Maybe it’s just my neighborhood, but I’m seeing less of those god-awful gigantic nightmare-fuel inflatable Christmas decorations on people’s lawns this year. Last year, we had one dude up the street that had an inflatable snowglobe with Frosty the Snowman inside it. It was hooked up to a blower that made fake snow fly around inside it. Every time my brother-in-law saw it, he darkly muttered something about a BB gun. I also saw a lot of inflatable giant Santa Clauses and one really exceptionally awesome house two streets over from us had a full inflatable Nativity scene. Boy howdy, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen inflatable Mary patting inflatable baby Jesus with her backlit, wobbling, rubbery hand.
My point being, none of those people have inflatable crap in their yards this year. I’m wondering if the fad is passing, or whether they were all BB-gunned out of commission last year, or what. Any anecdotal evidence?
One yard on the way to town has Santa on the motorcycle, Santa driving a car (there’s a light inside to make the headlights shine and elves or penguins in the back) and a lit from the inside igloo with penguins frolicking on it.
I’d like to sneak a mannequin under the wheels of Santa’s ride.
Maybe shoot the penguins with a .410.
Every other house on my block either has an giant inflatable, a giant singing inflatable or a herd of lit up re-animated reindeer skeletons. The next door neighbor has a house high inflatable of Sponge Bob with a Santa hat. The one next to that has a pair of dueling musical inflatable snow globes.
Ah, but our potential for mayhem increases if we can gain control of the audio.
Say, Kol Haneshama Hebrew satellite radio.
Of course, if you could get the other one to do something in Arabic…
A friend of mine’s son is fascinated by inflatable yard decorations. They have a collection of them for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Og knows what else. I’ll be staying with them over the Christmas holidays, so I’ll get to see the latest additions. Last year they had a snowman and a Santa that went up and down a chimney, and I’m pretty sure he was telling me they’d bought another recently.
A house down the street from me is absolutely devoted to these things - I’m not sure there’s any time of the year when they are entirely absent. Presumably they have thousands invested (what do the stupid things cost?).
Inflatables spotted this week (in addation to ones already mentioned upthread):
Santa in a Nascar with elves as the pit crew
Santa bass fishing
Santa in shorts with a margarita under a palm tree
One neighbor has the huge house-high Santa that keeps deflating, but they faithfully keep pumping it back up.
Two Motorcycle Santas this morning. One of them has a sidecar. I couldn’t see what was in it in the twilight; something large and black. Either a huge penguin with waving wings or Death with his scythe. I rather like the latter; sort of evens out the Holiday Spirit.
What’s funny is when people don’t keep them properly inflated and they start looking droopy and depressed, or completely deflated, lying on the ground, dead. Yes, kids, Santa is DEAD. Bwahahahahaha! The other day I saw a partially deflated giant snowman; his head was drooping forward and down so far that it looked like he was performing an unspeakable act on himself. Merry Christmas, indeed.
My brother-in-law has a whole Nascar set-up this year with three Santa clones racing in stock cars from Lowe’s, Home Depot and Menard’s. With an elfin pit crew assisting. :rolleyes:
Tacky as I may think it is (and I do think it is), a much bigger “fuck you” to the shit who thought s/he needed to express his or her views by throwing a slab of ice at their old inflatable snowglobe. Nothing says “Holiday spirit” like vandalism, asshole.
My brother has two of the Homer Santas. He puts them up on Christmas day and takes them down the day after Christmas. He claims this puts the Christ back in Christmas because when people see them they say “Jesus F**king Christ!”.