Robot and Son

We’ve been enjoying reading “The Wild Robot” by Peter Brown on the subway to summer camp. A robot named Roz who is shipwrecked on an island populated by animals becomes the mother of a gosling. 

In my son’s action movie universe, the second act of the story would probably involve the revelation that Roz the maternal robot was actually a high tech killing machine from a future timeline, and she would have to use her previously hidden weaponry to save the island’s residents from an interdimensional menace. Many explosions would ensue. 

We haven’t finished the book yet, but I am pretty sure that is not what is going to happen. 

After looking at this napkin, my son told me that he envisioned Roz as looking more like Futurama’s Bender than the Terminator.

Bender would have been easier to draw.

StormTrooper and Terminator "Just Dancing"

Maybe they are just dancing...

In a rare moment of napkin interest recently, the napkin recipients' father, also known as my spouse, suggested that there was a lack of Stormtrooper meets Terminator imagery out there in pop culture. After a brief google search, I can report that this does indeed seem to be the case. There are a few "Who would win?" sort of discussions and one video mash-up of Arnold vs. a Stormtrooper, but this does seem to be a slightly underexplored combination out there in internet land.

As the Storm Troopers in the Star Wars movies are always so terribly inept, it did not seem like a very fair contest to me, so I tried to come up with some other activity the two characters could share besides combat.

Last evening the boys and I were having one of our frequent and unproductive "how can you get more exercise while still playing video games for every possible waking moment of the day?" conversations, during which my older son resorted to proposing that we try "Just Dance" on the Xbox One. I suspect that he was just strategically humoring his mother's obsession with health and exercise and was not really serious. I think this because he then immediately pointed out that "Just Dance" was not really a good idea because the game would require buying a Kinect which would then spy on us in our living room.  (There's a whole other amusing topic!) I notice today when I looked "Just Dance" up for this post that this game can be playing with a just smart phone....

But, unfortunately, I am still in favor of not playing video games all day and instead exercising away from the Xbox.

While I was thinking about dancing games last night, however, I drew the trooper and T-800 "busting some moves." Since that phrase, according to Wiktionary,  is presently mostly outdated and now can mean anything from flatulence to seduction to attack, perhaps their ambiguous postures are just as well.....

Or maybe it's just my poor drawing....

Lil Bub and Terminator

Internet Cats with Robots: Day 2

Why this pair? It really defies explanation.  Lil BUB definitely seemed like the obvious follow up to Grumpy Cat.  According to her official website, she "has overcome great challenges, is a published author, a talk show host, a movie star, and has helped raise well over $100,000 for animals in need." 

When I spent a few sleep deprived minutes contemplating which pop culture robot would be her ideal counterpart, I did not have any sort of epiphany.

 While C-3P0 does have a similar facial expression, in hindsight, perhaps I should have gone with Ultron.

Robocop 2014, The Terminator and Hiccup

Macho robot guys with a lurking alternative character.

We finally watched the 2014 version of Robocop over the weekend.
Immediately afterwards, while the kids were bickering over who got to be which version of Robocop, suddenly the Arnold Schwarzenegger style Terminator seemed to be part of the game also.  The robot guys with big guns were saying things like "I'll be back," and "Hasta la vista, baby."

At this point, I feel compelled to mention that the boys have not seen any more than a few snippets of any of the Terminator movies.... Although, since they have now seen Robocop, this is clearly not a parenting accomplishment on my part.

At any rate, Robocop and the Terminator obviously scratch the same itch in the 7 or 11 year old male mind.  Our sons want to identify with them...Not for their troubled relationship to humanity of course,  but because they are remorselessly powerful guys in cool outfits with big guns. 

Interestingly enough, Robocop 2004 features Mr. Voice of Hiccup, Jay Baruchel, as a craven guy from marketing.  The boys found him pretty compelling despite the fact that he is the antithesis of the powerful robots- ie, entirely gun less.  I think he appealed mostly because he retains some of Hiccup's mannerisms and wimpy, snarky guy attitude despite being an amoral corporate man in a suit.  They found his line, "Hey don't shoot, I'm just a guy from marketing" to be worth repeating multiple times. 

While this does provide an alternative option to the macho robocarnage, I'm not sure it is entirely a good one.