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Macy's Parade Balloon Inflation

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This year we went the day before Thanksgiving to see the Parade Balloons being inflated. It's free to go, but you have to enter at a particular place and deal with huge crowds. The first few balloons we saw: Kung Fu Panda's ass: I liked seeing how many sandbags it took to stabilize the balloons: Here's a look up the street: Here's the head of the Kung Fu Panda balloon, and a small vehicle for size comparison: A bunch of smaller round balloons: Here some workers are securing SpongeBob Squarepants. I did notice that his arm was oddly bent by the straps, and still kind of bent the next day: The sidewalks the crowd walked on surround the Natural History Museum. There were big floodlights set up so that the balloons could be easily seen. Kool-Aid Man was being moved to a new position as we walked by, at first we thought he was deflating. Erin took this picture of a balloon dog's butt. All the

X-Men: Evolution, Season 2: On Angel's Wings (2001)

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X-Men: Evolution is a strange show. It started out with one of the worst premises imaginable: having the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as students with secret powers enrolled in the same public high school. And, frankly, it didn't even do that premise justice for more than a year. However, over the seasons, the show evolved into something else. Somehow, the characters and the setting evolved until it actually made sense calling them the X-Men. In a sense, most of the series wound up functioning as an extended and in-depth origin story, which is sort of cool. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad episodes to sit through before the series picks up. This episode is after the worst of them, but it's still got a lot wrong with it. As the title implies, On Angel's Wings focuses on Angel, who inexplicably hides his powers in shame, despite the fact his mutation is more likely to get him laid then hunted (to be fair, this bizarre bit of illogic is lifted right f

Book Review: Hercule Poirot's Christmas

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Cross-Posted from The Blue Fairy's Workshop Hercule Poirot's Christmas Agatha Christie, 1939 I find Agatha Christie to be an acquired taste that I've never quite acquired. I enjoy her work, usually, but it takes me a long time to get into each book. This was no exception. Once the story got going I quite liked it, but there were a lot of character introductions to get through first. Once the extended family was all together at the manor house, they got right down to the business of Christmas: acrimonious backstabbing, awkward flirting, and murder. Poirot is brought along to assist the local police when patriarch Simeon Lee is found dead in a locked room. He'd assembled his clan of children together for the holidays to emotionally torment them, then threatened to make a new will. So everyone has a motive, but only Poirot can peel through the misdirections and lies to figure out what happened. I especially enjoyed Poirot's amusement at the very British natu

Warehouse 13: Secret Santa (2010)

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Let me start by saying I didn't know anything about this show going into this episode, other than that it's sort of The Last Scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Series. What I knew by the end is that it's really just that: a series of wacky adventures based loosely on a bunch of made-up magical artifacts based even more loosely on historical figures and events. (I have since watched another, more recent episode, which sucked much less than this one.) This Christmas episode features a cynical banker-type being tormented by a spectral Santa, who threatens to make him “disappear” unless he changes his ways. There's a sub plot about reuniting another character with his father. It's not boring, but all of the plot turns are horribly cliché and I just want to smack all of these characters for overacting and being morons. The dialogue is fairly clunky, although the cheesy B-grade CG special effects amuse me. There's some decent use of silly creepy Christmas mus

Arthur Christmas (2011)

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This might change after I see this a few more times, but for the time being I consider Arthur up there with the best Christmas movies ever made. The top three - Nightmare Before Christmas, Elf, and Miracle on 34th Street - are now the top four. At its core, Arthur Christmas is a brilliant little picture about a dysfunctional family at Christmas time. The reason we should care is that this family is heir to the Santa dynasty, a lineage of Father Christmases going to back to St. Nicholas. There's a lot to like in this one. Right off the back, the portrayal of the operation is ingenious and original. Comparisons to the Star Trek Enterprise are obvious - I'd argue that there are at least as many parallels with Battlestar Galactica. This Santa's using technology a few hundred years ahead of the rest of the world. Intriguingly, they've also got some more traditional magic in reserve, though that's generally become obsolete. The elves appear quickly and instantly s

Cracking Open an Ice-Cold Can of Christmas

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I know, I know. You've had a long day at work, and you're exhausted. You need something cool, refreshing. Something to take the edge off. So you crack open a nice, cool can of Christmas Tree. Yeah, that should hit the spot. When Lindsay and I heard these were for sale at the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. in Seattle, Washington, we hopped a plane across the country to pick one up. Just thought you might like some background on what's been growing these last few months. More Photos:

Holiday Flash Games

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Yes, it's the holiday season, but you don't need to wrap those presents yet. Come on, you don't really need an excuse to waste time online, do you? For your amusement: a handful of my favorite Holiday themed online games. Factory Balls: Christmas Edition A puzzle game about painting white balls in various patterns.  It's more challenging, and more fun, than it sounds, but won't take that long to finish. Grow: Ornament A bite-size grow game, shorter and simpler than the original Winterbells A simple "use the objects to jump as high as you can without falling" game, set apart by the use of an adorable snowy setting. Garden Gnome Carnage Fling the gnome-on-a-bungee around to fight off legions of Santas and elves as long as you can.  Yeah... it's kinda weird. Christmas Lights Spot-the-Difference Like most spot-the-difference games, this is pretty easy, but there are enough scenes for you to get heartily sick of "