Best Halloween Costume?

Lowbrow Answer: "Sexy" Anything
Listen, sweetheart. I know you've got really low self-esteem because your ex-frat-boy boyfriend would rather watch NFL games than have sex with you, but do we really need to see you squeeze your formerly perky ass into a pair of black booty shorts so that you can tell everyone you're a "cat?" Newsflash: cats don't wear high heels or have a bellybutton piercing or get drunk on two Smirnoff Ices. (Well, okay, maybe that last one is true - I have no idea how many Smirnoff Ices it takes to get a cat wasted.)

I like boobs and ass and low self-confidence as much as the next guy, but come on. If I wanted to see some girl's naughty-bits in public, I'd just drop a roofie in her vodka-soda and then drag her outside. Problem solved.

Middlebrow Answer: "Scary" Anything
At least these outfits are on theme. Halloween, if you'll remember, is supposed to be about ghouls and ghosts and shit. It's not supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be terrifying and horrifying and poop-in-your-pants-ifying. You should be dressing up as scary things. Stuff like zombies and monsters and catholic priests and my Uncle Rod who used to force all of us kids to take mustache rides at Easter. *shiver*
I'm not sure when we lost track of the true meaning of Halloween and veered off the track into superheroes and pop singers and eating 9 pounds of candy in one day. Probably around the same time we changed Christmas from "the birth of our Lord and Savior" to "Fuck you, give me that Tickle-Me-Elmo or I'll shove a lawnmower up your ass."


Highbrow Answer: "Abstract" Anything
For my money, the best Halloween costumes take explaining. A lot of explaining. I like it when a costume requires a lecture or a history lesson or a pie graph for me to understand it. At least then I'm learning something.
For full highbrow points this year, the best costume would require dressing up as one of of the following things:

- 14th Century German Nihilism
- Hubris
- The Japanese Commodities Market
- Any Color From the Infrared Spectrum
- The Soul of a Cheetah
- Chapter 14 from Betrand Russell's "The Amberly Papers"
- Doubt

Best Part of Christmas?

Lowbrow Answer: The Birth of Christ
One little homeless baby is born and the next thing you know, we get a whole race of Evangelical idiots who hate Muslims, The Purple Teletubby, Jews, Science, Gays, and Women. Nice going, Jesus. Couldn't you have just stayed in the carpentry business instead of switching over to "Savior-ing?"

I hate birthdays anyhow. Especially one for somebody born over 2000 years ago. You don't see us baking a cake for Ghengis Khan or throwing a party for Octavius Caesar. You know why? Because they're fucking dead. They could care less if we're celebrating their birthday. They're too busy in Heaven having a threesome with Joan of Arc.


Middlebrow Answer: Presents
Here's a fun trick if you're bored. Buy a big black dildo and wrap it up. Put it under the tree and address it to your dad from your mom. Include a note inside that says, "I thought you might like this because you obviously have no interest in my vagina." Then just sit back, sip some eggnog, and watch your parents fight. Ah, Christmas. Good times.

Getting presents blows. Especially from your "kind-of" relatives. You know the people I mean. Those couples you only see at Christmas whose names you can't remember and who don't seem to even know who you are. They're names are usually something like "Janet and Ted." And they give you a purple sweater or a DVD of "PBS Masterpiece Theatre," and you have to awkwardly hug them and you hate it bacause they smell like moth balls. Die, Janet and Ted.


Highbrow Answers: Handel's Messiah
You know you're a badass when Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn cite you as an influence. That's like Ron Jeremy saying, "Yeah, I try to fuck like Jeff King does." Handel worked for the English Royal Crown, he spoke like nine languages, and he composed 42 operas. FORTY-TWO. I can't even watch 42 minutes of a movie without getting distracted or needing to pee.

The Messiah is epic. Can you really argue with the Hallelujah Chorus? That shit is amazing. The Messiah is also the most famous instance of Handel's "Word-Painting." That's a technique whereby the melody of a song matches the words. As in, the word "high" would be sung on a high note, or "Valley" would be a string of notes that form a valley shape on the page. BAD. ASS. He's basically doing three types of art in one. You can't even walk and chew gum at the same time.