Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category:
Crown Royal Presents The Samuel Deeds 400 [DaddyTips Road Trip]
DaddyTips is pleased to announce that we will be attending the Crown Royal Presents The Samuel Deeds 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That’s right — Road Trip!
Captain Ultimate, New All Ages Comic
We’ve mentioned Joey Esposito here before (actually, we’ve even met him in person — nice guy). Joey is the comics editor at IGN, and also writes comics himself. His latest is Captain Ultimate, a really fun all-ages book published by MonkeyBrain Comics. Joey wrote it with fellow IGNer Benjamin Bailey. The amazing art is by Boykoesh, with eye-catching colors by Ed Ryzowski. Adam Pruett is the letterer. (Hey, Stan Lee always mentioned the letterers back in the day. Artie Simek, represent!)
Here’s the cover:
Looks like fun, right? It is. Read on for more info. Read more »
The Play Doh Royal Baby And Family
You may have heard something about the royal baby. But have you seen the royal baby and family rendered in Play-Doh? You’re about to.
What’s that you say? You haven’t heard anything about this? Are you sure? It kind of took over all forms of media, social and traditional. Son of Catherine (aka Kate Middleton), Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince William? Grandson of Queen Elizabeth II? Future King of England? Not ringing any bells?
OK, I had to look up everybody’s names on CNN because I’m not a big royal watcher. But I’m not a royal hater either. The truth is that people seem to be genuinely interested in the royal bambino, just as they were with the royal wedding. (Sorry, I should probably say Royal Wedding.) I don’t begrudge people their distractions. (Avengers movie, cough cough.)
Whatever your opinion on all things royalty, I think we can all agree that the Play-Doh Royal Family is an impressive piece of work. According to information we received, it was made entirely from Play-Doh, using over 30 cans of the stuff, and took over five hours. (That sounds pretty fast to me, actually.)
Photo courtesy of the good folks from Play-Doh.
IGN Commenter Speaks Truth About The Avengers
I finally have a few minutes to pull out my Geek Gold Card and catch up with all of the San Diego Comic Con news. At first I thought the biggest tidbit was the title for Avengers 2 — Avengers: Age of Ultron. (Insert little nerdy noise here.) Turns out much more was revealed about the many upcoming Marvel superhero movies, plus the announcement that Superman and Batman will do a project together. (I like phrasing it that way because it sounds like I think they’re real people. You know, like The Muppets.)
Personally I prefer The Avengers. Have I mentioned that lately?
Anyway, in this IGN story about footage from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the comments section is briefly hijacked by someone who thinks that the Nolan Batman flicks are more awesome than The Avengers movie. We disagree with this statement. A lot. Enough that we could say mean things. But since it’s not nice to be mean, let us instead share a polite portion from this post:
They are ALL good movies, however Avengers did what superhero movies needed to do. That is all. I win.
That is indeed all. Well, not really. The above was followed someone stating that “the avengers might be one of the most overrated movies of all time, despite the fact I like it, people just give it way too much undeserved adulation“, which itself led to, “Nolan’s batman films are the most overrated comic book movies of all time. Begins actually felt like a comic book. things slowly started to trickle down hill with the dark knight until we received the all over the place plot of The dark knight rises.” (Note: all comments pasted as is, spelling/capitalization/grammar missteps included.) Eventually the thread gets back to what’s really important, which is that there are a lot more superhero movies on the horizon and how awesome that is.
Personally I’m more excited about the upcoming Marvel movies than I am those from the Distinguished Competition. Part of this is because I’m more of a Marvel fan to begin with. (Not that I dislike DC; I love the Justice League cartoon and yack about it so often that even my fellow Geek Gold Card members tune me out when I get going.) Other reasons include:
(a) There are more Marvel movies on the way, and the main goal here is to have as many superhero movies as possible. Preferably one per week.
(b) Out of the recently released superhero movies, those from Marvel (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man) have been better than those from DC (Green Lantern, The Dark Knight Rises, and even Man Of Steel, although I liked it fine).
The Avengers, of course, is the best of the bunch. Well, the best as of now. Because there’s lots more to come. And that, in the words of Martha Stewart, is a good thing.
Comic-Con: Captain America Honors San Diego with Winter Soldier Footage – IGN
Hug Him And Squeeze Him And Call Him George (Video)
You’ve probably heard the line “I will hug him and squeeze him and call him George.” As I just wrote on Facebook, teaching it to my children is one of my great accomplishments as a parent. (Remember, quoting yourself may be tacky, but it makes fact-checking much easier.) I always thought the line came from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Now I’m not so sure.
I might even have the line wrong. If so, I’m not the only one.
What follows is a condensed version of my attempt to figure out where “I will hug him and squeeze him and call him George” came from, which led me down a big Internet rabbit hole (pun intended) of cartoons, John Steinbeck, and other stuff.
At first the Internet seemed to be telling me that the cartoon in question was “The Abominable Snow Rabbit”.
In the video above, the line is, “I will name him George, and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him…” Not an exact match, but very close. (Daffy Duck has a great line as well: “I know I’m a louse. But I’m a live louse.”)
Then I stumbled across an intriguing tidbit: “The Abominable Snow Rabbit” is an homage to John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men
OK. Sure. Why not?
However, according to the Internet there are many cartoon homages to “Of Mice and Men
Really. There are.
Here is “Lonesome Lenny”, a 1946 Tex Avery cartoon, described thusly on IMDB: “Screwy Squirrel is bought in a pet shop to be the companion of a daft dog so strong that he squeezes his playmates to death.” Well all righty then. The dog’s name is Lenny, and he calls his new pal George. (Lennie and George are the main characters in “Of Mice and Men.”)
(Tip of the hat to the folks on this AWN forum page for pointing me towards “Lonesome Lenny”.)
But there is another Tex Avery short, “Of Fox And Hounds”, released in 1940, that is also an “Of Mice and Men” thing. This is where the immortal line “Which way did he go, George? Which way did he go?” came from. (I taught that one to my kids as well. I’m an awesome dad.)
(Hat tip to LanguageHat.com. No pun intended that time.)
Research note: Lest anyone think that my sources are limited to Wikipedia and pages I found via The Google, here is a link to The New York Times’ review of the 1939 film version of Steinbeck’s book (starring Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr.), which states that “Of Mice and Men
“Of Fox And Hounds” seems to be the first animated homage to “Of Mice and Men
Lennie, George and rabbits are apparently quite the thing. Who knew?
What did we learn? A lot. Haven’t answered my original question. But that’s OK.
(Thanks to the Facebook friends who inspired this post.)
Classic Looney Tunes – YouTube.
Related articles (Note: These are offsite links; DaddyTips takes no responsibility for outside content.)
Blueberries For Dinner Poem
I’m drinking my dinner
(it’s not what you think)
I washed off some blueberries
Right in my sink
Made ’em into a smoothie
That did the trick
Cuz the idea of cooking
It just makes me sick.
Because it’s really hot. Have I mentioned that?
Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial Offer
You know what’s fun to do when it’s really hot outside? Sit inside with the A/C on and watch TV. You know what’s a good way to watch TV? Amazon Prime.
(This is an air conditioner. It makes your room colder.)
This is obviously a “click this link to try out Amazon Prime for 30 days for free” thing. That said, I use Amazon Prime and it’s really cool. The free shipping is nice, but the TV and movie library is very deep. There are even some titles that Netflix doesn’t have (and vice versa).
The bottom line is that you can try out Amazon Prime for free. What’s bad about that? Nothing. So here you go.
Join Amazon Prime – Watch Over 40,000 Movies
What have I watched on Amazon Prime? Bionic Woman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcba-ZgtsT4
No Six Million Dollar Man, but maybe someday.
Amazon Prime also has Downton Abbey
It’s free for 30 days! Give it a try.
