Teacup Pig as Angel with a Kamehameha Shotgun

Not just an imaginary interdimensional porcine mini angel carrying a firearm....

There's potentially a lot to explain here, but rest assured, this picture was a very specific request cooked up by my sons last night. The short version of the story is that this image represents the confluence of multiple things that my sons are thinking about:

They are still very much interested in listening to The Cab's song "Angel with a Shotgun," which is appealing because it is the soundtrack to a fan made "Attack on Titan" video (over 500,00 views with commentary written in Thai) and also evokes Doctor Who's Weeping Angels for them. And of course, there is the repeated reference to a weapon in a catchy song, so that's appealing right there.... (There was a previous "Angel With a Squirt Gun" napkin from 2014 that hashed over these topics if you really think you might want to read more.)

Teacup pigs are a sore topic this week, because, as mentioned in our previous post, we will not be adopting a soon-to-be-immense micromini-pig any time soon...despite our younger son's overwhelming need for one.

This minipig is not only armed with just any shotgun. It is shooting a "Kamehameha Wave."  And what is that? you may wonder.  I had been wondering myself for a while about the yelling of "CAH-ME YAH-ME YAH!!!!" that was going on in our apartment. I have to admit that I might have been remaining intentionally ignorant of the finer points of the Japanese anime TV show "Dragonball Z."  I suppose that I have been fortunate that my sons have never consistently watched it, as I find the histrionic tone very hard to appreciate...or even tune out.

But now we have a Dragonball Z video game and I can remain ignorant no longer.  Apparently heroes of the series are able to gather and shoot energy from their bodies... akin to the "Force Push" or "Force Lightning" in the Star Wars universe, or the "Fus Roh Dah!" of Skyrim. This particular sort of energy blast is named for the Hawaiian Kamehameah line of kings. I am not sure why, and unfortunately, do not have any further time to sort this out.

I will add that I had not made the connection previously between the shouting that my kids were doing and the Hawaiian royalty, because, as I now discover thanks to the magic of the internet, I had been pronouncing "Kamehameha" wrong for decades.

Yet another educational napkin...for me, anyway.

Weeping Angel Offers a Strawberry for Lunch

Don't Even Blink:

After many attempts, Archer finally managed to infect his younger brother with the Doctor Who virus over last weekend.

He started by showing Ansel the episodes with Weeping Angels, appealing to Ansel's burgeoning interest in all things creepy. Archer is not all that much a fan of dialogue, romantic intrigue or humorous banter between the sexes, so his interest in the Whovian universe is mostly about the various powers and weapons of the aliens.  Ansel is much more willing to sit through a TV series where people talk more than shoot, so perhaps he may end up more of a Doctor Who fan than his brother.  He did ask me midway through the first episode why one of the actresses had such yellow teeth. Clearly we've have been watching too much Disney and not enough BBC.

As I mentioned below regarding the "Angel with a Squirt Gun," my attempts to draw a lovely, Baroque inflected stone angel were not a success. The Weeping Angels are supposed to be scary malevolent aliens anyway, but obviously that was not a good concept for lunch.

The angels can only move when they are not being watched, so one has to wonder what she is going to do with that strawberry when she gets a chance.

Angel with a Squirt Gun

 

"Angel with a Shotgun":  The Quaker school version.

Archer listened to The Cab's song "Angel with a Shotgun" on repeat for much of yesterday afternoon.  He acquired the obsession with this song the same way that he has developed most of his preferences in music lately: from watching "Attack on Titan" videos.  He particularly likes a version of the song where it is sped up- becoming something like "Angel with a Shotgun" performed by the Chipmunks.  And whenever Archer is listening to something, so is his seven year old brother.

While I was cringing yesterday, I tried to remember what my favorite music was when I was eleven, or seven...back when dinosaurs walked the earth.  I'm afraid I was on a pretty much all classical diet at the time. But I do remember that one of my best friends in sixth grade had an obsession with Styx and the song "Come Sail Away,"  I should not be too judgmental of my sons' music choices.

Of course, this song is not just about the aesthetics of music for them.  When Archer and Ansel think of angels, they are thinking of the "Weeping Angels" in the Doctor Who series.  The idea of a creepy all powerful alien who can impersonate a stone figure who is now also armed with a shotgun....well, how cool is that?

On a final unrelated note: I set out to draw the requested weaponized angel with the idea in mind that I was going to make it look like one of Bernini's lovely baroque stone angels.  The angels in the TV show are of course clunky cludged together life casts as well as live actors. 

Almost 30 years of sculpting has certainly taught me that I am no Bernini. A few minutes of sketching last night indicated that I am also not capable of drawing a Bernini-esque angel on a napkin.  I ended up using some very different source material, which might have been titled something like a less polite version of  "Cute Young Ladies with Squirt Guns"  I don't think I am going to be any more specific than that as my older son often reads what I write here.  Thus the "angel" on the napkin suffers from modern malnutrition and an awkward pose.