Tellin Y'all It's sabotage

Being a shirt designer in the realm of pop culture based designs, I have had a lot of time to learn about intellectual property and trademarks and copyrights.   And while I do understand that protecting your intellectual property is important, you have to realize that there are some fights just not worth pursuing.

Goldieblox recently came under fire by The Beastie Boys because of a commercial that showed girls bucking the pink plastic kitchenware toys of the 1950s-2010s and turning to ingenuity, creativity, and science to show just how smart and cool they are.   They did it to the tune of the Beasties’ “Girls”.

This was brilliant as a OK Go / Rube Goldberg themed ad with the catchy tune in the background with the lyrics changed.   The problem is that The Beasties have a policy of not letting companies use their music in ads, and like most artists this includes music used without their permission.  But the Beasties and Goldieblox battled over who sued who first and, in the end, Goldieblox complied with replacing the music in the ad with an instrumental, you-get-it but-it’s-not-infringing-on-anyone, tune that still manages to evoke the idea of “Girls”.

What the remaining Beasties fail to realize is that this is the age of the Internet and social media and they simply invoked the Obi Wan Kenobi Threat.  “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”  How?  GoldieBlox’s YouTube channel took down the other ad but you can still find it.

Not to mention, every news outlet’s own YouTube channel and story that picked up on the commercial shows the original video or a full story about the lawsuit, featuring the original commercial with the original song.  
 

 

But... the story takes another twist.

Remember how I said the commercial was reminiscent of OK Go?  That’s because the mechanical marvel was designed and built by Brett Doar, GASP “a stinky boy with cooties.” Who built the Rube Goldberg device for OK Gos “This Too Shall Pass” video.

So… who is the loser in all this mess?

Is it the Beastie Boys, who lose an ounce of respect from fans, especially females, for picking on little girls?  (Which they didn’t.  They went after a company who neglected to follow intellectual property rules.  The girls were the face of the story and thereby collateral damage.)

Is it Goldieblox, who got beat down by the establishment for trying to promote girls are equally as smart and creative as boys and got slapped for not following intellectual property rules?  (Which doesn’t matter because the consciousness of what they tried to do lives on in the form of undying Internet pixels and increased sales due to awareness.)

Or is it girls who are, once again, relegated to being an object.  The company wanted to promote the idea that girls are equally creative and smart as boys and in executing this plan, hired a man to do all the work while they just looked cute and cool.

Or is it the public who rises up and shares “LOOK AT THESE GIRLS!” “GIRLS RULE. BOYS DROOL.”  all over social media while neglecting to understand intellectual property rules, marketing to the masses under the guise of promoting gender equality, or simply creating buzz by social engineering.

Me, I’m just here showing a cool video in the face of the man…  because the Internet is forever and we’re all stupid to believe we are in control.

You gotta fight for your right.  Know what I mean?

What Happens When You're Not Paying Attention to Kids

Every now and again, my kid gets out all her old toys from when she was two or three and plays with them.  This cause my wife and I grief because the house gets littered with all her stuff which then has to find its way back into her room with enough space left for her to fit at bed time.

Most of the time she sits there playing with a few toys while watching television.  The ability for me to get some time to watch the backlog of my recorded shows is null unless one of those shows has Dora in it.

The rare occasions when she goes to her room to play allow me to watch television but I pay for it when I see the mess she has made in her room.

Today, she proved once again she is smarter than both her parents.   While I wasn't paying attention, she pulled this off all by herself.

Her old baby doll pack and play.

He removed the dangling animal cross bar.

One of her pony tail holders

Instant giraffe headdress

She showed it to me and I did not make the connection.  It never once dawned on me to ask how she managed to make this headband.  Then I actually looked at it when she took it off and put it down.

She took the pony tail holder and looped it around the ends of the cross bar.

She's five.  Now, I am biased when it comes to how smart she is.  I think she's a friggin' genius.  How many five year-olds could come up with this idea and application using two unrelated items?  This is not the first time she's engineered something like this.   When she was four, she assembled her own decorations.

Then again, she uses this thing to pretend to be a giraffe. 

Eh, she's still a genius.

Butt Wait, There's More

Kids are funny. It was always the case with us, growing up. Our parents would spend obscene amounts of money on Christmas presents for us and we’d be more enthralled with the packaging. My kid is just as nutty when it comes to getting a present or basically whatever she sees advertised on television.

"they 're cuddle cuddleuppets cuddle cuddleuppets blankets that are puppets..."
HER: “Can I have that?”
ME: “We’ll see.”

"Dreamlite sleep tight …"
HER: “Can I have that?”
ME: “We’ll see.”

"You pop ‘em. You dip ‘em. Decorate ‘em and devour ‘em. They’re Bake Pops!"
HER: “Can I have that?”
ME: “We’ll see…”

"What’s shaky, chilly, and makes you silly? SLUSHY MAGIC!"
HER: “Can I have that?”
Me: “We’ll… wait a minute? Kiddo, these aren’t toys.”
HER: But we can freeze the magic cubes, pop em in the Slushy Shaker and add our favorite cool drink to make a Slushy cold drink!”
ME: “…We’ll see.”

So, for her birthday, she got a Slushy Magic. She begged me to get it out and make her a Slushy Bunny Milk (NesQuik chocolate milk). So, I checked out the directions and popped the “magic” cubes in the freezer. She expected it to be ready to make out of the box. I said, “No, honey. First we have to freeze these things and then put them in the drink. It could take a few hours.”

HER: “Oh, so when they’re done, we can put them in the Slushy Shaker and add our favorite cold drink?”
ME: “Yeah.”
HER: “Oh, OK.”
A minute later…
HER: “I hope they don’t cause butt cancer.”
ME: “We’ll see”



Footnote: it appears that the “magic cubes” are simply bags of saline. So, in essence, I am adding breast implants to our favorite cold drink. And… they don’t work. 

Just glad she never saw this on TV

Millennium Falcon Fail

Ok, this is a short one, for once. Actually, I have two really long ones eventually coming, but then again, so is Christmas. They aren’t even of real topical relevance. It’s just me opening up my brain and spilling it out for you to look at and say. “That boy is crazy!”

Here we go. A few things keep popping up in my state of consciousness towards pop culture. A while back, one of my Tweeps posted a picture of a vintage Millennium Falcon toy from the 70s. This past weekend, while talking with my mom, we discussed how my seven year old nephew has discovered Star Wars. He has seen all the movies, thanks to my DVD collection, and has begun playing with all the old toys, thanks to my childhood bedroom. One item that he is playing with is, you guessed it, The Millennium Falcon. Just the other day, an old friend of mine from growing up reminded me about playing on the playground during recess and using the merry go round as my own personal Millennium Falcon.

All of this means something yet I don’t quite know what the universe is telling me. Oh, right. Post something about The Millennium Falcon. Got it, universe. Thanks again.

That Millennium Falcon toy I had growing up was the single coolest toy I ever had. It was huge and made noises and took batteries and held a bunch of action figures and it made me squeee! However, the one thing I never could figure out was…

Which way were the action figures supposed to sit in the damn gun turret?

Technically, the Falcon had two, one on top and one on bottom. Even though the toy version only had the top turret, the seat wasn’t exactly designed to be intuitive to that idea. I mean, realistically, Han and Luke went either up or down in the ladder and then sat perpendicular to the ladder so it could go either way.

I think 90% of the time I had my action figures sitting upside down in the chair. Maybe, I was wrong. Who cares? I was a kid. The world was my universe and I was Han Solo breaking hearts and making Kessel Runs in less than 12 parsecs.

Next time we’ll discuss the radar dish. Where did it go? Did the filmmakers understand that it was the first thing on the toy to break off and made a nod to that in Return of the Jedi? Stay tuned.

Born Too Soon

One of my favorite bands is a hometown act called The Clarks.   Their lead singer, Scott Blasey, played a small acoustic set in my hometown a couple weeks back and I was able to introduce my little one to one of the few “good” musicians actively producing music today.  But I digress.  He also  released a solo album a few years ago with a song on it called “Born Too Late.”     In it, he asks various historical figures to mentor, or show him, in their respective areas of expertise on how to do things.    Sample lyrics include: ‘Vincent will you teach me how to paint.  Theresa will I ever be a saint.’   Get it?  Good.  Moving on.

I am not one of those people.  I have the firm belief, and have stated ad nauseum  that I was born too soon.   I concede that 1975 wasn’t exactly the dark ages but in terms of being the geek or tech nerd I am, Pong wasn’t exactly the Large Hadron Collider of its day.  So, from day one, I have always been one step behind technology or other advances that were beneficial to our lives when it applied to my age group. 

First there was Power Wheels.   In the evolutionary scale of childhood transportation I went from crawl to walk to big wheel to huffy to ten speed.   Anyone born after 1980 had the opportunity to firmly place Power Wheels in between The Big Wheel and your everyday Huffy bike.    Think of it, a motorized mini car that you could ride around your yard.    I was so pissed when they became available because I was already too big to have one.  As I hoofed it around the neighborhood on my Huffy I would see younger kids riding around their yard in their Power Wheels, faces aglow. 

That was also the year that our school district decided to skip my grade when it came to having early swimming education.   Until that point, that grade level of elementary school had a few swimming lessons at our high school and for some reason, they skipped my year.  I believe that further doomed me.  When I did reach high school and had to take swimming as a part of my sophomore year I did not have the proper swimming foundation and ended up drifting towards the left when trying to complete a lap, which led to me being given the nickname “Scud”  as in not very accurate in trajectory.   Once I ended up going in an arc to the side wall instead of straight ahead.  I emerged from the water thinking I had beaten everyone else only to see them to my right pointing and laughing.  But I took it in stride.  

By my senior year of high school I was recognizable to everyone, not because I was extremely popular but because everyone knew that I was the guy behind the video camera that hung around the halls.  I was in a class that made videos for our morning news announcements.  We actually put together a news broadcast with editing equipment, mixers, used computers for titles.  We were pretty industrious and managed to produce a lot out of nothing.  I was proud of our work and felt like we made an impact on the morale. 

The year after I graduated, the school sprung for the technology to do basic green screen effects.  There were so many ideas I had that could have involved having green screen tech at my fingertips.   OK, some were purely for the sake of humor but still, the application would have yielded awesome results.

Moving on to college.  In my sophomore year, I became fascinated with this Internet thingy and learned how to make web pages in the computer labs of the University of Pittsburgh.  I did this while never being taught how to program, in the classroom.   I did it on my own time at 2:00AM instead of being at the bars.  *cough* dork *cough*  I even got to design the University’s Transportation Department webpage as part of a project for the only class I ever attended that dealt with web design and it was taught by the English department and I pretty much knew more than they did, at that point.   When I graduated, java script became the newest feature for web design and soon classes were being taught everywhere.  I had already graduated and had lost the ambition to go back to school as I joined the work force.

As I hurtle towards middle age I see the toys and gadgets that come out for the younger generation and I want to weep.   Yes, I am a gamer with a PS3 and Wii, but I have no time to really play all that much.  Ok, I do play a little bit every day or so.   I’m not like some kids who spend an entire weekend leveling up and playing hours upon hours of Dorkcraft.  So, it breaks my heart that there are so many awesome games out there that I don’t have time to play. If I was still in college, I would love it.  I’d be flunking out, but I’d love it.  Then there’s the Internet sites like Facebook.  I admit that I am a bit of a dork and play games like Farmville and Mafia Wars but I don’t obsess about harvesting crops or taking out rival families enough to empty my bank account just to buy a friggin puppy for my farm or a kick ass weapon to lay waste to anyone who tries to rob my mega casino.   Yes, I do realize I understand what I just said.  [changes subject with “look over there”] What else is there?

There’s iPods, iPhones, iPads and iWanttocry because I just don’t have the time to get into the technology.  Granted, those are not specifically geared towards the younger generation but if I were not a part of the work force full time, I could have devoted my studies to becoming an expert at these things in order to work in a field that is relevant to their use.  I’d be the ubergeek extraordinaire when it comes to all things tech.

Perhaps with the technology at my beck and call I could come up with better applications for these devices so that we are not just wasting our time with silly little apps.  But alas, I was born too soon.  I can only speculate and grumble and tell kids to keep their smart phones out of my yard or I’ll keep them.  Not because I’m a mere mean old Grumpy Gus, but because I want to play with them, too.   Screw you Power Wheels.  You ruined my life.

 

The Inventors of The Frisbee and Easy Bake Oven Have Died

Two inventors of famous toys from the annals of pop culture died this month.

Walter Frederick Morrison died at the age of 90. He originally invented what was better known as the Frisbee. He fought, as a pilot, in World War II and was short down in Italy. He was a prisoner of war for 48 days. After the war he designed the flying disc, got an investor and eventually sold the rights to Wham-O who renamed it The Frisbee. Sadly, Morrison died on February 9th.  Details are sketchy at the moment. He was either found on a roof or became stuck in a storm drain. In either case, his body was retrieved after three hours of attempts with a long stick


Ronald Howes took the idea of street vendors roasting chestnuts and created an appliance found in many, built to scale, plastic kitchens around the world. The Easy Bake Oven used a light bulb, sometimes a 100 watt version, to cook brownies and cakes to near salmonella breeding perfection. What kid didn’t intend to impress their pretend boss from the Lemonade stand by having their cootie loving wife of two days cook up a wonderful three layer Easy Bake Cake in just under three hours?  Dinner was always a success and ended before the street lights came on.  Howes died on February 16th at the age of 83. It is estimated that it will take three months to cremate his body, but it should smell delicious.



These deaths follow the news that Glen Bell, the founder of Taco Bell, died on January 16th. The viewing for his funeral took place as late as 1am and mourners were asked to please pull to the second window.

Meh Meal

Time for another tale of Little Mongo.

Once upon a time, specifically on a Monday, Little Mongo went to a wonderful place with magical creatures walked and talked and looked something like food. That place was McDonald’s. You see Little Mongo’s Daddy was a member of a service organization that held their meetings on Monday nights and that meant that sometimes Little Mongo got to go Mickey D’s as a treat.

We’d all pack up the family truckster, which at that time was a silver Maverick with black vinyl interior that flayed the skin from your arms and legs in the hot summers. It was complete with an AM radio with the push button presets that made you feel like you were at a vending machine. Still, it got us from point A to point B and at that time, car seats weren’t as required as they are today.

So, there we were at McDonald’s on Route 40 in Uniontown, which was just a couple of minutes away from the restaurant where the Big Mac was created. This McDonald’s, however, was not in a shopping plaza but right off the road main road in a row of three restaurants that made up what I liked to call the primary colors of fast food. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King all in a line. Further up the road there was a Wendy’s and Hardees, and a Rax, too. There’s a blast from the 80s. But I preferred McDonald’s over the others, even though the Pizza Hut had a cocktail cabinet version of Galaga which was pretty awesome. The two main reasons I chose the Golden Arches over the King or the Hut was that I could get a Happy Meal and sit on a train.

That’s right, in the main eating area of the restaurant there sat a group of seats fashioned into a locomotive and a number of cars, each with a table. The locomotive was a two seater with the table set up as the dashboard of the engine. Not content with sitting anywhere else, I immediately staked my claim to that engine seat and if circumstances [read: obscured visibility] permitted, I was willing to jack someone, Grand Theft Auto style from my seat. I hated facing backwards on that damn thing. Once I was seated and got my nice little cardboard box, with two holes cutout of the base of the arches for little fingers to carry, I was ready to nom nom nom that bad boy up. Life was good. And afterwards, we’d usually play a stupid trick on unsuspecting patrons as we would stack a ketchup packet or two beneath behind their front wheels. When they backed out it looked as if they ran over a small rodent.

If the weather was particularly nice we would go out into the playground area of the restaurant. Back when McDonald’s had their equipment outside and it was primarily made of metal instead of molded soft plastic. Our McDonald’s consisted of a few Fry Guy spring riders, a giant Grimace that you stood inside and just rocked back in forth as if you were a shake and he had just gulped and a Big Mac Climber. I mean Big Mac as in the character from the commercials. You know, the constable or Johnny Law of McDonald land. The thing consisted of a hole in his butt that had ladders. Climbing one ladder put you into his head which was open with metal bars that kept you from falling out. Now if you took another ladder you could end up inside his hat which had holes in it to look out. It was kind of like a sweatbox in a Georgia prison but it was still fun. Something that always troubled me about that Big Mac character, he was a horrible representation of law enforcement. The Hamburgler was always loose, the Fry Guys were always jacking other people’s fries and that Captain Crook character always stole a bunch of Filet-O-Fish and never did any time down at Gitmo.

In later years after I pretty much outgrew the playground equipment, they were removed and now most Playland’s as they are called are indoors. I’m sure there were some pretty horrific accidents that occurred at the hands of a huge metal hamburger that you could potentially fall out of onto the concrete. In fact a quick Google Street View of route 40 shows the horrible truth of my lost childhood. The McDonald’s no longer has the distinct shape it once had. Instead it is now an outdated glass box housing a Playland inside the restaurant. Worse yet, the Pizza Hut down the road is gone, leaving only an empty hut and sign out in the front of the parking lot. It’s a shame.

My interaction with McDonald’s nowadays is limited as I’ve grown up. I still try to eat there once in awhile and look forward to the Monopoly game in the fall, even though it is a rip. Of course, I eat way too many bad things as it is now that I’m into almost into the back nine of my 30s. I’m sure I’ve passed along some quips on my unhealthy love of the Baconator. But, living where I live, now, near the equally busy area around Route 30, I have loads of choices for fast food including the original fast food primary colors of Red/Yellow, Red/White, and Red/Blue/Yellow. But, now I have a two and a half year old who gets to enjoy the prefabricated plastic Playland in the newer McDonald’s Big Mac Museum.

Frankly, it was about time. The store that sat in the spot, previously was sorely outdated. It looked like a rogue Miami Subs mated with a Taco Bell producing the ugliest shades of pastels known to man with a speckled grey color for table tops. Now we have this huge McStarbucks looking thing with weird cushions and mosaic tiles and they have yet to get one of my orders right. But inside the automatic sliding doors lies a huge jungle gymonstrosity. My kid loves it. At first we took it easy letting her just climb around the bottom platforms under close supervision but since she turned two in July of 2009 we’ve loosened up the grip and she pretty much runs wild in there. I do get concerned over the older kids not having the ability to be aware of a smaller child in the area but that was quickly resolved as I witnessed my child taking out a kid twice her size on the slide when the older kid tried to climb the tube from the bottom. She can hold her own.

Gone are the days of the sharp metal chutes and ladders as well as the old train I used to pine for on Tuesday mornings. Now we have hip looking seats and backs like something out of a IKEA catalog. Another drastic change to the iconography of McDonald’s is the Happy Meal. I said before that it was customary to get a small cardboard box that contained a burger, fries and a toy. Growing up, the toy ranged from hot wheels to something tied to a popular movie, usually Disney. Now, the toys are not much more than cheap plastic and the presentation itself of a Happy Meal is in a paper bag instead of the box. I understand the need to be eco-friendly or reduce costs but come on, you could use recycled cardboard and tout yourself as green.

Sadly, my kid will grow up in a world where all of the greatest things about mass consumerism and 80s advertising will be replaced with this madness. In fact, I had a conversation about this with my wife as my kid threw a forearm at line jumper for the slide. Happy Meals aren’t the same, the playground equipment is different, and I bet that a guy like Jim Delligatti could not invent a revolutionary sandwich like the Big Mac in the corporate giant that is McDonald’s, today. Something like that would be constructed at the McLabs with scientists in white coats and no souls. The ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that built the backbone of corporate America has wrought with scoliosis which is corrupt and contrived. Big business goes after the little guy for using just the letters ‘MC’ in something, regardless of the intention to confuse trademark or not.

The world is passing out Meh Meals to our inner child and the toy inside is a lead paint based piece of crap from China called capitalism. I’m am SO NOT lovin’ it.

Friday Night Remote Fight: Best Movies to Kick Off the Weekend

WARNING:
The post you are about to read contains dangerous levels of sugar and caffeine. Side effects include lethargy and feelings of euphoric childhood fantasies.
Consult a blogger.

Friday night. It’s a magical and mysterious thing. Surviving another long week seems almost worth it when you have this to look forward to. Some people have big plans to hit the clubs or some other event. Here in Pittsburgh, there’s a little thing called the NHL Finals going on and we’re down a game to the Capitals, so you know a majority of Pittsburghers will be either in the Mellon Arena at the game, outside the Mellon Arena watching the game on the Jumbotron, or in a bar watching the game on television. But what about the rest of us?

There was a time when I lived for Friday nights. Somewhere in my socially deprived mind I thought that if I didn’t go out somewhere, anywhere, on Friday night I was missing out on some sociological event that would go down in the annals as EPIC! Usually, that meant hanging out at the mall or even in my day, the roller rink. Yeah, for a brief period between the years of 1986 and 1990 I would make it a point to go to my local rink and just be. Of course, that meant be by myself, spend a couple dollars on Rolling Thunder or Xenophobe, watch other people couple skate, and then go home.

Then there were some Friday nights, during my early teenage years, that I just spent up in my room. Ok, it’s not what you’re thinking. This was about 1987 or 1988 and my brother had been in college at the time. Our first home computer took the form of an Apple IIc and my brother’s roommate had volumes of floppy disks with games on them that he copied for me. Now, the degree of advanced graphics and sound cards were still years away but even the simplest of games like Conan or Bruce Lee kept me busy for hours. It would be nothing for me to grab a can of Pepsi, a bag of Doritos, turn up my RUSH tapes, and not be seen again until Saturday morning at 7:00 AM when I had to get up for my paper route. How pathetic is that?

What kind of childhood was that? It was like the real life equivalent of the first twenty minutes of Weird Science, before the bras on the heads. Although, I kept waiting for my bedroom door to explode and have Kelly LeBrock standing amongst the smoky rubble just waiting for me to utter the simplest command. Never happened for you either? John Hughes was such a lying prick, wasn’t he?

Still, I remember, with fondness the days, when Friday meant I was done for the week. It was the time when my brain could just shut down and I could spend the next two days just crashed out in my “play clothes.” There wasn’t a child that needed tending to. There wasn’t a yard that needed to be mowed. I wasn’t responsible for taking out the trash or making sure the litter boxes were clean. It was all about the pleasure principle, and I don’t mean a Janet Jackson album.

Looking back at my childhood, I continually mount a pretty good case for being born too soon. There was of course the Power Wheels defense of 1983. That was just the tip of the iceberg, the smallest visible portion of the massive amount of technological innovations that developed over the years of my life. Those advancements in fun always seemed to be geared towards the demographic just below my age range, robbing me of the latest and greatest in media, toys and other escapist devices. While video game consoles are probably the greatest missed opportunity, the advancement in home theater and movie offerings through DVD and cable providers ranks a close second.

Yes, young Whipper Snappers, you there with your Twit-ster and Space-Book have all the hook up in gadgets and distractions of heroin addict whose house just landed in a Ozian poppy field. OhgodohgodDorothyDorothypoppiesfieldpoppiesfield... (ten points for you old timers that get that moldy oldie reference to geekdom.) I’ve become the Luddite equivalent of my parents talking about walking to school, uphill, both ways, in three feet of snow, but I’m explaining how, in my day, we had to sit in a certain order on the couch and touch the lamp just so we could keep our fuzzy reception of HBO visible. We dared not move or the audio track would go from somewhat discernible to that repetitive “cheet, cheet, cheet,” sound. It was like the whispers from Friday the 13th, set to the speed of Chipmunks and blasted like a Greek chorus, chanting over and over again that we were “cheating” the cable company, yet we continued to fine tune our

I mean, God help me if I was alone. I had the skills of a SETI radio technician, fine tuning the little knob on the device that clipped onto the back of our television, just so I could see the glimpse of a fuzzy pair of breasts from Revenge of the Nerds late at night. You kids, with your DVRs and your Blu Ray. Bah! You don’t know how stressful it was to have only five minutes to return a VHS rental and then realize you had to rewind the damn thing. If only I would have been born in 1985 I’d be knee deep in WoW and failing my Rocks for Jocks that I needed to graduate with a degree in Undeclared Arts. I’d be Netflixing the entire Second Series of Dr. Who while searching for another little jug of iced tea from 7-11. This would all be done simultaneously while texting my friends and updating my status while recruiting more people for my Mafia and send them all flair based on how much I hate Twilight.

But, I’ve gone completely off the point as I tend to do in my pop culture dementia. The entire point of this ever disintegrating rant is to highlight a selection of popcorn confectionery cinema treats that are best served reheated and with copious helpings of greasy, shop delivered pizza and carbonated beverages. This selection is a prime example of a childhood gone completely off the reservation. This is the kind of pre pubescent nostalgia that has you up until way past midnight, fixated on your glowing screen in a quasi reversed Ludovico technique. Instead of causing an aversion to the images and acts on screen, you wake the next day and head out into your backyard or neighborhood, engrossed in an intense imaginative state, reenacting the best scenes from the film. In your possession is a broken stick that doubles as a sword or rifle and you are clad in a newspaper hat and a cape fashioned from your Mother’s hand knitted afghan.

So, here we go. Settle down into that butt shaped groove you’ve made into the couch, Rochambeau your loved one or best friends for the remote with that killer Paper/Lizard/Spock combo move you’ve developed and let the brain take the night off, you deserve it. Now, I’m sure I will have missed some more of the classics and well established films but this is just a sampling.

Comedy

Dude, where’s My Car?
Half Baked
Stripes
Superbad
Old School
Ghostbusters (Could technically be listed under Sci-Fi)
Weird Science (As could this)
Big Trouble in Little China
Heathers
Shaun of the Dead (It splits the genre with Horror)
Meatballs
Caddyshack

Horror

Christine
Evil Dead I and II (Dead By Dawn is more comedy but let's keep it where it's at)
The Lost Boys
Halloween (1978)
The Thing
The Frighteners
Bubba Ho-Tep
Night of the Living Dead
Cabin Fever
Final Destination
Grindhouse
Poltergeist
Jaws

Adventure

Raiders of the Lost Ark
National Treasure
The Goonies
The Mummy
Jurassic Park
Romancing The Stone
The Three Musketeers (1993)
Ladyhawke

Action/Fighting

Kill Bill
Kung Fu Hustle
Crank
Die Hard
First Blood
Commando
Predator
Point Break
Bad Boys
Hot Fuzz

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Fellowship of the Ring
Terminator
The Running Man
The Matrix
Escape From New York
Tron
Aliens
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Stargate
Independence Day
Akira
Six String Samurai
The Black Hole
Back to the Future
Underworld

Those of you who can’t turn your mind off for 2 hours.

Donnie Darko
12 Monkeys
Strange Days
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Memento
Paycheck
Pi
North by Northwest
Cube
Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Rom/Com

The Princess Bride
The Wedding Singer
Sleepless in Seattle
Only You
One Fine Day
10 Things I Hate About You
Failure to Launch

Just be sure to wipe the drool from the corners of your mouth when you're done. Have a good weekend and Let's Go Pens!

The Curious Case Of Teddy Ruxpin

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

As a child I found myself playing with toys of a more adult nature. Meaning that, as a toddler, I played with LEGOS that were rated at a higher age level that I was. Get your head out of the gutter. My brother had toys that he ultimately had torn down and re-engineered to work faster or do different things. And, in any situation, the packaging for a toy sometimes provided more entertainment than the prize inside.

Most of the time, I played with toys that were previously bought for one of my siblings and did not have a lot of toys bought specifically for me. Probably the first "new" toys I ever received were Kenner Star Wars action figures. Of course, had I been any kind of collecting genius, I would have never opened those cardboard backed, plastic sarcophagi allowing my retirement millions to be sealed in for freshness. When buying a car, they say that it depreciates by about 20% as soon as you drive it off the lot. In the case of Star Wars action figures, it’s similar in that the first thing that happens when you open the packaging is that you lose the little plastic weapons. The next thing that disappears is any removable clothes, such as capes. There’s your 20% right there. Yes, looking back, I think I would have asked for two of every action figure I was bought. One for me and one for the vault.

As I grew older, the toys I had as a young child had sustained my need for escapism from the everyday doldrums of basic cable. However, somewhere just before the middle of the 80's there was a significant change in toy designs starting around the age of eight. Soon, I went from playing with toys rated at a higher age than myself to being jealous of the ones I had missed out on as a kid. By 1983, I had already outgrown my Spider-Man Big Wheel and had moved on to a black Huffy with the bread loaf ribbed seat cushion and a new mode of transportation had arrived for the under seven crowd, the Power Wheel. Think of it, a motorized miniature car that held up to two passengers and required no exertion of energy. I was flabbergasted. How could technology betray me like this? For the last two years I was relying on manual operation of these pedal based devices that in my mind were not built with gender in mind. I mean come on, you give boys, the design that has the metal bar running between their legs while the girl version has none. Have you ever slipped off your pedals and fallen onto that bar? All this time I could have been speeding along at the speed of 2.5 mph down to my best friend’s house. He only lived a quarter mile away. I could have been there in just under ten minutes. Of course, I would have needed a fresh battery for the return trip as it was uphill the whole way. Seeing as how we had to be home before the street lights came on, I’d have to plan on leaving in advance of dusk, but still, why do people take the bus to work? It takes longer to get there but they don’t have to do any of the work.

While most people will tell you they were born too late, sometimes I wonder if I had been born too early. As I got older, the toys became more advanced and kids really were spoiled by the technological wonders as were parents. As a parent, I am not really dreading the time when I will have to read my child a bedtime story in order to get her to sleep. As an actor and general performer, I will probably take great pride in doing different voices and who knows, I may just spice up the story a little. Maybe Goldilocks is addicted to smack and is crashing out during a B&E at the Three Bears house much like Robert Downey Jr. did back in the day. Either way, I would relish in the undertaking. However, growing up, I had to read my own books and how cool would it have been to have been young enough to enjoy Teddy Ruxpin. I was rather jealous of the demographic that he was aimed at and thought it would have been a neat marketing move to have Teddy read other literary works like the ones I was forced to read in school. Just think he collective works of Shakespeare or Tolstoy, read aloud by a talking bear, but only in the voice of James Earl Jones or Patrick Stewart. I don’t think I could stand to hear Hamlet being done by a cartoon bear voice. You can’t capture the angst and melancholy nature of the Great Dane that way. Again, a plethora of batteries would be needed in the case of that idea.

Well into my young adult years kids’ toys continued to advance, making me wish more and more to be a kid again. My friends and I burned late afternoon oil simulating war games behind my house on the grounds of our elementary school. I was nearly old enough to drive and here I was crouched down in a set of bushes with a fake gun looking out for another kid. I’d pop up, unsuspecting, yelling “Bang” or making some other fake gun sound as I shook my hand violently in his direction. After the slow motion carnage subsided I declared in the most whiny of voices, “You’re dead! I got you!” Yes, war is hell, but we relied on the honor system. If you could prove that you shot your friend, usually based on a surprise attack, they had to sit out until the next round. The more physically fit and adventurous kids would climb up onto the roof of the school and hunker down among the discarded tennis balls and kick balls and the few wayward Frisbees and play sniper. They say you never hear the bullet that gets you and in this case, you never felt or saw it, either. Yet, for all our imagination and creativity, there was new toys hitting the market like Lazer Tag and Photon that offered high tech warfare with better accountability. Once I followed around a group of outsiders that staged a battle on our school grounds using Lazer Tag. I kept close to them like a war correspondence reporter watching intently as they stalked their prey. I was so jealous. The next year we decided to upgrade our arsenal to make it more interesting. We didn’t get any new-fangled toys to aid out campaigns. We started using bottle rockets, firecrackers, and roman candles. We still miss poor Jason.

I’m kidding about that last part.

As I graduated from high school and moved onto higher learning, it was time to put away childish things. That was until my dorm roommates came home from the grocery store with a set of suction cup dart guns they found in the bargain bin. We reverted to children and formed our own gang, 8 KROW. We were wannabe gangstas hunting each other down with our plastic gats. The dorm was riddled with saliva stained dart marks along most of the smooth surfaces. We chased one another from our hideout, down the outer hallways, to a neighboring dorm room full of girls. Our blood feud spilled into their bedrooms as innocent coeds were caught in the crossfire. Granted, had this occurred later than 1993, and perhaps not at a location as secluded as the college I was attending at the time, there might have been some campus security involvement and we would have been arrested for carrying guns, albeit a fake green one with orange rubber bullets that stick to walls. Still, we would have seen it as 5-0 trying to get at us and would have probably launched an assault of darts at him in the process. This had to be a sociological phenomenon. Here I was getting older, hurtling headlong into adulthood and I’m chasing around other people like a little kid, giggling all the way.

Now, almost midway into my thirties, I have neither the body nor the free time to endure such frivolous escapades with children’s toys. I spend most of my time lamenting over sticking batteries into my daughter’s ear piercing and annoyingly repetitive gadgets for the three and up crowd. She follows my wife around while she vacuums, Mommy with her Oreck and baby with her little dirt devil toy vac with a detachable hand vac. There is a stockpile on the back porch of unopened toys waiting to get into the rotation. Yet, while I don’t have the time to run off with my dwindling pack of friends to engage in a fake battle or gang initiation, I do find the time to have the occasional tea party and often, you’ll find me doing the lion’s share of the coloring when we are in a restaurant and I’m keeping the little one placated until her noodles arrive. My regression into childhood is now complete. And in a few years I will be reading Green Eggs and Ham to her and doing the role of Sam in some exaggerated and silly voice. Although, I might crash out and falling asleep before she does, I don’t want to keep her in suspense as to how the story ends. If only there was some kind of toy that could do the job for me…..hmmm. I wonder how Anthony Hopkins feels about doing a vocal recording of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish?

MyBabysDay Makes My Baby's Day

They say "Mother" is the word for "God" on the lips of children. Although, sometimes, "Father" can translate to "Hero" in the eyes of a child. That's my job. Hero, protector, provider, example, especially in what not to do. It's hard to know what to do when your little one gets hurt or loses something. The last thing you want is for them to be sad or upset but at the same time you don't want to give them an unrealistic vision of what the world is like. I'm not saying sit a three old down and tell them to start studying for college entrance exams and putting away those pennies from Aunt Margie for retirement. I just mean that a kid needs to have a realistic sense of expectations. I learned this when my 11 month old daughter takes a toy or a piece of food while sitting in a high chair and drops over the side, looking to see if it hit the floor. Usually, I manage to catch it and put it back into her path of grasp. Sometimes it hits the floor and I have to say, "It's gone. It hit the floor and now it's dirty." You have to because sooner or later everything ends up in their mouth. I don't intend to take away the object forever, just until I can clean it. Well, except for food. We'll just get another one. However, not everything can be fixed. Broke is broke in the case of some objects. That's when the look of hurt and confusion really makes me get a knot in my throat. Recently, a knot was induced when one of my daughter's favorite toys was broke. It was nothing spectacular other than a miniature beach ball that was given to us.

It was a Saturday maybe two weeks to a month after she was born. We were on our usual Saturday morning breakfast trip to Bob Evans when a lady approached us. As a parent you tend to be wary of people approaching your child. It's a sad commentary on the times where even when you are with your kids you fear that someone will try something inappropriate or just downright sadistic. I try to be a little more optimistic but have my reflexes at the ready. This particular lady didn't set off any red flags in my mind. She merely commented on how adorable our little girl was, I take full credit on that, and gave us this little piece of schwag. For those of you have never heard of the word schwag, take a look at your pen. If it has a company or brand name on it, it's schwag. That coffee mug with some corporate logo, that's schwag. These promotional items that advertise a brand are like Levi jeans and Beatles albums to the Cold War era Russian people. They are inexpensive, but everyone scrambles to get one in the office when someone has them. This particular piece of promotional goodness had a website logo printed on it. http://www.mybabysday.com/. They are a quaint little business outside of Pittsburgh that developed a software program to help track a baby's daily activities. Anyone wondering why their little one is doing what their doing when they break out of their normal routine can find this software useful.

Often when someone offers you a promotional item it becomes more about the actual item than the advertisement. We forgot all about what was written on the beach ball and just loved the fact that our girl was batting it around the room and actually throwing it back and forth between us. She'd chase it around the floor and it's round and smooth texture would slip from her grasp and she'd laugh as it would scoot away from her. Then she would lower her head and charge off again after the ball. I think it was more of a joy to us to watch her play with it then it was for her. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago, disaster struck. It was during the Pittsburgh Penguins glorious win in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals here in Pittsburgh. We were all sitting on the floor watching the game and playing with the beach ball. It looked as if it needed a little more air so I picked it up and began to inflate it as the Penguins scored. I must have got excited and over inflated the ball because it began to deflate right in front of my daughter's eyes. She looked heart broken as she picked it up and looked at me. I was devastated. Her favorite toy and I had ruined it. She looked at me as if I had told her the truth about Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and then took away her puppy all at once. After she had gone to bed I grabbed the ball and decided that I wasn't going to let her down again......this month. I went to my computer and looked up the website on the ball. I sent a message pleading for help and within a week I had two beach balls in the mail. We'll keep one as a backup, well, because it's now Game 6 and I'm afraid I won't be able to control my excitement as the Penguins continue to hold on in the series.

The other I quickly inflated and walked up into our living room where my daughter was climbing all over her grandfather. She looked at me and saw what I had. She instantly smiled and scrunched up her nose in that all too familiar look that made me smile. She got down on the floor, I tossed the ball onto the carpet, and off she went leaving her Pappy to recover from the attack. She raced around the room batting the ball everywhere. Once again she was the gleefully playful child I always love her to be. This was all thanks to a hopeful plea and a piece of promotional material. So, thank you MyBabysDay. You made me a hero in my daughter's eyes once again. I don't suppose you brand ponies, do you? Her first birthday is coming up in a couple of months.

P.S. Let's go Pens.

Double O Spud

Recently, I was sent an internet site for a place called Spud's Travels. Why?  Because, that's what we do at work.  We find weird websites and email them to each other.  Unfortunately, when they get to me, I have to take it one step further and point out their shortcomings.   It's not a malicious thing; it's just that I don't think like everyone else.  I tend to have a warped sense of reality and should probably come with a plastic bag warning.   Mental issues aside, I didn't really spend a lot of time at the site which is pretty much one of those traveling toy picture pages.  Back when I was a kid there was a story about a duck shaped lawn ornament that went missing from a local couple.  Every so often they'd receive letters from exotic locations and there would be a picture of their duck at some monument or tourist type attraction included.  Eventually, the duck was returned and no harm befell it.  Then, when I was a sophomore, I was involved with the stage crews for the plays and musicals performed at our high school.  In our back room, where we kept all the sets and props, there was this huge paper Mache horse from a previous year.  One night it disappeared from the school and began popping up all over town.  The local news paper found it on their steps and then it appeared on the rooftop of a local business.  It was quite the mystery for our little one horse town.

But here, we're talking potatoes, here.  With the impending release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Playskool has decided to release a Taters of the Lost Ark Mr. Potato Head, complete with whip and gold colored idol.

You may remember when the prequel trilogy of the Star Wars saga was released Playskool issued a Darth Tater and Spud Trooper version.  There is even an Optimash Prime version for last years' Transformers movie.   This got me to thinking.  Playskool has missed the boat on the marketing goldmine of the century.  With Daniel Craig putting on the tux for Bond 22 this fall, Playskool should be rushing out a whole line of Mr. Potato Heads based on the Bond franchise.  After all, the latest Double Idaho 7 has been called "Mr. Potato Head" by numerous folks.  Why not use this as an excuse to corner the market.  However, being that I am bringing this to you, I believe I should be given compensation for my marketing genius.  Ok, that won't happen. I'll still give you my opinion because I'm just ridiculously insane.

I give you Double Idaho 7.  Spud, James Spud. 

This secret agent comes complete with the following.

1. White tuxedo jacket


2. Mouth that doesn't smile but comes with a bow tie directly under it.


3. Stern, cold eyes


4. Gadgets.  Plenty of them all stored in his butt.

Maybe, I'm nuts.  After all, why would a company that makes kids' toys create a spud in the likeness of a stone cold killer?  Hello, Darth Tater? Spud Trooper?  Spuda Fett?  It's not like Darth Vader was into playing with puppies and rainbows.  He was the baddest bad ass in the galaxy.  He killed Jedi children.  And Boba Fett was a ruthless bounty hunter.  So, why not James Bond? 

Think of it in terms of sheer volume of usable material in which to make jokes.  After 22 movies, Bond has more pun related films than any other Mr. Potato Head movie star likeness.  Just take a look.

Slicense To Kill

Gnocci Are Forever

Goldtuber

Live and Let Fry

Octopussy and Chips

Quantum of Solanum

On Her Mashestey's Secret Service

GoldenEyes

The Wedge is not Enough

The Man with the Golden Hash Browns

From Russet with Love

You Only Bake Twice

For Your Fries Only

Perhaps, someone out there among my three readers will contact a friend of a friend and send my link all the way to Playskool's marketing groups.  Until that happens, let it be known that I came up with the idea and put it down on paper, first.  We'll haggle over copyright later. 

 

Ok, one more.   Mrs. Potato Head Bond Girl version....... Honey Ore Ryda.

Fine, I'll stop.