David Spade & iPods

David Spade recently kicked off the second season of his Hollywood themed Daily Show clone "The Showbiz Show with David Spade". New episodes of his show air Thursday nights at 10:30pm on Comedy Central and then are repeated 4,000 times in accordance with the FCC's basic cable laws.

The current episode made me laugh out loud several times, especially in a segment they call "There, I Said It" where Spade goes off on a rant about someone or something in the entertainment world. This week his target was iPods, and it was so brilliant and dead on that instead of quoting it or transcribing it I want you to go watch it. If you go to Comedy Central's website and scroll down just a little, you'll find the Showbiz Show section. Click on it and it will take you directly to the video of David Spade's rant on iPods. If the picture freezes, don't worry about...just listen to the audio. There isn't all the much to see anyways! But it's so funny and right on the money, I wish I had written it here weeks ago!

I don't hate iPods. I'm usually very reluctant on new technology. I was not ready to trade in my VHS for DVD eight years ago! That might be because I was still upset about all the money I sank into Laserdiscs. I thought the internet was going to be a fad and I stayed away from that for as long as I could hold out. Of course, I hoped right online when I found out you could hear the songs from Muppet Treasure Island weeks before the movie came out. And even this whole HD/wide-screen/plasma/flat screen television stuff I don't really get!?

I guess the iPod thing is ideal for people who are really into their music. I don't even think I like enough music to fill half of the smallest iPod. I like a handful of songs from the 80's, The Spice Girls, soundtracks to old Disney movies and that Since You've Been Gone song by Kelly Clarkson.

What Ever Happened to Alexander The Grape!?

What ever happened to this guy!? That was a great candy! I've never liked grape flavored anything, but I always did have a special place in my heart for Alexander The Grape. Mmmm....they were good. They were kind of like little hard candies with a somewhat softer chewy coating. They are kind of hard to describe, I guess that's what made them so great. If you've ever had a Lemonhead, Alexander The Grape is just a grape version of that candy. In fact Alexander later changed his name to Grapehead before falling off the face of the Earth!

Alexander The Grape had so many friends, each just as tasty as the last! There was Mr. Melon who tasted like watermelon....those might have been my favorite. And there was Johnny Apple Treat, kind of like Johnny Appleseed but with much more sugar. Those were good too! And who can forget Alexander's Asian friend, who managed to solve crimes while tasting like delicious sweet artificial cherries, yes...we're talking about Cherry Chan. Cherry Chan's name was written on the box with the exact same faux-Chinese font that got McDonald's into a heap of trouble when they had their Oriental McNuggets. Man, Cherry Chan was awesome! They were better than real cherries! I'd never take a Cherry Chan off my sundae!

These candies and many more were produced by the Ferrara Pan company of Forest Park, IL. Ferrara Pan is still around today. They continue to manufacture Lemonheads, as well as some other classic candy like Jawbusters, Atomic Fireballs, and Boston Baked Beans. Mmmm...those Boston Baked Beans were good too, I haven't seen them in a while! They used to make another great candy called Fruit Cocktail Imperials, but those are also sadly out of production.

All their candy used to come in small boxes and would sell for ten cents. This is still in the early 80's I'm talking about! We used to ride our bikes down to the old Funn-Putt (not Putt-Putt) mini golf course in the Oakland Mills Shopping Center and get all sorts of boxes of candy with our spare change that we could dig up! We'd eat some right away, and then save some boxes for later. We would trade...a couple of Cherry Chans for a few Mr. Melons. Good times! Do kids today get these experiences!? I guess they can still ride their bikes to the 7-11 or Highs, but it's not the same as a little mom and pop store! And you can't get anything for a dime anymore....at a 7-11? Forget about it! Not that a box of grape candy would satisfy a child today anyways. Nowadays they probably ride their bikes down to the corner store for some Red Bull and Altoids!

It's just another thing these kids today are missing out on! Don't even get me started on prizes in cereal boxes and Saturday morning cartoons! ....Man, I could really go for a Cherry Chan right about now!

Kings Dominion & Hanna-Barbera

In the good ol' days Kings Dominion and Hanna-Barbera went together like Disneyland and Mickey Mouse. If you bought a Kings Dominion T-shirt it had Yogi Bear on it. If you were getting your picture taken with a costumed character it could have been Scooby-Doo or even Captain Caveman. And at the end of the day when you were looking for your car in the parking lot, your car could have been parked in George Jetson row 3 or Huckleberry Hound row 7.

But times have changed and the Hanna-Barbera stable of characters are not as relevant as they were in my childhood! The children's section of Kings Dominion used to be called "The Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera!" It's now called "Nick Central" and more and more of the Hanna-Barbera stuff is being removed in favor of Nickelodeon themed attractions. At King's Island, KD's sister park in Ohio, this year will see the debut of an all new Nickelodeon Kids Area that completely wipes out their old Hanna-Barbera Land. I'm afraid the same will happen to the Virginia park in the next year or so. I have very many fond memories of the H-B gang at Kings Dominion.

Before they ride off into the sunset for good Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear and a few other Hanna-Barbera superstars are making one more appearance in the park in a very unique way. This summer Kings Dominion will be the new home of "The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera" ride, my all time favorite amusement park ride that debuted at Universal Studios Orlando in 1989 and resided there until 2003 when it was replaced by....a Nickelodeon ride!

It's not very often that a theme park attraction gets another life at another park, so I'm very excited to ride this ride again. It's a motion simulator ride, and Kings Dominion already has a dual-screen simulator theatre so it was probably at a low cost to add this attraction to their line-up.

I'm sure the pre-show to the original ride will be cut from the KD experience, but after waiting over an hour in the blazing Florida sun you were ushered into a small pre-show area where via video Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera briefly showed how their artist create animated films. They are currently working on Jetsons: The Movie, and we meet Elroy Jetson who tells us a little bit about their new movie. Then H-B resident villain Dick dastardly pops up with his side kick Mumbley and they protest that they are not staring in the next Hanna-Barbera production. Dick and Mumbley quickly hop into a computer generated rocket ship, kidnap Elroy and then take off. Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo step in, and promise their bosses that they'll get Elroy back safely with the help of the people in the audience!

At this point, the automatic doors to your left open up and everyone proceeds into a big room and grabs their own four-person rocket ship. (Kings Dominion's theatre is set up like a traditional movie theatre with rows of seats, but I suspect the effect will be just the same!) Your rocket ship is loaded into a large rubber band sling shot and you are catapulted into the cartoon world of Hanna-Barbera. Of course your seats motions match the action on the screen!

After a cloud of cartoon mist settles down, you come upon a spooky old castle as the Mystery Machine races by and bumps you off the road. Scooby and Shaggy are at the wheel of the van, and you follow them into the castle and through all sorts of dark passage ways and haunted rooms all the while chasing Dick dastardly and Elroy. After many obstacles, Dick flies his ship into a cartoon vortex and you are right behind him.

Suddenly you are chasing Dick, speeding along a barren desert. There are some mountains up ahead, as you approach the mountains the music starts to clue you in on where you are headed next. As you reach the top of the mountain and get a peek over it, the soundtrack is pumping the theme to "The Flintstones" are you are smack in the middle of Bedrock. Your ship heads straight for Fred in his Bronto-crain. Fred slides down the back of the dinosaurs tail and into his car and you're off on a wild car chase through Bedrock. Of course at this point in the ride, I was totally hooked and if I wasn't poured into the ride vehicle with the safety restraint digging into my gut I would have tried to jump out and stay in Bedrock.

After many great gags in Bedrock, you end up in Outer Space and the chase continues with The Jetsons. There is a trip through a space amusement park, including a ride on a roller coaster and finally the space police catch up with Dick and rescue Elroy who is reunited with his family and you the rider are thanked by Yogi and Boo-Boo and returned home!

What a great ride!!!

The Universal ride used to empty out into a great Animation Exhibit with lots of hands-on stuff about animation and great photo ops! Then there was a Hanna-Barbera gift shop where I spent much time and money!

Kings Dominion will no doubt just have the movie, but it will still be great to see it again! I was last on it in 2001! Make sure you check it out this summer.

Keep an eye out for two more articles I'm going to write about two of the greatest attractions at Kings Dominon that are no longer there and no where to be found on the internet: Yogi's Cave and Smurf Mountain!

Theological Discussion

As I was cleaning up the playroom yesterday I came across Elias' Fisher-Price Noah figure sitting in JoJo's clown car and thought it was kind of funny. For those of you not familiar with JoJo, she's a young clown who lives in Circus Town with all her little circus friends on the Disney Channel Preschool series JoJo's Circus. If you're not familiar with Noah then maybe you should find yourself a good Sunday School program!

Anywho, I saw Noah sitting in JoJo's car and thought it was pretty silly...a classic Bible character sitting in a neon pink car with eyeballs for headlights. But then I thought about it a little more...Doesn't it make perfect sense for Noah to consider driving a clown car!?! I mean, he had to build an ark big enough to hold all those different animals and you can fit a hilarious number of clowns in a clown car so I'm thinking you probably could have fit a staggering amount of animals in a clown car.
We went to the circus last year, and about 32 clowns got out of a little tiny clown car and then they put a sheet over the car and turned it into a zebra! So, there's no telling the powers of a clown car!

Oh yeah, there is the matter of the flood! Clown cars don't necessarily float. Well, then they'd need to get Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Herbie for something like that...I don't know, they'd probably have to have some meetings to work out all the details!

Joey's School is Dumb

If your child went to school in the school district we live in, you too would have a list of reasons why you believe the school is run by idiots. Here's the latest two additions to our ever-growing list:

1)They are watching "Roots" in class, with the N-word muted out! I can't begin to grasp how ridiculous that is! It's Roots not House Party! The word is used for impact and to illustrate a point...AND in a historical context. Have we become so P.C. that kids are supposed to think that slave masters referred to their slaves as "African Americans"? They might as well use "Song of the South" to teach about slavery, and they probably would if they could get their hands on a DVD of it. Since this is the same school that celebrated National Reading Day....READING DAY....by watching the movie "The Cat in the Hat", which is a movie not a book nor is it based on anything past the first three sentences of the book! Stupid school!

2) Joey got in trouble the other day for horsing around in the hallway between classes. Basically, a friend of his hit him with his binder and Joey pushed him back! A teacher saw this and wrote the two of them up. The wording in the write-up says: "Joey inappropriately touched another boy." Doesn't that sound a lot more sinister that what really happened. That makes it sound like Joey lured some younger kid to come behind the skating rink and drop his pants for a Darryl Strawberry rookie card! Now Joey has to live with this wording on his permanent record, he'll probably never get into Oral Roberts University like he wanted to, and he'll have to be a registered sex offender no matter where he goes to college! Stupid school!

Basically what I'm getting at is the school is dumb!

GOOD EATS: Cheeseburger in Paradise

Last night we checked out this new place called Cheeseburger in Paradise. It's a new restaurant chain co-owned by Outback Steakhouse and Margaritaville, we went to the one in York, PA there is also one in Pasadena, MD.

The place has a beachy-island theme without cramming the whole Jimmy Buffett thing down your throat the way Margaritaville does. They have live music every night, and really good burgers. I had the Cheeseburger in Paradise which is served (like the song says) with "lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French Fried potato, big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer!" Except I substituted a Diet Pepsi for my cold draft beer.

But let's just skip to the desert...they have Chocolate Nachos! These are chocolate and flour nachos fried and sweetened, then covered with chocolate sauce, diced strawberries (that looked like tomatoes,) and colored sprinkles and then served with three kinds of Ben & Jerry's ice cream for dipping. Very unique and very tasty! Hats off to you Mr. Buffett for this wonderful creation!

Viewer Mail

How is Tanner doing?
The doctor did call the other day with results from all of Tanner's x-ray's and testing. No surprising, they can't find anything wrong with him! That's a good thing, but it continues to be frustrating that we can't get to the bottom of why Tanner spits up almost everything he eats and that he's gained very little weight in the past three months! Our next stop on this journey is an appointment with a GI specialist at Johns Hopkins sometime next month. I'll keep ya posted!

Where did the name ED SOUTH come from?
Good question! It all started back in 1991 when I was part of a "pirate" radio station that a friend of mine built in his attic. Since our operation was only questionably legal, we all came up with fake DJ names. At the time there were quite a few DJ's on the air with the last names of North and West...so I jokingly picked South. We did that radio station on-and-off for two years, and when I got involved with the radio station at college I used the name Mr. Ed, and that was pretty much the end of "Ed South."

In 1996 I wrote and produced a play called "Barn of Thought". The main character's name was Ken, but when I ended up playing the character on stage I decided to change his name to Ed and I remembered my "old" last name and "South" came along for the ride as well! A year later I started doing a public access TV show, and thought South sounded better than my real last name, so that's when I kind of adopted it as my stage name.

Nowadays "Ed South" has come in handy on the internet, where you need to protect yourself with a certain level of anonymity.

What's your favorite Disney movie?
If there was one movie I could name as my favorite Disney movie, then I probably wouldn't love Disney as much as I do. There are so many great Disney movies, and so many of those that hold a special place in my heart that I can't just name one.

First of all, there are two types of Disney films: Animated and Live Action!
I really love just about all of the animated films that Walt Disney Feature Animation has created over the past 70-some years. I could probably single out The Little Mermaid as my favorite animated film because it came out when I was younger and it was really the first "great" animated film released during my life time. However, I also think Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Lilo & Stitch are some of the greatest movies ever made. Of all the animated films Disney has made, the only four that I really don't like that much are: The Sword in the Stone, The Black Cauldron, Atlantis, andBrother Bear.

When it comes to live action films, some of my all-time favorite movies are the Disney comedies that came out shortly after Walt's death in 1966. When The Walt Disney Company was suddenly without their leader, they played it safe and produced movies that were very close to the formula that the studio found success with during Walt's reign. The results are some FANTASTIC movies like: Gus, The World's Greatest Athlete, Blackbeard's Ghost, Snowball Express, The Strongest Man in the World, Superdad, and The Barefoot Executive.

There are also TONS of great classic films that Walt Disney himself produced, not to mention great contemporary films, including three of my absolute favorites: Cheetah (1989), Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken (1991), andHoney, I Blew Up the Kid (1992).


Aren't you glad you asked!?

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

How much do you think it cost for my wife and I and our two older children to eat lunch at the food court in the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History? Jennifer, Joey and I each had a soda, a sandwich and fries, and a cookie. Elias had chicken tenders and fries. The grand total....$57.04!!!! That's American Dollars!!!! Fifty seven dollars for a family of four to eat at a food court!

Some of the other highlights from our trip yesterday to the National Smithsonian in D.C.:
At the Air & Space Museum, Elias surprised us all when he went up to a picture of Saturn and said, "Saturn has three rings around it!" We're not quite sure where this knowledge came from, but I suspect Little Einsteins had something to do with it.

One of our favorite things on display at the Air & Space Museum is a box of Red Barron frozen pizza. Elias, however, really enjoyed seeing all the big planes.

At the Museum of Natural History they have a diorama of a Caveman Burial. At this exhibit, we witnessed a woman praying for the soul of the caveman who died several million years ago. She then proceeded to talk to the cavemen and tried to give them all a high-five! We quickly gathered the children up and moved to the next gallery, trying not to make eye contact.

By the end of the day everyone was pooped!

Too Much Fish, Too Much Cheese

As an unofficial historian of the McDonald's menu, I would like to submit the following candidate as the most disgusting item Ronald has ever offered us. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Double Filet-o-Fish! My friends, that is too much fish to bite into at one time. A hammer-head shark doesn't want that much fish in his mouth at once! Who is eating a Double Filet-o-Fish!? Who has decided that they want to consume twice as much frozen immatation fish patties as before?! Just thinking of all the extra tarter sauce is making my arteries harden!

I've never been much of a student of the Burger King menu, but lately they've been making many additions to their "most disgusting list." They have something now called The Cheesey Double Cheeseburger which is a double cheeseburger with american cheese, pepper jack cheese....AND....if that wasn't enough....a substance known as creamy cheese sauce! Does creamy cheese sauce sound like a good idea alone, yet alone on top of two burgers, two slices of cheese, and condiments?!? It should be called the "I don't Give A Crap Burger!"

Whereas McDonald's tries to convince you their food is good for you, Burger King doesn't even try. Burger King's next TV commercial should just be me sitting on the sofa wearing an old Britney Spears t-shirt and eating French Toast Sticks dipped in Creamy Cheese Sauce. I don't know what that's supposed to mean!?!

McDonald's is now printing the nutritional information on the sides of the cartons their food comes in. As my stepson Joey pointed out the other night, that doesn't really seem necessary when you have to wipe away grease in order to read the information!

Tanner Got X-rayed; Elias Saw Elephants

Yesterday was the big day for Tanner to get his X-rays done! The plan was for me to take Tanner to the hospital today but Jennifer ended up switching around her work schedule so that she was able to take him, she really wanted to be there with him.

Tanner did really well. He had to drink a bottle full of some liquid called "berrium" or something like that and then after it worked it's way through his system he had all sorts of x-rays done. Luckily Tanner and the berrium cooperated, and the whole ordeal only took two hours! They had originally told us it could take up to SIX hours!!!

Of course, there were no doctors present, just technicians, so we'll have to wait a couple more days to find out the results. Tanner is doing fine though, he's very happy and content and his spitting up does seem to be a little less frequent!

While Tanner was at the hospital with Mom all morning, I took the opportunity to take Elias to Mister Ed's Elephant Museum in nearby Orrtanna, PA.

As the name implies, this place was pretty cool! It's a very small museum of this guy's enormous collection of everything elephants! There's just ALOT of elephants!! But don't feel left out! I snapped a bunch of pictures for my bloggy friends!

I love these kind of little homemade roadside attractions. It's like having a little South of the Border in our very own backyard! (If our backyard was 47 miles away!)

I've actually wanted to go to the Elephant Museum for quite sometime. In 1997, I went camping in Gettysburg with some friends of mine and we saw the brochure for this place and we really wanted to go! However, our tourist dollars were instead lured to Land of Little Horses where we saw pig races and a horse that could count. Memories!

Getting back to our day....could it have been any nicer outside!?! After our tour of the Elephant Musuem, Elias and I met up with mommy and Baby Tanner and had lunch at The Avenue in Gettysburg (FANTASTIC Cream of Crab soup!) then walked down the street for ice cream at a great little ice cream place that has outdoor seating! It was a wonderful day of great weather, good eats, and 6000 elephants!

Tanner Update

Tanner did not have his radiology work done today as planned. After we starved him for four hours, as instructed, and waited in the waiting room for a half hour past our appointment we were told they couldn't do the work today.

It turns out Tanner's new doctor had told Jen he was sending Tanner for an "Upper GI." So Jen called and made the appointment for an Upper GI. It also turns out the doctor had also wanted something else done that he hadn't told Jen, so of course she didn't mention it...and this other procedure takes SIX HOURS!!!!!!!! So we gotta go back Monday morning and try it all over again!!! Plus Jen has to work Sunday night, so I'm going to have to go do it myself since she'll be no good without sleep after working all weekend! I'll be taking a book...and hopefully I'll get a lunch break or something. (The cafeteria at the hospital is some GOOD EATS!!!)

Tanner News

We finally got Tanner to a new doctor yesterday! He had been seeing our family doctor but we were unhappy with his response to Tanner's several problems. The new doctor answered some questions for us and is taking some action!

Since he was born 11 weeks ago, he has always spit up pretty much everything he eats. As a result, Tanner has not gained much weight. Our old doctor just dismissed the spitting up as normal baby spit up, and wasn't bothered by the minimal weight gain because he was gaining weight, even though it was an ounce or so every couple of weeks.

Yesterday, this new doctor told us that Tanner's weight is way off for what he should weigh at his age, and that the spit up issue could be something serious that needs to be corrected. So, they are sending him for some x-ray type stuff to get a good look into his chest, lungs, and tummy and see what's going on. So even though we still don't have any answers, we are happy that it looks like we're on the right road to getting all these issues taken care of!

Read on....

Elias The Firefighter

Elias loves reading about firefighters and fire trucks, and he loves to play fire fighter too. Elias was very excited last night when a large package was delivered with his name on it. Jen and I were both very confused as the package was from Amazon.com and we hadn't ordered anything. Inside was a very nice fire fighter dress up set from his Uncle Charlie in Texas (my brother).

This set is much nicer than the one I bought Elias for $4.00 at KB Toys! It has a very nice helmet and jacket, along with an axe and a radio that makes noises. It also has a neat hose and a fire extinguisher. Elias loves it all! He wore it for the rest of the night as he put out fires all through the house, and tried to take apart the dish washer with his axe. At end of the night, Elias was sad that I wouldn't let him take the fire extinguisher to bed with him!

More NASCAR Cracks!

Today as I was out and about, I was behind a car with a NASCAR license plate frame. The frame featured #88, Dale Jarrett! Come on...Dale Jarrett!? I'm pretty sure they made that up! How many Dale's and Jarrett's do they already got driving around those NASCAR tracks!?! That's two much of a NASCAR name to be a coincidence! Either that's not his real name or his no-doubt unwed, Winston-smoking mother named him that and put him to bed every night with a steering wheel in his hands as he lay in his crib with a giant Tide logo on the side of it! Dale Jarrett...Give me a break! That's like the WWE introducing their new wrestler, Rock Hogan!

I also saw a billboard today for the Lady and the Tramp DVD. Along with the obligatory picture of Lady and Tramp eating their spaghetti dinner while the Italian stereotypes serenade them, at the bottom of the billboard it has the "Rated G" logo and underneath that it says: "For ratings information go to filmratings.com"
Who exactly needs clarification on why Lady and the Tramp is rated G? For that matter, any movie rated G! So then when you go to filmratings.com and type in "Lady and the Tramp" it just says "Rated G". Thanks MPAA! That was the most unnecessary internet trip since I typed in the code from my Taco Bell cup!

But since I was at filmratings.com, I thought I'd share my two favorite ratings explanations!

Title: Team America World Police (2004)
Rating: R
Rating Reason: Rated R for graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language - all involving puppets

and

Title: Twister (1996)
Rating: PG-13
Rating Reason: Rated PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather

(I admit, when I was younger I used to sneak copies of "Nasty Weather Illustrated" under my mattress!)

So, I'm taking it upon myself to re-rate Lady and the Tramp PG-13 for suggestive pasta eating, loud barking, and intense depiction of dog pound.

Greatest Cable Channel Ever!

Yesterday at my mother's house I discovered that her cable tv line up included the Walt Disney World On Demand Channel. A feeling of pure joy filled my soul as I made this discovery. I then proceeded to ignore my mother and children for the better part of the next two hours while I soaked in all the goodness Walt Disney World On Demand had to offer. One of the programs is called "Top 7 Things to Do in Walt Disney World." This show is played on one of the in-house channels on the TV's in the hotel rooms on Disney World property. When we were in Disney last July for nine days, in all honesty I probably watched the show between 15 to 20 times! And yet, I was still completely captivated by it again yesterday! That is probably almost as sad, but not quite, as my numerous viewings of the infomercial for the Magic Bullet. Man, I want one of those! That salsa they make looks really good!

While we're talking about crappy TV...I'm happy to see reruns of The Simple Life on E! (Weeknights 6:30p) I'm not sure what it is about that show that I haven't got sick and tired of yet...Probably my high threshold for crap! Also worth mentioning, on VH-1 this week, they are doing "I Love Toys," which is their "I Love the 80's" format but it's all about 100 Great toys! It's fun! That's on, like, 32 times a day, everyday, all week!

Oscar Fever!

The Oscar Awards are tonight and I couldn't really care less. However, I do have one comment to make about the awards. I don't care how much you liked Brokeback Mountain or how good it was...Ang Lee should not win best director!!! Ang Lee still needs to be held accountable for making "Hulk"...one of the worst movies ever made!!!! That movie was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO bad that I'm still talking about it three years later! Ang Lee must be made to sit out at least one Academy Awards show before he's allowed back in!! I mean the Hulk fought giant mutated poodles! Poodles!!!! Gay cowboys should be fighting poodles, not the Hulk. Oh my god, that movie was so bad!!!

Here's one cool thing about the Oscars this year: Matt Dillon is nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Crash. I'm sure Crash is a fine movie, I don't even remember it being in theatres, but the great thing is Matt Dillon is nominated for acting's highest award the very same year he appeared in Herbie Fully Loaded! How great is that! Herbie was SUCH a good movie! Don't get me started on Herbie Fully Loaded!
I think Disney should rerelease the DVD to say "co staring 2005 Academy Award Nominee Matt Dillon." Props to you, Mr. Dillon. By the way, he's really good in Herbie too!!! I wonder if Herbie will be a presenter at the awards tonight!? He could squirt oil on the loser's feet!!

I WANT THIS CAR!

How cool is this car!? I'm not one to drive down the road and see a car and say, "Man, I want that car," but If I saw this car driving down the road I'm quite sure I would follow the person home, hide in their bushes and them clobber them with a golf club, take their keys and the car and drive to Mexico! (Too much information!?)
You can win this car in some contest that the Disney Visa Card is having...but I like my plan better! We've got a Mickey Mouse TV with big ears on the top, a Mickey Mouse toaster that plays M-I-C-K-E-Y when your toast pops up, and a Mickey Mouse bathroom with all kinds of Mickey stuff...but a Mickey Mouse Car!!! I'm sorry but that's just about as awesome as awesome gets!

Speaking of cars, this summer in an extended moment of delusion we seriously almost bought a 1963 VW Beetle with the hope of painting it like Herbie The Love Bug. I guess that kind of behavior isn't too surprising from me, but the fact that I had my wife on board was pretty cool! After we had the car painted, I was convinced I was going to rig it up so that it would squirt oil out of the tailpipe...in case anyone tried to kidnap us, Herbie could squirt oil on their foot and the bad guy would be real mad!

Move Over Oprah!

Today we present, Elias' Book Club! Elias was jealous that Oprah got to dictate what books would be best sellers, so he asked me if he could use the enormous influence of The Wonderful World of Blog to start his own Book Club.
Actually, it's just an excuse to post really cute pictures of my son.

Every week or so, Elias seems to really take a liking to a particular book. This week it's A Bird and His Worm by James Kaczman. It's about a bird who does not like to fly and the adventures he has trying to get south for the winter! Cute book!