"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?"

Two words: ROBO DOG. "Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?"

"Da-da, What Do You Do When We're in School All Day?" TWO WORDS...

...Clam Husbandry.

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 3)

"Hoooblee hooblee hoobleeeee LEFT!"

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 2)

"Oh, la di daa di daa..."

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?" (PART 1)

Da-da goes for a little walk around the town... in his way.

SAHD PHOTO ESSAY: "Da-da, What Do You Do All Day When We're in School?"

Well, kid... it's complicated.

First, Da-da does a lot of this, while monkeys scream inside his head. This could go on for years.

Then Da-da tends to a few projects he started long ago, but can't seem to finish.

Then it's time for some home improvement.

Next, Da-da steam cleans a few things.

Touches up the scenery.

Has a small adventure.

Gets out in nature, for a bit.

Returns to perform a little maintenance on the family vehicle.

Handles the unexpected.

Starts to work on dinner...

...and keeps working.

Then Da-da waits patiently, in the short time left...

...before he picks you up from school.

And only then, after a long day, does Da-da unlock the donut.

Taking the Mouse by the Horns: A Puzzling and Overly Image-laden Foray into Disney's Recent Dark Hornage

Aiiieeee!

Da-da knows there are a lot of serious things going on in the world that require serious attention, but... well, this is earth where, for the time being, the E stands for Evil or Egregious. Da-da doesn't believe in Evil, per se; more apt to call it insanity, which is what it is. What Da-da sees most are people foisting said insanity on otherwise sane humans (bygones) in the guise of entertainment. Da-da himself does this all the time and it's fine, as Da-da's blog is for adults, mostly parents whose brains are still missing in action. Filmwise, insanity is a given. Take the work of David Lynch for example. However, studios don't market David Lynch movies to children.

The point Da-da's trying to make the hard way is that Disney's new movie, "Maleficent," is ostensibly marketed toward kids, showcasing Angelina Jolie being... well, creepy. Creepy and disturbing. Sure, she was already creepy and disturbing, but these are two things you want kids to avoid if you don't want them to go insane and drag you along with them.

The movie trailer creeped Da-da's boys right out.

"I'm not watching THAT," 9YO Nagurski announced after viewing the teaser, and his 7YO brother agreed. Thanks, Disney. You just saved Da-da about $50 in tickets and sundry theatrical junk food.

But these kids weren't the only ones who felt this way.
 

Ug, creepy. Even the baby doesn't approve.

Not surprisingly, the kids they tried to cast for the part of the 4YO girl victim in the movie couldn't even make it through the audition, because Jolie -- in full make-up -- frightened them so badly.

"One little kid even said, 'Mommy, please tell the mean witch to stop talking to me,'" Jolie recounted.

The only kid they could find who wasn't scared was Jolie's daughter, who of course got the part. For the record, she was scared, too, but she was used to the fear, having to live with Jolie and THAT MONSTER Brad Pitt all the time. Ever see Brad Pitt eat a burrito? (Yes, Da-da's joking. Brad only eats ground up baby unicorns.)

So, what exactly is Disney trying to do here? Exemplify the Dark Arts? (Without Snape?!) And why is it on its third director, anyway? No one wants responsibility... why? And why couldn't they just use a computer-generated Tim Curry with a new coat of paint as Maleficent? Would've been much cheaper and a lot more disturbing, if that's what they were looking for. (If you really wanna get weird, try using a floating green CG Truman Capote with horns for the sequel. Yikes.)

Horns? Tangent time!

Horns. Tim Curry as Hellbo... er, Big Red Legendpants.

Hm. Horns back, horns forward. In films, if the horns go back, does that mean the character is submissively evil? Or perhaps passive-aggressively evil?

Dominant AND submissive. And derivative. Another stick, too. Hm. Da-da's not gonna go there.

Uh, we have this guy. O'course, if yer talkin' horns, you must include...

All the pretty manbat hornage. Who are you leaving the kids with, tonight? RIGHT: the one who looks like Da-da.

...straight-up (so to speak) Manbat hornage. And then there's...

Oops. Sorry, Ron.

... no, wait...

Loki's horns looked familiar, right? Da-da loves Hellboy, and really anything written by Mike Mignola.

...THERE he is. Horns forward AND back... but typically denied and cut off and sanded down. Aha. At least Hellboy has a sense of humor. Manbat and Maleficent and Loki and Big Red are NOT big piles of giggles. Point? On Da-da's head, chief. Ok, wherewerewe?

Ah...

Fallen-angel clean-up on aisle nine. John Constantine, get ready for your close-up.

...creepy.

Da-da doesn't know about you, but there sure are a lot of horn-y dark scary beings prowling around movies these days. Is someone trying to sell us something? Or is it just faux end-times zeitgeistiness? (Note: THERE ARE NO END TIMES. It's propaganda.) Doesn't matter, but OH how this epoch will be studied ad nauseum over the next 1000 years.

Da-da won't get into the fascistic overtones of films (and sporting spectacles) over the past ten years (many by the same director), but "Maleficent" alone should make one wonder if there's indeed some ulterior motive at work. Da-da's not naturally suspicious, he simply distrusts corporations -- and banksters and politicians -- and assumes they're nearly all either devil worshipping yahoos or greedy predacious pedophiles. Or perhaps they're just misunderstood and need a hug. By a straightjacket.

Anyway, if "Maleficent" were somehow self-deprecating, or wryly fey like "Hellboy," that'd be one thing. An entertaining thing. But a black-horned evil witchiepoo delighting in scaring and torturing children? Sure. Ok. That's fine for a certain kind of movie, but this is a Disney movie! What's next, a "Ghostbuster's" remake, but without the humor?

Unless Da-da's missing something, Disney itself seems to have fallen pretty far from Walt's Happy Tree, so far that they might want to call the company something else like, "Mammonpants," or "EvilMediaDeathMachine3000." Either way, the below gentleman, were he alive, would not like his namesake's current, downspiraling direction. Fact is, he'd be pretty pissed off.

Get up, Walt. Time to kick some butt.

Wait. This just in...

Disney has just announced a new Disney spokesperson who will also be the new Walt Disney for their newly revived, "Wonderful World of Disney." Yes, it's...

More horns, but at least they're on a UFO.

...Angus Scrimm, the Tall Man! Fresh from his stints as Phantasm spokesperson for The Cabal and Monsanto. Welcome, Angus! Play ball, kids.

The HORROR of the Post-Apocalyptic Playdate

Da-da now lives in fear of the word, "playdate."

CABAL BURGER, TONIGHT ONLY

The Designated Parent and The Deluxe Transitive Gargantua

Speaking of horrible anomalies and fuzzily untenable segues, Da-da's been thinking about the following for a while... primarily because baseball has been on Da-da's mind in-between shopping for food, making food, yelling at people to come and eat food, cleaning up strewn food, hacking food off the walls, freezing leftover food for that future Walt Disney Moment, etc. Oh, yeah, and then there's Da-da's next book STARING AT HIM from way over there in that pile of notes. GET THEE BEHIND DA-DA, FOUL COMPELLING SERIES OF REDUNDANT COMPELLINGNESS.

Anyway, it's known by most parents, but no one talks about it much. It's nothing controversial, certainly (don't get your hopes up), merely an unspoken necessity that all new parents -- or those fools thinking-about-being new parents (whom Da-da now advises to STOP, STOP NOW and continue practicing) need think about. Then again, if you thought about this at all, you'd never become parents. Unless you were born with brain damage. Or an NFL franchise.

Oh. Right. The point. Da-da's striving so laboriously to make. It's just that, for child-rearing to go as well as can be expected with minimal insanity (ok, nominal insanity), one parent/partner needs to be the go-to parent, or as Da-da likes to call it: "The Designated Parent," or DP. (NOT to be confused with A Parent To Be Named Later.) Said designation can of course be shared by the whole team, which is why Da-da often calls it, "The Duty."

"Who's got The Duty today?"

Being the DP simply means that one of the parents -- or a trustworthy grandparent (sober), or relative (sober), or older child (sober), or equivalent (sober) -- is the person who drops to PT (part-time) or NT (no-time), careerwise, and manage all the day-to-day minutiae that requires a calm and sober, reasonably educated and level-headed and creative, giving and loving caregiver of care and redundancy who doesn't mind not having an adult conversation or ever sleeping again.

Like it or not, you need someone trustworthy to watch your scale-model miscreants and ensure that they aren't playing video games all day or watching TV all day or dismantling the cat (again), and hopefully going to school and doing their homework when required while you plan and procure and prestidigitate meals, jolly the troops into position for said seiges, make school lunches, debrief school lunches, drop off, pick up, reconnoiter, deploy, retreat, run like hell, cook and clean, help with homework, figure out homework, castigate the heavens for such homework, blah blah blah... and then clean more after you've already cleaned. (Didn't Da-da just clean that?)

Yes. You are correct: this is indeed what We in the Royal Navy call:

DRUDGERY. 

(Not Matt Drudgery, that's totally different and rather annoying. And it wears a stupid hat.)

No, it's a necessary drudgery Da-da's ruminating. At least Da-da tells himself this. Over and over. In the mirror. With a batarang. So, unless you want strangers raising your kids to be strangers... which is strange, but some people like A STRANGE LIFE. What was Da-da saying? Right, no life. RIGHT TO NO LIFE.

Yes, Da-da's chosen to turn his life into his kids' lives, which might be sad if he hadn't already chucked his sanity out the airlock, if it was ever there. Either way, it becomes an absurdist movie Da-da stars in 24/7, one that no one watches but Da-da... which sounds sad until you realize that this is really the only way Da-da's insane hyperkinetic gargantua progeny are gonna be the best insane hyperkinetic gargantua progeny they can possibly be. C'mon, they always seem to rebuild Tokyo after all those monster attacks, right?

For this to happen the way that benefits them the most, one parent has to be The DP. Or reeeeally good at tag-teaming. Or hire some reeeeeally good people, but then you're back in the strangers-raising-strangers booth at The Non Sequitur, sipping Campari with Joel Gray as Dean Stockwell. Is this thing on?

In terms of The Designated Parent, some people have no trouble with this role, and Da-da hates them, while secretly filing them and watching it at 3:00 am. See, some of us do have trouble with this role. Perhaps because some of us still have a tiny vestige of gray matter -- and what used to be ambition, turned feckless fog -- left blowing around aimlessly in that vast empty parking lot between our ears. Then again, perhaps that's just wishful thinking.

Minister of Low Hanging Fruit Tuesday: LSD and Radiation = Bad Meat Recall?

                                                                                [via AcmeVaporware]

Just a quick connect-the-dots post. Da-da saw the below news item about an animal rendering plant in Northern California being shut down by the FDA:

Beef recall millions: 8.7 million pounds meat recalled, plant shut down

Then Da-da saw this:

Florida Family Hospitalized After Eating LSD-Laced Steak Bought At Walmart

Hm.

Either that, or the FDA closure has something to do with this (from 2012):

California Slammed With Radiation:
Fukushima Radiation Plume Hits California

All those West Coast cows have been eating hot grass for quite some time now. Both radiation- and LSD-infused meat would cause the FDA to be mum on the subject. Da-da hates living in the future.

"Fear Not, Honey..."

That Analogical Look of Parenthood

Yup.

Once More Into the Screech, Dear Friends

The main problem with children is that they keep coming back, no matter how far away you leave them.

LOOK What Your Kid Did

O the self-righteousness of the wounded unicorn owner.

Is THAT Your Kid?

"Abe, is that your kid up there with the chicken and shock absorbers?"
"Fascinating."

Is That YOUR Kid??

"Do you have any idea how much it costs to repaint a llama?"

Why Da-da Wears Bandages

Once you've reproduced, you start to slowly vanish -- some more than others.
(Yet another reason Da-da wears bandages.)

Is That YOUR Kid?

"Da-da, What Do You Do All Day While We're in School?"

Da-da works on his new book.