A Gingerbread New Year

Happy New Year to everyone!  As you can see we've got a new banner and a new background, but it's the same old toilet humor you've come to know and love.  Let's get 2012 started with the things everyone loves: Really good food and celebrity trash!

I've wanted to build a gingerbread house for a while and was given a prebuilt one for Christmas, so all you had to do was decorate it.  Unfortunately the house was in worse shape than the Roman Colosseum and came in about 22 crushed pieces, so decoration was quite impossible (more on that below).  So we decided to build one from scratch.  Not great, but not bad.  And it tastes good so who the hell cares about the construction.

Dots, Junior Mints, Reeses Pieces, Marshmallows, M&M's, Melt Away Mints, and fruit snacks topped onto graham crackers

So - is the goal of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve to bring together every single trashy no-talent celebrity they can get their hands on?  Does anyone really want to ring in the new year with Justin Bieber doing his best Pippi Longstocking impression?  Or that mandatory random chick they hire as a field reporter?  In this case it was Jenny McCarthy, who I thought was a pornstar at first.  Or listening to One Republic?  Yeah, they totally rock with their little pansy lyrics and girl pants.  But most of all - Lady Gaga.  I like Lady Gaga.  I think she's a terrific entertainer and her songs are catchy.  But this:

Lady Gaga missed the memo that this is Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve and not a KKK rally

Ok, seriously guys???  You're really gonna let her go on TV with that Chinese hand fan on her head?  Where's the quality control anymore?  Oh, so they'll edit out the moderately dirty sex jokes in the Goonies, but letting one of their "reporters" come out as David Duke is just fine, right?  Right.  

Fail.

I just had to vent that.  This is Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, not a frickin' Halloween dress up party.

But anyway.  So the pre-built gingerbread house...these were my exact thoughts from picture to picture:

A little cracked, but maybe I could do a ghost town theme, inspired by my trip to Bodie this past summer!

Well...maybe it could be decorated like one of those rundown houses from Bo-

...maybe we could put it back together with plenty of the frost-

Huh.  

We did try to reassemble it, but it proved near impossible so it was returned to Target.  Pretty disappointing.  Imagine if a 6 year old saw this.  They'd be rolling on the ground screaming.  Imagine if that was me 6 months ago.  I'd be rolling around on the ground screaming.  But Target took it back no problem.  Something interesting they're doing as well, at least the Balboa store - they've now combined Returns and Purchases, so the first 5 registers or so you can buy as well as return products.  While I see that as really utilizing your work force, I also think they're probably downsizing.  I mean yeah, it's useful that you can buy and return at the same spot, but sometimes people don't want to go further into the store to return an item.  Maybe it's also a sales pitch, cause then you're on line and you see all these other products and whatnot.

Here are some more sweets for you:

The key ingredients of the gingerbread house

Admit that you've always wanted a Hershey's bar as a front door

See that Dot column?  That's solid architecture

A roof of Junior Mints - you know you want it

It was a fun little project.  I used to be really good at constructing these as a kid but my skills have clearly deteriorated.  I was about 9 or 10 when I built my most memorable house.  The World According to Suz and I both made these giant multiple level houses complete with furniture and decorations and a picture on the wall.  They were built tough and lasted a while as we slowly ate them, piece by piece.  Good times.

Oh, and here's one more thing from Christmas - my very own bistro!:

Three cheeses (jalapeno cheddar, smoked cheddar, farmhouse cheddar), sausage, melt away mints, and crackers.  All of my favorite things!

Thanks for reading!