Teeny Manolo

I know, it’s only September.  But hey, all the stores have their Halloween stuff out, so I consider the holiday to be fair game.

Besides, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so it doesn’t take much for me to get into the, uh, spirit.  So sorry, couldn’t resist.

But as with all “scary” movies, buy with caution and forethought into how your little viewer will be likely to handle it.

The Nightmare Before Christmas This movie is really two movies in one, because not only does it work for Halloween, it works equally well for Christmas. I’m all about the value, you know. This is a new re-release, and you’d better snap it up quick, because once they are gone, it’s unlikely Disney will do another for a while. Take it from the woman who lost her DVD oh, eight years ago and wasn’t able to buy another until this month.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown Can this 1981 gem be any more classic? Can Linus be any cuter? And Lucy any more endearing than when she collects her brother from the pumpkin patch to put him into bed? Can Glinda just be done with the questions?

Casper Debate abounds about this movie, actually. Some people think it is horrible, while others see it as light and fluffy bit of entertainment. There are no Oscar noms here, but the kids will probably really like it.

Clifford’s Big Halloween Clifford is just one of those enduring, endearing creations that will be loved until the end of time. Trust me, you can never go wrong with Clifford.

Mickey’s House of Villains Not a movie but a collection of animated shorts held together by an admittedly thin plot device. It is a mixture of old and new shorts, along with a sing-a-long by all the Disney villains.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks Who doesn’t love Angela Lansbury in a live-action/animated movie about a magic bed? The young Ms. Lansbury plays an apprentice witch who goes on adventures with three adventurous orphans. This is old-skool Disney, and what’s not to like?

Something Wicked This Way Comes The scariest, thematically of all the movies on this list. And it technically isn’t really about Halloween. But, this movie adapted from an excellent Ray Bradbury short story will leave you with tingles.

Corpse Bride All right, another movie not truly about Halloween. But with the underworld, ghosts and ghouls, it is sure to get you into a Halloween frame of mind. Victor Van Dort is already engaged, but somehow finds himself accidentally married to the Corpse Bride. Which bride will he pick, the one that’s alive, or the one that’s dead?

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad This DVD has both a version of Wind in the Willows (one of my favorite in children’s literature) and Sleepy Hollow. Both are definitely worth owning, and the vision of the Headless Horseman is enough to send almost everyone in the family hiding under the table.

It’s the 21st Century, my friends, and we are ALL jaded, including the kidlets. Oh, they may not hang around streetcorners wearing berets and quoting Camus (except behind your back) but they, too, affect poses of ennui and world-weariness.

Which is particularly amusing when they are four, but don’t tell them. You know how they sulk!

So they turn to the Dark Side. And not just Darth Tater.

Emily Strange had her day.

Bad Batz Maru is my personal favorite (”Don’t mess with me: it’s a BAD FEATHER DAY!”).

But no flash in the pan shines as brightly, nor burns out as fast, as a jaded hipster trend and it is my solemn duty to report that all of those are, like, SO TWENTIETH CENTURY.

These days we’re all about the Ice Bat Ugly Doll.

Now that Ms. Spears is back, slimmed, extended, tanned, rested and ready, the tabloids are begging to know her diet secrets (what, “chainsmoking, three hours of daily rehearsals, and not eating” doesn’t work for them?). We here at TeenyManolo have sussed out the situation, made contact with not a few shady characters (are there any else in her life?) and discovered the secret.

Here, at last, via Meg Tucker, is the long-rumoured recipe for Britney Spears’s Cheeto Chicken Casserole!

Britney’s Cheetos Chicken Casserole

Ingredients:

4 to 6 chicken breasts cooked and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 can of cream of chicken soup
4 hard oiled eggs
1 onion diced
1/4 c. mayonnaise
1/4 to 1/2 c. chopped celery
1 bag of Crushed Cheetos for topping

Directions:

1) Mix above ingredients together and put into casserole dish
2) Crush enough Cheetos to cover top
3) Bake in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Or just adapt a page from the great Samuel Johnson, who explained that “A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.”

Oh, I should have expected this. So many stars, even those who are well-behaved at home, go a bit crazy once they get overseas. And we have heard ALL about Elmo!

Have you and your kids got your $250 tickets to celebrate Miley Cyrus’s Sweet Sixteen at Disneyland on October 5th (Miley Cyrus born Destiny Hope Cyrus on November 23rd)? Disney’s taking no chances on party guests being thin on the ground; they’ve piggybacked events in a way which would make even Porky blush:

Miley Cyrus is celebrating her Sweet Sixteen at Gay Days at Disneyland.

The 11th annual Gay Days event, which attracted 30,000 gays and lesbians to the park last year, actually takes place October 3-5. Gay Days describes itself as a “mix-in with straight parkgoers,” where the LGBT crowd wears red shirts.

Dress accordingly.

via Defamer

Look, I know it’s Fall. I can see my breath already, and I even brushed my teeth! And unfortunately, Zeus and his little … Zeusettes? have also noticed the change in the seasons and have begun causing a bizarre, yet pervasive phenomenon whereby water droplets condense in the mid- to upper atmosphere over a wide range, precipitating along a course dictated by gravity towards the center of the Earth, only to be stopped upon the surface, where they congregate in forms known as “puddles.”

Yeah, but what are you gonna do about it? Well, if you’re at all like my mother, who was wont to spiel forth with the words “go outside and play” in weather that would keep a polar bear indoors, you shove your kid’s feet into breadbags (in case of soaker) shove the plastic-wrapped for freshness feet into rubber boots, wrassle the kidlet into a raincoast, preferably the kind with the very satisfying snaps like a real New Englander’s, stick a floppy plastic hat the size of Prince Edward Island on her head, and shove her out the door with a cheery, “Be back at six!”

Then you pour some vino and go watch your stories for a few blissful hours while the neighborhood children solemnly play Noah’s Ark yet again with their sodden teddybears and long-suffering Maltipoos.

Oh, it’s a Philip Larkin tale for sure!

But since the sun may not come out tomorrow or, where I live, until next June, we might as well do what we can to brighten the miserable, leaden gloom. Otherwise our children will all grow up to be Goths, right?

Nobody wants that, my friends.

So, to stave off a precocious fondness for Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and black nailpolish, we present the unmistakably brilliant Children’s Color Wheel Umbrella from MOMA Online:

You could even get a full-sized one for yourself, should you feel a nostalgic appreciation for The Cure coming on.

The Munchkin’s teacher has handed out a sheet which outlines an activity to do with your child every day of the week.  We are to pick two of the activities per week, and mark down which ones we have done.

We had already done the ”if you had a magic pencil box, what would be in it” question, which led to some entertaining flights of fancy.  These things are meant to be bonding activities which encourage you to discuss things with your child and do things that might normally be a bit out of your comfort zone.

So tonight I thought I would have him complete this sentence: “If I could learn one thing this year, it would be…”

Could he want to learn about quantum physics?  How to dissect a frog?  How to build a robot?  There are so many things my bright boy would want to discover, and I was smiling in anticipatory glee.

The Munchkin paused for a mere second and replied with all the earnestness a five year old can muster, “How to not have to go to school anymore.”

Sigh.

It’s going to be a long decade or so, isn’t it?

Family.com, a Disney site, is sponsoring a contest in which you can actually win a prize for being badly dressed!  Well, when you were a kid, anyway.  Or maybe you can cash in on badly dressing your own child.

I’m thinking back to my own childhood, and for a while, my mother was dressing my sister and me like twins. Uh, except we were almost six years apart. I remember one year we were particularly resplendent in matching red Christmas outfits of scratchy polyester with peter pan collars and white rickrack trim. Good times, good times…

Photos Courtesy of Family.com

from TheSun

moar too come soon. iz in tyme out.