Friday is Independence Day

Big Game Photo Safari

For Christmas Elias had received a Fisher-Price Digital Camera. He's played with it over the past 6 months, snapping pictures around the house, but we've never taken the camera with us anywhere. Today, we finaly fixed that and took the Kid Tough Camera (and the kids) to the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo. Tanner loved all the animals and Elias had a kick taking pictures of them all. Well, not all of them...he wouldn't take pictures of animals he didn't like! Anywho, take a look at Elias' photography over at my Flickr page.

Comedy Central Presents

At the end of every school year Joey's school has a talent show. For the past five years Joey has performed stand-up comedy at these talent shows. It takes a lot of confidence and courage to pull something like this off, and Joey has nailed it every year. This year the school finally made available a video of the show for the students to keep. Here's Joey's performance of all his own original material.

Two Kids in Print

Joey just finished his sophomore year of high school! He brought home the school's literary magazine and showed us that he had two photographs published in it. Joey had taken a photography class and one of his assignments was to experiment with light. Joey snapped a few pictures of Elias with different light sources. One of those pictures made the magazine. So we've got two kids featured in this year's publication. The picture of Elias was used as a background for a poem someone else wrote:

Jedi Elias

First of all, you have to cut me some slack. This is the longest amount of time this blog has gone un-updated since I started it 2 1/2 years ago! During the down time, we spent a week at my favorite spot in the whole world, Walt Disney World! I want to tell you about a very magical moment that we experienced on our trip. As you may have read before, my children are obsessed with Star Wars, so visiting the Star Wars based attractions while at Walt Disney World was high on our list of things to do. A new attraction that they've added since we were there last is the Jedi Training Academy where kids get to train in the art of using a lightsaber with a "real" Jedi master. As soon as we arrived at Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park we headed straight to this new show and waited for the next performance. As the show started, much to our delight Elias was picked to be one of the handful of kids that got to go up on stage and train with the Jedi knight! Very exciting, indeed!

First they handed all the kids a Jedi robe and a lightsaber to train with...



Not usually the most attentive child, Elias did really well and paid attention to this teacher and got down all the moves he was taught very quickly...

After going through a series of lightsaber moves a half-dozen times some familiar music began to play as two Storm Troopers took to the stage with blasters in hand. They had all the kids move to one side of the stage...at which point I think half of them wet their pants. Then, as smoke filled the stage, the Dark Overlord of Evil - Darth Vader, himself, made his entrance. Vader tried to lure the kids to "the dark side" but their Jedi Master was confident that the force was strong within them and that they could resist the temptations of the dark side of the force. One-by-one the kids got to take turns showing Darth Vader what they've learned to do with a lightsaber. Some of the kids just kind went through the motions, but Elias was ready to fight. When it was his turn, he remember all the moves and really let Darth Vader have it! (It was awesome!)

After the young Jedi defeated Darth Vader, there was a graduation ceremony from the Academy, and all the kids got a diploma to take home. Of course they had to give back the light saber and robe...but we bought Elias an official Jedi Robe in the Star Wars gift shop 100 feet away.

Even though I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, it was really cool to get to see Elias live out a fantasy like that! In my 23 visits to Walt Disney World, it was really one of the most magical, memorable moments I've ever experienced!

Two Iron Mans Are Better Than One

As you may know, we are big fans of Movie Tie-Ins. Well, at least I am and the rest of the family has to go along for the ride. Yesterday we had to go out and run a few errands (including picking up our Disney World tickets) so I gave the kids a choice: McDonald's for Speed Racer toys or Burger King for Iron Man toys. It turns out Iron Man crushed Speed Racer in enthusiasm so we included a stop at our local BK for lunch. Expecting to get psyched for the Iron Man movie with some crappy little toys we were also met with an image of Indiana Jones as we pulled into the parking lot. It turns out BK didn't only whore itself out to Iron Man, but they are also in bed with good ol' Indy too. I'm a sucker for any menu item that is somehow tied into a movie, so while the kids ate their chicken tenders and apple sauce Joey and I were chowing down on Indiana Jones' Adventure Whopper...or something to that effect. Yes, it's just a Whopper with the addition of Pepper Jack Cheese, Bacon and some dark red tangy sauce but it comes wrapped in an Indiana Jones wrapper too! How can you resist! And I'm not really even into the whole Indiana Jones thang!


As you can see from the picture, the boys got Iron Man glasses that I guess are somehow supposed to make them look like Iron Man. Elias and Tanner really wanted action figures but they also aren't ones to pass up wearing superhero costume items. Most of the toys available in the Burger King Kid's Meal are figures but there is also a 3-D puzzle that looks kind of neat. It appears that Burger King is going to have Indiana Jones toys sometime in the next week or so.


Over at Mickey D's they are plugging the new Speed Racer movie with their Happy Meal. They of course have several different cars as prizes but they've also decided to make Speed Racer one of their boy/girl prizes. I assume boys are awarded one of the cars and girls receive "fashion items" like Speed Racer purses and vanity mirrors. An odd decision on Ronald's part, I guess they felt the movie just didn't have enough "Girl Power" to keep the little girls happy. Lame!

New Greatest Movie of All Time

I heard about this movie a few months ago and thought it sounded like something I should see. A few days ago I saw the trailer for the first time and elevated the movie's status to not only a "Must See" but perhaps "Greatest Movie of All Time!" Please enjoy...

You've Heard of 'Old School'...This is Old Hut

This is (allegedly) the very first nationally aired commercial for Pizza Hut, going all the way back to 1965. It's amazing the chain is still around today with a start like this. Judging from this commercial, in 1965 you could get your pizza topped with meat, veggies or LSD!?!


WHAT????

Tim McGraw Fritos

As you should know by now, if they put a picture of a cartoon character on a grocery item I'm going to buy it. The same isn't necessarily true for pictures of country music stars, but when I came across McGraw's Spicy Jalapeno Fritos at my local Wal-Mart I had to throw a bag into my cart just for "blog's sake!" It's not everyday that a celebrity gets a food product named after them. The package says nothing about Tim McGraw other than the name of the snack and his picture and signature. I was expecting the back of the bag to have a little homespun story of how Tim McGraw's grandmother used to spend hours in the kitchen shaving jalapeno slices on to their home made corn chips while Tim sat on the front porch and learned to play guitar from his grandfather. But no - just a picture of Tim.

But then we ripped into the bag of treats and we knew that Mr. McGraw was onto something with these Spicy Jalapeno Fritos. They are outrageously good! We ended up scarfing down a whole bag of them in a matter of minutes. They're not spicy-hot that you need to drink a gallon of cold milk after a handful, they've got a nice natural taste of jalapeno dusted on them. They taste just like when your grandmother shaved jalapenos onto your fritos when you were little.

Anywho, I guess these bad boys are in limited supply because our Wal-Mart ran out of them already. We stocked up on a few bags when we saw the supply getting low, but then we ate all those bags too! Well played Tim McGraw....well played!

The Original Ace of Cakes

At some point on this blog I've mentioned my mom's cake decorating business that she had when I was growing up. She quite literally probably made the cake for every birthday party I went to between the ages of 5 and 13. She used to have a photo album of all the cakes she had done, which kind of served as a catalogue for customers. Recently we found a handful of those pictures and they fit right at home here on WWoB, because each one is a little tasty treat of pop culture goodness!

That's tight! I'm sure this was for one of my birthdays. I wonder if she still has the pan?

This Princess Lea cake was for the girl across the street. Judging from the number of candles, the year was 1978 making this one of the first wave of Star Wars cakes.

Ahhh...I had many Smurf cakes throughout the years. This one is especially colorful and was made by tracing a picture out a coloring book onto rice paper. Then coloring it with icing on top.

My mom also made several Pac-Man cakes over the years, although probably only one for me. This cake also has little ghost-monster cupcakes with it. Ain't that cute?

Now this Pac-Man cake is based on the Atari 2600 home version of the game. I can remember my mom watching me play while she sketched down the pattern of the screen. Ya gotta love the attention to detail. Happy 12th Birthday Who Ever This Cake Was For!!

Star Wars Cavalcade of Stars

As I've mentioned before, the power of Star Wars has taken hold of my children. Here's a great video of little 2 year old Tanner naming all his Star Wars figures. Listen for his attention to detail...

Here They Come... Here Comes Speed Racer Toys

The summer movie season is just around the corner and that means the summer movie merchandising is here. Product tie-ins and other movie goodies can get me excited about a movie that I have no intention of seeing! However, I am looking forward to the new Speed Racer movie and we all know how much of a fan I am of free prizes in cereal boxes. So, free Speed Racer prizes inside specially marked boxes of General Mills cereal? Sign me up! I haven't watched an episode of Speed Racer since I was probably 8 years old, but I do have fuzzy warm memories of the cartoon. When I was in the first and second grade Speed Racer was on WDCA Channel 20 every afternoon at 3 & 3:30. We got off the bus somewhere between 3 and 3:30. So everyday I would race home from the bus stop, grab the afterschool snack and then head on down to my friend Ryan Tripp's house to watch the second Speed Racer before a solid hour of Scooby-Doo at 4 & 4:30. That was television my friends! (And...Yes, my friend Ryan's mom was later involved in a certain White House scandal that made her famous!)

So, anywho...this new Speed Racer movie looks pretty cool. It's bright and colorful and looks like it will be alot of fun plus it stays true to the original series which is always a plus in my book. I had already seen Speed Racer fruit snacks at the grocery store and today I saw the toys starting to pop up on the shelves at Wal-Mart. The free cars inside the cereal happened to be inside two brands of cereal that we eat in our house, so we picked up a couple of boxes. Unfortunately we didn't score the Mach 5 (Speed Racer's white car) but we did get these two other cars: #33 and #12 Hydra Cell. That means absolutely nothing to me either, but after the movie I'm sure we'll know who they are. The cars have the ol' pull back and go action which allows them to speed off on their own after driving them backwards on the floor a few inches. For cheap little cereal premiums they work pretty good. They are fast and provided an evenings worth of entertainment for my kids (and I).

Speed Racer hits theatres May 9. You can look for additional tie-promotions with Target, Lego, Puma and yes...the coveted McDonald's Happy Meal.

back of the cereal boxes

Keeping Up With The Flintstones

In a post on another blog that I check in with often they've got up a collection of photos of props from Star Wars that they've seen in various places throughout the years. It got me to thinking about about the number of props I've seen from one of my favorite movies, The Flintstones. Unlike most movies, EVERY SINGLE thing that appears on screen in both THE FLINTSTONES (1994) and THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS (2000) had to be created from scratch. So there are quite a bit of prop items floating around. The only picture I ever thought to take was this one here of Fred's bowling balls and team uniform at the Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. The Planet Hollywood in Baltimore had a few pieces of Flintstones memorabilia, and I even saw Fred's car and several full size playground props at Universal Studios Florida a few years back. The greatest treasure trove I ever hit was at a store that sold movie memorabilia at Pleasure Island in Walt Disney World. Among other items, they had lots of the women's jewelry from the film as well as the time card that Fred has stamped/chomped by a dinosaur on his way out of work. Most of these pieces were several hundred dollars which is too rich for my blood no matter how much I love The Flintstones. But the one piece I could have had was a single piece of Bedrock currency (little shells with dollar signs on them.) They were selling for $35.00 a piece, I thought long and hard about it but eventually passed on it. I could have at least taken a picture! I'm sure shortly after I left the store I spent $35.00 on something to eat.

The Star Wars Gene

My kids have become obsessed with STAR WARS and there isn't much anyone can do about it. You see, Star Wars blood runs in my wife's side of the family. My brother-in-law is a huge Star Wars fan. He's been one since he was knee-high to an Ewok. My step-son Joey is also a huge Star Wars fan, and my two nephews are also huge Star Wars freaks! So, it was inevitable that no matter how much Disney I force fed down their throats, it was all going to take a back seat to Star Wars.

It all started shortly after Christmas. My nephews, who are slightly older than my kids, got a Playstation 2 for Christmas. Being the huge Star Wars fans that they are, they got a game known as LEGO STAR WARS for Christmas also. Lego Star Wars is a video game version of the Star Wars films all rendered in the style of Lego building blocks and with the violence and tone watered down for little kids. While Elias and Tanner were at their nephew's house one day they watched their nephews play Lego Star Wars. That's where it all began. For the next few days, Elias begged me to go to Aunt Karen's house to play Lego Star Wars. He kept asking me all kinds of questions about Star Wars and was just trying to figure out any way at all to get to his Aunt's house and play this video game. Tired of hearing about this game all the time, I figured we'd just go buy it and then it would all die out in about a week or so. That's where I was wrong, and that's where I made a great mistake!
The instruction booklet to Lego Star Wars has been carried all over this house as if it were a security blanket. "Dad, can we play Lego Star Wars now?" is uttered at least three times a day. The power of the Lego game has not died out. I've kept the video game time to a minimum but the Star Wars obsession has spilled over to toys, books and of course the movies.

They now make Star Wars figures for preschoolers. They are small chubby little figures, just the right size for little hands and they don't have parts that easily break. And yes, they also sell a line of spaceships for the little figures to fly in. And of course there's the lightsabers. Elias wanted some new lightsaber that changes colors real bad. He asked the mall Easter Bunny for one and it turns out the Easter Bunny is a big Star Wars fan and pretty much promised the kids all kinds of Star Wars stuff for Easter. So, we passed on all the candy and had a VERY Star Wars Easter at our house. The boys both got new lightsabers and they each got a ship with some figures. (In case you're wondering, Elias got a Podracer and Tanner got the Millennium Falcon.)

It continues...at the library we discovered that they had a whole shelf of kids Star Wars books. Needless to say, I've read "Luke's Fate" and "Anakin's Race For Freedom" about 50 times each in the last week. And there's the movie, which Tanner saw once and Elias has seen a handful of times. Elias is already quoting it and talking about things in the movie that only people camping outside of a movie theatre should know about.

Here's an exchange after a discovery at his cousin's house:
Elias: Did you know Burger King had a Star Wars Happy Meal?
Me: Yes
Elias: Why didn't you take me there to get one?
Me: Because they had it before you were even born.
Elias: Well, you could have got me one and saved it for me.

With a new Star Wars movie set to come out this summer, I'm sure the Force will be strong in our house. In fact, the new movie hits theatres the week before Elias' birthday. Guess what kinds of paper plates and napkins I'll be buying?

Flintstones Resort

I've never even heard of Melia All-Inclusive Resorts until earlier this week but now that I have, I'd like to visit there very much. I'm sure eating and drinking until your heart's content is nice, and laying out by the pool under the tropical sun is great. But at Melia (with resorts in Caribe Tropical, Cozumel, Azul Ixtapa, Puerto Vallarta, and Turquesa) you can hang out with the Flintstones! Seriously, I'd travel half way across the globe for live Flintstones action!

Now most of this stuff is designed for kids under 13, but who cares! First of all, most kids under 13 don't know who the Flintstones are. At the Beaches chain of all-inclusive resorts they have a Sesame Street kids program, so I guess this is Melia's answer to the competition.

They have a Bronto Breakfast with Fred and Dino. There's also two kids eateries, Betty's Kitchen and Fred's Bronto Burger. Then they've got all kinds of games and activities for the kids in three different age groups. It all sounds pretty cool and very creative. Look at the next picture down below and you'll get an idea of the bright and colorful way the preschool area is decorated:

I only found two people on Flickr that had uploaded pictures from a stone-age trip to Melia. Here's someones random photo of their baby with Mr. Flintstone. (That's a great costume, by they way!)

As if the whole idea wasn't cool enough...check out the beach chairs! That's worth the price of admission alone...

We just might have to skip Disney World one year and get our Flintstone on!

Happy Easter!

May The Cake Be With You

For whatever reason I do the things I do, I was looking online today for images of Star Wars Cakes when I stumbled across a few other cool cakes like this Super Mario Bros. wedding cake. First of all, how cool is that!? Second, I hope this dude realizes how lucky he is that he got his wife to agree to a wedding cake based on a Nintendo game. I'm sure that's not the wedding cake she dreamed about all her life.

My wife and I kind of kicked around the idea of having a Flintstones wedding. If we had actually gone through with it we might have had a cake like this...

Yabba-Dabba-Dough!

My brother knows a good potential blog post when he sees one, so he picked up this set of Flintstones scratch-off Lottery tickets from his home state of Texas and sent them to me. They are very cool although it's a bit unusual to use cartoon characters to sell lottery tickets. But I guess since kids today don't know who the heck the Flintstones are, it's fair game! These tickets are cool however, with each featuring art inspired by the classic TV show. All you have to do is scratch off the numbers behind the clubs and match one of your winning numbers. Nice bonus touch: find a bone and you win a prize instantly.

Of the five tickets, the Wilma and Betty dancing ticket won us two bucks! That would be like winning five dollars in the Flintstones time!

Anyhow, thanks for thinking of us Chuck!

International House of Seuss

I simply love a good restaurant movie tie-in. Or should I say...


I would drive 26 miles to the nearest IHOP,
to order these pancakes topped with pink and blue glop.
There here to promote the new Dr. Seuss movie,
you might find it gross but I think it's kind of groovy!
The folks who made ICE AGE have a new movie out
HORTON HEARS A WHO is what it's about.
They call this breakfast Who-cakes
and that's green eggs with spinach flakes

Why do that think kids will want to eat eggs with spinach?
They'd much rather do their homework to the finish.

But those Who-cakes look good
I'd eat them right up!
No, seriously...I would totally order that! Those pancakes look outrageous! But if I drove 26 miles to the nearest IHOP just to get Dr. Seuss pancakes I'm quite sure my wife would clobber me with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole!

Check out details on the whole promotion at IHOP's website.

I Like Puppets

Just got back from a 4-day visit to Sin City USA - Las Vegas to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. Five years ago we ventured out to Vegas for the first time, and tied the knot in a simple ceremony at The Little White Wedding Chapel, the very same chapel (and minister) that would later be a part of Britney Spears' infamous first brief marriage. We had a good time on this recent visit. We ate some great food, won a little on the slots, and saw some wonderful sights and shows. We saw a topless Burlesque review and we even saw Howie Mandel in concert the night of our anniversary. But the highlight of the trip for me was getting tickets to see The Ronn Lucas Show.

I saw the ad for this show when we were in town five years ago. I didn't really have any idea who Ronn Lucas was, but I was familiar with his dragon co-star Scorch. Scorch was the star of a very brief 1992 sit-com. And when I say very brief, I'm talking February 28 to March 13th of the same year. Even though it only ran for three weeks, the show stuck in my head all these years...as you may know I have a thing for puppet-based sit-coms! So anywho, my wife finally caved in and agreed to go to the show this visit.

They have this new thing in Vegas where you can go to these ticket sellers on the strip and get discounted tickets for shows that same day. It's a really good deal, and it you're going to Vegas and seeing some shows you should check them out as an option. We got tickets to three different shows from them and got crazy good prices on seats. The Ronn Lucas Show is an afternoon affair, starting at 3:00pm. We got our tickets at around 12:30 for something like $17.00 a pop. We had awesome seats, 3rd row - dead center. It was great!

The show was fantastic! Ronn and Scorch start things off and are later joined by Billy Bob, a cowboy puppet and Chuck the punk rocker. One part of the show, Ronn got someone out of the audience and made them look like a dummy. Get It! The show closes with Mr. Lucas taking off his sock and slowly transforming it into George the Turtle. There's a couple of other unusual characters that pop us as well throughout the performance. The whole show was great, and I know my wife laughed a lot harder than she thought she would. The really cool part was after the show when we got to meet Mr. Lucas and chat with him for a few minutes. Of course, I brought up the Scorch sit-com which he was surprised I remembered but was happy to reminisce about. We not only got this cool photo taken with Ronn and a plush Scorch ($35) but he also autographed a DVD for me. I'm a sucker for the simpler things in life like puppets and DVDs and having a puppet DVD signed by the puppeteer. The whole experience was really the highlight of my trip.

If you've got plans to go to Vegas anytime soon you should check out The Ronn Lucas Show at the Luxor, afternoons at 3:00pm. And get all your Vegas tickets from Tix 4 Tonight or your paying too much for tickets!