honestly.

Not one thing of remote interest has happened to me lately.  So, no blog posts.

it’s not called mongoloid anymore.

Somehow, I don’t think the creators of this doll were remotely joking.

Introducing the Down Syndrome Girl Doll! The description from the website selling the product is as follows:

A soft-sculpt cloth doll with all the features of a down’s child

A doll that looks like me

$27.50

An incredible gift and affirmation, our Down Syndrome dolls are created in love, given in love and received in love.

Serene in their love for us, in the joy they find in their lives and in their accomplishments, special children with an extra large capacity for love.

The Pattycake Doll Co. takes great pride in presenting the first ever soft-sculpt cloth dolls for these special Down Syndrome children. Build self-esteem and self respect with a doll the “looks like me!” A doll that teaches your child the positive message that “we’re beautiful too.”

Approx. 14 inches tall, lightweight all cloth and fiber filled, machine wash and dry, easy to dress slip on pants and velcro-strip top. Available for either boys or girls and in white or ethnic skin tones. Age safe starting at 2 years old.

foam-rubber puppet children

Of all my questions that have gone unanswered, the one that resonates within the confines of my skull is this one:

Who the fuck pulled the plug on Muppet Babies?

It’s been almost 15 years since the show last aired, and to this day I find it funny. How many other programs have featured Tom Selleck professing his love to a cartoon pig with blonde hair? Where else is “Native American” a valid career path?*

Did you think Garbage Pail Kids was canceled before it even reached American TV sets because it was a crap show? No. Garbage Pail Kids was canceled because it was set to air in the timeslot after Muppet Babies, a show so brilliant that you could air M*A*S*H* after it and it would seem like a very special episode of Yogi Bear.

Watch:

*Completely serious – during a tune about career paths, Miss Piggy Sports a festive Indian headdress.

shit SINema: meet the spartans

As if Robot Chicken hadn’t worn out the now-famous “THIS IS SPARTA!” line by devoting ten segments to it, Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg have cooked up another steaming batch of shit soup for moviegoers to devour.

Who keeps signing off on all these lame-ass Seltzer-Friedberg projects anyway? Yes, we all know that Paris Hilton popularized the phrase “that’s hot”. And we’ve all put it behind us. There’s no reason to pluck it from obscurity to score a cheap laugh that will most likely not make it past the inaudible chuckle phase anyway.

Meet the Spartans offers all of the quality Seltzer-Friedberg humor that we’ve grown to love: fat jokes, midget jokes, gay jokes… there’s even a crack at Paula Abdul!

The only thing that would have been more predictable is if they titled the movie “Meet the Fartans”.

I’m not begging for the Mariana Trench, but I like my movies to have a bit more depth than a visual gag where Donald Trump’s hair is pulled off by Spiderman’s web.

i knew a girl… (#2)

Helena. I knew a girl who looked like Rodney Dangerfield with a 5-0′clock shadow. She was the type you see wearing a bleached out 3X Tweety Bird t-shirt rummaging through the scrunchie bin at Goodwill. The kind of ugly she-beast who was always bragging about how much sex she got, although her boyfriends always conveniently went to another school. She had a hormone disorder that caused her to grow facial hair, so she would often come to class with a three-day beard. Rugged, like George Clooney, only the exact opposite.

i knew a girl… (#1)

Agel.  I once knew a girl who looked like a ginger-haired Emperor Palpatine. We played volley ball together. When we were in the locker room changing, I couldn’t help but notice that she wore the same purple thong every day. It had a little chain on the back with rhinestone letters that spelled out “Angel”, but the “n” was missing. She frequently wore pink toe-socks with the word “Princess” printed on them with glittery paint. And most days, she wore a denim flip skirt and a Bobby Jack t-shirt. But Agel (as she came to be known) wasn’t in 7th grade. She was a 19 year-old photo tech for CVS. Now, I don’t know if it’s exactly my place to talk about style – I wore a Star Wars t-shirt to class today – but after a person reaches a certain age, Bobby Jack goes from being cute* to depressing. It’s like seeing a 55 year old grandma wearing Apple Bottoms jeans and a pleather newsboy cap. You just die a little inside.

*I don’t think Bobby Jack is cute, but apparently some people do

hybrid clone

I think that Serj Tankian is a hybrid clone.

If you put Danny Bonaduce, Hal Sparks and Screech in a blender, poured the mixture into muffin cups and baked for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, I’m positive that you would get a batch of muffins that taste just like the dude.

I swear.

doin’ things is what I like to do. yes.

I don’t know if I’m the only one, but I love the new Dunkin Donuts commercial (actually, I remember seeing it sometime in 2006, but they’ve just recently brought it back). It’s such a vague sentence, but it’s sung (by They Might Be Giants, I might add) so enthusiastically that it cracks me up every time I hear it.  The ad being aired today has a slightly different (and better, I think) tune than the one from 2006, but unfortunately I couldn’t find the new one on YouTube.

Watch:

anime kids.

I don’t like anime. I haven’t since I was a Sailor Moon überfan when I was ten years old. There is nothing less appealing than two purple-haired ninjas battling it out with giant katanas while wearing bathrobes. Except for being in a room full of obese basement-dwellers dressed up as purple-haired ninjas battling it out with giant katanas while wearing bathrobes. Oh yes, I’m talking about the anime kids.

Of course, somewhere along the course of my life I committed some great misdeed, and Lady Fortune decided to throw at me the worst of all punishments. One of my friends is… an anime kid.

When we met, I never would have suspected that she was infected. She smelled fine, dressed normally, and never once did she use the word “kawaii”. Then, one day, I stayed the night at her house. For most of the night, we just watched TV and talked. Then I excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I returned, she was sitting on her bed, reading a book. Backwards.

“Uh, Reno, why are you reading that book backwards?”

“Because it’s a manga,” she replied. “A Japanese book.”

I died a little inside. “They read backwards?”

“Yeah. Rather than flip all of the panels when translating the books into English, they just print the book backwards.”

I could only manage an, “Oh.”

Another time, she delivered the [heartbreaking] news that she would be attending AFO (a crazy anime kid convention in Orlando where you’re sure to encounter a handful of the aforementioned purple-haired ninjas). I asked her if she was going to dress up. To my relief, she said no, but broke my heart again as she tacked on “because I don’t have a costume”.

After eight years of friendship, I’m still hesitant to go shopping with her. She always has to stroll through the manga aisle to peruse the latest backwards books that Japan has pulled out its ass. Always has to make that pit-stop in F.Y.E.’s right-back corner to see if the Naruto DVDs have dropped in price. The scenario plays over and over in my head whenever we’re in the bookstore: Gorgeous Man sees Other Voices, Other Rooms (or something) in my hand, “oh, hey, you like Capote? Me too! He’s great – hey, do you want to get some coffee with me or something?”, just then, Reno chimes in, “ohmygod, hey, Berlin, Wolf’s Rain DVD on sale for $2o!”, Gorgeous Man scowls saying, “oh, I didn’t realize you were one of them. Never mind.” So I have to distance myself from her when she’s hunting manga, making sure that I make it known to all passerby that I do not, in any way, like anime. It’s actually a lot of work; having an anime kid for a friend (when you have a vehement dislike for anime kids) is like having an incontinent dog; it’s a lot of maintenance and at times you wonder if it’s even worth it. But then you figure it must be, since you’ve kept it all these years.

OPEN YOUR MIND! (just buy shoes first)

I’m guessing that the message of the latest Converse ad is to encourage free thinking and individuality? In itself, a nice message, but I wouldn’t exactly say that Converse is the best company to stress the idea. When every person wearing your product sports Invader Zim tees and gloves with all the fingers cut off, “uniqueness” probably isn’t the venue for you.