Family Movies

Aw, now, that was just too short.  My brother the Dude came home for the holidays, and he’s already going back to his damn engineering school.* We had to cram a lot of geeking into a few days, so Mom and Dad had to put up with quite a bit of nonsequiturs involving Batman or Transformers or Pixar. I told him about the latest escapades of his favorite aliens from my stories, the uninhibited and somewhat bonkers wooslets (he helped create them), and he told me a bit about Tae Kwon Do and about how the freshmen at CSM this year apparently find it offensive that they’re called geeks and are trying to counter the campus paper’s “Geek of the Week” column with “Non-Geek of the Week.”  Denial.

 

I also discovered that one of his favorite kids’ movies is The Sandlot, which occupies a real soft spot for him the way It Takes Two does for me. It’s made me wonder about nostalgia movies. What’s a movie you will always love no matter how old you get, flaws and all?**

 

Speaking of movies, as a historic family marker, the Dude was here for the Great Epic New HD-TV And Blu-Ray Setup, which means we got to introduce Dad to WALL*E.  Dad has spent years not liking cartoons, and then he saw Ratatouille and decided it was the greatest movie ever—and so he was totally ready to view the world’s cutest post-apocalyptic movie when we put on WALL*E—and lo, he loved it. But if you ask me, the greatest Blu-Ray experience was Transformers—but then, I just love the hell out of that stupid movie.

 

Maybe when he comes back I’ll make him watch Cloverfield.  Nobody else in this family likes it; maybe I can get one person on my side.

 

 

*Bastard’s actually acquiring a useful skill. He’ll probably manage to get a great job straight outta college. Jerk.

 

**Actually, The Sandlot is a pretty quality movie. If you want a movie I think is a quality family film that occupies a soft spot, I’d go with Secondhand Lions, but I think I was past kid-age for that one.  It Takes Two isn’t in that caliber, but I was ten when it came out and it’s damn fun.

My Inner Nerd Is Even Nerdier Than My Outer Nerd

Yay! I got me a Metaquote! (Not nearly as good as Ish’s, though—come on, if you’re a genre-lover who has taken a creative writing class, you have had this experience. I know I have.)

It’s evident that my subconscious is less inhibited about awesome crossover fiction. I still think the greatest crossover ever is not Batman with Doctor Who; it is, undeniably, Wolverine Versus Alien. I am tempted to learn to draw, then learn to draw comics, just so that I can draw the scene with Wolverine’s chestburster, because that shit was comedy gold.*

Makes me sorta sorry I’m going off the Fukitol, really. But since I at least seem motivated to write now, it’s a trade-off, I s’pose.


*And yes, I already thought about the fact that Wolvie’s ribs are coated in adamantium. Clearly he’s still got some non-adamantium-coated costal cartilage, or he’d have a lot more trouble breathing—so presumably the alien could bust through that, and I think they would bend a bit outward from the spine. And quit looking at me like that.