Hitchhiker

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of the greatest books ever, written by the late, great Douglas Adams. It spawned a number of things, including a BBC movie. The book was great, but when it was put into a movie form by the BBC, following the book word for word, it just didn't seem very funny. I guess that's the typical British way, though. (And, yes, I do have this movie in VHS format.) The new movie, coming in April, seems like it will be much more entertaining. Here's the big QT trailer. I can't wait!

By the way, I also use to have an Infocom game that I played on the family's Apple Macintosh 512k. It was one of those great text-based adventure games which made you think that has been replaced by shoot-em-up games that make the mind go numb. Good news, though, the game has been rewritten and is now on the web, in both Java and Flash versions. The Flash version even has pictures, but isn't the cheating a little bit?

The actual guide is even online now...

Teens with weapons!!!

Put down the rubber band and walk away, before anyone get hurts.

Cell Phones & Movies

Stumbled across this today. It's a clever way to encourage people to turn off cell phones during movies.

Harry: The Optimist

Harry seems to always find a silver lining. A few days ago, it was gorgeous here. Sunny, about 75. We decided to load everyone up, including the dog (haven't mentioned her before- I'll have to write about her at some point) and head to the park.

Stephanie played on the playground while the boys played catch (both football and baseball, though not at the same time). By all accounts, everyone had a good time. There was running, smiling, laughing, the joy of being outdoors.

After loading up in the stereotypical family of five minivan and leaving, I asked the kids if they had fun, expecting cheers of joy and gratitude and to be filled with the satisfaction of having shown my kids a good time.

Instead, I heard Harry. "That grass is itchy."

What???

I think everyone agrees that the US is the greatest (and richest) nation on earth, but, somehow, according to some Germans & Austrian, we're to blame for them being caught in the 12/16/2004 tsunami!

My Wife

Have I mentioned that I love my wife? If I ever want to cheer her up (or if any of you readers want her to be your devoted friend), I can buy her some of those candy hearts so popular at Valentine's Day. If I get them on sale after Valentine's Day, it makes her even happier.



The only problem being, of course, that they are not terribly popular at any other time of year.

We may have a freezer full of these by the end of the day. Please, please tell me that there is someone else in this world that likes these so much, they stockpile them in the freezer for year-round enjoyment.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to you all!

The family spent some quality time filling out heartfelt Valentine's cards for Mike and Harry's classes. What better way to say "I love you!" than with Scooby Doo and Spiderman? As they did this with parental supervision, making sure not to skip anyone on the list (we wouldn't want to offend anyone would we?), it made me wonder- did I hand these out to all my classmates when I was younger? Or just to the ones I liked? Or even just to the girls? (Perhaps this is why there is so much sexual confusion among kids these days- after all, as elementary school kids they are forced to give notes of affection to the boys, as well as the girls. Hmmm...) I don't remember any feelings of sadness or loneliness at getting none, but I also don't remember being deluged with them from everyone in the class. Maybe it was somewhere in between...

I'll be enjoying my Valentine's Day at basketball practice with Mike and Harry. The Mom and I will have to celebrate our love another evening. That's usually when we get to celebrate our love, anyway- around other people's schedules. Why pick one day to do this, anyway? Shouldn't a husband and wife celebrate their love every day?

Mike's Brows

The Mom noticed something odd about Mike's eyebrows the other day. She finally decided that there was a patch missing. He uses Mom & Dad's shower sometimes, so The Mom assumed that he had shaved a little chunk out. A little while back, he had a cyst removed from the other eyebrow and it left a little bald scar. Maybe he was trying to even things out. He denies any responsibility, though. Hmm... I guess it was the aliens...



Then The Mom decided she would try to "even it out." Did it work? Does it look better? I'll let you decide for yourself...

Funny Video

I sent this to a few people. I decided that it was funny enough to post. Enjoy...

Check out the rest of this guy's blog, too. (Update: This is where I saw the movie initially, but he took it down because it killed his bandwidth. I updated the link to the original location.) He's the youth pastor at a church and he's got some good things to say.

Harry Potter

I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night. I started reading these because Mike was. At one time we were racing, but I passed him up. I look forward to the next one, but I think OOTP was not quite as good as the others. It could have been made shorter (870 pages!), and the ending was almost anitclimactic.

Puppy Bizzy

My previous Puppy Bowl post as translated by Gizoogle:

Puppy Bizzy

Did anyone catch this? My kids discovered it . Bow wow wow yippee yo yipee yay. I T-H-to-tha-izzink Animal Planet decided tizzle couldn't compete wit tha Supa Bizzle n just said forget it. Let's find sum'm sum'm cheap n cute. Maybe 10 thugz W-to-tha-izzill wizzay it. At one time, five of those thugz wizzle in our house thats off tha hook yo.

Basically, tizzle let some doggz rizzay around on a mizzle football field, filmed it fo' 3 hours n tizzle looped it tha rizzy of tha day n siznent they employees home ta W-to-tha-izzatch tha real game. I thiznink tizzle decided dead air would be bizzle so they had ta put sum'm sum'm out there . Keep the party crackin while I'm steady rappin'. But if you didn't git enough of it, you can buy it on DVD.

Veggie Rights!

I'm always up for someone willing to poke a little fun at the animal rights extremists.

Puppy Bowl

Did anyone catch this? My kids discovered it. I think Animal Planet decided they couldn't compete with the Super Bowl and just said forget it. Let's find something cheap and cute. Maybe 10 people will watch it. At one time, five of those people were in our house.

Basically, they let some dogs romp around on a mini football field, filmed it for 3 hours and then looped it the rest of the day and sent their employees home to watch the real game. I think they decided dead air would be bad, so they had to put something out there. But if you didn't get enough of it, you can buy it on DVD.

Poker

Any poker players out there? Apparently, yes. It seems like every night it's on either espn, espn2, or some other cable network. If it's on espn, does that make it a sport? I thought you had to at least move for it to be considered a sport.

I just don't get the poker craze. How exciting is it to watch people shuffle cards? I noticed in my pre-Super Bowl surfing that poker even made it off cable to NBC! Then again, before I played golf, I could turn a golf tournament on on Sunday afternoons to guarantee myself a nap.

We went to a Super Bowl party and the guys were playing poker. They tried to get me to play. I can never remember what hand beats what and I don't understand the new lingo- river, flop, backdoor, etc.- so I chose not to play. (Maybe I should take a laptop- I could have looked here for a glossary or a ranking of hands.) Even though it was only a few bucks, I would have been better off just handing it over before the cards were dealt.

Kidzville

The Dad took Stephanie to a party at Kidzville on Saturday. Stephanie doesn't like The Dad to put her to bed most nights, or bathe her, or get her out of the car, or some days, to even look at her. However, she insisted that The Dad take her to the party. Kids are a mystery.

Anyway, it put The Dad in the awkward position of trying to chat it up with moms that he didn't know. The only other dads were family that had their own things going on. That didn't go so well, so he spent some time checking up on his email, sitting around, watching Stephanie and her friends. Stephanie was having too much fun with friends to care what The Dad was doing.

Kidzville is basically a big indoor playground where you can pay exorbitant fees to have your child's birthday party (or go for slightly less for "open play.") I made two interesting observations (at least I think they are interesting, since I put them in this blog):

1. Stephanie wanted to ride a little mechanical horse or car or something- I don't even remember now. Besides the fact that I had no quarters, I told her that I had philosophical issues with going to a play place that charges you $5/kid (for open play) to get into and then they expect you to shell out additional coin for such a trivial ride. Once I explained that to her, she, of course, understood completely.

2. When my kids are teens they will definitely work there. There are several 15-16-ish year olds working there to help keep control and work in the "party rooms." After a long day working there around several dozen noisy, running, screaming, crying, spitting up, dirty diaper-ing, messy (and expecting you to clean up), etc. kids, how could they possibly leave and even think about doing the act that might actually produce one of these creatures. It seems to me to be the perfect birth control!

Of course, I love my three and Stephanie didn't do any of those things...