SamuraiFrog did this, and thus, so must I.
1. What is the worst treat to get when trick-or-treating?
Milk-Duds. God, those things are horrible. Just awful. They’re supposed to be chocolatey-caramelly goodness, but they’re really rock-hard balls of chewy crap. I hate them.
Weirdly, though, after first grade, I never trick-or-treated again. It had to do with our moves in my childhood. In second grade, we lived in West Virginia, and as I recall, the town there didn’t allow trick-or-treating. (I may be misremembering, to be honest.) Third and fourth grade were spent in Hillsboro, OR, where there was trick-or-treating, but I decided I liked handing out the candy more. After that, we moved to Allegany, NY. But we lived out from the village center a ways, where we weren’t really in a “neighborhood”, per se; we were about a quarter mile from the next house. So the next time I went trick-or-treating? When I chaperoned The Daughter on her first trick-or-treating excursion, back in 2001.
2. What character from any horror film would you most like to play?
I’m probably best suited to be the guy who lives on the grounds of the haunted mansion and creeps everybody out, always saying creepy things to the kids, before they discover the true horror and then prove myself to be a hero before dying horribly. If I get to do the part in overalls, so much the better.
3. Would you rather be a zombie, alien, or psycho? (why)
A psycho alien. (I’ll admit, I’m not sure why zombies are so pop-culturally cool right now.)
4. How many Halloween, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street movies combined do you have on dvd?
Zero. I actually hate those kinds of movies. I watched one once, in a hotel my family stayed in. My parents went down to the hotel bar for a drink, and I found one of the Friday the 13th‘s on HBO. It was laughably stupid and bad and confirmed my at-the-time negative opinion of horror as an entire genre.
5. What is the scariest movie you have ever seen?
Either The Exorcist or The Silence of the Lambs, both of which I consider brilliant.
6. Lamest costume you have worn on Halloween?
I don’t do costuming much. In fact, the last one I wore for Halloween was when I went on my afore-mentioned last trick-or-treating excursion as a kid. That costume was a Captain Marvel costume that my mother made, because I loved SHAZAM!. And that costume was f***ing AWESOME.
7. Favorite Halloween treat?
Mini candy bars. I also like Smarties, and the fruit-flavored Tootsie Roll things, which I like a lot more than Starbursts.
8. Friendly-faced jack o’lantern or scary one?
Either-or. I just look for creativity.
9. Have you ever had nightmares about a scary movie character chasing you?
I don’t think so. One thing I remember — not Halloween-related, actually — was going to visit my maternal grandmother. She lived with my uncle in Pittsburgh, in a two-story house with a basement that was also the garage (owing to Pittsburgh’s hilly locale). My uncle’s automatic garage door opener sent a horrible noise through the house that scared the living shit out of me when I was young.
10. Best thing about Halloween?
It’s really the one holiday left that’s all about fun, even in the scary sense, and that hasn’t been shot through with a whole bunch of sanctimonious bullshit. What harms Halloween (and the entirety of harvest season in general) is not anything to do with Halloween, but actually the retail world’s insistence that on October 10, it’s time to say “Screw Halloween” and put out the Christmas stuff.
11. Strangest Halloween custom you’ve heard of?
None, really. Can’t think of any.
12. Person in your family who most likes Halloween (not counting yourself)?
My wife and The Daughter. (Who was actually insisting, three weeks ago, that she was too old for trick-or-treating. She’s 11, you see, and too old for such nonsense. No amount of me pointing out that we always see kids way older than 11 out there getting candy was budging her from her position. Learning that her friends in school are still trick-or-treating, though? That did the trick. Huzzah!!!)
13. Are you superstitious? If so, name at least one superstition of yours.
No, I’m not.
How about you all?
I actually like Milk Duds, but not all the time. For some reason I think of them as "movie candy". I don't buy candy at the movies anymore because it's so darned expensive but when I was a kid I almost always got Milk Duds. But that was the only time I ever ate them – at the movies. Weird, huh?