Tuesday, October 31, 2006

The Naming Of Pumpkins: Finale

I hate to rush this but there's a trick or treat bag sitting here that's not gonna fill itself up, so let's roll out the last of our plastic pumpkins!


Our first two pumpkins share a striking resemblance to each other, earning them the names Huey and Louie. That's Huey on the left and Louie down below. Or is it vice verse? I can never tell them apart unless they're wearing their different colored ballcaps. Huey wears red and Louie wears yellow. Or is it vice verse?

But just check out the similarities between the two. Same rainbow arc eyes, triangular nose (Although Louie's is more arrow-shaped. Yes, I can really tell them apart!) even their teeth are similar, just flip-flopped. They make for a nice, though incomplete, pair. Somewhere out there is a Dewey with my name on it!

Here's a brand spanking new face making their world premiere here tonight. So new that I didn't even have time to sticky roll the black background for her official photo. I picked her up at a thrift store just yesterday and as you can tell by the Reese's Pumpkins sticking out of her head we've already pressed her into Hallowe'en night duty.

I nearly passed her by because she was in the midst of a pile of generic pails and didn't seem different enough to leap out at me. As I wandered around to the opposite side of the table I noticed that she was back-stamped! I don't know how rare that is generally speaking, but she's only the second one in my collection. Her stampings are similar to the other one (who we met in a previous post) but instead of a cat she's got herself a witch on her backside. She's too new to have revealed her name, but hopefully we'll know by this time next year.

And lastly, but in no way leastly, here's Bettie! Bettie demanded she be last because she's got a streak of the dramatic in her. That's not the only thing streaking through her. Let's just say, that Bettie is the 'Betty' of our plastic pumpkins. She beautiful and she knows it and she works it to her advantage. She also has a bit of the bandit in her. While basically good-hearted, Bettie can't resist the sparklies. If any of my jewels or silver go missing, they usually turns up inside Bettie.

And that's it for our month long trick or treat bucket showcase and that's it as well for this crazy month long celebration of all things Hallowe'enish that we've found ourselves in. I hope that you've all had some fun this month and will have even more fun this evening! I'm off to hand out some candy, do a little trick or treating myself and then wrap the whole evening up by partying like I wasn't pushing forty. I will never learn! Happy Hallowe'en everybody!

Hey, what's that waiting for me in the front hall?

Could it possibly be...?

Yes!! It's a big ol' box chock fulla new, hot off the eBay plastic pumpkins! You know what this means don't you?

To be continued next year!!

Sunday, October 29, 2006


I don't usually buy lottery tickets... handing over hard-earned cash in exchange for a very slim chance at getting slightly more cash in return is not one of my personal thrills. I've got plenty of vices but luckily gambling isn't one of them. If I've got five bucks in my hand I'd rather just buy a McGriddle and a Diet Coke, thank you very much. Besides, what with the price of gas and smack nowadays a person needs to hang onto as much cash as he can. I'm just kidding about that smack thing, of course. I'm not even really sure that I know what smack is. I know what 'horse' is. And 'tar.' I'm iffy on the smack.

Anyway, I always make a lotto exception around the holidays when the nice folks at the lottery board release appropriately-themed tickets to mark the occasion. Partly this is because of the festive-ness of buying lottery tickets covered in jack-o'-lanterns, shamrocks or Santa Clauses and partly this is because a little voice in the back of my head insists that a person is far more likely to win fistfuls of dough with a holiday ticket than they would be with a plain old everyday ticket. I don't know why the voice in the back of my head thinks this. Too much smack, probably.

Today was Hallowe'en lottery ticket buying day (Hope you didn't forget. It was on all the calenders.) so why don't you play along with me and we'll call it a post-

First up is the $1.00 'Creepy Cash' card. Which feature three different designs. The jack-o'-lantern seen above, a zombie and something else I've forgotten. I was determined to get the jack-o'-lantern and, if I had to, would have bought three tickets in order to get it, but luckily it was the next one on the role. Already Lady Luck is on my side! Now let's see... 'Match 3 like prizes, win that prize.' I can do that-

Lady Luck wandered all over the room and blew on some other guy's card. Minx. Still, it's only the $1.00 card. Everybody knows that the real money is on the $2.00 cards!

Ladies and gentlemen, let's play HalloWin! This one is a little more complicated, but you can win up to 10 times so it seems an even trade off. Plus, I love how the top prize is $13,000. A very Hallowe'en-y sum. Let's see what my winning numbers are-

12 and 1. Nice enough numbers I suppose. Whatever, I don't particularly favor one number above another. I'll take what I get. Although... wait a minute. 12 and 1? 12 and 1 makes 13! $13,000 is the top prize... my winning numbers add up to 13... it has to be a sign! Oh my God, I'm about to win $13,000!!! I can't believe this! $13,000! No one's ever handed me over anything close to $13,000 at one time before now! Wow! I think I have to sit down for a minute. I know that $13,000 isn't a huge amount of money nowadays, but it's nothing to turn up your nose at either! I mean, the things you could do with $13,000! I could clear out my Amazon wish list! I could finally get around to paying for that Soloflex I bought two years ago which might in turn inspire me to actually open up all those boxes that Soloflex came in. I could spend the winter some place warm! I wonder how many weeks in Hawaii I could swing on 13,000 bucks? I wouldn't have to stay in the Kamehameha suite of the Hanapepe Hilton or anything, I will be spending the days laying on the beach after all. And as for meals, I'll sup on the coconuts and papayas that fall from the trees and land at your very feet. And poi. How expensive can poi be? Of course, if it was a little bit more than $13,000 I would donate part of it to any one of the many different charitable organizations that I give to on a regular basis. Like... uh... the foundation for... the um... well, it's tacky to talk about one's philanthropic endeavors. $13,000 just isn't enough to really bother trying to divvy up for donating purposes though, is it? Now if it was, say, $26,000 then I'd be glad to slip a little toward some worthy cause or the other, but the top prize is only $13,000. Hey, wait a minute! Get a pumpkin symbol and you win twice the prize shown? A pumpkin symbol? Hey, I have a blog named after pumpkins! It's another sign! OH MY GOD! I'm about to win $26,000!!!


The Virginia Lottery can bite me in the jugular.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

The Saturday Before Hallowe'en

Friday, October 27, 2006

Bucket Interuptus

We're taking a quick break from the pumpkin buckets today so that we can focus our attentions on their kissin' cousins- the light-up plastic pumpkin Hallowe'en decoration. You've all seen them before, you all probably have at least one in your own assortment of Hallowe'en decorations and if so... I want it. E-mail me for my mailing address. No seriously- gimme!

By the way, I don't give the light-up pumpkins names. That would just be mental.


One of my favorites. The witches around the base are cool and the skull laying at the cat's feet makes for a sinister little touch. Light-up pumpkins are usually meant to be fun and goofy, so sinister is always a nice little bonus!

Top o' the mornin' to you Mr. Lantern!

Pumpkin in witch hat #1-

-and pumpkin in witch hat #2. Also on cool base featuring bats and cats. My favorite of the two witch hat wearing pumpkins. Shhh! Don't tell #1!


Jack-o'-lantern headed scarecrow is cute but he's one scrawny little dude with absolutely no weight to his bottom parts so that he topples over violently every time you walk past him which is annoying when it happens to you but hilarious when it happens to other people. I can't tell you how many people I've seen shriek like a little girl when a small glowing orange pumpkin creature lunges at them from out of the darkness. It's just almost exactly like that last segment of "Trilogy of Terror."

This last pumpkin is probably the fellow who started it all. I've mentioned before that I never used pumpkin buckets for trick-or-treating when I was a kid so my nostalgic love of all things orange and plastic is probably entirely the fault of this guy. He was one of the very first Hallowe'en decorations that my parents purchased after they were married and was the centerpiece decoration of all my childhood Hallowe'ens. Hallowe'en decorating around our house was as big a deal as Christmas decorating and like the star at the top of the tree this fellow wasn't plugged in until all of the rest of the decorations were up and the absolutely most perfect spot was found for him. Some of my fondest memories of the holiday are of lying on the living room floor, watching Hallowe'en specials or reading scary stories with no other light on in the room except for this pumpkin. When it came time for me to move out on my own, the first thing I did before leaving was to go into my parent's storage room and dig him out of all the boxes full of decorations and insist that he was coming with me. After some negotiating, my parents finally agreed to let him go. I think their exact words were "Whatever gets you out of the house."

Interesting fun fact post script- the Blogger spell check function does not want to recognize the words kissin', mornin', or eatin' which is just blatant discrimination against American Southerners, the Irish and all other people who are just too busy to go around finishing every word that comes out of their mouths!

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

More Hallowe'en Highlights

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

The Naming Of Pumpkins: Miscellany

Oooh, that orange background I used in the previous post is a bit stomach churning, isn't it? It also seemed to have the effect of making my normally blurry photos that much fuzzier... I think even the camera was a bit nauseous. Let's just stick with basic black from now on...


Today's set of plastic pumpkins come to us without any sort of unifying element to tie them together... that's right, I'm working without a theme! So here are three completely random pumpkins, including the promised cameo appearance by a big-time star of classic literature, which I'm saving for the end of the post 'cause that's what you do with big time stars.

This first pumpkin is one of the favorites of my collection and not just because his unusually plump-featured face makes him look a bit like one of the Ghostly Trio. I like Wink (and despite my better intentions of not sticking him with such an obvious title, 'Wink' is what I always come back to) because he's so obviously been put to great use in his day. The plastic on his cheeks and eyebrows has been worn to a translucent sheen and his face-side is such a noticeably lighter shade of faded orange that I'm pretty certain Wink pulled front window decoration duty after his candy carrying days were done. He may not be an example of museum quality pumkin-ness, but he does possess a bucket load of character! He also ends up being one of the more realistic pumpkin pails I own owing to his faded front half suggesting the pale mis-colored side that many real pumpkins sport, that side that lay in the mud while on the vine and which you always turn to the back of your jack-o'-lantern. Wink wears his with pride!

This happy lass' features are not the most unique in all of plastic pumpkindom, it's what's stamped on her backside that makes her post-worthy-

-the maker's of this pumpkin went crazy with the Hallowe'en bling and branded her with all manner of seasonal imagery. Lydia not only has four more tinier pumpkins embossed on her posterior, but there's a huge black (I'm assuming) cat and the words 'Trick' & 'Treat.' No 'or.' Lydia's not an 'or' kind of a gal. She wants the tricks and she wants the treats and forget about trying to make her choose between the two. Nobody puts Lydia in a corner!

The stamp work on the back of the pumpkin is cool, but would have been a bit more effective if the manufacturers had slapped a little black paint onto the cat and the lettering to make them a bit easier to see. Cheap bastards...

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for... ladies and gentlemen- Mr. 'Boo' Radley!

Say "Hey, Boo" everybody.

Arthur 'Boo' Radley, reclusive and spotlight-shunning star of Harper Lee's seminal (I think I'm using that word correctly) classic To Kill A Mockingbird, makes a rare appearance and we're thrilled to have him. As you can see, Boo's shyness and hesitancy to leave the security of his house stem mostly from his being a plastic pumpkin bucket with the word 'Boo' stamped in the middle of his mouth. As accepting of plastic pumpkins as today's society may be, it was quite a different story back in the 1930's. Boo could never fit in comfortably in a small southern town of the time. In fact, once you realize the truth about Boo you come to see that Ms. Lee's entire tale of racism and unthinking persecution is deeply allegorical, using the sufferings of one discriminated against group of people to make a statement about the treatment of an entirely different minority, as well. In this way, To Kill A Mockingbird is a lot like The X-Men. Also, I think that Scout and Rogue are the same person. Think about it... they're both Southern. They both have an o and a u in their names. Scout's real name is Jean Louise, whereas Rogue's real name is Anna Marie which both sort of sound alike. Also, have Scout and Rogue ever appeared together in the same story? Well, there you go.

One and a half more plastic pumpkin entries to go before Hallowe'en! Be there or be rounded and orange!

Monday, October 23, 2006

Variations On A Theme: A Coven Of Witches

Wooden Witch

Bendy Witch

Toilet Paper Roll Witch

Pinata Witch

Weeble Witch

Action Witch

Puppet Witch

Cleverly Disguised Clothespin Witch

Shiny Happy Witch

Stuffed Witch

Sock Monkey Witch

Decapitated Witch

Melted Witch