• Nov. 29, 2006 | 6 a.m. PT

Commercials, campy culture, and costumes

I'm currently iced in (in Seattle, of all places) and getting a little bit of cabin fever. And I've heard more than I want to about Michael Richards, O.J., and Britney and her newfound buddy, Paris. So this update is blessedly free of any mention of the four of them, just so you know.

Checking in with the commercials
No, it's not time yet for our Test Pattern summer commercial contest, but I have to mention one that won't still be airing by next June. Have you seen the one for Hallmark where people are stuck in an airport while planes are being delayed left and right? Everyone's crabby as anything until a mom gets the bright idea to pull out the Very Merry Trio, an ornament-toy thing that lights up while penguins and a snowman flap around and dance and the whole thing plays "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"? It immediately works its soothing magic, and suddenly the entire D concourse is like family! Now I have as much holiday spirit as the next person, but seriously, can you think of any planet upon which someone's annoying and noisy toy would actually not tip an already-edgy and tense airport crowd over the line to completely insane? Maybe it's just me. (I started a   commercial-discussion topic here, by the way.)

Putting the ‘culture’ in ‘pop culture’ — maybe
World travel just got a bit loopier. Sweden is opening an ABBA museum in 2008, and China is planning a Bruce Lee theme park to open in three years. Bruce Lee is buried here in Seattle, though for some reason that giant red grave marker shown in the photo was completely invisible to us and we searched all around and never found it. I'd have to say the freakiest pop-culture landmark I've visited was Sanrio Puroland, a kind of Hello Kitty indoor theme park in Tokyo. Highlights included a Hello Kitty-shaped popcorn machine, a restaurant called Yum-Yum Corner, and a gift shop selling everything from Kitty kimonos to Kitty ramen. Meow!

Number-one in the 'hood, G
Halloween's over for this year, but start working now on your Aqua Teen Hunger Force costumes if you hope to beat out this guy, who dressed up as an eerily accurate replica of the Aqua Teen's mouthy neighbor, Carl. (Link via Deadspin.) Oh, there's more: Someone else was Master Shake (the Mooninites sometimes know him as "Cup"). (Here's another version, complete with straw.) In 2004, this guy made an awesome Frylock. And here's someone who got a big group of pals and went as the entire ATHF gang.

LINKS FROM ALL OVER:
• Seattle's Mr. Yuk is retiring. Watch the 1971 Mr. Yuk commercial on YouTube -- it scares the heck out of me still.
• Best snow globe ever: Darth Vader builds the Death Star out of snow. Awww.
• "Twin Peaks" fan visits a number of the real-life, Washington-state locations from that classic cult show and takes photos of how they look now.

• Nov. 27, 2006 | 6 a.m. PT

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. I did, and I learned one thing: When they tell you your flight is delayed and the mechanic isn't sure what's wrong with the plane, you'll indeed be giving thanks early when the airline gives up and moves you to another plane. No one likes being late for a family holiday, but it's a better feeling than sitting on a plane wondering if there really was enough time to fix the mysterious issue. And now, on to Monday's linkage.

• Reader-submitted link: Valerie says: "This is a great site to put everyone in the true Christmas spirit.  You can create your own snowflakes and help the Salvation Army.  The more snowflakes that are made, the greater the donation."

• Valerie's link reminded me of another fun winter link, Snowcraft, a neat online snowball-fight game. This is adorable, but I am so bad at it. If it were real, I'd be a snow-covered popsicle by now.

• In Test Pattern's summer TV commercial contest, we talk a lot about music in commercials, and sometimes I receive email from readers wondering if I can help them identify a song in a movie or TV show as well. Looks like Tunefind will be a good resource for me to use in the future. I recently discovered the band Get Set Go because their song "I Hate Everyone" was played on an episode of "Grey's Anatomy," so I can relate.

• Amazon.com sells almost everything now it seems, including some groceries. Some wisecracking readers have been taking advantage of Amazon's reader-review option and leaving hilariously over-the-top reviews of these staples, including these milk reviews. There are more than 800 now, and the ones I've read are all delightfully insane. I like the one that connects Tuscan brand milk to the Tusken Raiders of "Star Wars." (Link via an old edition of Fark.)

• Random, but also semi-related to the milk post above: Breakfast-cereal characters we never knew, including Yosemite Sam as a gladiator hawking Cheerios. This page is short, but it's just part of a much larger site, Topher's Breakfast Cereal Guide, which is also fun to surf.

• Nov. 20, 2006 | 6 a.m. PT

Multi-link Monday: Elvis treats, more

Thanksgiving, already? I'm not ready, are you? Here are five Monday links to surf while you procrastinate planning the menu.

• Love this tender: In honor of Elvis Presley's famed love for peanut butter and banana sammiches, Reese's is incorporating banana cream into some of its peanut butter cups. The King, with his well-known love for junk food, would have approved. I haven't seen these in my local stores yet, but I'm looking.

• Entertainment Weekly found someone who hadn't seen any of the "Star Wars" movies (not that tough, I guess -- I don't think either of my parents have seen them) and had him watch all six, in order, during the Cinemax marathon, and record his impressions. Short version: The films sucked him in, but he also noted their excruciatingly awful dialogue in some spots.

• This online quiz is only for those who surf Web companies a lot: See if you can ID the correct logo for places such as Google and Amazon when presented with the correct one hidden in a batch of very, very similar options. I can't. (Via Scrubbles.)

• Starting holiday shopping early? I love the items in this Perpetual Kid catalog, but I'd never buy the cookie cutters that look like cookies with bites out of them. I can take the bites myself for free. The voodoo knife holder is pretty funny, though.

• When you were a kid, did you ever think you could dig a hole to China? Not sure why we always said "China," but this cool site lets you pick a location and then discover where your backyard hole actually would end up. I started at my childhood home in Minnesota and ended up somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Glug! Good thing I never had the discipline to dig for long. (Via Freakgirl.)