When I was in my early teens I spent tons of time watching TV. One of the channels geared to my age group was Nickelodeon. It had been around for quite awhile, introducing America to the fabulous show You Can’t Do That on Television in the early 80’s and really taking off in the very early 90’s with original animated shows like Ren and Stimpy, Doug, and Rugrats.

Pretty soon Nickelodeon was coming up with tons of live action kid programs. Clarissa Explains It All ,  Are You Afraid of the Dark and The Adventures of Pete & Pete. This last one is the show I want to talk about. It started as one minute shorts during commercial breaks and grew so popular, it was made into a full half-hour program.

Pete & Pete was a show that I tended to overlook because it was about boys, it was a little bizarre, and I guess back then I just didn’t get it. This weekend I rented it for my two boys and got a huge surprise….it is completely hilarious!

The show is about the two red headed Wrigley brothers (both named Pete) living their small town lives in Wellsville.  Other characters are Dad, Mom (also Mom’s plate in her head), best friend Ellen and Artie….the town’s spandex wearing superhero.

The plotlines are funny and refreshingly innocent (little Pete vows to stay up for 11 days straight while protesting his bedtime), the camera work was surprisingly awesome, and the show is filled with fun 90’s music. If you like quirky TV, then you should check this Nickelodeon classic out.

After weeks of questionable shows spewing from my kids’ mouths (lookin at you Seth McFarlane), it was pretty radtastical to have a show that made ALL of us laugh and did not embarrass me in front of my boys.

It’s been an interesting week for me, to say the least.  Last Monday I had a flat tire on I5 on my way to work. The wonderful Washington State DOT came and changed my tire for me so I didn’t have to fear for my life doing so on the side of a very busy freeway. New tires and many hundreds of dollars later, I get a partial day off from work to recharge a bit. The following day was to be “less exciting” according to my wife, so just before I came home from work I did a faceplant into a heavy metal barricade (and a little bit of pavement), cutting a rather large gash into my finger. A trip to the ER at Swedish and two hours, three x-rays and four stitches later I was on my way home. Oh yes, very uneventful.

Thanks to my lovely staff (who apparently took some foreign language courses in my absence), I was able to get five whole days off in a row to recuperate. You may not know this, but after you crash into something with your face, many other body parts hurt like… a LOT! And while you’re sitting there on the couch, there’s not much to do but watch movies.  Here’s a sampling* of how I spent most of the last week:

Traffic:  In this unique drama which follows the lives of a drug dealer, a judge appointed to a prominent role in the war on drugs, his cocaine-addicted daughter and a man who drives the Department Of Transportation truck that connects their stories together, we are taken on a harrowing ride from which we may never return.

M*A*S*H: One of my all-time favorite movies of all time, Robert Altman’s masterwork of an anti-war war movie set in Korea, but obviously a statement about the Vietnam war. When a young soldier (played by an even younger Ron Howard) falls on the front lines, he’s sent to the 4077th MASH to get patched up and finds the irreverent doctors and nurses just the thing to distract him from the splint on his finger and the dull ache in his bones.

Falling Down:  Michael Douglas is having a bad day. He just wants to get home to see his daughter on her birthday. Unfortunately, nothing seems to be going right for him. First there’s the traffic jam, then the unhelpful Korean shopkeeper who “doesn’t give change” and then he takes a nosedive onto the sidewalk in front of a busy restaurant. It’s pretty much downhill from there.

Legends Of The Fall:  A man and his three sons (Anthony Hopkins, Henry Thomas, Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn) live in the Rocky Mountains of Montana at the beginning of the 20th century. When Henry brings with him his fiancé (Julia Ormand), the fellowship of the three brothers is about to shatter. The eldest son falls in love with the girl, she falls in love with the third son and the father falls and cuts his hand badly. Things get worse when the three brothers decide to join the first World War in Europe in 1914, leaving their father to recover on his own.

There were others, but these really stuck with me for some reason. Here’s hoping you all had a much better week than I did!

*Note: this is a completely fabricated list. I actually did watch a bunch of stuff, like The Rock, Rescue Dawn, Zodiac, Codename: The Cleaner, Dungeons & Dragons, a whole bunch of Daria and a bunch of other stuff that all seems to run together.

I found an old German/English translation book behind a dumpster at this bar on Capitol hill a few weeks ago. I decided to translate my “horrible film outing” story into a new language. Please cut and paste this into google translate if you cannot understand German.

Es scheint, habe ich immer eingereicht immer weh, wenn man zu einem Film zu sehen. Das ist was mir passiert ist letzte Woche. Bitte genießen Sie diese deutsche Ausgabe.

Der Avatar; (2009) war ich sehr glücklich zu sein Sehen des Films! Es wurde in 3-D, die ich genossen, als sie sahen Jaws 3-D gezeigt. Damals zeigen ein junges Mädchen sperrte mich aus dem Theater nackt, aber es war trotzdem lustig zu sehen. Ich wollte ins Theater, wenn die Kassiererin mir mitgeteilt, sie waren zu Fuß aus dem neuen 3-D-Brille.

Ich wählte den Film ohne Brille zu sehen. Dies würde sich als eine schlechte Wahl sein. Ich ging ins Kino mit meiner Moutian Dew und ein großes Feld von Twizzlers. Bevor ich sitzen konnte unten hörte ich eine Stimme rufen: “Sieht aus wie dickweed seine Brille vergessen. Es war mein Bully Ryan  Carter. Bevor ich ein Wort sagen konnte er ein paar alte 3-D-Brille aufgesetzt aus den 1980er Jahren auf meinem Gesicht. Ich habe versucht, sie ausziehen nur zu finden, sie waren super zu mir ins Gesicht geklebt. Einige der Kleber auch hielt meine Augen geschlossen. Ich war blind!

Da fing ich an, Panik, schrie Ich mag ein Baby. Ich konnte nichts sehen, aber ich könnte mir das ganze Theater über mich lachen hören. Ich könnte auch fühle mich durch eine Tür geschoben. Ich ging um blind für eine Weile. Ich hoffte auf ein vertrautes Geräusch zu hören. Ich tat.  Verkehr!

Das Krankenhaus Kosten waren sehr hoch. Der Klebstoff hatte meine Augen ruiniert. Ich würde erfordern zahlreiche Operationen, bevor ich wieder sehen konnte. Ich hatte kein Geld. Ich war gezwungen, zwei Arbeitsplätze zu erhalten; Red Lobster & TGI Fridays. Ich war Hausmeister an beiden.

Wenn jemand weiß, wie die neue Where’s Waldo? Buch endet, lass es mich wissen.