I don’t think that I caught this when it was first released last Christmas, but boy is it joyful to watch!
President Obama is definitely the coolest president we’ve ever had… 😉
Dream Journal : Humor for Rent
I’ve always fantasized about making Just Laugh real by having an actual office and employees and whatnot, so this was a surprisingly fun dream to find that I had not only found an office to work out of, but also someone to share it with in our humor writing adventures!
Apparently the “space” that we had found was more of a spare room or two that we’d found in the unused wing of a local hospital that we’d somehow convinced them to let us use for cheap.
VERY CHEAP!
For the most part we had the place to ourselves, though occasionally we’d hear doctors and nurses walking by our hallway late at night on their way out to the parking lot.
This became noticeable after being awoken one night overhearing them outside … because apparently I was single, so why wouldn’t I just sleep in this awesome place where I worked into the wee hours of the night to make humor for the masses, anyways?! 😉
Well, the next day i came in to find plastic draped everywhere because our wing was now under construction, and upon confronting the lady with the clipboard in charge, she made it clear that they were ready for us to go so that they could start using our space for actual hospital business again…
I argued that we had a lease, even though it literally had us paying something like $5/month or $50/month whereas the lady claimed that something closer to $5,000/month was what was fair for the space! Eventually the guy who our agreement was with showed up and sided with her, but said that if we really wanted to stay we should make a realistic offer for the space.
At one point he snickered that if we didn’t like the $5,000/month, maybe we could give them a percentage of our gross income, which even he knew sounded ridiculous … but that’s when my co-worker pulled me aside to point something out…
They didn’t actually know what our gross was – they just assumed that it was big because they saw us as this Internet company mooching off of them and not a couple of guys writing humor on the Internet and sleeping in our offices.
So I went back and told him that we’d do it for 1% of our gross, but there had to be some guarantees. Namely, we wanted it locked in for several years and if they wanted to reclaim our current space, they had to find us a better one – possibly over where they had some unused offices that had direct access and didn’t require walking through the hospital to get to them.
The guy snickered again because he thought he was pulling one over on us, whereas in reality we were just barely making enough money to pay for Hot Pockets and server fees and that was about it! We figured that 1% would actually be a decrease from the rent we were already paying, and if things really took off we could still handle it for a couple of years…
So in the end they fell for it and we got to move to an even better office that we stayed in until we were able to bring on two more people full-time. And even though the construction lady was being kind of a bitch, even she admitted that she read our site and thought we were really funny, so that was pretty satisfying, too. 🙂
Anniversary #9 … More Memories
I honestly didn’t realize until going to type this up that literally I did the exact same concept last year for my 8th wedding anniversary, but for the most part we came up with a list of memories that was a little different than last year’s … and not for nothing but life has kind of been more than a little crazy lately! … so let’s just enjoy this little stroll down memory lane for what it is and leave it at that… 😉
October 2008 (St. Pete Beach) – This was one of the last photos we took out on the beach with the sunset to our backs before heading aside to join our wedding guests in song and dance and good eats, save for the Swedish meatballs that I’m still bitter about almost a decade later because I never actually got one at my own wedding and they were delicious at the tasting! Still, it was a pretty magical night … even if we had technically already been married for a year because we’d snuck off and eloped on the exact same day a year prior for the insurance benefits… 😉
September 2016 (Tampa) – Barely three weeks ago, just before we welcomed our twin sons into the world! This was after Sara had spent nearly a month in the hospital, so tensions were at an all-time high to say the least, but a few hours later once the boys were all nestled snug in their incubators in the NICU and we all had a chance to catch our collective breath, it still ended up being a pretty swell day!
May 2015 (Walt Disney World) – This is arguably one of my favorite family pictures that we have right now, taken the weekend we went over for 24 hours at the Magic Kingdom during a period when we, err, weren’t at the Magic Kingdom. We were actually just killing some time outside of Fantasia Gardens Mini-Golf waiting for our tee time here, and at one point we decided it would be fun to take a little family selfie … and here is the result!
December 2014 (Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort) – Christopher’s very first Christmas!!! We celebrated with a trip over to Disney with Lori, James, and Madelyn for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, and of course we had to spend at least a couple of hours the next day taking in all of the fun decorations elsewhere around WDW, including a visit to the biggest gingerbread house you’ve ever seen! Little baby Christopher (~9 months?) seemed to have a pretty good time, and this was even before I slipped him a tiny bite of gingerbread… 😛
October 2011 (Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge) – A quick, overnight celebration for anniversary #4 took us over to one of our favorite Disney resorts, which though it pretty much rained the entire time did end up featuring what was pretty much the best dinner we’ve ever had. And honestly I think that’s probably still true – Jiko: The Cooking Place at AKL is amazing – we got a nice, secluded table in the corner of the wine room that was nice and intimate, we got to splurge on a fancy bottle of wine from South Africa, and the food … so good!!!
May 2011 (Home) – Can you imagine our crazy dog laying peacefully on a float in the pool these days?! Neither can I, but back when she was a sweet, although admittedly destructive puppy she was pretty easy to toss around like this and so one afternoon while I was at work Sara sent me this pic of the two of them lounging out in the pool just like any good dog and wife duo should be accustomed…
May 2007 (Discovery Cove) – One of Sara’s dreams has always been to swim with the dolphins, so the day after I proposed to her, we went and did that, too! As if she couldn’t have gotten any giddier after I somehow managed to surprise her with the same ring that she had all but picked out herself something like a month or two earlier, waiting around to pet and pose and even swim alongside of one of these 800-lb beasts was pretty amazing and needless to say, she seemed to be in a pretty good mood for the rest of the vacation. 😉
October 2006 (Epcot) – And here we are celebrating our six-month DATING anniversary, together at Epcot – which was coincidentally also the site of our second date! Believe it or not, by this point we had actually already moved in together and met each other’s parents, so you could say that things were moving pretty fast … but just look at those two happy kids!!! Skinny and surrounded by tropical drinks, with their entire lives ahead of them…
June 2006 (Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort) – And finally for this particular trip down memory lane, here we see our first overnight trip to Disney World together, and in fact this was actually when I first met Sara’s younger sister … who five years later would end up living with us for a few years when she finally moved to Florida! In this picture we’d probably been dating for about a month and a half, not counting the weeks that we’d chatted online before working our way up to meeting in person. AND THEY DIDN’T SPEND ANOTHER VACATION NOT AT DISNEY WORLD SINCE… 😀
So that’s all for anniversary #9 – it’s kind of crazy to think that next year will be the big NUMBER 10 … hopefully we’ll be able to do something extra special for that, though with a three year-old and two one year-olds on the docket … I sincerely have no idea what to expect! But maybe one could argue that surprise can be part of the fun, too, because I certainly could’ve never expected how things played out thus far over the last nine years and that seemed to turn out quite well. 😉
Onward and upward, to bigger and even better anniversaries in the years and decades to come!
A President Who’s NOT a Role Model for Kids???
When I saw this particular ad from Hillary earlier this summary, I couldn’t help but agree with it … though admittedly she’s already had my vote for a thousand other reasons, so I didn’t really give it a whole lot of thought beyond that…
…until today I came across this article reporting that the NEA suggests that Donald Trump’s campaigning is posing a negative effect on children, particularly with regards to bullying on the playground, citing examples of Latino kids getting bullied by their classmates about “deportation” and talking about “President Trump’s wall.”
I feel like this is an important topic worth discussing because despite my oldest son only being 2.5, we’re already desperately making changes in how we talk around our house to try to prevent one of his favorite words from being “Shit!” It’s no secret that children’s minds are impressionable and even if they don’t understand the complicated subject matters at hand, they still pick up on keywords and heated emotions that you might not necessarily want parroted back at you in the grocery store or when your relatives are over for a visit.
One particular example specific to politics sticks out in my mind from the last election cycle after President Obama defeated Mitt Romney and got re-elected for his second term. The child, who will go unnamed, was absolutely devastated that Romney lost and spent god knows how long bawling about how “our country was doomed” because Obama had won his re-election.
It’s worth noting that his parents were both clearly Republicans, though I haven’t a clue just how vocal they were about their political choices in front of their child, but regardless, I think it’s safe to say that ten year-olds shouldn’t have a political affiliation whatsoever!!!
I was only vaguely aware of politics even though most of high school when we started taking classes about government, and it probably wasn’t until the Monica Lewinsky scandal was everywhere in 1998 during my senior year that I even partially began paying attention … most likely at that point just for the giggles – I couldn’t have told you about any of Clinton’s actual policies to save my life…
Granted, I grew up in a household where politics wasn’t really on the forefront of anybody’s minds, whereas now thanks to social media we have the opportunity to get all riled up about politics pretty much 24×7. And that’s a problem for all sorts of other reasons, too, but with regards to parenting I think we might need a reminder not only that our kids are always listening, but also learning from how we debate and discuss our political beliefs…
…and if you’re the kind of person who tends to get most of their information from Facebook posts and soundbites – that might not be the kind of learning that you really want your child to be exposed to!
Now it goes without saying that I think Donald Trump is a horrible choice for president and any number of things that he’s said would get any of my kids’ mouths washed out with soap if I ever heard about them getting said out on the playground at school, but I also think that we need to be aware of the things we say because our kids are listening to those words, too, and who does a child learn to emulate first but his own Mom and Dad?
When you rave about how Obama is ruining the country and how these libtards don’t know freedom from the hole in their asses … that’s an example of respect, or lack thereof, for your children to learn.
When you polarize your views based only on a candidate’s failings and ignore the legitimate things that they’ve accomplished in their career … that’s an example of blind politics and a failure to find the good in other people.
And when you brush off racist and sexist remarks because you think that political correctness is a blight on our nation’s future … you’re giving a pass to your own kids to treat other people the same way, and maybe they don’t see it like just a joke as you claim to view such behavior yourself.
Parenting over the last couple of years has taught me that we have to be more aware of our surroundings because it’s never quite as cute and hilarious when it’s your own kid running around the living room shouting, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!!!” when you’ve got company over, and heaven forbid it becomes a habit that resurfaces sometime when they’re in church or school! 😯
So not only do we have to watch our own behavior, but seeing that we can’t exactly control the behavior of the politicians that we follow and support, it does beg the question of why they deserve our support if they can’t serve as good role models while running for the highest office in the land.
Food for Thought – 20% of the US population is under the age of 15 – which candidate would you rather they learn how to treat their peers from???
movie thoughts … Ghostbusters (2016)
I have no problem admitting that I was one of the original haters who thought that this movie was going to be terrible … because it is.
However despite the spin that tried to make it out to be merely a sexist objection to the all-female cast, I’ve come to believe that at least for most of us, it didn’t have anything to do with the cast … sort of.
Overall, what failed this year’s Ghostbusters reboot wasn’t the cast, but unequivocally without a doubt the script because frankly it was uncreative and undoubtedly unoriginal, to the point where it felt like it expected the weight of the beloved Ghostbusters franchise to support it no matter what … and it just didn’t.
The thing about reboots is that they still need to bring something fresh and new to the franchise – something more than just girl power, in this case – but the story itself was kind of boring and in many places just seemed to borrow from the original movie when the writers couldn’t be bothered to come up with a new story device. To that point, things that were probably meant to seem like nods to the franchise – like crossing the streams and fighting with the mayor and bringing the old logo to life – just felt like weak writing instead of proper tributes that the original Ghostbusters deserved.
Even the cameos from the original cast were kind of meh with no real acknowledgement of how they served in the original story.
And so I can’t really blame the cast itself for what ultimately seemed to be a case of bad, uninspired writing because I sincerely think that another version of this movie could’ve been just fine, female cast and all. The story isn’t that hard to write…
30 years after the original events in New York, the original cast has long since been retired as heroes when a new threat appears and these women who grew up on their paranormal tales attempt to dust off the old legends to take over the reins. The story contains plenty of nods to the original movies because they’re shared as anecdotes by the original cast, and in the end the new Ghostbusters save the day and the retired Ghostbusters – along with the crabby mayor – are the first in line to applaud their successors.
The whole stink when the original rumors of this all-female reboot came about wasn’t that girls can’t be Ghostbusters, but that’s all we were given and fans of the franchise demanded more than that. I’m sure that some were sexist, but not all, with many folks like myself just wanting to see more effort put forth than, “It’s Ghostbusters, but with women!” because a simple gender swap is no basis for any story, and it shows in the final product because they didn’t put crap into the writing and the movie fell on its face.
If anything, it did a disservice to the women who were cast because to take on a franchise as beloved like the Ghostbusters, they needed a good script to do their legacy justice. Instead they were given throwaway gags and re-used plot devices that didn’t add anything new to the franchise and just left the rest of us saying, “I told you so.”
All this movie needed to be great was someone who cared enough to write a new Ghostbusters story and then weave elements from the past into it. You can’t just swap out the actors and redo the same story and expect fans to rave about a new Ghostbusters story because it really wasn’t, and that’s a shame because if Sony had really been committed to doing a new Ghostbusters movie, they could’ve done it.
But instead we got this and it got overblown into this big gender war when it really was all just a case of bad writing. 🙁
P.S. Also, I get that it was intended to be a summer blockbuster and all because that’s how the first two were presented, but why not hold off and put them out in October to piggyback on the whole promotional season for Halloween instead???
movie thoughts … Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but last night we watched the latest Ninja Turtles movie and it … wasn’t actually that bad???
Looking back, I guess I didn’t even bother writing about the first Michael Bay reboot – that’s how little I cared for it, but after watching Out of the Shadows last night with almost ZERO expectations … it’s almost as if somebody cared enough to set out and make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie this time!
I still think that the turtles themselves look kind of weird, and all I hear is Antonio Scarpachi whenever Splinter speaks, but for the rest, they actually did a really good job of tapping the classic turtles mythos by bringing in more of the bad guys and vehicles and even the Technodrome!
When I heard that Krang was trying to transport the Technodrome to Earth, I was just waiting on the edge of my seat for the turtle blimp to make an appearance … maybe in TMNT 3. 😉
I feel like a big difference between this movie and its predecessor was simply that this one was a lot more fun and didn’t nearly try to take itself as serious as the first one seemed to. I mean, let’s be honest – Bebop and Rocksteady looked kind of funny, much in the same way that the turtles themselves do in this version – but they ran with it anyways and didn’t try to make the characters something that they weren’t, and it worked.
We got to see a little Casey Jones, and even a little Baxter Stockman … though casting Tyler Perry did seem a bit odd … on top of a recasting of Shredder that just seemed to work a lot better, with armor that was a bit more relaxed than the band-aid-warranting monstrosity that they had him running around in for the previous movie!
I’m still not crazy on Megan Fox as April because both movies seemed to make her a bit more central to the plot than she really needs to be in a movie about mutant ninja turtles, but all in all it was a fun movie and it was actually enjoyable from beginning to end – something that you couldn’t exactly claim about the first Michael Bay concoction. 🙂
The Sevener Twins Have Arrived!
Apparently I haven’t blogged here in a while, so what better way to return than by sharing the announcement of not one, but two new additions to the Sevener family?! 😉
…I’m sure there will be plenty of posts about the anxiety and dual dirty diapers in the near future, so stay tuned for that!
* * * * *
Today has been a special day as we are very thankful to be welcoming not one, but TWO new baby boys into our family…
David Owen Sevener (formerly known as Baby A)
Born on Thursday, September 15th, 2016 at 12:10pm
4 lbs 3 oz – 18 inches long
AND
Matthew Edward Sevener (formerly known as Baby B)
Born on Thursday, September 15th, 2016 at 12:11pm
2 lbs 1 oz – 13.5 inches long
Both babies are resting in the NICU with the same phenomenal staff that helped welcome Christopher into the world here only 2.5 years earlier, and though we’ve still got some challenges ahead of ourselves before they can journey home, overall today was a grand success.
Don’t Read the Comments (again!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28muwCKT1uQ
I just discovered Kat Blaque’s YouTube channel the other day and I’ve been slowly browsing through her videos because she seems to have a lot of calm and rational, well thought out things to say that I really admire, but this one in particular really hit home for me today because it’s been a particular frustration of mine as of late and honestly I’ve had other people tell me bits and pieces of this advice – all of which that are really worth taking to heart if you’re trying to make a career out of creating content online.
Here are some of the highlights…
- “Comment sections tend to be a massive time suck that often result in fighting with total strangers and resolving absolutely nothing!”
- “You are not required to comment, respond to a comment, or even see the comment section.”
- “Sometimes I think that we believe that the only thing that’s missing from this piece of content is our voice.”
I think my favorite point, though, is where she talks about constructive arguments in comments that would make for great standalone videos (or blog posts, or whatever) because this is a perspective that I’m trying to subscribe to myself that I first picked up from some random blog long ago that unfortunately I can’t remember. The author had turned comments off on his site, but also included a section below each post that specifically said something like – “If you have comments or opinions as a result of reading my post, I invite you to expand on them by making a blog post of your own.”
I love this just because while he’s not dismissing reader opinions as not mattering, he also made it clear that he wasn’t giving the option for each reader to leave them front and center on his doorstep and he also encouraged that more productive, thought out debate that we’d all like to see by saying, “Go put some of your own effort into it and make a proper rebuttal like I did!”
Comments are not content, and I’m looking forward to watching what else Kat Blaque has to say because it seems like she actually puts some real time and effort into the things that she posts online. 🙂
movie thoughts … Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Was this supposed to be DC’s long-awaited response to The Avengers?!
Woof.
I didn’t really care for Man of Steel, but it was alright … at least it had a decent plot up until the Superman vs. Zod destroy everything battle scene that just seemed over the top even for a superhero movie. But this one was just blah … almost boring … frankly, it felt very forced.
First of all, I hated the characters – Henry Cavil returning as Superman had even less emotion than ever, and Batman … I don’t even think it was Ben Affleck’s fault – he was sort off irrelevant due to how polar opposite the character was written from what we’ve come to expect from Batman, especially after the epic trilogy that Christopher Nolan gave us.
So before, Batman used to be this ace investigator with all sorts of neat gadgets, and a set of morals, and he was all stealthy and altruistic … but this Batman is kind of an idiot because he steals his intel instead of doing any real work, he’s violent and vengeant, and he wears a suit of armor like he’s fucking Iron Man or Sir Galahad … WTF?!
How Batman even runs around in that massive suit is beyond me…
Oh yes, and Jesse Eisenberg – the guy who played Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network – should’ve stuck to Facebook because he was pretty awful here, too, like he was trying to play The Joker, but without any real plot.
I mean, if we didn’t all know that Lex Luthor is Superman’s arch-nemesis, I’m not sure if we would’ve had any real indication why he was fucking with him. Maniacal, but without any real backstory like The Joker to make us care.
Anyway, pretty much the whole plot was kind of a bore, which again is tough compared to the rich and vibrant storyline that we saw Christian Bale go through in The Dark Knight trilogy. I was actually surprised because just watching the blockbuster names scroll by in the opening credits, it really seemed like it should’ve been a knockout movie … but Jeremy Irons as Alfred??? The role literally felt beneath him the entire movie, and that’s after Michael Caine absolutely blew the role away!
Even Lawrence Fishburne, who I know played the same character in Man of Steel, just felt miscast and out of place – like somebody booked all of these grade A actors and then never thought that they actually needed a worthwhile script to read.
It seriously felt so weak, it was like a child wrote it – Batman should steal the kryptonite to use against Superman, then Lex should kidnap Superman’s girlfriend…AND HIS MOM, TOO – you know, just in case one isn’t enough! And can we bring General Zod back with those laser eyes just like Superman’s … but maybe make him look like one of the trolls out of The Hobbit because those were really sweet!
Oh yeah, and in the end we’re gonna kill off Superman. You know, because what better way to tease Justice League than by killing off their leader before they even have a chance to assemble or whatever their catchphrase is supposed to be.
I mean, seeing Wonder Woman was neat for about the first 15 seconds, but then to instantly have her infinitely stronger than Batman, too, kind of made you wonder why Batman was even in the movie in the first place. The only time he really stood a chance against Superman was after taking an uncharacteristic potshot and even that was only temporary, so what’s the point?
And as a final thought, I’m kind of tired of this whole political back and forth between humans and superheroes in these movies, too. When I watch a superhero story unfold, I don’t care what senators think, and I don’t want to see our heroes standing before Congress or signing contracts that we know they’re not going to abide by anyways. If there’s that much bullshit about humans not being able to weigh the good with the bad, let’s see some superhero action in other realms for a while and let the humans deal with shit on their own for a while!
Seeing Superman standing before a Congressional hearing was embarrassing, and he didn’t even have a chance to leave with a good quip like Black Widow always does.
Were the old Superman movies this bad, too? This kind of makes me curious to go back and watch the classic movies with Christopher Reeve because those are supposed to be great.
This version, sadly, was not.
Does the web need to be filtered now more than ever?
I remember back in 2001 when we had relaunched Just Laugh, it was a big deal for us to finally get listed under the humor section in Yahoo’s directory.
Like, I got a big packet of information about Yahoo in the mail and everything – it was kind of cool!
Looking back at estimates, there were around 30 million websites on the Internet in 2001, whereas nowadays some 15 years later there are closer to one billion websites and the number of users has increased by a factor of six to nearly represent half of the planet now being online and connected.
In a lot of ways, the growth is absolutely amazing to see what the Internet has become and how people now have access to wealths of information that no one person could consume in their entire lifetime.
On the other hand, however, a lot of it is crap and it seems like at least with regards to news and the search for reliable, factual information, often times there’s more to mislead people than information that they can actually count on … if they can even find it in the first place…
Case in point is a quick search that I wanted to do this evening about last week’s shooting of Alton Sterling because a lot of rumors have surfaced that maybe he wasn’t allowed to be carrying a gun in the first place because he was a convicted felon. Here are the top results of my search:
As you can see, the top result – with its loaded headline and all – is from BearingArms.com, which is a pro-gun blog with ties to the NRA’s lobbying division. Not exactly the fair and unbiased resource that I was hoping for! The other sites aren’t much better, regurgitating reports from other publications with a bevy of linkbait stories on both sides. Of the two most reputable hits, USA Today and New Orleans’ Times-Picayune, neither story actually cites whether Sterling was legally within his rights to carry a firearm on the night he was killed by police.
Whenever we talk about web filtering software, we always think about protecting children from adult websites, but what about protecting any users from misleading and unreliable ones? Not so much as a form of censorship, but in the second wave of a digital age where websites are a dime a dozen and literally anyone can publish on the Internet now, maybe there’s some value to being able to say, “Only give me news content from vetted, accredited sources that I know I can trust.”
Granted, one could argue that social media already filters the modern web in a lot of ways – not all of them positive – but I don’t necessarily want to only view the articles that other people I follow have decided to share socially. In a way it’s kind of funny that the Internet would one day evolve to in fact having too much information, but it’s a good problem to have. I always laugh when people criticize Wikipedia as a source for information that the hardbound encyclopedias at the library still have their flaws, too, so maybe this is just the next challenge of the information age – figuring out how to connect people with the right information in a sea of clickbait and negligibly sourced garbage.
Don’t tell Marissa Mayer now after just shuttering the directory service that Yahoo was once famous for, but maybe they were on to something with curating the best links of the web after all!