Halloween Excess

I have several maples on my property and they are also showing quite a bit of color. Of course it reminds me of Halloween, one of my favorite holidays Halloween says excess, as in too much candy, too many decorations, too many pumpkins to crave or parties to attend. Halloween brings forth some rather bizarre records or events. For an example, take the pumpkin house below. Ok, it's just a side decoration used during Halloween season. but still, one fun thing about Halloween is seeing such sights.

- This year's champion for biggest pumpkin weighed in at 754 kilos -- about 73 kilos shy of the world record set in 2006. And it belonged to a Rhode Island man named Joe Jutras, who at one time held the world record for giant pumpkins.

- In Pretoria, South Africa several bakers created the world's largest pumpkin pie. The 957 kilo pie took two days to assemble and bake and measured 13 meter deep. The pie's other dimensions were 8 1/2 meters long and 2.3 meters wide. It took 10 hours to bake.

- And the record for the most human looking pumpkin face is not from a carving, but rather from the pumpkin's face itself, which had been molded during growth to look human.

- In my former home of New Orleans in 2010 New Orleans Saints football fans set a new world record. On Hallows Eve 17,777 fans came to the Pittsburgh Steelers game in costume, putting them in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest costumed crowd at a Halloween event. Here's a link to a newscast report of that one. http://www.abc26.com/news/local/wgno-news-saints-costume-record,0,2539152.story

There's plenty more excess out there. If you ever visited one of the many Halloween haunted Houses you'll know what I mean. In New Orleans, what is said to be the number one haunted house in the U.S to see, is located in a mortuary house....a former funeral home. Cost of the display, costumes, props, animation lighting, and actors and actresses etc. to set up up each year are hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the crowds that line up to pay $25 a piece to walk through it can expect an hour or more wait for entrance.

It's all a little spooky, but then, that's what Halloween is supposed to be about