Pumpkin Carving (Sorta like Porn...)

October 29, 2007

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Every year at Halloween, my friend Red hosts a pumpkin carving / scary movie party at his condo in Toluca Lake, CA. Guests are divided into teams of three and the team who handcrafts the best pumpkin gets a prize package that sometimes includes pornography.

I’ve been to this party several times and always have a blast. I have to admit that this year I felt a certain anxiety going in about whether or not I was going to be able to ‘bring it’ creatively speaking. I experience the same feeling whenever I go to one of those Color Me Mine ceramic painting parties. This is because I was a pretty good at art as a kid. I made cool posters, greeting cards, homecoming float blueprints, etc. That stuff came naturally. So as an adult, I used to approach these parties with the confidence of someone who knew from their school days that their block lettering rocked it out. But then after crashing and burning at a few art-themed parties—the Easter Bonnet debacle of ’02 comes to mind--my confidence has been shaken. Apparently, to stay on top of ones visual arts skills one needs to practice more than once a decade. It’s not like riding a bike.

So I try to approach do-it-yourself art parties with an attitude that says, ‘It’s not about winning, it’s about having fun, even when there’s porn at stake.’

his year, I ended up on Team 2 with Chad and Doug, two super nice guys I sort of knew from before, but not that well. Would we come together to make pumpkin magic? I didn’t know.

The teams were given a few minutes to powwow and plan—sort of like the sketching phase on Project Runway—before heading off to the nearby pumpkin patch, which is our version of the Mood fabric store.

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