I’m a sucker for giant, ominous statues. If Easter Island had 7-Elevens, I’d live there.

Quickest way to make me a fan of your movie or TV show? Toss in a giant, ominous statue. I don’t care if the statue is pure scenery or critical to the plot. Just stick it in there!

Here are seven of my favorites:

The Statue of Taweret!
Lost (2006)

Of all the things that kept us guessing about the island from Lost, the Statue of Taweret was by far my favorite. Introduced in Season 2 with only one four-toed foot intact, viewers had to wait until the Season 5 finale to see the whole thing, through one of the show’s most critical flashbacks.

Taweret is the (real life) Egyptian goddess of fertility, and while her inclusion may have been a nod to pregnancies being a “complicated” issue on the island, the statue was mainly there to tell us that people had been coming to this strange place for a very, very long time.

Hippo-headed and carrying an identical pair of huge ankhs, it’s among my favorite “monster” designs ever. (“Monster” in quotes because ancient Egyptians certainly didn’t view Taweret that way. She was a protector!) Read More…

I’m not sure if junk food has ever been as interesting as it is at this very moment. Everywhere I turn, I’m deluged by multicolored artificial things that work in sickly sweet pseudo-sugars the way Sirens work in song. It’s great!

Below are five new or newish junk foods that struck me as being just interesting enough to buy, eat, photograph and write about on a 450 degree Tuesday afternoon. Enjoy, however vicariously.

Cotton Candy Oreo Cookies!

I think we’re past the point of thinking that every wacky new Oreo flavor is a major event.

Okay, I’m lying. Of course Cotton Candy Oreos are a major event. Jesus, this is huge!

What I love most is how Nabisco perfectly encapsulated “summer” without ever using the word. I look at these, and all I can think about are swimming pools and ice cream trucks and Roman candles. The sun shines brighter, or maybe that’s just the blazing yellow cookie bag.

The two-tone icing looks like the background in half of my grade school photos, too. Another plus.

I don’t know how Nabisco pulled it off, but the cookies really do share a smell and flavor with cotton candy. It’s a dead-on match. Even has that lingering cotton candy aftertaste. (You know, the kind that’s still in your mouth five hours later, when you’re eating chicken and potatoes? That uh… that might not be a plus.)

Recommended? Yes. Cotton candy is already kinda space food, but if it wasn’t, this would be cotton candy space food. Read More…

I’d expected to lean more heavily on yard sales this season, but after my success at the Englishtown flea market a few weeks ago, I wanted to know if lightning could strike twice.

It did!

For me, it’s just been about developing my eye. My intuition. If you spend enough time at flea markets, you’ll gain a sort of sixth sense. By sight alone, you’ll know which vendors are going to have reasonable prices. You’ll know which dingy boxes will be worth making your hands dirty. You’ll know when to haggle, simply based on how much desperation hides behind a particular seller’s eyes.

It’s fun. It’s sociology through buying garbage.

We went there yesterday morning, with Jay of The Sexy Armpit. Everyone went home with piles of stuff. In fact, I was only there for fifteen minutes before accumulating too much junk to reasonably carry, necessitating a mile-long walk back to the car.

Jay and I shared a mantra: If we were going to spend two hours digging through dirty things, we at least needed to make it post-worthy. When you’re done reading about my finds, go check out his — they should be posted in a day or two.

Transformers & So Forth!
Price: $2 for the whole pile!

SCORE. On a table otherwise topped with wicker baskets and nothing but wicker baskets, I spotted a small pile of Transformers, Gobots and other robot figures of a similar vein. I might’ve walked right past them, if not for the two vintage Insecticons.

I couldn’t believe the prices. “50 cents for the big ones, 25 cents for the small ones.” It’s a pretty historic occasion when you can buy an unbroken G1 Decepticon Kickback for 50 cents… in 2015.

I had a hard time comprehending what the seller construed as “big ones” and “small ones,” so I just offered two bucks for the whole pile. What a freakin’ deal.

Kickback (the grasshopper guy in the center) was the star of the lot, but the other Insecticon was still worth buying even in his shoddier condition. Also included were a couple of Gobots, and things that were close to Gobots, and then something that didn’t belong in that pile at all: Chrome Dome, a vintage TMNT figure.

Special shoutout to that generic slot machine robot. If you’re around my age, you definitely owned him… or at least one of his 50,000 similarly-styled cousins. Read More…