Missing: one Arby's oven mitt

It wasn't too long ago that you couldn't flip through your 74 channels of rap on the TV box and not see an Arby's commercial featuring the Arby's oven mitt. The series of commercials felt like total overkill and I started to wonder how long this could last. I imagined in my mind a world of Arby's oven mitt marketing. A near endless string of ads featuring the Arby's oven mitt meeting a female mitt. The two going on a date, sharing an order of potato cakes. Mr. and Mrs. Arby's oven mitt eventually getting married in a ceremony presided over by a weepy Arby's manager who is overcome with joy to see such a perfect union take place in his very own Arby's lobby.



I even imagined that the commercials, in online-only form, could take a more adult but still humorous twist. Picture Mr. & Mrs. Mitt getting all hot and heavy in the Arby's storage room. Madly oven mitt humping each other with sweat running down their brows. Mr. Oven Mitt forgetting, in the heat of the moment, to use any sort of protection (I envisioned a rubber glove) and four months later (oven mitts have a shorter gestational period) a commercial shot on some stainless steel surface in the Arby's kitchen where a screaming Mrs. Arby's oven mitt pushes as the original star, Mr. Mitt, encourages his pregnant oven mitt wife to push out their baby. Cut to the tired but happy couple holding their new bundle of joy - a crying, tiny oven mitt is born and the circle of Arby's oven mitt life continues.

But no, none of this glorious story happened. Instead, we got the entire series of ads featuring the rather phallic foam Arby's outline hat. Oh, I get it, everyone's thinking Arby's and doing that gives them all huge erections. It's a fucking genius play on words and imagery. But what about our forgotten friend - the Arby's oven mitt? What has become of our forgotten little man?

I picture the single, unemployed Arby's oven mitt living under a freeway underpass in a large metropolitan area. He's struggled to find other commercial work but being an oven mitt who talks and has only done commercial endorsements for one national fast food chain leaves you as sort of a one-trick pony. So our oven mitt friend scrapes up a few pennies here and there begging for change. He's scruffy and unbathed. He wreaks of alcohol because it's the only way he knows to numb the pain. He's even resorted to performing sexual favors but that only leaves him feeling even dirtier and in need of blocking out the horrific things he's done in his darkest hours.

All this because some huge, multi-national corporation thought that the Arby's oven mitt's story was done and they could just move on and he'd be soon forgotten. Well, I haven't forgotten and neither has he. Let's never forget the Arby's oven mitt and if anyone at Arby's is reading this, I have plenty of amazing ideas that could bring this commercial icon back.

If this whole ode to the oven mitt made you sick, MinnPics redeems things. Check out what happened over the weekend and other rare gems.

How NOT to spend your weekend

I got stuck in a slide. No, not one of those shitty new-fangled plastic models with curves and bumps on it, this was an old-school burn-your-legs-in-the-hot-summer-sun metal slide. Straight as an arrow. The only problem was that I didn't really examine its width before chasing the oldest nephew down it. Now before you throw your head into overdrive and assume that I am a fatty (of sorts) let me preemptively defend myself and remind you that my waist is a slim and trim 33 inches and is very well proportioned to my 6-foot 1-inch tall frame. It's just that the slide wasn't designed for 30 year-olds.

And I think that this is a problem. Why should it be that a 30 year-old guy can't have a bit of fun on a slide? Why should that level of fun be left to four year-old kids who have so little focus that a swing bores the crap out of them even after my simple instuctions. Maybe it's time to develop an adult playground. No, not that type of adult playground but one with swings (no, not those swings), teeter-totters, those spinny merry-go-round things, the animals on ultra-sturdy springs and slides built for an adult-sized waistline. It's truly what America needs right now.

And America also needs grea tphotography. That's where MinnPics comes in. It's a showcase for great photography with hand-picked photos from across Minnesota.

It's a tennis court - for zombies

Nearly every day myself and the rest of the office drones in my department use on of our 15 minutes breaks. It builds employee morale when it seems, at times, that each day could be our last and it gives us a chance to get somewhat in shape. It gets tough sitting in a chair straining to be creative for 7.5 hours a day, 4.75 days each week.

I had seen the rectangular, fenced-in area since day one. It sits behind some rather non-descript townhomes alongside a drainage channel where the recreational trail is. The chainlink fence seems out of place to begin with and it made me wonder. What exactly is this area meant for?

I immediately recognized its proportions as that of a tennis court then, as the gerbil got back on the wheel, I put two and two together. Chainlink fence plus a tennis court-sized area obviously equals zombie tennis. It's a logical way to both keep the brain-hungry zombies contained and entertained because even zombies get bored.

I could immediately picture the arguments between zombie players and the zombie line judge. Zombie tennis full of mishaps including, but not limited to, arms still attached to the racket hurdling end over end because zombies are always losing limbs; zombie tennis players viciously biting other players and the zombies endlessly walking against the fence in their futile attempts at escape but still not being able to figure out the climbing the lowly three foot-tall fence would lead to their escape and plenty of precious brains.

Normalcy isn't a bad thing so go check out the non-warped side of my work at MinnPics where you can appreciate the hundreds of photos which I have already showcased and wait patiently for what's next.