Applebees serves more food to more people than the U.N. The motto of "Neighborhood Bar and Grill" is the epitome of American glocalization and globalization, as every neighborhood moves to become the same.

When I read about an editor in a local paper feeling guilty for taking his son to Applebees, I began to remember my own experiences at restaurants such as Denny's and TGI Friday's. I remember always coloring the little clown they gave me to placate me, looking down the menu and ordering the cheeseburger anyway.


Chains such as Applebees use this time of undivided attention to advertise childrens toys d movies. When I went to the Applebees within walking distance of me (right in my neighborhood!) they were advertising for "Happily N'ever After," yet another fractured fairy tale.




What I was going to do originally was a self defense coloring book for children - but I couldn't figure out more than 4 or 5 moves that a Krav Maga instructor was comfortable letting a child do, so I decided not to be a detriment to society. I still liked the combination of these pictures though:





I took them into Photoshop and rotoscoped them so that they would look like this:





I knew at this point that instead of a coloring book, I could use one of the coloring / advertising pamphlets from a chain restaurant like Applebees to make the same point.


So I went to my wonderful tech support job, usurped the scanner, and was able to take these scans at an ultra high resolution:







I used a combination of the Clone Stamp Tool, Vanishing Point, the Patch Tool and the Healing Brush to edit out the "safe" elements of the entire book (save for the "Witch-Tac-Toe") to make a blank for me to play with.





I just kinda vented after that. I criticized everyone from Jerry Falwell to the FBI to Lindsey Lohan. I then took the pages apart (because it was a booklet, afterall) and rearranged them into the order in which the printer would have had. The original plan would have been to make a hundred of these and drop them off at Applebees, but the cost of the copies was prohibitively expensive. The finished shots looked like this: