Skip to main content

Summoned

On special nights, after story time, the boys and I watch a short, curated playlist of movie clips I put together on YouTube. One of the clips is the last two minutes of the blind man scene from the movie Young Frankenstein, where the blind man lights the monster's thumb on fire when he thinks he's lighting his cigar.

The boys howled with laughter again. That's their favorite. There's another scene from that movie in our playlist, too; the one where Igor tells Dr. Frankenstein that he got the wrong brain and the name on it was Abbey Normal. Osamu imitates Gene Wilder saying, "I will NOT be angry." When he chokes Marty Feldman the boys like to playfully imitate that as well.

Even though the boys technically weren't 100% well-behaved tonight we still did special videos after story time. Sometimes I think I'm probably expecting too much. They're little boys and they're gonna fight with each other no matter what. I just need to deal with it. Luckily clips of Mel Brooks movies fix everything right up. I can't wait until the boys are older and we can watch those movies together. They're starting to venture beyond Paw Patrol and Pixar. Yesterday they watched most of the new Karate Kid movie, the one with Jackie Chan. They were both imitating lines from that as well.

I gotta be vigilant about what they imitate. Last Christmas they watched Jingle All the Way a bunch of times. It's a pretty harmless movie. I enjoyed watching it with them way more than I did when seeing it at the theater when it came out in 1996. It's not that great of a movie, but it's got Schwarzenegger and it has some laughs. There's a line toward the end where one of the characters says he's sweating like a dog in a Chinese restaurant. Ahh, a simpler time it was. Kenzo repeated that a few times over the summer. At least it was in context. I weighed how I should handle this and opted to basically ignore it. No reaction whatsoever. He hasn't repeated it in months. Christmas is right around the corner again though.

Osamu loves to "help" in the kitchen, even though mama generally shoos him out because of hot pans and sharp knives. Tonight, though, he got the summons to come and help mix the meat and onions and breadcrumbs to make hamburg steaks.


He loves to help mama. Papa, not so much. He likes to use me as a jungle gym.


Later, when everyone settled into bed, I prepared a little Saturday evening treat for myself after a cool nighttime walk. Canned anchovies on crackers and a little bourbon.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr. Blue Sky

Man, I conked out so hard on the living room floor tonight. Right after bath time, before story time. I barely remember. Completely exhausted. Big adventure day. Another in a long series I hope the boys will remember when they’re older... our first IMAX movie, a downtown city outing, and some life lessons in the game center. We left the house at 9:15 a.m. and didn’t get back until nearly 6 p.m., totally spent but full of pizza and memories. The Wild Robot in IMAX was totally stunning. The scale, the colors, the sound. We could feel every gust of wind and rustle of leaves. I made sure we had prime seats, row G, right in the center. Two big buckets of popcorn too, which, according to Kenzo and Osamu, I  absolutely should not  be sharing. “You should get your own!” they kept saying. I think a little bit of popcorn thievery is well within my rights as the papa. After the movie, we headed through the cold and wind across to the game center on the other side of Sendai Station. Being...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time.  When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it.  I looked down at my l...
1 comment
Read more