Not Your Daddy’s Mary Poppins

So I’ll get to the reasoning of the title in a minute. But first I must say "howdy-do" and "hola", and explain my absence.

The short explanation is "I’m getting married." The long explanation is "I’m getting married, wrangling my kids through their last quarter of school, making arrangements for the wedding, changing jobs, looking for a house, and generally not having much free time." It continues to be a good busy, and should calm down in about a month. One of the happier times of my life really.

So about the title for this post. Last night was daughter #2’s last band concert of the year. Or ever. She’s wanted to quit band for while because she much prefers choir, but I told her she had to stick it out for the year since I paid actual money for that clarinet. But I digress. It was the last concert of the year, and the closing number was "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". I think I spelled that right. The song started up, and as my brain is wont to do, a thought immediately came. I leaned over to my other kids and said:

"Super cows and fragile pigs explode and are delicious"

And then I had a couple kids sitting on the floor, falling over in hysterical laughter. Fortunately we were sitting just behind the timpani, so nobody could hear us.

After the concert, in the parking lot, I shared the rest of what had come to mind.

Super cows and fragile pigs explode and are delicious.
If you cook them well enough they’re even good with fishes.
Don’t help in the kitchen and you’ll wind up doing dishes.
Super cows and fragile pigs explode and are delicious.

 

I talked with my bride-to-be later on in the evening and shared it with her. How great is it to find someone who not only thinks it’s funny, but that it’s cool my brain throws these things out?

My Mom Wants To Fake Rock-N-Roll All Nite

This post could also be titled "Being For The Benefit Of Mrs. B", but then it wouldn’t be a KISS reference as much as a Beatle’s reference. And the KISS reference is important here.

My mom is something of a saint to me. Since my ex (insert double entendre here) over three years ago, my mom has been coming to stay a couple days every week to help with my kids while I’m at work. It’s not a small thing since she lives a bit over an hour away. She wathces the youngest who will start school next year, she helps with homework, and more than anything else…she spends time on the phone.

She’s a township trustee, and a good one. It’s something of a thankless job, having to deal with local weasels and whiners for little pay. And it consumes a lot of phone time. She’s also pretty conservative in her tastes. It’s really getting her out of her shell to have her watch some lame reality television with us. But hey, family bonding time is family bonding time.

So imagine my surprise when I came home from running some errands the other evening with one of my daughters and found my mom, plastic guitar slung over her shoulders, playing Guitar Hero III. Specifically ‘Rock And Roll All Nite’ by KISS.

Her defense was "I’ve never played before and wanted to try it." I didn’t really care what her reason was. I just thought it was great she was playing.

So I grabbed the other guitar and we spent the next hour or so playing a few songs I’m sure she didn’t know or recognize the lyrics for. This is the woman who used to go around singing lines from Sublime’s ‘Santaria’ because she thought it was catchy after all. She never seemed to get to those bits where they sung about poppin’ a cap in the guy hitting on the girl. So I got some fun out of pointing out "Remember all those crazy posters we had in the basement when I was a kid? That was Iron Maiden, and this is one of their songs." Yes, I had my mom playing the bass line on ‘Number of the Beast’.

And then her phone rang in the middle of a song. And just that fast the band was broken up. She was on the phone talking about issues with the local fire department and our audience booed us off the stage.

But for a while, we were rockin’. And after all these years, my mom showed she had a bit of cool in her.

Being Careful What You Wish For

My brother “gave” me my Christmas present this evening. Not a present really, other than that of time, but that’s good too.

He had told me on Christmas day that he wanted to watch something in particular with me. Something that we, as brothers, could bond over.

What he didn’t realize, and I couldn’t have forseen, was that he gifted me with my warm-down lap I was complaining about the other day.

“How so?” you might ask. Simple. He had located the Star Wars Holiday Special, in its unholy entirety, online. This show is a thing of myth. Legendary in its fecal prowess. The kind of thing that prisoners in Guantanamo are subjected to when waterboarding doesn’t prove to be successful.

In short, it’s a painful piece of dreck that George Lucas wishes had never been produced. And with good reason.

Feel free to watch the first few minutes (or the whole thing if you’re a masochist), and keep in mind that the breakneck pacing in the first 10 minutes is kept up throughout the whole of the show.

For those of you also requiring a holiday warm-down lap, enjoy!

How Can She Be Saying Hello When She’s Showing Ta-Ta?

I keep saying I’m going to do this more than once a week, and yet here it is a week later. Again. Good thing I’m not trying to generate any ad revenue. Google would probably have me owing them money if I were. Not that they aren’t already selling my soul online one small piece at a time.

Side thought: If Google if mining me for information, should I feel guilty enough to talk to my bishop? I should probably just feel guilty for seeing innuendo in things like that. (heh)

Anywho…speaking of innuendo, this post’s title is loaded with it. I’ve had it in mind for a while now as I’ve held back this story for a bit. So the story goes something like this:

My oldest (the Model) has a cell phone on my dime. It makes it handy to get in touch with the kids since their mom doesn’t see fit to (a) have a home phone number and (b) ever answer her own cell phone when called. After a surprise bill one month thanks to the fine folks at "Joke-A-Day" though I disabled instant messaging and so forth on her phone. She knows not the vastness of her own power to inadvertently cost me $45 in a month without hardly trying.

At least, I thought I had completely disabled instant messaging on her phone. Perhaps I have. It’s kind of hard to say really. Because one evening she received a picture message from her mom, although because of the block she couldn’t see it. Instead she received a blurb telling her that she had one and needed to go to a web site from my carrier to view it.

When she received the notice I was on the main computer (yes, as in there are multiple) at home, so she asked if I could open the web site for her to see the message. I was happy to since I wanted a distraction from the side-project I was working on. So I type in the web address, punch in the code to access the message, and get…

A tight shot of a big-chested woman wearing a t-shirt that says "I (heart) You". And almost before I can realize it’s an animated image, and definitely before I can finish thinking "This won’t end well" off comes the shirt and a second of bouncing commences.

So there it is. My oldest daughter receives a booby-shot message from her mother. Her very overtly, "you need to love me no matter who I am", gay mother.

As fast as my fingers would move, I closed the web browser. But it was too late. It had been seen, and the damage was done. Reflexes, as those of us old enough to remember from WKRP, have their limits. And those limits can only be exceeded when alcohol is provided to Dr. Johnny Fever. I neither drink, nor am I Dr. Johnny Fever. So there it is.

Brakeback did tell me later that the message must have somehow sent by accident from her phone. It was definitely her message though, as a "friend" had sent it to her. My oldest immediately knew which friend that must be, who I shall simply refer to as "The Flake". That didn’t help her feel any better about it.

So the moral of the story is this: if you have friends that send you phone porn, make sure you keep your keypad locked so it doesn’t accidentally forward to your kids, or your boss, or someone else important that might form a negative opinion about you.

Or, better yet, just avoid phone porn altogether I guess.

Job Opening: Must Be Proficient With Hammers and Children

The third trimester of Hallowchristmagiving is almost over, and the tryptophan is wearing off. So what to do next? Dream of the Big Dance, of course. Do the shopping, trim the tree, fire up the oven (yes, I do my own baking…and I’m good at it), and dream of having a "special someone" with which to share a smooch under the mistletoe.

Add all that together, and this morning’s conversation with my youngest makes complete sense. Not that we haven’t had these conversations before, but when I’m wishing there were someone with whom I could share a couch, a blanket, some popcorn, and a movie it’s just a little more poignant.

(Oh, and bear in mind that my youngest, "Z", is all of five years old)

Z: When are you going to get married again?

M: I don’t know. I’m not even dating anyone. (My last date was back in March)

Z: I know.

M: Do you want me to get married again?

Z: Yeah. And when you get married again, then I’ll have a step-mom, right?

M: Yep. Are you wanting a step-mom?

Z: Uh-huh. And when I do, she’ll be happy to play "Break the Ice" with me, won’t she?

The answer, of course, was "absolutely". We then broke into our own round of games for a half-hour or so before church. The great things about playing the game with her are the interesting house rules and hammer techniques. Does the big block with the bear go in the middle of the field, or more toward one side? Do you carefully tap a block out, smash it with one stroke, or use the hammer in more unconventional ways?

Whatever style of play one might prefer, I think it’s a pretty good quality to look for. And not just because it’s my daughter’s favorite game. I like it too, after all.

The one "A" is for "Ambiguous"

Yesterday was the twenty-third day of Hallochristmagiving, and by odd coincidence the gift for the day was “twenty-three dollars to purchase ‘Fido’ from Best Buy. It was perfect because I had been looking forward to picking this movie up since I first read about it this past summer.

You see…I am a fan of zombie films.

What’s important to understand about that statement is the unwritten word “good”. I am a fan of good zombie films. There are honestly loads of bad zombie films. And I’ve seen a few of them unwittingly. They are poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted, and tend to focus on entrails and breasts. They have no story and no message. They are, in a word, crap.

I’m sure many of you are already re-reading that last paragraph and thinking “Good zombie films with a story and a message? What’s this guy smoking?” The answer to that, of course, is nothing. Read the previous post about the Word of Wisdom. I live by it. The truth is that I’m utterly serious. There are good zombie films out there. They are smartly done and very entertaining without being exploitative. They carry strong social messages and deep insight. “Fido” is one of those films. It’s a Lassie movie with the collie being replaced by a flesh-eating corpse.

Those Mormons in the crowd might now be saying to themselves “But hey, Finite Monkey Guy, aren’t zombie films all rated ‘R’? And doesn’t the church teach that you shouldn’t be watching those?” Guilty as charged. I do own (and watch) a select few movies toting an ‘R’ rating. And I have some quandries over it. Not the least of which is how the heck do the people in the MPAA come up with their ratings?

Certainly many movies with an ‘R’ rating richly deserve them. And I don’t go to see those. Like “Super-Bad”. The title pretty much sums up all I need to know to make an informed decision about not watching that film. Any of the Freddie or Jason flicks. Boobies and blood. Not where I want to be. But then there are those like “Fido” where I watch them and come away wondering whether anyone actually watched the film before rating it, or just saw the word zombie and rubber-stamped it. I wonder because, aside from a blood spatter when a zombie is shot in the head to put it down (the traditional way — trust no other) there is absolutely nothing, and I do mean nothing, offensive in the movie. Not one single curse word. Not even of the mildest variety. No boobies. No entrails. Only a wink and nod piece of innuendo. Prime-time television has more in it to offend the innocent than this movie, especially if it’s a night that an episode of CSI or Law & Order is on. So any given night of the week, really.

“Fido” is a light zombie-comedy that, dare I say, could almost be a family film.

Compare that with something PG-13 like, say, “Blades of Glory” from earlier this year. A film which starred Jon Heder, Mormon actor and star of “Napoleon Dynamite”. That film was loaded with straight-up references to sex, let alone innuendo, along with drug and drinking references, vomit, bathroom jokes, and Will Ferrell walking around in underwear. How is that less offensive? How does all that require a less mature individual than watching “Fido”? I mean, aside from the maturity of those writing it of course. Really when you think about it, even the ‘G’-rated fare of Disney is loaded with wink-and-nod references to the burgeoning sexuality of their nubile female characters.

Other cases like this led me to the conclusion long ago that, in many ways, I just can’t trust the MPAA and their movie ratings system. I need to be more active in checking the commercials and trailers, along with checking viewer comments on movie sites and paying close attention to the explanations that began accompanying the ratings not so long ago. All together, those cues have been immensely helpful in avoiding many ‘PG’ and ‘PG-13′ movies that contain plenty of material I don’t care to see. The same cues have also let me feel not completely guilty about watching a few ‘R’ films as well. I feel like I either need to take that approach to movies now, or give them up completely because I’ll never know what I might get hit with.

So, Kanye actually left me a note that for the twenty-fourth day of Hallochristmagiving the verse should be something involving “ho’s”. I told him I could see my way clear only if they were undead and fully clothed.

Happy Hallochristmagiving!

Egads, we’re already 11 days in and I have yet to wish everyone a Happy Hallochristmagiving. While we’ve been slowly migrating into this new holiday since the middle part of my happy childhood I guess it’s now official, and I’ve missed jumping on the bandwagon by a week-and-a-half. At least I think it’s official. It was either Fox News or CNN that I read it on, I’m sure of it.

I would have completely forgotten that it was the Hallochristmagiving season if it hadn’t been for a short stop by my local warehouse club format store. There were glass ornaments for trees, fakes trees blaring music, roasting racks, palettes of candies, and in the middle of it all a manger scene with baby Jesus wearing a goblin mask while holding a jack-o-lantern and a turkey baster. It was a fantastic site that caused an unfamiliar emotion to well up inside of me. But fortunately I made it to the bathroom in time.

A lot of other changes have begun to take shape now that Hallochristmagiving has become official. Most notably is the special spirit the season brings. It used to be that you had to wait until the day after Thanksgiving for things to really start ramping up. Then you would suddenly see decorations on the streets and in the stores, with a window of only 30 days or so to enjoy them. The excitement and wonder of it all was amazing. So why not extend that by starting things off earlier? A lot of people think that moving to Hallochristmagiving is just a shallow attempt by retailers to generate a longer sales season. But I don’t really think that’s it at all. Perhaps stores do realize a boost in sales, but I believe the genesis is the spirit of charity and giving, and the desire to have that joy last the entire fourth quarter of the fiscal year. It was evident that it was working for one of the employees at the store I visited when I heard them commenting on the fake Hallochristmagiving tree blaring out electronic Hallochristmagiving music. They were talking with a co-worker, and in an animated voice said “It’s only October and I can already hardly stand it!”

Obviously the anticipation is already building even at this early stage in the season.

The official Hallowchirstmagiving movie is making its second annual opening in 3D this weekend I think too. “Nightmare Before
Christmas” is a pretty cool movie, and it was very forward-thinking of Tim Burton to have made something that now so perfectly fits into our new, three-month long holiday season. I’ve seen the movie a few times on video in the past of course, but seeing it in 3D would be pretty slick. Even better if it were a triple feature with “30 Days of Night” and “Fred Clause”.

The other big change, of course, is the complete overhaul to the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song. I’ve never actually been sure why it was twelve days to begin with, but there’s no doubt now about the origins of the “Ninety-two Days of Hallowchristmagiving”. I’m working now on committing each of the verses to memory, and though it may clock in at slightly longer than a performance of Wagner’s entire “Ring Cycle” it’s certainly worth it. Although I have to admit, I still haven’t quite figured out why all the instrumentation has been changed. Instead of the traditional tune, it’s now set to Kanye West’s “Gold Digger”.

So again, Happy Hallochristmagiving everyone. And I’ll look forward to next spring when I can wish you a lovely Valeasterick’s Day.