Valentine's Day 2019

Picked these up a few days prior...

The new ladybug and the Happy Heart crystal Pez...

New Easter Pez

Happy Easter...

for those that celebrate...On my mantel are the Easter themed Pez...

Valentine's 2018

Why yes...

it's a new one!

Christmas Pez 2017 + Christmas Kliks

After Thanksgiving..

the tree went up and along with that...

Halloween 2017

Man, where are all the kids at?

I want to get rid of all this shit tonight, ha ha...

Valentine's 2017

The windows of Beef 'n Bun change with the holidays thanks to Dano!

(photo courtesy of cathy of mmm-yoso, 2.14.17)

Next month, there should be some shamrocks and a leprechaun (a good one, not an evil one)...

But first, Valentine's Day..

The changing of the Pez - November 2016

October has come and gone...

So long to these characters!

It was time to take these down and choose the next batch for November...

(unceremoniously dumped on my kitchen table)

And yes those are pasta storage containers and old Belgian chocolate tins that I use for my Pez...

Getting ready for Halloween

We bought our candy late this year. Bert picked up some bags of the cheapy candy. Well, you know, the non-chocolate kind. Nerds, Laffy Taffy, SweetTarts, gum, lollipops and such.

We have a bag of the "goodstuff" too but that's for us in case we run out...

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter (for those readers who celebrate it!)!

Last night TC painted the hardboiled eggs...

We're not into the fancy egg decorating stuff here. None of this Martha Stewart decoupage or layered effects. I mean, those are great and all, but really, who has time for that?

No sirree Bob. It was the $1.99 Paas decorating kit that won out. TC liked the "roller sponge thing".

We liked the tie dye effect. The stripes also bled into each other which looked kind of cool.

We stored the eggs overnight in the original egg carton.

Even though TC is 10 and 1/2 we still had an Easter egg hunt (plastic eggs). Bert got really creative with hiding them within the house plants, on our wall sconces, and in our furniture. I hid some in containers like the coffee maker, a tupperware and in the fruit bowl. Of course she found them all.

The eggs were filled with coins (dimes, nickels and a few quarters) with a few containing dollar bills, along with candy filled eggs (double flavor Starburst jelly beans and  Peanut M&M's).

The baskets were simple too. Just one small box of Peeps (yellow and purple) and one package of Nerd Ropes which is Nerd-covered licorice.

We found a few "mutant" m&m's and put those in the eggs as well, which she enjoyed!

Ha ha, mutants!  There were about four of them. There were even a few mutant jellybeans. We accept you, one of us!

SF Road Trip - Day 4 - Pez Museum & Cal

Woo hoo! We're off to the Pez Museum in Burlingame, which is a few miles south of San Francisco (past the airport). We'd been here before when TC was 3, during our last visit to the Bay Area. I saw this featured on one of those travel shows and also on the food channel. Pop Culture aficionados that we are, this place was definitely going to be a "must see" stop. It's not like a huge museum where you could spend hours. No, this was a small store front owned and operated by a guy named Gary Doss. We were lucky enough to score a parking spot (metered) right in front!

Gary was kind enough to give us a "tour" of the 2 main rooms of the museum. And I kid you not, no sooner were we inside five minutes into his spiel about classic toys, a shitload of people came in. At least 8, mostly couples, some with their kids. I should also add that Gary will ask if you a "collector". Of course, I said, "Yes" (but what I really wanted to say was, "Are you fkg kidding me? Hell to the yes!). A collector in his eyes has at least three or more Pez. Well, shit, I have collections by theme! The Simpsons, Star Wars, Christmas, Halloweeen, Easter, Glow in the Dark shit, Valentines, and some other random stuff... For a peek into what we saw, check out this video here! It's so cool!

Admission is $3.00 for adults/$1.00 for kids and it's worth every damn penny! The overwhelming onslaught of being surrounded by so many PEZ dispensers, including the World's Largest (Guinness Book of World Records, 2007) is overwhelming! The original flavor of the Pez candies used to be Peppermint; the German word for 'peppermint' is 'pfefferminz', from which the moniker Pez is derived. God, I live for shit like this. Trivia alert people!
Since our last visit, the museum was expanded to include "Classic Toys" - those brought back a lot of fond memories. What I really loved about this place was that you can tell a lot of care went into the exhibits and the guy running the place, Gary, he really knows his stuff. Enthusiasm just oozes from his every pore whenever he waxes poetic about the wonders of the various types of Pez dispensers and classic toys. In this case, he had several display cases filled with toys that recently turned the big '5-Oh'! Below is the Easy Bake Oven! This was a toy I never got but always wanted as a kid! TC ended up getting one as a gift from Lotus and Missy several years ago. Hmmm, I guess when you're a kid, eating a chalky "cake" cooked by a low watt bulb sounds delicious and exciting but in reality, tastes like crap!
Another toy that turned 50 was the View Master! Now this, we had! The cool thing about the View Master is that the cartridges are always the same size, even though the viewer part changed over the years, the circular cartridges remained the same. This means, if you still have a working View Master and find some old cartridges , they will fit! I just realized, this is not a photo of a View Master, but a Colorform box of "Julia" which was a TV series about an African American nurse, one of the first shows to depict women of color in a positive and therfore, nonstereotypical light. I had Colorforms when I was a kid, but they were of "Holly Hobbie", a pioner girl who was always seen in profile wearing a big fkg bonnet. You never saw Holly Hobbie's face! Except, if you click on the link I provided, you can see her face because that is the newfangled Holly Hobbie.
Here are some vintage Coloforms boxes - these were so awesome!
More View Masters:

Gary also sells dispenser holders where you can display your collection proudly in your home. I was seriously thinking of getting the plexiglass one (not this one, everything's exposed!) but decided against it. I usually rotate my collection display throughout the year anyways and never like having them out all at once... More vintage Pez...You can see the Warner Bros cartoon characters as well as Disney...Then you have that damn Garfield in the bottom left...
Johnny Depp immortalized as a Pez dispenser! He's actually hard to find...
More Pez...most of the stuff on this wall was going for $1.99 but there were some Pez going for $3.00 (harder to find ones like "Chococat" from Sanrio and Mulan from Disney) and some going for $8 or even $20 or more!
Now, Bert is not a midget, but he sure looks like one next to Gary! This guy was huge! He's got to be over 6'6"! But hey, he is a really cool guy and he will answer any questions you have about any of the displays of Pez or toys. He was even on an episode of "Tell Tell the Truth" and had the documentation framed on his wall! How cool is that!
And the piece de resistance - the World's Largest Pez Dispenser! I have the small version of this - it's the Christmas Snowman!
Sadly, while looking up links for this post, I found that shortly after our trip (the article was dated July 1, 2009), the Pez Museum was being sued by Pez itself because the company considered that huge Pez dispenser"unauthorized". They also wanted him to stop selling "Got Pez?" t-shirts! WTF! Here's a link to one of the articles hereNow that we were through with our pop culture foray into the world of candy dispensers, we headed over the Bay Bridge to Berkeley. We were thinking of going to Emeryville to eat, but decided to just go straight to Berkeley to see a few of our fave places and have lunch. We used to visit Thane almost every year when he was still a grad student; we have many fond memories of the Berkeley area. On another note, I thought this was kind of funny...
Out of the what?
I kind of wished we ate here instead...One of my co-workers had recommended eating at Nations, which is a Bay Area chain known for their huge hamburgers. See the Yelp reviews of this location here.
After driving around trying to find this parking garage, we finally found it and headed straight over to Comic Relief, a comic store on University. See Yelp reviews here (the address is old because it's listed on Shattuck; it's not on University). What I like about this place is that they're very chill here. Some comic places are really uptight and they don't want you leafing through the books/comics/whatever until you plan to buy. Not here (unless they've changed)...they are quite cool. In the past, I bought some of my Optic Nerve)comics here (the rest I got at the Comic Conand had them signed by the author himself, Adrian Tomine, who used to live in Berkeley).
It's pretty big here - reminds me of Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland...
We just looked around with nothing in mind to get in particular.
Cool poster - looks like it was drawn by Daniel Clowes(artist known for "Ghost World", "Pussey!", and one of my faves, "Eightball)") who also used to live in Berkeley, unless he still does.
Across the street and down some was this place...where we ended up having our lunch. Bad mistake. Viceroy - ugh.
This was the crappiest decision we made this whole trip. The food here was subpar even though the servers were super nice. Most Indian buffets we've been to have had a wide selection of food. This one was kind of sparse and it wasn't that great. And, WTF, they didn't even have samosas! I know, like that should be required, but most places do...I won't even bother posting my shitty pictures of the shitty food, but here is Bert's beer for your vicarious drinking pleasure...
We went to Eastwind Books before walking over to the Cal campus. See the Yelp reviews here. This is an Asian American bookstore with two locations in the Bay Area - one in San Francisco and one here in Berkeley on University. I remember the last time I was here stocking up on titles I hadn't seen before (I collect books about Filipino American history, literature and poetry), the clerk asked if I was a "Professor" (hey, that's a slight step up from being asked if I was a 'DJ' or a 'dancer').
I found a few titles here, like a children's book, "Cora Cooks Pancit". It's important for me to have books that reflect our culture since it's hardly ever celebrated or seen in mainstream bookstores like Whorders, I mean, Borders, or Barnes & Noble.
I also picked up a few Maganda's (2002, 2003, 2006 issues), which is the student magazine from UC Berkeley, which shall heretofore be referred to as 'Cal',
You can see this famous Cal landmark, Sather Tower, aka "The Campanile" across the Bay. The Bell and clock tower is quite recognizable.
TC and I in front of Sather Gate near Sproul Plaza...That is the Cal mascot - the Golden Bear in front of Zellerbach Hall. The building to the left had all of the student organizations.
This building houses the bookstore at CAL.

Here's Rasputin's (hold up your right hand palm out now!) off Telegraph in the Cal area...More on Rasputin's here and here. There's also Amoeba Records but we didn't go there that time. We were trying to get back before the afternoon rush, but ended up getting stuck in it anyways. I used to love going into vinyl record shops and browsing around. We still have a record player but hardly ever use it. We should, though. I still have my favorite LP's lying around.

Artwork on the side of the Berkeley Public Library...

Liked the cool font from this sign...

This shop was on Shattuck... John's Ice Cream

TC's ice cream from that $1 scoop place. I think this was some sort of rainbow sherbet. Remember Thrifty's ice cream? Now Thrifty's is known as "Rite Aid". Not the same. Shakes head. I wonder how much their scoops are going for now? Back in elementary school, a quarter would set you back 3 scoops! That's right, 3! I also liked the shape of Thrifty's scoops because they were cylindrical and the scoops were easy to stack atop each other instead of rounded scoops which ended up sliding off.

Before heading back,we stopped by the Shattuck location of Andronico's, which is an upscale market, kind of like Whole Food's. This Andronico's is in the "Gourmet Ghetto" or the northern end of Shattuck which spawned birthplace of California Cuisine, courtesy of Alice Waters ultra expensive Chez Panisse Restaurant. Back to Andronico's....I remember when I was still pregnant in early 2000, I pleaded with Bert to buy and eat the Jelly Belly jelly beans here. He was so concerned because he felt it was too sugary for me and that I wasn't getting enough "healthy" food to eat. At the time, I couldn't stomach the smell of a lot of food, but I craved candy! A lot! Jelly Bellies and Skittles were my favorites. I ended up eating a lot of Wheat Thins and PB &J sandwiches during that trip. Anyhow, we bought a few snacks and supplies for dinner that night since I was going to make pasta.
Tomorrow, the Randall Museum and Sinugba in Daly City...