Nothing can kill the Grimace: Tales of a clumsy younger brother

It was probably my fault; I was the one who taught him.

I took pride in the fact that after some initial work from my parents, I was able to teach my younger brother, Josh, how to ride a bike. I thought I'd done a good job, but there were a few things that made me wonder.

Clyde Crashcup strikes

One day, not too long after I taught him, Josh was riding near the house. While pedaling happily along the road, he managed to hit a pebble the size of a bit of gravel; the kind that makes an annoying scraping sound on the ground when it gets stuck in the treads of your sneakers.

This little pebble caused him to twist up his handlebars and flip over them, landing on his chin. Back to the house he went, dripping a little trail of blood. I had to collect his bike.

My mom saw him, and it was off to the emergency room. The doctor sewed him up with a few stitches and he was as good as new. Except for the giant fat lip (which, strangely, has never gone back down) and the divot on his chin, that is.

The Race

One neat thing about our neighborhood was that the streets were separated from most of the real traffic outside the mobile home park. Obviously, people had to drive in to get home, but for the most part, the streets were pretty quiet. This allowed us to ride our bikes around without having to dodge traffic.

My brother, his friend and I were on the other side of the park with our bikes when we got an idea.

"Hey, we should have a race!"

I was all for it; as the oldest, I was the most likely to win.

We lined up our bikes, with me on the outside, Josh's friend David in the middle, and Josh nearest the curb. We'd barely begun when I saw Josh teetering away from us, being drawn to the curb like a moth to a lightbulb. If he didn't aim left, he'd --

Crash.

Since the curbs were the flat kind that taper into the street, Josh went right into a driveway that was occupied by a large pickup truck.

I was a little confused. I heard the crash, I saw the dent in the side of the truck and the bits of plastic from the shattered turn signal light, but Josh's bike was still out in the street.

Josh was trying to get up, and he was holding his head. That's when I figured it out. He'd busted up some guy's truck with his head. Before I could wrap my own head around that, a door opened and a guy walked out. He looked briefly at his truck and then at Josh.

"Hey, are you okay?" He looked to me. "What happened?"

"He ran into the truck with his head."

"His head?"

The guy helped us cart Josh back home. He knocked on our front door. My dad answered.

"This your boy?" the guy asked.

My dad looked down at Josh, who was holding his head and sniffling. The guy didn't even ask my parents to fix the truck as far as I remember. He was just worried that Josh was hurt. I knew he was okay because he'd only hit his head.

My parents didn't think that was funny. Neither did Josh.

For the next decade, Josh seemed to always be tripping or falling over something. Sure, sometimes I'd give him a little help (what are big brothers for, right?), but he seemed to do all right on his own. And boy, was he resilient. It was like having a stuntman for a little brother.

What's up?

We were trick-or-treating one year, and I'd just come down a flight of stairs after getting my candy. Josh was starting his way down when one of his friends saw him.

"Hey Josh, what's up?"

Josh missed a step and tumbled down the stairs.

My first reaction (and I'm not entirely proud, mind you): "Not him."

After a quick stop at home to get all Bactined up, Josh was back on the road ready for more candy. That, I should mention, was the second bad spill he'd taken that day.

See? Unstoppable.

I felt a little bad for laughing so hard at him, you can't see the Grim Reaper take a header down a flight of stairs and not laugh.

Pointing may not have been necessary, though.

There is such thing as a free breakfast*

It's National Pancake Day tomorrow, according to the fine folks at IHOP.

Sez the website: "On February 28, 2006 from 7 AM to 2 PM IHOPs across the country will celebrate National Pancake Day (also known as Shrove Tuesday) by offering our guests a free short stack of pancakes*. This is going to be our biggest one day celebration in our history."

That little * you might have noticed is for this part here: "Limit one free short stack per guest. Valid for dine-in only, no to go orders. Not valid with any other offer, special, coupon, or discount. Valid at participating restaurants only, while supplies last."

So if your IHOP isn't participating (and shame on them if they aren't), don't blame me. I'm just the messenger.

They also suggest that you make a charitable donation, which isn't a bad idea.

I like my pancakes in the shape of a J or a Mickey Mouse head, but for free, plain ol' circles are just fine.

(via Metafilter

Men of many faces

Don Knotts died Friday at the age of 81.

To my parents' generation, he was Barney Fife. To me, he was Barney Fife, Ralph Furley, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, a funny guy in damn near every Disney movie from the 70s (or so it seemed), a guest on Scooby-Doo and The Muppet Show, and, well, you get the idea.

He was everywhere.

And no matter what, he was making me laugh. As a kid, I had the most respect for people who made me laugh. I look forward to sharing Don's body of work with my son, who already has a pretty healthy appreciation for comedy.

---

Darren McGavin, who starred with Don Knotts in "No Deposit, No Return" and "Hot Lead and Cold Feet," died Saturday. He was 83, which surprised me. For some reason, I thought he was a bit younger.

I'd bet it's because 90% of the time I see him on TV, it's as Ralphie's crusty dad in "A Christmas Story."

"Not a finga!"

Brody isn't even 3 yet, but I think he's seen this movie about 12,000 times.

---

Abe Vigoda is still alive. He turned 85 on Friday.

From the "Oh, well that makes much more sense" department:

There's a follow-up to the story about the microwaved manhood I mentioned yesterday.

Turns out that the tidbit in question was fake. Apparently, "a man and a woman had inserted urine into a fake penis that the woman was planning to use to pass a drug test."

The whiz kids needed the microwave -- which has since been thrown away -- to heat the pee up to normal body temperature.

This, I think, illustrates the perils of drug use much more effectively than the episode of "Saved By the Bell" where Jessie gets hooked on caffeine pills ("I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so...scared!").

I mean, honestly, what series of decisions do you have to make before nuking a pee-filled mock member in a microwave seems like a logical thing to do?

"This isn't funny. What am I supposed to eat?"

Oh my.

Quite possibly the most disturbing thing I've read this week (and that's including plans for a new "Friday the 13th").

Apparently, some guy decided to forgo the Hot Pockets and opted to microwave a different kind of snack.

You know, maybe I was paying more attention to the Superfriends than to the news when I was a kid, but I don't think I ever read a story that had both "microwave" and "genitalia" as key words.

The worst part (don't read if you're about to eat): "After the clerk noticed a strange smell coming from the microwave..."

The article also mentions that there was blood found on the floor of the bathroom, which is actually a little more disturbing.

No Bagel Dog for lunch today.

(via Obscure Store)

Lesson learned

Mine might be the last generation of students to have watched educational movies via an actual film projector. The switch to VHS was pretty much final by my junior year in high school. And even my sophomore year, we only saw a few in Drivers Ed.

When I was in elementary school, we had these filmloop cartridges that you plugged in to a small viewer. I only remember watching one about polar bears because the bear took a pretty nasty fall, and being 7, I thought that was pretty hysterical.

But it was one I saw in fifth grade that has always stuck with me. It was shortly after we moved to Tracy, and I don't even remember why we were seeing the movie.

It was to educate us about the perils of vandalism. The only part that I really recall clearly is a scene where two kids decide to hurl a rock (or brick or cinder block) off an overpass. It smashes through some guy's windshield, and we get to see him all cut up and covered in very unconvincing stage blood whining something like "I'm blind! Aaaaaaa!"

Cheesy though it was, I've never chucked a cinder block off an overpass.

I've bought a handful of discs from the Educational Archives series and I've perused the Prelinger and AV Geeks collections at The Internet Archive, but I have yet to find out what this is called.

I'm usually pretty good at finding these kinds of things, but so far, no luck.

A father-and-son moment

A sunny blue day in Tracy, California. Though relatively early in the day, the heat was already building, strengthening the already pungent aroma from the nearby dairies.

My dad was going to show me how to properly fly one of those little balsa wood gliders. Fortunately, on the other side of the mobile home park where we lived, there was a vacant lot. The lot has since become a shopping center complete with a grocery store, eateries and roughly 8 million nail salons.

On the other edge of the lot, there was a chain-link fence and some Dumpster-like containers. But there was plenty of room and enough mounds of dirt for most of the neighborhood kids to play and do a little dirt biking.

I'd tried flying the gliders before without much success. Since I was in the early stages of puberty my already deficient coordination level was now hovering somewhere between wingless albatross and drunken downhill skier.

My dad opened the package with the pair of scissors he always had with him. He worked for the phone company, and as a result, always carried the scissors -- his "snips' -- and a small blade on a little holster attached to his belt.

Any time there was packaging that was reluctant to open or errant tactical warheads that needed defusing, my dad was there to MacGyver it with his snips.

In recent years, probably due in no small part to teasing from my brother and me, he doesn't carry them all the time now.

We assembled the glider in short order. I awaited my aviation lesson.

My dad adjusted his Pacific Bell ball cap to block the sun from his eyes and gripped the glider with his right index finger and thumb. Then he made a few practice swoops to show me the arc I should use to throw it for maximum glide.

"Check this out," he said. He cocked his arm back and let the glider fly. It went up, seeming to float lazily over the vacant lot. It silhouetted against the bright blue sky, arced down and went right over the chain-link fence into a Dumpster, where it landed with a faint thunk.

"Oops," my dad said. "We'll, uh, have to get you another one."

I never got another balsa glider. Instead, we all went to the bookstore, where my anguish over the loss of my plane was alleviated by the stack of comic books my brother and I got.

Up, up and away, indeed.

Thanks for nothing, Mr. Roboto.

After listening to my K-Tel comp yesterday, "Mr. Roboto" is now stuck in my head. Well, that was good thinking, wasn't it?

If you translated the lyrics to Mr. Roboto into Japanese, would "Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto" be "Domo arigato Roboto-san," which messes up the "clever" rhyme?

It's really hard to pick the one thing about the song that really annoys me. I mean, there's the song itself. But then there's the constant use of "modren," as in "I am the modren man."

Plus, it's part of a rock opera.

And like I always (since about a minute ago) say, you can't spell rock opera without c, r, a and p.

Lines of obsessive strangeness converge at one point

The great thing about having roughly a krillion things going through your head at any given time is that you often get to test the laws of probability as a result of obsessing over some morsel from yesteryear.

Lately, I've been wanting to listen to some of the music from my youth. The classic 80s stuff and the early 90s grunge are well-spoken for in my music collection, but there's a gap of a few years -- when I graduated from middle school and started high school.

I tended to buy my music on 45s; I didn't have a CD player (nor did most everyone I knew at that point; they were still new and expensive), and I didn't know enough about the rest of the songs on the albums to justify forking out the dough. So the albums I listened to were from my parents.

So now I'm tracking down records that I ordinarily wouldn't go looking for on my own. One of them was Kenny Loggins' "Back to Avalon." Found that one OK; I asked my parents if they had it on CD and they did. Score!

This leads me to Mr. Mister. You can barely pick up some 80s compilation without getting "Kyrie" or "Broken Wings," but because I like doing things the hard way, I was looking for the album after that -- "...Go On."

I think one of the songs, "Something Real," got some airplay on MTV, but very briefly. Still, I have fond memories of being on a weekend trip in the car, reading a recent week's comic books and listening to that tape on the car stereo.

It seems that the only way to exorcise the song demons from my head is to acquire the songs in question.

But iTunes didn't even have the album. I envisioned having to scour used CD racks to no avail. And then I got smart. Remembering how I got the Kenny Loggins album, I phoned my mom, who had indeed procured the Mr. Mister CD -- via the used CD racks.

I went out to pick up the CD today and meet my mom for lunch so she could see Brody. I arrived a bit early, so I decided to kill time by hitting a thrift store. I like that I can pick up entire albums for a dollar or less. I scored another K-Tel compilation, "Hot Tracks," which features the unforgettable "Mr. Roboto" from Styx.

I pored over the cassette tapes in the same bin and picked up one that was put in backwards so I could see what it was.

Mr. Mister "...Go On."

And this, only days after I found Cherry Pez when I wasn't even looking for it and about a week after I finally found the apple chips I was looking for. Do you think I bought enough?

These are the things I need to remember when it feels like the whole world is out to get me.

Happy Valentine's Day

More fun here and here.

If I could only have one food for the rest of my life? That's easy.

Holy cow!

While at Target today, we strolled down the candy aisle, and I happened to glance at a 10-roll refill pack of Pez. My eyes hit the bottom of the package, where there were two rolls of CHERRY?!?

Clearly I was hallucinating.

But no, there it was, as red as a monkey's behind and, as it turns out, significantly tastier. Cherry Pez. Formerly discontinued. In my hand.

I remembered a pact I had with a friend -- whoever found Cherry Pez first would send some to the other. Before posting this, I checked my e-mail, and as it turns out, we both found it on the same day.

A cool Pez coincidence, don't you think?

That's great, Sparkman, you're probably thinking, but how does it taste?

I don't have a memory of Cherry Pez to compare this to, but what I got today reminds me of two things: Robitussen and scratch-and-sniff stickers.

That sounds kinda bad, but they're good. Underneath the strong cherry flavor, there's that base Pez flavor that you really notice when you eat a whole roll at once.

So there's another thing to check off on my "Man, I wish they'd bring back this cool stuff" list. Still on the list are Nacho Cheese Cheetos and Hostess Pudding Pies. But hope springs eternal...

WonderCon bound

Well, it's off to WonderCon shortly. Expect tales of amazing sights and sounds or bitter observations on pop-culture events.

But how bad can it be when Chewbacca will be there?

I've got a doodle in my noodle

Neat-o!

I found Sketch Swap via Boing Boing the other day and decided to try it out. Here's how it works:

You sketch something with your mouse and submit it. In return, you get a sketch from someone else. It's pretty simple and only takes as long as it takes you to draw something that doesn't suck too much.

In the interest of time, I didn't worry so much about the suck factor. As it is, drawing with a mouse is tricky, especially since I don't have a left-handed mouse.

But here's what I submitted. A jaunty little dinosaur wearing Chuck Taylors.


And in return I got this neat sketch of a cowboy, which I think is pretty cool, especially in light of the "crap!" scrawled next to it.



Instant gratification. W00t!

Worlds of wonder

Wow. Looks like there might be an official tenth planet in our solar system soon. I read that German astrophysicists have said that the melliflously named 2003 UB313 is bigger than our ninth planet, Goofy Pluto.

It's been nicknamed Xena, and its moon has been nicknamed Gabrielle, after characters from "Xena: Warrior Princess."

If it gets the official okey-dokey, it will be given a new name.

In the spirit of giving, here are my top three suggestions:

1. Planet X

This would be a cool nod to history. I remember reading about the hypothetical Planet X in those dusty old science books I used to read over and over in elementary school. But as a name, it doesn't have much panache.

2. Krypton

Xena is cool and all, but if you're going with sci-fi/fantasy, you have to give Krypton its due. Plus it could drum up interest from the general public.

3. Mianus

Uh, maybe not. Never mind. Move along.

I asked my friend Ken for his top three name ideas. Ken's a smart guy, so I figured he'd come up with some good suggestions. Sez Ken: "I'm surprised that they haven't sold the naming rights to the highest bidder like they do for stadiums -- or at least put it on eBay." I asked him if that would make it a "for-biddin' planet." He said he remembered why I was dateless through high school.

1. Fred

Because "I thought it would be cool to have a planet named Fred."

2. Gilligan

Because "they already named an island after him." Plus, there was that cartoon spinoff, "Gilligan's Planet."

3. D'oh!

"...as long as they include the '!' as the official spelling." Of course, if they wanted to be real nerds about it, the official name would be "Annoyed Grunt."

I'm in charge of the stars and I'm here to say

A recent offering over at Tape Findings caught my eye. It's a birthday greeting from Captain Zoom. This particular greeting is personalized for someone named Alex.

My brother got a Captain Zoom record for his birthday when he was little, and for some reason, he was terrified that Captain Zoom was addressing him by name. What we thought would be a fun family experience went something like this:

We put the needle on the record.

"This is Space Command to Zoom. All systems are go for your message to Joshua.

Hey, Joshua, it's your birthday. I'm in charge of the stars, and I'm here to say ---"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Cue hysterical crying from my brother. In his defense, he was quite young and a gigantic wuss.

After its inaugural playing, the record didn't get many more spins on the turntable -- unless my parents were in another room and I wanted to make my brother cry.

Captain Zoom is still working, apparently. And now they'll customize it for any name -- even if it's not on their list. I think you'd have to try pretty hard. It appears that children aren't the only recipients of these greetings.

On the list:

Awsumb
Bucko
Dummy, Stupid, etc.
Donut
Loser, etc.
Schmoepy
Stupid/Stoner/Drunkard/Loser

And my personal favorite:

Chod

Not the spelling I'd use, but still.

I'm not including a link in case my brother reads this. I don't want to make him cry again.

Not till his birthday, anyway.

When number 2 is number 1

The number one movie over the weekend was the remake of "When a Stranger Calls," which I'm assuming is the result of some large-scale triple-dog dare.

To be fair, I didn't see it yet. I didn't think I needed to, seeing as how the ads reveal what traditionally is the biggest plot twist in that familiar story.

For criminy's sake, "Scream" did a riff on the babysitter urban legend before the opening credits. Are there really people who don't know what's going to happen?

I always figure that if you're going to take a familiar story, you dress it up with things that people haven't seen, maybe change it up a little.

Wouldn't it have been neat if the killer was that "Can you hear me now?" guy from Verizon? At least then the audience would be rooting for someone to dispatch him in an interesting way.

While I will entertain the notion that it's not a bad movie, I've read some of the reviews, and they're not pretty. Over at rottentomatoes.com, it's hovering at 13%, which isn't much better than the 7% garnered by "Big Momma's House 2."

When this drops on DVD, I think I'll check it out to see if it's just as bad as everyone says.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a direct-to-video sequel to this thing in which another urban legend that really shouldn't be an entire movie by itself is stretched out to feature length. And if we're real unlucky, we'll be getting a whole series of direct-to-video crapfests thrillers:

Don't Go Near the Microwave

Jill has sworn off babysitting for good; from now on, she's strictly a dog watcher. The Derf family entrusts their expensive purebred poodle into Jill's care. The dog is a maniac; it runs all over the place. She rescues Fido from the koi pond, and while she kept the dog from drowning, she needs to dry him before the family gets home, which will be at any minute. Suddenly, the microwave catches her eye, and she gets an idea. All hell breaks loose.

If You Can't Join 'Em, Lick 'Em

After the Fido fiasco, Jill has been getting death threats from the Derfs. To make her feel more secure at night, she gets a guard dog, Duke, to protect her. Whenever she hears a noise or gets scared at night, she just dangles her arm over the side of her bed, and Duke lets her know he's on the job by licking her hand.

One night she hears a lot of strange noises. Luckily, she's got Duke. After he licks her hand, she's able to sleep the rest of the night. When she wakes up, she finds her dog dead in the bathroom, and there's something written in blood on the mirror: People can lick, too. All hell breaks loose.

Pop Goes the Evil

Jill is on the run from the crazed members of the Derf family, who are still mad at what she did to Fido. To evade them, she holes up in a small convenience store in the middle of nowhere.

She gets the munchies, so she grabs a soda and looks for some candy. She finds some Pop Rocks, which, the clerk informs her, are dangerous. She's heard this one before. She rips open the packet and pours the Pop Rocks in her mouth. When she cracks open her soda and takes a swig, a vengeful demon that had been trapped in the candy is released and takes possession of Jill's body.

All hell breaks loose.

Dumb things I've done (5 in an occasional series)

Freshman year German class...

It was time for a gingerbread house competition, and my friend Ken and I decided to enter. Neither of us (as far as I remember) had any experience building a gingerbread house, but it didn't look that hard.

In fact, it looked too easy. I mean, jeez, anyone could build a gingerbread house. We had to come up with something different.

Before I tell you what we picked to make a gingerbread replica of, I should point out that both of us are married.

Not to each other.

In the infinite wisdom that only dorky 14-year-olds can muster, we decided that the way to win the competition was not to build a house, but a replica of everyone's favorite starship, the USS Enterprise.

Well, it had the virtue of never having been tried before.

We employed our mad engineering skillz and figured out the dimensions of all the pieces we needed and mixed up our sugary mortar.

But despite our forethought (at least 3 or 4 minutes), it wasn't until we were well into the assembly phase that we found our problem.

Here's our model. Pay special attention to the warp nacelles (those funky tube things in the back).


Okay, well, in space, that works great. Or if you are working with a substance that is strong enough to support its own weight.

Unlike, say, gingerbread.

Our nacelles -- made of giants candy cane sticks -- refused to stay put no matter how much glue we used. They'd just flop over like wilting flowers.

Well, that just wouldn't work.

After a few minutes, we went from "What would Scotty do?" to "What would Willy Wonka do?" to "Oh, crap, it's due tomorrow."

We propped up the nacelles with smaller candy cane pillars. A little inelegant, yes, but those things stayed up.

Did I mention we had to frost the whole thing, too?

We put the hull registry (NCC-1701-A) on the saucer section with little licorice bits.

Once it was done, it looked pretty sweet.

So to speak.

Project Babe Magnet was finally finished and ready to be gawked at by our impressed classmates.

Alas, we didn't get first prize. That went to someone who had -- unoriginally -- made an actual gingerbread house.

Feh.

We got third place, which was still cool. We each got a Toblerone for our troubles, so it wasn't a total loss.

Hey, free Toblerone, right?

Of course, mine had nuts in it (I hate nuts).

Our edible Enterprise also made it into the yearbook. Ken scanned this in for me. That's ours on the left. The thing cropped out so you can get a better view of the regular gingerbread house.


Oh well. At least the girls thought we were cool after that.

Oh, wait...

A genealogy question

I was sad to read of Al "Grandpa" Lewis' passing the other day. But then I noticed that in some articles, he's referred to as Grandpa Munster.

I haven't seen an episode of the Munsters in a long time, but wasn't Grandpa supposed to be Dracula? Lily Munster's maiden name was Dracula, and I assumed that Grandpa was her dad (or even grandfather, I suppose).

So why would he be Grandpa Munster? He's not related to Herman.

Just the other day I was watching one of his videos, "Grandpa's Sci-Fi Hits," which was a collection of sci-fi movie trailers punctuated with shtick from Grandpa. As always, Lewis is fun to watch, despite the painfully low budget.

Rest in peace, Grandpa.

'The best Burtless movie ever made'

Curiosity has not only killed the cat, but a number of my brain cells.

Seriously, some things sound so bizarre and/or awful that I can't just trust the observations of others -- I have to see it for myself.

That's why my movie library includes things like "Blood Freak," "Microwave Massacre" and "Pieces."

Today my curiosity is piqued by "Smokey and the Bandit 3."

I have no distinct memory of the movie, though I know I've seen it. Burt Reynolds shows up in a cameo at the end.

But what's really got me is that the movie was supposed to be "Smokey is the Bandit," with Jackie Gleason playing both roles.

Huh?

From what I've learned, it tested poorly -- people were confused about the dual role. I'm sure it was confusing to watch, but can't you glean the basic premise from the title? Smokey IS the Bandit. Not a lot of guesswork, is there? I bet these were the people who talk to the characters on the screen.

Not having seen the original cut, I'm just curious about the explanation for it. Why is Smokey the Bandit?

Aside from "Well, the first two made lots of money, so let's make a third," I mean.

Thus far, SitB remains unreleased, though there has been some interest from fans for it to be included as a DVD extra in a future release. But given that you can pick up all three on one dual-sided DVD for $14, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Nonetheless, it's on my list of must-see oddities. I'm actually surprised they haven't tried to relaunch the franchise recently.

But who would play the Bandit?



Or if they decide to try "Smokey is the Bandit" again, there's always this guy...

How do you like them apples?

Sometimes the simple things end up the most complicated. Case in point: Many moons ago on a trip to Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton, Jen and I stopped at a store that among other things, sold packages of dried apples.

Unlike the apple chips you tend to get in the produce sections in grocery stores, these were irregular chunks of dried apple. On a whim, I bought them, and they were really good.

Most people who know me are surprised when I say that fruit is my favorite snack food, but it's true. I went through the sizable bag by the end of that afternoon.

We didn't have a chance to get back out there for a while, and when we did, the store -- and my coveted apples -- was gone.

Thus began my quest.

In the ensuing years, I think I tried just about every variety of dried apples I could find -- apple chips (too thin and kinda burned), soft dried apples (good, but they look eerily like dried ears) and little shards of dried apple I'd get in cereal.

But not until the other day did I find a suitable replacement. And for only 69 cents.

Score!

They're apple chips made by Mariani, the company that also makes really good soft dried apples (even though they look like ears). The key, according to the back of the bag, is that they are air-dried rather than fried.

I polished off the bag (minus a small amount I saved for today's lunch) in one sitting. Now I have to hit the store to stock up, just in case they find out I like them and stop making them.

EDIT: I went back to the store two days later, and they were gone! Clearly a conspiracy is afoot!