The kids have a busy weekend - and so do the parents

Big News Update: Alya had decided to push her bedtime back to 8 PM. Parents not amused. Nor do they agree.

Yepppers, last night Alya told us that she is not tired and wanted to play. All the time she was rubbing her eyes and moving with very little pep in the step. So she got to snuggle up with Daddy and watch a bit of the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon last night. Then she snuggled up with Mommy to watch some of the Super Bowl. And then at 8:15, the Daddy-hammer came down and took his baby girl to her room.

You would think after such a busy weekend, there would be a greater desire to rest.

Friday, Sasha brought the kids into work for a little while to enjoy a dip food day that her department was having. And then latter on, the little ones got to enjoy playing at the Bayshore kids area.

That night, Kanisha came by with her kids and her niece to babysit Alya and Marcus while Sasha and I went out for a movie. Lots of running around the house, playing kitchen with little Alan, and going to bed late.

Saturday had a trip to the Zoo with Daddy. A short trip, but the weather was good and it was the first time going in the bird house there. Alya liked the smaller rooms, but had absolutely no desire to go into the large room where the birds flew around freely. Still, we got to see the lions hanging out. And the penguins were in full effect, strutting around looking good.

We also ran into Sue Gauger nee DiFonzo, who was there with her two little ones. That was fun to see what Alya and Marcus might be doing in a few years. The zoo is a great place for kids to stretch their legs in the winter. And the zoo membership that my Mom got us makes it that much easier to do.

Sunday was slow going at first. Sasha had a nice night out and I was up late doing a mini-podcast with John Mack. So when my Mom came by, we kind of left the kids with her while we napped/took-it-easy. So the kids had fun playing with Grandma. Alya called her "Grammy" at one point. Don't know where it came from but very cute.

Alya's other new phrase is "Not yet." As in:

"Time for dinner, Alya."

"No, Daddy. Not yet."

I think she got that one from us.

Finally, Sunday afternoon had an hour in the snow sledding. We bundled them up into snow suits and took them over to Brown Deer Park for some playtime outside.

When I pulled the two of them along in the sled, Alya squealed with delight. She loved sliding along the snow, holding her brother.

Marcus, on the other hand, just never relaxed to get into it. So eventually he had to be carried while I pull Alya up the hill.


Small Marcus in big snow field

At the top, I had little flash-backs to the water park adventure, but I loaded her up, sat down behind her, and gave us a push.


Alya laughed all the way down.




We ended up taking another trip and then Sasha took Alya down three more times.

Here's the second trip:



And I have to admit I took a couple of trips on my own as well.) Fun times for everyone except Marcus - and he was held the entire time, so it was a win for him too.

And my daughter, after all that, still managed to stay up until 8:30 PM last night. She definitely takes after her father.

* * *

For date night this past Friday, Sasha and I went to the iPic over in the Bayshore Towne Center. Big, comfy seats. Free bag of popcorn. And we ate dinner there in the theater. Great place to see a movie.

While dinner was okay (once they got the order right) the movie was really good. "The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button" was the film of choice that night. The film is most certainly an Oscar runner and worth seeing at some point, if not on the big screen.

The best way I can describe it is a re-visioning of Forrest Gump. In have an innocent (Gump) telling a story of his life and how he was a good person through it all. Button's story of a life that is different from everyone else, and how he maintained a positive outlook and remained a good person.

Happy and funny at times, sad and tear producing at others. A fine movie that I recommend people view, even if on DVD.

Now hopefully Alya will go to bed on time tonight.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Milk, Presidents and Movies

Sorry that my blogging speed has slowed down. Naturally, as more and more holiday events happen, the more "spare" time will dwindle. That is until we reach the new year, when all goes quiet again.

Right now I'm looking at Marcus's first birthday tomorrow. The poor kid is already 365 days old, but thanks to the leap year, it's not enough. And I know that the new teeth coming in are not helping his attitude either. However, he is off the formula and that is the biggest leap in terms of groceries that one can hope for.

Although our refrigerator is much more amusing these days. Sasha is a skim milk drinker, Alya is on the 2%, Marcus is naturally starting on whole milk, and Mr. Lactose Intolerant is on the soy milk. So after Sasha went shopping last night we have five gallon containers of milk, along with three half-gallon containers of soy milk. (8th Continent rocks with Raisin Bran!) Somewhere is farm with an extremely tired cow marked "BSer family cow". All I can say for that cow is, "Moo-moo, moo."

Regarding cash cows, the presidential election is over and my mail carrier can breath a sigh of relief. No more fliers going straight into the recycling bin. No more recorded phone calls on the answering machine. And we will finally be back to our regularly scheduled commercials encouraging us to spend money we don't have. I'm good with that.

One other political note, Sasha and I did stay up and watch the results and the speeches. Both speeches, I felt, were very good. McCain was a class act every step of the way, although I felt he didn't have to try to take all the blame. Obama's speech was fantastic because not only was he grateful, but he also didn't try to sugar coat the times ahead. For me that was very important to acknowledge that his winning wasn't a magical fix to all the woes facing Americans.

Shifting once again, last evening two of my friends came over to hang out. The original thought was to play a few games, but that changed to watching movies. An activity that we haven't done in a long time.

First up was an independent production of a horror story called The Yellow Sign. Fans of H.P. Lovecraft-style stories will appreciate the suspense and creepy facets of this production. Fans of film will be annoyed by the male lead attempting to channel John Malkovich. Mind, when I say horror, it is the vein of eerie and chilling, instead of gross and scary. As a fan of film and H.P. Lovecraft I enjoyed the short film, but felt that a lot could have been done to make it better without a budget increase.

After viewing a couple of short-short films that were on the same DVD, we switched genres in more ways than one. First change was from live action to anime (Japanese animation) and the second was from horror to a story that was romantic at heart.

Yeah, three guys sitting around watching a romantic cartoon. How weak-sauce is that?

(The answer is, "At least we don't live in our parents' basement with Geddy Lee of Rush!")

The movie was Millennium Actress, an animated film directed by Satoshi Kon, who did the thriller Perfect Blue, comedy Tokyo Godfathers, and the surreal Paprika. The story of Millennium Actress is that of a documentary maker who finally got a chance to interview his favorite actress, who tells her story crossing between her actual life and the films she starred in.

The clever bit comes in that the interview and his cameraman find themselves in the movie scenes as observers of the events. Eventually they become involved in the scenes as well, which makes it all the more touching.

It's a film that is supported by the viewer's knowledge Japanese cinema, but still stands as a sweet romantic film with lots of humor and fun dialogue. We watched the movie in Japanese with subtitles, but I suspect that the English dubbing might be a better way to watch as you can pay better attention to details on the screen.*

Be seeing you,

Jon

* Yes, anime viewers, I just stated that the dub might be a better way to watch anime. Until I know Japanese, I think that will be my point of view from here on out. (For non-anime watchers, dubbing versus subtitles used to be a matter of great debate and I had sided on subtitles for a long time.)

Links
H.P. Lovecraft's Wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.P._Lovecraft
Millennium Actress IMDB - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0291350/

Critics and Genre Movies - Grrr

As many of you know, I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to games, movies, video games, books, tv shows... well a lot of things.

So I'm at home with my feverish son (new virus going around, very not kosher and much snuggling needed) and put on The Ultimate Trailer Show (found on HDNet). Once upon a time, I found that movie trailers were almost the best reason for going to the movies. They were action filled, intense, and got me excited for more movies beyond the one I was about to see. Like I said, I'm a geek.

Well, the show begins and I realized I recorded the wrong show. This one features movie critic Robert Wilonsky and he talks about the various trailers he's going to show, both new and old. He opens up with Max Payne starring Mark Wahlburg and before showing it proceeds to rip into all video game movies as pretty much not worth the effort or watching for that matter.

And while I think Wilonsky was a little too harsh, it's true that most video game movies are not good. One paticular german movie director seems to have made sure to drag every title he could through the mud. (If you see the name Uwe Boll on a piece of film, run as fast as you can.) However, if you leave the desire to see the next Schindler's List or Citizen Kane at the door, they can be a lot of fun.

So I cut Wilonsky some slack.

The next trailer shown is the new Harry Potter movie. And Wilonsky proceeds to rip away again, possibly believing he's playing the "mean is funny" card. It's not cool in my eyes, showing - to me - he's another genre hating film critic.

This is not an uncommon occurrence in the movie review business. If the movie has fantasy or sci-fi elements - making it a genre movie - it immediately loses a star/point/onion/etc. Oh, and no respect at all. (Sorry, Rodney.)

What is needed are genre critics. Those people who are either open-minded enough to accept that a sci-fi movie can be good, or at least provide criticism from the point of view of people who like those kind of movies. Spewing hate is annoying and does nothing for anyone's credibility except for staining it.

The worst part about Robert Wilonsky, he's ripping into movies that he has not seen yet. While I do not believe that Max Payne will be an excellent movie, it could end up being an intense, highly-stylized action movie. The next Harry Potter movie will be fun in the franchise. Great film? Probably not. But it should be some good stuff.

The moral of the story? Don't trust anyone who puts In Good Company on any top movie list.

Be seeing you

Max Payne trailer - http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/maxpayne/
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/harrypotterandthehalfbloodprince/
In Good Company - http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/in_good_company/