Totoro Troubles

Due to all the construction ruckus (still) going on over at my house, I have been living at my grandmother's place for the last two weeks.  While here, I have been going through my late grandfather's sizable VHS collection (because they always had all the Disney movies here as grandkid-bait when I was younger) and stumbled across our copy of "My Neighbor Totoro," one of Miyazaki's early-ish animated features.

This copy, despite being VHS and therefore full-screen-cropped and English-dubbed, is absolutely invaluable to me because it is something my cousin and I always watched together with our Japanese grandfather when we were younger.  Just looking at the cover art reminds me of him, and I find myself suddenly desperate to own the DVD.  Actually, not suddenly, I have always wanted it, I just want it more RIGHT NOW.  And of course, it is out of print.  I can't find it anywhere, physically, locally (i.e. any specialty stores in Washington state), and through Amazon Sellers the factory-sealed copies start at $98.35 (at the time of this entry).  And I am the type of film lunatic that is even now itching to press that damn button.  A hundred bucks for a DVD and I actually have to physically restrain myself from buying it.  What the hell is wrong with me?

Anyway, to go along with my sudden Totoro renaissance I carved a Totoro pumpkin for Halloween, which is ADORABLE (it also had little pumpkin ears sticking up, but they're impossible to see in the dark).  It was the shading method rather than the cut-through method, so it took ages to get it all close to a similar depth, and then I had to shave out the inside of the pumpkin anyway to make sure it was thin enough for light to shine through.  Because it ended up so thick (1/4 inch, maybe?) I needed a lot of light to make it visible...

Enter the first of my (many) pumpkin troubles: it was impossible for me to find tea-light candles, even in the Halloween specialty stores, in smallish quantities.  I ended up buying the smallest bag I could find, which cost $5.99 and had about four pounds of the tiny candles.

Good thing, too, as it turned out that my Totoro required seven candles.  This number was particularly exciting because it meant I had to light each one and then reach my hand down the 8 inches or so inside the pumpkin so as to place each one, without lighting myself (or, more importantly, my hair) on fire.  Despite the obvious Strugglebucket disadvantage, I did actually manage this without being horribly burned.

This was was pretty impressive in its own right, considering that the matches I was using were easily over twice as old as I am.  I had to go rummaging around in the spider-infested cupboard under the stairs to find a box of matches at all, and then each pack had the image of a 50s housewife on the cover, I kid you not.

Anyway, the tea-lights only lasted about twenty minutes before burning out.  Which meant I then had to reach back down in and retrieve the candles, which were now just small, flimsy metal dishes full of hot melted wax.  And then repeat the whole damn process with seven new candles.  And again, after another twenty minutes.

We lit the jack-o-lanterns around 6:30 when the little kiddos started showing up.  The older trick-or-treaters stopped coming after 9:30.

So my pumpkin was cool and adorable (and one of our neighbors taking her son trick-or-treating knew who it was--I was so excited I hugged her), but by the end of the night our porch was littered with several dozen empty metal tea-light-dishes and a thick coating of candle wax on the inside of my pumpkin and many many burns on my fingers and hands.  Sigh.  But he was so damn cute...