Saturday, February 26, 2005

Knock Knock Jokes With Jane

Today's knock knock jokes are brought to you by the lamest Kid's Meal prize ever - the knock knock door. It's too retarded to describe, suffice it to say that it comes with knock knock jokes. Jane got it yesterday at Arbys and wanted me to tell her the jokes. Reproduced here are the actual responses.

Joke #1 -

Me: Knock knock.

Jane: Who's there?

Me: Who.

Jane: Who's there?

Me: Who.

Jane: Who's there?

Me: Who!

Jane: Who's there?

Me: No baby, now you say who who.

Jane: Who who.

Me: Is there an owl in here?

Jane: That's not a very funny joke.

Joke #2 -

Me: Knock knock.

Jane: Who's there?

Me: Ketchup.

Jane: Ketchup who?

Me: Ketchup to me, you're too slow.

Jane: (giggling wildly) That's funny.

Joke #3 -

Me: Knock knock.

Jane: Who's there?

Me: Cargo.

Jane: Cargo who?

Me: Cargo beep beep.

Jane: Yeah it does. (no laughter)

Joke #4 -

Me: Knock knock.

Jane: Who's there?

Me: Lettuce.

Jane: Lettuce who?

Me: Lettuce in and you will find out.

Jane: What?

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Hours Of Fun



For those of you with children, or who are going to have children, or who think that some day you might want to rent some children let the above picture burn into your brain. This is Lucy, hard at work on one of her Christmas presents - a Smithsonian Mega Dig Lab.

The kit comes with everything a kid needs to occupy themselves for hours. Goggles, tools and two large chunks of a sandy type of plaster into which have been cast plastic dinosaur bones and "gemstones" of dubious value. My kid loves these things (she also had a sandcast pyramid out of which she extracted mummies and sarcophogi and all kinds of stuff), and I bet just about any kid would. Nominally educational, the set lets the child do what he or she is really good at - hit things with a hammer. It also includes a tiny brush that your child can use to brush away small bits and dust just like the pros do. Lucy can bring an amazing amount of focus to her brushwork - an amount of focus which could light a city for a year or clean three dozen eight-year-olds' bedrooms, not that such astounding focus would ever be used for anything so pedestrian. The kits are relatively inexpensive as well - a quick Google shows that Santa paid about $20 for this little box of fun that has currently occupied Lucy for 4 solid hours. She's not even close to finishing either.

I don't recall have anything nearly so cool when I was a kid. The closest thing I can remember is a Radio Shack electronics lab where I got to wire simple circuits to all kinds of junk. It was awesome for the first five minutes - after that it never worked.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

What It Means, Benny, Is That I Want To Blow Uncle Roman Out *My* Ass

I was eleven going on twelve the first time I saw The Great Outdoors. It was late summer, before school started up again. The quaint little three-screen in Lebanon had a free movie day for kids. I have no idea what was playing on the other two screens, but the theater that my sister and I managed to get into was playing The Great Outdoors. This was no philanthropy on the part of the theater - approximately 14,000 children showed up for the free matinee, which was probably 13,990 more than usual. I'm sure that they more than made up the lost ticket revenue on concessions.

With no exaggeration there were hundreds of kids there. Had a fire marshall made a random check the place would have been shut down hardcore. Kids were sitting in all the aisles, on the floor in the area up in front of the first row of seats and some poor kids were sitting two to a seat. Free movies were really popular in small town Tennessee in the late eighties.

I watched it again just last night and I can't believe how well the movie holds up for me. Many, many times I laughed out loud. John Candy was at his personal best in this movie as Chet Ripley, working class man who just wants to be the world's best dad. It was a character that Candy was good at - see also Uncle Buck or even Home Alone. Chet tries really hard to look cool to his kids and also give them the opportunity to do everything that he had done with his dad when they would visit the same area. I am proud to say that I saw a lot of my own parenting style in Candy's Ripley.

Dan Akroyd is also good here, playing his singular role as a jackass - a role Akroyd perfected over time as well. Also well-featured is Chris Young, who would go on to play the pre-frosh in another classic film. The real mystery to me is the writer of the movie, the man himself, John Hughes. This guy gives the world Mr. Mom, Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty In Pink, Uncle Buck, The Great Outdoors, Home Alone and a little thing called Ferris Bueller's Day Off and now he's writing fucking Beethoven's Fifth and Home Alone 4. This man's genius shouldn't be wasted on tripe.

Looking at Candy's page on IMDB I see that next month will mark 11 years since his death. I can hardly believe it. It seems strange to actually miss someone that you never met, but I miss Candy a great deal.