Browse by Tags

• Reporter Seeks Bad Theme-Birthday Stories

  Surely you've been to a party (or thrown one of your own) that seemed like a good idea in theory and wound up being kind of god-awful. Frightening clowns, anyone? A reporter lady is looking for your story. This is what she says: I am a newspaper reporter and am working on a story related to parents' arranging for costumed characters and impersonators (think Dora, SpongeBob, Spiderman, Hannah Montana) to entertain at their kids' birthday parties. Specifically, I'm hoping to chat with parents who (in the last year-to- 18 months) had a hard time finding the desired character and/or were disappointed by what Dora (etc.) looked like when she arrived. Please contact me at katierosman@mac.com. Thanks so much! image courtesy of PBS  Posted Jun 26 2008, 05:07 PM by editors with | with no comments Filed under: birthday parties, Dora, hannah montana, clowns, SpongeBob, reporter

• McDonalds Wants to Sell Your Kids Hamburgers and Sex

  You don’t need me to tell you McDonald’s is marketing to your kids.  They want to snag your juniors early and mold them into lifetime users.  In America, McDonald’s ropes tikes in with Playlands, toys in meals and easy going clown/nightmare fodder Ronald McDonald.  Japanese McDonald’s, however, know what your kids really want: sex. Jump ahead to watch the sexiest Ronald McDonald you will ever see. Read More... Posted Feb 22 2008, 11:49 AM by Cole Gamble with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: mcdonald's, Sex, Japan, advertisements, clowns, hamburger

• Enraged Clowns Around the World Sound Off on Kids

  Clowns around the world plan to converge on Washington DC and stage a unicycle-powered protest challenging the recent study that erroneously claims that kids share a universal hatred of the colorful face-painted silly circus characters. The clowns plan to begin their march immediately and hope to reach Washington by spring. "Kids love us!" shouted Cuddles the Clown, brandishing a honking bicycle horn and balancing a bucket of confetti menacingly on one fingertip.   Read More... Posted Jan 18 2008, 06:26 PM by Karen Murphy with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: clowning, clowns, clown discrimination

• In Defense of Clowns

  Clowns. Ugh. I sort of shudder to even write that word. Scary. Wrong. Weird. Twisted. More than once I've had to escort one child or another far from the vicinity of a clown encountered at a fair or festival. There's something about the makeup, the hair, the...clownishness, that freaks kids out and makes their parents uncomfortable. Take this list, for example, and you pretty much get the horror that we think of as clowns. I hate them too. But interestingly, clowns as we think of them are far removed from clownING. Which is a whole different thing, really, and is something kids do naturally. Let me explain:   Read More... Posted Dec 01 2007, 12:35 PM by Karen Murphy with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: parenting, scary, clowning, clowns