This horrifying cheap mechanical moose from Zeb’s Famous Country Store welcomes you to the Quaint New England Gifts edition of my annual Gift Guide!

(11/28/08)

This continues to be a banner year, readers.

(11/28/08)

This was a banner year, readers.

Welcome to the long-awaited conclusion of Movies the “Avatar” Trailer Reminded People Of!  I’d like to give a special shout-out to the one thing that helped me the most in getting through this:

(Pumpkinhead, for the record, is hard to find but is just about the only beer I will voluntarily consume.)
So what we have right here is perhaps the single most damning Movie the “Avatar” Trailer Reminded People Of. Thanks to many of the visuals in the trailer, James Cameron’s amazing and spectacular animated adventure that would be like nothing we had ever seen before looked… a LOT like the biggest box-office flop in the history of animated films.

(12/5/07)

We’re about to see what Misaimed Marketing looks like.

We’re continuing our journey through the magical realm of Movies the “Avatar” Trailer Reminded People Of. Today, we’re tackling that other movie set in a jaw-droppingly awesome looking animated rainforest.  Some guy goes to this beautiful place and doesn’t really appreciate it. Then he sort of becomes one of the natives and explores the magical land. And once he learns more about it (and, more importantly, falls in love with a cute girl native), he’ll do anything he can to right the wrongs of his former people and save his new home.

(12/12/06)

The catalyst for this year’s visit to the land of strange gifts is something that I saw for sale in the Kittery Trading Post after *last* Christmas. Darn me for not having my camera with me at the time, however I have since found it for sale online. This is good; it means that I did not hallucinate it.
Friends, I have found the most incredibly strange Christmas gift you could ever imagine.

(11/29/04)

So last time, we had insane presents offered by the SkyMall catalog. This year, we are laughing as I say sarcastic things about weird toys I found for sale at bargain stores. I almost feel bad for these poor toys. Sitting on their little shelves, just waiting, waiting, *waiting* for the day when some child will take them home. How would *you* feel if you were a spotted elephant? Or a train with square wheels? Or a… perfectly normal looking doll…?

(Also known as “La Planète Sauvage”.)
Continuing our series of Movies the “Avatar” Trailer Reminded People Of, we have an animated movie from France that might just be too damn weird to review.

(11/24/03)

First, a quick DISCLAIMER is in order here: I am not affiliated with SkyMall or Toys “R” Us. This isn’t a paid advertisement, just a collection of links to insane things they happen to sell.
Okay, you may recall that, at the beginning of this year, during the California Adventure story, I mentioned the crazy in-flight magazines I got to read. One of them was a catalog called SkyMall. They had an excellent collection of things that I don’t even believe exist. I made a quick list of their most insane items. If you have a lot of money to spend on somebody who is very hard to buy for, here are some fine suggestions.