If you could be ANYONE for HALLOWEEN

JAN BROGAN: Time Magazine did a funny piece on the most popular Topical Halloween costumes for 2012, which included suggestions with tongue-in-cheek requirements to pull off the costumes.

Charlie Sheen and the Goddesses (cigarette perpetually hanging from your mouth, very little clothes -goddesses only - backwards Yankees cap - self-destructive tendencies. )

A pregnant Beyonce, unitard, babybump, black and white striped hat, Kate Middleton in wedding dress, Harold Cain with the pizza box, and Michele Bachman (you can resuse your 2008 suit from your Sarah Palin costume) and simply A Mormon (from the Broadway play and two of the three Republican candidates for president).

It got me to thinking. In real life, I'm not big on dressing up for Halloween, but in my dreams, if I didn't have to actually worry about procuring and/or paying for the costume, who would I want to be?

If I didn't have to worry about it being age-appropriate, I'd go with Lady Gaga, just because she has the most outlandish outfits. But since I DO have to worry about being age appropropriate, I think I'll go with Anne Boleyn. For one thing, I've always wanted to wear one of those velvet dresses with the bodices, for another, my husband could

go as Henry VIII OR the executioner with the fancy ax from France.

Okay Reds: If cost and the ability to actually put the outfit together were not an issue: WHO WOULD YOU BE FOR HALLOWEEN, and why?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: We're not doing anything wildly creative this year. I'm in charge of costumes and Bruce is a good sport so in the recent past he's been Mickey Mouse, Fred Flintstone, Diego Rivera and Amelia Earhart's publisher husband whose name I never remember. This year he is Rick Grimes, the survivor cop from The Walking Dead and I will either be a zombie or Rick's wife - depending on how thin I feel that day.

If we were going high concept we'd go as Steve Jobs and an apple.

JAN: I can t BELIEVE TIME MAGAZINE didn't think of that. They should make you EDITOR.

HALLIE EPHRON: This is hard. The bride of Frankenstein would be fun. Or Neytiri from Avatar. If I get her body, too, then I'll go as Katy Perry (Is there enough money in the world to make that happen??)

JAN: Katy Perry, who looks remarkably like Boop, don't you think? All you need is the big round eyes....

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: OOh. Jonathan and I went as the Arks one year, Joan and Noah. The next year, I ran out of ideas, so I stayed in my aluminum foil chain mail, but changed my fleur de lys to an Arkansas flag, put on a cowboy hat, and went as Joan of Arkansas. Jonathan was Noah of Arkansas, which makes no sense at all, but it was pretty funny.

I'd LOVE us to be Nick and Nora Charles. I'd have to crimp my hair, and get an Asta, but the dress could be great. And Jonathan would be very comfortable with a martini.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, when you and Jonathan attended the Red and Black Ball at last year's Crime Bake, you absolutely looked like Nick and Nora - if they had been turned into vampires.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Agatha Christie. Frumpy would pose no problem. But I'd steal Nick and Nora Charles from Hank, except Rick would never dress up for Halloween. I, however, would look with a martini in my hand. Sans olive.

JAN: Yeah, I liking the Nick and Nora thing, too. She had fabulous satin dresses. And Debs, now I want a martini in my hand, too. (But I don't think Anne Boleyn drank them.)

RHYS BOWEN: I'd like Kate Middleton's wedding dress if I could lose six dress sizes overnight! Since I didn't grow up with Halloween I missed out on being princess, fairy etc. I was a mermaid one year--hard to walk. One year when John had a black beard we went as the devil and a fallen angel (black angel costume) and we got lost on the way to the party. John wound down the window to ask directions from a group of teenagers. He was in tuxedo but had upswept eyebrows and red horns growing out of his hair. One kid started to give directions then noticed. "You've got horns," he said in a shaky voice. "I am the devil," John replied in scary English voice as we drove away.

JULIA: And that kid spent the next year in therapy. I bet to this day, he can't watch any programming originating from the UK. Which (note this suave redirection to the topic) is where I'd get my dream costume from. If I could get my Halloween wish, the producers of DOWNTON ABBEY would open their costume room for me and let me run amok. I adore that late-Edwardian look - high necklines, sweeping bodices, all those exquisite dressmaker details. When I was younger, I actually went once as a Gibson Girl. Now that I'm silver-haired and, shall we say, more comfortably padded, I think I'd make a very imposing Dowager.

Or we could move it back a couple of decades: I could be the widowed Queen Victoria, and Ross could be my Highland "servant," John Brown.

JAN: Some interesting choices here - and we won't get all analytical about what they might mean -- so come on, tell us. WHO WOULD YOU BE?