Top 3 Best Pumpkin Pranks of All Time A comedy article
by John Hargrave | 10/12/2009 07:05 PM | 2896 views
Like Bill O'Reilly's head, pumpkins are hard on the outside, soft and gloopy on the inside. Combine that with the Halloween tradition of mischief-making, and you've got a perfect fruit (not vegetable) for pranking: the humble pumpkin.
We cut open the top of the Web, then scooped out all the seeds and pulp with a giant spoon, so we could find The Top 3 Best Pumpkin Pranks of All Time. Enjoy!
Note: Stand on opposite side of slingshot.
1) The Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator. The classic pumpkin prank is to smash a pumpkin, preferably in a dramatic way such as dropping it from a tall building.
Not content with the slow, predictable speed of gravity, various hobbyists and lunatics have organized pumpkin-hurling events, such as the World Championship Punkin Chunkin, competing to see who can hurl pumpkins the farthest. These contests started with simple catapults and trebuchets, but have now advanced into massive pumpkin artillery that require funding from the Pentagon.
Here's the world record pumpkin hurler, a pneumatic air cannon called the Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator. Watch here as it launches the pumpkin 4,860 feet, or nearly a mile, into a cornfield in Illinois.
(Click to watch -- the money shot is 2:00 into the video.)
This record was set a decade ago, showing that the government really needs to step up its funding of pumpkin-blasting R&D. Screw Mars: when will humanity cross the one-mile barrier for shooting pumpkins?
2) The Cornell Pumpkin Prank. The 173-foot McGraw Tower is the most prominent landmark on the campus of Cornell University. And on October 8, 1997, it became the most prominent landmark on any campus anywhere, because a pumpkin was found sitting on top of it.
Before.
After.
Students were mystified as to how the pumpkin could have been placed atop the massively steep tower -- and each day that went by without someone claiming credit, the mystery grew deeper. Eventually The New York Times wrote an article about the pumpkin, which drew the Today Show, the Associated Press, and CNN to cover the prank.
ABC News shooting from the top edge of the tower. Note how impossibly far away the pumpkin is, even from this point.
The pranksters' timing could not have been better, as cold weather hit the pumpkin before it could decay, keeping it frozen there through March. By this point, the Cornell administration were so happy to have their school finally put on the map that they announced a special "pumpkin retrieval ceremony." The plan was for Provost Don M. Randel to be hoisted up on a crane to take the pumpkin down -- but in a test run, some idiot knocked the crane against the pumpkin by accident, and it broke apart.
Screenshots from a 90's-era webcam of the Cornell administration's bungling rescue attempt.
The remaining fragments of pumpkin have been preserved in formaldehyde and now sit beside a brain display in Cornell's Department of Psychology. What this says about the brains of Cornell University faculty, we will leave the reader to decide.
"By the power of Greyskull ... I have the pumpkinnn!!!"
3) The All-American Pumpkin. It was the year after 9/11, and American patriotism was in full swing. Comedy site ZUG.com cashed in on America's fervent nationalism by creating an "All-American Pumpkin." The idea was to carve an ordinary pumpkin into 50 pieces, send them to volunteers in 50 states, have each volunteer decorate their piece in a manner befitting their state, then reassemble the pieces to form a national monument.
More like a national moldument. By the time all the pieces had been shipped to volunteers and back, the gourd had begun to disintegrate, with pumpkin juice oozing from the pieces, and black mold creeping up the pumpkin's sagging exoskeleton.
Looking back, America was rallying strongly around President Bush in the months leading up to the second Gulf War, and perhaps the pumpkin can be seen as a fitting representation of the country's collective mindset at that time. In that sense, the All-American Pumpkin Prank was not just a prank, it was art.
Which is why the good folks at ZUG.com donated the pumpkin to Boston's prestigious Museum of Fine Arts, as you can see in the videos below, available on YouTube for the first time ever.
Did we miss any legendary pumpkin pranks? And how did the Cornell University pranksters get the pumpkin on top of the tower? Submit your comments and guesses below!
They used a piece of rope or tow strap in the same way a lumberjack tree-climber does on a tree, with the added benefit of just tightening up the slack to control the ascent.
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