Pumpkins like these line Disneyland’s Main Street as part of the Halloweentime celebration. They’re nice and all, but did you know that they are more than just jolly seasonal decorations?

Each and every Main Street pumpkin is a caricature of a prominent person from Disneyland’s past, placed as a tribute to their contribution. It is considered a great honor to receive a “pumpkin on Main Street,” and every September Disneyland has a little ceremony in which new “pumpkinheads” are inducted.

Guests aren’t expected to recognize all the faces (although X. Atencio, Mary Blair, Wally Boag, and Carl “Cubby” O’Brien are pretty obvious in the above photo), but a handy guide is available at no charge at City Hall.

Okay, we get that the pumpkin guys are playing cards, and that the guy on the left is a cheater (as indicated by the card poking out from beneath his hat). But it all falls apart when you notice what he’s holding in his left hand. Here, take a look:

The idea, we can only assume, is that the cheatin’ punkin’ is using a mirror to look at his companion’s cards. Well then, why the heck is he pointing the powder-holding portion of the compact at the other guy’s hand instead of pointing the mirror there? And, even more important, what the heck is a male pumpkin doing with a woman’s compact??? Seriously — you don’t think the other pumpkin would notice something was out of place? Particularly since, as everyone knows, pumpkins don’t wear makeup in the first place!!!

Come on, Disneyland, you’re better than this. The least you can do is close the park down for a few hours — you know, on an emergency basis — and get this taken care of before you embarrass yourself any further. While you’re at it, we’d like to know where the rest of the deck of cards is, too.

If we had time, we could say a whole lot more about the little Halloween area’s minor shortcomings. Those pumpkins that the guy is spending so much time carving taste terrible. Also, that “cow” is totally fake. And don’t even get us started on the goats wearing bandanas, as if goats know how to tie square knots!

While there, we noticed a number of interesting things which we will post about for a day or two.

One of the interesting things we noticed was in the Halloween-themed area of Big Thunder Ranch. In a pumpkin-carving area, we noticed this particular bit of artwork:

Upon seeing this, we had to ask ourselves, “What is a carving of Cthulhu doing at Disneyland?” And having asked ourselves this, we had to ask the pumpkin-carving castmember about it. He hemmed and hawed a bit, then made some sorry excuse about it being a carving of a pirate! Since when is Cthulhu a pirate?

Given this evidence (combined with Disney’s well-known avoidance of trademark/copyright violation), I think it is more than safe to assume that Disneyland has obtained the rights to all of H.P. Lovecraft’s literary works and will be building some kind of Lovecraft-themed extension to either Disneyland or Disney California Adventure.

Lovecraft land will definitely be an awesome addition to the resort. We look forward to riding the Madness Mountain rollercoaster (safety spiel: “Remain seated please; ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”) and drinking a glass of Miska-tonic with our Dunwich Sandwich at the Innsmouth Inn!

After sneaking into Disneyland more than an hour before opening (it’s amazing what you can do when you’re disguised as a planter), our Official DisneyLies Photographer managed to snap a picture of an Imagineering test of the new Antimatterhorn.

This Matterhorn overlay — accomplished in minutes thanks to billions of carefully installed, computer-controlled black-light LEDs — is intended for use during this year’s Halloween festivities. Rumor has it that, when the Matterhorn is in “evil” mode, the mountain will not only look evil, but the cars will also be fitted with super-bumpy wheels and the Yeti will have a really, really bad haircut (sort of an “abominable mullet,” according to an Imagineer).