My Birthday at Tysons Corner, Including Looking at American Girl Dolls, December 15, 2023

In previous years (especially since my husband left) there were times when I went to Tysons Corner Center anywhere between 2-4 times a year. In 2023 I only went there once and it was on my birthday. It seems like ever since the Disney Store went out of business I feel less inclined to go there. Yes, there’s still the American Girl Place but that store is so expensive. They sell doll clothes that cost around the same price (if not higher, depending on the outfit) as what I would buy for myself at Target or Walmart. I’m just not into going into stores where the prices are too high for my taste because they are a total waste of time.

I still like going to American Girl Place to check out the dolls, it’s just that I don’t feel inclined to do so very often because most of their stuff is out of my price range.

So my birthday came around and I realized that I hadn’t set foot inside of Tysons Corner Center in 2023 so I decided to go there for my birthday before 2023 ends in 16 days.

I took the Silver Line Metro to Tysons Corner Center and took the pedestrian bridge to Metro Plaza (which is directly outside of the mall and is the closest location to the Metro station). They had these really cool Christmas/winter-themed sculptures that glistened in the sunlight.

They had this Christmas tree sculpture with a red sled inside (so anyone can sit in there and take selfies).

Here’s the red sled where one can sit in and take selfies.

And if those sculptures looked neat in the daytime, they looked even more amazing at night. I took these photos when I was leaving the mall and I was on my way back to the Metro station.

Inside of the mall they had these artsy customized athletic shoes on display, which were pretty cool.

The display said that more of these customized shoes were being displayed on the lower level near Barnes and Noble. Except I went to that area and I found no customized shoe display, which was a bummer. At least the two shoes I saw looked cool.

As a birthday treat for myself I purchased a hand-rolled ice cream from Sawadika Ice Cream. Seeing the worker make this is just as big of a treat as the ice cream itself.

Here is what my Oreo cookies and cream ice cream treat looked like after it was made but before I ate it.

After Sawadika Ice Cream I made my way to the American Girl Place, which had this Christmas Tree.

The first doll I got a look at in detail was this limited edition Shimmering Silver Holiday Collector Doll. It’s a collaboration with Swarovski so the doll has those expensive Swarovsi crystals in her jewelry and her outfit.

The doll came in this box that is printed to suggest something sparkly.

In some ways that doll reminded me of the elf queen Galadriel from movie trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, except this doll doesn’t have pointed ears.

I took a liking to that doll. In fact, I briefly felt tempted to buy her until I saw the $265 price tag. I know that most of the huge price is because of the Swarovski crystals but it’s still a pretty steep price for a doll that was originally created for young girls to play with.

They had a Hanukkah outfit with a little menorah that’s perfect for a doll. It was pretty cute.

Part of the reason why I wanted to get to the American Girl Place before 2023 ended is because I hadn’t had a chance to see the 2023 Girl of the Year in person. It turned out that there were three years of Girl of the Year dolls. I saw that the 2022 Girl of the Year, Corinne Tan, and her sister, Gwynn, were still on the store shelves.

I wrote about Corinne and Gwynn Tan last year so I’m going to move on to the 2023 Girl of the Year, whom I hadn’t seen until my birthday trip.

For the 2023 Girl of the Year they had an Indian-American girl named Kavi Sharma. She is described as being into songwriting, showtunes, dancing, and performing. She is very pretty.

I especially loved her traditional Indian outfit, which is currently sold separately.

I also loved her furniture and accessories. I found myself wishing that there were human-sized versions because I would love to have them in my own home.

That music note neon sculpture is to die for!

Kavi definitely has a sense of style that is quite unusual for a young girl between the ages of 8-11.

Kavi also honors her Indian heritage by practicing yoga.

Here is where the Girl of the Year gets really crazy. In the past American Girl would do this: First, the company would send a representative to the ABC show Good Morning America where that rep would announce on the air who the new Girl of the Year will be. Good Morning America would air that episode as close to New Year’s Day as possible. (The show itself airs Monday-Friday so if January 1 happens to fall on a Monday, the announcement would be made on the Friday episode.) On January 1 the new Girl of the Year would formally rollout at American Girl Place stores across the United States. (I went to such a New Year’s Day rollout once. It was in 2015, the year that Grace Thomas was the Girl of the Year, and I went to the Tysons Corner Center store.) Once the new Girl of the Year doll was given the formal rollout, the previous year’s Girl of the Year doll would be retired and both the doll and all of the line’s clothes and accessories would be removed from the store shelves.

In the last few years the previous year’s Girl of the Year dolls would remain on the shelves beyond her year and seeing Corinne and Gwyn Tan still remaining on the shelves after their year of 2022 ended was no exception.

But this year had a surprise I didn’t expect. I assumed that the 2024 Girl of the Year wouldn’t be formally rolled out until January 1 so she wouldn’t be on the store shelves yet. I was shocked to see that the 2024 Girl of the Year was already available for sale even though the new year hadn’t arrived yet.

Her name is Lila Monetti. She’s described as an Italian-American who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and she’s into gymnastics. She is a cute doll.

There was a time when the area in the next picture would have a giant poster featuring who the current Girl of the Year was and would include some life-sized prop (such as a surfboard) where people can take selfies. After the COVID-19 pandemic began the store stopped having the life-sized props because they were trying to limit any chance of viral contact but they still stuck with giant poster featuring who the current Girl of the Year was. Since the American Girl Place now sells three year’s worth of Girl of the Year, I think someone probably said “Fuck it! Let’s just put up a generic ‘AG’ poster so we won’t have to change it each year since we now have multiple Girls of the Year on sale.”

Then there are the historical doll line. American Girl has finally ditched that BeForever name. I personally never liked it because it felt grammatically awkward and it just sounded dumb, especially when pronouncing it. In any case, American Girl decided to come out with two new historical dolls that would represent 1999-2000. That was Y2K, which had all of this crazy hysteria over the coming of the Y2K bug (which never happened because computer experts had worked around the clock to prevent anything disruptive from shutting down the world’s computers). But American Girl decided to come out with two dolls to educate its target audience of girls ages 8-12 about that time when people literally became paranoid and lost their minds over the Y2K bug.

American Girl thought that it would be a great idea to not come out with one doll but two dolls as well. They are supposed to be twins. American Girl decided to make them fraternal twins instead of identical (to reduce the chances that families would try to save money by buying only one doll and get their daughter to one day pretend that her doll is Nicki and the next day she would pretend that her doll is Isabel). They also decided to give the twins radically different personalities with different senses of clothing style. That way parents can spend at least $230 getting both twins. It’s a win—for American Girl.

So now let’s meet the twins. Isabel Hoffman prefers to dress as a preppy. (She definitely reminds me of Cher from the 1995 movie Clueless.)

Nicki Hoffman is a skateboard enthusiast and her dress style reminds me of a cross between Tony Hawk and the Seattle grunge music scene of the early 1990s.

Their vintage 1990s computer equipment brought back memories for me. I still remember having to connect to the Internet via a modem that was connected to a telephone line and it made this horrible screeching noise every time you logged on.

If American Girl hadn’t decided to have fraternal twins represent the 1990s, I probably would have bought one 1990s historical girl to go with Melody (representing the 1960s), Julie and Ivy (representing the 1970s, and Courtney (representing the 1990s). But I wasn’t into spending at least $230 to get both twins. I guess I could’ve just decided on one but I couldn’t decide which twin I wanted. They both appealed to me in different ways. I decided to solve the dilemma by giving these two dolls a hard pass.

The other thing I learned is that the historical dolls no longer come with paperback books that tells the full story of the characters. Instead each historical doll will only come with a paperback journal and if you want to get the complete story about the doll’s background, you would have to purchase the official book that’s sold separately. I thought about doing just that until I learned that the only copy of Nicki and Isabel’s official book comes in hardcover only and it costs $25.

While I would love to read their book just to see how American Girl handles the Y2K bug controversy, I wasn’t into paying $25 for a hardcover book. I’m just going to check that book out of the public library instead.

I briefly checked out Claudie Wells, the historical doll who’s supposed to represent the 1920s. They had a bakery just for Claudie. It’s a less fancy version of that French bakery that came out in 2015 when Grace Thomas was the Girl of the Year that cost a whopping $500.

Claudie’s bakery cost $295. It’s cheaper than Grace’s bakery was back in 2015 but it’s still way too pricey for me.

After I left American Girl Place I took a couple of photos of that fancy Santa’s Chalet area where Santa Claus was working.

I ate my birthday dinner at Wasabi, the Japanese place that serves sushi on a conveyor belt, just like this video that I shot back in 2011.

After dinner I purchased a bag of gummi bears from Lolli & Pops. I also walked around a few stores. I found this racy Christmas sweater from Spencer’s Gifts that had a winking Santa coming down the chimney saying “I Like to Go Down.”

As I was making my way back to the Metro station I found out that the Winter Lantern Festival was being held just across the street from the Metro station. If I hadn’t been so completely exhausted from walking around Tysons Corner Center, I would’ve gone there as well. But I was too tired. The lights from the Winter Lantern Festival made the whole area really stand out in the darkness.

It’s Benjamin Franklin Friday on Hanukkah and My Birthday!

Much Virtue in Herbs, little in Men.

Playing Around With Stable Diffusion AI Again

While I was writing a recent post in my Deconstructing Kremlin Propaganda Substack about “The Orange Elephant in the Room: Donald Trump,” I thought about adding some illustration. I didn’t feel like creating my own illustration (especially since it dealt with Trump) so I went with Stable Diffusion AI, typed in a few keywords that said “Donald Trump riding an orange elephant,” and this is what it generated.

I was okay with the results. The reason why I wanted an orange elephant is because Donald Trump tends to use that hideous fake spray tan that literally turns his skin orange. He thinks he’s hot with that orange skin and that straw-colored hair but I can think of lots of other men who are way hotter than Trump at the moment. (LOL!)

Unboxing the 100th Anniversary Warner Brothers Looney Tunes Collectibles

I knew that 2023 was the year of Disney’s 100th anniversary and that was because I’ve been seeing all kinds of special Disney 100th anniversary products ranging from snack foods to breakfast cereals to limited edition products. What I didn’t know until recently is that Warner Brothers is also celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Compared to Disney, which has gone to great lengths to let everyone know that Walt and Roy Disney had founded what would ultimately become the Walt Disney Company in 1923, Warner Brothers has been relatively quiet. The only product I’ve found that is related to Warner Brothers’ 100th anniversary are these blind packages that I found at Target a few weeks ago but they have since been sold out.

The blind packages show the Looney Tunes characters in a mashup with other characters that are also part of the Warner Brothers group. Based on what I saw in the pictures printed on the packages, most of the mashups seem to be various Looney Tunes characters dressed up as DC Comics superheroes like Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. It sounded like a cute idea so I purchased them both. I made a short unboxing video, which I uploaded on to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

So I was unboxing them hoping that they would be dressed as one of the superheroes only to discover that I had unboxed a Bugs Bunny and Tweety Bird both dressed in Hogwarts robes and holding magic wands. I realized that some of these figures would be dressed as Hogwarts students because Warner Brothers has the movie rights to the Harry Potter franchise.

If I had obtained them prior to 2020, I would’ve been thrilled because I was a fan of the Harry Potter books. I’m less of a fan these days because of J.K.Rowling hostility towards the trans community. But now I feel ambivalent. I think the mashups are cute even if I’m less-than-thrilled with J.K. Rowling.

Those figurines were the first time I had purchased anything Harry Potter related since 2020 but at least I can say that I didn’t know what I was getting since they were in blind boxes. (I have to admit the boxes, which resembled a water tower that had the WB logo on it, were pretty cute.) If those blind packages hadn’t since been sold out at my local Target since I purchased them, I still would not buy them anymore because I would prefer not to buy anything related to Harry Potter unless J.K. Rowling stops being so hostile towards the trans community (which includes my friends who are either transgender or have transgender relatives).

My Customized Mask

I had attended a free art workshop that was held at The Space in Beltway Plaza in Greenbelt, Maryland. There were blank masks that could be customized so I did this.

I basically did a bunch of Zentangles based on the tutorials posted on the TanglePatterns.com site. That mask also makes me wistful. I ran into a friend at that workshop. He had just moved into a new place and that very evening he was having over Ric Gordon, who had just recently been reelected to his second term on the Greenbelt City Council just a few weeks earlier, and his wife, Carla. The following day I saw a post from that same friend on Facebook saying that Ric had suddenly passed away, which was a horrendous shock. (Apparently Ric and Carla went over to my friend’s home. Everyone had a good time with no drama. About 20 minutes after Ric and Carla returned home Ric suddenly dropped dead. He has had heart problems in the past and he even managed to survive getting COVID-19 twice in 2020 but it’s still a shock because he seemed healthy the last few times I saw him in person.) The two photos I had taken of Ric and his family at a party the week before are now the last photos I’ll ever take of Ric. I went to an impromptu vigil for Ric just two days after I took that art workshop and by the end of the week I went to his viewing at the local funeral home. In some ways I’m still in shock over Ric’s sudden passing (especially since he was only 41 years old) but he’s yet another friend whom I’m going to have to get used to not seeing anymore because he’s dead.

My Latest Zentangle

A few weeks ago I had gone to a training with the Maryland chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign, which was regarding a series of upcoming events that are being held next year in an effort to get more poor and low income people voting in the 2024 elections. I was asked to give a brief lesson doing Zentangles for workshop participants to quietly work on during the day while the workshop was going on. (The Zentangles were an optional project.) So I gave the short lesson while showing off the books I had brought with me and the TanglePatterns.com website for those who didn’t want to use the books. I managed to finish my own Zentangle, which you can see here.

It’s been over a year since I last done a Zentangle and it felt nice to pick it up again.

I’ve Just Written Another Substack Post

I don’t always write more than one Substack post per week but I came across this disturbing story about how Kremlin propagandists are using the Cameo website to trick celebrities into making pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian propaganda. You can read all about it on Deconstructing Kremlin Propaganda.

It’s Benjamin Franklin Friday on Hanukkah!

The doors of Wisdom are never shut.

The Latest Episode in “The Baltimore and Washington, DC That Tourists Rarely See” Series is a Museum Devoted to the Great Depression

Last month I wrote about how I made a New Year’s resolution on creating at least 12 new episodes in my ongoing web series The Baltimore and Washington, DC That Tourists Rarely See this year (which breaks down to one new episode per month). So far I got off to a good start with an episode about the new Planet Word museum in Washington, DC.

This month I focused on another museum, The Greenbelt Museum in Greenbelt, Maryland (located just a few miles from DC). I hadn’t intended to do two episodes about museums in a row but it happened that earlier this month the Greenbelt Museum decided to have a free open house day where it displayed vintage 1930s-era Valentine’s Day decorations and I decided to check it out. (The usual admission fee is $5 so it wasn’t like I was saving a huge amount of money.) I shot some footage during my visit there and I even made a Valentine’s Day card for patients in local hospitals. I also had photos from last December when that same museum also had a free open house day and it displayed vintage 1930s-era Hanukkah and Christmas decorations (which I later made into a slideshow that I posted on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.

So I ended up creating my latest episode that’s devoted to the Greenbelt Museum. What’s really interesting about this museum is that it consists of a home that’s literally frozen in time as it contains furniture, housewares, decorations, and clothes that were all originally made during the Great Depression of the 1930s. I uploaded it on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube. Enjoy!

If you’ve missed any of my previous episodes in this series, you can check out this YouTube playlist where you can view them.

The Festival of Lights Opening Ceremony, Greenbelt, Maryland, December 2, 2022

Nearly one month ago I went to the Festival of Lights opening ceremony in Greenbelt, Maryland. That event was held for the first time in over two years due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It was pretty enjoyable and I ran into some of my friends while I was there so it was all good. I shot some video footage of the opening ceremony, which you can watch on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, YouTube.

As part of the festivities the nearby Greenbelt Museum was offering free admission where it was displaying vintage Christmas and Hanukkah decorations from the 1930s. I found the displays to be quite fascinating. I took some photos and I made a video slideshow, which you can watch on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.