Blockbuster!

My recent film, The Railroad Crossing of Doom, has turned out to be a Youtube blockbuster. It's had more than 100 views in the past week. Since I love the disaster genre, I'm starting on a follow-up, DHL Deathflight!, The picture above is a sneak preview.

Odyssey of the Mind

Today was our performance of "Candy Factory" in Odyssey of the Mind. MY role was "salesman", and I was the star of the show. The idea is to think of healthy sorts of candies and show how eating well and enjoyment go hand in hand (well sorta--I still like Kit Kats and donuts even though they're not all that healthy). Anyway, it was very exciting getting ready for the show. We did pretty well though a lot of my colleagues seemed to forget what they were supposed to do. I reminded them from time to time. The judges really enjoyed the show and laughed a lot at our zany antics. I really enjoyed it, and hope to do it again next year.

Little League

Today was the first day of Little League. It was just a practice, but I was excited nonetheless. This year (and perhaps for several years) I'm on the Red Sox. While I'd most prefer to be on the A's, the Red Sox are a good second choice. I hit the ball hard today and did well at fielding too. Baseball is great.

Stuffy X Games

As you know, I love to make up stories with my stuffed animals. This weekend was Stuffy X Games. The stuffies took turns doing crazy stunts--jumps, half pipe, and so on. The viewers were supposed to text in their votes for the best stunt. It was sort of like a TV show, so I would tell the viewers to text "A/1" if they liked the first contestant the best. It ended in a four way tie!

The picture above is of a stuffy named "roar". He's named that because I wasn't sure if he were a bear or a lioness when I first got him. I figured that since both creatures roar, that was a safe name for him.

Mario Kart Expert

While I've tried lots of things in my life, Mario Kart is the first thing that I'm so passionate about that I've become an expert. I get up early every morning to practice. Usually, this time is spent experimenting. I run through various courses slowly and then quickly to learn all of their tricks and shortcuts. In the evenings, I mostly play for real, trying to win. There's an online mode and I usually finish near the top of every race I enter. I've even surpassed Daddy (who seems quite good at video games) in skill. I'm an EXPERT Mario Kart player. Sure, it's not the most useful skill in the world, but it sure is fun.

Ring and Sing

I performed today in bell choir and children's choir. It was our most deluxe bell performance ever. We did kumbaya. Everyone had to play separate parts and keep time. It went really well. We got a big round of applause at the end. As usual, our press agent (Daddy) was on hand to record the proceedings. Check out the highlights here

New Toy

Check out this video of my newest toy, a magic eraser. It lets you write all sorts of interesting things on whiteboards.

Railroad Crossing of Doom

And now the sequel--railroad crossing of doom. This one features a soundtrack and professional quality sound effects.

Disaster!

Remember the golden era of disaster movies...Airport 76, Poseidon Adventure, and so on. Well, I don't. But I still think disaster movies are cool, so we made some this weekend. The first of the series is "Rock in the Road". Check it out here.



You will notice a whole bunch of home made special effects in this movie. First, the road is Oak Knoll Road in the Napa Valley. The aerial stunts are performed via Mommy's invisible thread. The pyrotechnics are courtesy of a scented candle. All of the sound editing and effects are homemade as well. Still, I think it's my most professional movie yet.

Blue and Gold Dinner

 

Earler this week, we had the blue and gold dinner at Cub Scouts. While I didn't win any awards for my pinewood car, I had a fun time. We played a whole bunch of bingo games, there was a slide show of photos of the studd we did, and I got a cool pinewood patch. Cub Scouts is a lot of fun.

Sick

nap
Originally uploaded by John-Morgan

I've been off and on sick this week. I missed school on Wednesday, then seemed to recover, but I was feverish today so I stayed home. My throat is very sore, I've got no appetite, and I'm very sleepy. I hope I get better soon. I don't want to be sick on a weekend day.

Super Bowl Champs

HERE WE GO STEELERS!
Originally uploaded by Andy M¢

It was a very exciting Super Bowl as Big Ben and the Steelers managed a glorious comeback over the scrappy Cards. I expected the Steelers to "win handily" (one of my favorite expressions at the moment), and it looked like they would in the first quarter. But the Cards clawed back and nearly took the lead at half before Harrison's amazing pick and return for 100 yards. Daddy and I were jumping up and down over that play.

It still looked like the Steelers had things well in hand in the third quarter until they fell apart with the safety and the huge reception by Fitz. But what an ending. Big Ben connecting with #10, Santonio Holmes, time and time again. The Terrible Towels were waving mightily as the Steelers took their records 6th Super Bowl (two of which I've seen in my young life.)

Go Steelers!

Pinewood Derby Results

 

The pinewood derby was held today. There were many cars competing in the race. There was also a lot of technology including electronic scoring and a computer that projected the results. Unfortunately, the technology was not the most reliable in the world. There were a couple of long breaks when the laptop with the results failed. Anyway, it was a pretty successful day for me. My car had several firsts and seconds in the heats in which it competed. The rankings are determined by average time to finish across all heats in which a car competes. My car managed to finish 5th overall. Not good enough for a trophy, but a nice outing nonetheless.

By the way, in the photo above, my car is the one on the left. It's got a green number 99 painted on it.

Pinewood Pregame

Saturday is Pinewood Derby day at Cub Scouts. My car is all built and painted. It just needs weights, wheels, and axles added. My inspiration for the car was a Hot Wheels car named "Little Red Roadster." LRR is a many time champion in gravity racing on the Hot Wheels circuit, so I figured this would also be an excellent pinewood design since pinewood cars are also gravity powered. One design modification I made was to replace the LRR design, which is gray with a stylized "S" on the sides, to a more traditional (and presumably faster) flame design on the sides of the vehicle.

Daddy is mostly concerned with the speed engineering elements of the design. He found a website with advice for maximizing speed. Here's one odd little tip--it turns out that sanding the axles is helpful. Since the axles are nails, there is some scoring on the side of each near the head, presumably to help them stay nailed to whatever it is they're nailed too. However, this scoring creates additional friction, so sanding it down produces more speed. Of course, we're also going with carefully applied graphite. We also learned that the optimal weight placement is just in front of the rear axles. Mommy bought a bunch of weights and a very precise scale, so we can hit the weight max exactly. Wish me luck!

Odyssey of the Mind

I'm participating in a program called "Odyssey of the Mind." It's sort of a creative thinking and problem solving contest. My team, which consists of kindergartners and first-graders had the task of thinking up something to do with getting people to eat healthy foods. Since I myself do not much like to eat healthy foods, this topic was a challenge. Anyway, we came up with a candy factory that makes healthy candies from things like veggies. Fortunately, for us, we only need to do a mock-up of this factory rather than create a fully functional factory.

We each worked on different aspects of the job in terms of the design. The part that I seized upon is one of the most important aspects of the business--sales. I figured that the factory would be pretty useless if we can't sell the product. So, for my part, I set up a sales table, and am creating a sales costume. When asked what was the most essential thing for a sales person, I quickly hit on something super important--a name tag. All salespeople have name tags, so naturally, this is key. Mom asked me what name I would put on the name tag.

Ax

I answered. There seemed to be no particular reason why I thought Ax would be a good name. Anyway, I'm really enjoying this class. I like coming up with creative solutions to problems, especially problems related to business.

Latrell Sprewell Situation

I experienced a Latrell Sprewell type situation today at recess. Latrell, if you'll recall, got into trouble for choking his basketball coach. Well, anyway, I was playing basketball with my "friend" when there was a dispute. My "friend" decided to "settle" the dispute by choking me, which landed him in the principal's office. I was unhurt but upset. Yeesh. I hate school.

My Virtual Life

One of my Christmas gifts was the Wii game Mario Kart. It's the best game ever. You race around as one of the various Mario characters (my fave is Yoshi) in a variety of vehicles. In addition to the usual pitfalls of racing, there are a variety of things you can pick up and fling at the other drivers including banana peels, turtle shells, and lightning bolts. I've managed to improve a lot and unlocked a whole bunch of new characters and courses while racing. I'm very proud of my driving skills. Mommy worries about what my REAL driving will be like since my favored approach is never to take my foot (thumb) off the accelerator.

Ice Skating

 
This weekend I got to go ice skating--twice. On Friday night, the whole family went out to an ice rink in Civic Park that they put up for the holiday season. At first, I was pretty unsteady since it's been about two years since last I skated. I clung to the walls of the rink as I slowly made my way around. I got better as the night progressed and was happy enough to hold Mommy and Daddy's hand as they glided me around.

The next day, my friend Katie called me up to see if I'd like to go with her. Absolutely I wanted to. Ice skating is a little scary but also lots of fun.

Kite Flying

 
A couple of weeks ago it was a very windy day. Daddy was hiking in the foothills and came home excitedly reporting that it was the best wind in a long time. So we packed the car with family and kites and headed up into the foothills. At first, the idea was to climb to the top of one of the hills to take advantage of the wind, but there was so much wind that it was excellent kite flying weather even at the bottom of the hills. We each had a kite. Mine was a ladybug, Mom's was a fish, and Dad's was a combination of Elmo and Cookie Monster.

It was an amazing day. I reeled out almost all of the thread for my kite. It was higher than the nearby mountain. Mom had good luck too. Her fishy flew nicely though not as high as my ladybug. Daddy was not so lucky. The Elmo/Cookie Monster kite was too wimpy for the wind. It got blown to smithereens not long after it got aloft in the strong wind. Kite flying is super fun!

Here's a link to the kite flying photo album.

Kite Flying

And a slideshow

Sack Attack

Yesterday was the last day of football. It was rainy and out team only have 8 guys. This is just enough since 7 guys play at a time. I really prefer to play defense to offense, and I think I found my most preferred position on defense--pass rushing specialist. I'll line up on the ball or some yards back and then run as fast as I can at the QB. While I didn't manage any sacks yesterday, I screwed up a whole bunch of plays by the Titans, the best team in the league. I love to cause problems in the backfield.