Jay’s Guide to Pumpkin Carving

(updated)

I've never actually been to a real pumpkin patch, only the whole sale distribution centers that sling them to the public from someone's front yard or at a semi-busy intersection. Sometimes they’re set up in a wayward parking lot where a Fashion Bug or Fashion Bug Plus once flourished. That same spot will be used the day after Halloween is over for the 'Christmas Tree Blow-Out Extravaganza'. I asked Comagirl Sam about pumpkin patches and she informed me of the correct behavior one would display at a pumpkin patch. It in tales dressing warmly and frolicking amongst the many various shaped specimens in a search of the perfect match to your personality. That idea got me thinking of pumpkins and pumpkin carving. Once I thought about it for a short while I realized there was a rhyme to my reason when it came to pumpkin related events in my life. I realized I always look for the weirdest looking pumpkin I can find. I like the long skinny ones or the oblong squished ones. In fact the weirder the better. I'm just not a fan of the round ones so much. I'm too much of a germaphobe to like the ones with the weird tumorous growths on them. You know what I'm talking about right; they’re usually like greenish in color and bubbly or pock marked... You'd think you could use that in making a more grotesque and monstrous display, like your pumpkin is crying out in anguish at his unfortunate skin circumstances, but I'll stick to the oddities of geometry for the purposes of this blog.

My favorite design is this: One HUGE round eye, one small round eye (sometimes with strait edge on top to imply anger or fear) and stitches for mouth. This guy has had his mouth stitched up and can now only express himself with wild and exaggerated eye movements. I also enjoy the wide open mouth from time to time. This is great if you have a really big (and hopefully terribly misshapen) pumpkin. Then you can even set a smaller pumpkin with a totally distraught and terrified look, half way into the mouth opening of the larger. This set up is sure to please the kids. "Look mom that huge one is eating the small one!" (What a great metaphor for society). With a simple scene set up like that, you're single handedly entertaining the youth (who will then think your great and not TP your house when they are teenagers), and being snarky enough that the adults will appreciate your wit.

Pumpkins with one side dangerously out of shape, or even flattened completely are great for scenes too. Use their oddity to your advantage. Make one cheek of the pumpkin the flat side like he is getting punched in the face or hit by a bus. You can use a Barbie Corevette and set up a horrific drunk driving crash scene. Any normal blonde Barbie will work great as a Paris Hilton or some tramp from The Hills, they’re all the same. I mean its Halloween its okay to be twisted. Try carving an open mouth and let the pumpkin insides come out of it like he's puking. I call that the Frat-guy pumpkin. Add a small Golden Tee game behind him and 4 more pumpkins with baseball hats on and you've got your self a fantastic ‘Any Lincoln Park Bar’ scene

In fact, let’s look at some more scenes we can set up in what I like to call:

Jay's Multiple Pumpkin set up ideas:

1. Get one very angry looking pumpkin and put him up on a box of some kind, maybe set up a microphone made out of a Cattail or some corn husks. Then, surround him with a half dozen or more smaller pumpkins like they are listening to his fiery and charismatic speech. (add tape recorded crowd cheers every 48 seconds for effect).

2. I've always enjoyed the idea of 2 mad scientist pumpkins operating on another pumpkin. You can open the ‘patient’ pumpkin up too; don't be afraid to get wild and gross with it. Leave some of the gross pumpkin innards coming out of the surgical opening like they are butchering the poor patient. And don't forget to put surgical masks on the 2 mad doctor pumpkins. And one surgeon needs that round thing doctors wear on their forehead, you can use a soup can lid for that.

3. Pumpkin Reenactments... Set up your pumpkins in famous historical or pop culture situations. Try:

- Storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day - (Note: this requires anywhere from 20 to 137 pumpkins so plan this one with friends and neighbors unless you own your own pumpkin patch and/or have access to untold numbers of them)
- Salem Witch Trials - few girl pumpkins swing from ropes while townspeople pumpkins look on in shame and fear. (You can make those funny hats they wore with cloth table napkins).
- The moon landing. One small step for pumpkins, one giant leap for vegetables... (Make a flag with a carrot on it or something cute like that). Tin foil covered boxes make great Moon-lander ships

Great Movie Reenactments...
- The court seen in A Few Good Men when Jack Nicholson is berating Tom Cruize "... But deep down inside of places you don't talk about at cocktail parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!" (Don't forget a 'cute as a button' Demi Moore pumpkin behind a table watching intently).
- 2 pumpkins with scarves on in a Barbie Corvette going over the edge of your porch like the last scene of Thelma and Louise.
- 2 pumpkins with bras on their heads making a hotass girl pumpkin like in Weird Science. Hook up electrodes to the hotass pumpkin and give her huge puffy Kelly Labrock lips (don't hate her cus she's beautiful).

Or some music related set ups:
- Janet Jackson pumpkin exposing herself to a Justin Timberlake pumpkin on national T.V. (try and add angry soccer mom pumpkins calling their state representatives and complaining about the state of pumpkin society)
- Try and find some really bland put perfectly shaped pumpkins and give them all head set microphones. POW. Pussycat Doll Pumpkins You’ll need to have some really talentless pumpkins; you may have to ask the sale guys for help, usually the talentless pumpkins grow right in the front of the pumpkin patch).
- Bono Pumpkin. I'm not 100% sure how to do this but it’s worth a shot. I'd go for the sweet 80's Mullet Bono pumpkin look, possibly saving Africa by meeting with heads of state pumpkins around a oval (not square) table.
- Bigge Smalls and 2-Pak pumpkins. Maybe a pumpkin with MC Hammer pants on hanging around too.

Well I hope this helps, Halloween is right about the corner so get to work. Let me know if any of these work for you, send pictures if you get a really sweet set up done.

Untitled Number 1

I could write a thousand and one songs... and they’d all have the word you in them.

Sticking around...

...maybe it's your morbid voyeuristic side that's a direct result of a swirling concoction of jaded Gen X-er, throw away pop culture, and too much reality TV. Maybe you just want to hang in there to see how I turn out... It can't be normal you know, it can't be just some semi-manicured greenish-yellow lawn with dog and SUV and a 401K... It has to be a 'Crash and burn' or 'Fizzle and burn' or a 'Fuk are we ever gunna fuking light this thing and burn here or what?' kind of outcome, there can be no sunset fade-out ending for Jay...

You stick around because you have VIP seating to an ultra low budget Greek tragedy and you've already read most of the script... you just have to hang in there for the 3rd act so you can answer all the exclusive 'insider questions' outside the theatre after the play...

J in L.A.

My trip to L.A. was amazing! I landed on Wednesday night and jumped a Super Shuttle van for what felt like 37 hours of going around in circles thru LAX fishing for more income for the driver. Made it to hotel around midnight and made instant friends with a young lady from NYC. I called her Parker Pose because she smiled a lot and had strait dark hair. The Standard Hotel is a 21+ only hotel (thank god), but doesn’t allow outside alcohol inside. This is a strange paradox to the hotels in the Midwest that all but encourage their patrons to fill the tub with ice and chill a case of Busch cans for the weekend. I went down to the over price diner and had a drink and then to the adjoining night club that was blaring hip-pop jams and got a drink 12 seconds before last call was announced.

Now, in Chicago “Last Call” means: “Hey everyone, we’re gunna close up soon so try and finish your drink while I tighty up my bar and dip these lipstick stained martini glasses into 3 sequentially less soapy sinks of water”… But in L.A. “Last Call” means large bouncers violate your personal space holding busboy tubs giving you thug looks while saying: “Let’s go, Let’s go, Let’s go now, NOW little man”, until you drop your .75% full drink that you just paid 8 dollars for into the bus-tub and walk away hoping you can make it to the door before getting pistol whipped.

After getting forced out of the club (right in the middle of T-Payne too), I retired for the evening.

The next morning I went shopping on Melrose… Now anyone that knows me knows that I do not swim… in fact outside of the spur of the moment cannon balls I did in St. Louis last summer with Tommy and 2Fresh in our underwear, I haven’t swam with premeditation since 2001 when I was in New Orleans. But when in Rome…

I stopped in a surf shop in what I then figured out was L.A.’s Boystown and found some sweet little Euro-Trunks. (I also found my 2010 Pride outfit but that’s for another blog).

The L.A. G-star is nice, albeit light in the cool jackets department, but the girls in the store were sweet and good re-folders of things I tried on and promptly discarded. One of them liked my pants so she was my favorite. I stopped in a few other stores and nosed around at a lot of bejeweled and distressed garments for the fall, nothing of which sparked much interest. I walked nearly 400 miles that afternoon in 176 degree heat so I needed a nap before rolling out to the show.

Apoptygma Berzerk was playing Knitting Factory and Brandon put me on the list so things were working out smooth. The show was full… full of L.A. Goths! I mean wildly dressed individuals in all manors of menacingly black layers of black on black in black with black accents. Some of them were so clad in black that they left a black trail of ashen liquid behind them – not unlike a squid or octopus would do – as their huge boots and tattered layers washed by me.

Aerodrone was on stage when I entered and I saw Carlton from The Dreaming looking a lot like Johnny Radtke. Tza was flipping her inhumanly pin strait hair around and looking cute as ever.

I talked with the dudes from The Surrender (who are fantastic by the way) and found about the after party plans. I watched Apop from the side of the stage. Logan played a song with them as did a heavily tattooed short guy in a little hat.

The after party was across the street at a club called Perversion. It looked like a lobby of a convention center with pounding goth jams in the main and side rooms. It felt like I was at Vampire High’s Home Coming 2009. No cool lights and no fog, just dark. I was at the bar waiting for a drink when a short guy covered in tattoos bellied up next to me and said hello. The music was pounding loud but we spoke back and for a while and he asked me where I was from. When I told him Chicago he asked if I knew Kill Hannah and I said that I was friends with Matt and he told me to tell Matt hello. I said I would and asked him his name, to which he replied “Vindy”. I remember thinking “Vindy is a strange name” but you know people have made up names all the time and he looked like a rock dude so Vindy it was, fine by me. So I texted Matt:

JR: Vindy says hello… P.S. I’m in L.A.

MD: Who’s Vindy? What, you’re in L.A.? Cool.

JR: Shorter guy like myself w/ little hat, covered in tattoos… how’s SWR tour?

MD: Vindy… No idea who that is, does he have a cane?

JR: No visible cane… little hat though

Hung with Apop and The Surrender at the Surrenders compound in West Hollywood till 4am talking about amps and drums and whatnot… Thanks for the ride Tyler… :D

----- next morning -----

MD: Yeah, no idea who Vindy is… have fun in L.A.

The next night I headed down town to an Art show that Kendra’s Chicago friend was having and ran into my friend Margot, promptly texted Peter in Boston to let him know I was having more fun then him now. I met up with my boy Hans who then brought us to the coolest night club I’ve ever been in. (Besides maybe Ghost Bar in Vegas). It was called the Edison and was in the basement of the historic Edison building down town. It was like a brick and Iron boiler room with LEDs and candle light accents. I guess this is 'Swank L.A.' Hans works for the club air brushing the models so he gets the hook up. After that we head to Das Bunker to catch the ‘secret’ Apop show. I begin to think that I’ve come to L.A. to study West Coast Goths versus Neo Goths for a compare and contrast term paper.

After the show (which sounded amazing), I’m back stage hanging with Brandon and in walks Vindy… I felt compelled to tell him but at the same time a bit nervous… finally I just say: “Matt said he didn’t know any Vindys”. He said “I’m Benji. Benji Madden” (from Good Charlotte). I then feel like a huge dick… Both of us pull out our phones and to text Matt. I can see what he’s typing

BM: You don’t know meeee mutha fuker? I’m with Jay Ramirez right now!

JR: I suck, it was Benji Madden from GC

MD: Tell him he owes me a steak!

We talked about the new GC record, which I guess is going to be huge and he was honestly the nicest guy ever, so down to Earth and cool.

Thanks for the Apop hoodie Stephen… (not pictured)

The next day my friend Margot took us up into the hills and I saw L.A. in the daylight. It was hot as all hell but very pretty. I saw a horse and a few thirsty dogs along the way as well.

That night I was ready for some L.A. glam rock so I went to Viper Room on Sunset Blvd. There was a dirty punk band playing upstairs and right before I was going to leave Vinny Appice got up and played Rock you like a Hurricane with them. Totally sweet! Then to Rainbow, which is like a rock-n-roll Denny’s with dirtier floors and smellier bathrooms. I met some Australians, talked about crocodiles, music and Squid Billies. Talked to Johnny Haro for bit and that was it. (Everything closes at 2am remember).

Sunday was my last full day so I planned on taking it easy. I was at Skin Graft trying on stuff when Sara T called me. When I told her I was in L.A. she screamed “WHAAA… So is Dan”. Turns out Madina Lake was in town shooting a video for Welcome to Oblivion. I met them up at Rainbow that night and we caught up. I guess Dave Navarro was there and I remember for a second being mildly amused by the idea of inspecting his perfectly manicured facial hair but soon lost interest in all that noise…

Cut to around 3:30am

Me to Mathew: “Are you sure you know where the Chamberlin is?”

Mathew: “Yup, dude yup, I know right where it is”

Dan texted me yesterday, him and the twins wondered around lost just after that… HA.

Nathan trying on Kendra's jacket, (the same one I had to wear to get into The Edison, 'L.A. Swank remember... they don't take kindly to t-shirts with Motley Crue on them I guess)...