So I just happened to be thinking about the Gap for no really good reason. I spend most of my time desperately trying to avoid the mall (no mean feat when you live in Orange County), so for the most part I lead a relatively Gap-free existence. But when I have walked by the Kids Gap, or whatever it's called, one emotionally scarring feature has leapt out at me: faceless child mannequins.

If you are going to display clothes on a mannequin, give that mannequin a face! These little nightmares look like they're going to animate in the middle of the night (as we all learned mannequins do in the replendent smash hit movie, Mannequin) and spend the next six hours or so running into walls. Actually, come to think of it, faceless child mannequins in that circumstance would probably be a lot less threatening than fully-faced child mannequins.

Here's what I'm really saying: Mannequins are creepy! I think anyone who didn't get a chill from those glowing plastic people should worry about their tolerance for such things.

Also for your enjoyment: faceless heads!

This weekend I visited the Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor, where they have a little display on how the ship was used during World War II. They had some pretty eerie mannequins too. They looked like the really heavy-looking, badly painted mannequins I remember from when I was a little kid. Maybe they got them at a discount when Mervyn's decided to modernize their displays or something, because all of the scenes would depict, say, a young recruit from Iowa manning an anti-aircraft gun, but because of these old-school mannequins, all I could think of was polo shirts and penny loafers. And consistently, they were posed in positions that made them look like they were sauntering into the boardroom for a big meeting instead of defending a really really huge ship against Jurgen Prochnow and his minions out there somewhere in a U-Boat.

Oh well. Those were different times, I guess.