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Mom got a deal on some Day of the Dead hand towels at TJ Maxx, so she decided we'd be decorating in that style for Halloween this year.

This is the door hanger I made for her.

Cultural appropriation at its finest!

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Treat?

Or Trick?

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I bitch a lot about how Christmas season in America lasts for two months, which is two months too long. But it's still 3 months until Halloween, and Kroger has already rolled out Halloween decorations before the kids were even back in school.

You might interpret my criticism to say that I'm anti-Halloween, and you'd be right. I'm no fan. However, there's always been plenty of time for me to dislike Halloween during the month of October. There's no reason for it to take up a quarter of the year. There's got to be time for me to hate other things.

I don't know what this sprinting from one commercialized holiday to the next without any regard for the time in between says about American society in the 21st century, but I do know that it can't say anything good.

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Only 2 more days until Halloween, so let me hurry up and post the rest of my Jack O'Lantern Spectacular jack o'lanterns! Keep in mind that these pictures represent the best of my pictures, but only a small sampling of all the pumpkin art there was to see.

Many pumpkins, like this Irish Setter, utilized black paint for added contrast.

Bright lights can turn pumpkins into organic Lite-Brites.

Some carvings were more elaborate than others.

White paint and deep carvings make for a shiny, shiny pumpkin.

The Greek section had a pumpkins designed to look like urns, gods, and mythological creatures.

Not every design was horrific.

My art school roots are showing: The Great Wave off Kanagawa was probably my personal favorite.

This amazing Chinese dragon had a tail made of scores of small pumpkins that wound between and around several large trees. It was a fantastic work that was the highlight of the exhibit. Definitely something you're unlikely to see in your neighborhood this or any year.

(If you missed it, there were more pumpkins in yesterday's post.)

[UPDATE: I should have mentioned that this year marks the 20th anniversary of my First Place finish in the 1993 Emory University Pumpkin Carving Contest. I only entered because my dormmates bragged that they could carve better pumpkins that I could. As I proved, they could not.

I thought that pumpkin was pretty good, but it didn't hold a candle to most of anything I saw in Louisville. The state of the art of pumpkin carving has come a long way in 2 decades!

(For the record, the prize was $100 to spend at the University Bookstore, and I still have the $60 sweatshirt I bought with it.)]

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