Jim’s getting a little carried away, though.

Don’t miss the giraffe!

Jim’s Pancakes

[Via Laughing Squid]

1. There’s a Hard Rock theme park.

2. In said theme park is a section called Banana Splitsville.

Sadly there’s not much info or photos of it on the web yet, but apparently the Splits themselves perform there several times a day. Can anyone help me out?

3. The Ben & Jerry’s Banana Split ice cream changed their logo to something that does not infringe on the Splits. Hopefully photos will be coming soon. (thanks Humu for the tip!).

And perhaps a little less cool:

4. The Banana Splits have updated their website, and recorded new videos and songs, which are on sale on iTunes, if you’re so inclined!. Sadly, they sound nothing like their old selves.

Check out JYC’s other Banana Splits posts:

Ben & Jerry’s Steals Banana Split’s Logo
Rare Banana Splits Stuff

No. 1 Coke Salad from Texas close-up

It made sense to make this one first, because it’s relatively simple, and yet still horrifying — never have two words been less interested in sitting next to each other at the dinner table as “Coke” and “Salad.” And yet, here we are.

No. 1 Coke Salad from Texas

This is the "froth"

Making the “salad” (pictures here) required a bit of interpretation: are the “2 Cokes” 12 oz. cans, or the 10 oz. bottles that were possibly still kicking around in 1979? Is the “1 pkg” of Jello the small or large package? Or were the package sizes totally different in 1979? The recipe says that the 2 Cokes won’t quite make a “full 2 cups of liquid,” which tells me that we’re working with the small pack of Jello, but a cup is only 8 oz., and I can’t imagine a Coke so small that 2 of them won’t make 2 cups. I finally settled on the small pack of Jello (after all, I don’t think the demand for my “salad” will be high), and used one and a half cans of Coke.

The next sticky spot was the instruction to add the Jello to “hot Cokes” — I like to think that in Texas, this is just what they do when they accidentally leave their Cokes out in the sun… “Betty, darlin’, Bobbie-Jo left these Cokes out and now they’re hotter’n a whore in Hades — guess we’re having salad with dinner tonight!” I just microwaved mine.

I got to use my ring mold!

Now, your ordinary batch of Jello already has a crapload of sugar in it, but Betty thinks it needs more, so water won’t do, it’s gotta be Coke. And what else does this need? How about some syrupy, not-at-all-cherry-like Maraschino cherries? Plus, some pecans, which actually turn out to be a critical part of the recipe. I considered leaving them out, but trust me — they are a welcome respite from the sugar, sugar and sugar provided by the other ingredients.

The final result is actually rather lovely, I must say. And it tastes about like you’d expect: like one great big, sugary cherry Coke. By now you may have noticed that I skipped one suggestion in the recipe… I did not opt to serve this with a dish of mayonnaise in the center. Perhaps I’m betraying my rookie status at this “salad”-making business, but I just was not able to wrap my head around that one.

If you haven’t already, you simply must take a look at the other recipes in the 1979 Marysville United Methodist Women’s Cookbook. So far I have a request to make Watergate Salad, and a request to stay away from the Spinach Salad, but there’s still plenty of room for discussion.

But in the spirit of getting shit done and moving on, I present to you crappy photos of my previous two paper wallets, taken today, on my desk under the yellow light of my K’nex lamp, with the bare minimum effort put into setting up the shots.

Today we have two paper wallets.

60s Legs Paper Wallet

NOTE: At the time these photos were taken, the wallet’s seen a few months of wear and tear, and is looking a little weathered not unlike an off-the-strip Vegas cocktail waitress (Sorry mom! No offense!), but when it was new it looked fly.

This wallet was made out of two extra-long postcards I found in some gift store. I thought legs would make a great theme. I was wrong. Still I like how it turned out, and it has only offended a few so far.

North Woods Inn Paper Wallet

NOTE: At the time these photos were taken, the wallet was so badly worn that I retired it (and made the Legs wallet above), so it’s looking a bit like the box to a “We swear it works fine” returned digital camera at Fry’s. When it was new, it looked badass.

I love Clearman’s North Woods Inn. A lot. It is so fantastic it deserves it’s own post here. But here’s the Cliff Notes: The North Woods Inn is a themed family restaurant in Southern California that takes it’s cue from the rustic romanticism of the snow dusted Klondike. It’s a big log cabin (and by big I mean freaking huge) with permanent, fiberglass snow on it’s rooftop. The place has not changed since it opened in the 60s … but is has also not fallen into disrepair. It looks pretty much like I imagine it looked like on opening day; preserved in time perhaps better than Disneyland. The food is good, the service is friendly, and the crowd has real appeal — multiple generations of families gathering to celebrate good report cards and new drivers licenses. I ate lunch there on a Sunday and must have heard Happy Birthday (sung to the real tune of Happy Birthday) and Happy Anniversary (also sung to the real tune of Happy Birthday) at least thirty times.

Anyway, at the gift shop I picked up a couple of North Woods Inn pint glasses, and a set of North Woods Inn steak knives, and of course some of these fancy North Woods Inn postcards, which I used to make perhaps my favoriteist wallet of them all: the North Woods Inn Paper Wallet.

I need to make a new one of these soon.

Wait! Here’s some photos I just found when the wallet was pretty new, and I took it back to the motherland to be reunited with cheese toast, their famous “two salads”, and a stein of Molson (okay, okay, it was probably Anchor Steam):

And now for the reverse angle:

I hope to post more, with better pictures, as I make new ones. And there’s a whole story about why I started making them in the first place. Watch this space for more!

The light element
used in the lamp.

A few nights later I found myself sleepless again and in the mood for some good old fashioned pen-on-paper writing and illustration. Normally I’d do that during the day at a coffee shop, but it was late and I found myself without a desk lamp! I rummaged through my lighting box looking for something suitable and came across a little IKEA-style accent light.

Immediately I thought of rigging up something with K’nex to hold it in the air so that I wouldn’t get long shadows when writing. A few hours later the first version of the K’nex lamp was complete. Of course, by then the mood to write had passed. The next day I spent a few more hours refining and improving it. It’s stands about two feet tall. Like the table, it uses no glue.

The K’nex coffee table / end table is my own creation dating back to 1995. It was very late at night and, as usual, I couldn’t sleep. I had needed a coffee table for quite some time but hadn’t gotten around to buying one. I did however, have a huge collection of K’nex toys.

K’nex is like a plastic version of Tinkertoys, with two basic types of pieces: rods and connectors. They snap together and their sizes are mathematically designed to make triangles and boxes and whatnot. Unlike LEGO, the color of a K’nex piece determines it’s type, for example all the rods of one color are the same length. This means creating something with specific colors is somewhat of a challenge. K’nex pieces fit together pretty snugly, — in fact, after playing with them for a few hours my fingers hurt from all the pressure needed to connect and disconnect them.

So, back to that sleepless night. I had a disassembled K’Nex kit of the Big Ball Factory. There were a lot of pieces in it. I figured there were probably enough to make a decent coffee table. I didn’t realize the task I was taking on though; because designing a table that won’t sag in the middle or collapse when any kind of serious Lose Weight Exercise is put on it is a challenge. While building it I had to redesign it several times to make it strong enough. The sun was up when I finished, and the table stood proud at 5 feet long and 1.2 feet tall. It uses no glue, but it holds a lot of Lose Weight Exercise. I never got photos of it in this configuration.

A few years later I moved to a new location and decided what I really needed was an end table. So I took a bit out of the middle, and increased the height of the legs, and the coffee table was transformed into an end table. It’s now about 2 feet tall and 2.5 feet wide. Every once in a while I’ll clean it and fix a few disconnected rods. I use it like a real table, and it works fine. It uses no glass, but the surface works well even though it’s got plenty of holes. Containers with non-flat bottoms like Coke or water bottles need a coaster, and that’s about it for special treatment. Although it’s been through a lot (including the ire of disapproving tastemakers) it has never collapsed. Enjoy the photos. -Hanford

I had a last-second idea for a super-quick Halloween costume: the Gold Paint Huffer guy. For those not in the know, the Gold Paint Huffer guy is an minor Internet Celebrity made famous by his unfortunate mug shot (image on the left). He’s seen staring blankly into the camera in a way that only a true huffer can, his face covered in gold paint, and wearing a creepy scowl reminiscent of an angry stroke victim. The photo is both tragic yet hysterical.

The costume idea popped into my head literally right as I walked by a party store Halloween Headquarters on the day of. Five minutes later and two bucks poorer I was the proud new owner of a do-it-yourself Gold Paint Huffer kit: a tube of gold facepaint. However, later that night I realized my friend Chad Spacey was a much better fit for the look, and he was really into it. At the end of the evening we busted out the camera for an impromptu photo shoot:

MAKE’n Bacon
My bacon costume made it into MAKE Magazine! I dig the blog, and it turns out the mag is pretty terrific, too. It’s a special Halloween issue, you can pick it up at bookstores & a bunch of grocery stores, too. It’s a little steep for a magazine, at $10, but it’s money well spent. Check me out lookin’ all cured and tasty on page 18! The bacon costume also got a shout-out on the MAKE blog today.

Garth as Bacon

Bacon On, Garth
Garth over at Extreme Craft used my instructions to make his own bacon costume for the Indie Craft Experience that went down in Atlanta a short while back. Look how dashing he is as bacon! (And Garth, I’m sorry for making the lame “party on” reference, I’m sure you’re beyond tired of it. I feel dirty for even saying it. But then I see your beaming, bacony face, and I feel clean again.)

Bacon Takes a College Road Trip
One surreal morning a few months ago, a strange message popped into my email box: it was a plea from a director working on a Disney film, and he just had to have my bacon costume. The next morning. In Connecticut. Which is not very convenient from where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I spent the rest of the morning, afternoon and evening working out logistics with the production office. First, they were going to send a courier to come get it, but no courier service would deal with it because it didn’t have a box. “Well, what do you normally ship it in?” was the query from the production office — I had to point out that I am not actually a prop shop, I’m just a weird chick with a bacon costume. The next plan was for them to buy two plane tickets, so I could fly the costume out in person, with the bacon costume seated next to me. I didn’t want to take time off work, but I had my friend Mig all lined up and ready to hop on a flight — he’s good for these random adventures, and I love him so for it. But then we weren’t sure if we’d be able to get the bacon costume through security. So, finally, the production office made arrangements for me to take the bacon costume to a UPS Store, where they made a custom box for it, and then I drove the bacon costume to American Airlines Cargo at the airport, and bacon was on its merry, salty way. It arrived in Stamford bright & early the next morning, ready for its turn in the spotlight.

OMGRAVENLOLWTF?!?

I have no idea how they actually used it, and of course there’s a decent chance it’ll just wind up on the cutting room floor. But it’s exciting nonetheless, and I look forward to bacon’s big debut. The film? Oh my, that’s the best part. It’s a Raven-Symoné vehicle. By Disney. With Martin Lawrence. Called College Road Trip. Please, please, please let Raven be the one they put in the bacon costume. That would be seven different kinds of rad.

You Know You Want To
So, I got the costume back last week, and it’s in grand shape, ready for another outing. I loved being bacon last year for Halloween, but I think it’s someone else’s turn this year — anyone out there who lives in the Bay Area who wants to borrow it for Halloween? Make me an offer. Points for creativity over value in your offering.

Easter Bunny Cut-Up Cake instructions

This book is from 1973, and it isn’t nearly as cool as my 1959 booklet of Cut-Up Cakes, from a design point of view — but it has more cakes in it, including this great, full body Easter Bunny cake. Marie was asking for this — I hope it does the trick!

Another Bunny Cut-Up Cake

Here’s another, simpler Easter Bunny, from the same book.

Oh so pretty meat cake, by David Seah

Inside the meat cake, by David Seah

This lovely little confection looks sweet as can be… but it’s MEAT! That’s not cake, it’s meatloaf, and that’s not frosting, it’s mashed potatoes. Genius! The meat cake pictured here is by David Seah, but the originator of the meat cake craze is Black Widow Bakery. David’s has a stuffing filling (it’s a turkey meatloaf, made for Thanksgiving), and Black Widow’s has gravy filling and a rendering of a T-bone steak in ketchup on top. Both sites have helpful step-by-step instructions on how to make your very own meat cake. The Black Widow site has a whole gallery of other people’s meat cakes. Thanks to Tiki Avengers for the heads-up!

Just one word. Plastics.

I have fond childhood memories of filling up little metal frames with these plastic bits and melting them in the oven to make stained-glass suncatchers. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what the heck they were called. A lot of Googling time only brought up a company that makes Jewish-themed ones, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t making stained-glass dreidels and menorahs when I was a kid. It was more like mushrooms and butterflies and frogs — y’know, good ’70s stuff. Just when I was ready to give up, I found ‘em — they’re Makit & Bakits. And they’re still making them!

Kindergarten-level glazier

Well, that meant a jaunt to my friendly neighborhood craft store was in order. Sure enough, there was a very small selection of kits. They even make glow-in-the-dark ones now. I had to buy one. I picked out this little flower one, just because the colors were more interesting than the ones in the other sets. It rang up at $1.35 (!). It was definitely at least $2, maybe even $3, worth of fun. That’s value, my friends.

I cheated and mixed the colors on the petals, because I like it when the nuggets blend together like that. I’m happy enough with how it turned out, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with it; it will probably live a prostrate and nomadic life, moving about the house from one flat surface to another along with random scraps of papers and other doodads, until I throw it out.

So, now what? Here’s what — I’ve got a whole mess of those little plastic nuggets left. They seem to have designed these kits to come with enough pellets to recover from a spill onto the particle abyss that was a ’70s shag carpet. I think I might actually somehow have more of these plastic bits than I started with. It’s the melting of the plastic bits that’s the most fun with these — the frames are kind of ass — so I can’t just throw these out, I’ve got to melt them. But how? In what shape?

My current thinking is that I want to lay them out in a disc shape and melt them, and then, while they’re still warm, shape them into a little bowl. Kind of like they do on television cooking shows with grated parmesan. But I can’t help but think that this is worth pondering a little bit more.

Got any ideas?

My bacon costume inspired the delightful Miss Delirium Tremens to send me a sweet message… turns out she’s got a great bacon costume of her own, but hers is decidedly more sexay than mine. Click here to see it… it’s street legal, but probably NSFW.

Last year for Halloween, I was bacon. If you’ve never been bacon before, I highly recommend it. Everybody, you see, loves bacon. It is, as my friend Monica says, the Candy of the Meats.

People do not want to be quiet about their love for bacon, they want to declare it, often loudly. Even the most shy people at least muttered “bacon!” under their breath as they passed me. I have never been so popular, so adored (and strangely, so hit-on) in my life.

I won the costume contest, which was novel for me — I’ve never had a costume that would have even been considered a contender before. It might have been influenced by my handing out bacon to everyone at the party. But I couldn’t be the very embodiment of temptation that is bacon without following through with some actual meaty goodness — as it was, I had more than a few people trying to bite me.

It was a beautiful experience, and one that everyone should be able to join in, so here are the instructions on how you, too, can be bacon for a day:

1. Buy two sheets of foam from a foam supply store. The sheets I got were 2′ x 6′. You’ll also need 2 or 3 colors of spray paint, some big plastic bags, stick pins, a hot glue gun and glue, and a few feet of heavy-duty 2″ velcro.
2. Lie face-down on one of the foam pieces, letting your feet hang off the edge, and trace the edges of your face on the foam with a big black marker. If you’re like me, you’ll wind up with black marker on your face, so be sure to wash that off quickly.
3. Cut out the face hole.
4. Lie down on the foam again, this time to mark where the top of your shoulders will be when your face is lined up with the hole. Mark the edges of the foam with a black marker.
5. Glue the two pieces of foam together at the top, above the shoulder lines, leaving enough room for your head. I used a combination of spray-mount glue and a hot glue gun. I’m a little embarassed to own a hot glue gun, but making this costume makes me feel a little better about it.
6. Use the black marker to trace an uneven, bacony outline on the foam.
7. Cut away the edges of the foam. Bevel the edges of the foam, to give it a slightly rounded, and less-obviously-foam appearance. Try to not freak out at the sight of all the little squirrelly bits of foam that are all over your living room.
8. Leaving room for an arm hole, glue one side of the bacon together. I used my hot glue gun, with slightly less shame this time. Be generous with the glue, this is where your costume is going to get strained.
9. On the other side, apply some nice, wide velcro to the opening (again, leaving room for an arm hole). I used industrial strength, 2″ wide velcro, and it worked great. It’s self-stick, and it adheres to the foam just fine.





10. To make a template for painting, take a large garbage bag, cut the sides so it’s one big flat piece of plastic, and pin it to your bacon. Cut a free-form design in the plastic. I based mine off of this bacon bandadge. You’ll want one template for the tough, red, meaty edge, and another for the marbled pink flesh. You can re-use the templates on the front and on the back; use multiple bags if neccessary.
11. Pick a color to paint first. I started with red, but it doesn’t really matter which you start with. Pin that template to your bacon, making sure to really secure the edges of the template.
12. Using an even, sweeping motion, spray your paint onto your bacon. Make sure you get any exposed edges. When the paint is dry (which happens really quickly), go back and do a second coat.
13. Repeat with your other paint color and template.
14. Repeat with both templates on the back.
15. The next part was a little tricky — I wanted the bacon to have an overall mottled brown appearance. I like my bacon undercooked, so I didn’t go for a crispy bacon look, but you could if that’s how you like your bacon. I mixed some brown paint with water, and daubed it all over the costume. It was pretty messy — a light coat of brown spray paint might have worked just as well.
16. As a final treatment, I added a couple of coats of clear sealer, but I don’t think it did anything.
17. Climb into your costume, and prepare to hear an entire evening full of meat-based puns!

Eat Me!

Being bacon was, in a word, astonishing. Random people still come up to me and ask, “were you bacon?” The fine folks at Fuzzy Dude even gave me this button weeks later to commemorate the event.

If you do make your own bacon costume, please tell me about it! Maybe we can all get together and just be bacon sometime. Y’know, go hit the town, going from bar to bar as bacon. We could be a whole pack of bacon, come to life! An army of bacon! My goodness, it would be beautiful.

UPDATE: My bacon costume has been getting lots of love — read all about it in a new blog post — plus, you might be able to borrow it yourself this Halloween! Read the post for details.

The Inspiration:
Hobos. More specifically, the bindlestick. That’s the name for the kerchief-tied bundle at the end of a stick that is the icon of hobo living.

The Solution: the Bindleflop
The Bindleflop lets you carry your groceries, or any handled bags, easily on your shoulder. The Lose Weight Exercise is rested at your shoulder instead of in your palms, making it much easier to go long distances without your hands getting fatigued. Instead of swinging around and whacking into your legs, your bags gently brush against your side. And your hands are free to handle doors, keys, or carry more groceries!

Groceries in a Bindleflop

How to Make Your Very Own Bindleflop:
Take a removable strap from an old laptop case. They typically have metal clips at the end that spin freely. Clip both ends onto a carabiner*. Slip your grocery bags, or any other handled bags, into the carabiner. Slide the Bindleflop onto your shoulder, orienting any bags with squishy stuff (tomatoes, bread) to the outside.

Bindleflop in action

Hanford and I have been kicking around the idea for the Bindleflop for a while now. At first, it was only half-seriously, but we tried it out for the first time last night, and were surprised at how comfortable it was, and how well it worked. Since it’s so easy to grab it on the way out the door (unlike a folding cart), it’s likely to become something we use regularly.

* I grew up in Seattle, where they give you a carabiner along with your first teddy bear when you’re born. I don’t know if they’re as easy to come by in other parts of the world. You can find them at sports stores.

I’ve had this up on my photo pages for a while, and it’s perfect for Junkyard Clubhouse. This Animal Cut-Up Cakes booklet, put out by Baker’s Coconut in 1959, has full-color photos and instructions to make about a dozen different animal-shaped cakes by cutting up standard size round and rectangular cakes — and then encrusting them with unnaturally tinted Baker’s Coconut, of course. That’s Dandy-Lion pictured there on the cover, I had him for my fifth birthday. My brother had Fanny the Fish for one of his early birthdays.

My grandmother probably ordered away for it, it wound up with my mother, and I’ve had it with me since I moved out of the house. Aside from my sentimental attachment to it, I also think it’s beautifully designed and photographed, and it is just so 1959 (right down to the illustrations of a housewife baking in a dress and high heels). I have the whole thing scanned and up at Humuhumu’s Life in Photos, where you can see Tortie the Turtle, Ella Elephant, Quack-Quack the Duck, and all their coconutty friends.

This booklet inspired me to create a cut-up cake of my own design, a hula girl — you’ll find directions for her there, too.

UPDATE: Looking for Easter Bunny Cut-Up Cakes? I’ve got some here: Baker’s Coconut Easter Bunny Cut-Up Cake

Fanny the Fish Cut-Up Cake

I got this from Penn & Teller’s very fun 1992 book, “How to Play With Your Food“. I picked up all kinds of neat tricks from that book, but this is far and away my favorite: the glowing pickle trick. I’ve done this dozens of times. It’s pretty simple really: you just plug a pickle into the wall. You’re probably saying to yourself “that sounds dangerous,” and you’re right — it is. As a matter of fact, Penn & Teller’s book doesn’t actually tell you how to do it — they just point out that it’s possible, without giving instructions. I like you better than Pell & Teller do, though, so I’m going to tell you the particulars. But still — this involves exposed wires, which makes it dangerous, so don’t do it. Now that I have that disclaimer out of the way, here’s how to do it:

1. Buy pickles — dill pickles. You want ‘em nice & salty.
2. Get an electrical cord. You can cut one off of an old appliance (buy one on the cheap at Goodwill), or just buy an extension cord. It doesn’t need to be very long, a few feet will do.
3. Split the cord down the middle into its two halves, to about a foot and a half down the cord.
4. Carefully remove the plastic sheathing around the copper wiring inside, a good couple inches down.
5. Twist the copper wires into a point. From here, you’ve got a few options:
   • Try spiking the copper wires directly into the pickle. This can be a bit tricky if your wires are… flaccid.
   • Wrap the copper wires around the loop end of a metal spike. The spikes they sell for lacing turkeys work pretty well, or you can use a fork, or a nail.
   • I spike the cord into opposite ends of the pickle, but I’ve also seen configurations where the spikes both come into one end of the pickle, and are spaced a bit apart.
6. Make sure your pickle is on a safe surface (i.e., one that won’t conduct electricity) and stand back.
7. Turn out the lights and plug the sucker in.

You caught that bit where I said to not do this, right? Good.

Here’s a truncated version of how & why it works: the electricity is conducted across the pickle by the pickle’s moisture, and the yellow light is emitted when the sodium ions in the pickle become excited. The smoke & charred pickle smell are because you’re electrocuting a pickle, yo!

Penn and Teller’s How to Play with Your Food [Amazon.com]