Bonus: That kid’s fucking head looks like a Pumpkin!
Now I’m sure a lot of my American readers are putting down their firearms or foot long hamburgers from Carl’s Jr.
Shut up, I know you’re eating them right now.
And wondering, What in the hell is that crazy Canuck talkin’ about? Thanksgiving ain’t for another month. Yee haw and tar nation. Well not here. In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October. I like it that way. It spaces out the holidays so you can enjoy each one individually. In America they have Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November. I don’t know why. Maybe it takes them longer to clean (oil) and set the table.
One of those elephant guns would make a great horn of plenty. Does anyone actually put one of those horns on their table at Thanksgiving?
They used to give us pictures of them to colour at school around Thanksgiving (Way to phone it in Mrs. Burnell.) but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen one. I suppose I could make my own. Like this one made out of what appears to be the Sears catalogue underwear section.
But back to the whole Thanksgiving in November thing .That’s 4 weeks before Christmas! That just seems like too much to handle. You’re forcing yourself into a marathon of over indulgence. You’d just be finishing your Thanksgiving leftovers as you’re putting the Christmas Turkey in the oven. Well I hope they’re all asking Santa for the Shake Weight cause they’re gonna need it.
Or you could go out and hunt your own turkey. That’s good exercise. Here’s a little song off Ted Nuggent’s Hunt Music album to get you in the mood.
Just don’t get too caught up in the hunt or you may find yourself hunting nature’s greatest prey…
You know what creeps me out? That baby on the front of the Gerber baby food jars.
Look at it. It looks evil. It has those arched eyebrows and that creepy mouth. It looks like it’s about to hiss or show you that it has snake teeth. Like that baby in V.
Wow! Did you see the second one she pumped out? I think they used a Stretch Monster doll for that shot.
That clip could also appear in the deluxe box set for the movie twins. Labeled as the deleted director’s cut for the birthing of Julius and Vincent Benedict.
It’s like I’m looking into a mirror!
But enough about that. Let me get to today’s question. Just who is that baby? Is it as evil as it looks? Is it an alien lizard baby? Did it at least go the route of most child starts and become addicted to drugs/rob someone or something at gunpoint? Maybe it doesn’t exist at all. Maybe it’s just an on-the-telephone doodle drawn by a sick and twisted mind. Tell me Magic Internet! Tellllllll Meeeeeeeeeeeee! (Cue gathering clouds and lightening.)
Question 11: Who is the Gerber baby?
Vrooo. Vrooo Vrooo. Boop Boop (Beginning keyboard to the Ghostbusters song.) Vrrrrrr. Wrrrrr. Ding!
Magic Internet Answer: You think that baby is creepy? Try being the internet for a day. You’ll come out worse than 'Nam Ben. Well at least this is an easy one. First, the Gerber baby was not drawn by a sick and twisted person as you suggested.
File Photo: Not the Gerber baby artist.
The Gerber baby was drawn by Boston cartoonist Dorothy Hope Smith in 1928. She also drew this poster titled Don’t Kill Her Daddy with Carless Talk.
Morbid? Perhaps but sick and twisted? No. Dorothy drew the Gerber baby sketch as a submission to a contest that Fremont Caning Company had to find a baby face that they felt most represented their new baby food product. And the sketch won.
No Johnny, I don’t think that meant Gerber contained lizard meat.
Dorothy had said that if they chose the sketch she would finish it professionally but Gerber chose to use it as it was and that is the same sketch that remains on Gerber products today.
File Photo: Second Place.
But who was the baby in the drawing? The Gerber baby’s name is Ann Turner and she was 5 months old when the sketch was done. Ann Turner is still alive today. Although now she goes by the name Ann Turner Cook.
In her youth, Cook attended the University of Florida and studied education and English Journalism. She went on to receive a master’s degree in English Education. In 1966 she joined the English Department of Hillsborough High School. The original Hillsborough High School is said to be the oldest high school in America and Hillsborough High School as it stands now is one of the oldest high schools in the south.
Hillsborough High School, built in 1928. The same year the Gerber baby drawing was made. (Cue the Unsolved Mysteries music.)
Ann Turner Cook taught at Hillsborough for 26 years before retiring and turning her attention to writing mystery novels. It’s difficult to judge the quality of her writing without having read any of her work but I will say that the book covers and titles leave a lot to be desired.
No, I don’t think Dorothy Hope Smith drew that creepy bulky Ken doll on the cover Johnny. She died in 1955.
Yes, I suppose that ghost does look a little like David Lee Roth on the Cover of Eat Em & Smile
No, Johnny David Lee Roth isn’t dead… yet.
There is a handful of glowing reader reviews for Mrs. Turner Cook’s novels on Amazon.com, mostly from people that grew up in the area of Florida that she writes about. There is also a rather scathing review from Publishers Weekly.
In Cook's lackluster second novel featuring newspaper reporter Brandy O'Bannon (after 2001's Trace Their Shadows), Brandy and her husband, John, come to the proudly old-fashioned community of Cedar Key, Fla., for a long weekend. Intrigued by a classified ad asking the whereabouts of a woman and child who vanished in the area during a hurricane 20 years earlier, Brandy thinks there may be a story in it. John, hoping for a romantic weekend, is bored and irritable. Much of the action centers on the town's historic hotel: the private investigator who placed the ad is staying there, as are Brandy and John; the dining-room waitress may be the missing child; a skeleton found in a basement cistern may be the missing woman. Like many a plucky young heroine before her, Brandy plunges headlong into this multilayered mystery, ignoring police warnings and her increasingly resentful husband. An overly busy plot, alas, is weighed down with limp prose and repetition, including scenes of Brandy making endless lists of what she has learned and what she plans to do next. The tantalizing glimpses of the charming Cedar Key, deliberately turning its back on the tourist dollar, make readers wish for a stronger sense of place.
Hmm, a tad harsh maybe? Regardless of the quality of Ann Turner Cook’s writing I would recommend picking up one of her novels. At the very least you could tell people that you have read a mystery novel written by the Gerber baby.
Wow, thanks Magic I! Who knew that the Gerber baby would go on to do anything more than creep me out. Is there anything else I should now about her?
Magic Internet Bonus Answer: Well, here is something you may find amusing. I have a special searching mechanism called Google that I am sure you are unaware of. I attempted to use my Google to locate a picture of Ann Turner Cook’s mystery novel heroin Brandy O’Bannon. I was unsuccessful but the search did generate some strange results. The first page of photos was mostly pictures of Mrs. Turner Cook and her book covers. But by page 4 the results started to get very strange. Have a look.
Captain Kirk drinking brandy.
Tar Man from Return of the Living Dead.
The DVD cover for The Ape.
A group photo of dirty 70s Jersey Shore hippy band The Looking Glass.
And this cool customer.
Perhaps I have uncovered a mystery for Brandy to solve in Ann’s next novel?
There was a landmark decision made in the US courts last Friday. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the Chippendales tuxedo look (wrist cuffs and a bowtie collar with no shirt) is not an inherently distinctive trademark.
File photo: Chippendales’ lawyer addresses the court on Friday.
Apparently the US Court of Appeals feels that Chippendales ripped off the look from Playboy’s Playboy Bunny look.
File photo: Hugh Hefner and his lawyer address the court on Friday.
Don’t feel bad Chippendales. We all know and respect what you were trying to do. You were trying to avoid people having to see things like this.
But at the same time who are you to tell people what they can and can’t wear? I don’t see firemen sending you any cease and desist notices.
Or construction workers and the Fresh Prince for that matter.
It is a shame though. Trademark laws help protect the integrity of your brand. And your brand is definitely important Chippendales. I can’t speak for everyone but when I see a shirtless greased up juice head on stage pumping his garbage in desperate middle aged women’s faces and he’s wearing a bow tie and cuffs. I immediately think Chippendales. That and I shouldn’t have ordered the footlong.
But hey, lots of people have failed at trademarks and are still to successful. Let me show you.
Donald Trump.
He tried to trademark the phrase You’re fired! and failed worse than his hairdresser. But I’m pretty sure he’s still rich. He’s building a big towery thing here in Toronto and I didn’t find any pictures of him wearing a barrel.
Harley Davidson
Back in 1994 Harley Davidson tried to trademark the sound that their engines make. This didn’t work because companies like Honda and Yamaha argued that their bikes contained basically the same engines so they made the same sound. Harley Davidson eventually gave up. I can’t say I’m surprised that they tried to trademark a sound. I think they’ve pretty much run out of products to put their logo on.
Makes your P.T. Cruiser feel just like a hog.
Makes you smell just like a hog.
Makes you want to have sex with a hog your old lady.
Hey Chippendales, maybe you should try throwing your brand on some junk like that. What’s that? You already have?
Yeah… no one’s going to want to drink out of that.
Mike the Situation Sorrentino
File Photo: Mike Sorrentino addresses the court.
He tried to trademark his nickname the Situation or his abs or something. Whatever it was he didn’t get it. I’m not sure what sort of plans he had for it anyway.
Oh. Oh. Ok… Ummm, I see.
In fact Chippendales you should be less worried about stopping midgets and oafs from donning your cuffs and collars for Halloween and more worried about Mike the Situation. While you’re paying your beefy revue good money to take their shirts off in a club packed full of boilers, Mike is doing it for free. And he’s taking them home and having sex with them too. With that kind of debonair personality it’s only a matter of time before people want to start dressing up as him for Halloween. And then you lose more exposure.
File photo: Too late.
Sigh. And here I was trying to cheer you Chippendales up. Oh well. Time for plan B. I baked you this cake.
Feel free to share it amongst the guys or have them jump out of it or something. Let’s see Mike the Situation top that.
When I was a kid I was scared of all kinds of things. That is one of the problems with having an overactive imagination. I mean sure it’s great now. I can use it to write this amazing blog that gets me all the chicks.
Not as many chicks as the band Imagination gets… but pretty close.
Back when I was a little kid though, my imagination was doing its best to scare the shit of me. Let me give you an example of some of the strange and irrational things I was scared of.
The Basilisk.
The Basilisk is a mythical creature with the head of a rooster, the body of a lizard and the tail of a snake. Supposedly it’s hatched from a snake egg that is incubated by a chicken and it can cause death with a single glance. When I was a kid I had this book of mythical creatures that I got at Coles book store. I don’t know who did the illustrations for that book but I think at some point they had a glimpse of hell. There were a number of monsters in that book that scared me but none more than the Basilisk. The picture of it in that book makes the picture above look like Barney. And it was looking right at me! I was convinced that if I looked at that picture for more than a second I would die. I was also convinced that these creatures were real and that one was going to come in our backyard at night and I would see it and I would die.
There was only one thing I could do. It said in the book that Basilisks were afraid of weasels. So when our local church had its rummage sale I bought up as many of those ratty old mink stoles with the heads on them as I could find.
I thought they were weasels.
And I wrapped them around myself at night to ward off the Basilisk. Funny, now it’s looking at those minks that gives me the heebie jeebies.
Escalators.
Yep, I was afraid of escalators. It wasn’t so much the height thing it was the disappearing steps when you reached the top. I was sure that a stray shoe lace or rugby pant cuff was going to get caught in there and I would be sucked in and slowly ground into hamburger, my high pitch death screams echoing throughout the mall and settling in the nightmares of the other shoppers for all eternity.
That’s why whenever we went into Eatons at the Burlington mall I always insisted that we take the elevator. Even though Eatons only had 2 floors their elevator had elevator music. If you were lucky you could catch the opening base line of Another One Bites the Dust. For some reason that song always used to be playing in the Eatons elevator. Hey remember that Coffee Crisp ad with Another One Bites the Crisp?
Yes!
The Album for Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds.
My Aunt & Uncle used to have this record and it scared the shit out of me. Not actually listening to it. The record its self is more weird and bad than scary.
It was the album art that scared me. First there’s that horrible robot spidery thing on the front flame throwing a ship. Then when you open up the album you get a picture of this quaint little seaside village all destroyed and flooded with bubbling guts!
What the fuck is that?! Not only do these big robot spidery things have flame throwers but they also have human liquefier rays or something! You can’t put pictures like that in records for unsuspecting little kids to find. Adults always kept their records low down too. Right in the path and eye level of children. And if you think the liquid guts village is the worst picture in that album, you’re sorely mistaken. The picture that creeped me out the most was this one.
All the robot spidery things are dead and having their meaty insides pecked out by crows! How fucked up is that?! I think the guy that drew these is the same guy that drew that Basilisk. This image has stuck in my head for over 25 years. I actually kind of like it now. If I had this picture now I think I’d frame it and put it on my wall. Not the Basilisk though. That still scares me.
The Vacuum Cleaner.
I’m still kind of uneasy around vacuum cleaners. But I have reason to be. When I was young I used to follow my mom around while she vacuumed. Every once in a while she would run over a marble or a screw or something and the vacuum cleaner would grind to a halt and make this horrible jarring noise. I hated it. Once she ran over a rubber band and not only did it make the noise but it also filled the room with this disgusting burning rubber smell. I hated that smell too. But that’s not even the reason I’m scared of vacuums. When I got a bit older my parents would pay me to vacuum the house. One day I was vacuuming the living room in my bare feet and I accidently rolled the vacuum cleaner back over my foot and my toe got stuck in it! That vacuum cleaner sucked the skin right off my toe! If I hadn’t switched it off quick I would have ended up like this:
To this day I will not vacuum unless I’m almost forced. I also don’t like being in the room when someone is vacuuming and I don’t like having my feet on the floor when someone is vacuuming. I’m basically the opposite of that little creep that collects vacuums.
What a weirdo!
The Movie Maniac.
Yes, I know horror movies are supposed to be scary but I think this was the first horror movie I ever watched. My cousin and I rented it from Video Flicks when I was 7 or 8. There was something wrong with the tape so it had all these weird lines in it and the sound was all warped which made it even scarier. The part I was most scared of wasn’t even the shotgun scene.
I was into action movies and ninja movies that had all kinds of good stuff like that. It was the weird conversations that the maniac guy had with his human scalp wearing mannequins and dolls that scared me.
Yeah, the video store guy never should have rented that movie to us. I think if that happened now he could probably be arrested for some form of child abuse.
So there you have it. A bunch of weird stuff that scared me when I was a little kid, some of which still scares me today. What were you afraid of as a little kid? Praying mantises? I bet it was praying mantises. They’re the only insect that can turn its head.
