By Danny Chandler

Ghosts may fly through the air everywhere else, but in Moab, it's the pumpkins that come alive and take flight on Halloween.

The 4th Annual Pumpkin Chuckin’ Festival was held Saturday in Moab. Everyone in attendance was encouraged to dress up for Halloween.

“It's great to see the community in their Halloween costumes,” said Moab resident Kenna Watkins. “And who doesn't want to see a good pumpkin get chucked?”

The main draw to the festival is the Pumpkin Chuckin’ Competition, where participants build catapults and trebuchets to launch pumpkins hundreds of feet through the air.

A trebuchet is a French version of a catapult, with greater capabilities for distance, weight and accuracy. 

 By BEKAH DEMORDAUNT

Halloween in Provo is made up of a couple hundred Halloween parties with couples or roommates with elaborately planned costumes. However, the crew at Velour is ensuring live music fans have a place to go with a costume in tow.

Velour will be hosting three headliners Saturday night for their Halloween Ball, which is also being called the Dead Ball. Neon Trees, the Elizabethan Report and The Brobecks will all perform. This is the first Halloween Ball being held at Velour, which is replacing the traditional Monkey Grinder theatrics held at Velour for the past four years.

The Monkey Grinder show was an old time circus-like theatrical show complete with peg-legged pirates, fire breathers and men on stilts. However, after Monkey Grinder band members started moving out of Utah Valley, Velour owner Corey Fox knew that in order to replace the tradition it had to be pretty epic.

 With neglect, relationships once sustained by the warmth of fire may soon chill to ice.

This is the concept behind Alan Ayckbourn’s dark comedy “Absent Friends,” directed by Barta Lee Heiner and performed by BYU acting students in the Margetts Theatre through Nov. 14.

“‘Absent Friends’ shows how relationships have the fire of passion at the very beginning but if that fire is not nurtured it turns to ice,” Heiner said.

The story is about a group of old friends who were at one time very close but have let their fire burn out and are now forced to see the consequences of their own frailties when they meet together for tea to comfort an old friend, Collin, after the sudden death of his fiancé.

During the gathering, Collin cheerfully reminisces on the romance and bliss their relationships once had, taking each of the five troubled friends to their own breaking point.

It was 11 p.m. and very cold, yet hundreds of brave fans lined up in front of the BYU Bookstore on Monday night, excitedly waiting for the doors to open. One was holding an axe, a few were wearing cloaks, but most were simply stamping their feet and rubbing their hands to keep warm.

“I’ve been here since 7,” said junior Joel Gardner, holding a fleece blanket around himself.

So what caused these devoted fans to queue up, forming a line that extended along two sides of the Wilk? Nothing more or less than the midnight release of “The Gathering Storm” by BYU professor Brandon Sanderson, the next book in the “Wheel of Time” fantasy novel series.

“The Wheel of Time” has an interesting back-story. The original author, Robert Jordan, wrote 11 very successful books in the series but contracted a fatal heart disease before finishing the final installment.

By nature, I write, read, think, and talk about politics. But since (wo)man can’t live by politics alone, I will reveal the side of me that keeps my roommates from thinking I’m completely cold-hearted. You see, underneath my “politics-only” exterior, I have a soft spot in my heart for … Disney fairies.

Sad but true.

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Cancer isn’t easy for anyone to deal with, but for one Utah family, charitable musicians and a caring community are helping to lighten the burden.

A 9-year-old girl named Hannah Laursen from Orem and her family received dire news a few months ago when doctors told them she had a brain tumor.

Since then, Hannah has undergone surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
The good news is the family has received a lot of support from charities, the community and musicians.

JR Richards is best known as the lead singer of the band Dishwalla and is also a solo artist. Richards coordinated with Neil Warner, president of the Second Chance Foundation of Utah, to hold a benefit concert to raise funds for Hannah.