90 words from our sponsor

I woke up this morning to find that my favorite holiday YouTube channel XmasFlix had been scrubbed of all content. That added to the fact that the “falling snow” feature has been removed from WordPress is making it very hard for me not to stomp my feet and yell, “CHRISTMAS IS RUINED” and not post anything this morning. I’m not going to do that, but I do need a moment to collect myself because without XmasFlix it’s pretty hard to wade through the lousy and the offensive holiday cartoon offerings from the past.

In the meantime, please enjoy 45 minutes of ’70s and ’80s Christmas advertising. It’s more pleasant than you might think.

 

Only 18 shopping days left

The story goes that Santa’s elves make all the toys for the good boys and girls, right? But the ads for toys always clearly stated “from Remco” or “Passman toymakers” or whatnot. So does Santa have to shop like the rest of us jerks? Or does he run some counterfeit toy operation up there?

Hurry up with your lists, kids. Santa doesn’t have Amazon Prime.

Free TV

I didn’t do this. I just saw this. It’s nice to see a liberated appliance.

Way less of a sad sack than that despondent mattress from a couple of years ago.

If you go down in the woods today…

I can’t believe I didn’t hear about this incredible drug bust last summer. Actually, I can. The American reporting of the story left a lot to be desired. Whereas, in Russia:

I want to get all my news from this woman.

via Metafilter

Triple wonderland

Around this time of year, I start thinking about a really spectacular celebrity sighting that Benny had in the early ’90s outside a Thrifty drug store in Hollywood – the Del Rubio Triplets. They had purchased three double-dip chocolate ice cream cones – one for Eadie, one for Elena, and one for Milly – and a gallon of vodka. Benny watched as the girls climbed into a big white Cadillac to eat their ice cream cones. He didn’t get to see what they did with the vodka.

Why do I start thinking about Benny’s celebrity sighting this time of year?

That’s why.

Still standing by

I’m hoping to rectify my technical difficulties tonight; please listen to this music in a loop until then.

Thanks for reminding me of this, Listener Kliph from WFMU

UPDATE: The computer, she is broken. The genius doesn’t have my RAM until later in the week. Expect slightly handicapped Fancy Notions for a few more days.

Clip my dorsal fin and call me Flatjack

Sometimes it’s good to have obstacles. If I hadn’t had the obstacle of WordPress not allowing me to embed an absolutely mind-boggling Armenian cartoon from dotsub.com about a talking fish, a magic table, and… Ekh, I would have never found Diver Dan on youtube:

Style and substance

I feel so late to the party. Before yesterday, I had no idea who Sandra Lee from the Food Network was. Apparently Sandra Lee is a woman who throws a lot of pre-made food together until it resembles something hilarious and then drinks a lot of cocktails so she can properly concentrate on making a fancy centerpiece for her table. I really can’t knock any of that. This is what my “quick and delicious dishes” category on the Notions is all about. Trader Joe’s wouldn’t exist if there weren’t drunken housewives who can’t admit that they hate cooking.

It’s just that the styling and the tone are all wrong. This would be the greatest show in the world if it were hosted by Francine Dancer with a public access television aesthetic – the “Steven Seagal: LAWMAN” of the Food Network. But I guess you already knew that.

Word of the day for Thursday, September 3rd

You probably know this word already; it’s not that rare a word or anything. I mainly like this word because I always forget its definition. I always think it means “vomit.” It doesn’t.

I’ve been reading a book by this writer who likes putting silly songs in his stories, so I’ve been inspired to write my own little song about this word so I can remember that I always get its definition wrong. It goes like this:

If you think it’s “vomit,”
but it’s not,
it’s…

Yawp. A yawp is merely a sharp yell or a shriek or a noisy, foolish utterance. So even though it doesn’t mean “vomit,” it is not recommended that you yawp in the workplace.

Clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees

Everybody’s crying today about Peter Pan. I myself have a lot of reservations about crying for him, but I suppose I need to keep a respectful silence today. It’s only appropriate. And truth be told, I very much admire the work he did in the ’70s: