Or maybe go as Phil Jackson?

Dear Hipster:

This was supposed to be the year for Halloween. Not only did the actual holiday fall on a Saturday, it was a full moon to boot! I mean, could you ask for a better excuse to put on the sweetest, most ironic costume you could come up with and hit the bar with all the other holiday miscreants? And now it’s all wasted, another cultural casualty of the pandemic. Is there any point to even getting dressed up this year?

— Chris

Yeah, this year has not thus far been too funny. Prior to mid-March, the news was almost mind numbingly boring. Renee Zellweger won an Oscar for being Judy Garland in a movie I didn’t see... whoop de doo. Pete Buttigieg was a thing... la dee da. Justin Bieber had lyme disease... yawn. And if it wasn’t boring, it still wasn’t funny. I mean, the entire continent of Australia basically burned to a cinder, which is horrible and totally not capable of ironic costume reinterpretation. Then, you get to March, and, well, you know the rest.

But, when it comes to Halloween, we never say die. There is basically one day every year where grownups get to act like little kids, putting on funny costumes and indulging in some light-duty “trick or treat” (by which I definitely mean substance abuse). We do not lightly relinquish our day of irresponsible juvenalia. I call on you, hipster comrades, to find the twisted humor in this world and take back Halloween. I don’t care if you put on costumes and sit around your own houses drinking shots of butterscotch schnapps and amaretto (candy corn!!) out of a hollowed out mini-pumpkin—you owe it to yourselves and the rest of us to celebrate Halloween with all the cheek you can muster.

Even with this extremely not funny year mostly behind us, there remains some fertile ground in the otherwise bleak landscape of 2020’s pop culture.

Eddie Van Halen

Halloween is the most metal of all the holidays. If there’s any doubt about that fact, let’s not ignore how Glenn Danzig arguably named a band “Samhain” (after the ancient Celtic progenitor to Halloween) because the Misfits weren’t metal enough. Sure, maybe Van Halen isn’t nearly as metal as, say, Iron Maiden, but it’s close enough for rock n’ roll. If you want to pay tribute to this all-time great, whom we lost this year after a long battle with cancer, all you really need is a fabulous wig with epic bangs and a prop Frankenstein guitar. The rest is up to you.

Harvey Weinstein With His Walker

Remember back when Harvey Weinstein’s prop walker generated New York Times think-pieces? Ah, those were the days. Pay tribute to our innocence by donning an ill-fitting suit you don’t know how to button properly and pushing around a walker you’re clearly not using to support any of your body weight whatsoever.

Michael Jordan & Scottie Pippen

You know you watched The Last Dance during your lockdown. Pay tribute to the 1990s sports duo who got you through quarantine and helped you remember how much you wanted to “be like Mike” when you were seven years old. Do me a favor, though, and hold off on that appallingly ill-conceived black body paint, okay? I promise you a Number 23 jersey is more than adequate to get your message across.

Most Emphatically Not a Coronavirus

Seriously. Just don’t, okay? We’re all sick of it.