I Like Most Pixar Films, But There Is One Glaring Exception

This Is What Happens When The Boys Get Star Wars Toys For Christmas And I Get Star Trek Figures For My Birthday

John Williams Ruins Everything

At some point in your life, you’ve been some place where one or more persons sang or hummed or otherwise recreated the theme to “Sanford and Son.” If you try to tell me that this has never happened to you, I won’t believe you. You’re a liar. Shut up. No, YOU shut up.

I remember one such occasion in my own life when I was hanging out with my friends Lucas and Tim. Somebody, I don’t remember who, started singing the theme to “Sanford and Son.” Now that I think about it, I think it was me. I like singing the theme to “Sanford and Son.” There’s a relaxing quality to it. My friends, Lucas and Tim, told me that John Williams had written the theme to “Sanford and Son.” This is the John Williams who wrote the theme to “Star Wars.” Oh wait, you know what? We might have been singing the theme to “Star Wars” when this happened. Whatever theme it was, Lucas and Tim told me that John Williams of “Star Wars” theme fame had also written the theme to “Sanford and Son” and because I am sometimes gullible, I believed them. “Really? Really?” I asked. And not in a skeptical tone, but a really excited one. I was so happy to hear that John Williams, the guy who had written duuuuun DUUUUUN dun dun dun DUUUUUUUUN dun, dun dun dun DUUUUUUUUN dun DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUN had also written bowm bowm bownowm. bowm bowm bownowm bowmown bowm.

So you can imagine how upset I was when I saw the smiles on Lucas and Tim’s faces that told me that they were just pulling my stupid leg. I wasn’t upset that I had been tricked. I was upset that this vision they had set before me was not reality. I really wanted John Williams to have written the theme song to “Sanford and Son.” Wouldn't that be a wonderful world to live in?

Goddammit, John Williams. You ruin everything.

Boyos

Littlest dude is just under a month and 11.5 pounds. The way he's gaining the poundage, he'll be asking to borrow my clothes in a couple of weeks.

This morning I woke up, as I have many recent mornings, to the sound of Henry calling to me over the baby monitor. I went into his room, picked him up, along with his favorite blanket and his stuffed animals, and brought him back into our bed to snooze off the rest of the morning. It used to be only one stuffed animal, a nice little Elmo doll that, God bless it, doesn't sing or dance or say a single solitary thing. Sidenote: It's shocking how hard it is to find a quiet Elmo, they all seem to have shit to say. As I was saying, Elmo now has a friend, a bear, who is also as silent as a made man under interrogation. Who knows how many of Henry's stuffed little friends I'll have to carry with me in another month. This is developing into something of a ritual, one which I won't complain about too much since it typically affords about another hour in the sack.

The Ash drove me to work this morning so that she could have the car for the day. Something about going places, doing things, running things over, or some such. It is astounding how long it takes to get two little people ready to go anywhere, even if one of them is immobile. I can only imagine what it will be like when they can both run off and hide.

After work, the whole family arrived to rescue me. Driving along, Ash was telling me about her day, and she mentioned something about "the boys." I laughed and pointed out how our life was now such that we would be referring to "the boys" regularly in sentences. The boys this, the boys that, the boys, the boys, the boys. Little things are awesome sometimes.

We stopped by the store on the way home to pick up some stuff for dinner, Ash and Simon waited in the car while Henry and I went inside. We've been trying to do little things like that to reenforce Henry's big bro status and remind him of all the cool stuff he can do that the baby can't just yet. I'm getting the feeling that Henry's looking forward to the day that Simon gets his legs under him.

On the way home from the store, we passed by some kid who was running around with a toy lightsaber, which inspired the following bit of "Return of the Jedi" chit-chat.

HOLMES: Hey, that kid's practicing to be a Jedi.

HENRY: Jedi!

HOLMES (ala Jabba the Hutt): Ho ho ho. Jedi.

HENRY: Ho ho ho.

HOLMES (ala Bib Fortuna): Ay-wonna-wonga.

HENRY: Wonga-wonga!

HOLMES: Jabba-no-bodda.

HENRY: No BODDA!

Strong in the force is this one.

Naming of the Awesome

While in the midst of home improvement tasks throughout the day, my mind continually wandered back to the fact that I have this Hugh Jass decision to make regarding who I should name as the next... I know, I have big problems, right? I did not expect nearly as many entries as I got. I was hoping I'd get maybe just one, or maybe one good one and one crappy one, all in the name of no-brainer decisions. But instead I ended up with four good ones and two crappy ones. I can forgive both crappy entries though since Whit and Jonathon collectively write for well over three-quarters of the internodes. They're busy keeping this beast alive so the rest of us can abuse it for our own infantile purposes (although Jonathon's casting of Jessica Alba as Leia's body double...not actually as Leia, mind you, but as her body double is, how you say... interesting).

So that leaves me with four good entries, from which I am supposed to name a wiener. Let's go in order of receipt, shall we?

First, there's CamiKaos. I have to admit, I giggled at the picture of Owen Wilson as Luke, especially as whiny "but I wanted to go to Tacchi Station and get some power converters" Luke. Also points for including Gary Oldman, since he as about as close to perfection as an actor can come, though I might have dropped him into the Obi-Wan role instead. And of course, Eddie Izzard as Darth Vader would no doubt cause nightmares for generations to come.

Next up is Dan. Dan is British, which means he talks with the same accent as the Imperial officers, though I've never detected any desire to blow up an entire planet in any of his posts, but that may be because he knows that the power to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of The Force. That it is, Dan! As for his entry, let's just start with his suggestion of the lovely Phoebe Cates as Leia. Oh Dan, you dirty beautiful fellow. I can't argue with that kind of thinking, and I must say, I find this choice to be much more interesting than his original idea to fill the spot with the predictable Angelina Jolie. I liked the Elijah Wood as Luke call, and I would love to see a golden-clad John Cleese doddering his way around, but I was downright intrigued by his decision to fill the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi with the mighty Jet Li.

Next is Marsha. Homegirl got all thematic on this shit and filled the entire cast with characters from the new Battlestar Galactica series. When I first saw what she had done, I was afraid it would be gimmicky nonsense, and I thought to myself, I have a bad feeling about this. But she made some excellent choices here. I especially liked the fact that she took some liberties with the genders. I mean Starbuck as Han Solo? Boomer as Luke? And most drool-worthy, Number Six as Vader?! How'd you like to see this coming at you in a black cape with a lightsaber? Of course, if you've never watched BSG, you don't get any of what I'm going on about, but trust me when I say that these choices kick ass.

Finally, there's Anthony, who also went with a theme by populating the cast with great drunks. I just like this idea in general. Lightsaber battles would result in a lot more limb lossage, X-Wings and TIE Fighters wouldn't stay in formation...hell, Luke and Leia might just go ahead and get it on. Hmm, maybe I don't like this idea so much. But as I look at his casting choices, it becomes clear to me that you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. As drunks go, you probably couldn't find a better Luke than Jack Kerouac. The duel between Bukowski's Obi-Wan and Ben Franklin's Vader might be a little slow on action, but it would be heavy on the high-minded insults. I'm also glad somebody thought to cast Boba Fett, and I think Sid Vicious would fill the bill, as long as he left a little hole in his armor to get his syringe through. My only disagreement here is having Bill Hicks as Moff Tarkin. The great Bill Hicks would be none other than Yoda, spouting wisdom and insult to his followers, and then dying when he's needed most.

So I hate picking winners, but I have to admit that my favorite of all these entries was Marsha's. My love for the Battlestar runs deep, and she managed to pull it off, in my opinion, without being gimmicky. So corngrats Marsha, you are the next

Have fun with it!

I am the Awesome

At least according to fellow Austin blogger Quirkee James I am. For you see, he has bestowed upon me this little beauty:

And really, how could I turn down such a perfect award? It includes two words that I've been overusing for almost twenty years, one of my favorite hand signals, and my favorite guitar, the beautiful Gibson SG. If I could have one in every color of the rainbow, well, I'd maybe sell you the yellow one. As it is, my status as guitarist lies safely in the amateur realm, so I content myself with the cheaper Epiphone version.

So it is now my job to pass this award on to another awesome dude blogger. I'm assuming that the use of the term "dude" here is gender neutral, especially since I label both guys and dolls as dudes on a nearly daily basis (see aforementioned overuse of certain words). To do so, I believe it is customary to hold some sort of contest on one's blog. If I hadn't just done the caption contest thing in the previous blog, I would go that route, but alas, I can't bring myself to do two caption contests in a row. Thus, I'm going to try something slightly more complicated. I may be shooting myself in the foot here, as the complexity may scare some folks off, and I might just have to give this here award away. But for those of you not frightened of a completely pointless challenge, here is your task: we all know that the original Star Wars trilogy was some of the greatest bit of film ever to warm a screen. But what if the ensemble had been different? Your job is to come up with an alternate cast to Star Wars. Feel free to cast as many characters as you like, but all the main players need to be covered. Polls close in 72 hours.