Halloween Sunset

Well, that's another 31st of October passed. I'd hoped to get a lot more done for the Halloween Countdown but as I kept falling behind I sort of hoped visitors would look at my last years countdown or my Tumblr page. And I missed the coffin races this year. Last year the races gave me three or four good posts but it wasn't until the 30th this year so I regretfully gave it a miss. Well, I can only add this shot of the sunset tonight and my last minute gang of jacks. This might be the last year I'm giving out candy. There's just not that many trick-or-treaters around here to make a fuss. Next year I think I'll just catch some parties.

So with that, my thanks to all the visitors and posters, hope you had a Happy Halloween and have a good day after!

You're scaring me, Jack...

Finally carved my first jack of 2010. Brrrr... Scary.

Shock Doc

To give you a shot of Halloween Spirit!

And now a word from the Monster...

F'nstein

The Carving Conundrum

I carve elaborate jack-o-lanterns every year. I used to get tremendous joy out of it. I have a lifelong love of Halloween, perhaps stemming from the fact that it's my mom's birthday. Being something of a sculptor, I delighted in wowing friends and neighbors every year with my carved creations. Often, in recent years, I would take so much time with a jack that the pumpkin would begin to turn mushy before I could finish. I began to be bothered by the transient nature of the medium. Sure, I could take tons of pictures and show them off online and people still thought they were cool, but I found myself feeling less and less motivated with each piece, even when I get paid for them. I think I'm just getting tired of it. I'd rather spend that precious time leading up to Halloween with my digital creations.

Well, I've already picked out seven pumpkins this year (a part of the process that's never been much fun for me) and I'm committed on at least one carving. And so carve I will. But I think most of the jacks are just going to get hacked out so I can enjoy that burning pumpkin smell while I'm working on what I'd rather be working on. It's kind of sad but it makes sense to me. My mom has been dead for years. There aren't many trick-or-treaters here, these days, and a language barrier prevents most of them from inquiring about my jack-o-lanterns, anyway. I can always get my jacks exhibited but that just means more people wanting me to carve jacks for them than I can possibly handle. I don't know why I've never entered one into a contest. It seems like I only hear about them when it's too late. And those are generally for kids and amateurs and I wouldn't get much personal satisfaction beating the snot out a bunch of little kids in what is supposed to be a fun thing for them.

Oh well. With any luck, they'll soon develop artificial pumpkins that I can carve the same way I carve the real item. Funkins aren't quite there. yet. Then I don't think I'd mind so much. Then maybe I can burn newly-developed candles that smell like burning pumpkin, just to make the effect complete. The pumpkin-guts I'm not going to miss...

Devils Night

This is just a slap-dash photoshopping I did, just for grins, from a vintage bubble-gum wrapper art.

I can feel it in my bones!

Updated!: 10:20 PM (thank goodness for Blambot)

The ?th Annual Pumpkin Thingy

 

 So I saw a thing in the paper about a pumpkin thingy in Old Colorado City on Saturday and thought "Yay! Perfect fodder for the Countdown to Halloween thingy!" and took time out of my empty schedule to drive down there to check it out. And it's not that it was boar-ing...

 

...But by the time I got down there it was over and they were loading the colossal pumpkins back on the truck. Aw....

 But anyway this looked to be the largest pumpkin. I don't know what the hell you do with a pumpkin that size but there ya go...

And this was evidently the favoritist pumpkin, for some reason. Apparently they're going to cut a door and windows into it, move some little people in and shoot a new reality show for The Learning Channel. A deep fried Mars Bar for anyone who can guess the title.

And someone who was born a century too late decided it would be a good idea to have a requisite creepy clown to make balloon animals and who knows what all. Tsk....

Here's a cute window painting at the nearby Goodwill.

 

And there was also a scarecrow contest, though I found most of the entrants to be a tad too quaint. To give you an idea, here's one served up by the local Italian restaurant.

And from the local Barbecue...Spider Pig. Yeah. Well, it probably looks more terrifying at night when it's eyes are aglow with arachno-porcine hellfire.

The Hanging Man

I think my earliest Halloween memory was seeing a crude dummy in a flannel shirt hanging from someone's porch with a bloody knife sticking out of its eye. I was trick-or-treating and I must have been about 6. It's a mystery why this image would have stayed with me for so long but that seems the earliest one I can bring into sharp focus. I don't remember whether I was frightened or whether I found it hokey or anything about what could possibly have burned it eternally into my memory. Maybe it was the idea of someone hanging a real murder victim out in front of their door on Halloween as if to say "If you play a trick on me you just might get stabbed in the eye and hung from my porch with bulging eyes and blackened tongue as a warning the other children!" What else could it mean?

Counting on Fun!

Well, time to take the plunge, again. Last year I was worried that I couldn't find enough material for a daily post for the Countdown to Halloween and I figured I'd pretty much shot my wad by the time it was over. This year I'm that much more nervous but I'm no less enthused so hopefully I won't have anything to apologize for on the big day. I'm not sure what's going to come out of this blog for the next 30 days but hopefully some of you will find the unfolding mystery of it interesting enough.

In the meanwhile, feel free to browse my last countdown, which was successful enough not to garner me any hate mail. It includes last years coffin races and most of the jack-o-lanterns I've carved over the years, as well as spiders, squirrels and cannibals! N-joy!