Happy Valowe'en

I found these Hallmark Valentine's Day cards in a drawer full of junk the other day and immediately thought about what a cool Hallowe'en post they would make. Then I almost immediately thought that Valentine's Day cards, even ones featuring the walking undead, are probably better suited as a Valentine's Day post. Then a few seconds past immediately I thought about the chances that I might fall under a train between now and February and thus deprive the world of these two scans. I couldn't let that happen. I also couldn't waste a perfectly good Valentine's post either, especially since that holiday is going to be a lot harder to blog about than Hallowe'en. I'd like to get at least a week's worth of posts out of that particular holiday and to tell you the truth, I just don't have the material to get it done.

So I've had a cool idea that will not only get me two post off of one subject but may also mean the end of all life as we know it. See I'm posting these cards today and then when February rolls around I'll re-post this exact same entry with just a few cosmetic changes. Then I'll add a link in that post that sends people back to this post where I will have added a link that sends them right back to the February post which has a link that sends them back to this post... Moebius Loop! I'm not sure what will come of this exactly, but if enough people jump on this direct link merry-go-round at the same time then the Internet will probably collapse in on itself taking the rest of the universe along with it. And that could probably be interesting.

The Four Horsemen Of Hallowe'en

Being as how I am of the generation for which the television was babysitter, friend and teacher it's no surprise that every holiday's traditions include watching certain movies, tv shows or specials at least once in the season. For me there are four cinematic harbingers of Hallowe'en that I absolutely must watch before Oct. 31 or the holiday may as well be called off. First is the movie Halloween (and I capitulated and left out the apostrophe just because it's not technically part of the movie's title, but I'm adding it in this aside just for the heck of it. Wait for it... ' ) the very first slasher movie I ever saw. A hallmark moment in any young man's life. I watched it on Hallowe'en night the first year that I thought I was too old to go trick or treating. I watched it in secret in my parent's bedroom while my mom took my brother on the rounds and my father was busy at the front door. It was on broadcast television and edited to pieces, but it still traumatized me completely. I loved it!

It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is the second of the Hallowe'en must-sees and is kind of a no-brainer. If you haven't seen this at least once in your lifetime then you're gonna go to Hell when you die! That's not my idea, it's God's! He's a big "Peanuts" fan.

I first saw the Disney version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in school of all places and it's still the only useful thing that the educational system ever did for me. I laughed so hard I nearly wet myself and immediately had to go and read the book that the cartoon was based on. While I discovered that the book wasn't as Tom & Jerry slapsticky as the cartoon it still became a fav read. Not only do I have to watch the Disney version of the story every year, but I will also watch any other version of it that shows up on television, no matter how crap it may be. The Headless Horseman is just a perfect mood setter for the holiday.

The last of the four is another Disney 'toon, the classic Donald Duck short Trick Or Treat which, through the magic of YouTube and the generosity of the person who originally took the time to upload it, I present for you now. With what appear to be Swedish subtitles thrown in at no extra cost-

Mathcrow

My name is scribbled across the back of this cut & paste scarecrow, but I have no recollection of where or when I might have made this. If you click for the bigger pic you'll notice that the scarecrow is covered in simple addition and subtraction problems so I'm assuming it was a school project of some sort since math (or as it is known in Spanish, "La Lengua Del Diablo") is not a thing that I would fool around with just for kicks. Then again, none of the math problems have been solved so maybe I did just cobble this together in my spare time. Even as a kid I think that I would have been able to forgive a cool pumpkin-headed scarecrow for trying to teach me to arithmetate.

Five Things That Are Not True About Bats...

Two of those were just clever forgaries, bet you can't guess which ones!

The Naming Of Pumpkins: An Introduction

Out of all of the junk that I accumulate in a week's time most of it falls into the category of impulse purchases... meaning it was either discounted 60% or more off it's original cost or it was thrifted for less than five bucks. I'll buy anything priced according to either of those two criteria. There are actually only a few items that I consider myself a collector of... meaning that I actually enter a store or stop for a garage sale or browse eBay with the intent of purchasing an example of that item. One thing I collect are plastic Hallowe'en jack-o'-lantern buckets, i.e. those things for which this blog was named. This is not a nostalgia thing as I always trick or treated with a sack not a bucket, buckets are far too small for any kind of serious trick or treating. The kids with the buckets were the kids who had to run home after every sixth house and ended up missing house number seven. House number seven is always the house that gives out the full-sized Kit Kats.

As part of the whole big Hallowe'en thing going on this month I figured I'd introduce you to a few of the more interesting pumpkins in my collection. I'll be posting them sporadically throughout the month, two or three at a time. And yes I have named them all, it's a thing I do...

Today's post spotlights the basic no-frills version of the plastic pumpkin pail and it's descendants-

This first pumpkin pail is the pail against which all other pails are measured. He is the classic pail, the prototype pail, the benchmark pail if you will. Triangle eyes, triangle nose, jolly four-toothed smile. Every lazy cartoonist who has ever had to draw a jack-o'-lantern has drawn that exact same face. I should like to think that it comes as no surprise to you that I have named this fellow 'Jack.'

This jack-o'-lantern is actually a jill-o'-lantern. That's right, it's a girl. Please don't ask me how you go about sexing a plastic pumpkin-shaped bucket, that's something your parents should have explained to you years ago. You'll notice that the face on this pail is almost identical to the first one, just fleshed out a little. Same eyes, same nose, same mouth. On this pumpkin though, the eyes are not only topped with eyebrows, but they've got pupils as well. The mouth is even jollier, highlighted by dimples and chubby cheeks and the bottom teeth are slightly off center, which adds another small touch of character to this inviting face. Since this plastic pumpkin is basically a livelier version of the first plastic pumpkin, I'm calling her 'Jo' after Jocasta, the statue that was given life. I'm over thinking these things.


For years scientists and archaeolo-gist have been trying to discover the missing link that would tie the two pumpkins above together and I'm happy to announce that I've found that link at the bottom of a bin full of Bedazzled handbags and discarded mix tapes from the late '80's in a Salvation Army thrift store somewhere near Greensboro, N.C. That's him over there. You'll notice that his features retain the best bits from the original pumpkin while displaying a much more rudimentary version of the second's improvements. The dimples aren't dimply enough, the pupils are a bit square-ish and the eyebrows just aren't quite there yet, but it's definitely starting to come together. His name, and I know you all saw this one coming, is 'Link.'

That's it for the first batch. Next time around we'll focus on some size-ish anomalies in the world of the plastic pumpkin.

Knit Of The Living Dead

My grandmother use to be a crazy crocheting machine and over the years she made many, many cool things for her grandchildren & great-grandchildren including giant (nearly three feet tall) floppy frog people with long Doctor Who-ish scarves, spaceships full of tiny green finger puppet aliens and animal hand puppets with big red tongues you could wiggle with finger power. She also crocheted a Christmas stocking for me, my brother, our cousins and all their kids which we all still use and made each of her grandchildren a huge afghan when they graduated high school. She gave me tons of neat things which I still have sitting around the house... however, she never made me a blood-covered zombie. Why, I'll never know. If I knew how to crochet then the first thing popping out of my needles would be a horde of the living dead.

If you do knit and are looking for some awesome Hallowe'en ideas then follow this link for a look at "Yarn of the Dead." (Runner-up for this post's title. Couldn't waste a perfectly good pun now could I?) If you don't knit then just print out some of those pictures and give them to your grandma along with a couple of skeins of yarn in "Rotting Flesh Blue."

Hallowe'en Highlights

The Truth About Tricks & Treats

A little story about the birth of this blog... when I first started up this blog it was mostly due to intense peer pressure pressed by peers who were unrepentant blog-whores of the kind that live their lives entirely for the moment when they can set themselves down in front of their computers and write about all of the things that they had done that day just in order to be doing things that they could later blog about. I hope to God that you understood that last sentence 'cause I am in no way going to go back and try to edit it into any sort of clarity. Anyway, you know the type, you've seen their blogs... "Today I saw 'Snakes On A Plane.' It was alright I guess, but I didn't understand what all those snakes were doing on that plane.", "Today, I had to take my mini van into the shop to find out what that shuddering in the steering wheel was. Turned out that there was a dead hobo wedged up in the front left wheel well.". "Today I ran into Cindy Jo at the Tastee-Freez. Forgot to tell her about the VD." Blah, blah, blah...

So I avoided the realms of blogdom, like most sane people do, thinking them nothing but a hostile desert landscape full of creatures with wheels where their hands and feet ought to be and self-absorbed people who seemed to think that they were the only ones to ever get a root canal or try Turkey-flavored Jones soda... but then I started Googling...

Turns out that there was a whole world out there full of people who blogged about interesting things in interesting ways all the while forming complete sentences and managing to type every single consonant and vowel in a word while keeping their 'rofl!!!' and "; p's" to a bare minimum. If you're interested in who some of these people might be then check out all those links over there on the right of the screen to give you an idea of some of my faves.

So anyway, taking a cue from these folks I decided to blog a blog that blogged about things that I thought were interesting or just stupidly funny and hope one or two other people might feel the same way. I called it 'Plastic Pumpkins,' fiddled around 'til I found a color scheme that I liked and thought up all sorts of cute little thematically-linked things to title the archive pages and links list. Then I showed it to all of my friends who, upon skimming over the first few posts, almost collectively said-

"Eh, it's cute, but it's not very Hallowe'en-y is it?"

To which I replied- "Why the Hell would it be Hallowee'en-y?"

To which they answered- "Well... it's all Hallowe'en themed isn't it? Pumpkins and ghosts and black and purple and everything, right?"

To which I responded- "You pathetic idiots!" and then spat in their faces.

Having been friendless and alone now for the last few months I've had a lot of free time to think about this and I've come to the conclusion that they may have been right. I can see why a person might think that this was a Hallowe'en-type blog. But the truth of the matter is... it ain't themed to Hallowe'en, it's themed to trick or treating.

Yeah, it's a fine line...

Now, I love, love, love Hallowe'en like it was the first gym teacher I ever saw naked in the showers, but the whole idea of the blog was a sort of 'life as a 24/7 round of trick or treating' metaphor kind of a thing. In my materialistic and tchatchke-infatuated brain I go through life seeing how much loot I can stuff in a pillow case in one day's time before taking it home to dump on the bed and sort into piles of 'cool enough to post' and 'not cool enough to post.' Life as trick or treating... get it?

I can see how I could have been more clear about that...

So what's the point of all the above? Absolutely nothing other then as a prelude to tell all those people who were upset about the lack of Hallowe'en-y-ish-ness around this blog to cheer up, because October is all about Hallowe'en! Like a lot of other better blogs out there I will be making sure that every post made during the 10th month of the year will be Hallowe'en related, even if only tangentially. I also promise to always use the archaic and pompous "Hallowe'en' spelling of the holiday's name, because I think that the day is cool enough to warrant a random comma or two.

Now several blogs will be doing a daily countdown to Hallowe'en kind of a thing which I will not be doing because that's just 42 different shades of crazy! I'm not going to be posting any more than usual... please don't cry... it's just that any post made during the month will be spiced with holiday goodness! If you do want a daily dose of Hallowe'en blogginess then you should definitely check out two of my year 'round favs- Secret Fun Blog and Neato Coolville who will both be doing the daily thing. You should also check out Old Haunts which hasn't actually updated since the end of March, but has enough Hallowe'en stuff already posted to keep you busy for awhile. Then if you're in the mood for some spooky Hallowe'en-type fonts go check out Fontenstein a site I've been looking for an excuse to mention for quite some time now.

Hope you come back for more of "A Very Plastic Pumpkins Hallowe'en!"

P.S. Just in case you thought I was ragging a little hard on those 'day-in-a-life' blogging types, then please go check out my Yahoo 360 profile where I do all of the boring things that I mentioned above and then some! rofl : P