[Darth Vader approaches stormtroopers in the treacherous hive of scum and villainy known as Los Angeles. Actually, it's impersonator Chris Mitchell, protesting a crackdown on costumed characters. But wouldn't it be cool if it were actually Vader? Pic via Getty.]

The age of Gaga ubiquity is upon us. Official, licensed Lady Gaga costumes have arrived at Halloween stores, and include used soda can hair rollers and lots of fishnet. Prediction: Gaga prisoners outsell sexy prisoners this years.

It should be very easy to dress as your favorite Jersey Shore character. Just forget any pretensions to class, style or dignity and get yourself to edhardyshop.com. But if you're really lazy, go ahead and buy these official costumes.

We hug them, we kiss them, we put our children in their arms. Who are the strange people in the furry costumes at Disney World, and are they pervs? After Donald Duck grabbed her boob, a 27-year-old is suing Disney.

It was a crime of infinite ridiculousness: Dressed in a sumo wrestling suit, Sandra Talbot assaulted her ex-girlfriend with her own girth and a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, vengeance for flirting with a man dressed as giant Snickers bar.

[Good thing the World Cup is a soccer competition, and not a "dress like a goddamn maniac" competition, because otherwise, the Japanese would already have won and we'd all have to go home. Pic via Getty]

[Anthony Le, dressed as War Machine, rides an escalator outside E3, the video game industry's biggest trade show. He didn't have a pass, but drove 20 hours to be there "in the spirit of video games." Pic via AP.]

No need to worry about dressing up for Halloween and running the risk that your dog's costume will clash with your own. You can coordinate! Now when you shed your Upper East Side-living, lawyerly image and put on that same slutty French maid costume you always wear one night a year, you can make sure your dog looks just as slutty. Awesome! Between you, your dog, and your investment banker boyfriend wearing the very popular Bernie Madoff mask, you'll be the hit of the party, no doubt. [Buzzfeed]

Thriller: 15,000 Bernie Madoff masks have gone out for sale this Halloween.

Are Halloween costume makers getting more and more inappropriate by the year, or are young girls actually getting sluttier? Either way, we're not pleased about it. [Whole gallery of disturbing little girl costumes at Blogue]

Through the course of the day, you and the rest of the world will start surfing through Flickr and Facebook galleries to see what the rest of the country dressed up as last night. But no costume will be so frightening as what our favorite celebrity couple Seal and Heidi Klum put together. I regret that these two exhibited this travesty in front of their children. Get ready to have the same image in your inner eye for the next decade.Heidi's well known for her Halloween costumes, and her constantly sexual relationship with pop singer Seal. In the past she's dressed up as a variety of things, but this year, she really took it up a notch. These are from her Halloween party at 1-OAK in New York:

If you're dressing up as Sarah Palin for Halloween and you'd like to compare your totally uninspired Halloween outfit to the 46,273 other New Yorkers who are dressing up as the vice presidential candidate, you're in luck! Sarah Palin lookalikes are gathering in Union Square tonight—supposedly!—for a "Sarah Palin Experiment and Pageant"

Tomorrow is Halloween! It's a sacred holiday for children, what with the heaping mounds (if you do not feel like a nut) of candy and the fun, scaaarryyy costumes. The costume aspect also makes it something of an important day for adults because, to paraphrase the Dead Kennedys, you get a night of being someone else before you step back into your mold the next day. But really, you're always you and one can tell a lot about a person from their choice of Halloween attire. Really, there are five types of costumes (and only five types of people!), and we'll dissect them—and what they say about their wearer—after the jump.

So we all know that this Halloween there will be a million people dressed as Sarah Palin. These people are terrible and should be shunned. But some people will be a little more creative. Like maybe there will be some Levi Johnstons. Or Barney Frank! A "sad banker" or whatever is a bit generic, but why not Neel Kashkari? Take speed and go as Jim Cramer! Go as Nancy Pfotenhauer and declare your party to be outside of Real America. Or go as "the 'old' John McCain" and be really super honorable as you call your wife a cunt and befriend Charles Keating. We invite you to suggest, in the comments, your own news-based Halloween costumes that won't be terribly overplayed. We'll round 'em up and help you figure out how to put them together tomorrow.

Now that the media at large has had time to reflect upon the important national matter that was Starbucks' closing for three hours for "training," it's time to take a look at the lessons learned. The real purpose of the event: A PR stunt. The media: Played like a violin. Complicit: Us. Did CEO Howard Schultz succeed in finding the company's "soul?" Of course not! It was never there to begin with. And the real benefit for the employees: The chance to get drunk and dress up in costumes. As this final, poignant insider email to us attests:

"In this photo provided by Harrah's Casino, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton attends Halloween party at the Pool at Harrah's Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007. (AP Photo/Harrah's/Dima Gavrysh/Handout)"

Very fast bicyclist Lance Armstrong and aging sk8er boi Tony Hawk went to Allison Sarofim's insane Caligulan Halloween party without costumes because they're soooo cool. [Park Avenue Peerage]

· James Lipton: actor, writer, academic, talk show host, raconteur, French pimp. Excuse us: American pimp living in France. Truly, there is nothing this man cannot do. [NBC.com]
· If this is how the reunited Van Halen is going to sound, we may not bankrupt ourselves buying scalped tickets to the Staples Center show after all.
· The Birds star Tippi Hedren decries Hollywood's inability to generate new ideas.
· There are dozens of dogs in this insane Halloween slideshow, yet not a single one is wearing a Lindsay Lohan costume. Amateurs, the lot of them!
· Tripadvisor can help you plan your stay at the number one beet-related agrotourism destination in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

We happen to be mildly terrified of people in German-inspired costumes. (We imagine our tolerance for such things was snipped off, along with some other bits, eight days after we were born.) At the Times business section, however, one hopes this particularly neurosis is in short supply. The Bizday administrator sent this reminder (or, warning) this afternoon: