Aliens Naruto Run Out of Area 51 on Monday

(They were just waiting for all the Area 51 raiders to go home)

This one is a little late, (or is it?) as the main event to ”Storm Area 51” was of course scheduled for Friday September 20th. 

“What event?” My ever-tolerant mom is asking as she reads this....(though there was a good bit of coverage in the New York Times.... So, perhaps I can’t use Grandma as a foil here.) 

At any rate, there was a fair amount of attention paid by our kids to the supposed raid on Area 51 last Friday. The huge online phenomenon manifested a good bit smaller in the real world. And sadly, we were not among the 400 or so people who actually went to the site...or the environs. 

But we were among the millions who were impressed by the guy who managed to get his Naruto run in the background behind a reporter from “Action 13 News”...and became a worldwide meme.

Naruto running: perhaps no more implausible or uncomfortable in the real world than the extraterrestrials in Nevada.

My son tells me that he can recognize all of the aliens on this napkin, so at least there’s that.

Alien Loves Predator for Valentines Day

‪A classic for Valentines Day:

Alien Loves Predator...my kids love both....everyone loves candy. ‬

Chipmunks and Xenomorph

As Dave would say, "ALVIN!!!! Stop playing with that Xenomorph!"

Our sons enjoy how the Chipmunks behave like exuberant wayward children.  And how Jason Lee's Dave is much like a beleaguered and ineffectual parent, hopelessly trying to rein in his "kids'" out of control behaviour.

Our kids would definitely want to slide down a Xenomorph's head if they had the chance.

(I have still managed to avoid seeing "The Road Chip," thus far, but unfortunately, that cannot last forever.)

Alien and Predator Holiday Selfie

If it bleeds, we can celebrate Christmas with it.

Christmas is a pretty secular holiday at our house. When I was a child, I thought I could be both Jewish and Christian at the same time. But the reality is that despite the lighting of Hanukkah candles and the trimming of Christmas trees, we are not playing for either team.

But we can embrace the general spirit of generosity and togetherness in the season... particularly when it comes to the characters from violent movie and video game franchises.  The Santa/Rudolph theme is popular with the kids even if they don't have the same irrational affection for the old stop motion Rudolph TV show that I do.

I am afraid that they have more affection for the Alien vs Predator franchise in fact.

Spooky Scary Skeletons

A Unicorn, a Velociraptor....and some guy....send shivers down your spine....and are really hard to draw.

As usual, I discovered that the phrase that my older son has been contantly repeating recently was not of his own manufacture, but was actually proliferating on the Internet.  My first tip-off came when one of his friends came over to, yes, play video games, and said the same phrase over and over in the same tone of voice.  (Again, I have been consistently sleep deprived for well over a decade, so it takes a lot for me to catch on.)

At any rate, "Spooky Scary Skeletons" is a 1996 song by Andrew Gold, a video of a classic Disney animation with the song that has over 5.3 million views on Youtube, some Minecraft video spin-offs, etc, etc. I am just going to say that there's a link to the "know your meme" page on the topic because I don't think I can begin to unpack all of it right now.

My son asked for unicorn, Alien and velociraptor skeletons doing a high kicking "Michigan J Frog" style dance.  I was definitely not up to the challenge.  I had a hard enough time just drawing some vaguely anatomically correct skeletons and trying to put one in front of the other.  And what does the Alien skeleton look like anyway? (No doubt the answer is available online somewhere...)

The original Disney short of the dancing skeletons is truly inspired and inspiring... and I should have done better. Maybe I will give it another shot.

My son had something more like this in mind...with skeletons. Easy, right?

Alien, Raptor and Unicorn do the Michigan Rag

Hello my baby.

I'm going to be drawing two napkins a night next week when the kids start summer camp. I am not sure how this is going to go, as I'm way out of practice with that sort of volume.

Since my sons are in the same program and will be eating lunch together, I suggested that perhaps there would be one napkin a day, alternating between the two of them. Their response could be described as a bit agitated. The older one argued that it wouldn't be fair because he hadn't been getting any napkin drawings during school and really had to have them for camp. The younger one argued that he was used to getting them in school and couldn't possibly go without them for camp.

Ok. Well, I guess they must still appreciate the napkins a little.

I thought I would try and make a few before camp begins.  However, such advance planning rarely works out well for me.  Asking what they want ahead of time just means the kids' requests get much complicated. For instance: "I want the Alien, a Velociraptor and a Unicorn dancing like the "Hello My Baby" frog with top hats and canes."

The kids have been singing this "Hello My Baby" song frequently when they want to pull out all the stops and be extra annoying. But somehow I had not made the connection between this grating behavior and the classic Warner Bros cartoon featuring Michigan J Frog.

Perhaps the singing frog cartoon is not fresh in your mind either... particularly if you are not the mother of small boys prone to loudly performing the song while jumping on their bed clad only in underpants more than an hour after they should have been asleep.

You can see the cartoon "One Froggy Evening" and read copious (and fairly interesting) commentary at this link

Dormouse in Power Loader from "Aliens"

Remember what the Dormouse said:
...was it, "They mostly come out at night, mostly"?...or "Get away from her, you bitch"?

Ansel's interest in things small, cute and furry was focused on the Dormouse this last week.  He was reading "A Bed for the Winter," which according to Amazon is " the harrowing story of a little dormouse and his frantic search for a safe place to hibernate." He was also wondering if Dormice make good pets.  (probably not)

Everyone in our household seems a bit under the weather lately. Today we were introduced to the nifty term "viral torticollis" to explain why one child's head is on sideways and he can't bear to go to school.  I am definitely suffering from some back-to-school-virus related dementia myself, so this is probably not one of my better efforts in terms of concept or execution. 

I thought maybe since the Dormouse is always trying to avoid being another animal's dinner, perhaps he or she could use some technological assistance.  I was originally planning to come up with some sort of Dormouse appropriate mech suit, but decided to take the easy way out and borrow Ripley's backlit power loader from "Aliens."

Just for the record, Ansel has not seen the movie, but he thought this was cool enough anyway.

(And this one prompted me to add a new label category "Small Furry Things with Weapons" as that does seems a rather popular category here.)

Minions and Alien and Strange Facebook Popularity

Erich Grey Litoff was kind enough to share this napkin on the Stan Winston School of Character Arts Facebook page where it accrued over 5,000 likes and 890 shares.

This is approximately 5,055 more likes and 890 more shares than our napkins usually receive on Facebook.  

Oh well.

Alien with Foil Wrapped Eggs for Easter

What my older son actually said was, "Just because we don't enjoy the Easter Bunny anymore, doesn't mean we don't believe in egg hunts." I think he might have meant, "Just because we don't believe in the Easter Bunny anymore doesn't mean we wouldn't enjoy looking for eggs."  Maybe.

Our other Easter activities this year were less traditional.  We went to an "alternative Easter carnival" on Friday. The kids' favorite activities involved using a paintball gun to shoot at a unfortunate man dressed as a Peep holding a riot shield, ("Shoot Da Peep") and throwing a ball to try to "Dunk Jesus." Given the cold weather, there was no actual dunking involved. The man dressed as Jesus was dropped into a tank full of well used sofa cushions.

And we watched this Easter themed video spoof of the Alien movie. Thus the napkin.

A split second before "Jesus" hit the cushions.

Child Alien and Predator in Santa's Lap

And what do you want for Christmas?

Perhaps no holiday can be complete without bringing out the Predator and Alien kids.  (See other appearances here and here)

I used to take the kids to Macy's at the beginning of Christmas vacation so they could sit next to a frustrated actor guy with a beard and tell him that he was not really Santa.  The activity itself is free and if you go early on a weekday, the line is fairly short...

...and riding up the escalator in the store always gave me a few moments to consider how remarkably grateful I am that  the rise of online shopping has made it largely unnecessary for me to drag two rowdy and impolite boys through a department store in order to actually purchase anything.  I cannot imagine how much more fun life would be if I had to take them along to buy one of them a pair of pants... or, more inconceivably, to buy a pair of pants for myself. 

We have not been to Macy's in a a few years.  The kids are no longer much interested in the man in a red suit, and those Santa guys already suffer too much abuse without our help.

(They look cute and cooperative in this photo, but they just finished telling Mr. Claus that he is an imposter. )

The Predator And The Alien Trick or Treat as Batman and Robin

My kids always like to see a scary, powerful character looking insipidly cute.  They were not too impressed with my efforts here, however.  While I tried to make our murderous friends look childlike, my sons would have been far more pleased if had drawn drawn them as doe-eyed bobble heads. I

Minecraft Pikachu and Alien

Our older son is quite an authority on Minecraft...particularly considering he has not had an opportunity to play the game himself.  He has watched enough online videos of other people playing and discussing the game that I should probably have my parenting license revoked.  (If only there were such a thing as a parenting license...)

The younger brother is not so interested in Minecraft, but he is definitely interested in all the various incarnations of Pikachu.

I have been told that I made Pikachu's thunderbolt the wrong color- it should have been entirely yellow.  I don't know how I could have made such a mistake.  

I know that the lack of  authetic Minecraft detail, however, was just laziness.

Predator and Alien At The Beach

One for the end of summer:  The Predator and the Alien play nice at the beach.

We do like cute monsters.

Minions With The Alien And Eggs

Archer was dissatisfied with my previous attempt at pairing the minions with the Alien.  He wanted a particular narrative: the minions first being excited about something and then disturbed by the Alien.  I told him this was definitely asking a lot for a napkin and that I was not sure I could pull it off.

I seriously considered drawing the lovely green glowing cracked egg from the original ad campaign, but finally went with nasty eggs that were more true to the movie... But there are so many iterations of Aliens and Alien paraphernalia that it is hard to choose.  For instance, how many fingers does the average Alien have?   A 2 minute visit to Google yields several versions of the Alien hand. This is the sort of topic that I can't really dwell on at 11:30 on Sunday night.  My apologies for any lack of Alien accuracy.

The minions seem to only have three fingers... I am reasonably sure of that anyway.

Alien with Despicable Me Minions

It has been a big week around here for minions and aliens.

I somehow feel the need to issue the disclaimer that my children have not seen any of the Alien movies, despite repeated requests.

There are limits to even my bad parenting.

Happy July 4th From The Predator, Uncle Sam and The Alien

Alien versus Predator is Archer's favorite franchise this week.  He has been very frustrated with me as my plot knowledge only covers the first two Alien movies...and the more recent Prometheus, regrettably.  Somehow I missed all things Predator the first time around.

Bomb Pops were a childhood favorite for me.  Now, of course, I see them as an unfortunate opportunity for my kids to dye their lips, tongues and shoes both blue and red.