Florida Walmart, Texas Mattress Store "Celebrate" 9/11 With, Um, Interesting Gimmicks

This probably wasn't the best way to homor 9/11 

I suppose their heart was in the right place.

As we approach the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some people at a Panama City Beach, Florida Walmart, and the local soda distributor, came up with a striking way to "honor" the memory of 9/11.

So they constructed in the store the two World Trade Center towers built out of Coke Zero packages, notes the Associated Press.

The backdrop of the American flag was made with red regular Coke, silver Diet Coke and blue Sprite. A banner above the display that read "We will never forget" with the Coke and Walmart logos completed the look.

Why does this kind of weird, tacky thing always seem to happen in Florida?

Of course right away there was (surprise!) a backlash. A lot of people were appalled.

Others mocked it:

"We will never forget.....These great rollback prices y'all!" was one Twitter reaction.

Amid the hubbub the Coca-Cola company apologized and said the display was meant to honor local firefighters and support that organization's upcoming event.

The store and the distributor said they never intended any disrespect, which I believe, but what the hell were they thinking?

Well, they were probably thinking more than the folks at a Texas mattress store. They decided to hold a mattress sale, and did quite a little TV ad that you can see in the video at the bottom of this post.

As the Dallas Morning News tells us:

"Store manager Cherise Bonanno says that there's no better way to remember the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks than the sale, which offers any size mattress for the price of a twin mattress. Two employees stand in front of a pair of towers of mattresses and an American flag.

At the end of the video, which has since been removed from the store's Facebook page, Bonanno swings her arms and the employees tumble into the mattress towers, knocking them over. 

Banana shrieks, then turns to the camera and says, "We'll never forget."

Well, it's hard to forget the mattress ad you're about to see. Do you think it's a bit much?

Ugly Christmas Sweaters, Charlie Brown Trees Are A Thing This Year, Apparently

This guy is a major trendsetter
this Christmas season.  

I guess it's a trend I can embrace.

The Big Things at Christmas this year, at least two of them anyway, are hideous Christmas sweaters and Charlie Brown trees.

I like to think it's a rebellion against the societal demands that you MUST make Christmas elaborate, absolutely perfect and way, way over your budget.

If you don't do these things, you are an absolute scumbag, at least in the eyes of the marketers who want you to spend, spend SPEND at Christmas.

Ever notice that after every Christmas season, retailers are "disappointed" in sales. You didn't give them enough of your hard earned money, you morons!

Thoughtful but inexpensive gifts and activities need not apply, apparently.

But then there are the people armed with seasonal sweaters with badly rendered reindeer sewed on, and annoying jingle bells ringing with your every move as you gather around the half dead, listing Christmas tree.

Out in Fort Collins, Colorado, somebody found a way to capitalize on the anti-perfection Christmas movement by opening an ugly Christmas sweater thrift store. 

According to Consumerist and CBS Denver, Ugly Christmas Sweaters, or UCS's, are big sellers, says Nancy Agnew, the owner of the store.

"When the store opened it had 4,000 sweaters in stock, with prices ranging from the very modest $3 up to $43, reports CBS Denver. The owner says she's now selling about 150 sweaters every day.

She got the idea after working at another thrift store and seeing that people really, really liked buying UCSs. So she planned this sumer, washed and hot glue-gunned stuff, then opened up in the fall. She has plans to expand to Denver and Boulder, to spread the ugly joy there."

Oh, great, I see a nationwide UCS empire starting here.

Maybe we'll all be required to don we now our ugly apparel every Christmas season. That could be another reason to dread the holidays.

If that's the case, you can drown your sorrows in the weak glow of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Those, too are a hot commodity.   

This little guy is a trendsetter, too, with his
somewhat unsuccessful little Christmas tree.  

For those unfamiliar with the concept, Charlie Brown Christmas trees are from the Charlie Brown Christmas special, in which Charlie obtains a tree that is not exactly the most beautiful in the world as he disastrously tries to free himself from a holiday funk.

NPR also got a big response when they put out a call to listeners for some of the most impressively bad Charlie Brown trees.

People have quite a history of bad holiday trees, apparently. Not as bad as a battered pink plastic one I saw in a window recently, but you get the idea.

I guess we should just embrace the tacky. It's more fun than trying to be Martha Stewart all the time. Makes you less crabby, too, being tacky and not perfect.

My husband Jeff and me have taken the tacky tack, at least to an extent.


At recent Yankee swap Christmas parties we offered gifts of a squeezable Minion from "Despicable Me" and Hello Kitty and Duck Dynasty Chia Pets.

Really, have yourself a tasteless little Christmas. It's more fun that way.