July Ramble: The Jenny Awards

Giraffes have always been my favorite zoo animal. I don’t know why.

For me, "best" lists always have a component where I discount the ones that "everybody" know and love. Like, Best Musical: I'd say Les Mis, but everybody knows that one. So I'd say Urinetown. Best soda: Strawberry & Creme Dr Pepper Best theme park: Idk. Disney Sea was really good though. Aside, Raisinets: Very good candy. Halloween candy: Caramel apple pops. Best Animated Series: American Dad. Aside, the states game: That sounds really cool, but I've never heard of it. Best doll: the blue alien I got on my first trip to Disney World. Or maybe the kimono-wearing Hello Kitty I got while I was in Japan. Aside, your best noodle. Nooooo. Tube noodles are so weird. lol Pringles: YES! And incidentally, they aren't technically potato chips and that's why they are so good.

Chopper is 100% the best droid! I'm late in catching up on a lot of the non-theatrical Star Wars stuff, but I adored Rebels and Chopper is one of my favorite parts of it.

I love Hadestown!! It's my favorite right now too :)

Thank you for Taco Bell. I love it but the wife hates it so my time spent eating there has drastically gone down. Man no mention of mystery lodge video. Hope it’s not on Jenny’s canceled videos. Well I guess there’s always star wars land part 2 to look forward for.

On Bruce Coville's website, there's a guest book for fan letters that he continues to reply to: https://www.brucecoville.com/guestbook/

I realize that it's super weird to comment on a four year old video, but I met Bruce Coville at the 2021 Baldwinsville NY ghost walk- he was playing the devil in one of the scenes you walked through and he was DELIGHTFUL. The whole thing was so fun and spooky and cute. He said hi to us, I stared at him with my mouth open like a star struck idiot. Still one of the best nights ever.

You are so right about Anna’s coronation dress! The green and the lil floral detailing are so pretty

I gasped aloud when I saw that adorable smilin' Jiggypuff dome

oh my god a polly pocket video would be so entertaining!! I’d be seated

im a long time viewer new patron watching back old videos and based off the main channel i lowkey thought jenny was just a “from afar” horse girl and as a fellow equestrian interested in eventing it makes me really happy to know thats what jenny did too!!

im all for a haunting hour top 10 i need to hear your lily d hot takes

It’s very possible we went to the same elementary school, because I also remember the “states game” and “lava monster,” and this is the first time I’ve heard of either since 5th grade.

We had this school yard game at my school that was a lot like lava monster. We called it grounders. Who ever was ‘it’ had a to keep their eyes closed and could climb anywhere on the playground and try to tag people. The other people were allowed to go on the ground but if who ever was ‘it’ called grounders then they would now be ‘it’. It was a lot of fun but we used to get in trouble for playing it.

I watched dressage at the paralympics live when they were in time, and yeah, it was impossible to tell who was doing well

Fishie off the Climber is another one from Canada. In that one the IT person has their eyes closed at all times. Everyone else has to be on the play set somehow, if you are off at any point and the IT person yells "Fishie off the Climber!" then you are now it.

In Calgary, Canada we have a game like ‘Lava Monster’ called grounders where the ‘It’ can climb on the play structure /if/ they have their eyes closed but on the ground their eyes were open. Dangerous? Yes. Fun AF. It totally rewarded knowing the structure back to front

Best shoe is a heely. I've gotten a pair for christmas and I'm too old for them but I love them so much it's great. Just zip around the house and store.

Does anyone else's older family members hate Dr. Pepper because they say it reminds them of medicine? I'm assuming it's some kind of trauma from when they were kids.

GRAAAAND CHAMPIONS! The most beautiful horses in the world... Seconded, these were way more fun than my Breyer horses, though showing my Breyer horses was also fun.

I am certain I have said the exact same thing about monkeys

I LOVED Tokyo Disney Sea! It's absolutely my favorite park ever. One of the things I really miss about living in Japan.

I loooved Grand Champions. My favourite dolls as a kid (not only fav horse dolls). the playsets were also really high quality!

Hadestown was the last thing I saw before Broadway shut down. I'd love to see it again, but right now I'd like to see literally anything. Raisinettes are the only acceptable movie candy, IMO, and I've felt this way since the 80s. I may be elderly now, but I've always felt this way. Yet I never want to eat them at any other time of my life. Movie theaters only. Dunno why. Raisin bran was also my favorite cereal as a kid, though, so maybe there's some kind of raisin link going on with kid me.

never heard of the states game and i'm from the Midwest...

Maybe this has already been addressed but there should be a way to manually set your white balance. Since you're always filming the same scene with the same lighting you could do it once and leave it that way.

Those shoes are called Oxfords by the way :)

Best required reading in high school was Red Sky at Morning, which stuck with me big time, I still re-read it every few years which I don’t think I’ve done for any other assigned reading from school (aside from a pass through Jonathan Livingston Seagull to confirm they were insane to have had us read it in the first place, though that was middle school really).

I'm so glad someone else has read the Bruce Coville unicorn anthologies! I had The Unicorn Treasury as a kid and I loved it to pieces. I had to buy it again recently because I lost it and I really wanted to reread it. It's a great book, even if the excerpts are a bit annoying.

So glad to see another Chikorita fan, she gets so much hate!!!

Bruce Coville! I Left My Sneakers In Dimension X, My Teacher Is An Alien. My favorite was probably Goblins In The Castle!

Yes please please please do the OG Polly Pocket video! I loved the hidden nooks and themes (fairies, gemstones, you name it). They also had horses!!!

Did you ever read those YA vampire books ? Christopher Pike stuff specifically... probably a fun topic....

I nominate the Jenny Awards to be a regular thing with new topics every time. I eat Raisinets and chocolate-covered raisins regularly. I also like Raisin Bran. If you've never tried it, I strongly suggest Chunky (chocolate, raisins, peanuts), even if you're not biting to a raisin, the chocolate has a distinct taste. I have a feeling they mix ground up raisins into the chocolate. I drink Diet Dr Pepper but haven't had one since the Corona. I went about 2 months without my usual Diet Coke during Corona. I'll get a Stewart's diet Root Beer when I visit the local sub shop.

omg please do divergent, my friends and i rewatched them recently for the first time since being massive YA heads in our early teens and theres so much to unpack

Ah Bruce Coville, I grew up reading the 'My Teacher is an Alien' series!

Pringles actually tried to argue in UK court that Pringles aren't potato chips for tax reasons. As far as I know they were never successful though

wait you did a video on going to japan?? where/when??

Also “I’m not going to hunt monkeys” (Edited out) ...but if I’m walking in the woods with a gun and a monkey shows up I can’t guarantee its safety.

(finish a video of Jenny listing her favorite things...) (...an empty Pringles can rolls across the floor) (I stare off in existential wonder....) Am I....Jenny Nicholson?

Me and my friends loved Raisinets so I was unaware people hated them. They’re a must get when I go to the movies.

RE Your Rant at the end about Camera & Colors: I think your ring light is too bright. In lots of your recent videos your face looks washed out, just solid white. In this one, and the Brony one, where you're wearing something really light colored on your head, the camera is using that to set the brightness level, so your face is where it should be, and the background is darker.

I never got on board with Hey Arnold!; i wonder if it’s too late to start now...

omg please do a divergent series video

we also have the states game in the greater las vegas area but i don’t think it is found at every elementary school here, mostly newer ones

god damn i love hadestown so much

similar to lava monster, we played grounders. the person who was It had to keep their eyes closed, and you'd be it if they got a normal touch on you, but also at any point they could yell "grounders" and if you were on the ground/off the play structure, you'd also be it

For the record I would ABSOLUTELY watch the haunting hour top 10.

sharknado video

i think we'd be friends based off all your answers to these questions and your general demeanor and i know that's creepy but i love hadestown and horse toys and take5 and theme parks and i fcking love halloween. oh god i also hated show jumping when i rode, but what barn did u learn dressage at? maybe thats just not taught in the south lol. also question did you read pony pals?

So I'm from South Florida and we definitely didn't have the states thing

Pineapple pizza (not Hawaiian) is also my favorite, at least as far as what is widely available in restaurants in the US. I also like mango, egg, pickle, mango, plum and kiwi on pizza (as single topping pizzas, not all at once). I don't like raisins but do like raisinets. The fish you picked are cool but still can't hold a candle to the amazing blobfish!

Yes, Stegosaurus is indeed the best dinosaur! It's been my favorite for as long as I can remember, though second place is packed with a bunch of other dinosaurs that I also love because it's just so hard for me to really rank them in a proper order. I recall when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old I went to a dinosaur exhibit with my family in what I'm guessing was either the San Bernardino or Redlands area; none of them that I've asked can remember this trip when I was asking them the name of the place, but I sure remember going! I was so excited to be there seeing the displays and the bones and learning everything that I could, then I picked out a small plastic Stegosaurus toy that was the coolest thing I found there though thinking back on it now I do recall that the toy was a peach or almost fleshy color instead of the standard lizard style of green, grey, and brown. Young me didn't have a problem with this color choice probably because I was so ecstatic to have myself a dinosaur, but current me thinking about it kind of does! lol Even though we have no way of knowing what their actual colors were, I still find it funny when I think back on that toy and yeah; it was certainly a peachy colored Stegosaurus and I honestly wish that I still had it! This was once again such a great ramble video Jenny, so thank you a whole lot for this as it made my morning when I woke up and saw it available! Now I'm looking forward to the upcoming 500k subscribers video that you're working on, which I'm SURE will NOT have any spiders in it at all anywhere, which is unfortunate because everything is better with spiders. Unless were talking about beds of course and then, well no, absolutely not! Stay out of my bed spiders! lol

Totally agree about monkeys! I've never understood what people mean about "uncanny valley" when it comes to like, cgi, but monkeys! Monkeys are uncanny! Just focus on something like their hands and they're juuuust human enough to be disturbing. So I don't like monkeys

Good pizza opinion. People don't like Round Table because its expensive but you get what you pay for!!

The state game was totally a thing at my Elementary School, but I'm also from the Bay Area so I dont think that does anything to disprove your hypothesis that it's a CA thing. I tried to make it more interesting as a kid, like have people yell out like, capitols and state birds and stuff but nobody else got into it. Our version also involved throwing rubbery balls at each other. It wasn't great, in retrospect.

If your cryptid video doesn't give due respect to my guy, gal, and/or non-binary pal Mothman, I'm going to be extremely disappointed.

I totally was thinking Joy Luck Club before you said it

omg the eventing shoutout brought me so much joy (and I will forgive the cross country slander)

"I wouldn't go out and *hunt* monkeys." I fell over on that.

We had one of those big ground paintings of the US map at my elementary school in Ohio! don’t think anyone ever knew why it was there though haha

If you’re on the fence about covering the kissing booth you might as well wait until part 3 comes out since that’s something netflix thought needed to exist.

Oof I just watched Kissing Booth 2 (family movie night) and it was so painful to get through, I had to take my headphones out and mute myself so I could yell and let out the Rage and Frustration energy. Most common comment in the chat: "I hate this movie." As funny as it can be to try and describe, glad you're dodging that bullet.

I had no idea that the "state game" was a thing in other places! I used to love it. But since I grew up in a midwest, the small east coast states were the ones we'd use to trip each other up.

Autumn <3

We had our own version of the “lava monster” game in grade school! It was called ship wreck, and one kid was the shark and the others were sailors. The playground equipment was a ship, and every time someone got tagged, the water level rose so that the sharks could climb onto parts of the equipment to tag more sailors. Super fun, have some really great memories with the game

take 5 are SUCH a good candy and i rarely find them in LA but they were all over the place in the midwest :(

Have you ever watched Home Movies? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcnngxPqP7c (spoiler alert, she eats kiwi later in the episode)

Also, look for the "hardy kiwi" --they're a small, grape-sized kiwi that is much milder in acidity. They're very hard to locate but some specialty grocers carry them.

I guess (raisin) “Poppets” would be the equivalent of Raisinets, here in the UK… and I agree they’re the best movie snack. I’m also a big fan of Autumn/Fall (and, of course, Halloween), so I was glad to see it go home with the gold, on this glittering occasion. :)

I think four square's fun cause of all the made up rules and how kids would just come up with new ways to cheat. Like, every kid would have their own 'finishing move' with a cool name that's impossible to win against. Truly the wild west of kid's games. (I actually don't know if that's a universal experience or if my school was just full of four square cheaters)

Bruce Coville is a really good choice, and he's a very nice person.

Thanks for giving me flashbacks to The Saddle Club. I can’t believe I forgot about that show! I had a Grand Champions mare and foal set that I named Delilah and Samson like Carol(?) did on the show.

Dr. Pepper is a solid choice. As a root beer man myself, I do try to limit my consumption to one can/bottle every few days because of how sweet it is. Also, I guess it wouldn't be a good awards show without one winner being an obviously wrong choice (Snyder's Dawn of the Dead is best zombie movie? get outta here). I think Shaun of the Dead and Warm Bodies are both viable contenders for the award and Jenny disqualifying them is wack. You're wack Jenny.

Are you still making that history dinosaur attractions video? I assumed that is why you went to that lovely, gaudy dinosaur and cavemen place you posted on Twitter

Growing up in Idaho we also played lava monster, but we had house rules like "no pokies" since the play structure at our elementary school had little holes all over the floor pieces that were perfect sized for child fingers. Our play structure was also very tall so the tallest part was "base" but the lava monster was able to count to 30 and if you spent the whole time in the base you HAD to leave it and cross the monkey bars to the other connected play structure. We played it every day for like....3 years? Then when I was in Jr High a drunk guy drove into the play structure at my old elementary and broke it so now the new generations have a way lamer one for lava monster.

The best zombie movie is Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, no contest

my personal favorite required reading book was probably Gatsby, because I had a lot of fun reading it and the movie was fun to watch after. technically there were books I read for like book reports, but I wasn't forced to read those specific books so I don't count it haha. great ramble as usual!!

**steeples fingers** Excellent! BTW 1) any pointer to your Tokyo DisneySea video (cannot seem to locate it on YouTube) and 2) please add my voice to any chorus hoping for the second part of the Star Wars land video.... "Big train energy..yes! Efficient walkways? No!"

The number of spiders in your house appears to be increasing. They're taking shelter from the pandemic, sensing a friendly matriarch.

Lol I'm in Kentucky and have the states game. I totally forgot about it until right now. We didn't play it too much at recess because it was also the basketball court and basketball was more popular than yelling out states.

I see that Jenny is celebrating Spider-Man day with all her spiders.

Ooh, I love your best shoe pick! Oxford heels truly are the best combination of style and comfort. (Didn't mean to sound like a shoe commercial, I just really like them and you make me feel validated :D)

For required high school reading, I don’t think I liked much what we read, but in middle school we read Holes and I enjoyed that. I read and loved Ender’s Game outside of school but it was never something that was required. I remember slogging through half of Scarlet Letter and I just HATED it. Even as a bookie child, I had to bail from that one.

The Dawn of the Dead remake has a special place in my heart for introducing me to Sarah Polley, who is such an awesome filmmaker. Go check out Stories We Tell if you haven't.

I still have a Polly Pocket set from when I was a kid, it’s actually a rodeo themed one!! There’s a horse that bucks around when you spin a little handle, and one of the girls can sit on it. Those sets were always well themed! Also Mighty Max was my jam too!

I would like to see Star Wars Land 2!

(10/10)

new contender for Jenny-iest video ever

jen hav u tried hot dr pepper

Jenny always Delivers!

omg i live in socal and i completely forgot about the states game. such an obscure memory

Paraphrasing, but: “giraffes are a good re-theming of a horse for the zoo” is a distilled J-Nich content moment. Also, I fear this video will be prime fodder for a future Jennypedia collator.

Love you Jenny!!! Does anyone have a link to the video about DisneySea? I can't find it!

Best Cryptid? Best Hallowe'en Creature? We hear you loud and clear, Jenny! Thanks again for more great Ramble Topics.

i adore you, jenny. more specifically, i adore the giant spider that you own.

You use a webcam to film? Daaang, that's good quality, what kind is it?

Have you seen Train to Busan? It’s a Korean zombie movie and it’s the closest I’ve seen to a perfect zombie movie. Also I live in the Bay Area and we had state tag!

I grew up in SoCal and we also had a map of the US painted on the playground! I always assumed it was just my school that had it. It was more for decoration but I do remember one specific instance my 4th grade teacher brought us out there, yelled out a state, and forced us to run to it. I got clowned on for mistaking Montana for North Dakota :/

My hometown of Kentville, Nova Scotia has a long tradition of building "pumpkin people" in fall and it is very serious business. I have seen everthing from KISS to pirates to beetlejuice to full star wars scenes in pumpkin form. I'm pretty sure that if you assault a pumpkin person in Kentville the sentence would be more severe than assaulting an actual person.

Rasinets all the way!

Do you cuddle your giant spider friend at night

+1 for the Polly Pocket video concept. Also, Lava Monster was simply “Shark” at my school. The sand was the shark infested waters which made the play structure the ship. Adjacent to the primary, plastic-y jungle gym was an old wooden play structure that was ideal for Shark as it was smaller (closer proximity to the designated shark, heightened thrill) and the logs that comprised the structure doubled as the ship’s masts. Drink up, me ‘earties, yo ho.

We played the state game when I was in elementary school but we called it States Tag and we played it exactly the same way! I assumed it only existed at my school (in Southern California)

Shaun of the Dead is possibly my favourite movie of all time and I've always identified heavily with the protagonist (I wonder why that might be) so it was kinda sad to hear it disqualified as a zombie movie, but I've had some time to think some thoughts and I think I kinda agree? It's a rom-com-zom, a romantic comedy with zombies, so I suppose Shaun and Liz's (and Shaun and Ed's, and Shaun and Shaun's mum's (and Ed and Shaun's mum's (she's like butter))) relationship is the primary theme of the movie with the zombies acting as the sort of catalysing force. Still, I think that it is true that there is no perfect zombie movie, and that all of them have some element of weirdness or commentary or themes that make it not all about the zombies. But because of that, I believe that "zombie movie" as a genre then follows a formula that would qualify Shaun of the Dead as a zombie movie, that is, a zombie movie is any movie about a theme that also includes zombies, and sometimes it is a movie about zombies that also includes a theme. By this definition, though, a zombie movie that just literally focused on a completely stereotypical cliche zombie apocalypse with no new gimmick or twist or weirdness would not qualify as A Zombie Movie. I suppose something like that would be in the Disaster Movie category. But yeah Dawn of the Dead (2004) is a solid choice. I had kinda forgotten about the baby zombie, I thought it was going to get marked down for fast zombies. Never really been a fan of fast zombies; they are victims of the videogamification of the undead. The whole point of zombies, to me, is that they are unthreatening alone but their strength is derived from the sheer overwhelming number of them, plus their persistence and resilience (the only way to kill them is to "remove the head or destroy the brain"). It's difficult to make that into a fun & challenging enemy type so designers often just have 'em run at you and die after a certain amount of damage. I can accept that in games, I suppose, but film should not be so confined. I want more movies with slow, headshot-kills-only zombies. How wild is it that Phil from Modern Family was in the Dawn of the Dead remake as a horny selfish rich jerk, though? The early aughts were strange and exciting times. Reminds me of how seemingly every single famous male actor of the past two decades was in Black Hawk Down before their big break.

C110P so they could make it look like CHOP... but it really looks like... Cllop. Clop. Clop.

So the States Game does not exist in Utah. I’m wondering if it is a thing in other places outside of California? I’ve never been to a school with a map painted like she is describing

And the best new ramble goes to... There's so many hot takes I love this video. Also are those the new glasses? They're great! I wish star wars pilots would wear jigglypuffs as helmets.

spider!

Does Anna and the Apocalypse count as a real zombie movie?

First of all, I have to disagree with your takes on weather. The absolute worst kind of weather is when it's really hot out, but then some stray shower passes by and it rains for like 2 minutes before being sunny again. All the rainwater gets evaporated and the outside turns into a giant sauna. Anyway, that's my HOT take. In terms of favorite required reading, one time in high school we got to choose from a list of books to read. Band of Brothers was on that list, and I was a big fan of the mini-series, so I chose that. It was one of my more enjoyable experiences in terms of required reading. We were tasked with grouping up with others who chose the same book to have discussions. There was only 1 other student in the class who chose it, and he never got around to reading it, so we just sat around awkwardly.

Jenny must have a dedicated storage unit to store all her plushes

B I G S P I D E R

Did you review the giant plush spider on Amazon

It is legit insane how many of these we agree on (I promise i'm not just kissing up to you haha)

you know that kind of unhealthy, entitled vindication viewers get when a youtuber agrees with them about a thing. never felt it stronger than when you said dr pepper

Bruce Coville, yes!!

I really hope The Squonk makes it into that hypothetical cryptid video, I've never found myself so quickly enamored with a mythical creature as it and the other Fearsome Critters.

DisneySea ftw

Take 5 a very strong and bizarrely underrated candy bar.

oh my goodness that spider

Just interrupting my view to thank you in solidarity for your pro Dr Pepper and Diet Dr Pepper take.