Thursday, November 27, 2014

Godzilla Through a Kid’s Eyes – Millennium



By this point, after watching so many Kaiju films, my daughter was in full Mystery Science Theater 3000 mode.

Here are the highlights.


Monday, November 24, 2014

The one, the only(ish) …Groucho!


I may have hammered home the fact that I’ve been a Marx Brother’s fan for most of my life.

In that effort, I may have missed mentioning, that due to an interest in the comedy writing process (for some reason) and because of a fascination about the life required to stay on the circuit, I have a large collection of Vaudeville era comedians’ biographies and autobiographies. 

The combination of the above two sentences should make it obvious that a significant portion of those books are about Groucho Marx and his brothers.

While their movies are fantastic, there’s a sense from the writings that there was an extra magic to the live performances that film couldn’t capture.

This fascination drew me directly to the 2001 PBS television airing of Groucho: A Life in Revue.  I was truly impressed, both by its content, and the ability of its star to accurately portray Julius H. Marx at four different ages.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Godzilla Through a Kid’s Eyes – Heisei


Now it’s time for a child’s views of the more serious and adult (sorta) Heisei series of Godzilla films.  Since I’ve already posted far too much about the King of Monsters, we’ll stick to some reaction quotes on these.



Monday, November 17, 2014

Walt Disney World 2013 Index

Hey there, in celebration of my 400th post, I'm cheesing out and doing another index to make it easier to link this trip together...and of course be a bit lazy for this auspicious number.

This is also the index for ALL Disney Trips, scroll to the bottom for all the links, please.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Walt Disney World 2013: Day 11 –End of the Trip Frown, and I Go Upside Down

Disney 2013 Trip Index

We roused ourselves on the final morning to find the boarding passes hanging on the outside handle of the room door. This meant, aside from getting to see the giant Lady and the Tramp when the distraction caused me to get lost, all of the previous night’s check in fiddling had been a waste.

Demonstrating our clear skill and experience as travelers, the first suitcase came in at forty-one pounds, well under the fifty pound maximum.

Demonstrating our still being us, the second one weighed sixty-three.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Godzilla Through a Kid’s Eyes – Showa Part 1

My plan worked and my goofy descriptions of the Godzilla films I’ve loved my entire life enticed my daughter into wanting to see them.

The result of this bit of sneakiness led me to watch the full spread of twenty-eight classic appearances of the King of Monsters (plus some bonus ones of his friends, and his cousin Earl) TWICE in six months.

Ah, the hidden wonders of parenthood.

I probably should (again) mention the patience of my wife – who, while she enjoys them, is extraordinarily glad she only had to sit through them once.

With that much Kaiju permeating my very soul, I couldn’t very well let the actual November 3rd Fiftieth Anniversary date get too far past without acknowledgement.

However, I think one thing everyone involved can agree upon is that I’ve talked FAR too much about Godzilla this year.


Therefore, here are some extremely short and general impressions my daughter passed along while joining me in yet another of my long standing fandoms.

Monday, November 3, 2014

Walt Disney World 2013: Day 10 – Nice Kingdom Farewells but Shopping Worse, Because I’d Battled an Improper Curse

On the last full day of the trip, we returned to awakening at Stupid O’clock in the morning for an early reservation.  Anabelle became popular with the breakfast reservations crowd when her request for Transportation Cards led the driver to hand them out to all the kids on the bus.

We split from the Castle and Crystal Palace meal goers at the Magic Kingdom and hopped on the monorail with other hotel breakfasters. We made our return arrival at the entrance of 1900 Park Fair in the Grand Floridian before the 8AM opening. 

Wow! We were finally getting good at this.