It took almost an hour to cook up the right mix of junk, but I'm back from Toys "R" Us with a hundred bucks worth of whatever.
And it was freakin' fun, let me tell you. Notwithstanding the pain one must endure if he or she chooses to plow through the virtual Land of the Dead that is a Toys "R" Us store on a Sunday afternoon, the experience was delightfully ridiculous, and I can't recommend it enough for anyone who is both in the black and not at all opposed to looking like an idiot.
I'm taking pictures today and will work on the article this week, but suffice to say, it's a great collection of completely pointless trinkets ranging from mainstream action figures to all of the weird junk they hide two aisles beyond the Hot Wheels section. You can get a general sense of the wealth of toys from the photo above. Also take note of our super genius talking cat, seen thumbing through a pile of books in the hopes of finding something intellectually challenging. (I believe she settled on a Far Side compilation.)
Now for something completely different, with a catch: I reserve the right to expand this into a full article at a later date, assuming I find the other things that I'd need to do so.
My utter fascination with the many marketing hits and misses of the McDonald's company has been well documented across the site, but outside of slight mentions in one or two blog entries, we've never seriously discussed one of their best promotions of all time: Chicken McNuggets Shanghai.
I can't remember if it happened in 1986 or 1988, but it was one of the two. In a promotion that wouldn't fly today since we're all so uptight about everything, McDonald's issued special takeout-style boxes of Chicken McNuggets, complete with a fortune cookie, teriyaki sauce and most holily of all, a pair of chopsticks. (Holily is an actual word; I can't believe it either.)
The commercials for Chicken McNuggets Shanghai featured patrons goofily trying to work the chopsticks and failing miserably, treating them like such insane novelties that we must assume that sushi didn't once touch American soil until the '90s. I can't speak to the validity of chopsticks being totally foreign objects in the late '80s, but since I was just a kid at the time, they were certainly new to me. McDonald's food always had an intangible "play factor" to it, but here we had an open invitation.
Between the fancy red boxes that housed the nuggets to the individually wrapped fortune cookies (which were actually imported by the planeload from China), Chicken McNuggets Shanghai thrived on its presentation. The meal was served in a themed bag filled with four different dippping sauces, and when all was said and done, nobody could deny that a Chicken McNugget just tasted better when you ate it with chopsticks.
Which got me to thinking: Chicken McNuggets Shanghai might be history, but chopsticks and Chicken McNuggets aren't. I've got a stockpile of the original McDonald's chopsticks in one of my many drawers full of mirth, but you don't need to be so lucky. Any regular pair of chopsticks will do, and nothing is stopping you from reliving the glory of a high class Chicken McNugget.
Whether you eat them once a week or once a year, I'm really going to have to insist that you use chopsticks the next time you down a pack of Chicken McNuggets. What was merely delicious before transforms into a distinctly religious experience, and I can think of no simpler way to make shitty McDonald's food reek of top floor metropolitan class.
I'd originally intended to show you how to recreate the discontinued McDonald's Salad Shaker collection by using a few Slurpee cups and a pair of scissors, but this is way cooler. Try it. You'll feel distinguished and sooo less greasy than usual.
PS: You don't need to be a chopsticks wizard to make the magic happen. Shown above is how I did the deed back in '86, and it worked just as well. Actually, it worked even better: Poke two holes, and you've created your very own McNugget Buddy, free to cavort around McDonaldland as Ronald continually suggests an innocent round of Marco Polo in a pool full of barbecue sauce. It's a good thing dead chicken parts can't sleep; clown will eat them.
I suck. I guess my current status as a nonentity can't be attributed to any single thing. I've been really, really busy with work, but not in a bad way, and Lord knows that I've managed to post even when I was busy with work in a bad way. I think it's just been my cover excuse: I've been busy enough to make myself believe that that was the reason I wasn't writing anything, rather than figuring out what it really is.
I'm still not entirely sure what it really is; I guess I can sum it up best as a consistent feeling of being "unplugged." I struggle to find a relevant word for weeks, never once reminding myself that this entire site has been built on irrelevance, and that it would've been easier to just write about the damn Iron Man Slurpee three days ago rather than sitting around trying to come up with some kind of magnificent return post.
Also, when I do this, I feel old. I mean, I have this glorious, absolutely glorious television special wherein 50% of the Golden Girls host the 25th anniversary of Disney World live from the park, and I can't muster the gusto to build the review, because it's from 1985 and I feel like nobody who would be willing to read sentences in my chosen structure was even born by then anymore. It's a far cry from the site's infancy, where I could say "He-Man" and 10,000 people would hold up posterboard signs in tribute.
Then again, I'll write light confessions like the paragraphs above, read them over, and only then do I get how utterly stupid I'm being. Why? Because in the time it took for me to write that, I could've been writing about something you'd actually be interested in, like, say, the Iron Man Slurpee. (It comes in an Iron Man head-shaped mug, you know.)
The other part of it is this: In my head, I always know I'll eventually come back and write consistently, whether it happens this minute or in a week or a month. And I assume that everyone who reads the site also knows that, and expect them to keep checking, even though I know how annoying that is. There are plenty of sites that I've read for years that've progressed into having a more casual update schedule, whether by official announcement or pure happenstance. And I know that I've felt disconnected from those people after a while, because they seemed to stay on as a lark and not as a lifestyle.
So, I'm sorry if the site seemed to be at the bottom of my checklist lately. It was in action, but not in thought. To help make amends, here's what I'll do:
I was recently gifted a swank $100 American Express gift card. I could use the money for something practical — perhaps a pair of jeans that aren't two inches taller than my legs, or maybe a horde of energy-efficient light bulbs which will scream to the neighbors that I ain't afraid to go green. Or, I could let you tell me what to buy.
You pick the store, and I'll go on a $100 shopping spree there, buying only the most ridiculous, weird junk I can find.
The only catch is that I'm not going to travel 50 miles out of town for this, so your choices will be limited to the following:
1) Toys "R" Us 2) Best Buy 3) A Supermarket 4) Amazon.com (okay, so an online choice is lame, but they've got some weird shit)
Whichever establishment gets the popular vote in tonight's thread will win, and I'll spend tomorrow doing the hunting for the report. I was going to throw a dollar store in the mix, but really, I know that everyone would choose that, and I'm still a good three weeks away from being desperate enough for fresh content that I'd spend a hundred bucks on generic shampoo and obsolete Colorforms playsets.
Aside from that, this is your normal SNT. Tonight's extra theme? Halloween. Serious. I'm jonesing. Not so much for Halloween proper, but rather just a cold night in some scary log cabin with nothing but space heaters, blankets and crappy food to protect me from the various horror icons who'd dare to make live appearances after I watch them on a shitty fifteen-inch tube television. Seeing as how my psychological clock is so fucked, it makes perfect sense that this notion would hit as soon as it actually feels like springtime outside.
Oh, and my Smash code is 4425-1199-9569. I usually frown upon every thread turning into an exchange of Wii friend codes, but in this case, I really want to spend the night pounding you with my absolutely invincible Pikachu.
I spent the past week at a "How To Be A Better Webmaster" bootcamp/seminar deal, and though I expected simple solutions like "update more often" or "remember that you own a website," I was instead instructed to resonate with you by talking about one of my favorite stones in the entire stone kingdom: JADE.
I love jade. I really do. I look at jade, and I wish I could be magically transformed into a hippie new age housewife, just so I can get away with gluing random pieces of it to my belt. Though there are hundreds of things that I love without any clear remembrance of the origins of said loves, with jade, I actually know the precise moment that I became its #1 fan.
It was the summer of 1985. During my family's annual trip to Wildwood, the inevitable vacation-ending activity commenced: It was time to cash in all of our casino arcade tickets and obtain whatever lousy prize we could get from spending thousands of dollars on skeeball and Pop-A-Ball poker.
For as much as I loved those Wildwood casino arcades, I have to admit that there was an unmistakable level of suck to the prizes they offered. 25,000 points for a knockoff Lots-A-Lots-A-Legggs doll? The fact that only three of you know what real Lots-A-Lots-A-Legggs dolls are only punctuates how ridiculous it was to spend 25,000 points on a bootleg version.
In the end, I usually picked whatever toys I could find that were from officially licensed brands, even if I wasn't a huge fan of those particular brands. And that's how the "Rambo Survival Knife" came into my life.
If you're wondering what any of this has to do with jade, I promise, all will be revealed.
The "Rambo Survival Knife" is actually more of a "Rambo Survival Kit," consisting of much more than the crude rubber blade shown at left. Also included is a sheath, which is so unbelievably thin and flimsy that the knife simply cannot fit inside it, whittling the sheath's potential uses down to landfill or a condom you wear when you want children.
More alarming is the toy watch. It isn't functional, of course, featuring a cardboard dial which dictates that the time is now and forever 10:05. To help sell the toy watch as an official Rambo item, they went through the trouble of adding "RAMBO" text on the dial. If nothing else, it's succinct. I might be more forgiving to this piece of shit watch if it had the ability to stay in one piece. Just by touching it, the watch explodes into several plastic pieces, each more annoying than the last. Then again, I'm not too familiar with Rambo's films. I know he had guns…can anyone confirm if Rambo ever had an exploding trick watch? I suspect he would've called it a "time bomb." But he wouldn't have chuckled after saying it, because that's cheesy.
At the casino arcade, this dumb Rambo toy was on display in a high-up window case. Almost everything seems ten thousand times cooler when on display in high-up window cases, but this is one of the few items in history that was done a great disservice by such a method of display. Nobody could see it from the floor of that arcade, but lurking deep within the "Rambo Survival Knife" set was something so holy and so GREEN that I'm honestly tempted to finish this entry in this horrible font color.
It was…THE AMULET. I would've been excited enough to own an amulet that was apparently based on a combination of Buddha and a Martian Popping Thing, but when my mother noted that it "looked like jade" and explained what jade was, I just about lost my mind. I had no reason to suspect that the amulet was simply forged in plastic, and in my mind, I was the proud owner of a million dollar gem, left to wonder how such an immensely priceless objet d'art could've possibly been packaged with a lousy shoelace for a necklace.
I cannot impress upon you the love I had for this amulet. I wore it everywhere, or at least, I did until the fateful day came when the charm fell off and vanished from the face of the planet. The entertainment industry had long taught me that amulets were magical good luck charms capable of delivering their wielders incredible powers. So, not only did I look freakin' cool with my freakin' sweet jade amulet…I had godlike powers, too!
So began a lifelong love affair with jade. To this day, no street fair vendor hawking poorly crafted animal statues made from jade or other rocks green enough to pass as jade has met my gaze without meeting my wallet soon after. To this day, I still contend that most of the walls in our apartment would look really great if we painted them bright green. To this day, I let that bitch from Mortal Kombat II beat up Scorpion without ever trying to fight back, sheerly out of respect. Jade wins.
Kind of an odd story to be telling you on a Friday night, but I feel better having done so.
The "Rambo Survival Knife" was made by a company called LarGo, which reads like the screenname of the Tampa-area old lady who I totally pummeled in Yahoo Checkers just the other day.
In other news:
I'm back in ToyFare with an article on M.U.S.C.L.E. toys, covering their past, present and future, with every accessory and Nintendo game in-between. Actually, the feature was in last month's issue, but it took forever for me to find it. When I finally did, it was at a comic shop on the way to my bus stop by the office. During the ride home, I couldn't keep from thumbing through to check out how the ToyFare's artists handled the layout, and also to see how much of it survived their editing process. (Not complaining…they edit for the right reasons, not just for the heck of it.)
So I'm sitting there reading, and I catch some guy across the row staring a hole through the magazine pages and my head. He didn't seem like the type of person who would've been a ToyFare subscriber, and I couldn't figure out why all of this seemed so interesting to him. Finally, it hit me: A glossy black magazine page with "THINK PINK" written on it in giant neon lettering, footnoted with a shot of a cartoon character wearing a leotard. Feeling sufficiently leotarded, I tucked the magazine back into its brown paper bag and quickly zipped into iPod mode. Whatever. I get sick when I try to read in cars, anyway.
I hope you're all doing well. At least, I hope you're doing well enough to answer this SURPRISE SURVEY — WHOA!
Survey: Look at the picture below. It's of four sandwiches. Put these sandwiches in your order of preference, and explain your reasoning. Your decisions must be based on these sandwiches and these sandwiches alone, exactly as shown. You can't add mustard or whatever else you would usually add. I don't know why, but I'm honestly curious about your responses.
I'd go with the roast beef sandwich as my top pick, and actually, it's the only one that I find somewhat palatable. Totally crushing on the sea of radish slices.
Next up, I guess the luncheon meat. I've never had luncheon meat, but it looks kind of like Spam. I can't remember if I've ever eaten Spam, but I find it interesting. I'm also intrigued by the scale portrayed here. From what I know of green pepper rings, their relative size means that the meat slices are approximately seven feet long a piece.
Ham would be third, even though I don't eat ham and have an aversion to cucumbers. Why? Because I'd sooner fry bugs up with dog shit than eat a tuna salad.
Great survey, right? X-E is so awesome.
PS: Did Rambo really wear a jade buddha amulet? If the answer is yes, he's so great.
As the world turns its attentions to Uncle O'Grimacey's fabled Shamrock Shakes, I find myself bored with the prospect of another month spent trying to locate that one odd McDonald's willing to dye its milky treasures green for me. I've already done that and photo-archived it, and besides, the only time I've ever been even 1/14th Irish was when I consulted a fermentingly old bottle of Baileys to survive a toothache several years ago.
So, go. Go and have your little minty triple-thick delicious milkshakes. I've discovered a new method of celebrating St. Patrick's Day by way of the material world: Mutant fish!
After receiving word from an anonymous tipster that a local Petland store was displaying its lucky pride in an obscene way, I cased the scene earlier this evening. I come from a neighborhood with its fair share of Irishmen, but there still seemed to be something a tad off about a pet store so thoroughly decorated in tacky clover-themed garland and the errant cardboard leprechaun. On the other hand, any event that tempts pet store workers to segregate doggy rawhide bones into boxes of "green" and "all other colors except green" makes me clap like I'm at the opera after someone nails an amazingly long note. Okay, maybe I didn't clap like that, but I clapped like something. Okay, actually, I didn't clap at all. But I thought about clapping.
By now you're probably wondering why I'm rambling on about a pet store decorated with green ribbons. In fact, clover-themed window clings were the least of my concerns. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, they had a whole freakin' tank of painted parrot fish. You know, the kind that are unnaturally dyed in a bevy of neon colors? I bought a bunch of 'em several years ago, and upon learning about the process by which they're turned into technicolor freaks, I vowed never to buy them again. Still, when faced with an Irish pet store featuring a tankful of clover green parrot fish, convictions may sometimes find themselves taking a backseat to awesomeness.
Regarding the photo above, you'll have to use your imagination a bit. Try as I might, it just isn't easy to take pictures of stuff inside fish tanks.
Yes, I bought one. Yes, I know that I shouldn't support the business practice of injecting innocent fish with fast-fading food dye. Everyone's allowed a weak moment, and after all, it's not like I picked some normal fish from a tank and sent them to the back room with a syringe. They already did the deed, and at least I'll give the poor thing a better home than some seven-year-old Irish kid with intentions of using an upside-down football helmet for a fish tank.
All but one of my original painted parrots from that ancient blog post have died off. The one that's left was originally bright red, but over time, his color has faded to a very muted and nearly natural yellow. He's grown much bigger and lived for far longer than a lot of fish-related websites told me he would, which is either a minor miracle or, you know, just one of those things.
Despite our collective misgivings about the animal rights issues involved here, I have to admit that holiday-themed fish is a concept that I'd be happy to volunteer time to and/or draw up signage for. It's important to support the causes you believe in, even if we're just talking about fish that look like Christmas or Halloween. Or stupid St. Patrick's Day.
We went to Altantic City for an overnight visit this past Friday, and for the first time in history, I actually won. After spending several hours getting violated by every slot and table game in the Tropicana casino, the trip was shaping up to be just another in a long series of colossal failures. And then, it happened. During a late night game of Let-It-Ride poker, I nailed four sixes with two fifteen dollar bets in. That's $30 x 50, plus a $400 bonus bet payout. Jibberish poker lingo, but the short version is: Happy Matt.
The win was worth almost two grand, and even with my many follies earlier in the evening, I came home more than a thousand bucks up. So marked the only time that the ride back from Atlantic City wasn't footnoted by the foul ambiance of regret and guilt. I have no solid plans for this modest fortune, but since I'm speaking of a financial gain on the Internet, I obviously plan to donate everything to starving children with baaaad diseases.
We headed out to the boardwalk on Saturday, ultimately landing at one of the many 99 cent shops that I've covered in past Altantic City-related articles. For the most part, it was just the usual gamut of generic foodstuffs, obsolete soap brands, shell-themed ashtrays and breast-shaped coffee mugs.
I wanted to tie a bow around the weekend by coming home with something worth writing about, but there are only so many times a person can scribble about odd soap and titty cups before they bore everyone around them. Fortunately, at the last moment, I found a certain something that's totally worth paying a backwards tribute to…
At first glance, this Animal Playset just seems like your everyday, run-of-the-mill, cheapo set of plastic animal toys. And while that's technically a correct description, it's also a description akin to calling the tip of the Sistine Chapel "a ceiling," or the moai statues peppered throughout Easter Island "rocks."
The oddity seemed only rudimentary at first: Why were cat and dog figurines packaged with a plastic palm tree? We could fry many robot brains trying to conjure an answer, but the truth is, that alone wasn't enough to make the Animal Playset worth writing about. I looked closer.
"Wait a second…those aren't cat and dog figurines….they're dog-faced cat figurines!" I was elated! We were getting closer to a shitty toy worthy of archiving. I inspected the still-packaged playset some more, hoping to find additional graces. The next thing I noticed were the odd pair of toy rocks that came packaged along with the dog-faced cats and palm tree. What significance these rocks hold will be forever lost on me, but at the same time, I knew that I couldn't genuinely point to them as the piece (pieces?) de résistance. If the Animal Playset was to go down in history as one of the worst dollar store toys ever, it needed to blow my mind without even trying.
That's when my friend pointed out that the included plastic playmat, which seemed to detail a simple grassy area for the dog-faced cats to march around the palm tree on top off, was actually the biggest mindfuck at all. As my friend took an inquisitive hand to his chin, he turned to me and spoke softly: "Hey, why the fuck is there a pterodactyl on this thing?"
No longer forced to string dog-faced cats and palms trees into cohesive incohesiveness, this final feature took the Animal Playset to a previously unreached echelon of oddball royalty. The playmat not only features a pterodactyl, but also a brontosaurus, along with a hippopotamus, lion and various farm animals, roaming together through a series of fenced-off grassy lands. Either Hammond had a hand in this, or the Animal Playset is an entity for which the rules of time and science do not apply.
Let's review: Dog-faced cat figures tugging a palm tree across a countryside filled with cows and dinosaurs, with free bonus rocks. It's the kind of catalog description that means more than a photo ever could. I love the Animal Playset, and I have every reason to. It's successfully mutated cats, it's pushed palm trees to a higher level of grandeur, and it's given me ammunition for nights filled with dreams of brontosaurs and lions playing freeze tag together.
The fact that the playset's shelfmates consisted of porn-themed playing cards and last year's assortment of Marshmallow Peeps notwithstanding, this was the absolute best way to bookend my most successful Altantic City to date.
Before heading home, we sat out on a boardwalk bench, soaking up the cool breezes and reflecting on the weekend that was. Then some random guy waltzed over with a giant bag of buttered popcorn and poured it on the ground, inviting a nearby flock of seagulls to turn murderous. We ran. We ran so far away-ye-yay.
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
Posted by Matt @ 6:22 pm [Permalink] [112 Comments]
