"Santa is a Disney character."
Oh for eff's sake, Disney.
Disney tells Santa clone ho-ho noWhen James Worley paid a visit to Disney World in Florida his portly frame and white beard soon had kids asking: "Are you Santa Claus?" Not wanting to disappoint, Mr Worley, 60, played along with some "ho-ho-hos". But Disney officials descended, telling him to stop the impersonation or get out of the park. They said they wanted to preserve the magic of Santa. Mr Worley took off his red hat and red shirt but said: "I look this way 24/7, 365 days a year. This is me."
'Confusing'
Even after bowing to the request to alter his appearance, Mr Worley, from Tampa, said children continued to ask if he was Santa. "How do you tell a little kid, 'No, go away, little kid'," Mr Worley told local television. He said Disney had told him "Santa was considered a Disney character".
Officials at Disney World's Epcot park said they had had complaints from "several guests who were very upset". Disney said it had its own Santa at Epcot and Mr Worley was "confusing" the children. Mr Worley said he had played a jolly elf at charity events for a number of years, while his wife sometimes dressed up as Mrs Claus. Mr Worley said he still loved Disney and Christmas.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6189521.stm
Published: 2006/12/18 11:39:11 GMT
© BBC MMVI
This is why Santarchy doesn't work!
The Christmas business is in full swing over here. Halls have been decked. Christmas movies have been watched. That ominous song about the bells has gotten stuck in my head. Things have been glued to other things.
But loudest among the melee is Santarchy, the annual pub crawl in which a crowd of mutants dressed as Santas descend upon cities all over the world. I joined the original one in San Francisco last year, and you know how the rule goes: if you do it the week before Christmas, it's a tradition. Chicago's Santarchy is a more subdued affair since it hasn't been around as long and for some reason people chose to have three or four of them instead of getting one huge group together like they do in SF. But that didn't stop us from rocking the Loop all Saturday.
The fun thing about attending here versus San Francisco is that people around here are capable of being weirded out, so instead of being very actively ignored by passersby, the santas were pulled over dozens of times to pose for photos with shoppers and tourists and it seemed like every person we passed honked their horns and waved at us. My boys and I absorbed an innocent pub-sitter into our ranks and after several santas outfitted him with a hat, beard, and tinsel, he proceeded to buy everyone drinks on his company dime. The Bean was rushed, mutant toys were passed around, and an impromptu dance party broke out when we found a busker playing Christmas songs on a saxophone. The photos are blurry and I forgot to get any of my/Hayley/Max's little outfits, but oh, the memories...they will last at least a week.
Daniel and Hayley are so deliciously compliant in my hairbrained activities.
Buscemi claus
Dance party!
I don't know who they are, but they are bound for the island of misfit toys.
Our merry band capped off the weekend by watching the boys perform at Second City before paying a visit to the Chicago History Museum. Anyone who doubts the logic behind my fixation with World's Fairs needs to see exactly what we've all missed because we weren't around in 1933:
This is exactly why museums need to come to life at night more often.
Labels: Chicago
"World's tallest man saves dolphin"
Enough about me. Here's one from the BBC News
The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards.
Mongolian herdsman Bao Xishun was called in after the dolphins swallowed plastic used around their pool at an aquarium in Fushun, north-east China. Attempts to use instruments failed as the dolphins contracted their stomachs. Guinness World Records list Mr Bao, 54, as the world's tallest living man at 2.36m (7ft 8.95in).
Recovering
Veterinarians turned to Mr Bao after attempts to extract the plastic shards at the aquarium in Fushun, Liaoning Province, had failed. The mammals had lost their appetite and were suffering depression, aquarium officials said. The heads of the dolphins were held back and towels wrapped around their teeth so Mr Bao could not be bitten. He then extended his 1.06m-long arm into the mammals' stomachs.
Chen Lujun, manager of Royal Jidi Ocean World, said Mr Bao was successful and the dolphins were "in very good condition now".
Local doctor Zhu Xiaoling told the state media agency Xinhua: "Some very small plastic pieces are still left in the dolphins' stomachs. "However the dolphins will be able to digest these and are expected to recover soon."
Mr Bao was confirmed as the world's tallest living man by Guinness World Records last year. He overtook the previous holder, Radhouane Charbib of Tunisia, by just 2mm. Guinness World Records say Mr Bao was of normal height until 16 but then put on a spurt that doctors were unable to explain, reaching his full height in seven years.Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6178659.stm
Published: 2006/12/14 10:09:51 GMT
© BBC MMVI
Labels: the life aquatic
Little Red Rooster
Hot damn isn't it fun when you're zoning out while listening to an old blues song and the singer's bitching about somebody, then you inadvertently pick out a line where he complains that said somebody won't lay eggs any more?
Rock music needs more songs about the livestock.
Actually, I think I'm going to check the lyrics to "Velouria," because I wouldn't be surprised if Velouria did lay eggs.
Freak.
On Masquerades
Leah: 1
Coffee: 0
I'm drinking my coffee out of a big wooden stein with a base about as wide and heavy as a horseshoe. You know what that means? I've been awake for a whole hour and I haven't destroyed any electronics by spilling into them.
Take THAT, Apple Computer!
Our New Year's Eve masquerade bash has been in the works for a while now and though serendipity arranged for my grandma to give me an amazing vintage dress for Christmas, I can't find a mask I can tolerate anywhere. Mask shopping online ought to be a cinch since Mardi Gras/carnavale aren't all that far off, but if I put on a mask with eye-holes that aren't enormous, I Freak Out. I am, after all, already myopic as all hell. I do not like to augment this handicap. You know how cats get when you put them in a bathtub? Putting a mask on my face is like strapping a little doll-sized bathtub to a cat's head. It don't jive.
Diagnosis: I might have to resort to facepaint.
The one perk of having zero readers: you can reference My Chemical Romance at will. It's just you and me today, Internet.
I do have an old glitzy mask sitting around on my desk, and it would be perfectly fine for the party except for two reasons: the eye-holes are tiny, and it brings back weird memories. I got it for cheap in the French Quarter to wear to a Purim ball back when I was living down in the swamp and all. I liked that it was relatively simple: silver with gold sequins all over it, versus the huge feathered ones in yellow, green, and purple. I was temporarily estranged from my erstwhile boyfriend, so I asked Ryan, the guy-friend most likely to own a suit, to go as my date. He was an heir of some kind, from Texas. The director of the university Honors Program liked to make fun of him because he'd worn $3,000 shoes made out of some kind of reptile to class one day. I'm not clear on how shoes can cost that much unless they're programmed to make you dance like Fred Astaire, but I digress. Ryan had good manners. We went to a ball. Everybody danced in a circle to "Hava Nagila." Ryan walked me home and seemed weirded out when I hugged him goodnight. I figured that people of his stature must bow to each other or exchange cigars, instead.
But I didn't know him all that well. Everyone in our class knew that he had a pretty intense crush on a tiny girl named Mirya who spent the bulk of her time sunbathing drunk. A few weeks after the ball, I got back with my boyfriend, and Mirya woke up in her dorm room late one night to see Ryan sitting next to her bed, watching her sleep. I heard she got very fat the next year. And he was married with kids, or rather, married because of the kids, by the time he graduated. I never heard who the wife was, but he didn't seem particularly fond of her. I couldn't say for sure - I didn't know him all that well.
Purim sure was fun, though.
Labels: memoir
The more you know!
Check it out: Harpo Marx, right? Quiet guy. Something like that. Did you know that there's an Egyptian god of silence named Harpocrates?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarpocratesStill no Wikipedia entry on Grouchocrates.
I've also got a very bad idea that I hope nobody will be interested in pursuing. A little holiday searching through Amazon.com turned up Pirates of the Caribbean-themed "Life" and "Battleship" games. Pardon me, Pirates of the Caribbean,
2: Cthulhu's Chest. I was just thinking that you could use this technique to make Scrabble twice as irritating as it already is by playing "Scrabble of the Caribbean," in which only piratical words are allowed. It would be just like "Barbies of the Caribbean" and "Ponies of the Caribbean," minus the swarthy fashions.
Man-oh-jeez I am so tired of pirates.
What to my wondering eyes should appear
...and the award for number one thing to see out your front window upon first waking up goes to:
NARNIA.
Gallery partially available here.
