2007
hey hey my friend where are you going today
maura @ 1:49 pm
Greetings programs! Lately Gus has been repeatedly watching (and Jonathan and I repeatedly mocking) Tron. How did we get here?
It all started with the pirates. Gus has been big into pirates for a few months now, and I’m not at all sure why. It’s not those stupid Pirates of the Caribbean movies, he has not even seen them, honest! (Though we do loves us some Johnny Depp in this house.) I guess it’s probably that every other kid loves pirates too, so the iconography is all around us.
A few weeks ago I spent ONE SOLID HOUR putting the lego pirate ship together while Gus asked if it was finished yet approximately once every 2.5 minutes. This lego ship was mine when I was little*. We gave it to Gus as a recycled gift last xmas. Yay for recycled gifts! Esp. legos, since the new ones are so much lamer than the old ones.
* In this case “little” = “in college” and if you are so fusty to think that college students shouldn’t be playing with toys then I guess I will never show you my rad yo-yo collection, either.
Recently Jonathan has informed me that actually, this lego ship is NOT a pirate ship, but rather they are the “good guys” in the navy. To which I reply: don’t ask me, I’m just a girl.
Back to the legos. After the (non-)pirate ship was finished Gus wanted to make me build more elaborate lego sets. So I tackled the lego Boba Fett’s ship (Slave 1) that Jonathan bought for himself a few years ago. This has far fewer parts and was much much easier to build. Gus even successfully begged to be given the little lego Boba Fett that’s been keeping watch on one of Jonathan’s bookshelves lo these many years.
Of course Gus started asking questions about Boba Fett, the ship, the little carbon-frozen Han Solo lego, etc. Jonathan gave him the basic plot outline of Star Wars in about 20 minutes. Of course we love the original 3 movies, but the story sounds SO cheesy when you relate it verbally.
Yes, we are the only people in the world who have not yet let their almost-6 yr old watch Star Wars. Gus is very into swords and guns right now and it just seems wiser to wait until his fascination has died down. But I’m sure this makes me a horrible square and he’ll be the last kid in the world to see it and everyone will laugh at him.
So we scrabbled around the house for “something in space” for Gus to watch. Tron was the substitute we settled on. Why do we even own Tron? I think a couple of you know the answer to that question, but I’ll share it with the class. Last millennium I worked at Disney Online, and I used my employee discount to buy 3 videos: Freaky Friday**, Bedknobs & Broomsticks***, and Tron. Lisa bought Tron too, and we joked that we probably cleaned out the stock.
** Which I cannot even watch anymore, even though I love it, because it reminds me of the remake, which I also love, which makes me want to shake some sense into Lindsay Lohan.
*** A classic! Also used to fan the flames of Gus’s swords-n-guns mania by fast forwarding to the end where the mysteriously un-aging Angela Lansbury uses her mad magic skillz to chase off the Germans with ghost soldiers.
Tron is not in space, but close enough, apparently, because Gus is hooked. And it is hilariously useful for illustrating some of the weird things from our youth that Gus can’t believe, e.g. that you used to have to leave the house to play video games on a big giant machine and after you died you had to put another quarter in to keep playing! This blows his little mind.
End of line.
7 comments on “hey hey my friend where are you going today”
Of course I meant “the other 2.”
Tron might as well be in space. Who can say? Did you ever see that ep of “Everybody Hates Chris” where the voice-over talks about that very same thing–leaving the house to play video games? Hee, we used to go to Acropolis Chili. It smelled awful and there was grease all over the machines. Eeeew, but they had a hilarious game called Pengo, which had a fabulous theme song.
Even Chuck E. no longer has video games!
You know whenever I ask general questions of blagland about kids stuff I am really just asking you! :) It is good to hear I’m not the only square in the world.
*We* haven’t even seen all the new three! The first two were so bad that we were scared, though apparently #3 is not as bad.
Har, we are commenting almost in real time — like IM, but clunkier!
When we lived in Missouri I used to to to this arcade and play Frogger and Tron (really!). And buy Jelly Bellies from the candy store next door. I’m such a girl.
Stupid Chuck E. Cheese. Gus is always wanting his birthday party to be there (we’ve been to a few). I am so unsubtle with it — I just reply “they’re busy that day.” Hopefully by the time he figures out that I am not psychic he will no longer want to have a party there!
“Freaky Friday” was awesome but scared the heck out of me. My mom worked in the next county and I was afraid if we were switched I’d have to a) drive, which I didn’t know how to do, and b) drive a long way into Butler County, where I would probably get lost. This is why it took me until age 26 to get my license, I’m sure.
We saw the “Freaky Friday” remake after Hurricane Isabel made us totally stir crazy. It was very good, or maybe I was just tired and confused from not having electricity and water.
I’m all for knocking sense into Little Miss Lohan! She was Ben’s celebrity skank girlfriend until he saw her on a talk show being not-so-smart (bedazzled by her red hair, he had perhaps previously mistaken her for a Mensan). We kept blaming her dad but c’mon, girl, at some point you gotta rise above your dysfunctional family and get on with your happy little life!
Oh I lied, he did see “Phantom Menace.” He watched it like 10 times after Netflix sent it to us. I blocked out the entire experience.
You weren’t (just) tired and confused, the FF remake really WAS good! Jamie Lee Curtis is hilarious.
Yeah, I am worried about asking Netflix for kids films for that very reason, he will want to watch it repeatedly and I will want to send it back so we can get a better movie! Of course, we have 3 movies right now that we haven’t had time to watch for over a week, so maybe we are the Netflix slackers.
We didn’t let Max watch “Star Wars” forever, and when we finally did…oh, man. Then of course the other 3. He has not seen the newer installments, but he tries this Jedi mind game with me where he asks me all these S.W. questions, then I say “I don’t know, I only saw the first 3 and then one new one, I can’t remember the name,” and he says “you mean the LAST 3!”
Well he’s pretty much off that kick right now. I thought it would never end. Harry Potter seemed to have something to do with it. Anyway, 6 is a good age for the trilogy, I think that’s how old Max was when we finally relented.
No “Indiana Jones” yet. And I was going to let him watch “The Mummy” (Uncle Ben has a copy) but Ben (dad) said no way. We saw “Time Bandits” instead, hope the ending doesn’t make him go into therapy.