the musical fruit: movement #23.

the musical fruit: movement #23.
song: "mayonaise," smashing pumpkins
fruit: pumpkin

if i was asked to name the one musician i'd most like to punch squarely in the face, it's billy corgan, the mastermind behind the smashing pumpkins. they're a joke now, but when i first heard the pumpkins back in the early 90s, when my younger brother brought home gish (their debut album), they became my favorite band for most of the decade. their early stuff was filled with fuzzy, layered guitars unlike anything out there & i picked up their second album, siamese dream, on tape on the day that it came out. from there, i bought every single & b-side they put out & even saw them in concert (in rhode island, headlining the fourth lollapalooza). i still loved them even though they were absolutely awful live & the best act that year was the beastie boys, whose set made me think i was going to die in the mosh pit. 

my favorite song off of siamese dream is "mayonaise," the sixth song on an album filled with amazing songs. it starts off with a single guitar & a minute in, a bunch of fuzzy guitars come in, turning the song into a pseudo rocker with occasional quiet parts. there's an acoustic performance of the song on their 1994 video release called vieuphoria & for years, it became one of the songs that i learned & most enjoyed playing on guitar. back in the 90s, i used to listen to the song & bring myself to tears with lyrics like "i fail, but when i can, i will. try to understand that when i can, i will." although i've sort of forgotten about the song over the last decade or so, those lines have sort of become a mantra for my lifestyle. anyway, siamese dream is definitely one of the best rock albums of the 90s & despite how much of a douche nozzle billy corgan's become over the years, i can still put the album on & go nuts over it...not as nuts as present day billy corgan, but still pretty nuts.

...so i have a pumpkin. since today's halloween & nobody cares about pumpkins come november 1st, it's a fruit/squash living on a short timetable. as you can tell from the photo above, although i have plans to see what i can do with it, i've yet to get around to carving it into a jack-o-lantern. from what i've learned, the pumpkin's a pretty useless fruit unless you're willing to remove the insides for pumpkin seeds & scrape the insides to get at the pumpkin meat. actually, one moment...i'm going to try giving this pumpkin a good carving before it's officially november.

...holy crap that was unnecessarily messy. regardless, i have my first jack-o-lantern of this decade. check it! i also have a ton of pumpkin seeds which, when they dry out & are mixed with some olive oil & salt, are going to make a slightly-boring snack that i'll use to subdue my nicotine cravings. other than that, this pumpkin is dead to me. tomorrow i'll probably take it & place it outside my building, where teenage hooligans will likely come across it & smash it to bits in the street...& with that, the halloween cycle will be completed.