more than meets the eye

Yesterday, I went to the dentist, and while I was waiting, I picked up a copy of Highlights (because that's what you do when you're at the dentist, whether you're 6 or 36.)

I went directly to the hidden pictures page, confirmed that, yes, children are still circling the hidden pictures and they are still using pen, and then went hunting for Goofus and Gallant.

This is what I saw:

Michael Bay's anonymous Transformers apology in Highlights.

If you can't read that, it says, "I felt like Goofus when I annoyed my family with my Transformers." -Noah, Age 5, Georgia.

"Holy crap," I thought, "Michael Bay is writing anonymous apologies in Highlights!"

37 thoughts on “more than meets the eye”

  1. haha – yeah the ‘transformers 2’ debate rages on the mailing list at work
    Dentists here always used to have fish tanks – my dentist has a virtual one on the ceiling that you can watch when he’s working on you!

  2. That was just what I needed to start my day. That is a good laugh.
    But, I miss the classic Goofus & Gallant illustrations. And, i was 16 and my grandma was still renewing my highlights subscription.

  8. That’s great Wil! Wouldn’t it be nice to get one of those.
    We were way disappointed in Transformers 2. Much less family friendly than the first. It was really just 2+ hours of gratuitous violence and T&A. Was there even a well-developed plot? Because I didn’t see one.

  11. I want some transformer toys. When I was young my parents wouldn’t even get me a GI Joe. They wanted me to be a doctor so they got me the Lower G.I. Joe instead. It did come with it’s own fiber optic camera on a flexible tube though!

  12. My sister and I went to see Transformers on Friday. She still has a headache! I swear, Michael Bay’s hero must be JJ Abrams! They are both pulling stupid shit out their collective arses. LOL!

  17. New game — create your own droll Goofus and Gallant dyad:
    Goofus wears white after Labor Day.
    Gallant snickers, because he wouldn’t be caught dead doing that.
    Goofus teases Gallant’s sister about her weight.
    Gallant tears through the border of the frame and, politely but forcefully, explains why this is wrong.
    Goofus divides by zero.
    Gallant disappears in a burst of electromagnetic radiation.
    Goofus calls female dogs “bitches.”
    Gallant calls them “my bitches.”
    FINIS

  18. Only slightly scarier is the fact that my OWN children are now the children reading these. I hide them under my laptop and take them upstairs to read for myself 🙂

  19. ::applause::
    ::more applause, hysterical laughter, and huge grin::
    I have not seen the new Transformers movie, so I suppose I can’t say much, but after the first…why would I?
    (I got the first from Netflix and I’ll likely get the second eventually just to form my own opinion, but…yeah…not impressed the first time around and the second doesn’t even pretend to look good.)
    I tend to put stock in the opinions of some much more than others. Anyone whose opinion I give two cents about LOVED Star Trek and thinks Transformers is a piece of crap. Good enough for me.

  20. PS-my local drive-in movie theater (yes, I do have one) showed Transformers and Star Trek last weekend. I really wanted to see Star Trek again and since I’ve seen it in a regular theater and in IMAX, I thought the drive-in would be fun. But I just couldn’t do it. Not with that pairing. Think they’d let me just come in for the second feature? Please?

  26. Just thought you’d like to know that Hilights at the dentist are somewhat international… a staple here in Canada too… I can smell the dentists office just thinking about it.

  28. Yeah, not an appropriate film for kids who are just getting old enough to play with the toys. The dialogue doesn’t quit being over the top, and the littler kids will SOB THEIR EYES OUT when they see their favorite Transformers dismembered in an endless variety of ways.

  31. I wouldn’t say that I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and with all the crude humor and excessive cursing in it, I really hate that I took my three year old boy to see it. He got tired of it halfway through.
    Personally, outside of a lot of plotholes that never were filled, and threads that went nowhere, and characters added for no reason other than random humor, I actually DID enjoy the film. (sorry about the caps, no button to italicize, can I use html code in these posts?)
    The action was great, Optimus came out as the central hero throughout the film from beginning to end, Megatron looked cool as a space tank, and the backstory about the Primes was rather interesting. Plus JetFire makes an appearance and does his classic switch from being a Decepticon to being an Autobot.
    There actually was a plot throughout the movie, but with all the plot holes and threads that went nowhere it could be easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. I still haven’t decided if the plot entirely made sense or not, but I enjoyed it enough not to walk out on my friend I had brought along to see the movie too.
    I’m not sure where all the negativity on this page is coming from, but I don’t think it was a bad film, just one that should have been worked on a bit longer with the script and possibly editing. A bad editor can ruin a great script.
    Also, I did have a hard time believing the Decepticons could travel so fast back and forth from Earth to Cybertron. Not a kiddie film, but one adults should be able to enjoy even if there’s a few things that could have been done better.

  32. So I haven’t seen the new one yet, but the big problem that I had with the first was that they both disanthropomorphized the robots AND decentralized them… Now, I’m not against either concept, per se, but when you combine them, it means that you don’t spend enough time introducing characters that we don’t recognize anymore, and so we don’t really know or care what’s happening in the big fight scenes, for example- or at all, really…
    Also, the main villians aren’t very well explained, so the Decepticons don’t really make that much sense…

  34. Oh my gosh your so funny Wil! I still read Highlights too except I hate when the kids have already marked the right answers on the page and stuff because I wanted to give the right answers to everyone else.

  35. Just this past Friday my SO and I had to drop by the optomotrist to have her new glasses “polished and adjusted” (since they look *nothing* like the demo pair that she used to select the frames and the shop does not allow returns). I saw several Highlights magazines by the chairs and thought “Hey! I can do picture searches…that’ll be fun.”
    Imagine my disappointment when I discovered all of them had been done…in pen. The large, irregular circles of ink that assured me, at least, that someone far younger and more deserving of the pleasure had worked their way through the picture, finding the hot dog, the ice cream sundae, the pencil and all those other familiar forms. Ah well…youth will be served.

  37. okay, just had to comment on this one! i work for a doctor’s office. most of our patients are 50+. for some reason, we get two copies of highlights every other month. i put one out in the waiting room untouched. the other copy…. that one becomes mine to do the hidden pictures! =) and yes, i do them in pen, and sometimes on a slow day i will also color in the pictures with multiple colors of highlighter.
    three years ago, i was doing this very dilligently at my desk, with my manager looking at me like i was crazy. i explained to her how i was -really- stuck on this one picture and handed it over to her. the two of us spent at least three hours trying to find it before eventually giving up and going back to our “jobs”. some of those things really are hidden for only kids to find! (btw, i was 25 at the time and my boss was 59)

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