2/20/2011

Mid winter break is here and my have we been getting to bed late, but it seems that it started off with a bang (Friday night: after midnight), then a bit earlier (Saturday night: 11:30 PM), then a wimper (Sunday night: 11:00 PM). What next? A bedtime during vacation? We will protest! We will march on the public squares of this country demanding our rights as members of this society to go to bed whenever we choose! At least Saturday night Nana was good enough to let us watch 3 Stooges until 11:00 PM in her room (the TV Room/Man Cave), so we did not wake her up at 4:00 AM Sunday morning to watch more 3 stooges, even though we could have!

Tonight we went to the Bat Mitzvah of our cousin Shlomit. It was really fun--they had all you can eat jelly bellys and all you can drink soda right on the kids' tables. Papa kept coming over and getting into the Dr. Pepper and the good flavor jelly beans, but luckily he didn't eat too many so we managed to mine out loads of good flavor ones for ourselves.

Warning: Nonsense to follow.

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Ho hum, just another day at school. Now leave me alone.

Aw nuts, why do I have to wear fancy duds to a party? I thought parties were about having fun, and these clothes are not about fun, unless you consider a white shirt to be the blank canvas of my dinner...hey, that gives me an idea...

Quit with the camera--me no want talk to you. Unless you come bearing treat. Chocolate you say? Let me think about it. Chocolate = treat. Me want picture.

Okay, chocolate is an acceptable currency. Wait a second--how much chocolate? A 1-pound bar? Okay, I'll pose for your soul snatching camera device, and the chocolate is all mine!

Just thinking about my chocolate, not thinking about bits of my everlasting soul going into the void that is the camera, just chocolate...mmmm, chocolate.

Nana has chocolate you say? Okay, we'll pose with her. Hold on--we didn't see the currency. You don't have any? You stole it from us--you will pay dearly for this betrayal. From now on, all your chocolate is belong to us. Ours, yummy, mmmmmmmm

Copyright 1997-2011: The Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

2/13/2011

Irony: Papa trying to tell me (Willie) that I have to wear jeans instead of just my sweat pants all the time. Am I missing something here?

James Bond movies are pretty much all the rage around here. We can say that we didn't like From Russia With Love, and the Roger Moore movies are not so good. Tonight we saw Sean Connery as the older James Bond in Never Say Never Again, and it was pretty bad, except the spear gun parts. And why couldn't the sharks have laser beams strapped to their heads? Last night was Pierce Brosnan--if that guy was any more wooden, he'd be full of termites. Any way, there were still plenty of explosions, car chases and annoying love scenes. Bleah. The extra super added bonus is we discovered that The 3 Stooges are on every Saturday night and early Sunday morning (4 AM). The next guest is going to have some company! Papa yells every time Shemp is on screen, but we like him. We like Curley better though.

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 Like the deer in the headlights, I've been caught in the lights of barbershop-bound transport.

 I asked papa to cut my hair, but he got cold feet. Probably because he can't reach the top of my head any more. Poor little guy.

Mug shot time: Face right.

Face forward. Oh ya--new glasses too. These are supposed to be the same indestructible ones that Teddy has, except within a week of getting them, I got popped in the face by Teddy, and, you guessed it, my glasses bent.

 Here papa, now I'm at your level, and I've got jeans on. At least he didn't insist I wear shorts all the time. And tattered sweat shirts.

2/6/2011

Today, like most people, we celebrated the national holiday of Super Bowl, which in all fairness should be renamed Super Bowls, on account of bowls of potato chips, tortilla chips, doritos, bugels, dips, ribs, chicken and all kinds of other stuff which we usually call yuck food, but somebody obviously likes although we don't know why. We enjoyed the commercials this year--a number of them were very funny, but some just didn't make any sense. The game was pretty good too. Some of us were rooting for Green Bay, one was actively rooting for the Steelers, and we (Willie and Teddy) were just rooting for more commercials. And the super bowl is also the gift that keeps on giving--we've got so many snacks left over that we'll be eating them for a good long time, we hope.

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 You want me to sit still for pictures? Again? What will you give me? Mmmm, chocolate.

 I want some of that action. gimme gimme gimme gimme.

 We had to decorate the house in honor of mommy's singing group's house concert. Here we see the true owner of the toaster and some of his priorities.

 Here we see some of the other priorities around this time of year--namely Super Bowl sunday with Mexican real sugar Coke! Mmmm, sugar.

 Now how could you possibly refuse such tempting beauty?

Most of us were rooting for Green Bay, but we did have Neal who is an actual old school Steelers fan complete with his terrible towel. But wait, where's Teddy?

 Ho ho, on this side of the room. Photobomb!

 Photobomb 2!!

Okay, the new TV is definitely bigger than the old one, but it doesn't fill the space completely. Mommy found some old Raiders fabric to cover up all the junk boxes that are hiding in the space behind the TV, and I (Willie) decided to 'decorate' the fabric.

 The first thing I did was I made a guide to the game for above the TV, but that really wasn't far enough.

 So I rededicated papas old football and baseball pennants with modern up to date teams rather than his old moldy teams.

You can see my prescience in my labeling of this pennant--I crowned Green Bay champions a full 3 hours BEFORE game time.

Oh dear, I missed a spot with that license plate frame, but in general I did a really good job at covering all the raider logos with steeler ones.

1/30/2011

Papa was on a working trip for a week and when he got home all heck broke loose in the downstairs bedroom. It seems he that because he happened to be in Oregon he had to go to Costco and get a new TV. He kept muttering something about having had his last TV for 23 years, but seeing as how he says he's 23, we think that he's just fixated on that number. Anyway, he got home and next thing we knew, he had emptied out the downstairs bedroom closet and he and Big Willie insulated it and rehinged one of the doors to make room for the TV. But then papa really went nuts and started putting up his Raiders and A's stuff around the room. You'd think he's making a Man-Cave or something. We're not sure how mommy is going to take to this behavior, but so far she's steered clear of the room due to football and testosterone.

We had a long weekend because there was no school friday due to the day between semesters or something like that. We went to get Willie's glasses replaced (a few too many basketballs and little brothers to the face) and visit the guys at City Produce. Mark (one of the the guys who runs City Produce) was trying to get Teddy to steal the family car to drive to middle school with next year, but Teddy didn't seem to be biting. The Mark launched in about stealing the family car to go for a spin and Papa said that his father had done that too, but he didn't have to because Uncle Michael used to give him the keys when he was 14 so he could buy Uncle Michael cigarettes and candy. This does not sound like any father we know--what's going on here? Has the world turned into crazy town?

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 I (Teddy) actually beat Mommy at Scrabble. I'm still not sure how I did it, but I don't think she was taking it easy on my either.

 I didn't even have to use QUIJIBO.

 Lets see, that's a 7 letter word on a triple word score for 5000 points. It's not April yet? Okay, ignore the last sentence.

 No helping me Willie. I can handle this game myself.

 I can also handle these nacho cheese doritos myself. Me and papa decided to split a bag--not in one sitting. We asked Willie if he wanted to go in on it, but he declined. He was busy thinking about Jalapeno potato chips and spicy stuff like that.

 No I wasn't--I was thinking about iPods. Mmmm, iPods. What do you mean you can't eat them? I want my money back.

 Now, here's something I can get behind--mommy made these great chocolate chocolate chip cookies that I improved with a layer of marshmallow fluff. Then I sandwiched it and put it in the microwave til the fluff puffed.

Mmmmm, huge oreo.

 SCARF, CHOMP, MUNCH, FOLD, SPINDLE, MUTILATE!

 That was very satisfying, but messy. Don't be surprised but I'm thinking about cutting my hair. I have 12 inches of hair which I think is enough for a donation to locks for love. I'll ask Aviv this weekend that the deal is, but don't be surprised if I have less hair in the coming weeks.

So papa keeps feeling like he is getting smaller, but really it's just me getting taller. Papa measure me today and I'm up to 5' 7 and 3/4" and it doesn't look like I'm stopping yet. It's fun to look down on the little guy and rub his furry head.

1/16/2011

Here it is mid-January already and we've already had our two BIG snowstorms of the season. Of course, the second one happened basically in the middle of the night, and was almost completely rained away the next day. And oh yeah, it was kind of outshined (outshone?) by the fact that pretty much every other place in the country, except Florida, had snow, most of it tons more than we did. Oh well -- today we could have frolicked outdoors in our shirtsleeves, if that's the kind of guys we were.

Not much going on. Everyone (read: the editor) is kind of tired so we'll be a bit short on details. Suffice it to say we're going strong and everyone is making progress in their own various ways. This morning we both helped make the waffles and it made them taste oh so much better. Hmm, is that worth actually doing the work? We'll have to think about that.

We have just finished reading Animal Farm. A good book, though not all that many funny parts. Not sure we like to think that much over our nighttime reading. What next mom -- Fire in the Lake? A Thousand Days? The Spirit of 76? The Guns of August?

The land puffers are on a quest to reach the holy grail, which is on top of Willie's bed. What do you call it when it's a human-chain but made of this kind of creature?

First we climb up from the floor...

Carefully cross this really funky bridge...

Watch out for that hidden camera, what is this, the thought police??

And finally, we reach our goal!

And all the birds celebrated --

we're all brothers under the fin (and feather), right? Hey, what's that guy across the table eating? Did we know that guy he's eating?

Actually, that may LOOK like a celebration, but it's really a protest; the last bird on the left, is the remnants of our dinner. The rest of the birdies are hoping it's not someone they knew.

We're honing our Magic: The Gathering skills,
 including how not to be a sore loser OR a sore winner.

And here are our portraits for the week:

     

1/2/2011

Happy New year everybody. Sorry we missed a week--the Xmas weekend was super busy with non-stop Chinese food and movies and guests. We've been playing much Magic, and doing little else. Today Katherine and Cynthia came over to visit. Cynthia came in from New York and Katherine from Pennsylvania. The funniest thing was that I (Willie) am now taller than Cynthia (and she used to babysit me when I was little--I taught her the word 'oscillate'). Papa made sushi while C, K and their mom, Marion looked on. When he was done it was sample time. The weirdest thing was that our guests last week had brought some salmon roe (that's baby salmon eggs--ewwwwwwww) and he put it on some of the sushi and they were EATING IT! EWWWWWWWW! People are weird sometimes. I mean, think about it--they LIKE eating some poor fish's young. How would you like it if a salmon knocked on the door and started eating Teddy? Okay, bad example because I wouldn't mind that too much. But you get the idea.

It's been a pretty good vacation, but now we are ready to go back to school and do all of our homework on time and eat spinach and cauliflower and salad and other things that are good for us. HEY--Who's writing this crap? PROTEST! We are not eating things that are good for us. Take tonight for instance--just after my bowl full of stoned wheat thins, I needed a Jalapeno potato chip chaser. So there!
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 Papa put a new scrabble game on his iPod, and guess who got hooked? Well, actually we both got hooked, but just as Teddy was about to beat the infernal machine, the battery died. Coincidence? We think not.

Now, what's a 7 letter word I can make out of QUIJIBO?

 Naughty baby George has been running around the house making believe he's still in the jungle and the world is his bathroom. Well, we've got news for you monkey, it's diapers for you!

 Okay, who messed up the diapering of the monkey?

 Ewwwwww, what's that smell?

 It's not coming from George.

 It's not me--point that camera somewhere else please.

Whoa--not there--can't we get a censor? Where did George's diaper go? Mom! George is naked on the kitchen counter. We've got eat off off of that counter. Ewwwwww.

Copyright 1997-2011, The Berman Boys, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.