From the archives: 

Gawker posted this a year ago today, but it hasn’t lost its punch: “The Five Costumes You Meet at a Halloween Party.”  Aside from the oft-commented “Sexy Blanks” get-ups (sexy nurse, sexy schoolteacher, Sarah Palin), they include:

The ironic references: “Wouldn’t it be funny to be, like, Zack from Saved By the Bell? Or, um, what about that guy from Head of the Class? The allure of doing something kitschy and pop culture chic can be strong! Members of the opposite (or same) sex will laugh and smile at you and think you terribly clever and you’ll have a nice jumping off point for conversation (“Oh my god, remember that episode when…?”)”

And my favorite…

The good ones: “These are the ones that make you profoundly jealous because you never think of things that good and why can you ever think of things that good? My same friend who wore the Star Trek uniform in high school went as Someone Going Really Fast to a college Halloween party one year. Like her hair was sticking back and she put wire in her tie and staples in her pants and it was really, really cool. Other times people are just the right amount of scary—but they still look like people—and you quietly (or drunkenly and loudly) applaud them for their moxie and ingenuity and you look at your non-costume and think “What the hell is wrong with me?”

[Gawker: The Five Costumes You Meet at a Halloween Party]