ONCE-FRIGHTENING COSTUMES NO LONGER AS SCARY AS REAL LIFE.

Byline: KIMIT MUSTON

I don't know what to do. Halloween is almost here and I don't have a thing to wear.

I had planned since last summer to dress up as Ken Lay, the ex-presidential friend and ex-chairman of Enron who sold his morals for a couple of billion in stock options, but unfortunately Ken didn't appear before enough televised congressional hearings to be instantly recognizable to a Halloween party full of drunks - I mean, my close personal friends and neighbors.

And that left me scrambling for a new costume.

The requirements are simple. A successful Halloween costume must be instantly recognizable, the zipper has to stay shut, it has to be stain-resistant, not too dorky-looking, and be easy to get out of. Come to think of it, those are the same requirements for the Republican program on prescription drugs.

I thought about putting a paper bag over my head and going as one of Vice President Dick Cheney's secret energy advisers, but the first time you bob for apples that costume starts to come apart like a bad alibi.

I'm sure everybody who came to last year's party dressed as ``Where's Waldo?'' is going to show up this year dressed as ``Where's Osama?'' and, trust me, there are no smart bombs in that crowd.

Oh, and in case you hadn't gotten the word yet, the Saddam Hussein mask is so passe. Nobody will be wearing that one this year.

My only objection to the Robert Torricelli costume was that it didn't have anywhere to put your wallet so all night long you'd have to keep putting your hands into other people's pockets. And I didn't want to get halfway to the party and decide I needed to go home and change into somebody else.

Frankenstein, the Wolfman, Dracula, the IRS agent, they've all lost their ability to inspire horror. Well, maybe the IRS agent is still scary, but who wants to spend all night following a guy dressed like Martha Stewart?

Even the old medical standards don't seem very scary this year: the butcher doctor, the kill-crazed nurse, the myopic pharmacist, none is nearly as scary as the standard basic HMO.

And how the heck do you dress like an HMO? They're practically invisible. No matter what state you live in, they are always based in a different one. Your only contact with them is when you write them a check every month or they say ``no'' to your doctor when he asks them to pay for your treatment. Scary, yes, but how do you dress like that?

I was tempted to put on the Al Gore mask I had left over from 2000, but it smells a little of desperation. I've got a Hillary mask but it isn't quite big enough, yet.

But you know what's really weird? The worse the economy gets, the better my old Bill Clinton costume is starting to look. I'd wear it again if I could just get the zipper to stay shut.