Raise the banner high

I used to hate banner ads. You know what I am talking about, the ads that appear on web pages (sometimes obscuring the text you WANT to see and talking loudly.)

I used to hate them, but I have been beaten to submission.

I love them now.

Here is one from Pizza Hut...

... or should I call it PASTA HUT? I don't even know if I will be able to speak with my mouth full of 3 pounds of Pasta Hut pasta. Thanks Pasta Hut. You have filled up my Tuesdays for the rest of eternia. Or eternity. Whichever one isn't He-Man's planet...
OR SHOULD I SAY HE-MAN'S PASTA?


Who is this wrestler?

I wish Wildman Marc Mero was a choice. I am going to have to assume it's H. Three H. Yup.

Choose Your Fortune Teller

Remember that scene in Big where Tom Hanks went to fortune teller machine and then became an adult. Then he falls in love with Elizabeth Perkins making her a pedophile?

Well, I recently came across a few of those fortune teller machines and I decided to review them for you.

Swami:

This is the typical machine I think of when I think of fortune teller machines (which oddly enough takes up quite a bit of my time.)
Swami, like all the others we will be looking at, is about the size of an old phone booth and features a bearded man in a golden turban. His shirt and scarf reminds me of something that Larry would wear on Three's Company.
He has a statue of Buddha in front of him.
LOOK: ****
SMELL: ***
ACCURACY OF PREDICTION: 61%
POSSIBLE SAMPLE PREDICTION: "You will be on American Idol season 28."
POLITICAL AFFILIATION: Green Party

Cawston Ostrich Farm

When I go to Disneyland in fabulous Anaheim California or Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom in Florida I always seem to make my way to the mutoscopes.

If you don't know the word "mutoscope" don't worry, neither did I until about 30 seconds ago.

And if you don't consider me the high mark of intellectualism, and are still worried, I can only remind you of the scene from Bourne Identity where Jason Bourne Identity tells a thug "Pain? I don't know the meaning of the word." The he looks up "pain" in the dictionary and then kills the thug with the book.

Also this may cheer you up: spell check does not know what a mutoscope is.

Or maybe I am spelling it wrong.

Anyway, to write this article I spent about 10 minutes googling "old timey flip book movie machine at Disneyland's Penny Arcade" before I arrived at the term mutoscope.

I usually use them at the end of the night when I am trying to extend my stay at Disneyland past the scheduled closing time (the Penny Arcade usually stays open an hour later than most of the park.)

You put a penny in the slot, put your face up to a View Master looking thingie and the turn a crank to flip the images in the mutoscope.

On my most recent trip I watched this one:



It shows an Ostrich pulling a cart with a (rather unenthusiastic) kid on it.

Seemed like an awesome thing to do, but hey I have never ridden in an ostrich powered vehicle. Perhaps in the past everyone did.

The wagon in the mutoscope has the name Cawston Ostrich Farm written on the side. A quick Google search reveals it to be AMERICA'S FIRST OSTRICH FARM!

The Cawston Ostrich Farm was located in fabulous Passdena, California and was open from 1886 until either 1935 or the late 20s. I found two different sources. I can't say for sure which was right and neither source seemed all that reputable.

But I did find some information on Wikipedia that I cut and pasted and then slightly reworded so as to make it seem less like plagiarism:

In the mid 1880s Edwin Cawston took fifty ostriches from Africa to Texas.Then he took the ostriches via train to Pasadena, California. Only eighteen survived. Cawston was able to get the ostriches to multiply and eventually had over 100 on his Ostrich Farm.

The Cawston Ostrich Farm was close to the Los Angeles trolley line and was a very popular tourist attraction. Guests were able to ride ostriches, buy hats and boas made from ostrich feathers and laugh at the ostriches silly long necks.



At some point people got tired of laughing at the ostriches long neck (probably when the giraffe was invented) and the place closed down.

Today the factory has been turned into expensive lofts and the ostriches could no longer afford to live in Pasadena so they most likely went back to Africa.

But, on a cool night at Disneyland it only costs a penny to be taken back to a time when you could smell an ostrich and not get arrested.

Obamachoo

If you follow this silly blog it would not surprise you to find out that I collect Presidential memorabilia. Recently I decided to purchase my first peice of Obamabillia.

Obama's mug has been slapped on so many items it was really hard to decide.

I saw a t-shirt with Obama slam dunking a globe as he steps on John McCain's face. I saw a pin with the logo for The Lion King written as "The Lyin King" with the POTUS's face superimposed over Mufasa's grill. I also saw the notorious Chia Obama.

I still had never seen something that made me dig into my pocket and fork over the cash.

So the other day I logged into eBay and refused to log out until I found SOMETHING that would brighten up my home and commemorate (for better or worse) the current president.

I didn't care if I bought something pro-Obama (or should I say PRObama?) or anti-Obama (that PRObama thing made me laugh really hard.)

I just wanted to get something stupid.

At first I was really interested in the items that spelled the President's name wrong.

A presidential typo seemed really funny.

Then I looked at poker chips, beer mugs and commemorative plates and then I found this:



Obamachoo!

In case the picture is hard to understand, it's a beautiful hand painted tissue box adorned with a bizarre caricature of Obama. The tissues come out of his nose and the word "Obamachoo" a great mash up of the name Obama and the word "achoo."

The caricature reminds me of the Spitting Image puppets:



If you don't remember Spitting Image it was an odd puppet show that satirized celebrities in the 1980s.

The image doesn't really look like Obama, but I still think the image works as a whole.

Obamachoo as a slogan makes no sense whatsoever and that makes me LOVE it.

Interestingly I have not been able to get a consensus as to whether this item is pro-Obama or anti-Obama.

I prefer to think it's just an insult to everyone who sees it.