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Dear Jack: Webisode 21 of Jack-Man, “Vegan Bear Scare”

4 years, 10 months.

Dear Jack: Webisode 21 of Jack-Man, “Vegan Bear Scare”

Dear Jack,

We attempted to film webisodes 21 and 22 of Jack-Man on Saturday morning… but the cold, the light rain, and the realized need for a 3rd person to serve as cameraman and props holder got in the way of that.

Fortunately, your Pre-K teacher Ms. Aimee heard about what was going on and saved the day.

She came over on Sunday, when the weather was slightly better, and we filmed both webisodes back to back. There’s no way we could have done this without Ms. Aimee’s help:

In “Vegan Bear Scare”, we introduced the new character, Vegan Bear. Originally, I intended for him to be a gorilla, but the suit was too expensive.

By default, this is our Halloween episode, as I admit: Vegan Bear is by far the creepiest villain Jack-Man has ever encountered.

The theme song to Jack-Man states this about the series:

“Jack-Man knows just where to hit ‘em, when it comes to creepy villains.

He packs a punch and eats a healthy lunch.”

Perhaps this webisode capitalizes on that concept more than ever, with such a creepy villain and such a focus on healthy eating.

Vegan Bear explains where vegans get their protein and nutrients, from 6 sources:

Veggies, fruits, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds.

Ultimately, “Vegan Bear Scare” is technically the 1st half of the story; as Webisode 22, “Tin Roof Rusted,” will immediately pick up where Webisode 21 left off.

But I decided to release them as 2 separate webisodes because of their unique content.

Also, both of these webisodes feature Vegan Bear driving Jack-Man in the 2015 Toyota Corolla!

Here’s a piece of trivia about “Vegan Bear Scare”: it’s the only other webisode, besides Webisode 2, that doesn’t feature Green Meanie.

That’s in part because I wanted all the “villain focus” to be on Vegan Bear, not Green Meanie. The other reason is because Green Meanie shows up on the 2nd half of the story line, in Webisode 22.

I think “Vegan Bear Scare” turned out to be very exciting. However, the next one coming up, “Tin Roof Rusted” is… simply epic.

Love,

Daddy

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dad from day one: A Baby’s Sixth Sense

Week 6.

It’s a sort of eery feeling getting up at 1:30 AM, 3:30 AM, and/or 5:30 AM every morning to feed and change Jack.  While it’s still dark and quiet, while I’m only “awake” enough to put the word in quotation marks, and while my memory barely records the routine actions taking place during the twilight, I’m sure I’m subconsciously looking for something out of the ordinary.  As I hold Jack in one arm and his bottle in the other, the dimly lit room casts a strange shadow on his face.  Sometimes when I look at him during this time I get a little creeped out.  In this situation he reminds me of a baby version of the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz (played by the Jewish actor Bert Lahr); that movie and the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, though they are both wonderful classic movies, have always freaked me out a bit.  On a similar note, it also seems like I’m taking care of a little old man, with his receding hairstyle (Jack Nicholson style), his chubby cheeks, and his baby-version-of-cussing-somebody-out cries when he’s really hungry and his diaper is wet.

To make matters more theatrical, there are times when I am taking care of him during the middle of the night when it’s like he peeks around my shoulder and sees something and gets this calm yet curious look on his face. Does he see something?  A guardian angel?  Jesus?  Maybe the ghost of Bert Lahr?

I wouldn’t be surprised if babies can see into the spiritual realm.  It could make sense in a way; babies are completely innocent.  They are unaware of damning traps like pride and greed.  I could see how a baby is naturally closer to Heaven than we adults are.  Sometimes I envy the things my baby may be seeing.  But then again, it would be just another thing to spook me in the middle of the night. It seems every account I can immediately think of in the Bible where an angelic being spoke to a human, the angel always had to start the conversation out with “Do not be afraid…”  But Jack isn’t scared by whatever he is seeing around me that I am less aware; if he’s actually seeing anything supernatural at all.

 

 

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What Makes a Good Horror/Thriller Movie?

Find out what it takes to impress a movie snob like myself when it comes to the “boo!” factor.

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is when someone starts telling me about a movie, and in a subconscious effort to be cool or to be a hero, blurts the ending.  Usually, that takes away much of the incentive to spend the two hours to watch the movie.  But recently, a coworker blabbed the twist ending to Orphan and it actually intrigued me so much that I watched it this past weekend with my wife and my mother-in-law.  And though I typically can’t say this about most movies, especially not “scary” ones, I give it an A+.  So what makes for a good scary movie, according to me, a self-proclaimed movie guy?

It doesn’t have bad acting. A few weeks ago I tried to watch Fire in the Sky, the 1993 thriller about alien abductions, and couldn’t make it past the first 20 minutes because the acting was simply not believable.  It was somehow both too cartoonish and too bland.  Like Christian movies and low budget sci-fi movies, scary movies also tend to feature unknown actors who are unknown for a reason.  For a scary movie to be good, the acting itself can not be a distraction.

It doesn’t exploit violence and gore. Granted, I don’t mind excessive violence and gore if it’s necessary to the plot.  I’m a huge fan of the Saw franchise.  But I didn’t like Saw III, Saw V, or Saw 3D individually because I felt the violence and gore itself was over-the-top and mainly there for shock value alone, whereas I felt that with first Saw, Saw II, Saw IV, and saw VI, the violence and gore had a purpose directly related to a meaningful plotline.

It doesn’t contain soft-core porn. The thing that has kept me from seeing Hostel is that I have heard from multiple people that “there is a soft-core porn scene in the beginning of the movie”.  A good scary movie doesn’t need obsessive nudity in order to be a good scary movie.  (When any kind of movie has excessive nudity and sex scenes, I almost always believe it’s in there as a desperate attempt to make an otherwise drab movie seem interesting.) There was nudity in One Hour Photo, but it was extremely relevant to the plot and had a purpose.  I’m not saying I morally approve nudity, but I am saying that when it’s done in good taste, it can at least keep from distracting from the quality of the movie itself, as opposed to most Friday the 13th movies.

It doesn’t contain special effects which I can tell are fake. In Saw 3D there were several death trap scenes where I could totally tell the newly dead bodies where just hollow rubber dummies.  That’s how I feel about the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Final Destination series.  I am a snob when it comes to special effects of any kind.  That means I don’t want to see any blood that looks too watery or any noticeable uses of green screens.

It doesn’t end with all the main characters dying. The movie is scarier if at least one person lived to tell the story.  I’m not saying that it has to end well.  One of my favorite scary movies is Skeleton Key- no one really dies in it but it doesn’t really end on a happy note either.  Yet the creativeness in how they pulled off that combo impressed me.  Same thing with One Hour Photo.

It doesn’t end unfinished. If the name of the movie is Freddy Vs. Jason, then either Freddy or Jason better clearly win the fight by the time it ends.  I’m fine with a movie that ends while leaving the door open for a sequel.  But if that’s the case, I want that movie to be able to stand alone as a film that in of itself actually makes sense and has closure.  The first Saw movie does this perfectly.

If a horror/thriller movie passes these six tests, there is a good chance it will be at least a good one.  It’s not about how many times you get spooked when something surprises you by jumping out on the screen or a high dead body count.  The movie itself has to be legit and in tact as a whole.  Otherwise, instead of walking back to your car after the movie as look around the parking lot for any suspicious shadowy creatures, you’re shaking your head at how stupid that movie was instead.

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What is the Point of a Man Wearing a Bathrobe?

Men wearing robes. More of an abstract concept than anything.

In movies sometimes, men wear robes when they’re getting ready for bed. Often, villains wear them while scheming with their henchmen inside of a mansion. In real life, I only see men’s robes if I stay in a really nice hotel or B&B- I usually am given the option to purchase one from the room for about 65 bucks. But I never drop the cash for it. As far as actually walking around the house in one, I haven’t yet had that privilege.

Though In 1984 I did have a Gizmo robe that I wore every night. But that was 25 years ago.

 

I do hold this romanticized idea of coming home from work, slipping into a burgundy robe with matching slippers, and to make sure I fit the whole stereotype, I would slick back my hair. I would keep a pipe in the pocket of my robe- not to smoke sweet smelling tobacco, but only to give a better “robes man” image to unexpected guests. A glass of wine would help the persona as well. Just poured from a cheap $8 bottle from Macaroni Grille- my unexpected guests from Connecticut wouldn’t know the difference by sight alone.

It would help if the first room my unexpected guests saw when they came over was a dim-lit “study” where a comprehensive library of classic English literature was on display, while also on my mahogany shelf were three immaculate model sailboats. And a bear skin rug. And something from Africa too, like a tribal shield. Not only am I sophisticated, but I am a world traveler.