Halloween falls on Monday this year, which means you've only got a few more days to figure out what costume to wear if you're so inclined. Here at Washington City Paper, we're keenly aware of the holiday's approach—mostly because old Amanda Hess blog posts suddenly start getting lots of online traffic. But we're also under intense pressure, as everyone is in the journalism business, to make sure our coverage is hyperlocal.

So D.C., here are our suggestions for how to dress up in a way that would let you go straight from an Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting to a Halloween party. Appropriate attire for this holiday basically falls into one of two basic genres: zombie, or sexy. With that in mind, these are the top five 2011 Washington City Paper D.C. Halloween Costumes:

1. Zombie Sulaimon Brown: Sure, you might get a laugh or two by dressing up as everyone's favorite mayoral candidate-turned-D.C. bureaucrat-turned federal witness. But unless you're trick-or-treating at former Vince Gray advisor Lorraine Green's house, chances are you won't scare anyone. Unless you become a zombie—because they're always scary.
2. Sexy Reusable Bag: Paying five cents into the District's coffers to get a plastic bag to carry home your candy isn't remotely sexy. You know what is sexy? Keeping the Anacostia River clean! Dress up this weekend by wearing one of those Whole Foods bags—and nothing else.
3. Zombie Streetcar: Because it may as well already be dead.
4. Sexy Tommy Wells: To get the smart growth set breathing hard this weekend, forget bobbing for apples; if the fruit isn't from a local orchard, chances are they won't want to play, anyway. Instead, throw on some Playboy Bunny ears, start talking about "livable, walkable" streets, and get all your colleagues to stand by and do nothing as you get crushed in a hardball power play!
5. Sexy NIMBY Zombie: The living keep trying to open up bars, restaurants, and shops in your neighborhood. Fortunately, you're in D.C., where the undead can veto that sort of thing simply by showing up at a meeting and growling loudly. Wave a copy of the latest D.C. Register, put on some lingerie, and scare that project into someone else's back yard.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery/Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

When I'm feeling especially prayerful, I settle onto my futon with a big bowl of Grape Nuts and watch movies about zombies. Last night I watched H.P. Lovecraft's Re-Animator. Below, in no particular order, are my top five reasons why this is a great zombie movie:

5.) Peter Kent: Kent is the first character to be brought back to life by Herbert West, MFS (mad-fucking-scientist). He throws a couple of characters around, grunts and groans, busts down a steel door, and then takes a skull saw to the thorax–all the way through. Epic.

4.) The Green Goo: These things don't come back to pseudo-consciousness all on their own (a la 28 Days Later: "No deus ex machina here folks, move along now, nothing to see."), West has to bring these freaks back to life...by beating "brain death!" Whenever you see West break out the DayGlo syringe, grab your blanky: shit's about to get heavy.

3.) Barbara Crampton: Crampton plays Megan Halsey, the daughter of Medical dean Alan Halsey (played by a stuffed and silvered Robert Sampson). Her character is a little too dopey for a good heroine, but she redeems herself by getting naked. Twice. (Email me for the in and out times: mriggs@washcp.com.) Pointless nudity is horror-flick boiler plate, but in both scenes, Crampton's nudity is a function of the plot (seriously).

2.) Absurdism: A re-animated house cat nearly kills West, Peter Kent shakes a man to death, Dr. Carl Hill manages to sneak into a morgue with his head in a bowling-ball bag and an instructional plastic skull atop his shoulders, and then orchestrates a zombie orgie. Holy. Shit. For every cringe-inducing moment during which a prosthetic eye pops like a golf-ball sized pimple, there are five minutes of footage so bizarre and so ridiculous that you can't help but cheer.

1.) Herbert West: If my parents had been the type to let me watch scary movies when I was young, I would've had on my wall a poster of Herbert West (played by Jeffrey Combs). He stands short at 5'3". He wears huge wire-frame glasses. He has a mustache that trembles when he's on the verge of "discovery." In short, he's the nerd hero; Martin Linux King; a lone 1 in a field of 0s. And he saves the fucking day.

(And if you don't feel like watching a flick at home, check out City Paper's movie listings.)

Here's a little taste: