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!

It's Halloween! Here's Another Comic

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Today we have another rehash from my college school newspaper, in fact it's from the same November 1994 issue as yesterday's post. Before I achieved fame and fortune with my Dog & Bunny comic strip I attempted another comic that was a direct knock off of another popular strip. It was so much of a rip-off that we named the comic MR. ED'S FAR SIDE RIP-OFF, not that about 100 other single panel comics from the mid-90's couldn't also be called Far Side Rip-Off's but we just decided to be upfront about it. The artwork was done by a friend of mine, Jeff Levine, who was into graphic arts. (Last I heard from him he designed sports apparel for local teams.) As with so many other things I did in 1994, this comic's gag revolves around the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Remember, if you have trouble reading the comic you can click on it to enlarge it!

Mr. Ed's Barn of Thought: I Got Your Trick or Treats! - 11/2/94

Here's the Halloween edition of a humorous column I wrote for the school newspaper back in my college days. This article appeared in the November 2, 1994 edition of Red & Black - the student newspaper of Catonsville Community College in Baltimore, MD. Some of the jokes and references are a bit outdated, but I guess that's what happens when you rerun a 12 year old newspaper article.

This year at at my house for Halloween we had two piles of stuff for trick or treaters. One pile was candy bars, which most kids got, and the other was 24k gold bullion for any kid not dressed up as a Power Ranger. Is it me, or was every other kid a Power Ranger?

And of course there was that one kid whose parents took the cheap way out by dressing him in an all red sweat suit, sunglasses, and a motorcycle helmet. That's the same kid who every other year is a ghost.

What's with the ghost costume anyway? Could you possibly be a little less creative with that thing?

Yes, another Halloween has come and gone, and what did we learn from it? That those Power Rangers are a bunch of rich SOB's, and that there is nothing more fun that putting on disguises and asking total strangers for food.

I use the word "food" and not "candy" because every trick or treat route has at least six or seven houses that give out raisins, peanuts, or apples. The apple of course came from the one couple on your street with no kids who decided they had something better to do than sit home and meet the neighbors, so they leave a giant tub of apples bobbing in water. An apple is still better that a pencil! Would you tell me what the hell a kid is supposed to do with a plain, yellow, No. 2 pencil? Stationary supplies are no substitute for a box of Milk Duds, even the 3 count size.

Each Halloween sees its share of trends. This year of course they are the Power Rangers, the Lion King, and O.J. Simpson. Then you have your long running favorites, G.I. Joe, Ninja Turtles, and Star Trek characters. And the classics, cowboy, witch, clown, etc. And then at the bottom of the costume hierarchy is the ghost, along with that one kid who has aluminum foil around a baseball bat and can't get over the fact that Star Wars was filmed about 20 years ago.

The costumes that always drove me nuts are the ones that are bought "off the rack" at finer discount stores everywhere. You know the ones I'm talking about, the costumes hanging on cardboard hangers alongside 15 thousand other ones. The thing that irritated me about these costumes wasn't the fact that they ripped at the seams halfway through the Halloween party at school that day, but that the costumes were just a jumper with a picture of whoever it was supposed to be on it. I assure you Fred Flintstone never wore a shirt that had his picture on it, yet alone the words "Yabba-Dabba-Doo!" (tm).

Home come some parents could just never spring the 79 cents for the official trick or treat bag? The bag with the Haunted House on the side and a jack o'lantern on the other. They were always sold at the checkout counter of People Drug...oops, I mean CVS!?

But, when all is said and done, Halloween is a special time of year. It brings together a community, kind of the same way a disgruntled postal employee does. (What does that mean?)

Halloween Weekend Movie Suggestions

For Halloween movie goodness everyone often turns to the horror section of their video store. When I was nine I saw POLTERGEIST and that pretty much kept me away from the horror genre for the next...oh...24 years (and counting). So, may I recommend some of my favorite films to pop in the ol' DVD player come trick or treat time...

When you mix Ernest P. Worrell and any holiday only good things will happen. Everyone knows Ernest saved Christmas, but when you might not know is that Ernest also had a hand in saving Halloween as documented in the 1991 big screen adventure ERNEST SCARED STUPID. The fourth of the nine Ernest films finds the commercial pitchman up against an evil troll who is accidentally unleashed on a small New England town on Halloween night. Big-Time comedy ensue as Ernest must learn how to defeat the troll with the help of an old witch (played by Eartha Kitt.) As I've said before, and I'll say again at Christmas, you just can't go wrong with an Ernest flick.

One of the only times you'll find me recommending a Bette Midler film, HOCUS POCUS is a really fun Halloween movie. Three kids match wits with a family of 300 year old witches who are accidentally unleashed on a small New England town on Halloween night. Midler plays one of witches along with Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimny. Bette Midler sings but not "Winds Beneath My Wings". See, it's not that scary!

Here's the setup for SPACED INVADERS, a ship full of aliens hears a rebroadcast of Orson Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS radio show and mistaken it for the real thing. They head to Earth to join in the alien invasion where they are accidentally unleashed on a small New England town on Halloween night. One of the little aliens wears sunglasses and talks like Jack Nicholson...how funny is that!?

This one doesn't take place on Halloween, but since Elvira only works in the month of October it's fitting to watch her debut movie ELVIRA MISTRESS OF THE DARK at Halloween time. Elvira travels to Massachusetts to attend the reading of her Aunt's will. Along the way there are plenty of puns and bad one liners. After some comic mischief, Elvria's boobs are accidentally unleashed on the small New England town on what might as well be Halloween night. It's a good time, and I'm proud to say I saw this gem in the movie theatre 18 years ago.

Got any Halloween favorites you'd like to share with us?

My Friend Can Draw Better Than Your Friend

In keeping with the Halloween fun I have some artwork by my good friend Grant Corley. Grant has been my best friend since the 5th grade and he's always been handy with a pencil. After high school Grant abandon me for something called "college" and he eventually ended up in San Francisco studying art and trying to break into animation. For a while he was employed as the art director for the newspaper The Examiner where in addition to fulfilling his lifelong dreams of designing ads for used car lots, he also got to take pen in hand and create some great original artwork for the paper as well. Here's two examples of his work for The Examiner with a Halloween theme. Grant drew all this freehand. I'm telling ya, the boy knows his way around a pencil. You can click either of these pictures to enlarge them, and we'll even throw in this bonus link to a .pdf file if you really wanna blow it up and print it or just check out all the detail!

Site News: Somebody Saw Our Pumpkin

As you may know, I use the site textamerica.com for most of my photo hosting needs. I have a page there called Wonderful World of Photos where I post pictures of all the crazy stuff my family does. It's always cool when someone out there in cyberspace takes note of what you do and passes it on to other. Textamerica just chose this photo of the pumpkin Elias and I made at school today as one of their Editor's Picks for the day. This photo, along with others, is featured on the Editor's Pick page off Textamerica's main page. You have to be registered with their site to access the page. I know it's not really a big deal and I don't want to blow it out of proportion, but I just wanted to share it with ya'll as the Wonderful World of Blog moves one step closer to total internet domination!

Pumpkin Painting

Today at Elias' school was the first "Bring A Grown-Up to School Day". Let me tell you, for a stay-at-home dad that's some big excitement! This month's project was Pumpkin Painting. The kids got little pumpkins and the grown-ups got big pumpkins. We had fun painting and adding lots of colors to our pumpkins. Elias takes after his father in the "visual arts" department...let's just say his pumpkin artwork was in the representational style.
My pumpkin looks like one of the other three year olds in the class may have painted it. Other parents were getting real bold colors and solid brush strokes but as hard as I tried I could only muster up this goofy looking fella:
But it wasn't about the artwork, it was about spending time with Elias and that by itself is a good time! After the pumpkin painting we all had a snack of doughnut holes, grapes, yogurt and cookies and apple cider or milk for a beverage. We rounded out the morning with some songs and dances. Check out Elias and his buddies dancing around the classroom:

Chopping Mall

CHOPPING MALL is one of the best films you've never seen. A group of teenage mall employees decide to spend the night at the mall and have a party. It turns out that on the same night the mall's new security system goes online. The mall is now equipped with Security Robots that patrol the shopping center after hours. As luck would have it the robots malfunction their first night on the job and a few people die as a result. In between the teens brief sexual encounters they each get picked off one by one by the crazy security robots. With a name like CHOPPING MALL you'd expect a lot of blood and guts, but most of the deaths are at the hands of the robots lasers. While I'm sure getting zapped by a robot isn't the most pleasant way to go, it sure beats a machete through your rib cage as is usually the case in these sorts of films.

The film is not really scary at all, but it does deliver some good laughs both intentional and unintentional. Dick Miller (Mr. Futterman from GREMLINS) shows up as the mall's overnight janitor. Not to give anything away, but it's going to be his last night on the job. Also on hand in a brief cameo are Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov reprising their roles from EATING RAOUL. Heading up the picture are Tony O'Dell (from TV's HEAD OF THE CLASS) and Kelli Maroney who was in the equally fantastic and underrated NIGHT OF THE COMET.

When a movie is called CHOPPING MALL and has the tag lines "Where Shopping Costs You an Arm and a Leg" and "Shop `Till You Drop, Dead!" you know you're in for a good time.




If that looked too scary for you, you might want to catch the film on TV under it's tamer title KILLBOTS.

The Enchanted Forest Lives

Don't get me started on The Enchanted Forest. I love the Enchanted Forest! For those of you not familiar with The Enchanted Forest, it was a small fairy tale theme park that opened in 1955 in Ellicott City, MD. The park's grand opening was on the heels of Disneyland's grand opening earlier that summer making The Enchanted Forest the country's second theme park and the first on the east coast! Long story short, the park closed in the late 1980's and just kind of sat there frozen in time as a shopping mall was built around it. Many attempts had been made to get the park reopened until finally someone had the idea to just move the stuff out of the park and put it somewhere else. Which is where Clark's Elioak Farm comes into play. Over the last few years volunteers have been removing the fairy tale items from The Enchanted Forest's original home on Rout 40 West in Ellicott City to their new home at Clark's Elioak Farm. Each piece that has been moved has been restored and repainted and they all look great!

I went to the Grand Opening last year when they only had a few pieces moved. I was able to briefly visit yesterday and see all the new stuff they've added. Click on over to Wonderful World of Pictures for some great photos of what's happening over at the new Enchanted Forest!

Halloween with Toys R Us

Here's a nifty little piece of Halloween animation plugging Toys R Us in 1980. Of all the Halloween costumes they carried, they decided that they needed to point out just two very specific costumes!?

My Halloween Costumes

We know you've been waiting for it, so here it is: the complete rundown of every Halloween costume I wore during my formative years! The first four years I've pieced together from photo albums. From 1978, when I was in Kindergarten, and on I remember what I wore each year.

1974 - Campbell's Soup Kid
1975 - Cowboy
1976 - Mickey Mouse/Mouseketeer I was wearing a Mickey Mouse Club T-shirt and a Mickey Mouse mask, so I guess I was somewhere inbetween the two.
1977 - Mouseketeer This time around was a little better. I had the groovy disco Mickey Mouse Club ears and the multi-colored shirt from the 1970's version of the Mickey Mouse Club.
1978 - Casper White sheet and a Casper mask: Inspired!
1979 - The Pink Panther My only store bought costume, the pants ripped in school the day of Halloween thus sealing my fate of never having a store bought costume again!
1980 - Mork from the TV show Mork & Mindy I had the Mork suspenders. They were awesome!
1981 - Smurf My first attempt at a Smurf costume was kind of lame, I wore a blue button down shirt and white dress pants.
1982 - Smurf Try #2 was much better (as pictured above) My mom made a smurf hat, and sewed a little blue tail on white sweatpants. The smurf-colored Smurf t-shirt helped too, but I probably could have done with out the gay Zorro mask!
1983 - Michael Jackson I had a silver glove and a Thriller jacket. Instant costume!
1984 - Michael Jackson I had to take another stab at my Michael Jackson costume as well.
1985 - Trivial Pursuit This was an awesome costume. We took two big pie sheets and made a sandwich board that looked like a playing piece from the game. Then we stapled cards from the game all over a hat. Good times! (Wish I had a picture)
1986 - Tourist At this point I was in the 8th grade, so we're entering the period where you do as little as possible to get away with having a costume!
1987 - Santa on Vacation Basically, a variation on last year's costume except with a Santa Claus hat. Brilliant!

Leave a comment with some of your favorite personal Halloween costumes.

This Is Television, My Friends

I could not be an ounce more excited that this show is finally making it's way to DVD. This is what television is all about! BARBARA MANDRELL AND THE MADRELL SISTERS was a fantastic variety show that ran on NBC for two seasons starting in the fall of 1980. Between the three sisters, they can play any musical instrument ever invented. So ya got the three of them running around singing and dancing their hearts out and juggling about 5 instruments each, then you throw in some comedy skits and some special guest stars like Robert Guillume and Phyllis Diller and top it all off with regular appearances from the Krofft puppets and you've got a solid hour of television entertainment.

BARBARA MANDRELL AND THE MANDRELL SISTERS was created and produced by Sid & Marty Krofft, the television masterminds behind the Saturday morning classics H.R. PUFFENSTUF, LAND OF THE LOST, and my personal favorite ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL. With their success in children's programming they moved to prime time to produce two other classic variety shows DONNY AND MARIE and THE BRADY BUNCH VARIETY HOUR. I've already got the BRADY BUNCH VARIETY HOUR on DVD, so once I snatch up Babs Mandrell when the DVD comes out in January, I'll just be waiting on you Donny and Marie!

Look at Little Wendy's Over There...

When it comes to the world of Happy Meals/Kids Meals, Wendy's doesn't get to step up to the plate and play with the big boys very often. McDonald's and Burger King always get the big tie-in promotions for the latest movie, tv show, toy or whatever it is the kids are crazy for these days. In the past few months Wendy's Kids Meals have featured toys celebrating Six Flags Amusement Parks (we got a penguin with the Six Flags logo on his tummy, I'm not sure what that has to do with any amusement park..but o.k.) and this summer's Tim Allen movie ZOOM (What? There was a Tim Allen movie this summer called ZOOM? Exactly!) So, I was pretty surprised when I pulled into the ol' Wendy's drive-thru today for a quick lunch and found my good buddies Snoopy and Woodstock starring back at me from the menu board. Wow! Wendy's rolling out some major cartoon characters for their Happy Meal, I thought to myself. I was pretty impressed with what Wendy had up her sleeve until I realized that I'm 33...Snoopy is cool to me but these kids today with their iPods and their Pokemon don't have a clue who Snoopy and the Peanuts gang really are. Ehh...to hell with `em! I still thought it was a cool Happy Meal, and my 3 year old son knows who Snoopy and Charlie Brown are, so it was all good in my house!


The prize inside these Peanuts Kids Meals are one of four different little plush characters. They have Charlie Brown, Woodstock, Snoopy sitting up, and Snoopy laying down. It seems to me that if you're adopting a franchise with at least a dozen characters you could do better than to duplicate one when you're only making four. The coolest part of the promotion is the bag has several of Charles Schulz' classic comic strips on it, so you have something to read while you're chowing down on your Big Bacon Classic. Can't go wrong with some vintage Peanuts comics and artery clogging food!

Supergirl Cookies

Man, I could sure go for some Supergirl Cookies right about now! I wanted to see the new SUPERGIRL movie so bad when it came out in 1983. However, I was only 9 years old at the time and had to rely on my parental units for visits to the movie theatre. We averaged about one trip a year to the movies and I had already spent my 1983 movie on RETURN OF THE JEDI. So, I had to resort to the novelization of the movie and a couple of boxes of delicious Supergirl cookies with scenes from the movie on the back of each box.

Helen Slater played the role of Supergirl and thus began the stopwatch on her 15 minutes of fame. She followed up SUPERGIRL with THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN (a great movie co-staring her brother Christian Slater.) She then made appearances in RUTHLESS PEOPLE (another great movie) and the Michael J. Fox hit THE SECRET OF MY SUCCE$S (never saw it.) Slater has spent the following 18 years playing bit parts in films and TV shows and making the occasional TV-Movie.

Never got a SUPERGIRL sequel, probably because the film turned out to not be very good. I remember being somewhat disappointed when I finally saw it on HBO a year later. However, that didn't stop me from watching it 67 times...that's how we rolled in those days!

Woolworth Is Your One Stop Halloween Shop

I used to love Woolworth. Beyond the endless isles of crap that you could buy they had an electronics department that featured products from companies you never heard of for great prices. You could buy a dual cassette player from Scanasonic or Trony for like ten bucks! They also had the most odd assortment of tapes in their music collection. Looking for the soundtrack to CHOO CHOO AND THE PHILLY FLASH? Look no further than Woolworth!

Woolworth was also home to some good eatin'! Many Woolworth stores had "Coffee Shops" or "Lunch Counters". Seriously, that was my favorite place to eat back in the day. Any eatery that features it's entire menu on a laminated place mat...you know you're in for some good eats! They had great sandwiches (especially the burgers) and the Coke was perfectly a little too syrupy...and they had good ice too. Seriously, one year for my birthday I chose the Woolworth Lunch Counter for my birthday meal.

According to this commercial from 1976, Woolworth also had you covered in the Halloween department. This was the premier spot to pick out your cheap plastic costume of your favorite cartoon or TV character. And the lady in this commercial was very pleased to let you know that Woolworth also stocks candy for the Halloween season! She's very proud of the candy they have to offer...and who wouldn't be!?

Remember Pac-Man? He's Back...In Lottery Form!

Believe it or not, this is not a relic from 1983 that I've had stashed in a Fred Flintstone & Friends pencil box under my bed for the last 23 years. This is brand new Pac-Man Instant Win Lottery ticket that I picked up in my travels recently. Not from an antique mall or flea market...I'm talking about a Lottery Ticket Vending Machine. Pac-Man has found his way back into the wonderful world of merchandising via lottery scratch-off cards. I've never bought a lottery ticket in my life, but Pac-Man was calling out to me and I knew I had to bring him home with me. Plus I knew it would be a cool thing to post on the ol' blog here! While the card has wonderful graphics, the game itself has nothing to do with Pac-Man except that if you scratch off a ghost with cherries behind him you win instantly, and if you scratch off strawberries you win all ten prizes shown.

This is why I never play lottery tickets! I never win anything!

Vintage Halloween Photos

The other day I was digging through the basement at my mom's house looking for wild and wacky stuff to share on the blog and I uncovered a large box of photographs dating from the 1930's through the 60's. I found a couple of Halloween pictures that I thought we'd take a look at today to get us into the Halloween spirit! (Remember, you can click on the photos to enlarge them.)

This picture is really cool. It appears to be nine people all dressed in store-bought costumes from Walt Disney's SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. The hand-written date on the back of the photo is 10-30-41, perhaps it's a Halloween party or just a practice run to see how all nine people look in their costumes!? Disney's classic Snow White film had just been released four years earlier so these costumes were probably still hot ticket items. It's nice to know that even in the old days store-bought Halloween costumes bared little resemblance to the characters they were trying to portray.


Next we have a photo from Halloween 1956. Here we have illustrated the old fashioned custom of lining up all the young boys in town and have them brutally eaten by a deranged demonic clown. Look at that dude's clown mask! I didn't know things were allowed to be that terrifying in 1956! The little boy to the far right is sporting another classic off-the-rack costume. I believe he is supposed to be Super Mouse, a popular comic book character from the 40's and 50's. The "belt" on the costume has a "MS" on it. Either way, what's the kid in the middle supposed to be!?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pie

This, right here my friends, was a snack! Hostess has been making a line of hand held fruit filled pie for years. The most popular flavors have been apple, lemon, cherry and blueberry. Sometime in the late 1980's someone at Hostess had the great idea of taking the small crust of their Fruit Pies, scooping out all the wholesome fruit and replacing it with thick delicious pudding. Then a few years later the fine folks at Hostess took their tasty pudding pies and dipped them in a neon green icing-like substance, slapped the ultra-popular Ninja Turtles on the packaging and snack food history was made. When you bit into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pie you could feel the years being shaved off your life with every bite! Nothing edible should be day-glow green, and nothing that is filled with pudding needs to then be dipped in something else. But Hostess did it, and God bless `em for it!

The great thing about eating one was that people would look at you like your crazy! Maybe it's because I was 17 years old when these came out, or perhaps it was just the unnatural shade of green that radiated from the pies. As you can see from the wrapper shown here, inside each wrapped pie you got free TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE trading cards. Can't you just imagine biting into your Ninja Turtle pie while looking through your collection of TMNT II movie cards, hoping to find a card with featuring Vanilla Ice making his cameo appearance in the film singing Ninja Rap!?!? Word to your mother!

I remember one morning on a bus ride to school, I was enjoying a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pie and my friend and I read the ingredients on the back of the wrapper! I vividly remember among all the unnatural ingredients listed...Locust eggs! That's right, I said Locust Eggs! After that, I think I had maybe one more pie before I decided that no matter how much butt Leonardo can kick, I wasn't eating locust eggs for no one!

Malls of America

There's a great site I check into quite a few times each week called Malls of America. Just about everyday they post great vintage pictures of shopping malls of our past, most of the pictures have a moody 60's feel or a groovy 70's vibe to them. Recently I sent them a few shots of my childhood mall, The Mall in Columbia. They are being featured today so swing on over there and hang out at the mall for a while. (At the site, you may have to scroll down to the end of the sidebar to see the posts!)

If you've bounced over here from Malls of America, Welcome! Yesterday I ended up posting some pictures of my kids, but if you scroll back before that you'll find all kinds of fun retro stuff to fill your virtual-shopping bags. We have a lot of fun here so please consider bookmarking us and dropping in again! This site is updated almost daily!

Fantastic Fall Photos

What Ever Happened to the Shirt Tales

If the Care Bears can make a comeback then where the heck are the Shirt Tales? Man, that was a great show! Shirt Tales started out as a line of greeting cards from Hallmark. They were cutesy little pictures of fuzzy animals wearing shirts that said stuff like "Hot Stuff" or "Congratulations" or anything else you might find on a greeting card. These cards became one of Hallmark's biggest sellers in the early `80's so like everything else that became popular in the 1980's they got their own Saturday Morning Cartoon show! That's the single greatest things about the 80's...everything was turned into a cartoon! The Shirt Tales went from anonymous garmet wearing forest creatures to Rick, Tyg, Digger, Pammy, and Bogey.

In their cartoon show, the Shirt Tales lived in a tree in a city park. They divided their time between harassing the park ranger Mr. Dinkle and fighting crime/saving the world. Inside the Shirt Tales' tree house was a giant computer where they communicated with the commissioner who sent them on missions of a crime fighting/world saving nature. At least once in each episode one of the Shirt Tales would display their emotions through a message on their shirt. It was never revealed if these were special battery powered shirts or if they were just magical. Either way the most intriguing part of the show is that not one person seemed alarmed that a panda bear was living in a city park. These things are endangered species and we've got the commissioner sending Pammy Panda all over the globe to hunt down jewel thieves and kidnappers!

You'll notice in the picture above the addition of another Shirt Tale, Kip. She was a little kangaroo (voiced by Nancy Cartwright of Bart Simpson fame) that was added to the cast in the second season. Back then, ever year a show had new episodes it was customary to add a new character so that children knew they were watching "one of the new ones."

Anywho...the Shirt Tales were awesome. Saturday mornings...NBC...right between Snorks and Smurfs...Good times! Shirt Tales, it's time for your comeback!

Dog & Bunny - 5/8/96

Oh, Dog and Bunny! What are you guys talking about!?

It's time to check in again with everyone's favorite comic duo...Dog & Bunny! Again, looking back at this comic strip 10 years after it was made, it makes no sense what-so-ever. From what I remember, DATELINE NBC had run a story where they put some cars to test to see if they could handle certain situations or something like that. It turned out that the Ford Taurus was catching on fire due to some fault in the manufacturing. A few weeks later it was revealed that NBC made the story up and the cars were tampered with before the story was shot. That ended up being bigger news than the original story. Either way, this strip came out before the news of the fake story came out. Check out the detail on Dog & Bunny's desk. If I remember correctly, they are supposed to be sitting in the offices of our school newspaper!

You can click on the comic to make it bigger!

Why Do I Still Have This?

This is no good reason why I still have this piece of paper in my possession. Canada's Wonderland is one of Kings Dominion's sister parks, located in Toronto. On a cross country trip in 1986 I begged my family to stop at this amusement park so I could put another feather in my "Smurf Attractions Visited" cap. Upon entering the park property and paying for parking with that colorful Canadian Monopoly money, we were handed our parking pass, a park map and this coupon for a free ticket if you returned a few weeks later to see He-Man and She-Ra Live! I was pretty excited to see the Smurfs (yet again) but He-Man and She-Ra!? I never dreamed of such amusement park/cartoon character glory. Alas, there was no way we were going to be anywhere near Toronto that following September or October to meet and greet the Masters of the Universe of the Princess of Power. I guess I've held on to this ticket for 20 years in the hopes that my dreams would never die! Twenty years, people! T-w-e-n-t-y! That's pretty sick! Actually I just always thought it was pretty funny. Apparently they could only find drawings of the action figures to promote this event! By the way, when is She-Ra going to make a comeback!? I'm all about that!

The Ed South Show Clip: Cereal Commercial

When we were doing THE ED SOUTH SHOW we would come up with ideas for stuff to film and then never get around to actually filming some great ideas. One night in 1997 while a handful of friends were enjoying some eats we came up with the idea of a cereal company called "Ghetto Mills" and then we proceeded to crack ourselves up with names of cereals that this company would produce. That night, I wrote a few of the jokes down and actually wrote up a quick script for a commercial for two of the cereals. The scripts sat in a notebook for four years before we finally blew the dust off of them and filmed `em. We even found somebody to make us nice cereal boxes with our silly product names on them. Here's one of the commercials that we shot for episode #017 of THE ED SOUTH SHOW...

Evil Looking Ronald McDonald Drives a Turtle and other stories

This is quite possibly the most bizarre prize ever put into a Happy Meal box in the United States! Ronald McDonald's makeup has slightly changed from happy hamburger slinging clown to child serial killer. Seriously, the cold stare in Ronald's eyes and the addition of just the little triangles of makeup under his eyes are cause for alarm. He looks like he's about 30 seconds away from raping a kid in the janitor's closet of your local McDonald's. And notice he's driving a turtle, not riding a turtle mind you, but driving a turtle equipped with two joysticks for easy turtle maneuvering. What ever happened to the little Winnie the Pooh heads you clipped onto your belt loops!? Now that was a happy meal toy!

McDonald's likes to do this thing where at one time they will have two different types of Happy Meal toys available at the same time, one for boys and one for girls. They usually do this when there is something popular out that mainly appeals to one gender like Bratz or Power Rangers. This month McDonald's has The Little Mermaid for girls and Bionicle for boys. (For those of you out of the loop, Bionicle is some sort of gay Lego robot or something like that!?) First of all, The Little Mermaid should have a Happy Meal all to herself. There have been two previous Little Mermaid happy meals in 1989 and 1997 when the movie first came out and when it was rereleased on Home Video. In those Happy Meals the toys were little plastic figures or wind up toys. Now, in 2006, where ever Disney movie has to be for boys or girls, The Little Mermaid prizes are ALL girly. They have Little Mermaid purses, jewelry, lip balm, and even a tieara. I was pretty disappointed the other day when I saw The Little Mermaid poster hanging in the window of a McDonald's and swerved over three lanes of traffic to make it to the restaurant only to get a Little Mermaid necklace in my Happy Meal!

It never even dawned on me that the prizes would be girly. I was expecting more little plastic figures for my shelf! So instead of getting the boy OR girl prize at McDonald's this month, I've been ordering the "under 3" toy for Elias. They always have a different set of Happy Meal prizes with no little parts for kids under 3. Usually they are Fisher Price Little People toys, but now they are carrying a whole line of Evil Child Molester Ronald McDonalds in various vehicles, motorized or shelled. So stop by your local McDonald's today for a delicious Iced Coffee and Evil Looking Ronald McDonald driving a turtle toy!

In other news...check out this video of Tanner dancing to the song from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Walt Disney World.

Let the Halloween Begin!

It's October 1st, and that means you can officially start celebrating Halloween without being accused that it's "too early." Around town here, people have had their Halloween decorations up for weeks. Yes, I said Halloween decorations. I live in a town where Halloween lights are just as common as Christmas lights!

What do you think the Holiday season was like before TV? Probably pretty sucky! Television sets the mood for the holidays, from the commercials which start airing long before the actual holiday to all the great TV specials that become holiday traditions. To start off the official Halloween season, here's a moody little piece of video from the early 80's. It really doesn't have anything to do with Halloween, but one of the great things about this holiday is that so many things can be considered Halloweeny just because they are spooky! Enjoy...

Old School Orlando: Fort Liberty

Orlando, Florida is obviously known for it's world class theme parks like Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World. Surrounding these vacation destinations are hundreds and hundreds of smaller tourist attractions looking to get a piece of every families vacation dollar. One of the more popular types of attractions are dinner shows. These shows all follow a similar format, some kind of big themed tournament style show along with a meal also themed to the show. You've got your Medieval Times with it's knights, horses and jousting and then a king's feast of dry chicken and Little Debbie snack cakes. There's also Arabian Nights with more people jumping around on horses while you eat....Arabian food???. Dolly Parton even got into the act with Dixie Stampede where you watch coyboys ride around on horses while you eat dry chicken and drink Diet Mountain Dew out of a jar. There's also Pirates, Sleuths, and Capone's (I doubt they involve horses but probably dry chicken.) Even the theme parks have gotten into the act, a few years ago we went to Mickey's Backyard BBQ where we paid $50 bucks to line dance with Mickey and Minnie Mouse in 138 degree heat while getting drunk on all-you-can-drink beer and wine.
As with Orlando attractions of any type, there are bound to be some casualties. Fort Liberty was another dinner show themed to the ol' Wild Wild West. Guests entered an old Civil War for and enjoyed a performance of cavalry riding horses and shooting muskets at each other. While civil war broke out vacationers enjoyed dry chicken and New Coke. Actually, the menu looks pretty good with sliced smoked pork, fried chicken, baked potato, beans and corn on the cob. And don't forget for dessert: Liberty Apple Pie (that's a special kind of apple pie!)

The Fort didn't last too long, and before long it closed it's doors to horse seeking visitors. Some of the horses now probably work at the newer Dixie Stampede. Disney has their own wildly popular western themed dinner and show called the Hoopty Doo Musical Review which has been running at least twice a night since the mid 70's. I guess that town wasn't big enough for the two of them! What's funny about Fort Liberty is that the building still stands today and is used as a normal ol' shopping center for locals. Imagine getting your videos or dry cleaning at a unauthentic civil war fort! There's also a Subway sub shop in the Fort. I stopped there once with a buddy of mine that lives down there, I asked for Old Bay on my sub and the "sandwich artist" looked at me like I was crazy. See, they don't have Old Bay down there...I probably could have asked for "GatorSpice" or something like that. Crazy Floridians!

White & Nerdy Video

Here's the latest comedy masterpiece from "Weird Al" Yankovic...

Ladies and Gentlemen...The Ed South Show

Today marks the official online debut of content from THE ED SOUTH SHOW. Yeah! For those of you unaware of TV's greatest gem, THE ED SOUTH SHOW was a public access cable show that debuted on Howard County Comcast Public Access in the summer of 1998. The show started off as an interview/magazine style show but quickly morphed into a sitcom. It was produced by me, Ed, along with the help of many of my talented friends. Being Public Access that means that there was no money involved in the making of the show. Everything was done on everyone's own time and nobody ever got paid for anything that we ever did. But we had a lot of fun, and we took alot of pride in what we were doing. At the time we started the show, our public access channel was nothing more than public affair programs all shot in the same studio with the same backdrop, same furniture, and same handful of plants that were rearranged for each show. THE ED SOUTH SHOW looked to add some entertainment and comedy to the channel's line-up. For the sake of variety I also vowed never to shoot anything in the studio.

We produced 18 half-hour episodes between October 1997 and November 2001. The show was basically about a guy named Ed (played by me) who had a local TV show. Sometimes we saw Ed at work doing his show, and other times we saw behind the scenes of the show and his private life. The behind the scenes portions of the show were all scripted and performed by a number of friends and co-workers. Some of the characters on the show included the owner of the TV station R. J. Tartersauce (Kevin McCrum); Ed's girlfriend Amy (played over the years by three different actresses: Allisan Pyer, Maggie Sandy, and Ann Metz); Amy's best friend Jessica (Jen Kersey); Jessica's idiot boyfriend Devon (Brian Kaiser) and Ed's producer Producer Brian (also played by Brian Kaiser).

Before we get to the clip, let me also say that THE ED SOUTH SHOW would not have been what it was without the fantastic help of everyone that was involved especially Andrew Heiliger, Matt Maloy, Brendan P. Hines, Chad McCaughey, the one and only Mr. Joey Carwash and Brian Kaiser. We also have to send a shout-out to James Conners for helping me get clips from the show into a digital format for uploading to the internets!

So...on with the first clip....This is the idiotic opening skit from episode #007 "The Return of Devon." This quick skit is a good example of how we liked to do a whole bit based on just one joke. It's also the first time we worked with Jen Kersey, who went on to take the roll of Jessica and appear in several more episodes. The music in this skit was produced for us by Phil Heiliger, who also did the show's theme song. Listen carefully to the music, you may notice that it's just one note off of the original song it's supposed to be...that's for legal reasons since we obviously couldn't afford to use the real song.




If you didn't "get it" you can click here.

We'll have lots more clips from THE ED SOUTH SHOW in the near future!

Roller Coaster Memories

I checked out a couple more books from the library about roller coasters. This time they were from the adult section. I found a few pictures that I wanted to share with ya'll. The first two pictures come from THE GREAT AMERICAN ROLLER COASTER by Scott Rutherford. The Zephyr, seen here on the left, was the first roller coaster I ever rode! It was probably 1982 when I rode it, putting me at age 8. The Zephyr made it's home at Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans. All I remember is that the track was enclosed from the loading station to the chain lift, and that I was hyperventilating for the better part of an hour after I rode it. At the time, the Zephyr was something like one of the top 10 wooden roller coasters in the country. I doesn't look all the big in this picture, but I guess when you're 8 years old looking up at it, it's huge! Lake Pontchartrain closed in 1983 and then was redeveloped almost 20 years later into Jazzland Amusement Park. Jazzland quickly became Six Flags New Orleans (shocker) and then the park was wiped off the map in 2005 thanks to Hurricane Katrina.


This photo is an early `70's shot of my beloved Kings Dominion. First off, notice the lake in the picture which used to be home to water ski shows. Now it's the water park. Of course in the background is the classic Rebel Yell but the coaster spotlighted in this picture is the small steel coaster at the bottom, Galaxy. I was thrilled to see this picture as I remember riding this great little coaster and loving it but never finding any pictures or much documentation that the ride ever existed. It's a large portable ride and it's still probably operating in a small park somewhere to this day. The Galaxy was removed in the mid-80's to make room for the Shockwave stand-up roller coaster. The Galaxy and rides like it were at one time a staple at most amusement parks and carnivals, but now they are hard to come by.

This last picture is from the book ROLLER COASTERS by Mike Schafer & Scott Rutherford. Here we see Hersheypark's classic Sooperdooperlooper. Built in the late 70's, this was the first roller coaster to turn riders upside-down on the east coast, and is my people's first looping coaster they ever went on. The ride still runs today, and remains as popular as ever, even if it's dwarfed by other rides in the park. A picture taken from this vantage point today would look quite different then the one we see here. The pathway visible in the photo is now lined with games of chance and an information booth called Information...and more that I happened to work at occasionally when I worked for the Guest Services department of the park a few years back. The info booth is located directly inbetween the entrance and exit for the Sooperdooperlooper, therefore I spent most of my days in the booth answering the questions "Where do you go to get on the Sooperdooperlooper?" and "Where do people come off of the Sooperdooperlooper?"

I Hate Owls

Bob-Howdy, I hate owls! They are on a list with bats, eagles, and koalas as members of the animal kingdom that I could do without! They are too big to be birds, they don't have necks and they are evil!

The other night my wife and I came home after visiting with some friends. It was about one o'clock in the morning. When we got out of the car, among the various creepy sounds of the night we could distinctly hear the "Hoot-Hoot" of an owl. Freaked out, I quickly surveyed the surrounding area. Perched on a telephone wire that borders our property I spotted a shadowy figure about the size of a bobcat. "That must be an owl...up there," I said as I pointed out the unidentified silhouette to my wife. We kept our eye on the telephone wires as we made out way to the front door. Suddenly the animal let out an attack call and spread it's wings.

My wife and I turned into Hanna-Barbera characters as we jumped in the air, revved our feet and then shot towards the front door of our home in lightning speed. It was obvious at this point, the animal on the telephone wire was indeed an owl...An evil, nasty owl out for blood. As the owl spread it's wings and began to flap, we could feel the warm summer air sweep past our necks as the bird took flight. I fumbled for the house key while the owl swooped from his perch and headed towards a forest of trees across the street. We breathed a sigh of relief.

At that point the owl sensed that our guard was down, he made a 180 degree turn in the air and began to sail straight towards us. I couldn't get the key in the door quick enough! The owl plunged right at us. Jennifer and I ducked for cover but it was no use. The owl grabbed my wife's purse with his razor sharp talons and ripped it away from her. Taking to the night sky once again, the owl let out a mocking screech as it flew over the neighborhood dumping the contents of Jennifer's purse all over the neighboring lawns. We made it inside our house, slamming the door behind us thankful that we both survived without any physical harm.

The next morning we went outside to gather what we could from Jen's purse. We relayed the story of the brutal owl attack to our neighbors as we collected Jen's belongings from their property. One of the neighbors was outraged that such a violent attack could happen on our street. He gathered a few of the other neighbors along with some torches and pitchforks and they made their way into the forest to hunt down the blood thirsty owl. I stayed with Jennifer to make sure we found everything we could from her purse. In the end, all that was missing was a roll of Mentos, a nail file, and a couple of credit cards.

The following week when the credit card bill came there were fraudulent charges on the statement. Among them a $175 bar tab at Hooters, a charge at wale-Mart for $84 worth of Tootsie Roll pops, and a charge for $1,700 at Graduations.com for gowns and mortarboards.

At least...that's kind of how it all happened...?!