The Boston Common Pumpkin Festival.

The Life is Good Pumpkin Festival was held on October 23rd, 2004 on Boston Common. 50,000 people shuffled through on that cold, cloudy day to watch the organizers try and break the Guiness world record for the most lit Jack-O-Lanterns. They didn’t actually break the record (somewhere over 16K) but they came within spitting distance. And to be fair the feat was quite amazing in spite of that – as there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 29,000 carved pumpkins (just not all lit) on the Common over the course of the day.

Where does one get or grow 29 thousand pumpkins, you ask? Dammned if I know. There were trailerloads of them dumped out around the carving stations which some guy on a microphone kept trying to get people to come over and participate in. Only problem was, you needed your own knife. I don’t imagine I need to delve into the potential legal rammifications of handing out knives to strangers on Boston Common after dusk. But still, it’s hard to carve pumpkins with car keys. Not impossible though, judging from some of the more crap carvings on display. I’ll put it on record – little kids have no business whatsoever participating in Halloween related festivities.

Also featured on stage were Mayor “Mumbles” Menino – who i believe thanked Life is Good for organizing the event. But he could have been reciting the 4th act of The Merchant of Venice for all I could make out. And then there was a country-western band who got the crowd jumpin’ with a backwoods version of ‘Hold Me Now’ by The Thompon Twins. I tried to think up some alternate titles for the song in this incarnation, and finally settled on ‘Hold Me Now And Pass The Corn Liquor Before You Sodomize Me Uncle Cletus’. I kept that to myself.

My roomate Betsy and I brought Nakul, and his wife Deepika along for the pumpkin peeping. They’re proud new parents but were grateful for the chance to get out and see more Boston/less bright yellow baby-shit. Among our favorites, the scary skeleton, the turtle from Finding Nemo and the 80% of the rest of the 29K that read simply “Go Red Sox”. Actually, the Red Sox carvings got a little tiresome after awhile. But we were bearing down on the World Series at the time and I guess all those pumpkins did a lot to help clinch the victory. And very little to feed the city’s homeless. Personally, I could see a pumpkin pie kitchen, as opposed to a soup kitchen, doing quite well in the old combat zone. If it were run by underage male prostitutes.

The adventure ended across the street at the Public Garden, where Nakul chased a Canada Goose and I had an unfortunate disagreement with a squirrel over (insert ‘nuts’ joke here – I like to make the blog interactive when I can). The Boston Pumpkin Festival was a great time, and a massive undertaking akin to the pyramids of Egypt. I have no idea how much money was raised or who sponsored it, but nice work kids. A produce-wasting effort of Gallagherian proportions.

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