Bye, Bye Wolfie

Some time after nightfall this evening The Big Bad Wolf will take its final ride through the woods at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg after standing in the park for more than half of my lifetime. It wasn't my favorite roller coaster or my first roller coaster or the biggest or the best, but it was a roller coaster and every time a roller coaster is shut down, taken apart and carted off to the metal recyclers it always makes me think that what Harper Lee said about mockingbirds sort of applies to roller coasters as well... they exist for no other reason than to bring us joy and it seems like a sin to tear one down.

Color Me Goofy

Hey, that's my name...

Hey, that's my name again! It's like somebody is trying to communicate with me across the decades.

Freaky puppy.

One time, some friends and me were at an amusement park and between us we laid down a couple hundred dollars on this game where you had to shoot Nerf balls at a stack of milk bottles and try to knock them over and we never could knock them all over, but we were just b. s.'ing and having a good time and the girl that was running the game couldn't believe that we weren't getting upset and yelling at her because we weren't winning and I realized what a crap job it must be to stand there all day and get yelled at by a bunch of dumbf***s because they didn't win a stuffed Tweety Bird.

Rock City '56

Plastic Pumpkins: The Deleted Scenes

Hey! Since I don't have a camera or scanner to help me come up with something new to post why don't I dig through all my old files and see if I can find some crap that I scanned or photoed in the past and then never bothered to write about for whatever reason and then write about those reasons. That sounds close enough to an actual idea to just barely fly...

This first pic of some of my PEZ dispensers displayed on an old spice rack was originally going to be some sort of Plastic Pumpkin's Thrift Shop Design helpful hints type post. My helpful hint... old spice racks make excellent PEZ displays. Couldn't really flesh that out into an entire post...

Here are some old ride tickets from Lakeside Park. Lakeside was an old amusement park in Salem, VA that was torn down years and years ago. My only memory of the place was of me in a stroller being pushed alongside of a creaky old wooden coaster that seemed on the verge of imminent collapse. This may not really be a memory from my own childhood and might instead be a memory from the made-for-TV-movie, "Death of Ocean View Park," a truly, truly atrocious movie that I would sell my best friend to a blood-drinking cult in order to see again. If anybody knows where I can get a DVD of this movie please let me know. I will go bootleg. I'm not afraid to say it!

Sidebar: another interesting thing about Lakeside Park was that it was torn down and replaced by a shopping center that is called "Lakeside Plaza" or something along those lines, which is an example of a phenomenon that I call "Naming Shopping Centers After The Shit You Tore Up In Order To Build Them" as there is no longer a lake or Lakeside on that spot. Other local examples include; "Orchard Hill Shopping Center" which sits on a hill that ain't got no orchards on it any more, and "Willow Lawn Shopping Center" which has neither of those two things, unless you count the cartoon willow on the sign and your idea of a 'lawn' is 'asphalt.' Take a look around your own neighborhoods for more fun examples.

This is a weird Greco-Roman-esque (I don't really know what any of that means!) temple that sits at the very back end of a local church's graveyard. It's kind of weird in that it's a Greco-Roman-esque(It really sounds like I know what I'm talking about! Ha!) temple at the back end of a small Southern Church and for the fact that the grand staircase you see leading up to the temple is facing away from the church and the rest of the graveyard and towards an overgrown back corner of the property and an empty neighboring field. In order to approach the temple head on, you must first sneak in through the back, walk down that flight of stone stairs and then turn around and walk right back up them. This was weird enough that I thought it might make for an interesting edition of 'From The Plastic Pumpkin's Case Files,' but no... it wasn't that interesting. For those of you asking yourselves "How would that have differed from every other Case Files post?" I say to you... just shut up!

Here's a close-up of the Greco-Roman-esque(I think I saw that word in a Wonder Woman comic!) temple. Still not interesting...

Here is a picture taken from afar. Slightly interesting, but too little too late.

Ya'll remember Simzilla don't ya? Back in the day, Simzilla was a favorite here a the big PP. That was back before I forgot where I put my Sims CD. Now the only things we have to remember him by are these two never before seen clips...

This first scene was from a never finished episode entitled "Taxi Cabs Never Stop For Kaiju." In it you would have watched as poor Simzilla tries to hail a cab after an evening of barhopping. Taxi after taxi would have sped right past him without slowing down until poor Simzilla was forced to take the bus home. This episode of Simzilla was going to be heavy on social commentary disquised as sci-fi adventure, much like "Star Trek," "X-Men," or "The Death of Ocean View Park." It was too hard to make it look like Simzilla was hailing a cab (he just kinda stands there looking at them as they drive by) so the whole thing was scrapped. Plus, 'social commentary?' Who the hell am I, Maya Angelou?

This is Simzilla being frightened by a plastic flamingo. Amusing, but limited story potential.

I was going to use this picture of dead leaves as the background for some sort of Hallowe'en logo back in '06 before I remembered that I was lazy. In '07 I remembered early on that I was lazy and went the black Sharpie on index card route and passed it off as a plot point. Suckers!

I thought that I might come up with something funny to say about this old magazine ad, but no go. Seems like there should be something in there, though.

I had some sort of "Night of the Living Dead Gingerbread Men" thing going on here that never really went anywhere.

I have no idea how I've amassed that many Candyland game pieces...

And last, but not least... or should I say "L st, but not l ast?"... at the time that I took this picture I thought that it was friggin' hilarious. "Who's L?" I thought, "And does he know what they have in store for him on Thursday." Then, when I was no longer really, really, very drunk, I realized that it wasn't all that funny. Luckily, I'm really, really, very drunk right now so I'm laughing my ass off.

I just reread this post and realized that I used the word 'shit' a few paragraphs back. I usually like to keep the blog four-letter word free, but I'm feeling a little PG-13 tonight so fuck it.

L'Amore Is In L'Air!

So, I knew Valentine's Day was coming up soon, but I didn't even remember that it was today until the nice voice on the Sonic menu-com wished me a happy one. I'm not as excited over the hearts and flowers and x's & o's as I am with some other holidays, but it's a day that's all about love and I can't see anything bad about that so I think the occasion needs to be honored with a post of epic proportions and thanks to Lushie Peach over at Food With Eyes I've got just such a post for you today!

Lushie (and that is her real name, I've seen her driver's license) read the most recent of my Busch Garden's characters posts and promptly fired up her scanner and sent me over some truely amazing pics from a souvenir booklet that she picked up on a family trip back in the summer of 1980. Coincidently, this is around about the same time that my family began to frequent the park so I've naturally enough decided that we must have been there on the exact same day and most likely passed each other at some point during our visits, innocently oblivious to the fact that we would one day be linking blogs. I imagine that it was probably on that quiet, shady stretch of walkway that connected Hastings with Aquitaine back where the monorail to the brewery once stood. Perhaps our eyes would have met that day but for the fact that Lushie was probably distracted by a vendor's sign displaying a smiling faced Pig-In-A-Blanket wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes while I was hiding from a giant beaver man.

The thing that is so amazing about these pics is not just the fact that the shy and noble big-headed creatures of Busch Gardens have been captured on film at all, but that the pics have managed to convey an accurate depiction of those critter's courtship and mating rituals! And offered further proof of my theory that they were all gayer than a Christmas tree wrapped in feather boas. Follow along with me and I'll point out all of the obvious sexual innuendo for those of you who's passe 20th century morals prevent you from recognizing it on your own...

Here's St. George and his life partner and future big game kill, Gordon the Friendly Dragon being serenaded with a lute by a pretty boy in tights (I know that it's a guitar, but we're in The Old Country now so pretend that it's a lute.) St. George hired the lute player as a special Valentine's surprise for his big green boyfriend, but from the knight in shiney armor's body language we can easily see that he has begun to regret this particular romantic gesture. Gordon is a little too interested in our lute-playing lovely. Perhaps we are witnessing the planting of the seeds of our loving couple's eventual, and rather dramatic, break-up?

Looks like they've kissed and made up! Here we see our couple tiptoeing happily through the dandelions while a very early version of the Cirque du Soleil and a hitman for the Rhode Island mob look on. I can't decide if what we're watching here is a sincere montage of true love's blossoming a la "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid" or a tongue-in-cheek dissection of same a la "Annie Hall."

(And as an aside, may I please direct your attention to what a kick-ass dragon costume that is! Look at those layers of overlapping scales, those huge clawed feet and that great big giant egg tooth... I'd tongue kiss any one of those merry-melody-making doofuses in exchange for that dragon costume.)

And now here's Bebo, the non-alcoholic adult beverage shilling French fox being led away for a little of what those in the know refer to as "Midway Delight!" And you can see that he's none too pleased by the idea as he has very nearly torn his arm off at the elbow in an attempt to flee the grasp of Tracey Lynn, New France's own paper-flower-selling girl! And why is Bebo so reticent to 'tip the tissue paper...'

... because he only has eyes for Buford. Here we see that the Canadian lumberjack has invited the fox over to his sweat lodge for a little dry humping of the support poles. This is how a giant-headed costumed amusement park character lets another of his species know that they are ready to begin mating. Happy coupling, fellas!

From Butch & Sundance to Bob & Ted & Carol & St. George...

Looks like George has grabbed a pretty boy of his own and the two of them have hooked up with another couple for the evening. High fives for St. George! Everybody throw their lutes into a bowl and we'll get this funky renaissance started! That will teach that dragon to play with an armored man's heart!

Oh, this is all going to end so badly....

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And that's the end of Valentine's week. With our next post we'll go back to orange-colored text and less bawdy sex talk. I swear, it's only all the artificially cherry flavored ju ju hearts that I've been throwing back in the past week that have made me so naughty. They're worse than green M & M's.

The Robes-Pierre Experience

Some of you may recall (and I know that none of you will recall) my brief obsession awhile back with the long-forgotten and rightly so giant costumed characters of Busch Gardens Colon or Perhaps Comma The Old Country. For all of twelve minutes I was bound and determined to dig up every last bit of information that I could on these assorted fuzzy stereotypes, which I attempted to do via a Google search that brought me right back to this blog and that post I just linked to at the top of this paragraph. Then I got bored and went and colored something.

But a few days back I had reason to dig through my mother's old photo albums in search of a picture of the singing animatronic mushrooms that used to be at King's Dominion (I do have reasons for doing these things you know) and what did I find but the following-


-actual photographic evidence of GCBGC activity and my very own family's historic encounter with same. That's my brother in the stroller shaking hands with, if the pink feather I see perched atop his head is any indication, Robes-Pierre. Robes-Pierre the possibly French or French-Canadian mouse maybe bear creature. And I think that the couple in back may be posing for a brochure photo.

If you are wondering where I am during this historic summit, the answer is: probably cowering in fear behind my mother and/or whoever the hell is taking this picture. I don't remember if I've ever mentioned my Mr. Peanut induced terror of all things giant and costumed, but it was a very real fear. A fear which made every childhood visit to an amusement park something of a nail-biter....

I just realized that this is my first post in over a month. I wish that it could have been a better one.

Trout! Rabbit! Trout!

"Hi I'm..."

... color blind? ... a 'Kroffthead'? ... Sgt. Pepper? ... o.d.-ing on 'Pink Things'?

Where In The World But Six Flags (Or The Castro)...

...could you ever see so much pink in one place? What's up with the pink, Six Flags Over Texas? That's too much pink! As if the background wasn't bad enough you had to go and spotlight various pink-ish things in the photographs, as well. What exactly are those pink blobby things that Jane Seymour and her toothy friend are so excited about? Why focus on the pink sky ride car when there are obviously other non-pink colored cars evident in the background? And why force your poor staff of underpaid high school students to parade around the park in pink candy striper outfits? (Although, I will admit that the cutie in the bottom right does manage to make the whole 'Gay Barbershop Quartet' look work for him.)

Was there a big sale on pink at the brochure store that day?

To add insult to my blog reader's injury... if pink had been one of the text-color options provided by Blogger then this whole post would have been in glorious "Techni-Pink Type!" Just imagine it!

Schlip! Schlap! Schlip-a-schlap avay!

This postcard was probably bought on the same Busch Gardens trip as the Bevo & Buford postcard, although it's no-where near as cool... but how could it be?

This postcard has it's own charms. It's not very often that you get to see the classic Scandinavian Fisch Schlapping Dance as performed by late '70's amusement park staff. Actually, according to the text on the back of the card these are 'Authentic German Folk Dancers" re-creating dances that are 'authentic versions of the ones seen at traditional German festivals.' Whatever... where's the beer?

The Secret Life Of Bevo Fox

Once upon a time (Thursday, August 03, 2006. 3:22 PM EST) I posted a semi-snarky blog entry about the long-forgotten-by-most mascots of the Busch Gardens theme park in Williamsburg, VA. With many years of successful amusement park mascot design under my belt, I felt that I was more than qualified to goof on these lamentably lame cartoon characters, which included a big beaver (insert crude remark here) and a swishy gay Frenchman. If you're ever so curious about that post then by all means go check it out, but then hurry back 'cause I have some apologizing to do...

A large part of those poor mascots' laughability factor, at least in my opinion, had to do with the overall 'pulled-it-out-of-my-ass-ness' of their very being. They seemed a motley group of 'whatevers,' thrown together simply to give the park's employees a reason to don body-lice infested fur suits and parade around on the asphalt in 90 degree weather for hours on end, scaring little children and upsetting guide dogs. Anyone who's ever worked in an amusement park knows that this is the cream job.

But one of these mascots, that devilish little fox with the twinkle in his eye, turns out to be quite the Anheuser-Busch celebrity. Bevo the Fox wasn't pulled out of anybody's ass just willy-nilly... he was ripped from the ass of a hard-working early 1900's ad man who needed the perfect character to pitch Busch's hot-off-the-bottlers new non-alcoholic beverage 'Bevo.' Yep, Bevo was the go-to fox in the company's (more than likely) desperate bid to convince prohibiton-era drinkers that this unfermented cereal beverage was as good as the real thing. For that alone, Bevo deserves much more respect than I've ever given him.


Bevo must have done a Hell of a job, because his namesake beverage was a top-seller in the early 1920's and an entire building (some might say 'shrine') was erected to honor the fox. Ostensibly a Bevo bottling plant, the building was more a destination point for near beer loving pilgrims the world over to come kneel at the feet of their tea-totaling buddha. So powerful was the craven image of Bevo that, in spite of the fact that Anheuser-Busch stopped production of Bevo in 1929, the building still stands to this day in St. Louis. Regular tours are given for the faithful. The pictures of the mosaic above and the cornice piece on the right come from The Bridge and Tunnel Club a neat website that offers, among many other nifty things, a picture tour of the whole Bevo building. All snarking aside, the place is a beautiful piece of architecture.

Bevo the Fox may be gone from beer label and amusement park alike, but he's still popular enough that his likeness will occasionally show up on items marketed to the powerful and unsteady on their feet beer-collector's market, like the figurine at the top of this post and the stein over to the left. The stein is from 1991 and is no longer in stock at beer-steins.com, but they've got lots of other stuff for sale over there and Bevo might just be lurking around there somewhere. Dear God, is that a leg bone he's chewing on?

By-the-by, while I was researching the 'Bevo phenomenon' I suddenly found the words to the song "Ya Got Trouble" from "The Music Man" playing in my head...

"They'll be tryin' out Bevo, tryin out Cubebs, tryin' out Tailor Mades like cigarette fiends!"

...and suddenly a word that I had sung along senselessly to for years held glorious meaning to me! In one tiny cosmic moment my arrested-adolescent love of amusement parks and my gay-ish enjoyment of a good ol' fashioned Broadway spectacular collided into one singing, dancing, cotton candy eating entity. I then experienced the most intense ice cream headache that I have ever suffered through and had to go lie down for a few minutes.

When I awoke I Googled the word 'Cubebs' and found out via Wickipedia that the cubeb (Piper cubeba), or tailed pepper, is a plant in the genus Piper, cultivated for its fruit and essential oils and often used in the past in the form of cigarettes for asthma. That's right... those young River City youth were huffers.