This was from the back of the funny pages, and it was serious.

So I decided to enter the contest, and at age ten, I created these characters:

I entered all of the above except for CARRYVAN, and the one I didn't even like called PUPPY HOG.

For entering so many characters (I guess), I won this playset:

My mom offered to take it back to the store to get something else. I refused. I played with it once.

These ended up being the finalists:

What the fuck?

Fearless Photog won the vote, but no toy was ever made.  At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, it was announced that there would finally be a toy:

You're still kidding me, right?

But there was one bit of satisfaction I was always able to maintain.  Mattel ripped off my Elephantom!

They gave him a robot head and dubbed him Snout Spout.

But now, there’s this:

Victory will be mine!

I will keep you posted on my final entries.  Yes, there will be many.

————————————————————————————————————-

In case you were interested, here are each of the character’s write ups as they were when I was ten:

C.A.R.’s a small, weak wimp that can be Crushed And Restored. But every time he’s crushed by Evil, he gets mad, and when he gets mad, he gets bigger and stronger and wants revenge.  Only He-Man can talk him out of this vengeance he want.  But every time he’s crushed by Good, he gets courageous.

I guess I didn’t like that idea.  Why would good guys crush him?

When Ill-Yusion sways his hands illusions appear.  Anything he thinks of at the time will become an illusion.  Also, he is always ill.  So anytime he coughs or sneezes, an illusion will appear or disappear.

He was always ill?  Who saw that coming?

Ticklon has four arms.  The two upper arms tickle a victim and the two lower arms grab the weapons.  So there is no need for a weapon of his own with arms like this.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Kangaruin (then named Kangaroo Man) has a pouch to keep things hidden.  Can jump to the length of 50 feet and can jump as high as 20 feet.  His hands and feet are very powerful.  He can punch or kick through any solid material.

Liquid materials, forget it.

Walrusaur (then named Walrus Man) has stun rays in his teeth. His teeth can also eat through 3/5 of any material except lime stone, like the walls of Castle Grayskull.  His flipper hands and feet make him a good swimmer (and slapper).

There should have been more slapping in He-Man cartoons.

Elephantom – The ghostly elephant whose trunk can stretch miles until the enemy’s caught. Weighs nothing with unbelievable strength.

Snout Spout was only shown in the He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special, and some She-Ra episodes, although I never saw those.

She-Yuld – Her shields create invisible force fields that keeps gathering around.  Once finished, ricochets anything that hits them.  Her shields have magnetic forces under them, too.

I don’t get what any of that means.

Clustor (Tartor, Ropego, and Gluestick together) – Tartor alone shakes his leg and gooky tar flies; Ropego alone has a rope arm and buzzsaw spurs on his heels; Gluestick alone spits glue from his mouth.  Together as Clustor they are stronger than ever: streams of glue from the mouth, a more controllable rope arm, and buckets of tar from the legs of Clustor.

Gluestick was the best I could come up with?

Yes, that says, "Santa's all stuffing and bones."

This was one of my favorite stories from my time spent living in Los Angeles, but now, it has elevated to simply one of my favorite stories.

(SIDENOTE: As a young writer, I remember reading many how-to articles about recycling your material to different papers.  At the time, I couldn’t see how that was possible.  Now?  Lesson learned.)

Anyhohoho, around Christmas of 1997, a pair of my friends came to visit, and they discovered an unbelievable article in New Times Los Angeles.  Here’s an excerpt (the sideways PDF of the article is after the jump, as well as what TV shows were being filmed at NBC in ’97, and a BONUS strange Detroit-centric article):

“I’ve been passing by this Santa, watching him do his little wave thing since I was a kid,” one officer, who asks not to be identified, says. “It wasn’t an easy thing to take, seeing the arm with that bone coming out and thinking there’s a real person in there. Lots of us, I think, really had a lot of affection for him, and to consider having to unplug him, stop the waving, take off that nice red suit and open him up to, well . . . no one wants to think of the Slacks n’ Such Santa as human remains.”

Crazy, right?  I’ve told people about this Santa Claus mummy for fourteen years.  And thankfully, while drunk at a one year old’s birthday party, when this tale was brought up again, my friend revealed he kept the article!  So over the next few days of all three of us emailing back and forth, a new light was shed upon the subject.

The author of The Case of the Disarming Santa, Peter Gilstrap, wrote the exact same article for New Times Phoenix one year earlier!  (To read the full article easier, click here.)

All the names and places remain exactly the same, except for the specific mentions of the individual cities.

So is the story real?

If I look up Laird Avenue, which is mentioned in both stories, what do I find?

How about any history of the store in front of which the Christmas corpse was found?

That sunovabitch double-dipped.  And he tricked all three of us hook, line, and chimney.  Can I blame him for spreading his own urban legend?  Not at all.  I wasn’t local.  I had no fond memories of any mechanical Santa Claus displays.  But I do have to applaud the audacity it took to try to pass the same story off in two cities it likely never occurred in.

It’s a regular fucking Christmas miracle…

L.A. Santa Article

NBC Show Taping Guide

Odd PressandGuide Article

Awesome, right?  It’s definitely sexual in nature, butt am I wrong to think it could be about a little something extra under the tree?  I known the TripleDoubleU has been around for quite some time and my purest thoughts are no different from yellow snow, butt I don’t think I’m reading too much into these lyrics:

I’m your
Backdoor Santa
I make my run
At the break of day

“The break of day” is also known as “the crack of dawn.”

I ain’t like
Old Saint Nick
He don’t come
But once a year

That part is obviously sexual, and the concept was stolen by Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond.  Here’s where it gets really interesting…

I kept that door open
In case anyone
Smelled a mouse

No comment.

If neither of those names are familiar, here are the faces to go with them:

Courtney Ford

Kate Beahan

Courtney is probably best known for her role in season four of Dexter (and not for her marriage to Superman), but she first came to my attention in an episode of How I Met Your Mother (“The Naked Man“).  She played an awful person on HIMYM, but she did this on Dexter.  She will forever be in my heart, and needs more opportunities to do what she did on Dexter.

Kate has not fared as well in America as she has in her homeland (she’s Australian… I love Australian accents).  Her biggest role here was in The Wicker Man, and this is a sample of the material she had to work with:

Come on Hollywood!  Give her another shot!  At least one better than Nick Cage in a bear suit punching a woman!

"Tauntauns roasting on an open fire..."

Awww… gawdammit!  It’s the stupid Wampa Rug that’s for sale…

I don’t know how well it works, but I want it.  And it’s free.  And it’s available now.

But you might be wondering this:

Why don’t you just download it now for free and test it out?

Well that’s because I can’t, you idiot, otherwise I would.  I still have an iPhone 3G, and I need at least a 3GS.  So I need to upgrade my phone to 4 in order to try it out before my trip to Prague.

So I guess what I’m really saying is:

All I Want For Christmas Is… An iPhone 4!

Essentially, it’s a mimicking parrot that can, well, here’s an example of how skilled they can be:

Imagine the things I could teach one!  Really, go ahead and imagine!  ’Cuz I don’t feel like it!

How could he keep from kissing her? Aside from lawsuits anyway.

This, my dear friends, is the tale of me embarking upon a slippery slope.  I do have my defense at the ready as to why I would remember such a small detail, and I do have proof.  It’s been a while since I’ve jumped into the rabbit hole, and I think I’ve missed hanging out in the dirt.

AnyGreendale, I’ve been watching the first season of Community on DVD and I’ve noticed something that’s alarmed me.  There are actual jokes missing that made it to air but the digital disc.  In a world where uncut DVD’s are the norm, why is this show the exception!

The one I noticed for 100% sure happened in the beginning of the episode Social Psychology.  I know this for two reasons (besides this proof I’ve found), which I’ll get to after the proof.  This line, listed in AV Club’s review of the ep, is not on the DVD release:

You’re an eight, which is a British 10.

You can see it in action here:

Now how did I remember this independent of my research?

1. Community is one of the few shows I watch more than once on my DVR (this, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and Delocated).
2. I like Alison Brie.  And I thought her various “Oh’s” were brilliantly executed.

And it’s not the only bit trimmed.  This is from a review site’s thread (video proof here):

My only gripe with this release: One episode is cut down from the TV version. Chang’s opening scene (where he puts his face right into Annie’s and calls her “Princess Gringa”) is gone, and so is a couple of really funny lines from John Oliver (who was barely in the show as it is!).

All I Want For Christmas Is… To Know Why!?

To begrudgingly begin, this ad from Verizon is way more annoying in its condensed radio form, but you can get the gist of it from this tube promo.  Whoever thought of taking Madness’ Our House and turning it into a hybrid holiday ditty featuring British-sounding hooligans should be run over by Santa’s sleigh.  That rusty ol’ magical blade right over their carotid artery would make my mistletoes tingle:

This one isn’t as holiday apparent, but it’s still hawking phones.  Who gives telecommunication devices as gifts?  Who puts some song that sounds like it’s sung by Lisa Simpson in their ad?

This one is off the radio, and it boils my blood like I’d been in a microwave.  It makes absolutely no sense, because not one bit of it ties together.  I’m sorry that I can’t get any angrier.  I feel dead inside:

I also wanted to mention that although I don’t mind Doug Benson most of the time, commercials for his new show, The Benson Interruption, drive me up the wall.  There are no videos online for me to share, so I made this instead: