Exit, Stage Left Even!

He doesn't get a whole lot of mention here at WWoB, but seriously, one of my all-time favorite cartoon characters; and probably in my top 3 of Hanna-Barbera characters is Snagglepuss. The pink mountain lion debuted in 1960 as backup player to the popular Yogi Bear on The Yogi Bear Show. As with the majority of the H-B gang, Snagglepuss has been laying kinda low lately. However, the folks at Saturday Night Live haven't forgeten him as Snagglepuss was featured on Weekend Update a few weeks ago. Of course, I always love when they do a classic cartoon character send-up on SNL, especially if it's not vular. Although this bit does question Snagglepuss' sexuality, it's all done in good fun. And as an added bonus, there's a great Flintstones reference at the end of this bit.

Oh by the way, this video is courtesy of NBC.com so I'm sure it will be bookended with commercials. On that note....Enjoy it EVEN!

Flintstones - In Polish

When I die, scinentists will study my brain to see what makes a human being look for things on YouTube like the theme song to The Flintstones in Polish:

Let's Talk About Jen

My friend Amy did something like this on her blog and I thought I'd steal the whole idea and do it over here. Like this blog here, Amy always talks about her kids but not so much her spouse. Here at WWoB, we talk alot about the kids...as well as the Smurfs and Alf, but I don't mention my wife Jen all that much. So here's a little prefabricated questionnaire about "your husband" that I switched to "your wife!"

1. She's sitting in front of the TV, what's on?
Some chick show like Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy or Days of Our Lives.


2. You're out to eat; what kind of salad dressing does she get on her salad?
Light Italian


3. What's one food she doesn't like?
Coconut


4. You go out to a bar, what does she order?
Tom Collins or a Cosmopolitan if she's in a Sex in the City mood


5. Where did she go to High School?
I think it was called North Carroll High, but it might be Westminster High or something like that.


6. What size shoe does she wear?
I have no idea, but there's 50 pairs upstairs that will give me the answer.


7. If she was to collect anything, what would it be?
Panda Bears


8. What is her favorite type of sandwich?
I'd go with either Peanut Butter & Jelly or Chicken Salad


9. What would she eat everyday if she could?
Taco Bell combo #6: Two Beef Supreme Chalupas, a soft taco and a Diet Pepsi.


10. What is her favorite cereal?
Rice Krispies with fruit on top


11. What would she never wear?
A black t-shirt from a concert


12. What is her favorite sports team?
Like me, she couldn't care less about sports


13. Who did she vote for?
She picked a winner!


14. Who is her best friend?
Me (...so she claims!)


15. What is something you do that she wishes you wouldn't do?
Leave laundry all over the bedroom


16. How many states has she lived in?
Three...PA, MD, NY


17. What is her heritage?
I believe she's got some German in there.


18. You bake a cake for her birthday, what would it be?
I'd go with a Strawberry Shortcake


19. Did she play sports in high school?
No


20. What could she spend hours doing?
Shopping without the kids, sleeping, get on my case about things I haven't done around the house


21. What's something cool about her?
She gets me. She knows we're going to buy a cereal if the prize is good, even if no one in the house is ever going to eat the cereal.

Marley & Me & Me

One of my little mini-goals in life is to select a book and read it before it is made into a movie. That's not likely to happen since I mostly read non-fiction books about tacky tourist attractions and biographies of Walt Disney. It doesn't count if I read the book knowing they are making a movie of it, like I did with Striptease, and I think we'll all agree that The Cat in the Hat doesn't count either. But thanks to a new movie with Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, I've come kind of close to meeting my goal.


A few years ago while selecting storybooks for my kids, I picked up a book called Bad Dog, Marley! It's a picture book about a family that adopts a dog and he turns out to be a little too much for them to handle. I thought the book was above average and the kids really enjoyed it and we ended up checking it out of the library a handful of times. Then one Christmas somebody gave us a copy and the story then entered into a permanent rotation in our bedtime story lineup.


I decided to see if the author, John Grogan, had written any other books. It turns out, the book we had been reading was a kiddie version of an adult non-fiction novel called "Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog." There was also a junior novelization of the novel. I picked up the junior novelization and planned to read it aloud to Elias while Tanner was taking his naps. (*minor spoiler alert) While leafing through the book I noticed a caption under a picture that read "One of the last pictures we took of Marley". It sounded like that book was not going to have a happy ending so I passed on reading it to Elias.


I later picked up the full length version of the book and read it at the beach this past summer. It's a very entertaining tale of a young couple who adopts a puppy which quickly grows up to become one crazy dog. I'm not that fond of dogs...or animals in general for that matter...but I found the book to be a really good read.

Anywho...sometime shortly before I picked up the original novel, it was announced that there was to be a major motion picture based on the book Marley & Me. There's been a teaser trailer out for a while, and the studio just released a full trailer with clips from the film. I gotta say, every clip in the trailer is from a scene in the book. It looks like it's going to be a good film. The kids are excited to see it....and YES, I have prepared them for the possible ending!

Here's the new trailer:

It's Good To Be A Smurf

My wife and I were doing some Christmas shopping at Toys 'R' Us (sorry, I don't have a backwards "R" key on my computer). As we were looking over the various Star Wars, Spider Man and Indiana Jones toys, who should be starring back at us but none other than a Smurf! Right here, in the year 2008...a Smurf toy sits on the shelf of a major department store! Can you believe it!??? Can you SMURF it? They've got three new Smurf friends out this holiday season in all their plush glory. There's this regular Smurf and there is also available Papa Smurf and Smurfette. Each of the little blue friends comes with a DVD of one of their Saturday morning adventures. How cool is that? And yes, one of my kids will be finding three-apples-high of goodness under the tree this holiday season.

So if that wasn't Smurfy enough, I find out on the internets that a brand new Smurf balloon will be debuting in this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. That's super cool! Why all the love for the Smurfs? Did you think they went away years ago!? It turns out The Smurfs are celebrating their 50th Anniversary this year. Now that doesn't really mean anything to America, because we didn't get exposed to The Smurfs until the early 80's. But good times none the less! In these hard economic times everyone could use a little Smurf action!

A Real Swinger

We've had a swing set in our backyard since the spring of 2005. It has been since then that I have tried to teach Elias how to swing while "pumping" with his legs so he does not need to rely on me for pushes. Every lesson has ended with one of us becoming incredibly frustrated. Earlier this week, I peek outback to check up on the kids and there's Elias swinging as high as can be - all by himself! I know it's not a big deal, but I was so happy that he finally had mastered this simple skill of childhood that I grabbed the camera to record it on video. Take a look:

9 Out of 10 Ain't Bad

Of the nine feature films Pixar Animation has produced The Incredibles is the only one that I haven't really cared for. It looks like their next project Up is going to be another entry into the list of their films I love. Here's the trailer for next summer's Up...it looks really cool:

Killing Fake Elephants

Here's another game I rented...

You know that arcade game where you shoot the deer!? I would never go hunting in a million years in real life - I don't see how taking innocent lives is a sport - but I'll shoot anything in a make believe video game. But in that arcade game you only get like three shots for one dollar to shoot the darn animal. So, I was thinking...it would be cool to get that on the Wii and then I could play it all night without pumping quarters into the machine and maybe actually score some points. So I go to the video store to see if I can rent such a game and I find Cabela's Big Game Hunter sitting on the shelf. Not only do you shoot deer in the game but there is also the promise of shooting bears and mountain lions, plus there's a picture on the back of the box of some dude shooting an elephant from the back of his safari jeep. OK, I'm in!

So, I get this game home and fire up the ol' Wii. My first mission in the game is to climb up a tree stand and shoot some deer with a telescopic lens on my riffle. Done! Next, I'm supposed to track down and kill 6 of some animal I've never heard of by scoping out the forest for the animals tracks and urine scent. What??? While you're running your little hunter dude around the woods, there is a little graphic that comes up on the screen that tells you how fresh the urine scent is. Really...do I need that much realism? I just wanted to shoot some animals. Even when I found fresh animal pee-pee, I didn't know what I was supposed to do with the information.

I tried another level where I ran around a mountain side for the better part of 40 minutes before I found some other hunter who told me to go shoot some ducks. I was actually able to pick off 6 mallard ducks standing on the banks of a river. I was then awarded a new gun to use in the game. It was at that point that I realized there are about 4,000 guns, gadgets and other items that you can unlock and use in the game. Included among them were your own bottles of urine scent to lure animals out into the open. It was also at this point that I decided I was in way over my head with the particular video game. I returned to the mountain side and ran around for another handful of minutes before I was savagely attacked and killed by a giant brown bear.

What's For Lunch - 11/08

I have a feeling that my son's monthly school lunch menu won't be providing us with laughs for much longer. Three months into the school year and it seems they've pretty much exhausted their entire lineup of meals to serve. But...there are a couple of strange and funny items on the November schedule:

• Fish Shape w/Dinner Roll My question: Is it fish shaped like something or is it something shaped like fish!?
• Cook's Choice is Hot Dog on Bun Wow Chef! Did you stay up all night coming up with that one? A+ for originality! Wait...on a bun!? Did you see that on Food Network or something!?
  

Easier Than Building Your Own Plinko Board

I'm a pretty big fan of video game adaptations of television game shows. I've played them all...from Hollywood Squares and Remote Control for the NES to Jeopardy! and The Weakest Link on Playstation...I've sampled quite a collection of these game show home versions. I enjoy their simple slow-paced game play based on skills not usually associated with video games. So I was pretty excited when I saw that The Price Is Right was headed for the Wii.

My excitement paid off. Wii's version of The Price is Right is a welcome addition to the world of video games based on game shows. The new game is a faithful reproduction of the classic game show. The Wii's unique controls make a nice match with TPIR's assortment of pricing games. Not to mention, all the sights, sounds, and music of the original show are captured perfectly.

First, you've got Contestant's Row, where you get your first bid in on some fabulous prizes. Right away, this is where TPIR sets itself apart from game show video games before it. Actual footage from the TV show is used to display the various items you'll be bidding on. In previous games, prizes were usually represented with a generic prize but here you get full video and real life prizes to bid on. Everything from specific cars to a snack side pack of Chips Ahoy cookies are all represented here. It's a nice touch. And on Contestant's Row you can even pull that bull crap where you bid one dollar more than someone else's bid. I swear if I was ever on that show for real and someone did that to me I'd knock their block off!

A good number of the pricing games that make up the bulk of an episode of TPIR are represented here as well. Yes, there's Plinko! And yes, the real greatest game of the show Cliffhanger...you know, the little mountain climber guy. That game is the bomb! There's a bunch of other ones too like Hole in One, and the one where you've got to find the front and back end of the car. Oh, and that one where you gotta run around and put the prices on everything and then check the clock to see how many you've got right and then go back and fix the prices. It's a lot less exhausting, I'm sure, playing that on the Wii then doing it for real.

They've got the big wheel in the middle of the show. You spin the wheel by grabbing on to it with the Wii remote and then virtually giving the wheel a spin. Nice Touch! There's also the Showcase Showdown if you can get to it, with two sets of fabulous prizes that you can pass or bid on.

In case you were wondering, you do not actually win real prizes playing this game. Money does not come out of you Wii, nor will a new car be delivered to your home. I know this because of the disclaimer at the beginning of the game that lets you know that the video game version is for "entertainment purposes only" and no real prizes or money will be awarded. Wow! Have we really come to that point in society where such a disclaimer is needed? That means one of two things: either somebody threatened to sue a video game company because money and prizes were not awarded to them, or I'm owed $750,000 from my home version of Deal or No Deal!

Watch ALF or You Are Stupid

One of the MANY problems with television today is that good old fashioned reruns are becoming a thing of the past. Oh sure, there's still plenty of reruns on TV at any hour of the day but you'll find the majority of them are shows from the last decade or so. Ya got The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on 14 different stations, you got Scrubs on 15 more channels, and why on earth is Becker on non-stop from 11pm till 5am? I'd love to turn on my TV and find Family Ties waiting for me or Alice, or It's A Living or how about some mother-lovin' Gimme A Break? Well, cable outlet WGN America is doing everyone a solid and they've got some good old school reruns in their lineup this season.

And not just any ol' reruns, mind you, but one of the finest sitcoms to come from the wonderful world of television of all time. That's right, it's my good buddy ALF! Now, yes I've got all four seasons of this fantastic television program on DVD and I can watch them whenever I please, but it's nice to have the ol' ALF'er back on the airwaves. I don't think ALF (1986-1990) has been broadcast on a national level since the old Odyssey network back in 1999. So it's great to have the fuzzy alien back on TV...even on his original night - Monday, at 8pm EST for a full hour, and then both episodes are rerun the following Sunday at 6pm EST.

Then get ready to sink your teeth into Newhart. Bob Newhart's 1982-1990 sitcom about a bed and breakfast in Vermont is seriously one of the wittiest sitcoms from the 80's. The cast and the writing is impeccable in every single episode. It's a great show that I haven't seen aired since Nick at Nite played it in the mid-90's. WGN America is running a full hour on Sunday nights at 8:00 pm EST. Good stuff, check it out!

WGN America is also the only place where you can see local favorite Homicide: Life on the Street weekdays at 2:00pm and you can see actual honest-to-goodness black and white television with back to back episodes of The Honeymooners Sunday nights at 9 pm EST.

If you don't know where WGN America is on your cable line up, scroll through the TV Guide listings and keep an eye open.