[Via Tiny Cartridge]

Apparently this is the handy work of Stan Freberg. Is he doing the voiceover? [via Martin]

Most of strips have a gag in them that almost always fails to deliver, like these:

While others just kinda play out incoherently:

But my favorite moments in these strips are when the author clearly just gives up. In this strip, you can see the author clearly thought he had something with “snow bank”, but makes Chumpy mirror the author’s own ineptitude by simply declaring “I don’t understand it but …”

And nothing screams “I don’t want to put any effort into my gag” than a word balloon full of “blah blah blah”s:

Still, there’s something about this strip that just makes me smile when I read them. It kinda reminds me of my own short-lived comic strip, Nuknuk and Piney.

Check out the rest of the scans on Cartoon Brew.

Why, yes, yes, that is exactly what you think it is. A tattoo on a man’s calf, of Patrick Swayze as a Chippendale’s dancer/centaur, on a field of purple haze-sky, with criss-crossed rainbows behind him.

There will never be another tattoo more majestic than this one (Move over Celtic Colonel Sanders tattoo, now there’s something surrealler). It’s really too good to be true. I think this picture should be displayed on your television set on Easter morning, a la the Yule Log. Enjoy.

[Don't miss the rest of this jaw-dropping celebrity tattoo gallery at Entertainment Weekly.]

But at night, the farmer heads home for the day, spreading stars behind him:

I wasn’t able to track down the name of the artist who created the farmer, but I’d like to think he’d approve of Morfai’s embellishment.

[thanks to Trott]

1. There’s a Hard Rock theme park.

2. In said theme park is a section called Banana Splitsville.

Sadly there’s not much info or photos of it on the web yet, but apparently the Splits themselves perform there several times a day. Can anyone help me out?

3. The Ben & Jerry’s Banana Split ice cream changed their logo to something that does not infringe on the Splits. Hopefully photos will be coming soon. (thanks Humu for the tip!).

And perhaps a little less cool:

4. The Banana Splits have updated their website, and recorded new videos and songs, which are on sale on iTunes, if you’re so inclined!. Sadly, they sound nothing like their old selves.

Check out JYC’s other Banana Splits posts:

Ben & Jerry’s Steals Banana Split’s Logo
Rare Banana Splits Stuff

Before I traded in my National Geographics for Playboys Hustlers, I was a consistent reader of MAD. What I really loved was the occasional flexi-disc records they’d include in their Super Specials. And the holy grail of all flexi-discs was The MAD Mystery Record. The record played “Super Spectacular Day”, a story in song that described the most absolute best day you could ever be having — until — the record randomly branched into one of eight different disastrous random endings.

It’s still clever even as an adult, but as a kid I was simply fascinated by it. How could a record have different endings? How did the record choose which one to play? I played the record over and over to hear them all and to study how it worked. Finally my Dad explained it to me: while normal records have one spiral groove per side, the MAD disc had multiple grooves spiraled together in parallel. All of the grooves had music that started off with the same beginning, so the branching appeared to happen mid-way through. But in reality it was the initial drop of the needle that determined what ending played.

Super Spectacular Day is a classic example of MAD’s corny humor. And of course, someone has put all eight tracks on Youtube so you can enjoy it for free (Cheap!). The actual playback of the song starts about 30 seconds in.

Here’s the Lyrics, courtesy of barrygoldberg.net, rearranged to match the order of the Youtube video:

CHORUS:
It’s a great big, beautiful, wonderful, incredible, super-spectacular day
And your heart is humming with good times coming
And you got that happy feeling things are going your way
All the bells are ringing and a little bird’s singing while he sits on your windowsill
Singing yessiree, I can surely see, it will plainly be, most definitely
A super-spectacular day!

Untilllllllll…

#1
‘Round quarter to five your relations arrive
And you greet cousin Beth with terrible breath
And a fat British guy who destroys your hi-fi
And your great uncle Fred who gets drunk in your bed
And your third cousin Dick who is metally sick
And his creepy friend Joe and six more you don’t know
And you’re sure there and then as you’re shafted again…

#2:
‘Round seven at night you go out for a bite
The streets are aglow from a large UFO
A creature comes out with two heads and a snout
It talks like a frog and throws up on your dog
It thinks you are great and wants you for its mate
You’re sealed in a case and go flying in space
And you silently say as the Earth fades away…

#3:
You walk out the door of a dry cleaning store
And you’re grabbed by surprise by three mafia guys
Who mistakenly think that you’re Hymie the Fink
They break your right arm and do bodily harm
And you’re writhing in pain and you try to explain
That your name is Jerome and you’re on your way home
And you let out a sigh as you’re left there to die…

#4:
A quarter past eight you pick up your blind date
And you really go ape for her fabulous shape
Of the girls that you’ve met she’s the classiest yet
And she’s pretty and bright and it’s love at first sight
And it’s really a shame she’s not feeling the same
‘Cuz she thinks you’re a shmuck and she says “lots of luck”
And you sob in despair as she gives you the air…

#5:
You’re called down in class and you feel like an ass
‘Cuz you don’t have a clue and you know that it’s due
To those classes you skipped and you’re fly is unzipped
And your acne has spread to the back of your head
And some jerk spreads the word that you’re some kind of nerd
And you fight in the hall and punch through a wall
And there isn’t a doubt as they’re flunking you out…

#6:
You develop a twitch and a horrible itch
And you’re covered with spots and you’re getting the trots
And you’re feet start to swell and it’s easy to tell
From this hideous wheeze that some awful disease
So you call an M.D. and he says “don’t ask me”
If it gets any worse you can speak to my nurse
And you manage to say as you wither away…

#7:
Your sister pours glue in her hair and blames you
And your neighbor says that you’re abusing her cat
And you just left the john with the water turned on
And the house gets all wet and your mother’s upset
And you’d die if you knew what your dad’s gonna do
And your python gets loose and you know it’s no use
And you cry there in fear and it’s now very clear…

#8:
You go out for a spin and your sunroof caves in
And the steering wheel shakes so you slam on the brakes
And the gears get all stuck as you sideswipe a truck
And you run out of gas while you’re trying to pass
And you’re stalled on the tracks and you try to relax
But the train’s coming through and it’s heading for you
And you have a quick flash as you brace for the crash….

… that it’s not such a super-spectacular day!

[via The Disney Blog]

Okay, these cracked up my proverbial shit. Over at I Love This World, René got these knockoff puffy E.T The Extra Terrestrial stickers for just $2 on eBay. $2! That’s what I call value. I mean, let’s take a look at these for a moment:

It all starts off as you might expect, with E.T. bopping merrily along in his glowy spaceship, apparently rocking out to some groovy tuneage on his totally boss headphones (with two antennae!).

Then, we learn that E.T. is a lefty, as he veges out in front of his favorite video game, with his unused right hand to his lips in pensive thought. But he doesn’t have the look of your standard tensed-up, video game-obsessed teen… no, his look is almost wistful, as if this game reminds him of a summer spent on the far side of his home planet… and he’s inspired to softly whistle a merry tune. I like this softer side of E.T.

Why, here’s another side of E.T. I like! It’s Get-Down Disco E.T.! He has got all the moves, and he wants you to come shake it with him! Come on, there’s a party in E.T.’s bathroom, and you’re invited! It’s BYOBathrobe, baby!

Whew! That’s quite a sweat we worked up, so now it’s time to get tidy. E.T. knows that all the good little boys & girls & whatevers need to scrub down, especially under their armpits.

Awwww… E.T. wants to show you his favorite panda. Hello, E.T.’s favorite panda! What a lucky panda you are to have such a friend.

HOLY CRAP. I’m sorry, I did not see this coming. The knockoff puffy sticker people killed E.T.! Or, at least hooked him up to some serious Muppet Labs-caliber equipment, so you know the best case scenario is that his head is going to explode.

Poor E.T. Such a fun-loving guy. Why couldn’t we just let him be? Why must we humans always kill what we do not understand? Thank you, knockoff puffy stickers, for showing me that sometimes an alien can be the better human. I am changed.

And now, I’m really, really wishing that I still had my E.T. latchwork pillow kit from when I was 8. Why-oh-why didn’t I find the wherewithal to finish it? I could be an eBay HUNDREDAIRE!

From the collection of Bay Park Buzzy

It gets even better…. the back side is after the jump…

Hee hee!

… but you haven’t experienced the sheer terror of An American Hippie in Israel. Okay, maybe sheer terror is a little strong. How about “bad scene?” (NSFW due to some slight hippie boobage.)

Fools. Fools! Fools! FOOLS!

[Thx to Christy]

I don’t know where Billoney finds this stuff.

[Via BooBerry Alarmclock]

I am a huge fan of coming up with a funny-yet-completely-impractical idea and then actually doing it, especially when it snowballs into excruciating absurdity. Which is why I burst into laughter many times while reading the painfully exhaustive 5500 word technical analysis of Bugs Bunny’s legendary baseball game against the Gashouse Gorillas. Here’s a snip:

What can modern baseball analysis tell us about the talent of Bugs Bunny? Unfortunately, we are faced with several problems:

* This game provides us with an extremely limited sample. Bunny plays for only five innings.
* The level of competition is never established.

As the first can’t be overcome, let’s deal with the second. From the level of fan interest, it is fair to assume that the players involved are good enough to be a major draw: a semi-pro game of local celebrities would not (and still does not) draw a sufficient crowd to pack in fifty thousand fans who cheer wildly at events (for one example, see the attendance at MLB All-Star Celebrity Softball games). The best-fit explanation is that the Teahouse Totallers are a collection of former greats of baseball, playing against a team of current pro and semi-pro players drawn from the New York region.

Check out the full article here.

And here’s the cartoon itself:

[via Cartoon Brew]

The alien landscape of Watergate Salad

There is something intriguing about the idea that anything in 1979 would willingly carry the appellation “Watergate.” I recently discovered a nearly-identical Watergate Salad in a 1981 Lutheran church cookbook from Wisconsin. This little beast got around. More astounding, there is a Wikipedia entry for this affront to the culinary arts. According to the dubious, citation-less, stubbalicious entry:

No one is really sure of where the name came from. Kraft Corporate Affairs said, “We developed the recipe for Pistachio Pineapple Delight. It was in 1975, the same year that pistachio pudding mix came out.” Kraft, however, didn’t refer to it as Watergate Salad until consumers started requesting the recipe for it under the name. “According to Kraft Kitchens, when the recipe for Pistachio Pineapple Delight was sent out, an unnamed Chicago food editor renamed it Watergate Salad to promote interest in the recipe when she printed it in her column.”

This? This is the best the Kraft Kitchens could come up with to promote their new pistachio pudding flavor? I know pistachio pudding, I have enjoyed pistachio pudding, and these ingredients are not friends to pistachio pudding:

Watergate Salad recipe: if you recite it in front of a mirror three times, Nixon appears and bites your face off.

Mmm… slime

The green, slimy first stage of Watergate Salad — the precursor, if you will — had a certain je ne sais quoi.

My initial reaction to a bite of Watergate Salad was “it wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t have the mini-marshmallows.” My second reaction was, “oh, wait, no… it would be exactly that bad.” This stuff is vile. The recipe sounded dreadful, and boy did it deliver. Luckily, I did not have to bear the burden of Watergate Salad on my own: I was invited to a potluck dinner. The “salad” went untouched for nearly the whole meal, but at the end of the night, a few brave souls dug in — and liked it! Go figure. So, I guess there’s an audience for Watergate Salad after all.

There are step-by-step pictures, if you want to see the whole gory production (including multi-color mini-marshmallows in their native environment — Cool Whip!). Coming up next thanks to a request from Liz: Corned Beef Salad!

[via Laughing Squid]

They don’t make cartoons like they used to.

[via Shawne]

No. 1 Coke Salad from Texas close-up

It made sense to make this one first, because it’s relatively simple, and yet still horrifying — never have two words been less interested in sitting next to each other at the dinner table as “Coke” and “Salad.” And yet, here we are.

No. 1 Coke Salad from Texas

This is the "froth"

Making the “salad” (pictures here) required a bit of interpretation: are the “2 Cokes” 12 oz. cans, or the 10 oz. bottles that were possibly still kicking around in 1979? Is the “1 pkg” of Jello the small or large package? Or were the package sizes totally different in 1979? The recipe says that the 2 Cokes won’t quite make a “full 2 cups of liquid,” which tells me that we’re working with the small pack of Jello, but a cup is only 8 oz., and I can’t imagine a Coke so small that 2 of them won’t make 2 cups. I finally settled on the small pack of Jello (after all, I don’t think the demand for my “salad” will be high), and used one and a half cans of Coke.

The next sticky spot was the instruction to add the Jello to “hot Cokes” — I like to think that in Texas, this is just what they do when they accidentally leave their Cokes out in the sun… “Betty, darlin’, Bobbie-Jo left these Cokes out and now they’re hotter’n a whore in Hades — guess we’re having salad with dinner tonight!” I just microwaved mine.

I got to use my ring mold!

Now, your ordinary batch of Jello already has a crapload of sugar in it, but Betty thinks it needs more, so water won’t do, it’s gotta be Coke. And what else does this need? How about some syrupy, not-at-all-cherry-like Maraschino cherries? Plus, some pecans, which actually turn out to be a critical part of the recipe. I considered leaving them out, but trust me — they are a welcome respite from the sugar, sugar and sugar provided by the other ingredients.

The final result is actually rather lovely, I must say. And it tastes about like you’d expect: like one great big, sugary cherry Coke. By now you may have noticed that I skipped one suggestion in the recipe… I did not opt to serve this with a dish of mayonnaise in the center. Perhaps I’m betraying my rookie status at this “salad”-making business, but I just was not able to wrap my head around that one.

If you haven’t already, you simply must take a look at the other recipes in the 1979 Marysville United Methodist Women’s Cookbook. So far I have a request to make Watergate Salad, and a request to stay away from the Spinach Salad, but there’s still plenty of room for discussion.

Since, well, 1979 or so, I have been in the possession of one of the most startling and dangerous pieces of culinary literature of the 20th century… the 1979 Marysville United Methodist Women’s Cookbook.

I’m fuzzy on the details of how I acquired this little ticking time bomb… my mother grew up in Marysville, and my grandmother is still there, so I suspect that my grandmother had something to do with it. Grandma isn’t Methodist, and she’s cheap, so I can’t picture her buying this to support the church. She must have been given it as a gift and she turned around and gave it to us. At any rate, it’s mine now, and has been since forever.

The whole thing is an abomination, but the salad section is downright audacious in its abuse of the word “salad.” There is very little green in this section, unless you count the many instances of lime Jello. There is a recipe for “Vegetable Salad,” which sounds promising until you learn that it calls for 2/3 of a cup of sugar, a can of Chung King Chinese vegetables, and a can of something called “Veg-All.” But then comes “Asparagus Salad,” which you would think would at least have asparagus in it, but you’d be wrong. It has “asparagus soup” in it (surely Campbell’s Cream of Asparagus), a pack of cream cheese, mayonnaise, and lime Jello. So, you know, at least it’s green.

Asparagus Salad (curiously missing any acutal asparagus)

But it gets worse — oh, does it get worse. It’s hard to select just one recipe as an example of the horrors contained within, so instead I’ve unleashed them all on the world by scanning in the whole danged section.

Pretzel Jello Salad

Don’t miss gems like “Corned Beef Salad” (with lemon Jello and Miracle Whip!), “Super Salad” (with lime Jello, cream cheese, pineapple and marshmallows!), “Pretzel Jello Salad” (with, you guessed it — pretzels — plus Cool Whip, sugar, more sugar, and raspberry Jello), TWO! different “Coke Salads from Texas” (with cherry Jello, Dr. Pepper may be substituted for Coke if you’re feeling exotic), “Tomato Shrimp Aspic” (with tomato juice, lemon extract, lemon Jello and shrimp), or “Vernell’s Mint Salad” (with lime Jello, a box of buttermints, miniature marshmallows, mint flavoring, and green food coloring).

Vernell’s Mint Salad

There’s more — so much more. It just keeps going and going. Say what you will about these salads (oh please, do!), but it sounds like a photographic paradise to me. These recipes are just begging to be made real so that their jiggly, cavity-inducing goodness can be captured in full Technicolor grandeur. It must happen.

I’m taking requests — take a look through the recipes, and let me know which salad you think I should make next.

Also, his vinyl collection is extensive, and far more esoteric than yours.

[via Trott]

[Via Shawne]

Be sure to keep watching to the end, he really brings it home.

[via Trott]

But in the spirit of getting shit done and moving on, I present to you crappy photos of my previous two paper wallets, taken today, on my desk under the yellow light of my K’nex lamp, with the bare minimum effort put into setting up the shots.

Today we have two paper wallets.

60s Legs Paper Wallet

NOTE: At the time these photos were taken, the wallet’s seen a few months of wear and tear, and is looking a little weathered not unlike an off-the-strip Vegas cocktail waitress (Sorry mom! No offense!), but when it was new it looked fly.

This wallet was made out of two extra-long postcards I found in some gift store. I thought legs would make a great theme. I was wrong. Still I like how it turned out, and it has only offended a few so far.

North Woods Inn Paper Wallet

NOTE: At the time these photos were taken, the wallet was so badly worn that I retired it (and made the Legs wallet above), so it’s looking a bit like the box to a “We swear it works fine” returned digital camera at Fry’s. When it was new, it looked badass.

I love Clearman’s North Woods Inn. A lot. It is so fantastic it deserves it’s own post here. But here’s the Cliff Notes: The North Woods Inn is a themed family restaurant in Southern California that takes it’s cue from the rustic romanticism of the snow dusted Klondike. It’s a big log cabin (and by big I mean freaking huge) with permanent, fiberglass snow on it’s rooftop. The place has not changed since it opened in the 60s … but is has also not fallen into disrepair. It looks pretty much like I imagine it looked like on opening day; preserved in time perhaps better than Disneyland. The food is good, the service is friendly, and the crowd has real appeal — multiple generations of families gathering to celebrate good report cards and new drivers licenses. I ate lunch there on a Sunday and must have heard Happy Birthday (sung to the real tune of Happy Birthday) and Happy Anniversary (also sung to the real tune of Happy Birthday) at least thirty times.

Anyway, at the gift shop I picked up a couple of North Woods Inn pint glasses, and a set of North Woods Inn steak knives, and of course some of these fancy North Woods Inn postcards, which I used to make perhaps my favoriteist wallet of them all: the North Woods Inn Paper Wallet.

I need to make a new one of these soon.

Wait! Here’s some photos I just found when the wallet was pretty new, and I took it back to the motherland to be reunited with cheese toast, their famous “two salads”, and a stein of Molson (okay, okay, it was probably Anchor Steam):

And now for the reverse angle:

I hope to post more, with better pictures, as I make new ones. And there’s a whole story about why I started making them in the first place. Watch this space for more!