Monday Night: I'm in the airport as I write this — but not as I post this; then, I'll be home.  After a long flight on Sunday morning that indeed felt less death-threatening thanks to the new iPod mentioned in the previous entry, I had my very first experience renting a car.  A big ol' red Equinox from Hertz, which marks not just the first time I've ever rented a car, but the first time I ever drove an SUV, and the first time I ever drove in Los Angeles.  So, a first time Cali driver in a completely alien SUV: I'm lucky I didn't leave a death count on the West Coast.

Work put me up in the Loews Beverly Hills, which didn't look like much from the outside but was really nice on the inside, complete with well-dressed desk girl who faked six or seven accents in the minute it took me to check in.  The room was excellent, with a big ass balcony overlooking the Hollywood hills (and indeed, the Hollywood sign), and it's good that I had a nice room, because I had absolutely nothing to do all day Sunday.  The office considered me going down a day early a "just in case" scenario, but it ended up being for no reason, and I ended up not doing much of anything, because even with a big red Equinox at my disposal, I still preferred sleeping in and watching pay-per-view movies.  The beds in this hotel are incredible — they have some kickass memory foam thing going; I felt like Oola sleeping against Jabba's belly.

Like I've said before, I just like hotel rooms.  Love them.  Especially ones with hot, hot pay-per-view movies available for exorbitant prices.  My first plunge was the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, bought after a recent testimonial from my friend Zach, who was totally right.  That was a good movie.  Now, here's the thing: I never saw the original, so I don't know if it's a totally soulless ape like the shitty Omen remake was.  The closest I got to the original was a Michael Berryman sighting at that horror convention I went to last year.  Whatever, ape or not, this is one sick, twisted and awesome stupid movie.

In the midst of too much room service and too many cigarettes, I watched Final Destination 3 again, and I still like it, so there.

Work started calling me at 7 AM this (Monday) morning, apparently not remembering the three hour time difference.  I was happy to remind them, but it only bought me a half hour.  Finally, this afternoon, I got around to doing what I was sent here to do: Try desperately to take a picture of the Hollywood sign from my balcony through the fog.  Nah, I came to interview some of the people who lent their voices-and-more to Monster House, and that went mighty fine.  We did it on the Sony lot, where they were apparently shooting Spider-Man 3 every day this past week except today, just to piss me off, because I so needed to be the 3,456th person to take a picture of Tobey in a black shirt and call it a career.

When all was said and done, I'd met some good people, watched some good movies, took some shitty pictures and had a gazillion hours to kill before my redeye.  Which is why I'm here.  You're helping me kill time.  I'm not kidding when I say that I drove around the airport for an hour and sat outside it for another 45 minutes, desperate to avoid doing what I'm doing right now: Sitting at my gate with absolutely nothing to do but type blog entries in a size 6 font so the burly guys behind me can't read 'em.  There's still about 90 minutes before flight time, and the flight involves a stopover in Chicago, so all in all, I'm ready to kill your mudder.

Now:  Back home, and that was, my GOD, that was the WORST flight ever.  As I was writing the above section, I noticed the scheduled depart time change from 11:15 to 11:35…and then to 11:55.  When all was said and done, they didn't let us on that plane until well after midnight.  I got stuck in the middle of a row next to a gigantic old guy who did not stop fidgeting the entire flight.  At one point, he tried to contort himself so he could sleep sideways, in an airplane seat, with his folds of fat invading my personal space and making me cry.  Once in a while, he'd settle down and actually fall asleep, and once I got past his snoring, I followed suit…until he flicked on the overhead lights to read the stupid complimentary plane magazines again.  This happened 100 times.

We finally landed in Chicago at 6 in the morning, where the three or four of us who were continuing on the flight to Newark had to sit by the gate for 45 minutes, basically for no reason.  Then we were herded back on the plane with a bunch of fresh faces, making me feel even more dirty and unshowered.  On the plus side, I noticed the fat gross guy sitting next to me pull out a new boarding pass just as we landed in Chicago, meaning that I wouldn't have to deal with him again.  Sure enough, when we reboard the plane with a bunch of new people, he's gone…and replaced by his fucking identical twin, equivalently fidgety, this time with goddamned psoriasis. 

All told, it took around fifteen hours of traveling to get home, and now I'm too pissed and exhausted to tell you about the Kryptonite Doritos I found in Cali.  Tomorrow, I guess.

Not going to finish Disney Part 3 this weekend, partly because I haven't started it yet, but mostly because I'm going out of town tomorrow.  And since that "going out of town" involves a long flight, I finally took the plunge and bought a Video iPod.  (Which isn't such an extraneous purchase when you consider that I managed to lose my first iPod like a week after opening the box.  I figure punishing myself with an iPodless existence for six months justifies today's big cash sendoff.)

It didn't take long for me to realize that VideoPods are worth more than the ability to watch movie trailers a thousand times.  I can't believe I'm going to be able to kill half of my flight time watching Shark Week.  I'm really okay with that arrangement.  Three hours of mako madness!

I chose the black iPod because I'm a man, dammit, even though the guy at the store said that, while sleeker, black iPods show their scratches far more.  That was really just his way of getting me to buy a plastic "Jam Jacket" case, which is, incidentally, white in color.  So I may have been had.  Actually, I've definitely been had, because now I gotta go around carrying something called a "Jam Jacket."  I will never tell anyone it's called a "Jam Jacket," but knowing is half the shame.

While we're on the subject of sharks, vaguely, it's with great pleasure that I confirm the continued existence of Sharkleberry Fin Kool-Aid.  There can be no doubts now, as the packages seen above has non-expired expiration dates.  It's true — they're out there.  Maybe more so in Canada or the UK than the States, but it's true — they're out there.  For a new generation, the once-pink shark mascot has been reduced to a mere means of transportation for the Kool-Aid Man.  Some personality is injected with the shark's penchant for goofy goggles, and while I can't honestly say that I prefer this new rendition to the original talking pink shark dude, I'm still stoked that Sharkleberry exists in any form at all.

It's impossible to know if the flavor's changed, but if it has, it's a very slight mod.  It's still a bonanza of fruits — orange, banana and strawberry — conspiring to form a Pepto-pink punch that smells stronger than it tastes.

While we're on the subject of liquids and pods, vaguely, there's new "Aquapods" from Poland Spring, which take the very basic and everyday idea of bottled water and turn it into something so unbelievably cool that I'm putting off a dire need to pack for a morning flight to tell you about it.  Featuring bottles in an "orbtastic shape," it's 11 ounces of water packaged in what will ultimately make for an awesome night of arts & crafts: The bottles are shaped so much like E.T.'s spaceship that I don't know how long I'll be able to resist yanking out some paint to prove it.

Though Aquapods aren't extremely convenient due to their bloated shape (I wouldn't dare put this in my work bag — it's gotta be twice as prone to getting pricked and exploding all over everything it shouldn't explode on), they're one of the only ways to make water more exciting without turning it into iced tea.  Or, you know, Kool-Aid.

The synergy in this blog post rocks.

And this doubles as your Saturday Night Thread, folks.

Wooo hooo!  Remember that Furby giveaway spot I did many months ago?  Wellp, last night, it took home a silver trophy in the annual Promax awards — sort of like the Emmys for promos.  I'd known it was nominated for a while now (category: "On-Air Sales Promotion"), and while I managed my expectations with all of that "it's an honor to be nominated" bullshit, I really wanted to fucking win.  I was never in Little League and nobody invited me onto their bowling team: This is my first trophy ever, and it's heavy and silver and is now glued to my hand.

The awards show was last night, which was hosted by SNL's Darrell Hammond (funny) and played out more like a highlight reel of the year's best spots — but due to time constraints, only select gold winners.  One of the first spots shown was the gold winner in my category — something from TBS starring Ashton Kutcher — and between that and the sheer awesomeness of everything that was playing on the big screen, I was 100% sure I didn't win anything.  Was I disappointed?  Sure, but the real problem was that the show was really, really long, and I really, really had to piss, the entire, entire time.  It wasn't just a case of having the nagging notion that it was time to relieve myself — no, we're talking about a face-first, all-out pulsating bladder bomb that threatened to burst at any moment.  My eyes were watering.  It really hurt.

After the show, they gave out booklets naming all the winners and…there it was.  The Furby spot.  Silver.  Fuckin' A.  Relieved (both because of the win and because I finally had the chance to piss all over the walls in a ritzy hotel bathroom), we trekked up to the 9th floor so I could grab a statue and experience one of those rare moments in life when absolutely nothing is bad.

And to think, it wasn't too long ago that my high points involved finding Furby dolls at Toys 'R' Us and selling 'em on eBay with a 30% markup.

Well, that took a century.  Here's Part 2 of my Walt Disney World Adventure, spanning three pages and covering fifteen more Hot Disney Things.  Again, I remind you to fish around for expertly hidden video links in addition to the ones in text.  Lots of big stuff this time, with everything from Splash Mountain to drinks-in-pineapples making the grade.  There's still enough worthwhile stuff to warrant a Part 3, but if you're getting bored of reading about rides in Disney World, I'll mention that much of Part 3 deals with the best part of any vacation: souvenirs.

Me and this article had a big sword fight over the past week or so, and the fact that it's been published means that I won.  It doesn't mean that I had enough blood left to proofread it as hardcore as I'd like, so if you notice a bunch of typos, please tell me so I can fix them and pretend they were never there.

In other news, caught a screening for Monster House tonight, and Sony decided to rock by turning it into a veritable Halloween party for the many children who attended.  It doesn't take a lot to make me happy, and a party footnoted with orange balloons and skull-headed swizzle sticks turned what would've ordinarily just been a free movie into a free movie with orange balloons and skull-headed swizzle sticks.  Dig it.

That's all for now.  Thanks for your patience re: Disney, and please arrange the universe so that it makes it okay for me to sleep for the next 70 hours.  Thanks.

Am I too late?

Sheet, yo.  It's the G Force Gushers, funked out with a gangsta twist.

Our vices grow lamer and less designer as we grow older; for me, it's become Gushers.  Fruit snacks with gooey fruit sap inside.  Freshen-Up gum without the gum.  Good stuff, and has been for a long time.  Notable for its advertising campaign featuring kids so empowered by Gushers snacks that their heads morph into oversized pieces of fruit, I've often looked to Gushers in my hour of need.  They represent "feel good food."  They look like little pricey jewels, but they're edible, and that makes you feel good.  And now, they've taught me that the concept of "G Force" is visually represented by a pus-filled Staryu.

I'd put off trying the no-longer-so-new G Force Gushers sheerly out of loyalty to the originals, but I was high on crack while food shopping last night and decided, "what the hizzy?"  Packaged in a box with weird art that's fairly absurd for a fruit snack brand, G Force Gushers are basically jumbo-sized regular Gushers, only this time, they're shaped like ninja stars.  A bigger seller point comes by way of G Force Gusher's larger amount of inner fruit goo, which has a more watery consistency than the originals, is more vibrantly colored, and if you squeeze one of the candies, provides a sight undeniably akin to watching some fat ox pop an unripe boil on his forehead.  Proof:

Gross as it looks, it still tastes neato.  Like a piece of Starburst taking a messy shit down your throat.

Got busy, so it's going to be a few more days before Disney Part 2.  In a disastrous move, I'll try to tide you over with a new Kool-Aid review, knowing full well that this replacement is akin to that episode where the crowd was expecting a Chipmunks concert and booed the holy fuck out of the Chipettes.  Today's featured flavor: Candy Apple.

In other news, some may remember the Shrunken Head Apple Project article from 2003, and the subsequent blog update from June, 2005.  It's been just about a year since we last heard from Mr. Apple, and indeed, he's still kicking ass.

So yes, even after all these years, the Shrunken Head Apple dude hasn't disintegrated and hasn't once been infested with gnats.  He just keeps getting cooler and cooler with age, like a wine or a cheese or a something else.  Yes.  Okay, back to writing about Disney…see you.