Weird Japanese Cartoons, Part 1

We'll start today's blog with a poll. Who here has ever seen a Japanese cartoon? How about one that's not Pokemon or Dragon Ball Z? Ok, let's see if you can guess the first Japanese cartoon I was exposed to as a child. Here are a few hints:

• The main character is a princess who's forced to pretend to be a boy so she can inherit the throne.
• The princess becomes a masked vigilante in her spare time, fighting the evil duke who wants to take her throne.
• For some reason the princess and her angel sidekick end up stopping a wedding on the bottom of the ocean at some point.

Still not ringing any bells? Don't worry, I can barely remember this one too. The anime I'm referring to is called Choppy and the Princess, and it's every bit as weird and awesome as it sounds. ... or at least I remember it being awesome. I haven't seen it in years. Here's a bit more info from Wikipedia:

"Princess Sapphire has a pint-sized sidekick in the form of Choppy, a young angel-in-training out to earn his wings. When she was born, Choppy accidentally gave Sapphire the blue heart of a rambunctious boy as well as the pink heart of a prim and proper girl, and so God (in a fit of anger) sent him down to Earth to sort out the mess and retrieve Sapphire's extra heart. Choppy is stuck inside a rather weak mortal shell, and cannot go back to Heaven until he's fixed things. Sapphire won't let Choppy remove her blue boy's heart, however. As a result, Choppy is pretty much stuck with Sapphire (although he doesn't really mind).

Sapphire and Choppy experience a variety of fairy tale and political adventures, including encounters with ice witches and anti-Royal revolutionaries. Sapphire also dons a Zorro-style mask at night and fights crime as the Phantom Knight, as well as foiling Duke Duralumon's schemes to take over the kingdom and his attempts to prove that Sapphire is really a girl (and thus discredit her as the heir to the throne)."

I also vaguely remember there being a scene where some mice help her with some housework, though without all the singing you see in Disney's Cinderella.

I remember watching it as a 90 minute cartoon movie, but apparently there was also a TV series and a manga (a kind of Japanese comic book that's printed backwards since Japan is on the opposite side of the world from us so it's oriented correctly relative to Japan. That is why it's backwards, right?) I think I was about three when I used to watch it, about the same time I was watching more mainstream stuff like Charlotte's Web, The Rescuers Down Under (which I watched before The Rescuers, so when I finally saw the original a lot of things made more sense), and Flight of the Dragons. Ok, that last one wasn't mainstream, but society would be so much better off if it were. They fight a giant worm that spits acid for crying out loud!

Flash forward about 7 years to 5th grade, and we have my next big encounter with Japanese cartoons: Pokemon. I remember seeing the first cartoon for the Game Boy game and being really confused, but through the magic of TV advertising I found myself really wanting the game. This may have been because I saw that it had a dragon in it, so it had to be good right?

Heck. YES. Together with a fondness for pretzels, a long-standing theme in my life has been my tendency to obsess over things. Christmas morning I got up early and watched the first few episodes of the cartoon to see if the game was any good. The story seemed epic enough, and the talking electric mouse, while a little too cute for me to really get excited about, was still pretty cool. A few hours later I opened my presents and found a shiny red Game Boy cartridge with the dragon from the commercials on the cover:

That's when things started to get out of hand. Within a few months I'd beaten the Elite Four, captured Mewtwo, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, spent endless, fruitless hours restarting the game and trying to move a truck and capture Mew. If this picture doesn't haunt you then you weren't a true Pokemon fan in the 90s:

To concerned friends and relatives I might have looked a little mentally disturbed, but I was in another, much more awesome world, where kids can train magic animals to fling elemental powers at each other for sport, topple evil corporations, and gain fame and wealth in the process. 

Nintendo Power magazine might have said that the most balanced and useful starter Pokemon was Bulbasaur, but I knew better. It was all about Charmander. I may have lost the boss fight against Misty about 20 times on my first playthrough because he was weak against water and I was too lazy to level up my pikachu, but several hours of level-grinding later it was worth it when I got the obscenely overpriced Game Boy link cable and was able to throw my charizard into battle against my friends' Pokemon. 

From a cartoon standpoint, the show wasn't half bad. Apart from the wimpy, incompetent protagonist Ash Ketchum, the characters were interesting and humorous. My favorite was always Brock, the rock-type pokemon specialist who would hit on every female character in the show at least once per episode.

I was about halfway through 8th grade when I realized that knowing the name of every Pokemon was no longer cool, and I gradually drifted away from the game. Now, years later, most of my coworkers are big Pokemon fans and I'm relapsing a little more every day. Case in point, the office whiteboard:

The charizard is dressed like Fonzy from Happy Days, in case you were wondering.

When I showed a coworker the pikachu stapler my Aunt got me for Christmas when I was about 11, I was told I needed a pikachu taser, which added another item to my bucket list.

I'll have to wrap it up for now and, like every episode of every Japanese cartoon, end on a cliffhanger. Next time I'll continue with Square Enix games, Speed Racer, and Studio Ghibli. If there's time, I'll rant a little bit about The Pirates of Dark Water.

My Basement is Full of Creepy Children's Movies

One time back when I was still single my friend Colin hosted a movie night. The film chosen for our evening's entertainment was The Secret of Nimh. Directed by Don Bluth and based on the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, it's a classic of children's animation. It's also got one of the creepiest scenes ever: the part where Mrs. Frisby goes to ask the owl for help. After being nearly eaten by a spider, Mrs. Frisby is saved by an owl possessed by the devil, who eats the spider! 

The owl spends the whole rest of the encounter telling her how to save her son Timmy, who has pneumonia and definitely isn't based on Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol, and telling her to hurry on the way out because he's getting hungry again.

Lest I've scared you away from one of my favorite kids movies, I'll point out that the movie also has a sword fight between genetically engineered rats that may or may not have been my favorite part. There's also an annoying woodland creature named "Auntie Shrew", a magic pendant that wasn't in the book, and a crow that was kind of ridiculous. It was cinematic gold.

During the party someone made the obvious comment that it was pretty creepy for a kids movie. We all agreed, but then I thought about some of the stuff I watched growing up and decided to say something about how most of the children's movies that were available during my childhood were, in retrospect, very creepy. What came out of my mouth was "This is nothing. My basement is full of creepy children's movies." Colin's sister, who met me for the first time that night, later told me that because of that statement every girl in the room swore never to date me. 

Luckily Jessica was not in the room, though I've seen her Mom's movie collection and it's no better. We actually got bored one weekend and watched a lot of those movies. The highlight was when we watched my all time favorite movie from growing up: The Flight of Dragons. I was very happy to discover it's still as awesome as I remembered, probably due to the fact that James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa) does the voice of the evil red wizard Omadon. Not to glory in violence or anything, but here's a picture of Omadon's evil dragon torching a knight:

Jessica loved the movie because all the dragons in it were fat. Here's two of them getting drunk:

There was also an elf, a talking wolf that came back from the dead, and a nerdy guy who gets the girl. Anyone who knows me will understand why I loved this show. It's what tided me over until I was in high school and they finally made a good Lord of the Rings movie.

A similar movie that didn't age nearly as well was a terrifying specter of film-making known as The Last Unicorn. At first glance it should have been cool: it had a wizard, a bull made of fire, and Christopher Lee (the voice of Saruman, Count Dooku from Star Wars, and Willy Wonka's evil dad in the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version). They even had the band "America" do all the songs. However, other than Christopher Lee the voice acting was terrible, and between that, the annoying singing butterfly, and the infamous naked harpy scene, the film failed to come together, and ranks at second on my list of most traumatic children's movies. 

The infamous position of number one on that list belongs to Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. I've never forgiven him for being dumb enough to release the nightmare king, and to this day I can't bring myself to watch that movie again. Case in point, here's some images of said Nightmare King:

This is what happens to any who oppose the Nightmare King

What kind of idiot would release that thing on Slumberland!?

Lastly, we watched all the other Don Bluth movies. I've already mentioned Feivel Goes West, but we also watched the first American Tail movie and discovered the Mousekowitz family were actually Jewish. We also discovered that Rockadoodle is every bit as terrifying and messed up as we both remembered (a kid gets turned into a cat by an evil owl, who then tries to eat him. Not only is that horrible, but it's further evidence that Don Bluth had some kind of a bad experience with owls as a kid). 

We then watched All Dogs go to Heaven. The movie was about like I remembered it, and I'm still not sure what the deal was with the singing mardi-gras drag-queen alligator. Also, this:

Every dog's worst nightmare is being dragged to hell to face punishment for a life of sin

More horrifying was when we learned that Judith Barsi (the little girl who voiced Ann-Marie and was also Ducky from Land Before Time) actually died in a really sad way before the movie even came out. The full bio is on IMDB, and it really made us sad to read it.

Last on the list is one we've given a little coverage to in previous posts: The Land Before Time. I can't say enough good things about that movie. The scene where Little Foot's mom dies still gets me every time, especially since my Mom had the sheet music to the song "If We Hold on Together" from the end credits and used to play it on the piano when I was little.

We also discovered that there's a lot of references to faith, the promised land, and other religious concepts that I never picked up on as a kid. I've also started saying "Yup, yup, yup" all the time. So far no one's called me out on imitating a little girl duck billed dinosaur, but that'll probably change once I publish this blog.

Apparently Drug Addicts Love Our Blog

This will be a short post. I just wanted to share a little insight we gained while looking through the page view counts for this blog:

I was wondering what was special about April 20th, until Jessica walked in and said "Oh look, we got a spike in our page views on National Drug Day".

Now you may be thinking: Drug Free Day? Isn't that what Red Ribbon Week is for? Why do they need a separate day for it? When I expressed my confusion, Jessica explained that it's a day for doing drugs. I was curious how my sweet, not-at-all-a-drug-addict wife would know about this, and she blames it on her high school friend having a birthday that day. Sure.... (rolls eyes suggestively while quietly hiding the prescription drugs).

When she brought this up we decided to check if it was a local thing or actually a national trend. Enter Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_20

For those of you as confused by this as I initially was, "cannabis" is another word for marijuana, which is another word for pot (the kind you smoke, not that other one. Ewwww.)

So there you have it. Our blog is scientifically proven to be linked to drug use. Continue reading at your own peril. (Just kidding, please keep reading. A disturbing amount of our fragile self esteem depends on the numbers that come up on our screen when we look up our blog).

*Disclaimer: We do not in any way condone the use or misuse of drugs. The End.

Prince Phillip is the Man

The two people who read this blog probably already know this story (hi Mom! hi Jessica's little sister!), but it's a pretty good story and deserves to be immortalized in blog form. It all started at a church-sponsored lunch for local single adults (this was in the darker, scarier, pre-Jessica period of my life).

I was sitting at a table with some friends and we were discussing the fact that it was Valentine's Day and we were all going to spend it alone in our parents' basements eating chocolate and desperately refreshing our Facebook pages.

Somehow we got on the subject of the movie Beauty and the Beast, and I jokingly suggested that since it was Valentine's Day we should all get together and watch it and revel in the romance. I'm 95% sure I intended this to be a joke, but then something happened that I hadn't foreseen even though in hindsight it's really obvious: the girls at our table jumped on the idea. Not only that, they called over the girls at the neighboring table and told them the idea. The realization slowly crystallized in my head that if I had a party at my house centered around watching a girly movie then girls would come to my house. 

The party was a huge hit. We had a 50% or better ratio of girls to guys (the holy grail of party planners everywhere), I learned the words to Gaston's theme song (he's especially good at expectorating), and even though I spent Valentine's Day eating chocolate in my parents basement watching a sappy romantic movie, for a few hours being single didn't stink too bad. Everyone agreed we should do it again, so we made it a Sunday evening tradition, and thus was born:

Disney Princess Sundays turned out to be immensely successful. I discovered that not only were most of my friends huge Disney fans, but most of the movies I shunned as a kid because they were too romantic actually had a high entertainment value. Case in point: Pocahontas. I remember not really caring for that movie when it came out, but when we watched it as part of Disney Princess Sundays it was hilarious. As a side note, we realized that the most dynamic, interesting character in that movie isn't Pocahontas, John Smith, or even Grandmother Willow, it's Batman. The proof is as follows:

1. There's a character named Thomas who is voiced by the Dark Knight himself: Christian Bale. He starts the movie off as an insecure young adventurer who falls off the boat and has to get rescued by John Smith. John Smith later has to give him pointers on how to shoot a rifle because he's too shaky and inexperienced to hit anything.

2. When Kokoum and John Smith are fighting over Pocahontas it's Thomas who shows up and shoots Kokoum, displaying a complete 180 in terms of confidence and manliness (and a total violation of Batman's code prohibiting firearms and killing. Maybe Ann Hathaway did the voice of Thomas's gun, since Catwoman clearly has no such prohibition).

3. When the colonists turn on the corrupt governor Radcliffe it's Thomas who gives the orders to lock him up. In other words, by killing Kokoum, Thomas has gained the respect of all the other colonists and is elevated to a position of authority.

Despite getting a girlfriend and learning not to be a racist, John Smith's character doesn't really change during the movie. The same can be said of Pocahontas, her dad, Radcliffe, and Kokoum (unless dying can be seen as character development). Thomas, on the other hand, goes from a fumbling, inept bystander to a confident, respected figure of authority.

We had a lot more fun with that movie once we realized that not only did it have Christian Bale in it, but that it chronicles his bloody rise to power. When you think about it, how many Disney characters have intentionally killed someone on screen? Notable examples include Scar from The Lion King, Mother Gothel from Tangled,  Gaston from Beauty and the Beast (haha, just kidding, Belle loves the Beast so he's not dead), Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid, and Prince "I'm a freakin' stud" Phillip from Sleeping Beauty (with all apologies to Team Eric, Phillip is just on a whole other level).

Note that, despite Marvel being owned by Disney, Cyclops still isn't on the podium.

But we're getting a little off topic here. Aside from Beauty and the Beast and Pocahontas, we watched all the other classic Disney Princess movies: The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Cinderella, Princess and the Frog, Aladdin, Tangled, even The Black Cauldron.

Eventually we had to branch out into movies that didn't have princesses like Oliver and Company, The Lion King, and The Incredibles.

This went on until I met Jessica and recognized in her the essential marriage characteristics I'd been learning about from Disney movies for the past year. I don't know if it was that our apartment was in a less convenient location or we just smelled bad because we were married, but attendance at Disney Princess Sundays dropped off dramatically. We still tried to have them for a while, but we ran out of Disney movies and had to branch out into Dreamworks movies and Don Bluth movies. This post is getting a little long so that will have to wait until next week's post. Until then here's a picture that really made us laugh; Kasie this is for you.

Comment prompt of the week: What's your favorite Disney Princess/Prince pair? Why? More importantly, who has the best shoes? 

Cyclops Shoots First

So today's post is actually a continuation of my previous post. Those of you that are getting tired of X-Men references are probably on the wrong blog, especially since I'm now midway through X-Men Evolution on Netflix. For the rest of you, here's some interesting things I learned about Cyclops from the X-Men while researching this post:

1. Cyclops gets his powers from solar radiation (similar to Superman, but weaker because he's just a mutant human, not an alien).
2. Cyclops used to be able to control his powers until he sustained a head injury as a child. The trauma caused him to lose control to the point that whenever he opens his eyes the beams come out. This is why in X-Men Evolution when Rogue absorbs his powers she doesn't need to wear his special sunglasses, since Rogue doesn't have the head injury and would therefore be able to control his powers.
3. His beams hit with a concussive force (like a giant, long-range fist) rather than heat. This is different from Superman's heat vision, which is drawn in a way similar to Cyclops' optic blasts (as red beams coming from his eyes), but heats up and vaporizes what it hits rather than smashing it.
4. Cyclops has a brother named Havok who shoots plasma out of his hands. For some reason his powers don't work against Cyclops and vice/versa. Ironically, his powers work very much like Superman's heat vision.
5. In the comics, he doesn't marry Jean Grey first. Instead, one of the times Jean dies he marries Madelyne Prior, who looks just like Jean, has a son with her, and retires from the X-Men...... until Jean turns out to be alive again, at which point he ditches her and the kid, proving that comic book writers are all despicable human beings. To justify all this, they end up rewriting Madelyne as a clone of Jean Grey, a goblin queen, the daughter of Mr. Sinister, and various other explanations for why it was okay for Cyclops to dump her that were later retconned* because they were all terrible ideas. (This is why I prefer the cartoon and movie versions of most comic book franchises. The actual comic books tend to go for so long that they jump the shark, then nuke the fridge, then nuke a fridge that's jumping over a shark. The cartoons usually avoid most of the nastier retcons and horrible moral dilemmas because they have to stay kid friendly and only run for a few seasons anyway). 
6. Cyclops' son is named Cable. For some reason Cable ends up living a thousand years in the future and has a "techno-organic virus" that gives the writers an excuse to draw him with an awesome metal arm and really cool futuristic guns that he actually uses to shoot things (One of my pet peeves is that more comic book characters don't use guns and conventional weapons). With the possible exceptions of Wolverine and Bishop, Cable may just be the baddest X-Man there is.

Cable gets first place because real men take care of baby girls

You'd think as Cable's dad that Cyclops would end up on the podium, right? Well, let's just say he gets an 'A' for effort.

*Comic books change their continuity a ridiculous amount. Aside from the fact that no one stays dead except for Captain America's sidekick Bucky, Jason Todd (the second Robin), and Uncle Ben from Spiderman, there's the fact that people's powers, costumes, and back-stories change from issue to issue. In the industry this is referred to as a retcon, which stands for retroactive continuity.  DC Comics is worse about this than Marvel, but they both do it.

Anyway, now that we have all that background we can continue the narrative I started in a previous post about what would happen if I woke up one day with Cyclops' powers. In our last issue, our intrepid hero was just finishing lunch at Professor Xaviers School for At-Risk Teens Gifted Youngsters when...

12:30pm: An alarm sounds in the building. Immediately all the faculty strip off their business suits, revealing awkward spandex costumes. I raise an eyebrow questioningly, and a furry blue German demon-elf tells me they tried switching to leather costumes for the movies but changed back when they discovered the spandex breathes better. He also whips out two swords and mutters something about how stupid it was that he didn't get to use them in the movies.

The wall to our left crumbles and Gandalf flies in wearing a red cape and helmet. He is followed by a nasty toad-man, a big fat guy, a guy with a flamethrower, and a bigger surly Canadian with sharp teeth and long fingernails (great, now I have to keep track of two animal-themed Canadians). Unfortunately, they're also wearing what look like spandex outfits. After recovering from the shock I catch a whiff of body odor that convinces me their outfits must be made of a cheaper material than spandex as it clearly does not breathe well.

Gandalf and Captain Picard start debating whether humankind would be more tolerant of mutants if they were vigilantes or terrorists. Before I can ask for his autograph and ask how Bilbo is doing Professor X uses his telepathy to insist I stop calling him Captain Picard and explains that his debate partner is Magneto, the Master of Magnetism, who is far less friendly to short people than Gandalf. At that moment, Logan (the "good" Canadian) busts in and jumps toward the helmeted guy, whose name I've already forgotten. The magnet guy (Magnesium? Magenta? Magna Carta?) flicks his hand and sends him crashing into the wall. Everyone shakes their heads awkwardly like this has happened before. Logan then brushes himself off and joins our side, and each team forms a line on either side of the room. Just as I'm convinced there's going to be an epic battle with lasers and explosions and cool guitar music in the background, Magnolia flicks his hand again and a foosball table rolls into the center of the room. Everyone cheers as Captain Pic.... Xavier proceeds to narrowly defeat Magnetroid 5-4. After a bunch of robots come in to magically repair the wall (just like always happens off-screen in '90s TV shows), we all stop for a photo:

2:30pm - After our harrowing adventure with Magna-Doodle and his henchmen, we get a call from the local police station about a bank robbery. We pile into a Humvee and head off to intercept the robbers. Within a half hour we've foiled the bank robbery and a few cars who cut us off may or may not have ended up smoking on the side of the road with optic-blast-shaped holes in their sides.

3:15pm - Jessica and I spend a half hour brainstorming battle cries and one liners. We discard most of them, but decide to keep "Well apparently," *puts on sunglasses* "looks can kill." (yeeeaaaahhhhh!)

6pm - Dinnertime. As a special treat, the Avengers are our dinner guests. Iron Man tries to get me to do some welding until the unfortunately credible Dr. Banner steps in and explains the difference between optic blasts and heat vision. I commit some kind of faux pas by asking Captain America to sign some trading cards I got from Gambit. The room gets really quiet and Thor mutters something about the son of Cole. Jessica spends most of the meal chatting with Black Widow about where she gets her boots.

7pm - We get a flight home in the X-Jet. The in-flight movie is The Wedding Planner, starring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey. By the end Storm and Shadowcat are asleep and Wolverine is bawling. Apparently it's his second favorite movie after Hitch.

10pm - We have some trouble putting Tori to sleep as she keeps levitating a foot above her crib for some reason. After the day we've had we're too tired to care, so we just drape a blanket over her and she falls asleep that way.

11:45pm - Tori wakes up crying. For some reason her voice is different, everything in the room is levitating, and her shadow is shaped like a bird that's on fire. I change her diaper and she falls uneventfully back asleep.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip to the depths of nerdiness. I'll leave you with a discussion question: If you could be any of the X-Men, which would you be? How would you change your costume, if at all? Let us know in the comments.

Also, since no one has submitted anything for our Baby Avengers challenge, here's my version of the Baby Justice League in the hopes it will garner us some submissions:

Shoulda' Stayed in the Kitchen

This will be a short post. Jessica and I were feeding Tori and reading a short story by Brandon Sanderson when I glanced at the bookmark I got from the library. On the bookmark there was a list of upcoming events at the library, one of which was a class on starting a book club. Then somehow the sleep deprivation from daylight savings time caused my brain to take the following path: "Book Club. Fight Club. Book Fight Club. What if I wrote a book about guys who join book clubs to secretly cause fights by espousing controversial opinions about the book of the week?" And thus was born:

We laughed about this way more than it probably deserved, then sat around brainstorming fake discussion prompts we could have the guys in the story give the unknowing book club women to cause them to fight. For example, they could say things like: "I hate <insert popular character's name here>. They're so whiny." or "My favorite part was when they killed that one major character. They totally had it coming." Or even "I think the real heroes of Twilight were James and Victoria, for trying to kill Bella." The second-best was: "Who is the worse parent in Pride and Prejudice: Mr. Bennett, for not supporting his wife and shielding Elizabeth from having to marry Mr. Collins, or Mrs. Bennett, for trying to have any say in her daughters' lives when she should have stayed in the kitchen and let her husband make all the decisions?" However, far more entertaining was Jessica's response when I suggested the following discussion prompt. A guest at the book club is asked to defend the following position: "Pride and Prejudice teaches women a false moral by allowing Elizabeth Bennett to end up happily wed to the wealthy Mr. Darcy despite refusing Mr. Collins and endangering further prospects by being willful, opinionated, and out of the kitchen."

*Disclaimer: We don't actually believe these things, that's why they are funny because we get to imagine the response of people who would take them seriously. Also, I've never seen Fight Club. Or read the book. My only exposure to it was the trailers when it came out, and the following youTube spoof:


**Another disclaimer: I haven't read Twilight. I've seen the movie, and totally agreed with Jessica's fake comments once she explained that James was the vampire who almost kills Bella.

***Yet another disclaimer: I'm not really a violent person, and I know making fun of Twilight is overdone and that Twilight wouldn't make a good book club book anyway. This is all nonsense we came up with when we were loopy from sleep deprivation after setting our clocks forward an hour, and really isn't meant to be taken seriously. If you're one of the five people who read this blog you already know that most of what we say isn't meant to be taken seriously anyway.

The first rule of Book Fight Club? Never actually read the assigned book.

Optic Blasts are not the Same as Heat Vision

First of all, I want to warn my Mom: Mom, if you're reading this, you may want to just skip this post. There's no pictures of Tori, and it's pretty nerdy even by my standards.

Since the last two posts worked out so well I thought I'd continue allowing our friends to choose my blog topics. This weeks requests comes from Kevin V.:

As you can see, at first I thought he meant lazy eyes, which like any red-blooded child-of-the-Western-United-States-married-to-a-Texan I associate with the classic film "An American Tail: Feivel Goes West".

I'm planning on doing a whole post about Don Bluth animated films at some point, but for now I just want to point out how great it is even as a child I was taught to love and trust Jimmy Stewart to defend us from evildoers, and John Cleese as the nefarious Cat R. Waul ranks right up there with Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, the corrupt congressmen from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or even Liberty Valance (I hope you know which Jimmy Stewart movie he's from) in terms of being a jerk who we love seeing Jimmy Stewart beat down. (Offscreen: Wait, you mean John Wayne, Tiger the Cat, and the forces of democracy and a free market economy took those guys down? Then what did Jimmy Stewart do? Moral Leadership!? That's not a beatdown! No I'm not going to change what I said on the blog!  What do you mean the Stewart Family Estate is threatening legal action? All right I'll fix it... grumble grumble).

I've been informed by our legal staff that my previous statements were incorrect. Jimmy Stewart did not beat down any of those people, but instead inspired them by standing up for what's right and providing a blistering Care Bear Stare moral leadership. Also, the Han Solo family estate asked that I display the following image:

Getting back to today's topic, it turns out Kevin meant "laser eyes", not "lazy eyes." On receiving this clarification I became even more on-board with the idea:

Actually, there will probably be several comic-book-related entries in the future. For now, we'll focus on what my day would be like if I woke up and discovered I had laser eyes like Cyclops from the X-Men:

6:30am: The alarm goes off. Jessica shakes me lightly on the shoulder to wake me up. For some reason I'm wearing one of those frilly eye covers that people in old-timey movies wear to sleep in. Even more embarrassingly, it looks like this:

Being the morning person that I am, I take it off my to rub the sleep out of my eyes. The lasers barely miss Jessica, bouncing off the mirror on our bedroom door before adding a new window to our bedroom.

6:45am: having dressed and proverbially powdered my nose, I now turn to the task of shaving. Mistaking my laser eyes for heat vision, I decide to make the best of my new-found destructive powers and shave by looking at myself in the mirror. Instead of burning away the stubble the optic blast knocks me down. Now I'm tired and have a headache.

7:15am: After shaving the conventional way and polishing off my Honey Nut Cheerios, I decide not to risk punching a hole in my computer monitor at work and call in sick. I dig out some sunglasses and paint them with a loose coat of Jessica's red nail polish. Somehow this makes it so I can see through them without blasting anything with my laser eyes. I have Jessica dress Tori and we head to the doctor's office to try and figure things out.

7:25am: As we're getting out of the car at the doctor's office we're confronted by a paraplegic Patrick Stewart look-alike, who offers me a job as a teacher at a school for lazy kids gifted youngsters in New York. I'm hesitant to accept his offer until his surly Canadian bodyguard starts cracking his knuckles and six knives shoot out of his hands.

8am: For some reason there's a jet parked behind the doctor's office. We get in with the mysterious bald guy, who explains that they've been looking for a guy with laser eyes ever since their previous laser-eyed teacher was portrayed as a doofus in a motion picture trilogy and killed by his schizophrenic wife in the third movie, which was critically panned.

8:30am: As we're flying across the country the Canadian notices Jessica's red hair and green blouse and starts asking creepy questions about whether she's ever been to Phoenix. I stare at him pretty hard and tragically blast him out the side of the plane. When I apologize to the bald wheelchair guy he shrugs, looks out the window, and proclaims that "Logan will be fine." I'm unsure whether he means the Canadian or the northern Utah city of the same name which he landed on.

10:15am: After finally convincing me to call him "Professor X", the bald guy starts insisting he's psychic. I'm skeptical at best since the closest he comes to reading my mind is responding to my unvoiced criticism that Shawn Spencer from Psych does more productive things with his "powers".

10:45am: I've now been introduced to the rest of the faculty, who seem strangely ethnically balanced, like the cast of an early 90s cartoon. There's even a memorial in a corner for a dead Native American with the totally plausible and not-stolen-from-Pontiac name of Thunderbird, though I'm told he was an offensive hodgepodge of stereotypes and died after one issue. When I ask what they mean by "issue" the white-haired African lady stutters a bit before saying "I mean he had a blood issue."

11:45am: Lunch is catered by Cafe Rio, and I'm feeling much better about the situation.

12:30pm: I'm walking off my lunch when....

Jessica: When what? What happens next? 
Me: I'm trying to build dramatic tension. I've already bored most of our readers with an extra long post and almost certainly alienated my poor mother, so I thought I'd call it good for now and take your advice to turn this into a two part post.
Jessica: I'm telling you, if the guy who wrote the Percy Jackson books can get away with a gratuitous cliffhanger then you can too.

Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion: same laser-eyes time, same laser-eyes URL!

Baby Avengers Challenge

Ok, this is going to be a little experiment to see how awesome my artistic friends (or any other random person from the internet who happens to wind up on this blog post) are. As many of you know, I like to draw random things when I'm in meetings. Being a slightly hyperactive, nerdy guy I need an outlet for my excess energy, and drawing actually helps me focus and retain information a lot better. Anyway, a few weeks ago I drew this:

It kind of speaks for itself, but I will say that I'm especially proud of Baby Thor and Baby Black Widow. Laugh at my bad art skills if you must, but my challenge is this: I want your help in creating the greatest collection of baby superheroes the world has ever seen (you know, in case the Baby Masters of Evil or the Brotherhood of Evil Mutant Babies, or the Baby Skrull Empire decide to attack). Submit your own drawings of baby versions of the Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, or whatever. As an added incentive, the submission that gets the most likes will totally get bragging rights, and maybe a signed eaten-by-Tori copy of the original. (Jessica: You can't like comments. Me: Then we'll print them off and the one that takes Tori the least time to eat will win.).

The fate of the Baby Universe rests in your hands. Send your pics to minortechnicaldifficulties@gmail.com or it you're Facebook friends with us you can get it to us there (if you're not Facebook friends with us: EWWW! Go away creeper! Unless your art is really good, then you can stay.)

My Daughter Killed Little Foot's Mom

I thought I'd start out with a word of caution about babies that are teething. Tori is 7 months old now and has two of her bottom front teeth and is about to get the two top teeth as well. We've learned through painful experience that although she may be tiny, she is still a human, and humans are still meat eaters, and getting bit by one is not fun.

Several times while I've been feeding her she has ever-so-adorably grabbed my finger, stuffed it in her mouth, and bitten it. Hard. At first I thought I'd be clever and put my finger in with the nail pointing towards her teeth, thereby protecting the fleshy pad of my finger. My plan was promptly foiled as Tori slid her teeth down the low-friction surface of my fingernail and buried them in the cuticle, which it turns out is a lot more sensitive than the pad of the fingertip.

Faced with this display of cunning, ruthlessness, and hunger, I realized with creeping horror that my daughter is, in fact, a sharp tooth.

Like my last post, the topic of today's post was chosen by one of our friends. At the insistence of our friend Edith, our twin topics are dinosaurs and hippos. Since I really can't think of a good segue from one to the other, I'm going to mask it by rather inelegantly and abruptly switching by means of this awesome poster:

Unfortunately it's not for a real movie, it's just a parody of Battleship. 

Other hippo related trivia: last year Edith (the friend who picked the topic of today's post, and one of the two who introduced Jess and I) was wearing a tutu and gray tights for Halloween. I couldn't tell what she was supposed to be until Jessica walked up and said "Omigosh you're a hippo in a tutu. That's awesome!" Apparently I need to watch Fantasia more often. I should point out that the word "hippo" has become a term of endearment for those in our circle of friends, and we call our friend who's a gluten-intolerant 100 pound girl a "fat hippo" more often than we do our other friend who's a 300 pound guy. (PS - why did you both move away?)

The only other things I can think to say about hippos is that I miss the show "Animaniacs", which had a segment called "The Hip Hippos". At least as catchy is the Flight of the Concords song about the Hip-Hop-apotamus (his lyrics are bottomless) vs the Rhyme-noceros. Finally, if any of you need incentive to read the "Beyonders" series of books by Brandon Mull, I'd strongly encourage you to pick it up, as it starts with a boy travelling to another world when he gets swallowed by a hippo at the local zoo.

Lest you think that we're done talking about the Wheel of Time, we decided to celebrate my completion of the series by making Wheel of Time themed cookies! Pictured below are our artistic interpretations of the 7 seals of the Dark One's prison, a few chocolate Horns of Valere, some cream cheese frosted fox-head ter'angreal, some wolves, and a few copies of the dragon banner (Jess drew some really awesome dragons on them and I got in trouble for frosting over them until Jess realized she could just lick the frosting off when she ate them). We also have a couple great serpent rings, some dragon's fangs, and a few flames of Tar Valon. Tori ate the only copy of Callandor the crystal sword that didn't get burned. It took all evening Friday to bake them and most of Saturday to frost them. I know the Horn of Valere should be golden and that a couple of the other colors are off, but by the time we were actually frosting them I was pretty much ready to be done with the whole project and didn't feel like making any more colors of frosting.

Before frosting (you can kind of see the awesome dragons Jess drew on the flag)

After frosting - Chocolate isn't black, but it's the closest we could get without using enough food coloring to make the cookies turn bitter.

If you're wondering whether reading the series was worth it, the answer is yes. The first four and the last four were the best, and the other books were really epic about half the time, but with a lot of slower moments where they're setting up some of the awesomeness of the later books. As for the final book, it was almost more epic than I could stand. Jess can attest to the fact that I spent a lot of the last week raging against Robert Jordan for putting in a lot of moments like (SPOILER ALERT!) when Fred Weasley dies in Harry Potter or when Aerith dies in Final Fantasy 7. The ending was really satisfying and wrapped up what it needed to while at the same time leaving the story open so you feel like the characters' lives will keep going and they'll still have other adventures outside the main story.

Now that I'm done with the Wheel of Time I'm going to spend some time catching up on homework, then I'll need to find some new awesome books to occupy my time. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear about them in the comments. 

Speaking of fantasy series: some of you may know that we refer to our basement as "Narnia" since the door to the stairs looks like it just leads to a closet, but really there's this whole world down there, and it's a magical place because the elliptical, the XBox, and the TV are down there. Well, whenever I think of our basement I think of this webcomic:

http://nedroid.com/2011/09/hotel/

(For those of you not familiar with Nedroid Comics I also recommend reading anything tagged with "Party Cat" or "Dinosaur Warlock". It's a very random kind of humor, but it's clean and I usually find it pretty hilarious, though you'll want to have the adblock browser extension running since sometimes the ads on the sides and top of the webpage are kind of questionable).

Tramway to Heaven

So this is the first time I've ever written a blog, woohoo!!! Sorry if I'm not as funny as Kevin, but moving on: As Kevin said, we're currently on shoes! I have to say you probably wouldn't know it when you met me but I have a special place in my heart for shoes, especially boots, heels and Converse. Boots are one of the few reasons that I look forward to winter. And Converse are just plain awesome.

Another reason I love shoes is it's the one place in which my being short comes in handy. I wear a size 6 - 7 in women's sizes which means around a 4 or 5 in men's sizes; this means that I can often fit both adult shoes and kid shoes which means I have a lot more selection that I can choose from :) So when we went to Journey's the other night looking for shoes for my Valentine's Day gift (cause my husband is awesome) I knew that if I wasn't definitely sold on the things in Journey's we could always go try Journey's Kids! However, I ended up with the shoes I first noticed and actually only tried on one pair. Wonder of Wonders,  Miracle of Miracles!!! This never happens because either they don't fit or I'm not sure about how they look; however, as you can see, these were apparently meant to be mine cause they have Wonder Woman on them, they fit really well, and the colors work really well with most of what I wear (jeans and a T-shirt usually.)

Also, they match the dinner plate I made at Color Me Mine:

Now I have to talk a little about other shoes. There are some shoes that only work with certain clothes and at certain times and seasons. For instance: even though I really like heels they are not the most practical shoes to wear sometimes, but you look good in them! The biggest exception to this is when it's icy and/or snowy outside, then you just look ridiculous as you fall all over yourself; just do yourself and everyone else a favor and don't. It is for this reason that I generally like boots a bit more; the ones I like tend to be a little more comfortable than heels and yet they look nice too. I may love shoes but I'm much too practical to not realize that most shoes need to be somewhat functional and you have to be able to wear them for at least a few hours. (Note from Kevin: Jess may be practical, but that doesn't mean I haven't seen her salivate over boots with heels on multiple occasions). However, I must point out that not all shoes that CAN be worn for a long period of time SHOULD be worn for a long time and not all boots look good; far from it.

No offense to anyone out there who thinks otherwise, but Ugg boots are one of the worst fashion mistakes EVER! I've always wondered if the designers realized what they did when they named them (Ugg...does that stand for ugly?) I have no problem with them at home....where no one can see you! However, these should not be worn out in public because they may be comfy but they don't really look good with anything (unless you are a baby; that's completely different because babies can get away with anything.)

(The black bar was added to protect the identity of our secret agent.)

The biggest problem with Ugg boots is they are generally worn with sweat pants and a hoody and they make you look like you just got out of bed and threw on some shoes and left the house. NOOOOOO!!! (By the way, that was a link. You need to click it for this blog post to take its full, awesome effect).

Why would you do this?! We've all been there: you're late cause your alarm clock didn't go off so you're going to be late (or more likely your alarm did go off and you just kept pushing the snooze button.) However, this does not mean you should just go in your pajamas no matter what you're late for (unless it's a final exam, and then no one cares cause they're too busy trying to remember all the stuff they crammed in their heads at the last minute.)

Now, I have to admit that your shoes can't always look good. There are times when you have to go with practicality over fashion: like when you're hiking or working in the garden or working on the farm. It's at these times that the fashionable ones are those who were smart enough to wear something that won't give them blisters. I've learned this the hard way. Growing up, my family went camping and hiking quite often. When we would go hiking, my Dad always wore hiking boots and the most hideous socks I'd ever seen; they were thick wool socks that came to his knees and were red and a dark, baby-poop green (actually he wore some pretty hideous things when we weren't hiking too, like socks with his sandals.) However, I really didn't like socks that were much taller than the no-show socks, so when we would go hiking often my tennis shoes would rub the back of my foot off since my socks would slide down below the edges of the shoe. You see, we didn't do the wimpy 10 min trails; when we went hiking we started around sun-up and went until sometime in the late afternoon, which was hard stuff for us city kids.

Funny story of one of our hiking adventures: one summer my family went to the Sandia Mountains during our yearly summer trip. My parent's chose this particular place for several reasons but the one I remember was it has one of the longest tramway stretches in the world (it's 3rd according to Wikipedia.) We all wanted to ride it but it's rather expensive, especially since we have a rather large family so we all talked about it and decided that we'd ride the Tram up and then we'd hike back down. We talked to a guy at the top and he said that people definitely did it and that it wasn't too bad a hike "Only 9, maybe 10, miles" is what I remember him saying.....yeah, you remember Kevin's comment about people in Franca, Brazil having a different interpretation of distance? Well we're pretty sure this guy had some of the very same issues.

Well, we get on the tram and leave the docking station and immediately my younger siblings start freaking out. As you can see from pics like the one above, the cable car is rather large and it hangs from the cable several hundred feet in the air and when it stops (which it did so that technicians could get out and do some maintenance work) the whole thing sways. It felt rather precarious; kind-of like a roller coaster in slow motion only you're standing up and there's no seats-belts, or seats. We had someone take a picture for us and in the picture my little brother is smiling (he's pretty photogenic) but his hands are together like he's praying with every fiber of his soul that we not die. The whole way up we were trying to convince the 2 youngest to come look out the window but they just sat huddled in the middle of the car whimpering; I felt a little bad but that didn't stop me from laughing a bit to myself. And so began our adventures.

We got to the top and looked around at the museum/shop thing but we didn't stay too long because I don't remember being super interested and it was getting later in the day. We found the trail and started down. We've been on some pretty nerve-wracking trails but I think this one takes the cake for all of the ones I've been on. The trail wasn't much of a trail; it was only about a foot to maybe 2 feet wide path and on the one side was a rock wall, at times it was just a cliff who's top was somewhere in the clouds above us. The most terrifying part was the other side though; for the first few hours of our hike the other side of the trail just dropped off and we were high enough up in the mountains that there were clouds below us so you couldn't see much more than 10 feet down! As soon as we started hiking, my younger siblings begin to cry and they just sat down and wouldn't move for fear of falling off the mountain. They also wouldn't go back up either because they knew that just means riding on the cable car of death. (Another note from Kevin: if you're a fan of the Fray you should turn on the song "Cable Car" as you read this. Here's a link:.)  



We eventually convinced them that they had to start moving or we were going to pick them up and carry them down (at least that's what I remember telling them, if it had really came down to it I don't think anyone would have been carried cause it was hard enough just keeping our own feet on the trail.) So we slowly began to make our descent. The best part being the fact that my 2 youngest siblings went the first mile or more on their rear ends! They were so terrified that they wouldn't let anyone touch them, not even my Mom.

We finally made to a more level part of the mountain and were down below the clouds and I remember thinking "Finally! Now we're getting somewhere!" Well we hiked for the rest of the afternoon and got to the bottom of the mountain and couldn't figure out where we were. The trail we found on the map followed the one we were on somewhat when we were on the mountain but it was definitely not the same one at the bottom. The parking lot was nowhere to be seen and the terrain was very hilly. So we started walking toward the highway and toward where we figured the parking lot was and we ended up in these hilly fields at the back of a neighborhood. I remember thinking that it seemed really creepy because the houses seemed deserted because the whole time we walked by them I never saw a single person outside of my family.  Not to mention the fact that driving to the park, I hadn't even realized there was anything but mountains and grass anywhere near the mountain. But we eventually found this trail that ran along the backs of these houses,  probably created by other hikers that got lost on the way down the mountain like us, and we walked......and walked some more, but unlike pioneer children I don't remember doing much singing. By this time we were all beyond sore and it hurt to move so we were all hoping and silently praying that the parking lot would be just over the next hill top.

After at least another hour, we finally found the edge of the parking lot. I could practically hear the Hallelujah choirs singing. After trudging through the parking lot (think of zombies', hobbling and groaning) we crawled into the car and drove back to where we were staying. I remember that it hurt just sitting in the car and getting jostled by the van's movement as it drove down the highway. But we were all laughing and smiling on that drive back, just happy that we made it off the mountain alive. When all was said and done we figured the whole hike was probably closer to 15 (long) miles of rocky, hilly, really beautiful terrain, not the "9 or 10 miles" we'd been told at the top.

You shoes you lose. Also, our daughter is Spock

Our friend Melinda requested that we have a post about shoes. I figure that's as good a starting point as any. First, I'll start with my take on shoes, then I'll give Jessica, who's much more of an expert on the subject, a chance to comment. That may turn into one or several posts, depending on whether we feel like it.

First of all, anyone who's known me for very long knows that one of my favorite things to joke about is the fascination women have with shoes. I suppose it's fitting, therefore, that I married a woman who ranks shoes somewhere between chocolate and oxygen on her list of necessities for life. I should have seen this coming when I was on my mission and I got transferred to the shoe capital of South America: Franca, SP, Brazil. Many of the people we visited and taught worked in the city's many shoe factories so during my time there I accumulated enough shoes to spell out the name of the city:

I was surprised to learn that a pair of dress shoes I'd purchased in the US from an ROTC surplus store (before I ever knew I'd be going to Brazil) had actually had the soles manufactured in Franca. 

It was also in Franca that I had one of my most exciting (read: hot, boring, and tiresome) shoe-related adventures. At the time I was living in a duplex with three other missionaries, and we decided to use one of our days off to visit the downtown shopping area. Our plans were cemented when some locals told us that the largest shoes-only shopping center in Latin America and possibly the world: "O Shopping do Calcado", was a few minutes walk from the downtown bus station. (As an explanation for our readers who don't speak Portuguese: "shopping" is the word Brazilians use to refer to what most gringos would call a mall. From what I could tell they used to call them "shopping centers" because that's probably what most of them found in dictionaries or English textbooks, similar to the way a billboard is called an "outdoor" instead of an "outdoor advertisement", although they pronounce the words "SHOW-ping" and "OUCHY-dor", respectively).

But I'm rambling about etymology when I should be writing about shoes. So there we were, the four of us, headed to the big shoe mall. Unfortunately, when we got off the bus, the mall was nowhere in sight. Rather than give up, we flagged down a few passers-by who informed us that it was just a ways up the street and that we couldn't miss it. So we began walking, and kept walking for about an hour and fifteen minutes, before finally arriving at our long-sought Shoe Shangri-la (or Mocassin Mecca if you prefer). Upon arrival we were greeted with a sight that has graced the eyes of many a shoe-seeking traveler: the four shoes of the apocalypse. Outside the mall, at each of the four corners of the building, stand four big shoe statues, each with a different theme. By now being heavily affected by heat exhaustion, we decided to photograph ourselves capering around the butterfly-themed one. 

I did wind up buying some pretty cool leather tennis shoes there, and I was very sad when, a few months after my return to the states, I noticed them starting to crack at the edges. On nice days I still dig them out and walk around in them, remembering our epic journey. Lesson learned: when someone from Franca tells you that something is "logo ali", don't take them at their word. Apparently that doesn't mean "right there" like it does everywhere else in Brazil.

Having talked a lot about my own shoe experiences I'll return to describing my observations about my wife's outlook on shoes. I figure that when our kids get older it won’t be as hard to tell them “no” when they ask for a toy or video game or treat that they really, really want, since I get to practice that skill whenever Jessica and I walk past a shoe store. I have to be especially delicate about it because my wife has a much greater ability to make me regret it than a small child does. I think part of it is Jessica’s tiny feet. She has a lot of options because her feet are small enough to bridge the gap between large children’s shoes and small adult shoes (the one time I was ready to cave when she wanted new shoes was one time in Wal-Mart when we saw a pair of children’s size Iron Man boots, but unfortunately they were just a little too small for Jess).

That being said, it’s only fair to point out that Jessica does have one pair of shoes that merit immediate respect. I'm referring, of course, to her Batman Converse All-Stars. I don't have much to say about these as they kind of speak for themselves, but I will point out that they're non-symmetric - each shoe shows a different set of scenes. That pair of shoes is awesome enough to keep me from making fun of the size and breadth of Jessica's shoe collection (most of the time anyway - old habits die hard). 

Since I doubt that a few paragraphs will satisfy our readers' burning desire for shoe-related blogging, I'm going to see if I can talk Jessica into doing a more expanded post about shoes. 

I'd like to round out the post with a bit of artwork (it seems like all our posts so far grow in image density towards the end of the post, almost like we're running out of interesting things to say and have to hold your attention with funny pictures). Today's artwork comes courtesy of the Sketchbook Express app for iPad and iPhone, and at the low low price of free it's definitely worth taking a look at. Among other things, you can import images from your device's photo library and start doodling funny stuff on them, such as what would happen if the Galactic Empire invaded Rio de Janeiro:

When Jess was pregnant with Tori and we still didn't know what gender the baby would be we started passing the time on Sunday afternoons and road trips by drawing pictures of the adventures our child would have as an adult (or if you're a fan of YA literature then they would have the adventures as an awkward pre-teen discovering their own identity at the same time they're dealing with the pressures of junior high school, 

acne, and parents who just don't understand). This was all inspired in part by the efforts of our friends to find a suitable name to use when referring to our unborn child. Rejected candidates included "Cletus the Fetus" and "Horseface" (pronounced hor-SEF-uh-see). As you can see from the title of this post, the name that stuck through most of the pregnancy was "Spock", which, despite being the name of a male Vulcan, was clearly the logical choice.

We tried to keep the drawings as ambiguous as possible with reference to age and gender to account for all possibilities, but it's kind of obvious in this image that I was expecting a son:

For the next image I did a better job making it apply if we had either a boy or a girl.

We now have two octopus bath toys for Tori to practice on in case this picture ever comes true. Unfortunately the Green-Goblin glider hasn't yet become commercially available, but I'm assuming that'll come with her ninja-secret-agent-astronaut training.

Once Tori was born we adapted the artwork slightly. While I'm still confident she'll grow up to hunt dinosaurs and fight giant mutant cephalopods, the following image reflects her current personality a little better:

Recognize that unicorn? I was able to recycle the image after using it in my now famous painting "My Little Pony fights a Charizard":

Twilight Sparkle uses the magic of friendship!

..... It's not very effective.