The sad thing is, if they are even remotely interesting, I actually look at them. God knows why, but I do. I think I'm brainwashed somehow, and I have been subliminally programmed to seek out cheap Chinese crap. There's something for everyone, and every taste.
Say, for instance, you're a devout Christian who would love nothing better than to have a full nativity display on your lawn throughout the Christmas season. Since you can't really afford to pay those nutty people at the church who freeze their asses off putting on that live nativity show to stand around on your lawn from 6-11 every night, you decide you're going to get some plastic fantastic holiness. Your first option is to hit up eBay and do a search on "Blow Mold Jesus.*" You'll get all sorts of hits like this one.
(As an aside, I looked at a bunch of those sets while writing this, and all of them have one thing in common, and that one thing is Mary's wild caterpillar eyebrows. No wonder she was a virgin. Also, judging by the size of the "newborn" baby Jesus in that link, I just have to say: Holy crap, Mary, I'm so sorry.)
At any rate, your only other choice besides new or used blow mold is to go 2D. The problem there is, you can't shove a light bulb up their butts to get that holy 60 watts of glow-power, so you have to go through the added hassle of setting up a spot light in front of them.
Until now.
I present to you, the answer to your 2D prayers:
Not only can you get Mary, Jesus and Joseph, you can also get the manger, the wise men and the animals. All with enough lights to make them look like a casino on the Las Vegas strip.
Oh, and apparently you can make them blink. Can you imagine stumbling on that scene when you're least expecting it? Holy Holy epileptic attack, Batman. You'd probably wake up in the hospital mumbling something about a stroboscopic camel and the next thing you know you'd be living someplace where an orderly peels the tinfoil off your dinner every night during the Wheel of Fortune.
Here's the rest of the set:
Is it just me, or do the wise men look like they have super hero capes?
I also love the ad copy:
Please note: Express delivery is completely out of the question. You're going to have to sit your ass down and wait for quality merchandise like this.
This part made me laugh the most: "Reproduce the entire Nativity Scene (or parts of it)."
Like anyone would really order up some weird combination of holy figures.
"Oh, look! It's Jesus and Joseph!"
"Just Joseph?"
"Yeah, I heard there was a nasty break-up. He's a single dad now. It's kinda sad. I feel sorry for the kid."
p.s. - If you're not doing anything, you're all invited to stop by our place for drinks on Christmas eve. Just look for the house with the blinking baby Jesus and his best pal, donkey.
p.p.s - Check out this new site and vote for two of my posts here. I could win some big bucks. Unless, of course, they're lying, which wouldn't surprise me.
*the name of my next band
I'd DEFINITELY buy the first album your band put out, if only to be able to keep it safe once the rabid christians decided to buy up as many copies as they could to burn en masse!
ReplyDeleteGreat post JV!!
Yo, JV, when did you swing by my folks place out in Western NY to get a photo of their nativity scene? They've been putting it out since the early 70's. Joseph's robe used to be deep red, but it's faded to a nice pink now. Very trendy, don't you agree?
ReplyDeleteMy sister found some "Look good for Jesus" lipgloss at Wal-Mart the other day. I think all of this is a backlash against the can't-say-Christmas people.
ReplyDeleteMy husband likes all the catalogs too - he says they make the best BR reading. :-)
Between this and the stick figure Satan t-shirt on Fail Blog today, this has been a great day.
ReplyDeleteThe catalogs are bad but I am an infomercial junkie. My roommate once caught me on the verge of ordering a drill bit and managed to talk me out of it by reminding me I don't actually own a drill so the bit really wouldn't help much.
That's hilarious. brings back memories of my mom fiddling with the spotlight after the neighbors knocked Joseph over again.
ReplyDeleteI want a nativity scene with wise men in Buddhist robes and a buncha homeless guys as the shepherds. Also, Mary & Joseph as inner city teens. Unfortunately there's not much market for authenticity in Christmas schlock.
LOL! We never got to have the blinking lights and I was so jealous of the kids with the reindeers and santas and nativity people and bird baths all over their lawns. But it's OK now, I've joined a support group.
ReplyDeleteYou've brought up a valid point... All those flashing Christmas decorations should come with an epilepsy warning.
ReplyDeleteWhere the heck to people store all this crap the rest of the year?
ReplyDeleteJV - I suspect they only sell full sets and the erstwhile consumer would then choose which parts to display...kind of like cutting the ex out of the family pictures.
The possibilites are endless following the unexpected divorce of Mary and Jofus.
Hilarious!
ReplyDeleteAnd to get off mailing lists go to www.catalogchoice.org and take your stack of unwanteds with you add your name to each individual company's Do not mail list.
Can do the same thing at the DMA now - better than the one they had a year ago.
I work in the direct mail industry and these things do work eventually.
I would so totally come out to watch Blow Mold Jesus. My parents have one too, Upstate Broad. :|
ReplyDeleteOn New Years, Blow UP Blow Mold Jesus...
ReplyDeleteI grew up in South Jersey, arguably the blow mold capital of at least the Eastern Seaboard. My personal favorite was a family who would start with the standard softly radiant nativity, then surround it with shepherds, sheep, a mule, a homemade manger, wise men, a kneeling Santa, then at a respectful, honorguard-like distance, a semicircle of alternating snowmen and soldier/nutcrackers. This was all lovingly encircled in a candycane fence.
ReplyDeletethen Joseph gets drunk and does what to the donkey exactly..... or does the doneky do to Joseph.....????
ReplyDeleteGood night. There's a word for this stuff; 'Jesus junk'.
ReplyDeleteGives Christians a bad name.
You are a RIOT by the way. I love your blog!
Jorm, I'll even sign it for ya..
ReplyDeleteUB, Pink is the new black.
KC, Your husband is not wrong.
carpe, I too cannot be trusted alone late at night with alcohol and a credit card. I once bought a soloflex that way. And some sort of meat vacuum packager.
Jess, that's disturbing on so many levels. I just can't picture mary with a tramp stamp no matter how hard I try.
Off ramp, we always loved the sleigh and reindeer my grandmother had on her roof. That was awesome.
David, good point. I think people build a special "christmas shed" for these things. Also, they were priced out separately. Well, the wise men were a single price, but they're like NKOTB. You can't split them up.
Tricia, please give me your mailing address, and I'll send all my catalogs to you. See what you can do, ok? :)
Shieldmaiden, you need to send me a picture of that. Seriously.
Our hood does lots of lights but nothing like this. Of course, it's all lawyers and gay folks, so not a whole lot of "reason for the season" feelings anyway. I think my household is the only one getting up early on Sunday mornings.
ReplyDeleteHey muskrat - I like what you write but I must take issue with lumping gay folks in with lawyers. I'm gay and go to church (which is what I assume your up early on Sunday morning note means) virtually every Sunday morning. Even most of my gay friends who are mostly recovering catholics usually find a church service of their liking.
ReplyDeleteNow, as to the lawyers, I cannot disagree with your observation.
someone on the next street over has a huge inflatable homer simpson in a santa suit with a big box of d'oh-nuts on their porch roof... if that doesn't say christmas... wait... does that say christmas?
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see that they're at least doing their part to maintain the myth that the wise men were there at the same time as the shepherds (according to the Bible, the wise men arrived something like 4 years later).
ReplyDeleteDiesel, maybe that explains the size of that baby jesus. He looks about 4 years old.
ReplyDeleteEither it's really late or I'm just that warped but when I read your title of a flashing Savior, I really thought it was going to be Jesus in some type of trenchcoat!
ReplyDeleteHey! You should come to the holy land and check out some of the great souvineers they sell in Jerusalem old city. I have a game I play "best bad taste souvineer". Although the postcards they have covered in ribbed plastic where from one angle is jesus and another angle is Mary are pretty good, invariably it's the man-sized glow-in-the-dark rosary that steals the show!
ReplyDeleteon a totally unrelated note, is there any chance your book will be for sale before christmas? that's probably a ridiculous question, but i thought i'd check.
ReplyDeleteI would send that picture forthwith but I live about 250 miles away now...if anyone is in striking distance of Exit 16B off 295 North in Gibbstown, NJ, its the house right off the exit ramp going toward Kings Highway. Follow the glow.
ReplyDeleteDear god, I read that as Blow HOLE Jesus...
ReplyDeleteShieldmaiden96, you must have some kin in SE VA. I think Mr. Neighbour collected blow mold remnants, as the Christmas before we moved he had Mary and Joseph looking over two mangers, with three (varying sizes) Santas paying respects. Two Rudolphs were stabled with the donkey and camel. I'll swing by this week and if he has it out I'll share a pic.
Saff, that's just wrong. Hilariously wrong.
ReplyDeleteQue, how much would a man-sized rosary set me back?
anon, sadly, not this christmas. I wish. If I had been smarter, I would have started on it earlier. Right now I'm in the process of putting the pieces together, trying to stitch it up in some sort of chronological order, write intro paragraphs and what not to tie them to each other, and then I have a list of about 10 new stories I need to write. Wow, that sounds like a lot of work.
Pjane, that sounds awesome.
I once delivered Meals on Wheels to a house that had a plastic Mary and Joseph and a "home made" baby Jesus. It was an aluminum roasting pan with a regular baby doll in it and it was covered up to its neck with a sort of tin foil blanket. It was the highlight of my routw when I delivered to that house. Sadly, after a few months they took all of them away.
ReplyDeleteRobin
I almost crashed my car today when I saw a plastic Mary with the caterpillar eyebrows on someone's lawn, I was laughing so hard.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with your band name. "Stroboscopic Camel" is MUCH cooler.
ReplyDelete