Scout: “West Side Story? That sounds good. Let’s watch that!”
The words Stacey Lucas has been waiting 7 years to hear.
Category Archives: Day In The Life
It’s a Simple Request
Scout: Hey, dad, you know the treehouse in the backyard?
Me: Yep.
Scout: Could you build an exact duplicate of that in the front yard except with walls and a roof and a movie studio inside?
A Life Misspent
Scout: Dad, have you ever been in a circus and you’re up in the air and you fall on the trapeze and you swing and smash into the side and fall off the trapeze and hurt yourself?
Me: No.
(beat)
Scout: Why not?
Trivia
Ryan is writing trivia questions for a 6 year old. Suggestions appreciated. (Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:19:39 GMT)
Shakespeare & Webcómics & Caterpillars
Have you checked out the 2009 Season Brochure from Georgia Shakes? You should. It’s big silly fun.
http://r.b5z.net/i/u/10018103/i/2009%20Season%20Brochure.pdf
You should also buy tickets to their shows (and the other theaters around town, while you’re at it), but that goes without saying.
—
In the continuing effort to acquire fluency in Spanish, I’ve been searching for good spanish language webcomics as documented in my other LiveJournal, coheteelectrico.
SENI (or Sergio En Internet) has much the same feel as Questionable Content. Twenty-something angst and pop culture references in reasonably-decently drawn cartoon form.
El Maizo is a fairly young fantasy-style strip, which makes it a bit more complicated to read in a foreign language. I can spend 15 minutes trying to find what a word means, later realizing that it’s probably a made-up word specific to the universe of the comic. Like trying to find a definition of Ewok. I like the art of the strip and so I’ll keep reading.
My favorite thus far is El Bulbo, the adventures of a superhero lightbulb. His true calling is to fight monstruos gigantes, but he is often called upon to fight bad-guys who aren’t so bad, such as the Middle-Class Avenger (Clasemediero Vengador), who breaks into banks and forces the tellers at gunpoint to give good customer service.
As a result of attempting to read a superhero comic in Spanish, I’ve had to pick up a lot of action-hero related words:
dejar – to leave, as in ¡déjamelo a mí! or Leave it to me!
explotar – to explode
tirar – to throw, kick, knock over
vencer – to defeat, overcome, beat
soltar – to let go of, release
golpe – blow, kick, bump/collision
mentir – to lie
cumplir – to carry out, perform
sacar – to take out
enejo – anger
bala – bullet
bronca – trouble
That last one I tried to use in class, and my teacher admonished me not to use it. She couldn’t give me the specific connotations of what it means, but just that it was sort of like gang trouble, or a gang fight, or something like that.
I still haven’t found the Spanish equivalent of Scary Go Round or Girl Genius, arguably the best webcomics out there. I guess that’s asking too much.
—
When my son calls me up all excited that he has caught another caterpillar AND he got to pet a duck today, I remember that’s why I’m in this cube 8 hours a day and not bumming around living in a yurt on a beach somewhere, and all is right with the world.
Pizza’d
Okay. I’m putting out the call: I want a super pizza recipe.
That means a crust recipe, and a sauce recipe. I can figure out how to cut mushrooms and/or pepperoni.
Go.
Christmas with Skynet
Last night, I invaded A Christmas Carol.
Dad’s Garage closed Invasion: Christmas Carol last night. Invasion, for the uninitiated, is an improvised version of the holiday classic. The basic premise is that each night, a random character is added to the mix with no advanced warning to the regular cast members. The unknown character is first introduced as the ghost of Xmas past, and then is sprinkled in through the remainder of the show. The cast members must incorporate the new character’s presence into the storyline.
Previously, some of the random characters have been a barbarian, a thief, a department store Santa, a Ghostbuster, and Hitler.
Last year, they did Invasion: Our Town with the same concept using the Thorton Wilder play. I invaded that one as an Indiana Jones-like character. Jesus made an appearance in a different episode.
I invaded Carol as The Terminator. Or rather, an early prototype Terminator, the T-1, “before they added bad breath.”1
Upon discovering that Scrooge was not Sarah Connor, I agreed to join Scrooge on his viewings of the past.
Later on in the show in a poorhouse scene, the husband of Scrooge’s old flame turned out to be John Connor, and a shootout ensued, killing all the poor (the front row of the audience). In the grand finale of the show, I finally discover Sarah Connor, wished her Merry Christmas, snapped her neck, and then we all said “God bless us, everyone!”
I am totally in the Xmas spirit now, humans.
__________
1 A too-vague reference to the movie that likely no one got. But really, that was for me.
Two random items of interest, and a bonus
I am in my cube listening to some coworkers singing Christmas carols in a nearby meeting room, accompanied by an acoustic guitar.
To own the truth, they are not bad.
—
I have found my new favorite spanish verb:
trasnochar – to stay up late
¡Trasnocharemos a las 31 de diciembre!
Estoy aprendiendo el tiempo futuro. Ahora puedo escribir sobre viaje de tiempo.
—
A bonus third random item:
Overheard in the hallway:
“If you think about the number of insect legs in your peanut butter, you’ll probably never eat a PB&J again.”
Seriously…
…how did people do Xmas before the Web?
Four Against One
I’m alone in the house with two five year olds and two two year olds. So far, I’m winning.
The girls are drawing with crayons quietly, the boys are downstairs wrestling loudly.
Occasionally, I have to stick my head downstairs and tell the boys to not wrestle on the stairs, or stop throwing knives, or to keep the open flame to a minimum.
L_ drew a little bit on Scout’s paper.
Scout: Daddy, L_ drew on my paper!
Me: She’s helping you!
Scout: Oh. (beat) Thank you, L_.
That never happens with boys.