On ze way to work today, I saw a chicken.  A giant fucking chicken.  Standing absolutely still next to a man handing out take-out menus for the “Texas Rotisserie Grill,” I was awestruck with the sight of what appeared to be the largest inflatable chicken I’d ever seen.  Through some natural instinct, I found myself drawn closer and closer to the cluck.  When I got just close enough, occurred did an indisputably terrible omen: the chicken pecked at me.  Really.  It was a guy dressed in a chicken costume made to look like a simple inflatable doll, but as curious pedestrians approached, he’d peck at ‘em with the voracity of, well, a giant fucking chicken.  There’s good ways to start the day, and bad ways to start the day.  Being pecked at by a giant chicken is probably the best morning kickstart I’ve had in five years.

Perhaps you've heard of the "Alien Fruit Monsters" who so viciously attacked Toucan Sam before fizzling into the abyss of Forgotten Cereal Guest Stars.  I honestly can't remember how the campaign started or what it was exactly about, but here's the basics: Toucan Sam and his three nephews (think Hewey Dewey & Louie) are attacked by "Alien Fruit Monsters," a bunch of grassy green extraterrestrials with deep, comical voices and a penchant for the nostrilicious yum of Kellogg's Froot Loops.

I've seen a lot of Froot Loops commercials, and I do mean a lot.  The "Alien Fruit Monster" campaign was much different from anything previously tried, with episodic ad spots that continued on for months and a whole lot of freebies and special gimmicks thrown towards kids who'd been thinking about switching to Trix.

Near the end of the campaign, Kellogg's did the unthinkable.  Released in a box three times the normal size, Froot Loops had been graced with…marshmallows.  For a limited time only!  The first marshy was a pale blue and completely pathetic Toucan Sam that nobody cared about, but the second?  Oh my, oh the second.  The second marshmallow represented the Alien Fruit Monster - a lime green dribble with ghastly pink eyes and a vague attempt at illustrating tentacles.

I bought the box months ago - many months, actually - intended for use in an article that never came to be.  Regardless, I marveled at how such a simple change and goofy campaign could make me think the world of Froot Loops.  I was obsessed with a little green monster some guy probably spent three minutes thinking up after a bong hit.  The Alien Fruit Monster marshmallows rapidly approached Lucky Charms Swirly Whales in terms of breakfast candies I'd sleep with.  And, remembering how much I miss those Swirly Whale marshmallows, I wasn't about to go through the torment again.

There they be.  Alien Fruit Monster marshmallows, plucked from a stale and completely obsolete limited edition box of Froot Loops, gently tucked into some plastic beaker thingy we found under the fridge.  I'm sure they'll disintegrate in due time, or team up into one solid mass of lime green marshmallow gunk.  At least I'm making an attempt to conserve the second greatest cereal marshmallow ever.  Few of you could say the same.  Callous pigs.

Unbelievably, I'm not even half done with this story.  There's a point to all of this, but you'll have to click "more" to get the scoop.
[more]

I'm not sure if it's the worst thing I've ever seen, but it's certainly the worst thing I've seen in a long while.  Okay, remember those Troll dolls?  The fuzzy-haired rubber figures Mrs. Poole used as good luck charms when she played bingo with Roseanne?  Well, they had their own series of live-action films, and here's a look at one of 'em.  The Treehouse Trolls features two kids being swept up into the realm of nice Trolls who look positively frightening and like to tie all of life's events to a song and dance number, and I had the intense pleasure of spending Saturday night watching it.  I do not feel like a better person for it.

This was heehawrioush.  Near where I work are a great number of beggars, ranging from the kind you genuinely feel terrible for to scam artists of the lowest order.  You grow accustomed to being accosted, and if you can make it through the day with your coffee change and extra cigarettes intact, you've done better than most.  The greatest of all money grubbers stood tall in Times Square today, and it was none other than Spider-Man.

So I'm approaching Spidey, and I'm just assuming it's some kind of big promotion.  There's always some weird shit like that going on.  The closer I get, the more I realize that I'm looking at an outfit straight out of Ben Cooper's trashcan.  If there's been a worse, more poorly fitting or disingenuous Spider-Man costume, it's for certain that the Devil walks among us.  Pretty soon, Spidey's plan revealed itself: the guy was posing for pictures with tourists for tips.  You had hundreds of people running across busy avenues, kids screaming, flashes flashing, the works.  The costume barely covered the sweatsuit underneath, and his head peered out from the all-too-large eyeholes in ways that'd unmask any secret identity.  And, for a Spider-Man, this guy was really out of shape.  Despite all of this, everyone was completely infatuated.

Using a milkcrate to collect his donations, Spider-Man was admittedly a crowd-pleaser.  If someone wanted a superhero pose, they got one.  If somebody wanted Spidey to dance with them, passing cars were treated with a sight only slightly less surreal than watching goats fuck dolphins.  The best part?  As people walked by, Spider-Man would frequently yell out, "see the movie!"  You've gotta admire the guy's determination to seem affiliated.  To put how unreal this was into perspective, there was a guy literally thirty feet away strumming a guitar wearing nothing but white underwear reading "NAKED COWBOY" over the ass, and not a single person was paying attention to him.  It was all about the mysterious ghetto Spidey.

Remember that gigantic inflatable Spider-Man I picked up in the carnival article?  I still haven't found the correct spot for it.  Amazing, I know, it being a 7' bulky inflatable Spider-Man and all.  Looks like it'd make a great pool raft.  I don't have a pool.  The preceding was an obvious lead-in to this article on the Game Boy Advance SP Classic, the retro-themed portable system complete with a nice library of classic NES titles.  I'm definitely down with this one, even after blowing so much cash on games I'll play 1-3 times.  Judging from the Amazon-100 poll in the last entry, I'm not the only one who likes licking this machine.  More stuff coming to the blog tonight…

Hello youse guys.  Through working with people, in public, in someplace not my apartment, in daylight, for the first time in sixty years, I've drawn the disturbing conclusion that I just might be the most annoying person on the planet.  Don't get me wrong — everyone's super nice and it's a blessing to rejoin the world amongst such acey kinda folks, but yeah, I am fucking annoying.  I knew that the biggest challenge of doing this would be socially integrating myself in there — it's something I have zero experience in — but I never thought I'd find out so many bad quirks about myself.  Example: no matter how many times I see a person on a given day, without thinking I let loose a "Hey!  How's it going?"  If I see the same person two minutes later…. "Hey!  How's it going?!"  I also have a tendency to thank people as I pass them in the hall, for no apparent reason whatsoever.  They say hello, I say thanks.  So during the lunch break I'm out on the street reaffirming myself by calling anyone around who knows me better, listing the many dozen awful things I'd done in the previous hours.  There's a moral to this story, folks: if you're a shut-in, fix it before it's too late.  Wanna know what's in store for your future if you don't?  Here it is: yesterday before leaving work, I had a five minute conversation with someone about the umbrella salesman outside the building.  It's been raining here all week, so it seemed like a topical conversation choice.  Thing is, when I got downstairs and headed to my bus, something hit me.  I spent the entire conversation referring to the salesman as a "saleman."  "The umbrella saleman."

Keeping with the spirit, today I had take notes from someone, so as they're on the way, I do the natural thing — grab a pad and a pen.  Unfortunately, I'd somehow chewed my pen down to the point where it would've been obvious that I eat pens, so I had to find a new one quick.  Checked the desk drawers to see if the guy who left the company before I got here had any spares hanging around.  He didn't, but he did leave a nice collection of what's shown above — condiments of every kind.  Chinese packets of Heinz ketchup, crackers, soy sauce, you name it.  It's like the prop room for The Sopranos' Pine Barrens episode in there.  Pens are always in short supply, but at least I'll never run out of wasabi.

Still working on the next article in bits and pieces as I have time, but I think it'll be a goody.  Meantime, let's start another survey…maybe the worst one ever: You're on Amazon.  You've got a hundred dollar gift certificate to blow.  List the loot you'd pick.  And no, I'm not looking for advice.  I have no yummy certificate.  I'm just curious for reasons I cannot comprehend.