Check out the pics

Punkinpalooza 2005 - a greater success can scarcely be imagined. Check out our photos on flickr.
Food, gourds, music. A great day under blue skies. Many thanx to Vakum for bringing down the porch. More written reports and commentary for the big day soon to come.

Onward and upward to Punkinapalooza 2006: the Wrath of Squash. Stay tuned!

First Annual Punkinpalooza Flashback!

Hey remember this? It's last year's Punkinpalooza 2004 blog entry - aka Remembrances of Things Smashed.

Oh I forgot -

for all these punkins, we're gonna need a whole lotta candles. Who wants to get those?

Punkinpalooza To Do list

Some Things We Need:

• tables for outdoor carving
• a tarp for the porch (in case of rain)
• candy
• booze (aka the three v's - vodka, vermouth, vino)
• meats - bacon and sausages
• treats - punkin-related snax (punkin pie, biscuits, muffins, waffle mix)
• extra cutlery and glasses
• large coffeemaker and urn (rental?)
• invite the house neighbours
• prizes for carving
• punkins!

Event Staff Vacancies:

• Bouncers (welcoming committee)
• Hors D'oeuvres - snax and candy
• Kitchen - incl. Head Chef
• Alcohol - incl. Head Bartender
• Pumpkin Goop Disposal Unit
• Tables and Chairs
• Sound Technician - for Vakum
• Music DJ - for all other music needs
• Prize committee
• Punkin Judiciary committee (to lay down ground rules for carving)
• Housekeeping & Dishwashing (the only paid position)
• Breast Cancer donation bucket
• Photographer/Photoblogger
• Punshine recruitment (talk to Flavio)

Send a cover letter indicating which position(s) you seek and explain why you would be a good fit with the Punkinpalooza 2005 team. Email to Flavio, Voula or Ming, or phone the Chateau.

Vakum confirmed

Meet the next Silverchair - five teenagers on a serious rock-n-roll mission. It's Vakum hitting the Château, and they promise to clean house. Yes, Vakum at Punkinpalooza... get sucked!

Flavio's delirious PunkinPalooza vision...

Have you ever wanted to carve a pumpkin so badly that the desire was oozing out of you like saltwater from a gasping fish, flopping mortally on the dock? No, perhaps not. But have you ever wanted to carve a pumpkin, just for the sheer love of the gourd and the treat-and-trickery?

Then come to Punkinpalooza 2005, a celebration of all that's weird and wonderful in the universe, and a recognition that pumpkins exists only to be hacked to pieces by the endearing band of gourd-throttling lunatics I call my housemates and compatriots. Pumpkins do exist, my dear friends, and after Sat Oct 29 they will exist in a completely different state: one of near-total annihilation, pulpy and stringy, reincarnated as art. For a wise man once came up to me, fingered my jack o lantern and offered twelve bucks to tell him a story about Hallowe’en. That man’s name was Ira Cronenburg and he is my best friend in the whole world.

Come to Punkinpalooza 2005 and I will offer you waffles, I will give you much tasty burger and so many pieces of bacon until you fill the entire room with the stupendous girth of your waddling tonnage. The world will snap in half when you look at it and many people will offer to truck you down to the harpoon yards thinking that you are in fact a great blue whale, and such will be your bliss that you will accept. Yours will be the ocean to languish in and many tourists will pay money to snap digital photos of you safe at a distance from their saltwater barges.

Come to Punkinpalooze 2005 and listen to the dulcet sugary music of a band called Vakum, which in fact is a pun of some sort, and a good one. Vakum will delight your ears and water your eyes. Vakum will come to the fore in your life-weltz and in fact be pre-eminent which is not something I can guaranteee to the rest of civilization. Vakum will play Punkinpalooza 2005 and it will be triumph of such legendary calibrations that fish will jump out of the water at the appointed hour and flop willingly into the fisherman's net in hope of being grilled and roasted along with so many pumpkin seeds. And when the Punkins are done they will be beautiful. Indeed punkins will scream forth from the rafters, vibrating with their well-carved visages, and prizes shall be distributed to him or her whose jacko has outshone all others, for prizes exist to reward the brilliant and guarantee success to the diligent. For when a man has carved a pumpkin he is doing the work of shepherds, smiths and sages, and there is much smiling upon Olympus. A great thing it is to witness a pumpkin hacked to bits, a mighty thing indeed to behold the lighting of that candle within its smiling grinning gourdlike superficie. As a wise man once came to me and said, 'Tis the time of harvest, when men must smash their pumpkins - so gather those patches that are ripe and fertile and inaugurate a ballroom of Amazement.' That man's name was O'Cyrus P Doggles, and he is my pet fish Charlie's veterinarian. I will refer to him often because he is the emcee for the upcoming festivities.

Come to Punkinpalooza 2005 and drink from the trough of abundance - wine will flow like pumpkin juice, and pumpkins will flow like water, and that water will be as smooth as ice. It will be a grand moment for the happy, and a bewildering moment for the serious, and all men and women shall gaze upon the living room of the Chateau and thank Allah that the Age was so enlightened. We shall praise the heavens and sing hosannas, and there will be much wetting of floors with the effusiveness of tears.

Thank you and see you at the brunch.

~Bonhomme

Martha Stewart no longer paddling in the Pumpkin Regatta

First was she was. Now she isn't. Apparently she's not allowed into this country.

Sure it sucks for the organizers of Windsor, Nova Scotia's annual Pumpkin Festival. But PunkinPalooza 2005 won't need no stinkin' celebrity appearance to pack the house. We've got the power of brunch on our side...