of his sharpie swastika melting with forehead sweat from his few minutes on the dance floor.
Religious People and Their Scare Tactics
2. The Scare Tactics of the Overly Religious
The only thing worse than people who get way too into Halloween (read: Wiccans) are stern religious observers who seem to actually be scared of October 31st. Atheists don't protest Christmas (though it's essentially a secular holiday by now). So what's up with Christians getting all up in Halloween's business?
Granted, the vast majority of Christian sects and people have absolutely no problem with Halloween, but the minority gets extremely vocal. Their opposition seem to give credence to the holiday being important (it's not), and make people want to whip out their Ouija boards and sacrifice animals just to freak the proselytizers out.
Also, many churches have started running haunted houses as a some bizarre form of religious recruitment (scaring the Christ into kids) which is disturbing on entirely different levels. But even the normal, middle-of-the-road Christians can put a damper on the evening by sticking one of those little little clip art ghosts saying, "Jesus loves you" onto your candy. Yes, he does; and he wants you to be malnourished.
Slutty Costumes
1. Slutty Costumes
They say that you're supposed to dress for the job that you want, and by the same logic, a surprising number of girls are going out into the Halloween night, looking to attract dudes who are big fans of Charlie Sheen and will buy them as many drinks as they want, so long as they have the word bomb in them.
Sure, for a lot of people, this is the best and ONLY part of Halloween, and there's certainly nothing wrong with ladies dressing attractively, scandalously even. It brings out the playful elements of being bad on Halloween (wherever the hell that originated). But the fact that any store-bought costume can be turned "sexy" with a pair of scissors and some tape, rings more of A Clockwork Orange than Cinderella. It does not take much mental faculty to come up with a sexy version of some other type of costume (plumber, pilot, parking attendant—those are just some of the P's), so take the extra time after nailing one down and spend more than an hour making it look good. It could up the level of attention you receive and might even make your Halloween pictures something other than blackmail fodder. You too, guys: wearing a hat is not a costume—you just look like the lazy asshole.