That Is Most Definitely Not Cheese!!!

So Malcolm has really started to talk. And by talk I mean say certain words and know exactly what he means. In the midst of his babbling (or one of his bizarre tirades we've taken to calling Hitler Speeches as he's extremely animated and insistant on what he's saying as he uses his arms to punctuate sentences, yet you have no idea what he's saying since he's a 15 month old), we'll get words that he knows...

Mommy (or Mama) and Daddy (or Dada) we've had for a while. And while "fan" was his favorite (and only) word beyond those for a while, we've now replaced it with "apple", "car", "hi", "bye" and "cheese".

He'll also try and repeat things if you ask him to, but he doesn't use any of those words on his own...which has prompted things like "Florida" or "chair"...but today our story is about the word cheese...

Mostly Malcolm eats string cheese and knows that this long cigar shaped item is cheese. And while he's a bit of a cheese snob, as he eats slices of other cheeses we give him as well and knows that they are cheese, it is this long cigar shaped item wrapped in plastic that he mostly identifies with cheese.

So imagine our hilarity when Malcolm was rummaging through one of the bathroom cabinets he can get into (where there's nothing dangerous I might add) and he comes out with a Tampax tampon and proclaims "Cheese" with a big smile on his face as if he's discovered the mother-load of hidden cheese we keep away from him. He then grabbed a second one and proceeded to run around with two tampons, one in each hand, proclaiming "Cheese", "Cheese", "Cheese".

We just had to share.

And while we're sharing, here's a video of Mac doing a Mozart impression.

Be seeing you

The Rantings of a Very Tired Man

Hey folks,

So...Malcolm has officially learned to climb EVERYTHING in the house...chairs, tables, his high chair...if he can reach it and pull himself up onto it, he will. It's just a matter of weeks (probably days) before we hear that "THUD" in the middle of the night as he plays Steve McQueen in his crib and tries to figure out how to turn the doorknob (he can lock the door from the inside).

So while he's running amuck in the three rooms he's currently penned into, I figured I'd sit down and write before he turns on the most annoying toy in the world (note to self...remove batteries...of course, I've been saying this for the better part of a week now and don't have the energy to find the screw driver to do the job).

Anyway, with the new James Bond film, Casino Royale, opening November 17, I figured it was time to sit through the entire series from start to finish before the new one opens. So starting in the next few days, you should be getting a piece every week looking back at two films at a time. That is if Malcolm hasn't figured out how to shimmy up the drain pipes yet.

Speaking of spies...Time Life Home Video has the exclusive rights to one of my favorite TV comedies, Get Smart, on DVD for one year...and they're going about releasing it the correct way. Unlike most series these days where it seems like we get one season at a time with minimal extras over the course of many months (or years) only to be served up with a "Complete Series" box set in weird packaging with even more extras, Get Smart is being released in mid-November on 25 DVDs with over 9 hours of extras in phone booth packaging. Cool...and if you search around on their site you can find coupons to take some money off the deal. Even at the retail price of $199.99 for all 5 seasons (138 episodes) it's a pretty good bargain.

And my last complaint for the day (as Malcolm starts climbing me and tries to remove another key from my laptop in addition to the "ESC" key), Warner Home Video has created what I'm voting as the WORST package art EVER for their upcoming new special edition DVDs of the Christopher Reeve Superman films. With wonderful poster art that was used on previous releases, they bad photo collage crap things are just plain embarassing. Shame on Warner. Shame shame shame. Hopefully someone will post better alternate covers on line for printing and replacement.

Well...that's all the time we have for today. If you're interested in new pictures of Mac, check out:

http://www.seemegrow.net/gallery/fenster

And click on the latest album where you can see him attempt to escape down our driveway only to split his lip open.

Be seeing you.

And They're Off...

So it's now September and the new Fall TV Season is just getting under way...

Here's a look at a few shows that have premiered so far:

Prison Break returns for a second season with the addition of William Fitchner as an FBI agent in charge of the manhunt for the "Fox River Eight". The show remains fun, wild and a bit off in its logic at times. But this is definitely a must see.

The show is followed by Vanished on Monday nights on Fox. I'm not sure about this show. Its about the disappearance of a Senator's wife. So far it seems like a bizarre cross between 24, Lost and quite possibly The Da Vinci Code. I don't want to like it (because I watch too many shows as it is), but there are many things I am liking about it (it's got that Robert Ludlum convoluted political plot I used to love). We'll see how this continues for the next few weeks and if anything airs opposite it that garners more attention from me (like NBC's Heroes...but that doesn't premiere until the end of the month...so this show will have had about 8 or 9 episodes before I make a final decision and by then it may be too late).

Tuesdays bring us the return of House which remains an amazing show. We also get Standoff which I have recorded but have yet to watch...which may be saying something. If I get around to it, I'll review it.

Wednesdays brings back Bones with a strange cast addition that has made me realize that the show was better when it was just Angel, Bones and her team. The new "boss/old flame" isn't holding me to the show as much (I found myself reading the paper while it was on in the background). Oh well.

This is now followed by Justice...which may as well just be called CSI: L&O as it's just the bastard love child of the CSI franchise and the Law & Order franchise. Coming from Jerry Bruckheimer and starring Victor Garber, this procedural law drama is interesting, but nothing new. I'll watch when I've got nothing else to watch or do. Of course, having it up against Criminal Minds and Lost means I won't be watching it much after the next two episodes...and that's fine by me.

For those of you needing a movie review, here a quick one...if you feel the need to see bad things happen to Lindsey Lohan for about 45 minutes or so, you may get a kick out of Just My Luck. Of course, I should probably get a kick just for having seen this (forgot it was on our Netflix list and somehow I wasn't paying attention when it made it to the top).

Lastly, I find myself watching a lot more news these days to counter the effects of watching too much children's TV. For most of the summer we were watching the same dozen or so episodes of Sesame Street over and over and over and over. You'd think that with 37 years of episodes that PBS could rag something older than 2 years ago out of the vaults. Thankfully, a few weeks ago they started airing new episodes and while we're seeing some repeated segments, the main "street stories" are new...and very funny...the best of these so far has been an amazing "parody" of the Elmo's World segment starring Cookie Monster (right down to the pet cookie in the fish bowl). In spite of easy repetition and unwarranted idiocy from people complaining the show is too liberal (if a six year old comments that there aren't enough white people on this show, then we can complain the show's too liberal...until then, you adults go back to destroying the world and stop complaining about things you have no real knowledge of), the show remains as fresh and as educational as it has ever been.

That's all for today.

Back soon with other things...well...soonish...

Be seeing you.