Archive for the ‘Entertainment’ Category

A New Look for Civics Lessons

Saturday, September 21st, 2019

According to a survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, only two out of every five Americans could name all three branches of the federal government and one in five couldn’t name even a single branch. This is better than it has been in past years, but the survey unequivocally shows that Americans really need to know more than they do about how their country works. Fortunately, there is a solution.

High school civics classes, as you’d expect, make a big difference in an adult’s knowledge on the topic. With that in mind, Florida Representative Alcee L. Hastings, along with 62 cosponsors, has introduced a bill to allocate additional funding for civics classes as a means of addressing this issue. Rep. Hastings, however, is not the only one tackling the problem. The Center for Cartoon Studies might seem an unlikely ally in the push to increase civics awareness, but they could very well be the key to getting kids — and adults — up to speed on the way government works.

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A Not So Gilded Birdcage

Monday, June 4th, 2018

Nathan Lane and the late Robin Williams are two of the funniest people ever to have graced this planet.  Put them together in a movie and you’re pretty much guaranteed outrageous hilarity.  That’s what happened in The Birdcage, a remake of the french farce La Cage aux Folles.  In it, Lane and Williams are a gay couple who own a drag club in Miami, Florida where Lane is the star performer.  They are also the parents of college student Val who has fallen in love with fellow student Barbara.  The problem?  Barbara’s father is an ultra-conservative, republican Senator, played by Gene Hackman.  Of course, Barbara’s parents want to meet their potential in-laws before consenting to and announcing the engagement.

To avoid friction, Val asks his fathers to play it straight when the Senator and his family come to visit and the laughs are pretty much non-stop for the rest of the film. 

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De-facing the Book

Tuesday, October 20th, 2015

No_Face_logoSo, for a full month, I was off Facebook.

Over the last decade or so, Facebook has managed to become an integral part of our society.  Facebook pages are nearly as important as, if not more important than a company’s website.  A Facebook account has become the single account used to access many other websites, rather than a site-specific account and password.  It is our address book and is trying hard to replace e-mail as our primary means of electronic communication and interaction.

So the notion of not using the site for nearly a month seems ludicrous, even for someone like me who, while not in danger of being called addicted, did use the site fairly heavily.  So how did that go?

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Yes, Moms Really Are Hotter

Monday, August 10th, 2015

Source: YouTube

Source: YouTube

By far, the most attractive quality in a woman, as far as I’m concerned, is confidence.  Add competence to that and there’s no way simple physical beauty can compete.

With that in mind, I’ve always felt that moms — women who have their act together and are raising their kids with love and care — are more far attractive than those “barely legal teens” you hear so much about on the internet.  And, based on a new video from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the Gregory Brothers, it sounds like I’m not alone in that assessment.

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The WiFi Treasure Hunt

Saturday, June 6th, 2015

787337_96637039_400x300I have a friend who owns a vacation home near Lake Tahoe and, being pretty much the most generous person in the world, he lets us stay there when he’s not using it.  We took advantage of the long Memorial Day weekend and went up for a quick break.  We weren’t expecting great weather so we planned on just hanging out, enjoying the views, and relaxing quietly. We drove up on Saturday and after unloading the car and putting groceries away, the kids started in on a game of Monopoly.  That kept them busy for a while — long enough for me to learn that my laptop’s hard drive had died.  It also kept them away from their tablets long enough that they didn’t think to ask for the WiFi password until bedtime.  With a promise that they would get the password in the morning, they quickly turned in for the night.

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Why I’m a Girl Scout

Saturday, September 22nd, 2012

I grew up in San Francisco, California and was definitely raised a city boy.  As a child, I could make my way around the Tenderloin at night as surely as Grizzly Adams navigated the Sierras.  I grew up on food from around the world and could use chopsticks as deftly as a country boy could handle a whittlin’ knife.  Buses and streetcars were my horses, alleys my hiking trails, skyscrapers my hills and mountains.  Guns, even the aquatic variety, were verboten (hunting was something done at antique stores or garage sales) and I think the only reason my mother allowed me fishing gear was because there weren’t any fish anywhere near us to be caught, other than at the grocery store; neither one of us would have known what to do if I actually did catch one.  In our family, “roughing it” meant going to “Opera in the Park”.

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Caving In To Cars 2

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Given my fierce opposition to anything violent in my kids’ entertainment and my critique of Pixar’s apparent move away from child-appropriate films (not to mention commenter Tim’s disappointed commentary on their latest film), you would not be out of line to assume that there is no way I would take my kids to see Cars 2.  And so you would likely be rather surprised to hear that my kids did indeed go with their Nana to see Cars 2 yesterday.  What, you might ask, was I thinking?  Why would I allow such a violation of my principles?

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Inappropriate Marketing

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

So we had swim class in the morning and the San Francisco Free Folk Festival in the afternoon.  It was a full day, to be sure, but the real challenge was that the two were 40 miles apart.  So while the Junior Partner was practicing his up-faces, I took the older two to a nearby Subway to get sandwiches for a quick lunch on the road.  Unfortunately, when I ordered a kid’s meal for the three-year-old, it came in a bag emblazoned with the Green Lantern character from the recent film.  A film, I will note, that is rated PG-13 by the MPAA and given a 4.7.4 for sex, violence, and profanity by Kids-in-Mind.com.

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Has Pixar Become Too Grown-Up?

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

For the last 15 years, Pixar has been known for some amazing animation, ideal, for the most part, for even younger children.  Toy Story 1, 2, and 3 were all wonderful films, according to both kids and critics.  WALL-E is a great lesson in what can happen if we don’t take care of our planet.  And I will certainly admit that I still cry at the end of Cars when Lightning gives up the race to do the right thing.  But have recent Pixar films become too violent for young kids?

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Sending Kids Off To School In Style

Sunday, June 5th, 2011

It may seem odd to be talking about putting kids on the bus to school when the school year is winding down or even, for many school districts, over and done with, but for one high school sophomore in American Fork, Utah, the morning send-off may be the best part about being through with school.  It seems his dad loves him so much, he was willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths to show that love — including by putting on a wedding dress.

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