26 Days `till Christmas

Opening Day at The Power Plant

A few weeks ago, we brought you the news (from 1982) on the ground breaking of Baltimore's new theme park, Six Flag's Power Plant. Well here we are three years later at the Grand Opening of the new indoor theme park at the Inner Harbor. Six Flag's Power Plant was built without any rides at all. Instead the focus was on hands-on-activities like the laboratory of the late Dr. Phinneas T. Flagg, who by the way was attempting to create a power supply large enough for the whole planet!

Here's one of Dr. Flagg's inventions...a gigantic larger than life music box. This mechanical wonder played tunes to entertain people until the people stopped coming to the park in 1989. That's when the Power Plant closed it's doors to the public.

Winter Wonderland Ride @ Fantasyland

One of my lesser known internal obsessions is a little defunct amusement park called Fantasyland. I apparently went there when I was about three years old, but I have no memories of the place what-so-ever. Fantasyland doesn't appear to be a fondly remembered and cherished family memory like Maryland's Enchanted Forest as I've been able to dig up very little about the park over the last few years. People that live near historic battlefields do not like things built anywhere near those battlefields! Fantasyland was built smack-dab in the middle of the Gettysburg battlefields, sitting only footsteps away from the National Park Service Gettysburg Visitor Center. It was a kiddie storybook land with displays of nursery rhyme characters and figures from children's literature. There were small rides for families to enjoy together, and the whole park appeared to have a homespun, low-tech appeal to it. The park closed in the early 80's, the land was purchased by the park service and all visible signs of the park were demolished.

A few years ago when I became interested in the park, I started snooping around the Gettysburg area and asking folks what they knew of the park. I never uncovered much but eventually uncovered where the park sat. Fantasyland's parking lot is now overflow parking for the Gettysburg Visitor Center. Making my way past "No Tresspassing" signs, I ventured into the woods beyond the parking lot. There are a few buildings still standing and a few walkways can still be made out. It's not creepy like an old abandon amusement park, it's just strange to be in thick woods and see a snack bar sitting in the middle of nowhere. (I did take some pictures which I'll have to find and share with you in a later post.)


Anywho, I love Dark Rides...Especially non-scary ones. And I'm sure this Winter Wonderland ride would have been a personal favorite of mine. I don't know anything about this ride except that I'd pay my weight in candy canes to take a ride on it. Just looking at this picture of the ride (from a brochure I have) I can only guess what kind of warped Christmas music echoed throughout the ride. Probably the kind of "It's a Small World" kind of song that gets stuck in your head for the rest of the day. Just like everytime I rode "Smurf Mountain" I'd end up spending the rest of the day humming that "la-la-la-la-la-la" smurf song and saying "I just love ice skating, It's so Smurfy!" Ahhh...memories!

Get Your Shop On Black Friday Style!

Let's just start off by saying that Black Friday is awesome! It's just a crazy, madhouse, nutty kind of a day where you can spend $600.00 before the sun comes up! Our alarm clock went off at 3:30am Friday morning. My wife and I were on the road by 4:40am and we were at Toys R Us by 5:15am. The parking lot was full and it took several trips around the lot before I could find a parking space. There were no shopping carts to be found so I had to resort to standing by the exit and following someone to their car to get their cart. Once inside it was the usual insane free-for-all that we've come to expect as Black Friday veterans. I've got to hand it to Toys R Us - they've got all of their big sale items right in the front of the store in huge quantities, clearly marked and ready to go! We picked up a Sit `n' Spin for ten bucks, a Little Tykes tool bench for Tanner (also for $10.00) and a Deal or No Deal game for Elias. We grabbed a place in one of the looooooooooong lines and then took turns holding our place in line and looking through the store for other goodies. We ended up waiting in line for 55 minutes...all this at 6am in the morning!

From there we headed to Sears to nab a great price on the My First Craftsman Action and Sound Workbench, which we got the last one of! The Sears was connected to a mall so we hit up a few stores in the mall, knocking a major gift for Joey off the list. One of the cool things about Black Friday is being a crowded mall like a Saturday night but it's actually very early Friday morning. I snapped this picture of the mobbed food court at 8:20am! It is there that we took part of our new Black Friday tradition, Cheesesteaks at 8:30 in the morning. We paused for the same "breakfast" at the same time last year so I've now dubbed it a tradition.

From the mall we hit up Circuit City which was mad crazy! They had cops out front directing traffic. Inside, the store is shoulder to shoulder people. We pushed our way through and picked up several gifts at great prices. After Circuit City, we drove a little out of the way to go to a K-Mart in the middle of nowhere because they had advertised Herbie: Fully Loaded on Game Boy Advance for $7.00! That was going to be a little gift to myself, but they were all out. So it was on to Linens n' Things were Jen wanted to grab a few items including a Chocolate Fondue set ($15) for ourselves. Jen ran in and did the shopping while I grabbed a power nab in the car...and yes I did the thing where I wake up behind the wheel and think I'm driving and totally freak out!

After a pit stop for gas and Diet Pepsi, Target was next on the list. Target didn't really have anything great as part of their Black Friday sale but that didn't stop us from spending over $100.00 there! Target led to Macy's, which was also part of a mall so we had to hop into the mall for a bit. Leaving that mall, we drove a half hour back toward home and paid a visit to our local mall. KB Toys was all out of what we were looking for there, and that's understandable since it was going on 3:00pm at this point in the day! We were also out of luck at the Hallmark store looking for a couple of particular ornaments.

Our last stop was Kohl's...Man, I hate Kohl's! There is nothing for guys to look at in that store and there is no place to sit! But at Christmas time, they have all kinds of stuff in there so it wasn't too bad. They had Fisher Price toys 40% off, so we stocked up on some stuff for Tanner and Little People stuff for both the boys. They love those little guys!

We got home shortly before 5:00pm. A brisk 12 hours of shopping on one of the busiest shopping days of the year! Needless to say, we were pooped!


A New Era in Black Friday Shopping

You may have heard that some outlet malls opened at midnight Thanksgiving Night/Friday morning. Crazy? We thought it sounded like fun but decided to pass and just do the 5am thing. Well, it turned out to be a big success all over the country. Stores are reporting that between 12:00am and 5:00am they made as much money as they usually do ALL of Black Friday. I heard it referred to on CNN as "a whole new discovered day of holiday shopping!" Next year I bet you'll find everyone opens at midnight! It's going to be the new start of Black Friday!

For more, check out this article from the Boston Herald.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wild World 1984

How excited was little eight year old me when I discovered that Maryland was finally going to have a major amusement park to call it's own!? The answer is: very excited! Like so many other Marylanders, Wild World was a part of growing up mostly because it was just nearby. It was never a great park, it didn't have the impact of Kings Dominion or Hersheypark but it was ours and we all went there every year. Wild World stated off in 1981, mostly as a waterpark but slowly added dry rides. In 1994, the park was renamed the equally generic Adventure World. Adventure World held on for five years before the park received an even more bland name, Six Flags America. I've haven't been to the park since it became a Six Flags. During the 1993 season my college radio station did a promotion with Wild World and I went something like 4 or 5 times in one summer and that pretty much filled me up on the place!

Today on display at WWoB we have a brochure for Wild World circa 1984. This was a few years before they had any roller coasters so the brochure offers pictures of exciting attractions like the Wild Wave wave pool, a kids ball bath, and walking in front of a fence! The brochure also says, "Test your game playing skills in our challenging VIDEO ARCADE; or browse the afternoon away in one of our fine GIFT SHOPS." Sounds like their advertising the 1920 World's Fair. Also on hand in 1984 was the GREAT AMERICAN HIGH DIVE SHOW. I'm pretty sure it was a law that ever amusement park in the 80's had to have a high dive show and it had to be called "The Great American High Dive Show/Team." I would also like to mention an attraction not seen in this scan, "The Pants Corral Video Theatre." I can't imagine what that was! In 1984 a single day adult admission to Wild World was $8.50, this past season that same ticket would have set you back $49.99! Now that's Wild!

Two New Shows From Two Of My Favorites

There are two brand new TV specials airing this evening from the creative legacy of two of my all-time favorite entertainers and personal heroes.

First up at 8:30 pm EST on ABC is HE'S A BULLY, CHARLIE BROWN. This is the 50th Peanuts animated special, and is based on comic strips that Charles Schultz wrote in April of 1995. He was working on the script for the special when he passed away in February 2000. The new show has Charlie Brown going up against a neighborhood bully in a tense battle of marbles. This special is the first new Peanuts offering since Summer 2003. Airing before the new show is a replay of the 1973 classic A CHARLIE BROWN THANKSGIVING, at 8:00pm EST.

To be honest with ya, I didn't know cable outfit TBS ever aired any original programming but tonight at 11:00pm EST they got a new special called THE JIM HENSON COMPANY'S PUPPET UP! - UNCENSORED. You won't be seeing Kermit and Piggy here, but what you will see are the Muppet performers doing improv comedy sketches in a comedy club setting. While I doubt the show will be vulgar, it is rated TV-MA for language. Even so, it should be very fun seeing puppets performing adult material for an adult crowd!

I'm looking forward to both show...I've got the TiVo locked and loaded! (Whatever that means!?)

Somewhat interesting sidenote: Both of my children's middle names were chosen in honor of the artists spotlighted tonight: Elias James and Tanner Charles.

It's Beginning To Look Alot Like Christmas

Elias and Tanner got to visit with Santa Claus today. They both were really excited. They got to sit in his sleigh, and since there was no line they got an extra long visit. Elias took the extra time to fill Santa in on how Christmas decorations replaced all the Halloween decorations at Wal-Mart.

If anyone in the MD/PA area happens to see this toy, the Mickey Mouse Ride On Airplane, while out holiday shopping, please let me know where you saw it. I had planned on getting it for Tanner for his first birthday in a couple of weeks. Target carries the toy, but now I can't find any. I've been to four different Targets and no luck! It's not a big deal, but if you see it - let me know!

Wow! Really? You're Waiting in Line for What?

Nerds and virgins made the news yesterday as people with nothing better to do began to form lines to get their hands on the new Sony Playstation 3 game system which comes out tomorrow. I think we're all in agreement here that these people are just about the lamest of the lame! It's a video game system, people! Are you really that bored with every game on the PS 2 that you need to declare to the town that you're a looser and have nothing else to do with your life than play video games and wait to play more video games? How much better than the PS 2 can it possibly be!? I'm still trying to beat Toy Story 2 on the original Playstation. And at $599.00, people should be boycotting the PS 3 not encouraging Sony by sleeping on cold pavement for the honor to shell over six hundred bucks! Everybody got all ant-sy about the Playstation 2, and look...every kid in America eventually got theirs!

Camping out in line is fun but I think they're pushing it here with this video game system. If people start marathon lines for every highly anticipated product that comes out, then the whole sleeping in front of the store thing becomes normal and not fun anymore. The experience of camping out in line for something should be reserved for these four occasions:

Concert Tickets With a concert, someone famous that you like (and others) is coming to town for one, maybe two nights. There is a set number of seats available, and once the tickets are gone...they are gone! Concerts are unique, one of a kind experiences and if you really dig Aerosmith, Snoop Dogg or The Wiggles then camping out might be the only way to get your hands on some tickets. (In my case it was The Spice Girls, 1998, Nissan Pavilion. Show sold out in like 20-some minutes! We were near the front!)

A Kick-Ass Sale Sometimes (like Black Friday) somebody like Wal Mart will advertise that they've got 50 laptop computers for $200, or flat screen TV's for a couple hundred. Why should your neighbors get all the good deals while you're fast asleep. There's nothing wrong with getting down to the shopping mall early and staking your claim on some good prices! (By the way, $600 bucks for a video game is NOT a good price - I don't care how good the graphics are!)

Transplants I don't think they handle them this way, but if you had to spend the night infront of the hospital to get a relatives name on a Transplant list, then that would be ok! I think you just make a phone call or write a letter, but if they chose to go the "camping out for a kidney" route I wouldn't make fun of you for waiting in line.

Star Wars Let's face it, Star Wars gets in people's blood. It's part of who they are. They practically invented camping out for something stupid. Sure, the movies are the same 24 hours later when you can waltz right into the theatre to see it, but the Star Wars clan does it with style! They dress up, they play games, they build little sim-communities on the sidewalk in front of the theatre, heck...they even get movies made about THEM!

So leave the camping out to metal heads, hippies, and 27-year old guys in Stormtrooper outfits. The Playstation 3 will still be there for you in a couple of weeks, in the meantime why don't you go play with your Tickle Me Elmo Extreeme that you paid $400 bucks for on e-bay.

20 Networks Shows I've Never Seen a Minute Of

• Prison Break
• Lost
• Bones
• CSI
• Medium
• Numb3rs
• The Amazing Race
• One Tree Hill
• House
• CSI: Miami
• Cold Case
• Dancing With the Stars
• Without A Trace
• The Sopranos
• 24
• Studio 60
• Two and a Half Men
• America's Next Top Model
• Smallville
• CSI: NY

The Power Plant Is Coming

A while back I was digging through stuff in my mom's basement, looking for material for the ol' blog. Right here we've got a little piece of Baltimore history that I found from the Wednesday, December 14, 1983 edition of The Evening Sun. This article announces that plans are underway for the "conversion of the old Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. power plant into an indoor, turn-of-the-century entertainment complex." Boy, was Baltimore excited when Six Flags announced they were coming to town. (This was long before there were 13 Six Flags parks in every state of the union.) Six Flags was bringing to town people that helped to build Magic Mountain, The National Air and Space Museum and even Epcot Center!

I guess the project was off to a rocky start from the get-go seeing as how the whole place was themed around a fictional character named Prof. Phineas Flagg and in the article introducing the park to the public the Six Flags director of communications refers to Prof. Flagg as "just a made up character!" Way to stand behind your product there old Six Flags! That's like standing infront of a ride at Disney World and telling people, "These pirates are just pretend! They're made up! They're not real! Neither are those dolls over there singing It's a Small World...they're not real either. It's all just made up!"

Anyhow, as you may know the ill-conceived Power Plant theme park in Baltimore's Inner Harbor didn't last very long. It's kind of ironic that Disney moved into the very same building years later to open it's first ESPN Zone.

You can click the article to enlarge it.

Princess Autumn

Here's a picture of little baby Autumn, the daughter of my friends Brian & Jenae. She's sporting some goodies from her Uncle Ed like her plush Minnie Mouse and her very stylish Minnie Mouse sleeper from the Disney Store. You gotta start `em when their young so they'll have life long Disney memories!

I've Still Got Kids

It's been a while since I've done a post about the kids. Tanner is doing fine, he's completely over that spitting up issue that we had such a problem with in the spring. He just started walking this week which isn't really going to change things around the house. He's been getting into trouble since he started crawling. His favorite things to play with are curtains, computer wires, things in cabinets and the biggest No-No of all: Daddy's remote controls!

Tanner is so much easier to put to bed at night than Elias was. Tanner gets a bottle every night at 8:30, on nights when Jen's at work and I've got the kids we lay in our bed while Tanner has his bottle and Elias and I watch a little bit of DEAL OR NO DEAL on TiVo. Then when Tanner is done his baa-baa I just lay him in his crib and he goes right to sleep. It used to take us at least an hour to get Elias to bed every night when he was an infant!

Elias started preschool in September, and he loves it! We just sent him there to be a little more active and socialize with other kids but he's also learned so much stuff. He knows his days of the week, and the seasons and months of the year. He can tell you what letter a word stars with by sounding it out, and most impressive of all he knows the Pledge of Allegiance?!

Elias is also very excited about Christmas. It's neat to get to see the holidays through his eyes. We're going to see Santa and Rudolph and Frosty arrive at the mall via fire truck this weekend!

Joey has had his hand in a cast for the past three weeks. He jokingly punched a wall a few weeks before the football season was over. As a result, he missed out on the last few games of the season. He's also been taking Hap Ki Do lessons (martial arts) which he's doing really well with. The other night we went to his belt test where he moved up a belt level. He broke a board with his elbow, it was pretty impressive.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Toys...for your crab

A reader sent me these pictures of the latest addition to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse merchandising lineup. The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Hermit Crab Mobile Kit is on shelves for your holiday gift giving needs. I wonder how the meeting went where they decided this was a necessary idea. I don't know what this kit all comes with but one really cool thing it does come with
is this awesome shell with a picture of Mickey on it for your hermit crab to move into. Mickey's image has been used on thousands of items over the years, but there's just something wonderful about slapping a portrait of Mr. Mouse onto an actual living creature!

We bought a hermit crab at the beach this summer. Elias named him "Mr. Crab". When Mr. Crab moved on to the big shell in the sky at the end of his second week with us, we had a simple service for him that involved dumping him into the trash can when Elias wasn't looking. Last week we were killing some time at a Petco and we were looking at the hermit crabs. "He looks like Mr. Crab," Elias said. A few seconds go by and then Elias says, "Hey....Where IS Mr. Crab?"

We quickly moved on to the fish tanks.

Goofy Visits a Gay Bar

Among his many other accomplishments, Mickey Mouse was the star of a Sunday comic strip in newspapers. The comic debuted on January 10, 1932 and continued running until the mid 1980's. The comics were designed to show Mickey and his friends in a more contemporary manner then the timeless animated shorts that were also being produced at the time. This strip is from November 12, 1950 and features as a punch line Goofy entering what would today be known as a gay bar.

Click on the comic strip to enlarge.

Cars Grapes

One more trip to the grocery store this week for us. Look, it's Cars Grapes! Remember the part in the movie where the cars were eating grapes!? No? That's ok...because it never happened. But that didn't stop anybody from slapping Lightning McQueen on the label of this gigantic tub of grapes and jacking the price up a dollar more than those other non-Cars grapes! This product comes to us from Disney Garden, a fantastic new operation that ties the boring old world of produce in with the exciting world of Disney. Keep an eye out at your local grocery store for apples with Mickey Mouse stickers on them, or bananas with Goofy stickers on them! If you've got the fruit, Disney Garden has got the sticker for that fruit!

I'm being sarcastic, but really I think the whole thing is kind of cool!

Gatorland Fire

Portions of one of central Florida's oldest attractions burns to the ground.

Congrats Brian & Jenae!

THIS JUST IN: Congratulations are in order for my good friends Brian and his wife Jenae. The happy couple are proud to announce the arrival of their long-awaited, slightly-overdue new daughter!

Autumn Ruth was born this morning at 3:00am (PCT) weighing in at just shy of 9 lbs. The delivery took 24 hours! Wow-wow-we-wow!
The Wonderful World of Blog offices received a call with the news from the proud papa himself shortly after the blessed event!

Brian is a regular reader of WWoB, so if you wanna leave him a message you can use the comment button at the bottom of this post!

Read About My Kids Watching Too Much TV

The website Ultimate Disney's latest DVD review is for the new Baby Einstein title BABY'S FIRST MOVES. The folks at UD know I've got a house full of little ones so they asked me to write the review. I enlisted the help of Elias and Tanner to get me through the 32 minutes of puppets and babies clapping and dancing, so the article kind of has a personal touch to it.

When your boss isn't around today, hop on over to Ultimate Disney and give my new review a quick read over! Thanks!

When You Wish Upon a Waffle

Yes, they did it again! They got me to buy their waffles because they put Disney characters on the box. Actually, we kind of already bought this brand of frozen waffle. They used to have FINDING NEMO waffles which was great because Elias loves Nemo. They made the Nemo waffles for a couple of years. Then they stopped making them earlier this year and replaced them with ICE AGE 2 waffles. Thanks Eggo! So we just picked up a regular box of waffles. Well, Elias wasn't having any of that. He had been eating waffles with pictures on them for almost two years and some stupid squirrel and his acorn weren't going to deny my son his God given right to eat frozen waffles with cartoon characters on them! So we got him to eat the ICE AGE 2 waffles. No sooner were we done with that mini-crisis then Eggo goes and changes the waffles again to PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN waffles. I'm sure Johnny Depp was trilled to have his face plastered on a box of Eggos. Now the pirates have made way for the Princesses. Of course the box is nice and pink and pretty for girls who love princesses, ponies and delicious homestyle waffles.


Check out the actual waffle. You can eat Ariel or Jasmine's head or their tiara. The artwork on these waffles looks like they were done by one of those dudes at a carnival that draws you with a big head and little body playing tennis. Oh...and by the way, yes Kelloggs...Princess Waffles are indeed a dream come true.

Seriously though, when you can't get to a restaurant for some hot griddle cakes, these bad boys will hit the spot for ya!

Yum! Lilo & Stitch Pizza Omelets

I'm a sucker for any food product that has a cartoon character printed on the box, and if it's a Disney character then it's definitely a bought item. And you may remember me mentioning my love of pizza based food items especially pizza omelets. So, imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon Disney brand Breakfast PizzOmelettes in the frozen food section of my local grocer. I love pizza omelets and I love Lilo & Stitch. Forget about the fact that most microwave egg products taste like silly putty, I threw a box of Lilo & Stitch Breakfast PizzOmelettes into my shopping cart. Here's the extra sad part: the Lilo & Stitch box had Double Cheese flavored PizzOmelettes while there was also another kind with pepperoni on it but that box had The Incredibles on it. Since I'm not really a fan of The Incredibles, I sacrificed my pepperoni for the Lilo & Stitch box. (Sad, I know!)

Yesterday I decided to finally open up the pizza omelet and give it a try. It's been sitting in the freezer for over a month but I couldn't bring myself to eat it. I had no expectations that this was going to taste anything but horrible. I think the words on the box "Soy/Cheese Blend" didn't sit with me too well! But since I really only bought this gross thing to take pictures of it and post them on the blog here, I figured I should make good on my investment. When I opened the frozen 100% egg white "crust" and saw what I was in store for, my mouth didn't exactly water. By the way, if you buy a grocery item and the box has a word describing the food in quotes...you might want to think twice. Lucky for me, my body is used to unnatural junk being poured into it so egg white "crust" wasn't really a concern.

And here's the PizzOmelette after it's 1:45 in the microwave. I think it actually looked better frozen! First I tore off a fork-full of the egg or egg "crust" as it were. It actually tasted like real eggs! I was surprised. But the mound of red and white still didn't look to appetizing. I had a feeling the pizza sauce was going to be god-awful. I dug into a piece with egg and the sauce and soy/cheese blend...Not bad...not bad at all! This almost tasted like a pizza omelet that you'd get in a restaurant. It sure didn't look like one, but the taste was close enough. My only complaint would be that the soy/cheese blend on top of the egg congealed to the point where it was hard to cut through it with a fork, other than that - tasty little breakfast!

Well played Disney...well played. The Lilo & Stitch pizza omelet ranks higher than the Monsters Inc. ice cream that had enough sugar in it to stun a racehorse and higher than the Kim Possible string cheese. Wait....what's that I see....? More Disney breakfast products in the freezer section.....
(oh...a tease for tomorrow's post!)

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Coloring Books

For all the MICKEY MOUSE CLUBHOUSE fans and parents that surf in here looking for the latest news: here's a first look as some coloring and activity books headed our way early next year. It's not often that you find a preview for coloring books, you'd think once they print `em they'd just put them out on the shelves. I guess not!

These books look like they'll be fun, especially the mouse shaped tip of the paint brush!

How to Have a Cool Party

Their Milkshake Brings All The Boys To The Yard

One of life's most simpler pleasures is the McDonald's milkshake flavor of the month. Every year at Christmas time we can look forward to the Egg Nog shake or the Peppermint shake, and sometime before St. Patrick's Day you know Ronald's got the green minty Shamrock shakes flowing. That's good sipping too! This tradition has been going on for years and recently McDonald's has taken to always offering a fourth featured flavor every month. Most recently I sampled Mango Strawberry which was quite flavorful! McDonald's Mango shake is much better than the Mango Orange Fruiti-Tutti Frozen Colada thing that I had at Dunkin' Donuts. That thing looked like 20 oz. of egg yolk, and it tasted like it too. Just because Ponch on C.H.i.P.s liked to drink egg yolk cocktails doesn't mean I want to chug one down with my Boston Creme Bear Claw.

Anyhow, yesterday when I was out and about I noticed that the new shake flavor was Baked Apple Pie. Sounds Yummy, McDonald's! I was glad to see the boys in R&D are coming up with something new instead of just sitting around coming up with more contests that involve text-messaging codes off fry containers. Didn't get to try the Apple Pie Shake yet...It was breakfast time when I saw it, and even though I don't eat a breakfast of champions a milkshake at 6:30 in the morning seems a little rough on the tummy, unless it were called a Breakfast Shake - then I'm totally there! (In Disney World they have breakfast pizza...AWESOME!)

Easily the worst flavor of shake that Mickey D's has ever offered us was called something like "Jungle Fruit" and it was part of their tie-in promotion with the GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE movie. Jungle Fruit was apparently fruit that was actually handled by animals at one point as it tasted horrible. It tasted like expired Tastycakes mixed with Zebra droppings! I could only take two or three sips before I had to throw it away! That's probably the only time I've ever thrown food away at a fast food joint!

I wonder if my local McDonald's has the Egg Nog shake yet!? Speaking of holidays at Mickey D's, don't get me started on how they stopped doing Disney Christmas Tree ornaments years ago! Jerks!

Birthday Shoutouts!

I've got two birthday shoutouts for today. I won't mention their ages because some people don't like to acknowledge when they turn 30!

First, Happy Birthday to my brother Uncle Charlie! He's still kickin' it Texas style! He's finishing Grad School in December too. I'm sure he's busy but he'll take time out of his hectic schedule to enjoy a birthday beverage or two!

Second, Happy B-day to my good buddy Joey Carwash! Joey and I have been friends since college. I knew Joey and I would be good friends for a long time when we met in 1994 at a leadership retreat conference in school. Shortly after the retreat a handful of us took a trip up to Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. Joey rode in my car with me and my friend Aaron. Joey was looking through my cassette tapes that I had in the car. "What's this one?," he asked holding up a tape. "That's an episode of The Golden Girls that I taped from the television." Joey's response: "Sweet...can we listen to it!?" A friendship was forged!

Happy Birthday Ya'll!