PUMPKINROT.COM: The Blog: 2024

Monday, December 2, 2024

Saturday, November 30, 2024

Some really cool cloaks started popping up on Instagram during the Halloween season. They popped up again today. Apparently, they're from a crooked company based in China and all the images are AI generated. The items are incredibly inexpensive for something that looks so neat (the first clue that they were bogus). I'm totally not endorsing for obvious reasons but felt compelled to post the images as they're pretty neat. And to warn folks that the company is fraudulent. So, if you ever see a company called Exikou, please beware.

My cloak-wearing days will have to wait until a legitimate company starts making stuff like this. I'd wear that third one down to work for sure.

Friday, November 29, 2024

B&W

Images by Steve J.

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hoping everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. We're currently drinking coffee and flipping between the Macy's and the Philadelphia Dunkin' Thanksgiving Parades. That Dunkin' Donuts one initially started out in Philadelphia as the Gimbles Thanksgiving Day Parade, back in 1920. It ran until 1986, and it always seemed to be on in my parents' and grandparents' houses, despite being wildly inferior in quality and talent. By the 80's, it felt more like visiting a sad carnival in an old empty town. Like a scene in a favorite Bradbury story:

Now a sword-swallower choked on a sword, sprayed kerosene in a gout of flame, and wandered out to applause from five small girls.

Three clowns knocked each other across the ring and bounded off to aching silence.

I think it was a Philly thing. It was occurring in our own city, and we would like it if it killed us. My sister even starred in it one year. That's how it was treated in our house, like she was performing a musical number. Meanwhile she worked for a now-defunct toy company called Kiddie City. She was one of the five folks holding a support tether to an extremely small, round Kiddie City balloon in the parade. And we missed her in the broadcast.

Eventually, I stopped watching either parade. It just seemed a little soulless and phony. A few years ago, I turned the Macy's parade back on. Had a fire going, had some music playing in the background, and kept the volume on the tv nice and low. Felt a little like being at my grandmother's house on Thanksgiving morning. And it actually wasn't all that soulless. Nor phony. It turns out it's that wonderful thing called Tradition. And at this age, I welcome the actors I've never seen... and the songs I've never heard.

This year it's raining at both locations, and the crowds are excited and happy nonetheless.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Thanks SO much for reading this blog. I truly appreciate it.

Here are some vintage and delightfully creepy photos from the Gimbles parade.

Image sources here and here.

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Now Playing: Experiment In Terror

By Hank Mancini.

Click below...

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Distance

A shot from afar. We went for a walk long after the last trick-or-treater, and after all of our guests had said goodnight. Coming up the street, it was neat to imagine kids seeing the house and noticing the colorful lights... and wondering what exactly was up on that porch.

Monday, November 25, 2024

The Elm Park Haunt

More images here.

Sunday, November 24, 2024

Webs

A few months before Halloween, I saw an Instagram reel by the insanely talented Brandon Hardy. He was creating some amazing realistic spider webs using a spray adhesive by the Loctite company. I had never heard of such a thing. I knew people had web blower guns that are essentially a hot glue gun hooked up to an air compressor (and usually the two aren't sold together). The effect of the glue gun approach is stunning. And they are somewhat durable and firm-ish since they're hardened glue.

The Brandon Hardy approach is akin to spinning your own delicate fragile webs. And they're basically strands of a very sticky adhesive chemical. So while you're spraying and while they're drying, you pray it doesn't get on you or that a neighborhood cat doesn't walk through them (they take about ten to fifteen minutes to fully dry). Once dry, they look and act like webs from the tail end of a big juicy spider. It was pretty addictive spraying the vines and leaves and gravemarkers. It took some getting used to though, as Brandon makes it look intensely easy (the aforementioned extreme talent).

Click below to see his reel explaining the process.

And here's a link to the product if you're curious!

Thanks, Brandon! The cemetery looked insane due to this one added layer of detail. Got so many compliments on the webs. Some people thought they were real. Which is all a Haunter ever asks for.

Click here for Brandon's IG. There are SOOO many wonderful how-to's.

Saturday, November 23, 2024

Red

Bird Feeder

For most people living in western countries, the idea of being eaten by an animal is at once odd and scary, but generally considered the stuff of fantasy and horror films rather than reality. However, for some extinct human species, and even modern humans of the not-so-distant past, the prospect of being hunted, killed and eaten by wild predators was reality.

And it wasn't just bears, big cats, crocodiles or sharks doing the hunting and killing. At least three different predatory bird species are suspected to have fed upon humans.