John and I carved our pumpkins tonight, as the picture may have suggested. My favorite part about carving jack-o-lanterns (and I really mean this) is the moment when you first have to stick your hand in pumpkin guts. It's weird. I know. That's the part most people want to skip completely. That's why the market for those fake pumpkins is so high. People hate pumpkin guts. That and actual pumpkins get moldy really easily. Which is really gross. But me, I like scooping out the seeds and other orange mess. I miss being young enough to get really dirty occasionally. You know, make mud pies or, well, I guess mud was pretty much always to blame. Anyway, it's satisfying to hack open a pumpkin and slop the guts out onto a trashbag.

You know the opening sequence of Amélie where the narrator introduces Amélie and her parents and says the things they like (such as cracking the top of a crème brulée or cleaning out a purse)? Cleaning out pumpkin guts would be on my list, if they (the they that makes movies about people of little consequence, unless you believe in the butterfly effect) were to make a movie about, or at least including, me.

I. Like. Pumpkin. Guts.

Last night John and I went out in warm sweaters and drove over to a haunted house I heard about at work. It was really neat. My favorite part, even though the effects were actually quite good, wasn't part of the house at all. It was that we were doing something that felt like participating in a community. The line was really long and we had to stand on the sidewalk on a residential street with people in costume, parents and kids wrapped in blankets, and just other people like us, living in LA and getting to see the elusive "breath cloud" (you know, "I can see my breath") because it was 10PM and cold enough for it to happen. I stood with my arm in John's and asked him questions about all the Halloween stuff he could remember from when he was a kid. Halloween to John's family was what Christmas was to mine. You know, minus the gifts. (Unless they did, in fact, find a truly sincere pumpkin patch.) It was a good time.

Also, you should go check out John's Special Halloween Comic starring Alien and Dinosaur, a set of characters that made their first appearance in a comic John did with his sister. If you're interested, you can also see them here, here, here, here, and here. These strips, in particular, would be rated PG, the rest of the site is not, just so you know. These are probably my favorite of all John's recently created characters. They're quite adorable. Especially on buttons.

Since I'm not dressing up this year, think of this as my "virtual" costume:


You are Kermit the Frog. You are reliable, responsible and caring. And you have a habit of waving your arms about maniacally.
FAVORITE EXPRESSIONS:
"Hi ho!" "Yaaay!" and "Sheesh!"
FAVORITE MOVIE:
"How Green Was My Mother"
LAST BOOK READ:
"Surfin' the Webfoot: A Frog's Guide to the Internet"
HOBBIES:
Sitting in the swamp playing banjo.
QUOTE:
"Hmm, my banjo is wet."


What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Happy Halloween! Could you guess which of us carved which pumpkin?

Labels: holiday.

|