Generic Fragments from a Generic Guy on a Generic Blog

It's been awhile since I've had a generic fragments.

This Friday we watched Benji and on Saturday morning I watched Return of the Jedi (for the first time) with my two oldest. Yeah, I'm parenting the right way.

I have to tell you, if there had been a competent film editor, Benji would be like 45 minutes long. 1/3 of the movie was showing Benji running around (sometimes in slow motion, often in a place the audience has already seen multiple times). 

Both the girls liked Jedi, mainly cause Ewoks.

I'm not a Jedi hater, I like it, it's solid. Obviously, its the weakest of the three but so what? I love the first 30 odd minutes with Jabba. It's cool.

The Lucas additions really stuck out this for me and the young Anakin ghost thing is just so stupid. I have hidden the prequels from my kids. My oldest C really pressed me on why they were so bad but try explaining to a 10 year old how terrible they are. She asked me what the story was about and I told her it was about how Darth Vader grew up. She said, "That sounds awesome!" and I replied, "That's what we thought before we saw it."

In retrospect, it was a bad idea for three complete movies. There are literally no major surprises in the film and I think that really hurts them.  Maybe it could have worked as one movie, but the heck with it, the prequels criticism begins and ends with Plinket, so what else is there to say?

I suppose it's time for me to share this song because it's spot on.




The other day our son was eating cocktail fruit and he wanted to let this sisters know that we had opened a can. He asked me what it was called and then went calling out in the garage, "Hey, girls, we have cotton tail fruit!"  It was great.

 Earlier this week I was driving home and saw a bumper sticker of Calvin for the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes bowing before a cross that said "Real Men Pray".

Okay, but Calvin is neither a man or real. Someone should let him know.

That's all for now. Buckle up when you drive, don't forget to feed the fish and go ahead and take a long, hot shower tonight, you deserve it.

Art Post: The Old Castle's Secret

I haven't posted in awhile because my PC crashed and we still haven't got it fixed up just yet. Meanwhile, I've been busy teaching an apologetics class for the high school class at church and generally having to share the family laptop. Also, life, ya know.

I have a cool post about performing at a Spurs game and meeting Craig Sager so that's coming at some point.

Ahem, anyway, onto the post.

I adore Carl Barks' work. I first discovered the wonderful world of Barks on a family vacation to (of all places Disney Land) when I was 12. We stopped at my great uncle's house up and I spent the night in his den full of old stuff and old books.

Of course, even at this age, I knew what I had to do.

After rummaging through hundreds of books, I found a huge book of reprints of Carl Barks' stories of Donald Duck.  I settled in for the night with the book in bed and read as long as I could. I already loved comics but these were different. I thought they would be "kiddie" but they were just as good (and most of the time) better than any epic Marvel tale.

From that night forward, I was hooked.

One of the great pleasures of being a parent has been being able to share my favorite stuff with my kids. I have been able to pass on my love of Carl Barks to my oldest, C. She tells me the Barks stories are the best and will frequently turn up her nose at a perfectly fine Don Rosa, telling me it's "boring".

Almost every night, C will read in bed with a reading lamp until at least 8:45 or 9:00 and she usually seeks out comics to read, especially Carl Barks. She doesn't realize how  good she has it, my dad didn't have any comics growing up! I love it.


One Saturday morning last spring, I had one the new Fantographics reprints of on the kitchen table. I am happy to report, the Fantographics Carl Barks collection is just awesome. I can't recommend them enough if you love adventure comics!

Anyway, this was sitting on the table and I started to doodle, which turned into a copy. Enjoy

Here's the original. In this story, which is a great one, the ghost in the story  is supposed to be Scrooge's ancestor, but the skeleton looks nothing like a duck. Why did this happen? An editor here would have been a valuable resource.

The only thing I regret is the text, which is pretty awful.

Detail. I had to improvise the writing on the gravestones (although the names are Barks'). The original image was pretty small, so it was just gibberish.