Your Guide to the Guides: Halloween

OK, so Halloween technically falls on a Monday this year, but we don't think that will stop most of us from taking the entire weekend to celebrate, right? If you're still trying to figure out your plans, we're giving you a guide to all the Halloween guides.

We have already featured a few Halloween events on our site. We talked about Halloween techno with the founder of HARD events Gary Richards, who will be hosting a haunted mansion party this weekend. We caught up with performance artist Christine Marie, who will be performing "The Fifty Foot Sword," a ghost story that will be brought to the stage at REDCAT. Local surfers are going to get costumed up before they ride the waves. There's plenty of Halloween fun to go around in this week's film calendar.

Citysearch has the low-down on all of the biggest events going on around the Southland: the Haunted Hay Ride Through Griffith Park, revelry at Universal Studios, Knott's Scary Farm, Hollywood Forever and the Queen Mary. West Hollywood has this big party in the streets, too, that you might have heard about. This guide will also hook you up with the biggest, best costume shops in town (outside of the studios', of course).

The Los Angeles Times has a comprehensive listing that includes all the big events plus events for kids, film geeks, history buffs and people who want to see live music. Some of the top picks from this list include "Halloween and Mourning Tours" at the Heritage Museum, a Hollywood Scavenger Hunt, a Howl'oween parade in Long Beach for the doggies and creepy music at the Greek paired with a reading of Edgar Allan Poe.

If you want to get all dressed up, but you have nowhere to go, Where LA can help you. You can check out KCRW's Masquerade or LACMA's Costume Ball (if you can get tickets).

Caroline on Crack knows that this holiday revolves around food and drinking as much as costumes. There are candy and wine pairing events, a rum bar that will be transformed into a Narnia wonderland and a ball that has its own candy bar (as well as a real bar).

Broke Girl's Guide has a full schedule of meals and Halloween-related events for you to check out if you're on a budget (and don't have a house party to go to). The highlights include a "Dark Carnival" at Villains Tavern and Pub Crawls in Hollywood and Santa Monica on Saturday.

The Rundown has a couple off-the-beaten path events like the Panorama of Horrors Spook Show at the awesome Velaslavasay Paronama and the event Lucha VaVoom, which is a mash-up of burlesque and wrestling (we think).

Film buffs will want to check out this guide from the Los Angeles Times' 24 Frames blog that will clue you in to what's playing this weekend, including classics like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (accompanied by the LA Phil) and a Vincent Price marathon at LACMA.

Fishbowl LA suggests you check out Halloween Highway 2, which may feature Margaret Cho, Andy Dick and blood wrestling (though not necessarily at the same time).

If you've got little ones or you feel like a child at heart, check out Curbed LA's survey on the best places to trick-or-treat around the county. Windsor Square/Larchmont Village, Manhattan Beach and South Pasadena took the top honors.

If you feel like getting hitched in Vegas on Halloween, this is the place to go.

If you need a techie fix for the holiday, check out Mashable's list of top apps for Halloween, which are mostly free or cheap. One of them lets you watch scary b-movies and others will clue you in to haunted sites in your area. One of them includes costumes ideas, if you've gotten this far down and realized you have nothing to wear.

If you're partying hard, don't scare your friends (and strangers on the road) by driving. The police will be out in full force over the weekend. For all of you who go to Hollywood, just know that there will be sobriety checkpoints.