More Max Jacks: Extreme Pumpkins II by Tom Nardone

Tom Nardone, author of the top-selling Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare Your Neighbors and proprietor of his riotous website ExtremePumpkins.com, has a new volume out for the prankster in all of us, the outrageous Extreme Pumpkins II: Take Back Halloween and Freak Out a Few More Neighbors.

Nardone's stated goal for both books is to "reclaim Halloween from the cheerful, the cutesy, and the parent-sanctioned." This sequel advertises such artistic triumphs as the Demented Tool Man pumpkin depicted on the cover, as well as the Projectile Sneeze Pumpkin, Baseball-in-the-Eye Pumpkin, Doll-Eating Pumpkin, and Full-Diaper Baby Pumpkin. Nardone even, er, branches out to that twisted relative of the pumpkin, the gourd, to exorcise, er, I mean exercise, his dark-side-of-Martha-Stewart talents.

Although a loaded-diaper jackie o'lantern may be a tiny bit gross, it's a pretty funny concept that'll give trick or treaters and their bored parents a chuckle on the big night. And if you want to keep your 'tweeners and teeners around for at least part of Halloween night, have an Extreme Pumpkin Party with a take-home product to surprise and delight their own family and neighbors. It's a sorta, kinda, almost wholesome activity for merry pranksters who need to sublimate their drive to make mischief, and if you have the stomach for it, you can always make pumpkin pie out of the, er, remains.

For last season's review of Nardone's first book, see my post of October 12, 2007, here.