Coming to you all the way from FRANCE is this Terry Gross-style interview with a pumpkin, who in all honesty, is a bit prickly. I don’t know if you could expect such countenance from every squash you come across. Talking pumpkins are rare, so it’s a very informative exposé on the life of a jack-o’lantern.
Are you wondering how this piece was made? Here is a special “Behind the Scenes” look at how Mike engineered the talking pumpkin:
And just so you know, the technologically advanced “movie puppeting stick” Mike used to manipulate the pumpkin’s jaw was: a chopstick.
Thank you, Mike, for introducing us to Jacques the pumpkin, please tell him he’s got lots of fans. Happy Halloweeeennnn!!!
Visit www.gothtober.com and click on DAY 21 to watch a strange, fantastic and beautiful little film by Mike Rainey!
Listen to the strings ebb and flow as a mysterious individual carves a small jack o’ lantern. What was once a stationery and unmoving object is sent out into the world by its creator.
Here is a statement from the artist regarding this work:
“Many people face monsters every day, monsters who wear the faces of respectable, mainstream people. Monsters who diminish life, who steal joy and pollute existence because they feel entitled to take, without empathy or consideration.
Halloween is a time when we can take away the power of monsters by naming them, looking at them, mocking them. I hope this piece can in some small way help to diminish the power of monsters.”
Visit www.gothtober.com and click on DAY 19 to see/hear a full gamut of emotions with David LeBarron and a squash in peril!
It is fire season in California, no doubt you have heard. Sometimes, you just get burned, just like Pumpy the Pumpkin! Within this charming little film are three very different reactions to burning hellfire.
NOTE: A very real pumpkin WAS destroyed while making this piece, but just remember: 1.) It’s not actually alive, despite the impassioned voiceover 2.) It smelled delicious!
When you’re a pumpkin, and you have been cooked, it’s nice to know that you make the world a better place in puree form. You can be stirred into oatmeal, made into compound butter, used as gourmet ravioli filling with sage, churned into ice cream, added to cinnamon rolls, swirled into smoothies… the glorious flavor of roasted pumpkin is a fall favorite.
The little sliver of time Pumpy the Pumpkin has been given sits at the tip of 13.8 billion years of existence. Energy can’t be created or destroyed, it can only change from one form to another, and transferred from one object to another. This means that Pumpy is still with us, as a spiced latte, as seeds in the garden, or even perhaps in another dimension, serving donuts on another planet.
Our final treat in the Gothtober Line-Up this year is from the Family Waller in Los Angeles, California. There are three Waller kids, and each one in this film has a dream after having too much candy. Footage from these miraculous dreams involves sweets, dolls, space travel, dirt, and a white pumpkin. The Waller family came together to make this film to let you know that if YOU eat too much candy, you might also experience vivid, sugar-laden visions, so be careful how many Junior Mints you eat before going to sleep! It’s kind of a cosmic cowboy PSA for the times we live in, feel free to sing along at the end!
We’d like to thank all of you out there who followed us until the very last day of October, and we’d like to pat on the back every skeleton, ghost, monster, and all of the other crawly screamy freaky things who made this year a great success. Thank you for being part of our 13th endeavor, dirt and worms for you all!
For ALL AGES, the Gothtober Coloring Contest is HERE! Visit www.gothtober.com click on DAY 4, download and print your pumpkin page. Color it, send it in! DROP DEADLINE IS OCTOBER 25th!!!
What will your jack’o’lantern look like? Will it have a scene? Will it be the face of an unknown monster, a spirit being, a scary politician?
We have FIVE DIVISIONS and we know you fit into one of them… unless you’re a vampire or some other form of undead, and if that’s the case, contact us. We will make a special division just for you.
AGE GROUPS
Kitten Pumpkins – 5 and under
Pumpkin Scouts – 6 to 10
Tweens-n-Teens – 11 to 17
Logan’s Runners – 18 to 30
Bladerunners – 30 to 125
Each Division will have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Prize Ribbons, as well as some very special Gothtober Treats! Prepare to win bizarre and inventive gift baskets containing specialty items hand-picked by Gothtober MONSTERS! Coloring Contest Winners will be announced and showcased on this blog on Gothtober 29th!
Rocks painted by Chris Feldsparr, Mother of the Head Candy Corn of Gothtober.com
Time for a mid-month Gothtober “Fall Interlude”
Been feeling horribly homesick for the last three weeks. I grew up in a beautiful place, running through orchards to pick apples for pies that Mom would bake. I’d hide in Grapevines, and watch as over the months, they’d turn from rich deep green into a sea of fire colored wonder flanked by dark coniferous trees during Autumn. I miss the scent of the rich loam of northern dirt, mustard flowers, redwood trees and even the cow pies. Especially prevailing at this time of year is “first crush” or the smell of fermented grapes processed and placed into wooden barrels by wineries in their haste to take advantage of the season’s best. I may be an Angeleno, but river water runs in my blood, and I’m a Forestville girl at heart.
I also miss my family, who are all really awesome, and what makes homesickness even more excruciating? Photos from HOME! Mom sent me pictures of she and Papa Rick’s pumpkin patch, and she also sent me a photo of her fabulous halloween rocks! Mom’s a rock painter, as you can see, she’s quite good, and these petrified jack’o’lanterns are so dang adorable I want them ALL, but I’ll settle for just one, if she’s even giving them away! I think CraftNight’s going to have a rock painting night soon, thanks for the inspiration, Mom!
Mom and Papa Rick’s 2012 Pumpkin Patch Surprise! Look at ’em GROW!
And the PUMPKIN PATCH, well… in my mind I’m always thinking I’ll have a patch like this at some point, but our soil has so much clay, and it gets kind of hot for pumpkins down here, so it would take some kind of insane amount of diligence on our part to actually have a successful patch. For instance, itps 90 degrees outside right now! Scandalous!
But up north, it’s quite a bit cooler, there is fog, just the kind of cold damp environment for a squash to thrive. The Feldsparr Patch is AMAZING, just look at those pumpkins! Papa Rick is a consumate gardener, he’s always growing things in his garden, their potatoes are so buttery, their garlic is so much better than supermarket garlic, or even farmer’s market garlic! It’s always a pleasure coming home and eating from their homegrown patch of veggies! I wonder if pie is going to happen, or soup, or pumpkin pizza, or if they’re going to turn into Jack’o’Lanterns… I hope we’ll get an update!
This concludes the Gothtober mid-month “Fall Interlude”, thanks for reading!
Mother/Daughter team Miss Lori and Madame Rose strike a pose… or two or three poses, actually!
What goodies are in store for you today from the Gothtober Postal Service at Pumpkin #15!!!You can get three, count’em THREE FREE downloadable printable wonderful Halloween cards that have been hand illustrated by this high-powered and enterprising family duo! Lori Meekerstarts things off with a stop-motion animation piece, you can watch the red sky and the murky olive-colored hills, when what comes flapping o’er the horizon but a batty little creature carrying goodies for everybody! Nope, it certainly isn’t Santa, because Santa, to my recollection, doesn’t eat bugs or make high-pitched squeaky noises. Oh right… and Santa doesn’t have wings.
The cards are available for download at the end of the movie, and you can get an owl, pumpkin or bat, and there are two sizes of each! One size is for an automatic “print-and-go” so you print it, fold it, write something on it and give it to a friend. The other size available is for perhaps cutting out and sticking in your scrap book, or in a letter to a friend, or on a very fancy card that has taken you lots of time to make!
Gothtober’s DAY 2 features Sir who is trying to sleep.
Who is sir?
Seems kind of like a hairy dude, intent on getting a good night’s rest until… oh dear, guess that’s not going to happen. Sir’s worldwide sleeping tour of recorded vinyl treasures is sure to inspire a myriad of personal emotions for you. From the very first frame of the movie, you get a sense of the main character’s somnambulistic nature, a sure clue that a sleep-induced adventure is about to take place, and it won’t be disappointing. You can hear the voice guiding him to “take the right boat” and “beware of zombies” my recommendation is to watch it a few times so that you can really grasp just how totally weird Sir’s dream is!
In the waking life of comic book and old-fashioned vinyl record sales, Mr. Canyon Fisher is a king, and the fact of this Gothtober movie is: he has sold every one of these titles featured in his store at PixelBiscuit Records and Comics. While Mr. Fisher didn’t play the main character in his movie, you can be rest assured that he empathizes with him greatly.
Technically, it’s not Fall until September 22nd, but if you’ve just got to have the taste of nutmeg and clove and spicy sassy pumpkin that sets the scene for “October’s Bright Blue Weather” you can get started right this very minute without an iota of hesitation. I believe you can also get it in Frappé form, AND salted caramel mochas are also available.
Matter of fact, I dare you to get some Candy Corn Oreos and wash them down with a pumpkin spice latté and see if your glycemic index forces each of your teeth to hum in four-part harmony. It’s an indecent request, but worth trying, in the interest in order to live a rich, full life, especially if you survive.
In Big Loud ‘n’ Orange, two men embark on a little transit improvement project they call “Bustober.” Alex Kenefick and Eric Potter—respectively armed with a clipboard and a boom mic—await the arrival of Metro buses ripe for Halloweenification. Viewers are also treated to entrancing, interstitial montages of Christina Aguilera, David Allen Grier and Angel‘s David Boreanaz moving through a pumpkin patch.
Though it may at first seem like a surreal and even disconcerting melange of imagery, this project has all the makings of a successful urban redevelopment venture: mass transit, grassroots activism, star power, kids and farm-fresh produce. It should come as no surprise that the video’s creator, Alex Kenefick, is in fact a seasoned urban planner and transportation activist.
We had a chance to interview Mr. Kenefick, who says that a total of 15 to 20 Metro buses were “improved” in Operation Bustober. He equates Metro buses to the ultimate Haunted Boombox: “They’re big, they’re loud, and they’re orange.”
We also inquired about the meaning of the gourd-navigating stars. “It’s Halloween in L.A.,” said Kenefick. “I could have put normal people in the pumpkin patch, but I figured celebrities were just better.”
