The Latvian's Strike! (Hail Doom!)

You may or may not know this about me, but I am a fan of 80's pop music. Not all of it. Some of it grates on my nerves as much as the next Jon, but there are quite a few hits that I dig.

Very few do I dig more than Europe's "Final Countdown." The pumping rock beat, the guitar riffs reaching climactic crescendos, the ear-drum-kicking solos, all of it. Well, almost all of it. The vocals are a little reedy and dated.

I also love symphony. Symphony with a beat is even better. The surprisingly aesthetically pleasing string quartet, Bond, is constantly in my playlist, as are other orchestral-based ear-rockers such as E.S. Posthumus and various movie scores.

What would happen if you put the two together, though?

Enter Latvia (Hail Doom!) the closest thing we'll ever get to Dr. Doom's homeland of Latveria. Rather, enter the Latvian Symphony Orchestra (Hail Doom!) and their own trio. This collection of mop-haired musicians manage to strum and bow their way through the most stirring rendition of "Final Countdown" I've ever heard. Don't believe me? Take a listen for yourself.



If you can watch that, complete with every stirring solo and riff lovingly reproduced in glorious symphonic sound and tell me it wasn't awesome, then you're either deaf, or have no soul, or both. I'm not going to rule that out.

Now if only I can find a symphonic recording of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing"

Thanks to bwe.tv for the drop!

I just Can't Wait for French Batman

This video is every bit of awesome that its name implies.
ITALIAN SPIDER-MAN!

They gave us Mario, it's only fair that we give them something in return.

March, Still Working on that Customer (dis)Service

March continues the theme started in February of sticking it to the customer.

The Smell of Poop, OR, Good Morning, Daddy!

Stacy had a women's conference this morning. She left early this morning to pick up a friend of ours, Karen, and meet some others before the conference. That means I was on daddy duty this morning. No big deal, the kids usually watch cartoons and munch on breakfast until I feel human and alive enough to drag myself out of bed. Yup, Father of the Year award, here I come!

So, this morning proceeds just like any other. I snooze, interrupted every fifteen minutes or two every time the girls see something noteworthy on TV. "Dad, can we get that movie?" or, "Daddy, can I have that toy?" or, "Dad, we have that!" or my favorite, "Daddy, look! Spongebob/Timmy/Hannah/Mickey/miscellaneous animated character did something!"

Even better? "Daddy, Scarlett got poop on the pillow!"

There's not many statements that will clear the fuzz from my mind faster than that one. I cleared the blurriness from my eyes to see Scarlett slouched between the foot board and the mattress with that, "I don't know what the big deal is" expression. Right next to her was the offending pillow. Believe you me, offending was the least of it. At least Scarlett was courteous enough to pull the pillowcase off first, because you know, it's much easier to clean a pillow than a pillowcase! I'll spare you the grisly details and just give you with this:

yup, a lot like this, only more brown.

I got Scarlett cleaned up in a jiffy. I'm still a little confused, though. She didn't leak out and she didn't have anything on her hands. I'm really not sure how she managed to
get it from her diaper to the pillow. That's right, my daughter is a poop magician. If only I could harness her power for good!

As I brought her back into the room to put her on the bed, I felt something wet at my feet.
Dreading what I'd find, I dragged my eyes down to the floor to see a puddle of apple juice that Blue was happily lapping up off the carpet. Both Zoe and Scarlett's juice boxes were lying on the floor, as crushed as wine grapes under the feet of burly Italian wine makers, only with less staining.

I finished cleaning that up and was just about to drop back into bed when I noticed a big wet spot on another one of my pillows. Sometimes I wonder how many times I'll be able to roll my eyes to the back of my head before they just give up and stay that way.

I performed the obligatory sniff test to figure out what the mystery fluid was. This one is going to go down through the ages as a mystery, though. It wasn't apple juice, it wasn't pee, it wasn't as scentless as water, but it also wasn't unpleasant. I don't know. I shrugged, dropped another pillow on top (no, not the poop pillow) and dropped Scarlett on top of that. I figured if any more random fluids leak out of her, it'd be on on a pillow that was already desecrated.

So yeah, that was my morning.

Here, for those of you completely uninterested in the travails of raising toddlers, but completely interested in badass robot fights, I give you something completely unrelated!



Sorry for the autoplay, It's built into the player.