Films

The boy got straight A's this last trimester/quarter in school - actually, in the parlance of our modern world, it should be "the boy got straight one's this last trimester/quarter in school." So Cindy and I took him to see a movie last night (it was free popcorn night as well, and everytime we hit that, I eat enough popcorn to feel ill for at least the next 12 hours). What did we see?

FF4 - ROTSS

I wasn't a big fan of the Fantastic Four as a kid - but I like these movies. They're pretty goofy, and light on story, but that's sort of what I expect from a movie based on a comic book. A good 90 minutes of entertainment is great - I can't help but think of all the utter crap that has been released as adaptations of comics and video games whenever I read a negative review of an entertaining flick like this.

Anyhow. Spoiler - The Fantastic Four do not allow Galactus to consume the planet. And Jessica Alba looks weird in this one - I don't know if it was funky tinted contacts, the odd wig, or the makeup they had on her, possible drug use, or what, but, it was weird to the point of distracting. Like "That person has devil eyes" distracting. Also, they manage to pull out that stupid hover car that I do remember from the comics. And while it's definitely more StarWars-ey than it was in the comics, that has still got to be one of the worst superhero methods of perambulation ever devised. What a hokey, hokey vehicle!

Bryan, go see the movie. I think you'll like it - thumbs up from me.

Second. I wasn't too excited when I first heard that the Transformers was being brought to the big screen - until I saw that preview about a month ago, now I'm way excited. In related, updating-our-childhood news, I just heard Spike Jonze - who usually makes watchable stuff, is adapting "Where The Wild Things Are," and there's already a still from the movie released..And...Tell me this doesn't look way, way awesome:

Blogging Again?

With the warmer weather, and a few interesting things occuring on the internets, my blog-mind™ has been a virtual hive of activity. Here's a few more pictures, we'll see if I bother captioning them, you stupids.

And we line up for a line out. For those not in the know - a line out occurs when a ball goes out of play during a match. The team who didn't kick (or did kick if it's following a penalty) gets to throw the ball in. It has to go down the tunnel, but the throwing team gets a tactical advantage in deciding how far it gets thrown. Lanky guys like me get to jump - and be lifted, sometimes by our testes - into the air and snag that bad boy. This particular match, our line outs were shit. But this last weekend, against some pretty good teams, I ruled - I think I caught all of ours and stole 4-5 of the other teams' throws. Pat on the back.

Here's Lake Tanganyiki...Or what seemed like it. There aren't really any good East-West Interstates in New England. So you look at the map and try to find the shortest distance. Then, 2/3 of the way through your trip, you realize that the road map in the car has no indication of elevation, so what looks like 50 miles is really about 100 because you're climbing all of these crazy ass hills and mountain passes. At least the mountains back here aren't as tall as those out West, or there's a good chance there'd be some Donner Party-like occurences. This, by the way, is in either New Hampshire or Eastern Vermont.

When you road trip with kids, there inevitably comes a moment when one of the little ones either spills a drink all over themself or manages to urinate twice as much volume as they've ingested all week. I think in this case the kid slamed an entire bottle of Gatorade™ and then proceeded to urinate approximately three times as much liquid out of his body as was in the bottle to begin with. Cute picture though...

The littlest one, enjoying some tummy time. Man, has he been a squawker the last few nights. And I sleep more soundly than Cindy does, so if I'm tired and irritable, it's amazing that she can even function.

Hopefully, Cindy's going to throw a few more pictures of the chillin's up on her blog - probably not today, as she's in Plattsburgh, but go check it out in the next day or so.

Oily? Eeewwwwww!

Tell me that this isn't the funniest, evilest, most disgusting proof that A) Truth is always stranger than fiction and B) We are all, collectively, headed towards hell in a handbasket, with smiles on our faces.

Normally, I don't like linking to strange blogs because I feel that it just adds to the inherent scariness, anonymity, and lack of fact-checking that comprises the vast majority of the internets. But the things I've read about this particular drug (oddly, the name is pronounced "ally") is summed up pretty well here. What I find the most funny is these aren't the side effects - it's how the drug works! That's right - we're so desperate to shed the spare tire that we'd take to shitting ourselves rather than eat right and get off of our fat asses. And the FDA is fine with this. USA! USA! USA!

Wha? Who Come's Up With This Stuff?

Here's something to ponder. Over at this site, you can have your blog "rated" movie style (nod to Pete). Here's mine:

NC-17. Really? Is that from all the titty pictures I constantly post? Or all of the gory pictures of Mafia hits I constantly paste into the front page? No. Here's why:

• shit (7x)
• hell (5x)
• ass (4x)
• shitty (2x)
• crappy (1x)

That's 19 "swears." I've got 214 posts (before this one). That's less that one "swear" (sorry, "crappy?" "ass?" I hear worse than that on daytime TV) for every ten times that I slap some of my meandering aimlessness up here. 0.088785047 "swears" per post. Good job, internet quiz guy.

Funny, funny, prudes of the world...

Just Two Things

This - because it represents everything that could be good in the world:



And this, but you've got to read the criteria to really appreciate (esp. #5 and #8).

I've Been So Bad About Posting, So Here's A Bunch Of Dreck For The Scrapbook.

3/5 of the happy family. I'm actually quite surprised that Connor isn't attempting to smother, bite, kick, or otherwise harm the little one. Really, he's not that bad - he'll even give Desmond a kiss on the forehead if he's crying.

Want to know what's amazing? When Desmond - as I'm sure most babies are - was born, he was pretty red. After a few merconiums (I think "merconium" is a great word. Too bad it means "baby's first excrement") - one in particular, which, pardon for being graphic, looked like black licorice flavored ice cream, due to the bile - he suddenly became pink. Said poo happened all over the little plastic bassonet they had him in in the hospital, and boy did it excite the nurse. Really. She was stoked to see bile poo and told us that he would color up after that. She was right! Licorice flavored ice cream!

The pops and the monkey. At least our baby looks like a little hairless ape, and not like J. Edgar Hoover.

Out for a spring drive a while back, I found this place. Bog River Falls. Everyone else in town knew where it was, but it took a cranky kid (Connor) and a warm spring day for me to find it. My dad and I tried to take Ethan fishing here, but were promptly attacked by swarms of three pound mosquitos and had to call it off early.
The day I took Connor for a drive, we saw some foxes (which I had never seen outside of a zoo before) and some grouse that were out on the side of the road strutting and fanning. Very cool. And! Last night, on the way home from work, a young (or maybe just small - is it a different subspecies out here than what they have out west?) cow moose crossed the road in front of me! Yay!

Ethan prepares for opening night of his role in "Newsies?" I really don't know what's going on in this picture - my mom went with him on a field trip to the Natural History Museum(?) in Blue Mountain Lake.

Gowned up ready for surgery, or, fearing the worst in a scary, disease infested world?
I totally could have grabbed some random guy in the hall and had him go and hold my wife's hand in the surgical suite if blood made me squeamish at all. No one would have known. I was pretty well disguised.
The C-section experience was, this time around, much less nerve wracking. I sort of wanted to stand up at several points and see what it was the doctors were doing down beneath the shrowd, but didn't think it would be a good idea since it was my wife they were slicing open!

Memorial day. Ethan held a banner for a full hour, and I didn't see him fidget much at all. Good job, boy.

Our next president, or what happens if you feed the Mogwai after midnight?

No! Don't smell the...ahh, shit, too late, nevermind.

Fun for the whole family (except for the dog, who may eat your face while you sleep, after a demeaning day in the park...)!