Check it out here.
...Sponge Bob SquarePants Barbie. Alyssa has her very own now, a must-have item.
Wow. What marketing team brought them together? The mind boggles just thinking about it.
It looks like Santa's made through his travels, according to NORAD. My kids flipped over the Santa cam--they loved it.
Drew got little trading cards this week. You know, the ones that come in a pack with bubble gum?
Except that this pack had a little note on the wrapper: "Gum Included Not For Human Consumption."
It smelled like petroleum, too. Does this make any sense? It must be to satisfy a legal requirement or something. I guess.
Before Saddam was captured, I think Bush didn't have much of a slim chance for re-election. Even one of my (very?) Republican friends said "I was glad there was a Republican in office when September 11 happened, but I wouldn't want him re-elected."
So now Saddam is captured and a week later, I ask "Did this help the President's chance for re-election? Or didn't it really make a difference?"
If you haven't already explored the Secret Diaries of the Fellowship link in the post I made a few days ago, you should probably know it gets, um, somewhat suggestive. That's what I get for posting a link before I read it all the way through.
I still thought it was pretty funny; that stuff doesn't really bother me (actually, physical smack-em-up humor like the Three Stooges is what bothers me--I just see people getting hit, nothing funny at all about that). But some of you may not think it's all that funny. Cuidado, or whatever they say in Spanish (my wife has despaired of teaching me Spanish, as I speak it intermixed with broken high school French).
Hmmm. I have a post on my blog (just a few minutes ago) that says "reading this on my phone in asia looks great dave!"
I have to assume this is my brother Joe, who is my only Pacific Rim reader (by now, perhaps my only reader!).
Pretty cool, Joe. I wonder what phone you have now that's browsing the web? By the way, have a Merry Christmas (or happy holiday, or happy whichever holiday the Chamorro celebrate--hope I spelled that right). Stay out of the Philippines! I've heard there are some (literally) killer mudslides there.
You may have heard of the Wilhelm scream, a sound effect of a man screaming that's been repeated in movies since its origination in the '50s. It's not a kind of scream; it's the actual recorded scream, the same sound bite that's appeared in a number of movies over the past fifty years.
NPR has a current story on the scream--check it out here.
I've heard the Wilhelm in the Lord of the Ring movies, too. I haven't heard it yet in The Fellowship of the Ring, but I bet it's there. In The Two Towers, the scream happens a couple of minutes into the Battle of Helm's Deep as a soldier falls from the wall. In The Return of the King the scream happens when **SPOILER ALERT--SPOILER ALERT** Legolas is crawling on the giant elephant and knocks an enemy soldier off. **END SPOILER ALERT**
It's a fun thing to look for-- you can Google it here, or see a nice quick rundown with a sound sample here. You can find a video montage of the scream at the bottom of the article on this page (48 MB video and smaller 27MB video).
Thanks to Bridget and Tony, who sat behind us at the King of Prussia Trilogy Tuesday triple screening:
The Secret Diaries of the Fellowship
I woke up yesterday and after running errands decided to watch Return of the King a second time. It was much better than the first time. the night before, I'd just been through 7 hours of movie already. I was also hearing book dialogue in my head during ROTK and being annoyed whenever the movie dialogue varied, however slightly.
The second time, I just saw it as a movie. Everything flowed. I highly recommend it.
It's four am, and I just got back from the Lord of the Rings Triple showing. It was great. As is my way, I decided to drive home from the theatre in King of Prussia in the middle of the night. I was pumped up from the movies all the way back, but now I admit I'm a little tired. More later...
One note, though. Did the women in the audience at every nationwide showing tonight go crazy every time Orlando Bloom (Legolas) showed up on screen? They sure did in KoP.
Mommy: Alyssa has a stuffed nose still.
Daddy: We should give her some Sudafed. Didn't we give her some last night?
Alyssa (matter of fact): No--I told you to, but you both just ignored me.
Daddy: No we didn't. When did you say that?
Alyssa: Oh , sure you did. I told both of you and you just didn't listen to me at all. Nope, not at all.
Mommy: I don't remember you asking me about that, Alyssa.
Alyssa: Yep. I did. You didn't.
Then our daughter laughs at us in a "whatever" attitude. As old as she is, though, she can't drive a car yet, at least. I know because she told me. "No, Daddy. You drive the car, not me. Let's go--stop stalling."
How long can a time-out be for subtleties of attitude? (grin)
I'm going tomorrow to see the triple Lord of the Rings showing in a day completely different from The Two Towers a year ago.
Last year I drove to the premiere of TTT aware that I'd be traveling to Michigan the following morning to get to my grandmother's funeral. It was to be a 12 hour drive one way, which turned into a plane ride thanks to my dad.
Which turned into a bumped connection in Chicago, which turned into a 300 mile drive in a rental car from Chicago to Pinconning (near Saginaw). And then a 300 mile race back the next day in blinding snow to turn the rental car in within the 24 hour deadline. And then a flight back to Philly to get to my car so I could drive 2 more hours home to Etown.
All on the day that Trent Lott's career unraveled, weirdly enough.
This year, all I have to worry about is stretching my feet in between movies. Bliss.
Check it out here.
Can you see how it works? It took me once or twice to see how the "magic" happens.
I have two words for you:
Doctor Octopus.
Decorating the Christmas tree; Alyssa's appraisal:
Alyssa: The top of our tree looks like a cactus, Daddy. No, really. A cactus.
Maybe we should think of a new tree motif this year. Southwestern Christmas with Santa in shorts and a T-shirt.
Geekdom over Lord of the Rings--here's an illustration of my point. I showed the guys at work the Return of the King preview today and I was complaining about a mispronunciation on the part of the executive producer.
Me: See? He said "Sore-on" when it's "Sour-on." Bad.
Mike: So what?
Me: It's not the correct pronunciation.
Mike: How do you know?
Me: What?
Mike: Seriously, where is there any pronunciation guide? Did Tolkien write a pronunciation guide and include it in the book? (Laughs)
Me: Yes.
Mike: What?
Me: Yes, he did. It's in Appendix C or E--I think it's in Appendix E.
(Mike, Brad, and Dan make murmurings about my complete and utter geekdom)
The sad thing is, it's just the tip of the iceberg. I admit it here first: when I was sixteen, I started a trivia book on Lord of the Rings.
It feels good to come clean. Maybe there's a twelve step program somewhere I can join. Or a D&D game I can join, anyway.
I've been trying to catch up on sleep and eat a little better to recharge for next week's Lord of the Rings marathon. I've fallen off the wagon with carbs in the last few weeks and I really feel it. Energy, outlook, carb addiction--it really makes a difference for the worse.
So I feel better now, but I had some really bad dreams last night. I kept dreaming that they cancelled the show next week. This is a once in a lifetime event--all three Lord of the Rings movies back to back. I've been trying to avoid thinking about it, but it's too late now. I watched the Return of the King preview on The Two Towers DVD last night and I got chills. I'm getting really psyched--I know this is all I'll be thinking about for the next six days. Cut me some slack; I read this book when I was twelve, seven of my friends bought me the red leatherbound edition of LOTR when I was fifteen, and I've read it backwards and forwards for almost thirty years. I confess my total geekdom.
Man, writing this post only passed fifteen minutes. HOW WILL I EVER LAST THE NEXT SIX DAYS?!
From an interview with Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer:
"So you are confident that humanity will survive the current deluge of information?
Undoubtedly. There are many who are genuinely alarmed by the immense amount of information available to us through the Internet, television and other media. To them, I can offer little consolation other than to suggest that they put themselves in the place of their ancestors at the time the printing press was invented. ‘My God,’ they cried, ‘now there could be as many as a thousand books. How will we ever read them all?"
From Neil Gaiman's Journal, a question from a nascent writer:
"My professor for comic book scripting told me once that it is impossible to listen to music and write at the same time."
Neil replies:
"What an odd thing to tell people.
I’m sure it’s true for him, mind you, but deciding that it’s true for the rest of the world is a leap of faith I wouldn’t have made, much like deciding that everyone in the world needs to write using your lucky brand of pen or it won’t be any good."
I do find that occasionally it's hard to write with music playing, but it's certainly not a rule of thumb for me.
So...Drew was talking at dinner about how he watched the end of Almost Famous with me the other day. He proudly answered Denise's immediate question with "there was no violence in the movie, Mommy." I felt obligated to mention that there was a bad word in the movie, but Drew said "Don't worry Mommy, I didn't learn it!" He didn't remember it, actually.
Which put me in mind of a story I then told the kids. When I was little, four or five years old, I came back home to my dad after playing with Johnny Pritchard down the street. I revealed to my dad that Johnny had told me a bad word.
"What was it, David?"
"Daddy, it was a very bad word, I think. I can't say it."
"No, tell me, David. What was the word?"
"OK--it was f*&%!"
I saw the shocked look in my dad's eyes almost (but not quite) in time to avoid the loud slap. My head wasn't ringing, but blank surprise would be a good description of my own reaction.
"DAVID! Don't ever say that word again!"
I think I learned that day that it's not always wise to always give your parents what they ask for. (grin)
I was skimming the Classmates.com message boards for my old hometown and I came across a thread regarding Munchkinville.
Munchkinville? What the heck is that? It sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. A place in Ridley where the houses were munchkin-sized? Where was this all the time I was growing up?
So I asked my family and had the answer immediately. Munchkinville was a lane behind the houses across the street from me on Swarthmore Avenue. It was an alley with small houses, but the odd thing was that the doors and windows were very small; hobbit-sized, in fact. I walked down the alley once, but I'd forgotten all about it. My father told me that these houses had been built long ago as small vacation cottages for people from Philadelphia. My brother told me that he was in front of the houses once talking about them and a woman came out of a munchkin house yelling at him. "Normal people live here! Go away!"
Munchkinville is gone now, all but a few of the houses, and they have normal doors and windows. Here's to a unique architectural and historical landmark.
I drove my mom to the Philly airport on Sunday to take her flight back home. As we motored through the Departures lane, I saw a section of the airport made of tan brick with a turqoise control tower. It was the original airport from way back in the '60s. It looks strange, surrounded by the white concrete of the current airport.
I remember that my dad once said that all the original airport needed in the '60s was carpeting. It had red brick floors back then. They added the carpet, but they didn't stop there. They never stopped at all. They kept adding, and adding, and adding. I've never seen a structure that grew like this airport--it just swelled piece by piece until it became the huge behemoth that you see now.
Even the terminals speak to the piecemeal construction of this complex. The A terminal was the last to be built, years after terminals B through E. After it was finished, it still wasn't enough, and they had to add a terminal before A. What do you call the letter before A? Well, in Philly they call it terminal A-East and now terminal A-West. Wow. I realize that it's one of the largest airports around, but the thing has become massively unwieldy.
Here's another weird fact. If you work in the part of the airport that's in Philadelphia, you have city wage tax taken from your pay--three and a half percent or so. However, if your employer is in the part of the airport that's in Delaware County, you have no city wage tax--it's almost like a 3.5 percent raise (if you look at the bright side).