We have a very special issue for you. Images from New York and several Halloween parties. In general, we were too drunk to remember these parties so these photos you will see are completely new.
Below you can read our "behind the scenes" of these pictures, while further down is an eyewitness account from the photographer himself, Steve de Seve.
The Tale:
How did we get a 7-foot walking pumpkin/bucket head to take Halloween pictures? It was an odd and spectacular night, and well, this is the story we got from one of the Pumpkin/Bucket-head groupies:
Imagine a Japanese monster movie about a man who mutates into a giant Pumpkin/Bucket head. The movie begins with the man, Hewey, working at a beer distributor on Pacific street in Brooklyn, which is odd considering the film is entirely in Japanese. It is Halloween when this man takes a call to deliver a party keg to an out-of-town address. The caller instructs Hewey to bring a keg of Busch Light Draft to a certain John C. Smith apple farm in Tuxedo Park, New York. Hewey makes it to Smith's strange apple farm just before sunset but discovers that there is no one present but a strange cartoon character waiting amidst a patch of weeds on the side of the road.
"Maybe I should take a picture of this little boy out here all alone on Halloween waiting for a giant pumpkin!" says Hewey.
So Hewey takes out his Matshusita VX-2203 AI super billion-pixel digital daddy that can only be bought in Tokyo and takes a picture of the kid (let's call him Linus for the sake of story continuity although the movie never tells us exactly). But the boy is staring off towards a distant copse of shadowy trees. He begins to cry and then he sucks his thumb.
Hewey is alarmed by the strange situation and mutely tries to help the boy. But he is stopped in his tracks. The camera! It's vibrating in annoyance! A digital voice calls out "Biwa udon shih-tzu Yama moto yama!" which translates literally to "change your batteries, dumbshit, batteries!"
The boy runs off in terror.
Hewey looks down on his magnificent ultra-sleek state-of-the-art camera and wonders how he was able to get one in the United States even though they are only purchasable in Tokyo at certain, what we call, "geek-stores." The camera is blinking. Hewey thinks perhaps the camera needs some fuel other than nickel-cadmium so he takes the keg and keg-bucket out of the truck's flatbed. He bends down to press a button the size of pen tip when suddenly....
A giant evil Pumpkin shadow the size of a Samsung Oscillating Fan model 190L, which you should know is very large and used for industrial purposes only, jolts from the ground to the sky in a matter of seconds, a massive apparation of terror, dwarfing everything in sight. It is a terrifying sight.
The giant Pumpkin is some sort of shadow creature and it manifests a lifelike vestigal hand the size of a Mizuno catcher's mitt and punches the digital camera into Hewey's mouth! Bam!
Then the hand grabs the keg-bucket and smashes it on Hewey's head! Slam!
Hewey stumbles back, dazed. A huge horriying Pumpkin just lodged a digital camera in between his third upper molar and his esophagus! He is stunned!
The giant Evil Incarnate is now glowing with radiactive detritus leached out from the New Jersey swamplands. It begins to fight a sky battle with Mothra. Wait, wait, the order's not right.
The giant Pumpkin creature, who represents Mother nature gone horribly awry and coincendentally very upset over the advancing digital age, has to fight something, maybe Mothra or that giant beetle. I think it's the beetle. But the giant beetle morphed into a human, representing something no doubt, and the Giant pumpkin must do the same to continue the fight.
See, so this giant pumpkin jumps into Hewey's body while Hewey is still struggling with his mouth and takes him over, vowing revenge. HeweyHead takes the Toyota mid-sized truck to the city to seek out his arch-enemy, the beetle thing or whatever it was. There he joins the Halloween parade on sixth avenue. But he is still a very ill-mannered Pumpkin/Bucket head shadow-creature so when smirky teenagers ask him what his "costume is s'posed to be" he snaps a photo through his mouth.
The photo takes the soul of the person and sends it back to the Matshusita plant in Akita for processing. That is the Giant Pumpkins secret soul-stealing weapon.
Pumpkin/Bucket head is still searching for that beetle and thinks he may have captured its soul in one of the photographs. Maybe you can help him try to find it!
Halloween Parade 2000, New York
(notice the triangular wedges of the eyeholes and jagged slices of the teeth in the pictures)
Halloween Diary of a Pumpkin/Bucket Head
by Steve
I got a call late in the afternoon from Maya-Lisa. "Steevie Dee! We're going to the parade!" This was a new plan. And I needed a costume. Dinnertime came, and I was using my steak knife to cut eye and mouth holes in a large, keg-size bucket.
When I met up with Maya-Lisa at the subway, I had my camera in the bucket along with my head. Often that night the conversation went as follows: "Hey, Pumpkin Head! Is that what you are?" Then the mouth of the pumpkin would emit a bright light. And the subject was caught on digital film.
We crashed a samba drum corps and Maya-Lisa (who was dressed as her Macy Gray knockoff, Gracy May) joined the dancing indian girls (woo-woo, not dot) and samba-ed for blocks. The band leader even gave her his light sticks. We fit right in. Pumpkin Head made many new friends and took many pictures whilst dancing like a motherfucker.
The parade broke up in the 20's, and we went in search of relief. Within 20 minute the scene was as follows:
Loud Voice: "HEY PUMPKIN HEAD! YOU CAN'T PISS THERE! THAT'S A NO PISSING ZONE. OK, go ahead. You can't stop now."
We walked down to the village. The drunks were by now calling me "Bucket Head," and I knew it was time to head home before I got some use as a bucket.
The last shots on the flash card are of the stairs and ceiling in the stairwell half a floor below my apartment. That's where me and Gracy woke up.
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