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Happy New Year!  I know, I know…we suck at posting to this thing.  It’s all good.  We’re so small and there are so few of us that we have a bad habit of forgetting about it.  It’s our collective New Year’s resolution to post more often.  ^_^;;

But in other news, go check out our myspace page!  It’s just recently up and running and looks great.  Friend us!  Click here for our myspace!

We had the absolute pleasure of meeting Japanese rock band QUAFF at Anime USA this year.  We did the best thing we could think of…we gave them the gift of awesome shoes.

This morning, an absolutely amazing blog post about our shoes showed up on their myspace page.  Click here to check it out!! Thanks guys!

And for anyone who hasn’t heard their music, they’re great.  Well worth checking out, well worth buying their cd’s.  And on top of that, they’re just awesome guys and their staff and managers are great people!  ^_^

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So many years ago, I recall hearing a story told by my aunt about how, near Atlanta, there existed this magical place called Babyland General (she was being just a touch sarcastic).  In this wonderful land of make believe, Cabbage Patch Kids (yes, those things from the 80’s) were birthed from the tree of life, given names, and adopted out.  This sounded rather odd when she told it.  My uncle’s comment was that the place was revolting.  Just to set the stage.

So, OF COURSE, I had to see this place in person.  And, lo and behold, not only is the place still in business, it’s flourished!  In fact, it’s done so well, they’re actually building a new hospital because the old one just isn’t big enough anymore.

For anyone who hasn’t caught on yet, Babyland General Hospital is the birthplace, literally, of the original Cabbage Patch Kid.  It’s located in the middle of nowhere in a one story, white clinic (at least, it used to be a clinic back in the olden days).  Mr. Xavier Roberts himself, creator of the creepy things, hand signs the dolls that are birthed at Babyland General from The Magic Crystal Tree.  But I get ahead of myself.

So we arrive at Babyland General.  I’m already giggling fit to burst at the sight of the place, but I’m keeping it together pretty well, so as not to insult the serious patrons (I’m pretty sure we were the only ones who weren’t…serious that is).  When you first step in the door, you wind up in the reception area and are greeted by an ecstatically friendly nurse, sitting behind the desk.  She welcomes you Babyland General and tells you a little bit about the place, then sends you off on your journey.

The first room you step into is the nursery, where you’re surrounded by cribs full of staring children of the corn pressed up against the bars.  At the end of the room were the incubators for the preemies.  It was at this point that I totally lost it.  I got to laughing so hard I couldn’t stop and was actually having problems breathing.  And it was one of those laughs where, no matter what you do, it just gets worse.  I probably sounded like a crazy person…surrounded by cribs and incubators full of slightly deformed looked dolls, tears stream down my face, in hysterics.

I finally quieted down enough to continue our little, self-guided tour.  Across the hall was the Nurses Station, which was also full of ‘Kids, as they call them, and was staffed by none other than the Vlasic Pickle stork (What?  Look at the picture.  Prove me wrong).

Continuing down the hallway, the next room you come to is the classroom.  The teacher, Miss Gardner, is apparently what happens to a ‘Kid after it grows up and becomes an adult.  She looks like she’s been drinking…heavily.  I really can’t blame her if that’s the case.

Leaving the classroom, you’re suddenly greeted with Christmas.  How very random.  Monte Pythin and Holli Berri are banished into the corner, but greet you nevertheless, as you round the corner.

Now, the main attraction is the next room.  This is like the Times Square of Babyland, the ultimate attraction!  For this is the main room, home to The Magic Crystal Tree!  Also home to a toy train set that is surrounded by more ‘Kids. …But mostly The Magic Crystal Tree!

The Magic Crystal Tree, as you can clearly see in the picture (well, maybe not, but it’s there, I swear) has an IV of Imagicillin.  This is because having abnormally large cabbages attached to you that periodically give birth to children is a tough thing, no matter how you look at it.  There are also magical Bunnybees floating around. (I swear I am not making this up…I would hard pressed to make this up).  There are a lot of cabbages sporting disembodied heads attached to The Magic Crystal Tree.

Now, we were lucky enough to actually witness a birth while we were there…of not one, but TWO ‘Kids.  A boy and a girl.  This is apparently a rare occurrence as The Magic Crystal Tree normally gives birth to one child at a time.  I have included the entire 8 minute video, taken on my digicam.  Sorry about the low production values…this was, after all, taken on a Cybershot, with me trying not to keel over laughing, in the midst of a very large, very noisy audience, made up mostly of middle aged women and teenage boys (I know, I know…this confused me as well).

Moving on to the gift shop…this was really nothing more than an ordinary gift shop that sold Cabbage Patch Kids…both the real ones (which, by the way, start at $200) and the Mattel ones (which are what we all grew up with).  The only thing about the gift shop that really caught me were the stuffed animal heads.  That you could buy.  And hang on your wall.  Oh, and the scary airplanes.

Outside of Babyland General is your perfect little photo opportunity to prove that you have actually visited the place and aren’t just making things up.  Everyone who visits gets a free Babyland General nurse’s hat.  Behold!

( PS.  Don’t get me wrong, despite the total weirdness and the absurdity of the entire situation, I actually had way too much fun touring this place.  I think Sarah probably did too…also, her Terror Bear shirt got some awesomely dirty looks from parents. )

So we’re about halfway down the strip when we hear shouting from ahead.  Of course, like any good group of civilians, we rush forward to see what the night’s entertainment is going to be.  We come out in the center of the mall, which, like any mall, was a big open area with kiosks that branched off in several directions.  So directly ahead of us, there’s a fight going on, the likes of which has shut down the jewelry store because the guy on the sore end of things had gotten himself trapped there.  Not by the security guards, but by one of the guys who was involved in the spat.

Now, let me give you a full picture of this.  The one guy is backed into the jewelry store.  The girlfriend is also in the jewelry store…I’m not sure if she was trying to stay out the fight or what.  The anger-enhanced gentlemen is jumping back and forth in front of the jewelry store, cursing and carrying on.  A large crowd has formed to watch, including most of the other mall employees.  So security finally shows up…except that they have no means of stopping the fight.  So they pretty much just stand around and, every once in a while, tell them to settle down.

After about five minutes of anger man jumping around, he decides to take things up a notch.  He pulls off his belt and starts using it as a whip.  Security steps up their “settle down” gesturing.  They go completely ignored as he stalks back and forth, whipping his belt around.  This was made slightly entertaining by the fact that, without his belt on, he was having difficulty keeping his pants up.

This also went on for a few minutes before he decides that the belt just isn’t enough…so he picks up a chair.  I was all like, “Sweet!”  Unfortunately, I didn’t get the professional wrestling-style fight I was hoping for, because he ended up pacing around holding the chair on his shoulder with his left hand, while continuing to whip the belt around with his right.

At this point, things have been going on for like 10-15 minutes.  Notice that the cops haven’t shown up yet.  Unfortunately, the mall was now closing and my aunt dragged us out before things got out of hand.  I was all for staying until the cops showed up…or at least until someone pulled a knife.

And, just after we left, not only did the cops show up…but someone pulled a knife!  And I missed it…damn it all!

The next day, we heard the full story on the news.  The fight started over a foot fetishy sort of comment (I kid you not)…and after we left, the guy pulled a knife and started slashing.  My thanks to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for being kind enough to post such a short, but weird story online.  Check out the link below.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Man Stabbed At Alpharetta Mall