Visitors

I've lived in Hollywood for over 25 years now and one of the most amazing statistics over that period is the number of Halloween visitors I've received: zero. That owes partly to the fact that I live in a security building with very few young families (those who have kids old enough to trick-or-treat generally move them to the Valley or out of town). But even when I lived in a more vulnerable apartment house on Beachwood Drive, just yards away from an elementary school, never once has my doorbell signalled the demands of young costumed extortionists.

This anomaly contrasts sharply with the apparent emergence of Halloween as the second most important commercial holiday of the year, outpublicized only by its spiritual opposite, Christmas. When I was a kid Halloween was a quaint peculiarity, observed simply and traditionally, as my brother and friends would wander through the halls of our apartment building ringing doorbells and collecting Tootsie Roll pops and candy corn. The only element of fright was the anticipation of confronting the mean neighbor who would scowl through the unopened door. It was the urban version of the conventional Candy Quest as depicted in Americana movies such as "Meet Me in St. Louis" and "E.T." We weren't even aware of such hidden dangers--perhaps even urban legends--concerning razor blades in apples and Ex Lax substituted for Hershey bars.

But today Halloween is an excuse for a weekend of partying, a huge parade down Santa Monica Boulevard, de rigeur costumes in banks and school and other secular institutions, and the backdrop theme of every episodic television show. Even I was guilty of penning at least one Halloween episode of a sitcom, and I have a prop helmet left over from one of the costumes which I will occasionally don to give my neighbors a start (it always works). It has become more of an adult holiday than a child's, which is both a shame and somewhat forboding. I always thought of this day as a time to satirize our cultural superstitions, but in our modern society, which is ruled by the Supernaturalists in the Senate and the Red States, those superstitions seem to be gaining adherents. Certainly the emergence of all those TV programs concerning the occult is a by-product of our gullibility.

Perhaps we are simply catching up with the pagan rituals from which Halloween emerged. The Mexican Day of the Dead, which is actually tomorrow, is devoted to honoring our ancestors, which is never a terrible idea. And a day when everyone's imagination is challenged to create an alternate exterior at least provides mental stimulation and active participation, as opposed to sitting home and watching a marathon of "Medium" episodes on NBC (though one could do worse than watch that well-scripted procedural). But I never quite bought the moral underpinnings of trick-or-treating and of Mischief Night, both of which only function as safety valves to our gluttonous and perverse instincts.

Yesterday my doorbell rang and instead of little kids costumed as George Bush or Weapons of Mass Destruction (both very scary), it was my new Japanese neighbors from across the hall, who actually handed me a bag of Japanese goodies. Of course there is something sublime about the courtesy of Asian cultures that makes us look like the troglodytes that we are. But it made me think that a reverse Halloween would be a nice variation on the grubbiness that we celebrate institutionally. So I put on my Halloween helmet and went to my neighbors and gave them both a laugh and a bag of Nestles's Crunch juniors.

I still have a lot of candy left over for my phantom visitors in case they should materialize. And in case they don't, I will likely indulge in what has become my 25-year Halloween tradition, which is stuffing my face with Milky Ways for the entire month of November.