This year's Halloween costumes.

This year there was a decisive return to classic costumery. Aside from the large number of older kids who buy that "Scream" mask attached to a black hood -- which at this point is less creative that cutting two holes in a sheet and being a ghost -- almost no one wore a cheap packaged costume. Even the three kids who were video game characters (and had to explain them to me) had handmade costumes. Many kids thought up clever things. And I hate to tell you, my boomer friends, but "hippie" has become a stock Halloween character. I was glad to see that there were none of those older kids who come by late and seem to think "teenager in a down jacket" counts as a Halloween character. (It is scary enough to extort candy from me.) Only one kid came in a costume related to the election, and he was George Bush, but you can't tell whether that was a pro-Bush costume or not.

(Scroll down to the previous post for my live-blogging of Halloween.)