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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

I get dragged to see the Nutcracker ballet...

Two Saturdays ago, I was dragged... check that... was escorting my wife and Julia to the Nutcracker ballet performance at the Orpheum. It was supposed to be a daughter-mother-grandmother show, but Grandma couldn't make it to Omaha. Her excuse was something about an ice storm that supposedly caused Interstate 80 to be closed down for a while. I guess some people just can't handle driving on black ice...

Obviously, I'm kidding. I was, however, looking forward to my several hours of solitude at home while the ladies went to the ballet. When I was informed by my wife that her Mom couldn't make it, I assumed that the show would go on without her and not include me.

"So I'm assuming that you're still going to the show, right?" I asked.

"Well, yeah." Laura said. "I already paid for the tickets."

"So who's going with you instead of your Mom?"

"You are!" Laura exclaimed.

"Oh, I'M going?" I asked.

"Yes, you are." Laura said matter-of-factly.

"I guess I assumed that you were going to go without me."

"Why would you assume that?" Laura asked.

"Because it's the ballet," I said.

"So?" Laura asked. "You'd think that a liberal like yourself would appreciate the ballet."

Laura always contends that I'm a liberal. I contend that I'm a moderate with liberal leanings. I also contend that Laura only thinks that I'm liberal because we don't always see eye to eye on certain topics, like health care. I'm in favor of universal health care. Laura, on the other hand, seems to hold that conservative line that those people can just go screw themselves if they're stupid enough to not have health insurance. Besides, they should be pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and getting a better job. At least, I think that's the way the conservative line goes.

“I'm a moderate and not a woman,” I said.

I had only seen an actual ballet only one other time, and I knew a little of what to expect. When I was in college, I worked for the catering department of the university. We would cover the intermissions for the performances at the Lied Center. During the Acts, we would either sit around and talking while we waited for intermission, or we could go into a private room and watch the performances behind a glass.

One such performance was for a ballet. I had never seen one before, so I sat down to watch. It was a Western ballet. The dancers were dressed as cowboys, farmers, farmer's wives, fair maidens or ranch hands. I watched with initial interest and then confusion as I couldn't figure out what was going on. There was a lot of prancing and gesturing, but I couldn't figure out the storyline. Someone would attack. Someone would cower. There seemed to be something about a bad guy coming into town.

I muttered, “I have no idea what's going on.”

One of my co-workers, a dance major, informed me of the plot. Something about the loss of innocence, something about passion and something about heroism, among other themes. One little gesture meant something completely different at any time. Maybe I'm not made for this because I was not getting it.

In the end, I had to go see the Nutcracker.

I had never seen the Nutcracker. I do know some of the songs, though. For example, when I was in grade school. One year for the Christmas pageant, we all had paper flowers around our necks and sang a song called, “Song of the Flowers.” Of course, this was actually the instrumental from the Nutcracker called “The Waltz of the Flowers.” It's very recognizable to me because it was featured in the movie “Caddyshack” during the swimming pool scene shortly before someone mistakes a Baby Ruth candy bar for a piece of poop.

Saturday came and as we went through entrance, the lady that took our tickets looked at me and the frowning expression that was on my face and commented, “Well you look like you're thrilled to be here.”

She laughed and I laughed.

Before we entered the auditorium, we showed our tickets to the lady at the door. She pointed out where the seats were. As we walked by her, I asked her a question.

“How long is this the show?” I asked, trying not to give off a hint that I was asking so I would know how bored I was going to be. It's not just the ballet. I have a hard time staying attentive for anything for very long. Years ago when I was a student, I went to see Les Miserables, and while I liked it, the last hour of the bloated musical was very hard for me to sit still for. Even Spamalot, as much as I liked it, had me looking at my watch during the last 30 minutes.

“90 minutes for Act 1, a 20-minute intermission and 90 minutes for Act 2,” the lady replied.

I thanked her for her time and mentally noted that it wasn't as long as I thought, so I had a chance to get through without squirming. As it turned out, I had a hard time staying awake during Act 1. I had taken a muscle relaxer prior to leaving for the show, and it was starting to kick in. Several times I caught myself nodding off near the end of Act 1. Laura said after the fact that she had heard me snorting a couple of times. She looked over at me to see my eyes half-closed and my head nodding up.

We found our seats in the sixth row. I opened the program and read the synopsis for the Nutcracker. If you've never seen it, the story goes that a big Christmas party is being prepared. The guests arrive and watch some entertainment from dancers. Then presents are given out. The main character, Clara, is given a nutcracker toy. Later that night, she sneaks downstairs to check on her nutcracker. Getting spooked by the dark, she grabs the Nutcracker and falls asleep with him. Then something about a mouse king that for some reason invades the house. The Nutcracker comes to life and leads a small army to fight the mouse king and his mouse soldiers. Just when it looks like the Nutcracker is going to lose, Clara hits the mouse king when her slipper.

Then it gets even weirder as Clara is taken to the Sugar Plum Fairy, who hears how she saved the Nutcracker prince. She is rewarded with a dance celebration. After a series of dance segments, she is taken back home. She wakes up with the Nutcracker back to toy form in her arms.

Ballet isn't my cup of tea but I was mildly impressed by the first act, the Party Scene. The plot was easy to follow, the dances were neat and the scenery was impressive. For me, it started to go downhill when the party ended and the dream sequence started. Some of the performances were interesting, but it seemed like variations of the same thing. Seeing how there is no dialog, but just a lot of facial expressions and lots of gesturing, I was quickly bored.

As much as I was bored, there were several things that distracted me about the second half of the show.

For one, Clara is given a bench to sit on near the back of the stage to take in the show that's being presented for her. Because she is sitting back there for the most part of the second act, all she has to do is to smile, nod, clap after each dance and then smile some more. I was constantly looking back at her to see if she would lapse into a yawn. She didn't, but that didn't stop me for constantly checking to see if she would break character.

Another thing were the men. I was trying to decide which guys were on my team and which guys played for the other team. I thought I had one pegged, the one playing the Nutcracker Prince, but Laura informed me that the guy was married to the lady playing the Sugar Plum Fairy.

I was also distracted by the outfits the guys wore. More specifically, the area below the belt that seemed to show every detail. Now I like seeing a guy's package as much as the next guy, which is very little, but I think if I was ever a ballet dancer that I'd either show some modesty and cover that area a little or stuff it with a sock to enhance that feature. Even Laura admitted that she was distracted by it. I was reminded of the ballet scene in the spy movie parody called “Top Secret” in which Val Kilmer is watching a performance and all of the male dancers have gigantic packages. They are so big that the female dancers can walk across them.

On a tangent, I've noticed that high school wrestling suffers from nearly the same problem. I've seen a few matches and it's pretty obvious that many guys go commando, if you catch my drift. For me, it's hard to take a supposed masculine sport seriously when it involves two guys going commando that take turns hugging and straddling each other. Maybe I notice because I've almost never met a person that wrestles that wasn't a total asshole so I'm looking for excuses to hate them. I've had a few issues with them in the past, but that's another story. But I digress...

I ended up concentrating on the technique of the dancers. For the most part, the dancers were fine, but a few times, I noticed a couple of the men's arms shaking as they were holding and spinning their partner. I also noticed a few flaws in the costuming. One dancer had a small hole in her black leggings, which I noticed every time she appeared on stage.

All in all it was a decent performance, but not my cup of tea.

Our new cat Boris is quite lazy...

A while ago, I wrote about our cat, Moe, who passed away. Moe was Laura's baby, so she was understandably devastated when he died.

We had three cats at that point, two of whom favored me a lot more than they favored Laura. Until a little over a year ago, we had just two cats, Moe and Murphy, who were the same age. Then Laura and Julia wanted a new kitten. I was against it because I didn't think it was necessary. If fact, when Laura and Julia went to pick up the kitten at the Humane Society, the HS people called me to get my permission. I felt very tempted to say that I didn't want a cat, but I relented.

Laura and Julia picked out a female they named, Suzie. Now it's been a good track record that female cats tend to gravitate themselves to me. I told Laura that she should get a male cat because I didn't want her jealous when a female kitten started to favor me. She felt that was ridiculous, so in the end, they got a female kitten.

I had requested that Laura and Julia would be responsible for the kitten so I wouldn't corrupt it. This worked for a few days, but then they got tired of always tending to the kitten, so I got brought into the mix despite my warnings. Sure enough, after a few months, Suzie started to gravitate towards me. Straight out of a cliche'd movie, Laura would be in one chair tapping her leg while exclaiming, "Suzie!". I waited and tapped my lap while also exclaiming Suzie's name. Sure enough, Suzie took off for me. Before long, Suzie was completely corrupted by me and followed me around wherever I went.

So when Moe died, Laura was sad for a bit, but then she was really pissed off because then she had no cats that favored her. It was only heightened when we'd be watching TV in the living room and Suzie would stroll into the room. She bypassed Laura's pleas and jumped into my lap.

Laura seethed, "It's not fair! At least you have two cats that still love you!"

So it was decided that we would get another cat. After several weeks, we went to the Humane Society to pick out our cat. We had been there a few times prior scouting out some cats. Laura had even had a private room session with one of the cats a week prior, an orange tabby they named, Cheddar, but she wasn't sure if he was right. She didn't have her heart set on Cheddar, but she just wanted a cat that liked to cuddle.

We picked one orange tabby cat to look at, but when he was brought into the room, he spent the entire time just wandering and paying no attention to us at all. After a few minutes, I said, "Well, I don't think he's very interested in us."

Laura agreed and they brought in Cheddar. We didn't pick him first because he was a rather scrawny cat. He was eight-months old and had a skinny body and skinny legs.

The Humane Society worker pulled Cheddar out of his cage and he immediately bounded for our private room. Once inside, he jumped up on the bench we were sitting on, put his head on Laura's leg and started purring loudly. She pet him and he responded with even more purring. Over the next 10 minutes, it was obvious that Cheddar was the cat we were taking home. He seemed to love all of us. Laura had a name picked for him: Boris, after Boris Yeltzen (don't ask).

We packed Boris into the cardboard carrier and placed him in my car. Laura had to go back to work. Julia and I started driving home. Boris started to meow loudly. He started to claw frantically at the holes inside the box.

Julia started to yell, "Dad! He's trying to get out!"

I tried reassuring Boris, but he was bound and determined to get out of the cardboard carrier.

"Oh my gosh!" Julia exclaimed, "He's dug a hole in the box! He's going to get out!"

I reached into the backseat and felt the box. Sure enough, there was a hold in the box. I reached a finger into the box to try and stroke Boris' head, but was scratched instead by the whining cat that frantically started resuming his prison break.

I looked around the front of my car and grabbed a CD case from the console. I reached back and said, "Here. Hold this over the hole."

Julia did as instructed. She held the CD over the hole, but Boris kept clawing away at the box. Julia squealed a few times and exclaimed, "This is the weirdest day of my entire life!"

She protested that she couldn't keep Boris out any longer, so I took the CD case and held it over the hole with my right arm stretched to the back seat and my left arm still on the steering wheel. I felt like stopping to calm him down, but I figured that getting him home as fast as possible was the wisest strategy.

Once home, we shut him into our room and shut Murphy and Suzie out. After a few days, we opened the door and let Boris meet the rest of the cats. There was a lot of hissing and chasing for a while, but he quickly won over Suzie since they are around the same age and they became buddies. Murphy still hasn't befriended him. Not that Boris cares.

There are a few things about Boris that we have noticed. While Moe ruled the house like a tyranical king in which he did everything himself and attacked all threats, Boris rules like a lazy emperor.

Boris likes to eat.

He was practically skin and bones when we first brought him home, but he quickly got into a routine of eating. If he doesn't have food, he whines and cries. If he does have food, he whines and cries as if there isn't enough. If I add food to the bowl, you'll often hear a cat sprint downstairs to get to the food and it's always Boris.

Boris is a little demanding.

Besides the food demands, Boris will whine and complain if he doesn't have enough fresh water. He'll sit there and meow in protest of his lack of water. If that doesn't work, he dips his paw into the bowl and starts sloshing the water out of it and all over the floor. Lately, he's just taken to dumping the whole thing over to get me to fill it up with some fresh water. I thought briefly about getting a filtered pet water fountain, but I figured he'd then start complaining if the filter wasn't fresh, so I dropped that idea.

Boris also is demanding of Suzie on getting cleaned. Our old cat, Moe, cleaned his hard-to-reach areas like any other cat by twisting his head around or putting saliva on his paw and rubbing it on his out-of-reach areas. Boris just walks up to Suzie when she's cleaning herself and drops down in front of her. This is her cue to start bathing him. One gets the picture of an old emporer lounging while a bather cleans him.

Boris is an attention whore.

Moe liked his attention, but usually just from us. Boris, on the other hand, prefers his attention givers like doctor's prefer their patients, with a pulse. There hasn't been a person that Boris hasn't prompted for attention.

He's climbed onto the laps of door-to-door salespeople, a water softener representative, a gas company tech and various kids that have come over. He even rolled onto his back when he was chained up outside on Halloween so
the parade of kids could all pet him. He's like the town doorknob: everyone gets a turn.

Now that I have a laptop computer, Boris jets for my lap when I have it on. He must love the warmth that comes off of it because I can't keep him off my lap for too long.

The up side is that he's a friendly cat to everyone, which is also a downside. I've mentioned before that Moe could be very aggressive and attacked people he didn't know (or acted like he was going to). While I counted on Moe to scare away any burglar that might break in, I get the feeling that Boris will just follow the burglar around purring and rubbing against the burglar's leg while the burglar robs us blind.

Boris is incredibly lazy.

I know cats sleep a lot, but Boris has taken it up a notch. He just seems to sleep all the time. Oh sure, he gets up to eat and drink, but then he lies down to do it. As you can see in the pictures here, he lies down down on his side to drink or eat. Granted, he could stand up and stoop over his bowl like any other animal, but that would be asking too much of him. once, I saw him get up from a long nap in his favorite chair, lie down to drink and then fall asleep in mid-drink because it was so much effort to move over from his nap chair to take that drink. He also lies
down to eat.




I'm exaggerating a little. Boris doesn't sleep all the time, but he does spend a large amount of time eating, drinking and getting attention when he isn't asleep.

What I am happy about is that Laura got her wish. Boris is more than willing to lie there and cuddle. To that end, he's a great cat.

Hiding the evidence...

The other night, Julia had one of those 'Oh crap!' moments that every kid goes through. If you've ever accidentally

broke, scratched, ripped, burned, doused, crumbled, or chipped something that you shouldn't have, then you know what

I'm talking about.

For me, there were instances like this when I was a kid when I accidentally knocked the sink off the wall in our basement, which I was playing on at the time. Or it could have been the time I accidentally set fire to the kitchen cabinets when I was 2. There was the time when Bill and I were having a water fight, and I accidentally threw a glass of water all over my Mom's sewing fabrics when Bill got out of the way of the water I had just tossed at him. Pick a year in my life and I'll have an example of an 'Oh crap!' moment.

I was out in the garage cleaning trash out my car. I walked inside and I heard Julia shuffling quickly around the

kitchen. I walked into the kitchen to see the whole floor between the refrigerator and the island covered in water.

Plus, there were shards of glass on the floor.

I asked, "What in the heck happened here!" in a loud voice as I looked over at Julia. She was standing next to the

our deck door with her back to the wall. She was standing in front of something.

"Nothing!" Julia exclaimed nervously.

"Did you break a glass?" I asked.

Julia groaned a little and nervously said, "It was an accident, Dad!"

I looked on the ground. There were a couple of shards of glass on the ground. It looked like glass from the

McDonald's Shrek 3 glass that we had bought this summer. I glanced around. "Where is the rest of the glass?"

Julia hesitated and said, "Umm... It's right here."

She stepped out from in front of a blue storage tub. I walked over to it. Sure enough, there were lots of shards of

glass in the tub.

She said, "I'm really sorry."

I laughed. "Don't worry. I'm not mad. I'm just glad you didn't cut yourself."

She helped me pick up the rest of the glass on the floor and to mop up the water. My phone rang. I answered it. It's

Laura.

"Hello?"

"Uh... What was that?!" Laura asked with a surprise.

"Oh, you heard that, huh?" I asked. I had forgotten that I had called Laura at work and handed Julia the phone

before I went outside.

"Yeah!" Laura said like Elaine would on Seinfeld. "I was talking to her when I heard this loud crash. Julia said,

'MOMMY! I'VE GOT TO GO! I'VE GOT A BIG PROBLEM HERE!' Then she hung up.

I told her what had happened. Julia dropped the glass while she was talking to Laura, hung up, ran to find something to dispose of the glass and started putting the glass in the storage tub. She would have probably attempted to mop up the water herself had I not come in.

It's an almost unavoidable fact of life that your kids are going to break and spill stuff. now I'm just afraid that

she's going to spill onto more expensive things that can't be fixed like a TV or a computer.

More joys of commuting with your spouse...

Driving Adventures Part 2

I mentioned in a previous entry the highs and lows of commuting with my wife, Laura.

One of our favorite shows is one called 'The Amazing Race', which pits teams of 2 against each other in a race around the world. It involves a lot of transportation with cab rides, train rides, plane rides and a lot of personal driving in which one member navigates while the other drives. I often joke with Laura that if we were ever on that show we'd be yelling at each other constantly.

This is often true of us when we have to leave town. Invariably, Laura gets stressed out when we don't leave the house at a certain time. I think she has a problem with my packing at the last possible minute and then throwing everything that I think I might need. This usually means I bring a lot more than I would ever need, but at least I've covered my bases. One of my biggest fears is that I will be driving out of town and a sudden pang will hit me that I've forgotten something important.

Because of this, when we have to leave the house, I usually have to make a few trips inside before we leave. I'll get in the car and then suddenly realize that I don't have my keys, so I run back inside to get them. I'll get back in the car, put the key in the ignition, but then I'll have to run inside because I've forgotten my sunglasses. So I run inside to get them. We're about to leave again. I've started the car and am about to back out, when I realize that I've forgotten my cell phone, so I run back inside to get it. This either ends there or I'll remember that I need to blow out candles, turn off lights, get a drink, go to the bathroom, lock the doors, grab a book I want to read, grab some CDs, grab my music player and other assorted trips inside for something. For some reason... Laura gets annoyed by this. I have no idea why...

So when we're off to work or driving home together, Laura has a few pet peeves in relation to my driving. She suggested a lot of these, so she had some input into this story. Lest you think I am complaining out of spite, my view is that if you can't laugh at these things, then you're on the verge of splitting up with your significant other.

Laura insists that if I am driving and there is a big gap between me and the car in front of me, that I need to close that gap. She'll start to intone, "Why aren't you going faster?", "Can't you go any faster?", "Why are you driving so slow?", "Why are you in this lane?", "Why are people passing us?" or "Jesus, you drive like a grandma!".

In my defense, if the traffic isn't that busy, I'll be sure to close that gap because I can get around the cars. However, if the traffic is wall to wall and the cars in front of me are both neck in neck with no hope of moving to allow more cars to pass, I find it idiotic to accelerate only 50 feet to the car in front of me, only to slow down to the same speed.

I joke that if we ever get into an accident that involves me hitting a car from behind because of her urging to 'get on his ass', that I'm going to blame the whole thing on her.

"Officer, I was obeying the speed limit, but my wife kept yelling at me to go faster and to 'get on' the car in front of me's 'ass'." That's me doing air quotes by the way.

The officer will probably shrug and mutter something like, "Hey buddy, I hear you..."

The ordering of directions doesn't end with on the road danger. If we're in a parking lot, Laura will bark out parking directions, even if it's obvious as hell which spot to take. I'll be driving up a row of cars and spot an empty spot. Laura will yell, "Ooh! There's a spot right there. Right there! (points)."

"Thanks," I'll say. "I couldn't have spotted that on my own."

"No problem," Laura will smugly say.

As if this wasn't bad enough, Julia has gotten into that habit, too. I'll be driving through a parking lot without Laura and Julia will exclaim, "Oooh! Daddy! Right there's a spot!"

So while I'm getting plenty of direction on the road, I am getting no help trying to decide what to eat.

I'll be driving home by myself on a Friday (Laura has that day off) and I'll call her up to see what she wants to eat. The segue here is a little awkward I'll admit, but it does tie into driving as you can see.

Usually, she wants to eat pizza. On a side note, I've never seen a person enjoy pizza more. If she could have her way, she'd eat it 3 or 4 times a week. It's as if she has a pizza maker's blood running through her blood, except she only got the part where the pizza maker just eats them.

Unfortunately for me (and her), I worked at Pizza Hut for about 10 years. During that time, I had every type of pizza imaginable and tasted every ingredient we ever had, which includes anchovies. I worked there part time to supplement my income five days a week. To save money, I would take home a personal pan pizza almost every single day that I worked there. As a result, I've not only had about every combination of pizza that you could imagine, but I've become so unbelievable sick of pizza that I could just about throw up.

Yet on almost every Friday, Laura will want pizza. So then I'll ask, "What do you want?"

She'll answer, "I don't care. Whatever you want."

Then I'll say, "No, it's not what I want. It's what you want."

She'll retort, "You know what I like. Whatever's fine."

To which I'll start to get a little testy, "Just pick something. I don't know what you want."

She'll start to get testy with, "What do you want on the pizza? Just pick something!"

I'll come back with, "You're asking the wrong person! That'd be like me wanting some Chinese food, but then asking you to pick it out for me when I know that you don't like it that much."

"Fine," she'll sigh, "Give me a ham and pineapple."

"Now was that so hard?" I'll ask.

If only Laura would concentrate on what we're going to eat instead of the driving, then maybe I wouldn't be so stressed when I drive home on Fridays.

But I think I realized why Laura and I clash when we drive together. It came to me when we were driving through our neighborhood to pick up Julia after work. Laura turned to me and said, "Jesus, you drive like the slowest f*#$ing grandma driver I've ever seen."

Of course, I pointed out that I was driving through an area heavily populated with kids. I sped up a little and then made noises and gestures as if kids were getting bounced off my car as it plowed through the neighborhood. She laughed.

We clash because when I get up in the morning, I'm pretty wide awake. I'm not one of those people that take two full hours to wake up, like Laura. As a result of this, our morning drives are pretty uneventful. Laura is too busy waking up to notice how I'm driving. But when I pick her up at work in the late afternoon, I'm running on a half-full tank, while Laura seems to be running at full speed. I'm the one that's zoning out while she's the one thinking of the best and fastest way to get home.

Once this past week, we took Laura's new car. She decided to drive on the way there and the way back. Now I think that I've mentioned that having Laura drive is analogous to riding a roller coaster. You're pretty sure you're going to die, but you hope to God that you don't. I said in a previous story that she tails people like she's trying to dry hump the back end of their car. Last week did not disappoint. There were several times when the cars would break and I could have sworn that we were going to hit the car in front of us. I winced and grabbed the little hang down arm on the ceiling. Once or twice, I signed the sign of the cross just to be safe. After a while, I just stared at the ground or out the side. It wasn't as scary that way.

I'm all for her driving. I just need to bring something to distract me from the excitement in front of me.

Julia goes to bed at 1...

Since Julia started Kindergarten, we've sent Julia to bed at 9 pm. For the past several years, it's been at 10 pm, so it's been a bit of an adjustment for her and us.

The other day, I woke Julia up at her usual time, 7:20 am, to get ready for school. I shook her a little bit and she said, "Daddy... I'm tired. I was up until one in the morning."

"You were?" I asked. "What happened? Did you wake up and couldn't get back to sleep?"

"No," she yawned. "I was just up until one in the morning."

I was a little confused about this. She had gone to be a little later than normal, about 9:15 pm, but it wasn't that late that she would be yawning all day.

I don't think too much about it, but then when I picked up Julia from her after-school sitter, the sitter came up to us and said, "Julia's resting on the couch. She said that she was up until one in the morning, and she's very tired."

We walked over to where Julia is resting on the couch. She wasn't asleep, but she was watching TV with a sleepy look on her face.

We told her to get a move on. She got up and I told her, "Julia, you did not go to bed at one in the morning."

Julia said, "Yes, I did. That's why I'm tired."

"What makes you think that you went to be so late?" I asked her.

"That's what it said on the cable box, Dad!" she retorted. "Last night, when I went to bed, it said '1' on the box."

I laughed because now it made sense. Our cable box has a problem every now and then that instead of showing what time it is, it shows the last channel the box was on before it becomes stuck and needs to be rebooted. I've had to do it about 4 times in the last two months. It was stuck on channel 1, so Julia thought the '1' was how late she stayed up.

We smiled at the thought of her yawning and complaining all day long about how tired she was for staying up way too late. Must have learned it from me when I complain about how tired I am on Sunday mornings. (Sniff... They grow up so fast...)