Warning: Sad!
The story of the drug-induced celebrity downward spiral is an old one, as old as Hollywood itself. It's always the same – riches to rags, iPhones to crack pipes, rocking the mic to rocking the glory hole stall at truck stops. The reason I'm relating the following cautionary tale is not because of its originality, but because of how close to home it hit. Jack's saga shows that NO ONE, not even a pumpkin, is immune to the seductive twin devils that are fame and Lindsay Lohan.
Chapter 1
I brought Jack the Pumpkin into the world with my own two hands nearly two weeks ago. Sort of like Geppetto, except my Pinocchio was perfect, without imperfections, a testament to my diligence and the battery-powered pumpkin carver I bought at Rite-Aid. It was an act of love, nothing less.
His smile was infectious, his teeth perfectly rectangular. His eyes shone with the intensity of an early 90s Mickey Rourke bender, like a phoenix rising from the ash of Lady Gaga's crotch. His face had a roundness only rivaled by Kim Kardashian's finest asset(s).
It wasn't long before young Jack realized the potential power and worldly glory his physical gifts could bring him. His was a beauty that could not, must not, be ignored. Jack was granted access to the hottest clubs in Manhattan, where he became a fixture on the dance floors and in the VIP rooms, always being swarmed by packs of inflamed ladies clamoring and clawing for just one glance, just one drop of seedy, cinnamon-hot pumpkin sweat. And speaking of ladies, Jack quickly locked down the hottest, coolest actress he could find. Life was good for our young gourd.
Then, one cold October day (about a week ago), Jack made the fateful decision that changed his life forever. He was shopping in SoHo for a birthday gift for his girlfriend, when he accidentally bumped into a Hollywood casting director in front of the H&M store. The casting director was in town looking for body doubles for The Nightmare Before Christmas 2, and you can imagine the look on her face, dear reader, when she was confronted by the lovely Jack.
"You must come to L.A.!" she screeched in an amphetamine-laced drawl. "You're perfect for the part, for a dozen parts. We need your face, we need your body, WE NEED YOUR SOUL! Also, I've been told that they're doing a sequel to Sleepy Hollow. What do you think?"
Jack didn't know who the they're referred to, and he didn't care. The prospect of being a movie star was better than his current plans for that evening. Which involved buying his girlfriend a ridiculously overpriced present and then taking her out to a trendy, pretentious bistro whose Moroccan-Asian-Cajun-Somalian-Irish-Mesopotamian fusion cuisine would give him little more than indigestion. The choice was easy. We said our goodbyes, he gave me first dibs on his girlfriend, and hopped on the next direct flight to LAX. The pumpkin had left the city.
Chapter 2
California was awesome. Jack had an agent and was going to auditions every day. He was hanging out with cool people in the condo the casting director (his new lover) had hooked up for him. Besides his new friends, Jack also loved California's laws. He had always had a severe case of glaucoma, and now he could go to the doctor and get a special card to buy a special kind of medicine that was still illegal in most other places, including New York. Jack was the happiest pumpkin in Hollywood!
But then one fateful evening, Jack went to some super trendy parties in the Hills. And we all know what happens there. At only his third party of the night, our naive pumpkin was confronted by two of the most shady, diabolical characters he'd ever seen. Two vile harpies whose mere presence had derailed and demolished the careers and dreams of countless aspiring whatevers, most of whom were stronger than Jack. They were a rat named Paris and a fucked-up redheaded clown-thing named Lindsay.
Chapter 3
In only two days, Jack transformed from a lovable and handsome aspiring actor with a lot of talent into a smelly, filth-mongering party whore. He was hanging out with Paris and Lindsay non-stop, completely and irreversibly immersed in their vapid lifestyle. There were dinners to attend, pills to swallow, parties, after-parties, after-after parties, nipple slips and brunches. Jack was out of control. He couldn't stop and didn't want to. He'd gone too far.
Then he really let himself go. His once-perfect teeth began to rot and congeal into a pumpkin-pie-like mush. His eyes had lost their fire and were now rimmed by black spots, burn holes, and tract marks. His round face was hollow and his nose was at Michael Jackson danger levels, on the verge of total collapse.
Paris and Lindsay, realizing that hanging out with such a ghastly monster (on the outside) might destroy their already mostly tarnished images (and draw the attention of their parole officers), told Jack he was done. There would be no more parties, no more TMZ exclusives, no more booger sugar. They handed him fifty bucks, kicked him out of their pink Bentley and told him to get lost.
With tears stinging his rotting eye sockets, he stumbled back to the casting director's condo. Jack knocked feebly on the door and stared at the casting director with the look of a forlorn puppy who has had his mischief and wants nothing more than to return to the loving arms of his master. The casting director called him a dickweed pumpkin-junkie and slammed the door in his ruined face.
Jack was alone, homeless, wandering the streets, drinking Mad Dog 20/20s and trying to give migrant workers sexual favors for a couple pesos. They told him he was too ugly and stomped him with their white New Balances. Now in pain, and in need of shelter, Jack stumbled to a rundown shack in Echo Park that he had visited once with Paris and Lindsay to pick up party favors. The crackhouse's proprietor, Julio, welcomed him with open arms (and baggies). Our brain-addled pumpkin, sad reader, spent the next 48 hours huddled on a bed made of old Lunchables boxes, smoking crack, doing speedballs, drinking 40s, snorting/shooting/smoking meth, swearing and having unprotected sex.
Then, a curious thing happened. On the third day, Jack woke up as usual, head pounding, lungs on fire, dollops of Cheez Whiz and paint thinner crusted to his upper lip. But then he noticed something different -- a bright shaft of sunlight piercing through a hole in one of the room's stained window curtains. Intrigued, he pushed a passed-out hooker off the Lunchables pile and stumbled over to the window. He opened the curtain and was instantly blinded by the brightness of a Southern California noon. When his vision cleared, Jack saw palm trees, old Toyotas and new Hondas, obese babies in baby strollers, teeny boppers blabbering into rhinestone-encrusted smartphones, ex-hippie postmen in Bermuda shorts, the eclectic and beautiful movement of average Americans on a wonderfully average American day.
I thought I was done, Jack said to himself, still staring at the deliciously plump baby. I thought there was nothing left for me out there. Nothing for me to do, nothing for me to feel. But I was wrong. I can be a new man!
This is what he did: he dusted the crumbs and roaches off of his face, showered the possibly-dead hooker with the rest of his money, took one last hit of crack, walked downstairs, opened the front door and...
...HE WENT ON A CANNIBALISTIC MURDER SPREE!!!!!!!!!
Epilogue
Today, Jack spends all of his time huddled in a corner of my apartment, hiding from the FBI and huffing a wide variety of household cleaning products when I forget to lock the cabinets. Another tragic end for a once-promising starlet who fell in with the wrong crowd.
Is there a moral to this story? Don't smoke crack? Don't hang out with Paris and Lindsay? Don't go to Los Angeles? All pumpkins go to heaven? I don't know for sure. What I can tell you, well-informed reader, is this – Do not carve a pumpkin unless you are prepared to deal with the consequences. They can be worse than you've ever imagined and may even take you to L.A.
(And don't snort meth.)
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
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