If I have time...

It's interesting to me how kids view adults. When I was a kid, I assumed that being an adult was great because you didn't have to go to school, you got to drive a car and you could buy whatever you wanted. Julia seems to have a similar view. Lately, she's lamenting being a kid and wishes to be an adult for some of the same reasons. She's just started Kindergarten and fondly remembers the carefree days of Pre-school when it was learn for a few hours in the morning and play all afternoon instead of the learn all day stuff she's now subjected to.

Before Christmas, Laura and Julia gave Julia's kindergarten teacher a Christmas gift, which included a candle holder of some sort.

I was unpacking Julia's backpack a few days ago and came across a Thank You card. I opened the card and read it to Julia. It was a card from her teacher thanking her for the gift.

As we were getting ready for bed, Julia walked into the bathroom behind me chuckling to herself.

I asked, "What's so funny?"

She said, "Adults like candles a lot don't they?"

I said, "Well, women adults like candles a lot. Men like other things. Do you like candles?"

"Ya," she said.

I should point out that Julia has taken to saying "Yeah" like she was born in Minnesota for the last several years. Her pre-school teachers tried to rid her of that habit, but with little luck.

"Do you think you'll like candles when you're an adult," I asked.

"If I have time," she said.

I paused a second and asked, "What do you mean: 'If I have time.'? Why wouldn't you have time?"

"Because I'll be carrying babies around!" she said in a 'Isn't it obvious?' way.

Laura and I laughed about that one. She seems to think that being a Mom means that she'll have no time for her kids. Keep in mind, she's told me on several occasions that she doesn't want kids.

Julia also has a semi-distorted view of vitamins and medicines, too.

I read somewhere that kids don't get enough Omega-3 since Americans don't eat as much fish. So I decided to give Julia Omega-3 supplements for kids.

At first, I was using a brand that tasted like oranges, but this new one I got, while having a lot more Omega-3 than the other brand, is very squishy and weird tasting. Julia tried one and then gave me a look that screamed, "Are you kidding me?"

I tried one, too and did my best not to look disgusted by the taste. I swallowed and said, "Oh well, they don't taste that good, but they have a lot more brain food in there than the other brand did."

I had told Julia that the stuff was brain food so she wouldn't ask what it is. I'm sure she'd freak if she knew that it was taken from extracted algae and anchovies.

The next night I gave her two of the new ones. She grabbed them and started to eat one.

"Take two of them?" Julia asked.

I said, "Yes. That's what the bottle says."

"I better not take four then."

"Why?"

She said with a wry voice, "Otherwise, I'll be a genius."

"Oh." I said trying not to laugh.

.....................

Julia likes to gab a lot in her kindergarten class room. If you talk or are misbehaving, the teacher will pull one of three crayons on their desk. The first warning is your green crayon, like the 'Go' light on a stop light. The second warning is the yellow crayon like the 'Caution' light. The third and last warning that gets you sent to the principal's office is the red crayon.

The first week back from winter vacation, Julia would have at least one crayon pulled a day. One day, she hung her head as she walked into the house from the bus because she had two crayons pulled. Seeing a trend, we challenged Julia to not get crayons pulled on a Friday. If she did, we'd do something fun. Friday afternoon, she waltzed into the house and proudly proclaimed that she did not get a crayon pulled.

That Saturday night, I was reading a book to Julia called 'Cheater Pants' from the Junie B. Jones series of kid books. In the books, Junie B. is a too-smart-for-her-own-good first grader who bends the rules as she interprets them. In 'Cheater Pants', she forgets to do her homework, so she copies off a classmate that left hers out while she was away from her desk. Junie B. is caught because it was an essay about what you did that weekend. Of course, hers perfectly matched the girl she copied from. Junie B. tries to explain that she was only copying homework and not a test, so it was okay. She didn't realize that she was doing something wrong.

We went upstairs to get Julia ready for bed. As I was giving her vitamins and some allergy medicine, Julia asked if it was lying if you got in trouble in class, but didn't tell us about it.

I said, "It depends on what it is. Why? What happened."

Julia nonchalantly said, "Well, you said that if I didn't get any crayons pulled that I wouldn't be in trouble. I didn't get in trouble with the teacher. She yelled at me once, but she did NOT (throws her arms sideways for emphasis) pull any crayons."

I looked at her surprised and said, "Oh really!" with a tone of surprise and accusation touched with a little bit of sarcasm.

"What did you do to get yelled at?"

"Umm... Nothing." Julia said with a quiet smile.

"Julia... You brought it up. Just tell me."

Julia sighed. "She was yelling at me to be quiet, but she's always yelling!" Julia raised her hands in frustration at this.

All I can say is that it's going to be a challenge to stay on my toes as Julia gets older...

The Bee Movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Happy Feet...

Introductions aren't my strongest suit, so let's just say that I had ideas to talk about three different kids movies, but couldn't think of compelling reasons to focus on just one, so I decided to meld them all into one story. That and I had a few of them partly written and was too lazy to finish.

........................

One Friday, Julia and I were on our own. Laura was out of town visiting a friend so I promised Julia that we would see the new movie, The Bee Movie.



We saw the 5:00 showing at the local theater here. Julia was pretty excited to see it. After all, if you've been watching television, it would have been really hard to miss the advertising for The Bee Movie. They were on for the two months before it came out non-stop on the kid channels.

We get to the theater and we go to buy popcorn. Julia really loves popcorn, so we ended up sharing a large popcorn.

Inside the theater, Julia decided that we're going to sit at the very top of the theater so that "we can see better." I tried to tell her that if we sat a few rows closer, we'd see it even better, but she had her heart set on the top row. Once you get Julia's mind set on something, it's hard to change it.

The previews were going and we're eating our popcorn. Julia was holding the huge bag on her lap. After a few minutes, she pulled the popcorn away from me.

I exclaimed in a loud whisper, "Hey! Bring back the popcorn!"

Julia defiantly said, "No, we're saving it for the start of the movie."

I tried to reach across her to get more popcorn.

She pulled away. After a few seconds, she put the bag back on her lap. I reached again. She slapped my hand! I reached again. She slapped my hand again!

I exclaimed, "Hey!"

She said again, "No! We're saving it for the start of the movie!"

I looked at her and then my watch. It's only a few minutes before the movie was supposed to start. I said, "Fine."

I sat there waiting, but I still felt hungry as I had not eaten yet. I looked over at Julia periodically. She was just sitting there watching the trailers, but then I noticed that she was putting popcorn into her mouth every 10 seconds or so.

I said, "Julia, I thought we were saving the popcorn."

She stopped eating for a minute. Then she began again.

I said again, "Julia, I thought we were saving the popcorn."

She stopped eating for yet another minute. Then she began eating the popcorn yet again.

I exclaimed, "Julia! Stop eating!"

She didn't stop, so I grabbed the bag. She slapped my hand again. This time, I moved close to her face and I said in a low voice, "Julia. This is ridiculous. I paid for the popcorn, and I'm going to eat it if I want to. Otherwise, I'm going to take this popcorn, throw it away and you'll get none. On top of that, you'll be grounded. Is that what you want? Besides, we can get a refill on the popcorn if we run out, remember?"

She looked at me for a second as if she was trying to figure out how serious I was. I think she got the message. Without sighing, she gave me the popcorn bag. I proceeded to eat.

Ahh... kids, aren't they precious? I'm sure years later she'll be convinced by her therapists that all of her problems in life can be traced back to the time when she tried to conserve her popcorn for the movie, but I ate it anyway. She'll come home one Christmas and yell, "You bastard! You ate my popcorn!"

So back to The Bee Movie...

The Bee Movie was written by Jerry Seinfeld, who coincidentally starred in the show Seinfeld. In The Bee Movie, Seinfeld plays the roll of Barry B. Benson, a young bee who's just graduated from school and excited to pick his new career. He gets freaked out that he'll get stuck in his career choice until he dies. After all, he hasn't seen anything out of the outside world. While flying with the pollen jockeys, the bees that collect and spread pollen, he gets lost in the big city. From there, he meets a florist, who he falls in love with. There are some funny scenes with her jealous human boyfriend and his dealing with the human world.

I don't really remember a lot about how the movie's plot goes, but it somehow moves to bees suing the human race for harvesting their honey without permission.

I fell asleep a few times during the courtroom scenes in the movie, which should give you an indication on how much I liked this movie. All in all, it was okay. It started out pretty good with lots of bee puns and humor that adults could appreciate. I just thought it dragged a little.

........................

Another movie we saw recently was the new movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks. As with every beloved franchise from our youth, they have to remake it into a cartoon, 3-D animated film or combination action and 3-D animated film. This is the latter.



The movie centers around a guy named Dave, like the guy from the original song (played by Jason Lee). He's a song writer, but not a very successful one. He plays his demo tape to his friend, Ian (played by David Cross), who is a record executive of some sort, or maybe he's an agent. Ian rejects it and tells him to find something new, so Dave does when he inadvertently becomes the guardian of three chipmunks who can sing and talk. How does one acquire three talking chipmunks you may ask? Well, if you are in the process of leaving a record company's lobby with a stolen muffin basket, it's possible that three talking chipmunks will jump in after their tree is cut down and erected as a Christmas tree in the lobby of said record company.

They introduce themselves to Dave, he freaks out, throws them out, they manage to get back in, and he blackmails them to sing his songs for free room and board. He throws them out again for ruining his dinner date with the girl next door, who happens to look like a super model (played by Cameron Richardson, who curiously enough played a teen supermodel on the show House, when she was about 24 years old). The chipmunks high tail it over to Ian's house without knowing who Ian is, what he does or where he lives. They sing for him the Christmas song and he proclaims them new artists on the record label!

Apparently, it's possible to record, produce and release a Christmas song sung by Chipmunks not only overnight, but so fast that when Dave is in the grocery store the next day, he hears the song on the loud speaker.

Fame comes to the chipmunks. Of course, Ian starts to wedge himself between Dave and the chipmunks, Dave loses the chipmunks, chipmunks miss Dave, Dave misses the chipmunks, Dave wants the chipmunks back, Ian won't let the Chipmunks go, yadda yadda yadda... the Chipmunks are back with Dave.

I left the movie twice to get a refill of popcorn and to go to the bathroom. Curiously enough, I didn't seem to miss anything. I even took my time. This should tell you that I didn't think much of this movie.

I joked with Laura when I came back the second time, "What did I miss?"

She rolled her eyes and said, "Nothing."

The movie was okay, but lacked a clever plot or jokes that weren't derived from trashing an apartment or chipmunk bodily functions.

The one interesting thing to me was the phone-it-in performance by David Cross, who has a dual career of corny movie actor and hipster comedian. You could tell that he was winking at the camera the whole time. Hey, I understand. If I was bit player actor, I'd probably be happy for any role that came my way, too.

One thing I'm getting tired of in these movies are the uses of the same plot device of two parties getting together, then one party goes away, which the other party realizes they were meant to be with the other all along. It's been used over and over with these films. Memo to Hollywood: Can't we just have a remake of a beloved pop culture icon(s) that involves a different plot device?

............

The next movie has been out for a while, but I'm finally around to reviewing it. It's called 'Happy Feet' and it's a movie about a penguin that tap dances instead of singing, which I guess most penguins do... This month, it's back on HBO and because it's also available in our On Demand section, we get to see it whenever Julia wants to see it. Yay!!!!



The movie centers around a penguin named Mumble. From the start, Mumble is different from the other penguins because he doesn't have a singing voice. Apparently, penguins not only sing, but they sing various versions of popular songs that include, "Heartbreak Hotel", "Somebody to Love", "Kiss", "Broken Wings", etc. It's like watching 'Moulin Rouge' with penguins. Curiously enough, they both star Nicole Kidman.

Watching this movie or even listening in the background to this movie makes me want to shove pencils in my eyes and ears. The butchering of songs is bad enough, but then it takes a turn for the worse by the two voices that Robin Williams provides for this movie. First off, he provides the voice of the sassy narrator, who turns out to be the character of Lovelace, the sassy love doctor, which he reads kind of like a grizzled Morgan Freeman meets Barry White. Then we hear him again as Ramon, the sassy Hispanic sounding penguin that Mumble befriends. For some reason, the writers of this movie felt the need to have the smaller penguins that Mumble encounters voiced like they came across the border.

The segments with Robin Williams drive me crazy because I personally can't stand him anymore. There was a time when I really liked Robin Williams. My brother and I thought that he was hysterical, and we'd see every movie that he was in. After a while, you start to notice that he's just doing the same voices whenever he's in a movie or appearing on a show. His list of characters include the sassy John Wayne, the sassy gay guy, the sassy southerner, the sassy Hispanic, the sassy preacher, the sassy cop, the sassy kid or the sassy grandma. I'm sure I've forgotten one. It wasn't so bad in the movie 'Robots' when he played Bender, the sassy, kleptomaniac robot made of spare parts, but it was definitely restrained. He's much better in movies when he's restrained like his roles in Awakenings and Good Will Hunting.

Another thing that drives me crazy about Happy Feet is the non-stop use of music for the sake of plot. You see the plot revolves around Mumble being an outsider because he can't sing like the other penguins. Because of this, he's kind of an outcast due to his crazy dancing that he does instead.

Because the plot, voices and music drive me up the wall, I'll admit that I'm not sure what happens in the middle of the movie. I do know that Mumble loves a girl named Gloria, he can't sing, he's shunned and explores a lot because of it, which is where it's discovered that fish are disappearing. Where it gets really weird is when Mumble and others try to figure out what happened to all the fish. In a very weird turn, Mumble is captured and placed in a zoo in which he faces real actors. He's depressed because he's away from his family and Gloria, the girl penguin he likes. He starts to tap dance one day, people notice and suddenly it turns into a save the world by dancing sequence. Mumble appears back home (with a tracking device on his back) and convinces the penguins to dance to bring back the fish. They do and the humans watching are astounded. It ends with real actors yelling at each other about how they must save the penguins!

It's a very weird movie, and I can't believe it got the good reviews it got. Julia seems to love it though, which I guess is the whole point...

So... How was your Christmas?

So... how was your Christmas?

Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year. I think it was because we were growing up in a big household of five kids that there was a lot of Christmas spirit to go around. We would have fun helping decorate the Christmas tree, sorting through the presents under the tree to see what boxes were for who, trying to guess what our Mom and Dad gave us, watching the various Christmas specials on television, singing the Christmas carols at school, preparing for the Christmas pageant, and, of course, the culmination of all those things with winter break and the opening of presents.

As I've grown older, I've noticed that my Christmas spirit has diminished a lot. I think it's because as an adult, you're faced with the realities of Christmas that you didn't have to deal with as a kid. There are bills to pay, jobs to go to, presents to shop for, crowds to face, relatives to face, rough weather to drive through, snow to shovel, trees to set up, trees to decorate, lights to hang up and a bunch of other stuff that seems to squeeze all the Christmas out of Christmas if you're not careful.

I personally dread the coming of Christmas because I know it's going to be hours of me stringing lights outside in the cold wind while trying not to kill myself on a rickety ladder. I'm deathly afraid of heights, so it's an adventure when I have to climb up to my roof to get the lights strung off the gutters. What's worse this year is that the house we have now has rather steep roof angles. My old house was fine because the roof wasn't that steep, and I had no problem navigating the roof, but the new house is damn scary. Last year, I attempted to string lights across the front of the house over my ultra-high peak above my garage and just couldn't make it lest I succumb to the fear and cry like a little girl. So I asked my neighbor to do it, which he did. This year, he wasn't around so I had to figure out another way to get the lights across my triangular peaked roof above my garage. I bought some roof hangers that will slide under shingles or hang on a gutter. The hangers have a hole in them so you can screw a broom handle into it, hang it on the roof and then unscrew the broom handle. This process allows you hang without having to get on the roof. Unfortunately for me, even with the broom handle and my ladder, the roof peak over my garage was still way too high. Using that noggin I was born with, I went in McGuyver mode and fashioned an ultra long broom handle by connecting two long pieces of my roof rake handle onto the end of a broom handle that I broke. I then used that 18-foot long pole to fasten the lights to the roof peak. It took a long time, but I managed to get all the lights up without setting one foot on the roof. Getting them down without breaking them is going to be fun, though.

I hear Christmas songs all winter, but still fail to feel the full-on Christmas spirit. Even when I worked at my last job, where they piped in Christmas muzac right after Thanksgiving until New Years Day, I couldn't get into the Christmas spirit. This year was worse because I reminded of how much I hate Mannheim Steamroller, the Chip Davis-led group that has churned out New Age versions of Christmas classics that sound like they were squeezed through a cheesy keyboard. This year, Mannheim Steamroller has a new CD out. Every day, I had to pass a huge billboard on the way to work for the new CD. The billboard has Chip's little daughter dressed as an angel and holding the new CD. The billboard reads, “Won't you buy my Daddy's new CD?”

Now I'm all for cute kids, but only as long as they are mine. This billboard ticked me off a little bit because Chip is pimping out his daughter to sell his new CD (like he needs the money) and he's implying that his daughter is so cute that she should be an angel in heaven. She is a cute kid, but lets not go overboard, Chip. According to his website, he's sold over 36 million albums. Surely he doesn't need to exploit his daughter to sell more copies and his billboard seems to demand that you buy it so he can get more money. Besides, Chip has been responsible for some pretty awful music, which includes the Husker broadcast theme song that so originally goes, “Hussskerrrrs!” followed by dee doo dee doo dee doo keyboards repeated ad nausea.

Even Christmas presents are a bit of a hassle. Every year, I'm asked what I want for Christmas and have trouble coming up with a list. The problem with being an adult is that if you really want something bad enough, you will buy it because you have the money and the will to do it. If you're a kid, you're at the mercy of Santa and assorted gift givers for the things that you really wanted. So I sometimes have to hold back on my purchases so that I have a list of things people can give me.

Usually, my lists encompass things that I'd like to have, but probably wouldn't go buy because they were a little too expensive for a casual purchase or they were things that I'd like to have, but they're not fun enough to buy on my own. There have been years that I've asked for bigger things, but Laura usually groans about that because they aren't fun to buy. One year, I asked for a new CD player for my car. Laura asked, “What kind of Christmas gift is THAT?” in a I-really-don't-want-to-get-you-that kind of tone. I responded, “That's an awesome gift! I'll always think of you when I'm listening to it every day!”, which I did.

So this year, I asked for a paper shredder. I know what you're thinking, “Wow, a paper shredder. What a thoughtful gift for any man.”

I couldn't agree more. I had asked for a paper shredder years ago and got probably the cheapest one from Laura. No matter, it was still a paper shredder. It was a standard one that cut the sheets into long strips. Depending on what you were shredding, it would either shred it or groan to a stop, which then would lead to me digging out pieces of paper from the blades. It wasn't terribly reliable, and it finally died a painful death as we were moving out of our old house. We had spent one night going through our old records and shredding what we didn't want to keep for the move. The shredder progressively started slowing down until it groaned to a halt. After that, it didn't respond. It had moved on to shredder heaven.

I had been meaning to get a new one because I'm always getting at least two pre-approved credit card applications every day in the mail. I had taken to recycling them, but then I saw television reports about thieves going through trash for those applications. I then started tearing them up into pieces, but that's a lot of hassle.

Sure enough, I got my paper shredder and it's pretty nice. It does a cross-cut shred so that it's impossible to piece together anything you shred. Now I'm shredding the shit out of my junk mail, bills and other assorted sensitive documents.

Every year, I give Laura a surprise gift, which is a gift that she never asks for, but I'm sure that she'll like. One year, I gave her a quesadilla maker. Another year, I gave her a bath spa machine. This year, I gave her a pizza stone set.

If there is one thing that Laura loves more than her family it's pizza. She loves it so much that she'd probably marry pizza if she could. I, on the other hand, used to work for a pizza place for over a decade and am so sick of pizza that I could live my whole life without ever eating it again.

I gave her a new stone because we used to have two pizza stones that we used all the time when making pizza (obviously). The first one broke when I pulled it out of the oven and dropped it. The stone had a metal serving rack, and I had made the mistake of pulling it out of the oven without oven mitts on. This led to me screaming and dropping it on the open oven door. Laura was pretty concerned... about her pizza stone being broken. I might have been burned on every finger, but she was pretty pissed about her stone being broke.

That Christmas, I got her a new pizza stone from Dillards. It wasn't as nice as our old one, but it did the job. This one broke, too. Thankfully, it wasn't me that broke it this time. We had used it one night to bake a pizza (go figure). Hours later, we are watching TV in our apartment's living room when we heard a huge explosion in the kitchen. Thinking our stove had somehow turned into a gas stove and blown itself up, I ran into the kitchen to see what the damage was. There on the stove were the shards of the pizza stone.

I learned something that night. If you leave a burner on low on your stove and then place a pizza stone on said burner over a small spot of the stone for over two hours, the concentrated heat of that burner under the stone spot will heat up that spot, but not the rest of the stone and cause the stone to explode. This is probably why they tell you to heat up your oven with the stone inside it, so it warms up gradually. So don't place your stone in a deep freeze and then plunge into the oven on high as it will probably explode.

Julia always seems to get the brunt of the gifts. Every year, I gape in dismay at the mountain of presents 'Santa' bestows up the chosen child. This year was no different. 'Santa' decided that Julia would love a whole horse set complete with three buildings and over a dozen horses. I thought 'Santa' had gone overboard again, but was accused of not being in the Christmas spirit, so I shut up. 'Santa' also gave Julia a Clarice stuffed animal (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's girlfriend) from Build-A-Bear, that chain of evil that dares you to go inside it and leave with nothing lest you feel the wrath of sad eyes when your disappointed child leaves with nothing. Julia had seen a commercial advertising Clarice and Rudolph for Build-A-Bear. Julia really wanted it and 'Santa's' helper (me) suggested to 'Santa' that she would love it.

Christmas morning, Julia exclaimed with delight, “Santa brought me Clarice!” She ogled over the clothes to dress Clarice in. She's been carrying Clarice around since Christmas and redressing her in clothes, so 'Santa's' helper was spot on in his suggestion.

Then we unpacked the horse stuff, put the buildings together and set back to watch the fun. Julia played with them for about an hour and then turned on her Nintendo Gamecube.

Weeks ago, I had bought her a cheap game that was the same price as a rental, which is why I bought it so close to Christmas, called 'Ty the Tasmanian Tiger'. Julia could barely play it, but now three weeks later, she can play it for hours without my help, which is what she did Christmas morning. I muttered to Laura, “Santa could have gotten her some games for the Gamecube.” Laura grumbled in disapproval.

Like her old man, Julia is turning into a gamer. It's taken a while, but I've finally gotten her interested in an activity we both enjoy. She's seen me play and solve several games that are insanely hard, so she knows that her Dad is the 'Man' with 'Mad Skillz' when it comes to playing games. Laura is pretty much useless. She worries that Julia needs to play with her imagination, but I point out that she's improving her eye-to-hand coordination and improving her problem solving skills. Besides, she's well on her way to getting a video game testing job like her Dad had back in 1999.

We are trying to limit the time on the games because, after a while, she starts acting like a addict needing a new fix if you try to take her off the game after she's been playing for too long. She knows that too much will 'rot your brain' and is thankfully on board with the breaks from the game while she's on her vacation.

Speaking of vacation, I've been off for the last two weeks with Julia while she's been on her winter break. At first, this was fun, but now the novelty has worn off. I think we're both ready to go back to work. As much as kids might not admit it, they crave structure and stimulation. Julia seems to be going through some cabin fever. We've had to deal with a few tantrums over the video game, cleaning up, bath time and bed time. That ends on Monday.

She'll be back to the daily grind of wishing school was over. We'll be back to thanking God that it's back so we can be back to some structure. I'll be back wondering where Christmas went and wishing for it to come around again. As much as my spirit has diminished, I'm still wild about the season.