Bad Guys and Vampires

It doesn't seem unusual for little boys to be fascinated by superheroes. I would expect to be buying toys and T-shirts featuring Batman, Superman, and the rest of that familiar lineup. With four grandsons, I have certainly bought my share of those.

Then, a couple years ago, Pooh developed an affinity for bad guys, particularly Horace and Jasper, the dog thieves in 101 Dalmatians. On every visit for several months, I would have to role-play one of them while he played the other. This wore me out. It seems that, in the process of dog-napping, thieves must expend a considerable amount of physical energy.

More recently, Beenie, who will be four in just a few weeks, always wants me to show him, on my iPhone, images of every bad guy he or I can think of. To this end, we have engaged in numerous discussions of Joker, Mr. Freeze, Penguin, Riddler, and  Jesse James. Once, I even threw Clyde Barrow into the mix. It seems I need to increase my repertoire of bad guys I can think of off the top of my head.

Last night, however, Beenie decided to pretend he was a vampire (I have no idea where he learned about vampires--I swear I am innocent this time.). As the potential victim of this particular bad guy, I had reasonable cause to worry. I had to pull my collar up around my neck and think fast.

"What does a vampire look like?" Beenie wanted to know.

"Well, he has sharp fangs, I said." And that's when, by the miracle of free association, I thought of apples. Sure enough, there was a single apple in the fridge that we were able to stretch into a play session of half hour or more.

"How?" you ask. Like so:

Yes, a secret yet untapped by apple promoters worldwide is that apple slices make perfect fangs. A typical apple, we learned, will afford you about ten sets of fangs. Each set will last several minutes from the victim's initial shriek of terror to the vampire's inevitable ingestion of his own teeth.

Luckily, no necks have to be harmed in the process of this particular vampire game. Last night, our biggest problem was the fact that we had only one apple and, thus, had to ration our fangs very carefully.

As it turns out, a little boy's preoccupation with bad guys isn't doomed to an undesirable outcome. As an added bonus to lots of fun and laughs, the kid, in the natural course of play, ends up with a healthy snack, and you can't beat that.

Star Wars Yahtzee Jr. Gets Five Stars

I've been thinking about Pooh all day long, and I hope the force is with him. By that, I mean I hope he and his sisters are having fun playing the new game Pa-pa and I delivered to him over the weekend as we observed his seventh birthday just a few days early.

All in all, I was pretty pleased with our launch of Star Wars Yahtzee Jr. I have always enjoyed the dice-rolling excitement of a good Yahtzee match, and I have to say this particular version adapts quite well to the needs of kids age four and older.

Instead of the usual numbered dots, the six sides of most dice feature pictures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, R2D2, Chewbacca, and Yoda, who acts as a wild card as players try to collect as many pictures as possible of a single character in a three-roll turn.

Since there is evil in every universe, one side of one sinister die is reserved for the picture of Darth Vader. If Darth turns up on a player's roll, that player loses the advantage of that fifth die for the remainder of that particular turn.

Further, the game is designed so that kids don't have to keep individual scores on note pads as they make decisions about how to count the dice rolls. Instead, they use color-coded game markers to mark their choices on a game board visible to all players at all times. This enables discussions of options with kids who may need help figuring out rolling and scoring choices. The board, game pieces, and dice (and a set of four happy players) look like this:

The game can be easily adapted for two, three, or four players, with the difference being the number of turns all players get. Once begun, things move quickly, and the kids seem excited both to take their own turns and to watch what happens as their opponents roll the dice, consider options, and strategize.

In our experience, the downsides of the game are few. You have to caution the kids not to bump the scoreboard and displace markers that have already been played, because then the cumulative scores are lost for that game. Another issue is the number of relatively small pieces (twenty score markers, five dice) to keep track of when a number of boisterous kids are involved.

But I have to say the five of us (Zoomie and I were partners) had a great time with Star Wars Yahtzee Jr. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. In the event of a number of kids who are fairly young, though, I would recommend flying a reconnaissance mission into the box ahead of time to punch out score markers and place the stickers on the dice. I did this, and am pretty sure I saved us some time, potential chaos, and possible damage to the game components.

Happy Birthday to you, Pooh. You are the most special first-grader in my universe. May the candles on your cake tonight glow like light sabers, and may your life be filled with a lot of Yodas and very few Darths.

It's in the Stars

It was meant to happen, clear as day. You know what I mean--that split second when, in the course of shopping the after-Christmas clearances, your eyes land--BINGO!--just like that--on the prize.

And I don't mean just a good bargain--watchful eyes land on those all the time. No, this day brought one of those delightful instances of serendipity when the perfect piece of merchandise met Googie at the crossroads of "It's about time you saw me hanging on this rack" and "Please don't let me snatch you up with such force that I raise the suspicions of the store detective ."

Let's rewind a bit. I was not at our town's new Kohl's store looking for anything in particular. I was simply cruising the aisles with a 30%-off coupon burning a hole in my billfold, along with a Kohl's cash certificate worth $10 off any purchase. There were already a few miscellaneous--comparatively unimportant--items in my cart at the time I scored the find:

Now, I realize that, at first glance, this may not look like all that big a deal to you. In fact, it may look mysteriously like just another "Grandma" sweatshirt--the kind that if you've seen one, you've seen them all. But au contraire mon ami--look again as you slowly absorb the utter wonder of this particular shirt. There are several reasons why only something like fate could dictate that I would end up with it.

First, it says, "My Grandkids Sparkle & Shine like Stars." That sentence contains a simile, a figure of speech that compares two things using the word like. It is, therefore, a poetic statement, and I am a poet. In fact, I am currently in the early stages of a book of children's poems titled Harvest the Stars. Yes, stars. What are the chances that, given those things, I would find this shirt today?

But it gets better. The shirt has exactly six stars, one for each of my six grandkids. Coincidence? I think not.

Next, it is not my nature to brag about my grandkids (uncross fingers now--it is too hard to type with them crossed), but my grandkids actually are stars. Sooby played Skippyjohn Jones' mother in a skit last summer in a kids' theatre class at our local community college. Pooh once gave a stellar performance as a mean mouse in The Nutcracker (I blogged about that a couple years ago--he ended up on stage too early and tried to kill the nutcracker). Bootsie danced in that same production.

The evidence doesn't stop there: For four years now on Christmas afternoon our family has sung a song together to post on Facebook as a Christmas greeting to our friends. This year we did "Rudolph," with all the kids donning antlers (except Sooby, who was Santa) and acting out parts as we sang. Last year we did "We Three Kings," with the three little boys--Beenie, Zoomie, and Heero-- looking astral as the stars of wonder, night, and royal beauty bright. The remnants of their costumes are a testament to this:

So there you have another manifestation of our "star" theme and sufficient evidence to prove that my sweatshirt find was, indeed, nothing short of miraculous.

I might also mention, just in passing, that I gave a total of $9.02 for this perfect-in-all-ways sweatshirt, which originally sold for $40. The icing on the cake is that, although I am sure it was on clearance as Christmas merchandise, there is nothing on it that restricts its use to only the Christmas season.

Add all these things together and you can see why my new sweatshirt makes this a great day. Although I didn't win the big lottery last week, I consider myself quite a winner, and for that I thank my lucky--well--stars.

Pretzel Art

It is really too bad that moms tell their kids not to play with their food.

As Zoomie and I discovered last weekend, that simply is not true, especially if pretzels are involved. We are living proof that, given a bag of pretzels, your snack can become an art medium and your kitchen a studio. Imagine that you are sauntering through an art museum, and you stop to contemplate the following works:

Pa-pa's Pickup on a Clear Day

Here you see Pa-pa's truck heading to the farm to feed the cows on a clear winter day dominated by blue sky. The salt on the pretzels doubles as bits of snow. So realistic is this representation that you can almost feel the warmth of the truck's cab and hear the crunch of the tires as they plow through a crust of white.

Stylish Snowman at Christmas

What shouts "Christmas" more clearly than this merry red background supporting a whimsical snowman? And what blares out "fashion" any more obviously than a snowman who would forego the traditional black top hat in favor of a stylish tam propped aside his head at a rakish angle? 

True, several pretzels were harmed in the execution of this piece. But you will be relieved to know that their remains were honorably interred and, in so doing, there were no "starving artists" residing at Googie's. 

Antenna-less Butterfly

Flying into snack time on dreams of hope, this unique butterfly acts as a harbinger of spring and the hope that January will be gone in the foreseeable future. Rivaling "Pa-pa's Pickup" in complexity (both require eleven pretzels), this beautiful insect virtually flies off a green background signifying an imminent return to all things spring.

So there you have it--proof that a kid's experience at Googie's can be enhanced when the line between snack time and play time is intentionally blurred. And--oh, yeah--if you wish to purchase any of these pieces for your personal art collection, just contact me. The artist is three-and-a-half and not yet taking calls.

  

It's a Wrap!

I don't have to do much reflecting on the past year to recall twelve great months of watching the six grandkids grow and learn. With our newest set of family Christmas festivities officially relegated to memory (and the wonders of digital photography), it seems fitting to wish you a Happy New Year with one last pic of Googie and Pa-pa posing with the kids.

If you have wandered into "Googie's Attic" over the past couple years, you already know the problems plaguing any effort to capture all six kids in a pose that does justice to their cuteness. There is always one look askance, one set of closed eyes, or somebody who, tired of the whole thing, is walking off the set to take up a picket sign.

One year, our Christmas photo featured a group shot where everyone was mad for a different reason. That, as you may remember, was charming. Last year, Sooby decided to close her eyes on purpose because she thought it would "be funny" if it looked like she had fallen asleep.

So this year, I decided we would make no effort to attain professional quality in our official picture. Instead, I bought and assembled a set of eight festive photo booth accessories to adorn our countenances with some seasonal merriment.

For the record, let me identify, from left to right on the back row, Pa-pa, Sooby, Pooh, Googie, and Zoomie. On the front row are Bootsie, Heero, and Beenie. The kids range from two to eight years old this year.

The little set of props turns out to be one of my better $1 investments of the year. And, ironically, our picture probably turned out better than usual simply because we gave ourselves permission to have fun and be silly.

Happy New Year to all of you from Googie, Pa-pa, and the kids. We hope you will make an occasional visit to "Googie's Attic" in 2016. I will try my best to make it a place where grandkid magic remains alive and well, and where learning, love, and laughter rule.

A Cowabunga! Christmas

In our family, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tradition has wrapped its lime-green arms around a second generation of little boys.

Named after Renaissance artists, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael, the Turtles began as mere comic book doodles in 1984, first acquired movie fame in 1990, and dazzled the cinema world most recently in a 2014 reboot. The '90 movie caught son Teebo, who was five then, and the newest one hit just in time to capture the imaginations of grandsons Pooh, Zoomie, Beenie, and Heero (who, if you ask me, would  themselves make a dynamic crime-fighting foursome).

So in my after-Christmas bargain stalking last year, it seemed ordained by fate that I should find a package of eight lime green tree ornaments. Having just seen an idea for making Ninja Turtle ornaments on Facebook, I determined that each pair of grandsons would have a set of these for their Christmas trees in 2015.

Later in the year I came upon a packaged set of four spools of ribbon with--get this--exactly the four colors of the turtles' masks. With a few googly eyes left over from a previous craft adventure, I was ready to heat up my glue gun and shoot.

Not only did the ornaments cost mere pennies to make, the process is about as quick and easy as you can imagine.

1. Cut a length of ribbon 14 inches long.
2. Stick its mid-point at mid-ornament with a spot of glue. (If your ribbon has a high paper or plastic content, be sure to use the low setting on your glue gun--I learned this the hard way, at the expense of Donatello's first mask).
3. Tie the ribbon snugly in the back and trim the ends to the desired length.
4. Glue on the eyes.
5. Add an ornament hanger.

If I should be lucky enough to find some more green ornaments after Christmas this year, you can bet I will snap them up. With the boys ranging in age from two to six, there could easily be some casualties involved.

After all, fighting crime can be a messy business, and we need to keep our Turtles intact. Merry Christmas to you, may your new year be filled with pizza, and Cowabunga, Dude!

Our Funny Santa Video

If you can find five minutes and forty-one seconds to spare in your hectic Christmas season, I have a treat for you. It is something you can enjoy by yourself or in the company of little people you love. All you need is a computer, iPad or smart phone that gives you access to You Tube.

In the four years since it was posted, a computer-animated short titled "Ornaments," produced by Aaron James Erimez of Eye in the Sky Productions, has amassed over five million views. I am pretty sure the kids and I are responsible for at least one million of those.

The video is a neat little piece of artwork that combines imaginative graphics, a variety of classical music, and a lovable Santa Claus ornament who encounters numerous conflicts as he tries to make his way off the tree to the coffee table, where an irresistible plate of chocolate chip cookies awaits him.

Despite the number of times my kids have seen this video, they relish it with new gusto every time. They love it so much that we watch it all year long, and not just during the Christmas season. Here is how you can enjoy this great little video feature for yourself:

1. Do a You Tube search for "funny Santa videos." When the choices pop up, look for a picture of  a Pixar-looking Santa with a Christmas tree on the right and a sofa with table lamp on the left. You will also see the "5:41," indicating how long the video runs.

2. Click on that picture, and when you see the names and titles mentioned in the second paragraph above, you will know you are in the right place. You will hear composer George Bizet's "Habanera" from Carmen playing and then a radio signing off the air. These are the video's only spoken words; the rest of it plays out to the immortal compositions of composers Tchaikovsky, Offenbach, and Rossini.

3. Sit back and enjoy the next few minutes as you watch the ingenuity of a Santa ornament who unhooks himself, rides a candy cane zip line down a garland of tinsel, lands on a toy train, catapults himself onto the piano, uses a director's baton to pole vault to the top, makes a paper airplane out of a piece of sheet music ("Silent Night"), and takes a harrowing ride in an attempt to get to the cookies.

Does he make it? If I told you, that would spoil the whole thing for you, wouldn't it? Really, you have to see this yourself to appreciate it. You will find it to be a creative, colorful, fast-paced piece of animation punctuated by numerous instances of giggle-out-loud humor.

There is not one of my six grandkids who has not seen and does not love the antics of "Funny Santa." I hope you will check it out, and let me know if you like it as much as we do.