Me: Hey, Dina, did you have any dreams last night?
Dina: Nah…
Me: Okay. Hey, Bassie, did you have any dreams last night?
Dina: Oh, wait. I had a dream that I went on a field trip…
Me: Oh?
Dina…To 1993.
Me: You mean the year?
Dina: Yeah.
Me: Why 1993?
Dina: (with a bit of irritation) I don’t know.
My awesome brother and sister-in-law got us 4 movie tickets for Hannukah. How to use them? Here are our family friendly options, along with my “worth the price of popcorn”, “netflix instant queue”, or “watch it at your friend’s house, kids” ratings.
Tooth Fairy: proof that Dwayne Johnson will never give up a chance to cross-dress. Also, not sure if the PG rating is because it may crush small children’s belief in the existence of fairies or because you can see The Rock’s rocks in those tights.
Verdict: Watch it at your friend’s house, kids! Anyway, it just depresses me to see Julie Andrews acting when I know that she can no longer sing. The hills are alive, with the sound of irony!
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel: Got an “Is this a sign of the Apocalyse?” positive review in the New Yorker. Stars Zachary Levi, of Chuck (whom Dina thinks is “cuuuuuuuute”). David Cross, aka Tobias Funke, is back from the first one.
Verdict: Netflix Instant Queue. I am presuming that yosefblog would rather poke his eyes out and wander the wilderness of Thebes than see this movie. Moving on…
The Spy Next Door: Jackie Chan as a spy who gets a babysitting gig with his next door neighbor’s kids? Although I am guessing that his aging body might preclude his performing stunts to the level of awesomeness of, let’s say, Super Cop, I imagine it will still be awesome. Also, Dina thinks he is “cuuuuuuuute”. Bassie finds the concept of the use of spy paraphernalia for babysitting purposes rather humorous. And, as Dina said when she first saw the trailer: “Mom! Jackie Chan is the spy next door! And it’s not like Firelight! It’s real!”
Verdict: Worth the Price of Popcorn. No Fear. No Stunt Double. No Equal. No Contest.
1. Listen to podcasts of “Philosophy Today!”
2. Play “guess the famous novel from its famous first line” (“It was the best of time, it was the…blerst of times?! Stupid monkey!”)*
3. Have Dina once again ask if she can get a modeling agent after looking at herself in the rear view mirror and remarking, “I’m pretty, aren’t I?”
4. Listen to Stephen Hawking “A Short History of the Universe” lectures
5. Play “name that famous jazz song from its first few bars”
6. Get McDonalds
7. Do Math workbooks (Dina)
8. Re-read Harry Potter books (Bassie)
9. Get really bad coffee at local rest stops (Rachel), every time thinking that “this coffee can’t be worse than the stuff I had at the last rest stop”. (Note: There are shockingly myriad ways for coffee to be bad.)
10. Taunting Rachel for getting shitty coffee once again, as though she were a mouse in a maze in a lab whose ability to learn from mistakes has been chemically blocked for the sake of an experiment about the learning process in animals. (Yosef)
11. Eat Swedish Fish.
*Note: this is not one of them
I tried to explain to Bassie the comedy rule of threes the other day in the car. The example I gave was pretty pathetic, though. Something like, “Pack your bags for the trip, kids! You’ll need bug spray, snacks, and a ten foot garden hose!”
Meh.
Bassie’s response: “Oh, okay, I get it. Like, ‘This restaurant has horrible service! The fish is underseasoned, the meat is raw, and they don’t serve their hamster heads with garlic ketchup!’”
And so, the student has surpassed the teacher…
Regarding the buying of a birthday present for a mutual male friend:
Bassie: I know what boys like.
Dina: (pleadingly) Please…tell me what boys like!
Um…are you two talking about the same thing? Because I think Bassie’s talking about a Webkins…
Bassie: Mom, they should make an app that’s a magnifying glass.
Me: Like, you mean, you hold up the phone to something and…
Bassie: Yeah, and you see it on the screen bigger. They must be able to do that, right?
Me: I guess. I think so. That’s a really great idea. You should develop apps.
Bassie: Mm-hmm.
We look in the app store.
Me: Oh, yeah, here are two.
We download the free one. And Basya, rather than resentful that someone else made it before she could, is thrilled that someone with the skill to execute it has thought of the same brilliant idea she has.
Oh, to be young and idealistic and lacking in hubris.
Bassie, while watching an ad for the re-release of Sleeping Beauty: “Mom, you know what I don’t like? When they take a line that a character said in a movie and recut it so it sounds like the character is saying it about the movie. Like, ‘This is so great!”, like they think the movie is great.”
Me: “Oh, you don’t like that?”
Bassie: “No. It’s exploiting the movie!”
Yeah, that’s right, my eight year old daughter uses the word “exploiting” without prompting.
And that’s why you talk to them like they’re real people and not babies. Because otherwise she might have said something stupid, like “It’s using the movie for something that it was not meant to be used for.”
Pu-lease. We must be nothing if not precise.
Okay, so for those of you over the age of 40 who don’t even know what twitter IS, I’ve compiled some of my tweets about the girls over the last few weeks. Remember: tweets can only be 140 characters long, so the following represent not only the funniest things they say, but also the most terse (“high humor density” is what I call it):
Dina, on learning that the SNL “Firelight” trailer was a spoof and not a real movie she could see:”What do they want? To make children CRY?!”
Dina, on the waiter not bringing her a straw: “I need to drink out of a TUBE!”
Bassie, on my desire to go through the window of walgreens in defiance of their “this door only” sign: “that would make quite an entrance.”
Somehow this wasn’t how I had imagined winning my first writing contest, but, hey, I’ll take it!
Bassie: You know what’s been bothering me lately?
Me: What?
Bassie: If someone says “it’s cold outside”, you can’t respond by saying “It’s”.
Pause…me thinking…
Me: You’re right, you can’t. And if I ask you “have you done your homework?”, you can’t respond by saying “I’ve”.
Pause…her thinking…
Bassie: No, you can’t.
Me: That’s weird. Because those are both technically sentences with subjects and predicates.
Bassie: Yeah, but you can’t say them.
Me: No, no you can’t.
Silence.
Me: Hunh.
Bassie: Weird.