Orange County Artists Face Monsters All Year Long : Look around Orange County and you’ll quickly see that Halloween is busting out all over.

At the top of the list is Knott’s “Scary Farm’s” annual Halloween Haunt, a three-weekend affair expected to draw maybe half a million customers to Buena Park, where they’ll pay $25 a head to be horrified by assorted witches, monsters and cadavers in various stages of decay. (Rather a waste of money, I’d say, as the same thrill is available free with admission to the congressional public balcony.)

That’s only the tip of the Tootsie Pop. Anaheim is having a Halloween Parade, Placentia is hosting a Halloween art contest and costume parade, Tustin is holding a Halloween carnival, the Discovery Museum of Orange County will re-create a Victorian Halloween . . . even the Santa Ana Zoo is getting in on the antics with an animal show and trick-or-treat party.

But I have a feeling that people in the Orange County arts community may be inclined to snap off the porch light, flip on the TV and say “bah, humbug” to Halloween this year.

What’s the point of dressing up like a monster for a night when local government has been treating you like Frankenstein’s wayward creature all year long?

It seems that the specter of taxpayer support of the arts has mysteriously transformed artists, who once helped enlighten our lives with their insights, into creepy members of the living dead.

Officials at South Coast Repertory and the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse probably would get a more hospitable reaction from their City Council if they made their grant requests while dressed in flowing black satin capes, rivulets of blood trickling from the corners of their mouths.

Would anyone be surprised to see Costa Mesa Councilwoman Sandra L. Genis (the one who handed out Hostess Twinkies as part of her “Let Them Eat Cake” award when another councilman requested $20,000 in arts money) cast her “no” vote on future arts grants by driving a wooden stake through the request forms?

While the Grove Shakespeare Festival has been given an infusion of new life with a $10,000 check from one anonymous arts angel, I can picture Garden Grove City Councilman Raymond T. Littrell stitching a new necklace of garlic cloves to keep off those artsy werewolves at bay.

And what, pray, will crusaders who oppose government funding of the arts have to say about the city-run Fullerton Museum Center’s use of tax dollars tonight, to help pay for back-to-back screenings of such blatantly sacrilegious films as “Dracula,” “The Wolf Man” and “Frankenstein”?

The way these officials act when musicians, actors and artists want a share of their tax tithes to be used for something besides parking meters and shopping malls, you’d think you couldn’t hurt them more by chomping into their jugulars.

Use a paint brush? Burn at the stake.

But rather than give up on this spookiest of all holidays, arts folks ought to study it more closely and tap the potential benefit it holds.

First, you need to remember that Halloween is a holiday that adults largely have purloined from the kiddies. While youngsters’ trick-or-treat routes rarely extend these days beyond the last door at the end of the hallway, the big kids are throwing ever-more costly parties.

Meanwhile, Halloween is the one time when it’s acceptable-- expected, even--to go around demanding something for nothing from your neighbors. The rest of the year, strangers who show up asking for handouts are shooed away, or simply have their bags of goodies confiscated by the authorities.

Struggling artists should exploit this philosophical loophole by ringing doorbells in our ritzier neighborhood and politely requesting greenbacks instead of Cracker Jack.

A few guidelines, though: Pick a costume that doesn’t appeal predominantly to the prurient interest, having no redeeming social, scientific or artistic value.

This is to say, don’t dress up as a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph, or as a winged Icarus (unless you include at least one airplane somewhere on your person). And whatever you do, don’t paint your face in two different colors and go out as a biracial Romeo or Juliet if you want to get anywhere in this county.

That doesn’t mean there’s no room for creativity. My costume this year is a white bedsheet with two eyeholes and the words “This Is Not an Artist” written across the chest.

It might be better still just to don a beard, grab a surfboard and go door-to-door as Orange County Republican Congressman Dana R. Rohrabacher saying, “Trick or treat--Sponsorship, Not Censorship!”

Now there’s a scary way to spend an evening.