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Ten years ago this month, three sleep-deprived SNL writers accidentally created one of the most beloved Halloween characters in television history.
And apparently, Tom Hanks thought the whole thing was ridiculous.
The story behind David S. Pumpkins is almost as funny as the sketch itself.
In October 2016, SNL writers Mikey Day, Bobby Moynihan, and Streeter Seidell were working late into the night on a Halloween sketch about a haunted elevator.
The premise was simple. Every floor would reveal something terrifying.
But around 4 or 5 in the morning, someone suggested a character named David Pumpkins. Moynihan added the middle initial. Nobody knew what the S stood for. Nobody knew who David Pumpkins was supposed to be.
And that was basically the entire joke.
They found a cheap pumpkin-covered suit, gave him two dancing skeletons, and decided this completely ordinary-looking middle-aged man would act like he was a legendary Halloween character everyone should recognize.
Tom Hanks reportedly thought the sketch was so bizarre that he suggested saving it for Chris Hemsworth, who was scheduled to host the following week.
But Hanks eventually committed to the bit.
The ridiculous grin. The awkward dancing. The absolute confidence. And, of course, the immortal question:
“Any questions?”
The genius of the sketch is that nothing ever gets explained. The people riding the elevator are just as confused as the audience. And every time David S. Pumpkins returns, it somehow gets funnier.
The sketch became an instant hit. NBC eventually made an animated Halloween special around the character, and Hanks brought him back to SNL in 2022.
Ten years later, people still dress up as David S. Pumpkins every Halloween.
Three writers came up with a completely nonsensical idea at 4 a.m. Tom Hanks wasn’t sure it would work. Nobody bothered to explain the joke.
And somehow they created a Halloween icon.
Oh, and years later, the writers revealed what the S stands for.
Simon.
Why Simon?
Absolutely no reason whatsoever.
Which, honestly, makes the whole thing even funnier.
Happy Halloween. 🎃
ANY QUESTIONS?
Keith.js retweeted
I've heard a few stories from people who make it a point to trick-or-treat at Christopher Walken's house, because he doesn't decorate or dress up. What he does is take a single dining room chair, and sit in the middle of his driveway with a bowl of candy on his knee. And when people approach him, he takes out once single piece, hands it over, doesn't blink, and whispers weird things like "Watch out for the leaves. They're... slippery." lol
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Patrick Stewart asked McKellen for advice on Macbeth.
- Well you’ve got that speech, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…
- Yes. But I know what that means.
- I think perhaps you don’t. The important word isn’t ‘tomorrow,’ it’s ‘and.’
Stewart lit straight up.
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Since everyone is posting their fav scene with Stewart, here is mine. Masterclass acting from him (and phenomenal acting from Frakes too, for that matter) to convey the subtext under the formalities that he feels terribly hurt by someone he thought he knew better.
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One week ago, lawyers at Canada’s top firms received urgent calls from their IT departments about a critical software update or an expired password. The agents were happy to stay on the phone and help.
Even to a skeptic, the calls could seem legitimate. They were often placed through Microsoft Teams, appearing to come from internal IT employees, or they were phone calls from the IT department’s number.
The reality: Hackers were on the other end, spamming Canadian lawyers en masse.
The tactic the hackers used is called vishing, short for voice phishing – and it worked. At least four companies were broken into, all among the country’s most prestigious law firms: McCarthy Tétrault LLP, Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, Bennett Jones LLP and Borden Ladner Gervais LLP.
The extent of the damage is still being assessed, but the fallout is already immense. Law firms market themselves as trusted advisers, and the nature of their work means they store sensitive files on their servers. These include non-public corporate information, communication between client and counsel, and their clients’ tax, financial or health records.
theglobeandmail.com/business…
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Patrick Stewart's stories from DUNE are pretty great. There's a whole thing about how David Lynch was disappointed when he showed up because ... well, I won't spoil it. And then this, on his first conversation with Sting, is quite funny:
Patrick Stewart was amazing, a bygone sort of actor with working-class ethics and classical aesthetics. One of the most generally beloved men in Hollywood. Could play a nasty villain! Great actor, he will be missed. thebulwark.com/p/patrick-ste…
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Your computer will be some kind of dumb terminal incapable of running anything more demanding than Notepad, and you'll need to connect to a data centre to get anything done under this glorious future envisaged by the tech bros.
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The people saying AI is a fad may be as delusional as the people who said the internet was a fad, but in 8th grade they taught us HTML because making websites was going to be a really important skill. These things don't always evolve like you expect.
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SIR PATRICK STEWART (1940-2026)
Before everything else, Patrick was defined by being born and bred in Yorkshire, the proud county in the north of England which he loved to the end. You could hear it in his accented voice and in the stern honesty with which he told you what he thought and felt. Yorkshiremen have no truck with half-truths or avoidance of big issues. He wore his heart on his sleeve, which made him a man to rely on, to admire and in my case, love.
We first met as ambitious young actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company half a century ago but we weren’t in the same productions. My first strong memory was a few years later, meeting him in the street in central London when he told me about an offer to take over a leading part in 'Star Trek'. “But Patrick think of your stage career in the UK. Do you really want to risk—getting lost in Hollywood for years and years?”. Well, he took the risk and thank goodness for us all that he did for not just his devoted Trekkies but film and theatre audiences, who marvelled at his using international celebrity to star in a string of cinema successes ('X-Men' of course) and in great classical plays by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Peter Shaffer, Pinter and Beckett at Stratford-upon-Avon, in London’s West End and on Broadway.
America was his adopted home, where he met his adored Sunny who has cared for him through sickness and health, through thick and thin. But he never forsook his origins: and the proudest achievement of the most respected and beloved actor of his generation on either side of the Atlantic, was his appointment as Chancellor of Huddersfield University in Yorkshire.
His farewell performance in 'Avengers: Doomsday' is yet to be seen.
Ian McKellen 29 October 2026
Photo: University of Huddersfield
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This is such a bleak story about what it's like to try to land a job right now. nytimes.com/interactive/2026…
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NEW:
Official voter turnout for Alberta's question 10 referendum was 70.4%.
Option 1 was victorious by a margin of 75%-25%.
elections.ab.ca/resources/me…
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The fact that the PHP vulnerability didn't immediately turn into mass chaos is only "surprising" to people who don't know anything about cybersecurity (or people trying to sell you something).
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ALT Tweet reading: "One disorienting thing about getting older that nobody tells you about is how weird it feels to get a really passionate, extremely wrong lecture from a much younger person about verifiable historical events you can remember pretty well."
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This is an argument in favour of proportional representation, not really a case for gerrymandering.
