A Cut Above

It is now the night before Halloween, and I have what I consider to be a complete travesty in my house. Last weekend, we invited a set of neighborhood girls over to carve pumpkins, and just to be sure we bought and hollowed out a couple of extra ones. Well, two pumpkins have been sitting on my porch for nearly a week now, empty canvasses awaiting the hand of a pumpkin master to mangle their flesh into a glowing work of art.

I thought myself to be such a master at one point. I started out like everyone else, working my way up from a general veggie master to gourd master until deciding to specialize in the Americanized version and hone my skills upon the orange beast of the gourd world. Interesting tidbit - originally, turnips or rutabagas were carved in Europe, but I was not interested in the title of "rutabaga master" for reason I think are obvious.

Anyway, I'm getting geared up to put the kids to bed tonight (hopefully early) that I may pop corn, pour myself an adult beverage, and take to the blades. Then I went online. Now I realize that I am not the master I believed I was. Maybe I'm a padawan - that's more reasonable.

Because these guys are the $#%@ing Jedi of carving.

First, let's look at the set of nercore pumpkins pointed to by my good friend. Some are pretty standard template fair, but other are a world of "holy cow". The Death Star? The Mario? The three dimensional Darth Vadar? Those are beautiful.



Impressed as I was, nothing could prepare me for what I found via Slashdot today. The man's name is Ray Villafane, and apparently he was part of a Food Network challenge for pumpkin carving where he whipped some hiney. Looking at his work, you can see why. I'm absolutely stunned at the level of detail he's put into this. Just to up the ante, he actually includes a brief tutorial on how he does one of them, but I think unless you are already an artist who can do realistic sculpture, it's best just to admire.



So...yeah. I though my Dr. Horrible pumpkin was going to be ambitious, but these people go above and beyond to create brief but stunning works of art. I'm sure there are those who would call this a waste, particularly when one considers the temporal nature of such work, but I couldn't disagree more. I love to see someone dedicate themselves so fully to something that, even if just for a few days, bring a little more fun into the world.

Happy Halloween Eve people. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a lot of work to plan for.