Hallowe'en

Part 1: Pumpkin Carving

This weekend Drew and I were in Kingston, and after lunch on Saturday we decided to hit up the farmer's market to get some pumpkins to carve.  We picked one round one, and one oblong one - at first we thought of Burt and Ernie.  We carried them home, me with the round one in my arms, Drew with the oblong one in his backpack.  There's something immensely fun about walking home with a pumpkin on the day before Hallowe'en, and I think it has to do with the fact that everyone around knows that you're taking it home to try your best to carve a scary face on it, and prepare for trick or treaters.

We talked about what to carve on them and whether or not we wanted them to match, but in the end I decided I wanted to carve a scary pumpkin face, and Drew decided to do Beaker, the Muppet.  Here are the pumpkins pre-carving.

We decided to watch Nosferatu while we carved, which is, I think, the original vampire movie.  It's black and white from the 1920's, and is a "movie", not a "talkie", so there's only ochestral music and the added-for-suspense sounds of violins, drums, and pianos.  Dracula is the main character, and though he and the movie are no longer totally scary he is still really damn creepy looking.  Apparently, at the time it came out it was terrifying and people actually fainted in the theatre while watching it.

It was tricky to watch a silent film while carving, so we took turns in no particular order of reading the dialogue shots (you know the ones, where they put up a card on the screen that has parts of a conversation or important parts of narrative that you can't get just by watching) to each other and filling each other in on what was happening to accompany the music.  

A pleasantly spent hour or so later, Nosferatu was being hunted by the townsfolk ("only a woman, pure of heart, could kill the beast") and our pumpkins were ready for their close-ups.  My pumpkin ended up being a bit of a scary vampire take-off.  Drew's turned out to be a really awesome Beaker, and the Muppets would be proud.  Here are the final products:

Vampumkin, by Kate

Beaker, by Drew

Part 2: Dressing Up

Here is Drew becoming Aldo Raine, commander of the special ops group in Inglourious Basterds.

First he had to comb and glue his hair back into a military-style 'do.  He trimmed his beard and kept his moustache, and then we spray-painted his hair and moustache blonde-brown-ish.

He wore army-green pants and shirt, found a military-style navy jacket, tightened his belt around his waist, and tucked a replica hunting knife into it.  He looked *awesome*.  I actually was kind of smitten by soldier-Drew, which he thought was preposterous (but I think is legit).

Aldo Raine, by Brad

Aldo Raine, by Drew

Here is me becoming Robert Smith, lead singer of the 80's band the Cure:

I put glue in my hair and hung my head upside down on the couch to let it dry standing up.  I put white face paint on to make myself look paler, and then put tons of black eyeshadow and eye liner on, with red lipstick.  Drew spray-painted my hair black to add colour and some extra stand-up power.

I wore a men's white shirt and drew's black zip-up, with black jeans and high-top converse shoes.  I looked pretty freaky actually.  I think I was scaring Drew a bit, and for sure scared his friends.  But still, people knew who I was, which I think makes it a huge success.

Rob Smith, as himself

Kate, as Rob Smith

Finally, just because I get a kick out of this photo and could barely stand to look at myself in the mirror, here's a photo of Drew getting his moustache ready.   That freaky person in the background is me.