If Hannibal Was Hired for Window Displays at Disney World

We had a lot of fun during our trip to Disney World. I’ve gathered some terrible and stupid pictures to share with you. Here we go:

We stayed at the Polynesian, which has extremely polite trash cans:

This thing loves refuse, and wants yours inside it.
This thing loves refuse, and wants yours inside it.

I think my favorite animatronic character of all the rides is this fabulously groovy disco scientist on Spaceship Earth:

She's got it going on, both scientifically and fashion-wise.
She’s got it going on, both scientifically and fashion-wise.

On our final day we dropped by Downtown Disney (if you panic because you hadn’t been able to find any Disney Merchandise in the parks, you can come here and get some, too), where I found this disturbing scene (if you can’t tell from the glare, these are princess dresses MADE OF PRINCESSES):

dresses

Has anyone else been watching Hannibal? Doesn’t this look like something that could be on that show? In particular, the murderer who was working on a “color palette”? Can’t you just imagine someone whistling creepily to themselves while they made this, maybe repeating “my pretty dolls, my pretty dolls” to themselves over and over? Just me?

Lastly, because it’s the most natural change of subject, here’s a picture of baby as Aurora. I really don’t subscribe to “pink princess pretty girly girl” stuff. I’m not crazy about how  gender-specific specific baby items have become. However, when your five year old niece asks for a Sleeping Beauty dress from Santa Claus and hopes that Lydia has one to match, well, then, by golly:

Aurora Lydia

She’s drooling in this picture, which I think makes her more authentic character-wise because you know Sleeping Beauty’s pillow case was nasty with sleep drool.

And while I still DON’T embrace pretty pretty pink for all girls all the time, damned if she didn’t look cute. And, now that she’s being constantly mistaken for a boy, I have to steel myself to fight the power and not feel like I have to always dress her like this. Disney World does weird things to me.

I Love-Hate You, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a bunch of glorious bullshit. It is so corporate, sponsors sponsor sponsors – “The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade brought to you by NBC presents the cast of Annie courtesy of McDonalds.” That’s really not an exaggeration.

It’s awful. I watch it every year and love each terrible minute. Why? I’m not sure. It’s cheesy. It’s a wall to wall advertisement save for the occasional school band or cheerleading squad. Why would anyone want to watch it?  It’s tradition. Tradition is a very powerful lure. But, more than that, I kinda like watching people sell their souls. I know that makes me sound like a terrible person and I don’t  have any response to that. There’s just something about a musician who wants to be taken seriously as an artist having to lip sync a cheesy song on the Build-A-Bear parade float while a bunch of furries cavort about that warms my heart. And also listening to the absolute bollocks river of banter and product placements that the hosts have to vomit out of their Turkey day mouths. Real example: “”Hamburger Helper gives us a float to remember.” They had to say that!

Because this isn’t at all scary.

And let’s not forget the balloons! I can’t see the giant balloons without remembering the scene in the 1989 Batman movie where the Joker tries to kill the entire city with poisoned giant parade balloons. I don’t hope that this happens at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But, I don’t want to miss it if it does.

Another game I like to play is “What Will be the Most Embarrassing Clip to Watch in Ten Years Time.” The possibilities are endless! Here’s some examples (people with heart conditions, sense of decency, or allergies to train wrecks should not watch) they are really bad quality, too, just to add to the mood:

I wrote the thing about The Joker BEFORE I found this clip.

Let’s remember: someone had to actually write this song, then she had to learn it, then she had to pre-record it, then she had to learn dance moves to it.

Remember when Victoria Jackson seemed sane riding around on a giant snail? Also, Phyllis Diller, RIP, this is EXACTLY how one should behave performing in this parade. I’m serious.

Jordan Knight of NKOTB gives up on lip synching about halfway through (unless one of the other New Kids sings that line, I bet someone knows! Show yourself!). I also LOVE that Donnie looks positively delighted that children have no food to eat or a place to go.

There’s a very good chance I will be live-tweeting this marvelous event, so please stop by and laugh at things with me: @cannibal_nerd

They are not friends, stupid shirt.

I was in a thrift store the other day looking through the t-shirts, and this one caught my eye:

What in the hell is this? Tom and Jerry best friends forever? Excuse me? Surrounded by hearts and flowers with loving smiles on their faces? Unless this shirt is from some alternate dimension (in which case I should have bought it as it might be worth something), the people that came up with this shirt either don’t know who Tom and Jerry are or they expect the young demographic to not know. Boys and girls and/or t-shirt makers: Tom the cat has been trying to kill and eat Jerry the mouse since 1940. Sure, sometimes they may reluctantly, temporarily set their differences aside to foil a dog here and there, but that doesn’t make them best friends by any stretch of the imagination. THEY DELIGHT IN CAUSING THE OTHER HARM. Delight, I tell you!

But, you know what? Maybe, for the sake of a buck, I’m willing to ignore narrative, character, and nature and embrace this foolishness. These are obviously rough drafts, they’ll need to be cleaned up by someone more talented than me, but I think the idea is there. I want my damn millions:

Just like Tom and Jerry, but in real life! I bet these two are both running to help a third friend, maybe a hippopotamus.

Actually, this isn’t far from the truth. The Walking Dead? More like The Walking FRIENDS!

Luke Skywalker and The Emperor in Star Wars were the Marty McFly and Doc Brown of space.

Buffalo Bill and Catherine Martin were total besties! BB helped Catherine with her beauty regime (lotion) and organization of beauty products (keep lotion in a basket so you always know where it is)!

The Wizard of Oz was full of friendship. But you can also make a t-shirt out of this stuff.

Pop Culture Roundup 3

On the right of this blog is an Amazon affiliate banner. Yes, it’s an affiliate link, but it’s also a little list of the things I’ve been watching at any given time, like a lazy, non-personal journal. It’s over that way ======>

But, I also like to occasionally talk about what I’ve seen, and so here’s some of the stuff I’ve watched over the last few weeks:

Things I hadn’t seen before:

The Fog
I hadn’t seen this 1980s John Carpenter horror movie before. I thought the fog was the actual thing that killed you but I learned that you shouldn’t make those kinds of judgements about movies called “The Fog.” Helpful tip you would think most people would know but didn’t in this movie: if, after midnight, someone shows up at your door and eerily and creepily loudly and slowly rhythmically knocks on your door with what sounds like a large metal object – DO NOT ANSWER YOUR DOOR.

Homeland
Wow. Have any of y’all seen this show? I didn’t really know much about it before I started watching it other than everyone said it was really good. It was really good. I don’t want to spoil anything about the show so the only comment I’ll make on it is that I keep wanting to call it “Homeland Fries.” That comment has nothing to do with anything, don’t worry.

Things I re-watched:

Groundhog Day
Our local movie theater recently had a little film festival with classic comedies. This was one of them. I’ve seen this movie many, many times. It is a practically perfect movie. It survives having Andie MacDowell in it. I’m glad this movie exists, because if it ever happens to me in real life, I will have the advantage of being able to explain it to my loved ones. “Groundhog Day is happening to ME!” Much easier than for Phil Connors.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Discussion: Ferris Bueller is a bit of an asshole – yes or no? I love this movie. This may shock all of you, but I’m much more of a Cameron than a Ferris, so I often roll my eyes at Ferris’ shenanigans and think he’s kind of a jackass. My favorite character is Grace, Principal Rooney’s assistant.

The Jerk
This is one of my favorite movies. I don’t understand people who don’t like this movie. We got to see it in the theater and here’s something I never noticed: the guy that gives Navin his first hitchhike ride is Rob Reiner. I don’t know how I’ve missed that all these years. So many useable quotes from this movie. One of my favorites: “You know, you can tell so much about a person from the way they live. Just looking around here I can tell…you’re a genuinely dirty person.”

Have you seen anything good lately?

What a Discovery

I used to occasionally watch a show called If Walls Could Talk on HGTV a while back. Basically, it showed people talking about the amazing treasures and historical artifacts they found in their fancy old homes. The camera would follow people up and down creaky old stairs while they explained how they discovered this or that. Examples (paraphrased and possibly made-up):

  • “I was in the attic trying to escape from my family’s oppressive neediness and while I was rocking back and forth in the corner, I noticed a loose floorboard and lo and behold, there was a first edition of The Wizard of Oz under it.”
  • “I was burying my mistress, I mean, some jars of pennies in my crawlspace when my shovel hit something hard. Turns out, it was an old tin box with a perfectly preserved Civil War-era flag in it. I’m lucky to be so homicidal, I mean, thrifty.”
  • “I was having a good wank in my ‘jack-off shack,’ which is the hall coat closet, and it finally dawned on me, this trunk that I always sit on in here while I look at Hustler didn’t belong to us. So I looked inside, and it was a whole bunch of stuff that used to belong to Chester A. Arthur!”

You know, things like that.

Well, I had my own If Walls Could Talk moment this week. As you may know, we’re currently staying with my mom while we try and figure out what we want to do while our still not bought house is not bought. Our cat is currently staying in the large room over the garage, which for the last 25 years has been called “The New Room” since its addition in the late 1980s.

In the early 2000s, my sister lived up in The New Room while she attended college. The New Room has a bathroom with a small closet. I’m currently using this small closet (which also houses Kenbie and all his/her friends) to store the cat’s food. Well, and here’s my moment:

  • “I was yelling at my cat to for the love of God shut the hell up and getting out his food to hopefully appease him, when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, taped to the inside wall of the closet, this:”

Y’all, it’s just like finding the diary of a Union soldier that shows great bravery in the face of turmoil, except it’s about not mixing up your shit and shower sponges and I see the person who made it multiple times a week. Still, it’s so amazing to have such a historical glimpse into the house’s past.

Have you ever found anything interesting in your house? I know it will be hard to top the sponge color code but I’d still love to hear about it.