6/17/2012

Happy Fat Taters' day. It's coming up on the last week of the school year, and we're super happy about that. Papa keeps muttering something about losing his free daycare, but don't know what he's talking about.

Papa's been making sauerkraut, kimchi, and yogurt kind of constantly these days. There are so many live bacteria living around here we should get the house checked out as a biohazard. So far he's not making us eat any of that stuff, but mommy ate the yogurt, and later had a slice of hot pizza, WITHOUT A LACTAID pill, and she DIDN'T GET SICK! Live bacteria are friends, and food!

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 I've doing more food prep lately. I've been helping with pancakes on Saturdays and waffles on Sundays.

I've also been making my own "rice bowls" with rice, chicken, peas and goop. Yummy.

We're back to playing "Places and Pigs" but we're starting to cool on this game.

Papa's dirty little secret has been that he has been collecting auto parts in his office since early April. Honda boxes everywhere--what could they all be for?

Wait a second, that's an Accord 'honk honk' horn, that appears to be installed backward someplace. What's up with that?

And that looks like a snarly open maw covered with mesh. Hmmm.

New car! It's a 2012 Honda Fit, and its name is Celeste.

She's kind of self conscious of her ample behind, so kindly don't mention it.

Papa's been putting those parts from the boxes on her all week. He replaced her 'meep meep' horn with the Accord 'honk honk' horn. Then put on the splash guards, screen in the front bumper, rear bumper applique, interior rear light with an on/off switch, and fancy pants pre-distressed craiglist wheels (which he had to have some professionals install).

Then papa forced us to help him wax Celeste, and he said we have to do it again in 30 days. Sounds like illegal child labor to us.

Snarly.

Poor Babar isn't too happy about the new kid on the block. But he's still insured and living in front of the house. But where will Celeste live, you may ask?

 Why in the spacious garage of course. If you park her just right, everybody on one side of the car can exit. If you park her wrong, you could tear off a mirror, or nobody could get out. Always an adventure.

 Those of you on the passenger side are not so lucky. We hope the front seat passenger likes straddling the stick shifter as they struggle to free themselves--bwah hah hah hah--evil laugh.

Look at all that wide open space! Wow. Just wow. In order to get that much space, papa had to move the freezer, narrow one shelf on this side by 2 inches, and narrow all the shelves on the other side by 10 inches. He also had to replace the shelves you can't see in front of the car with ones that are 14 inches shallower, so you can actually walk in front of the car to the laundry sink--we bet you didn't know we had one of those--or down the driver's side into the car. Pretty swish.

Copyright 1997-2012, The Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

5/6/2012

Remember us? You should because we are now officially starting our 15th year on the web!

It's only been since March 18th. There's so many old saws we could use here:
• Time flies when you're having fun.
• No news is good news.
• We're a bunch of lazy bums.
• We've been really busy.

Or maybe all of the above.

Our most recent Big Project (coming after Stupidopolis, the James Club movie series) is Places And Pigs. If you know Dungeons and Dragons, you'd love Places and Pigs -- because you love us and you think we're so clever, so you'd feel the same about our game.

That's what we do in our SPARE time. In the other moments, we do lots of homework, sometimes chores, sometimes tournaments and track meets, sometimes try new foods (ask us about Hing Loon).

I (Willie) turned 15 but I still don't get no respect. My mother turned, well, older than that, and I feel better because she don't get no respect either.

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Witness the prize-winning chef of April 2012 -- carrying on the family tradition of Pancakes! [Ed. note: Yesssss!]

Did you know that you can put different things in pancakes besides just... pan? For example, little pieces of apple. Yes, Willie -- things other than chocolate chips! No, Willie, that's not blasphemy, it's experimentation. I also tried pumpkin pancakes (not bad) and vanilla. I think I'm sticking mostly with apple for now.

I'm a famous chef too -- I make my own matza pizza. Or is that matzah pizzah? Either way, it's good. And it's Not Just For Passover any more!

Don't panic: it was just "Fake An Injury Day" at my school. Thank goodness for Ace bandages -- instant costume, and it made it easy to look like I was actually participating in Spirit Week for once.

Blueberries (fresh from some impoverished land to the way south), pancakes (fresh from the griddle), and Twizzlers (fresh from the factory, or maybe not so fresh because they were from Grocery Outlet, or Gross Out for short).

All part of your Balanced Nutritious Birthday Breakfast of Champions!! That's right -- no way would I get away with this any other day of the year. (Usually the blueberries are frozen, but we likes them fresh, and wriggling--don't we Precious)

Don't look at ME -- I didn't take his blueberries. I'm perfectly happy with just the pancakes, thankyouverymuch. Mmmwmpphhhh grmmmph... that means Happy Birthday Willie, please pass the pancakes.

 My first magen david -- thank you, G&G!

I've been waiting for this all year...er, all day.  [Ed. note: after approximately 10 years of making this legendary mousse, we're finally getting the hang of it.]

 If I were a praying man, this would be the time...

"Quinquagenarian with Lilacs."

It's been a riotous few weeks of birthdays, concerts, visitors, and lots and lots of sugar, but some people just don't know when to stop partying.

Leave it to the Georges to keep the party going. Don't know about that raccoon--looks like he's down for the count.



Copyright 1997-2012, The Berman Boys, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

Baby Willie sez: Me want more pictures, or me gonna cry.

3/18/2012

We've been doing most of the same stuff lately, except for Willie who joined the track team at school. It means he has to stay after school for two hours every day running and stretching and running some more. He somehow managed to get himself on the distance running squad, though the longest distance he's ever run is from his bedroom to the breakfast bar when the turkey bacon was ready. Now, he's running about two miles a day, and not even complaining about it. We'll see how he feels when he has a mountain of homework to do and doesn't get home til 6. Late nights, here we come.

Teddy has had some pre bar mitzvah minyans where he has had to think about the nature of G-d and wrap tefillin (hebrew for torture device) and put on a tallis.

Papa was so excited last night because Teddy is nearing the end of a sinus infection, and while papa was administering the Neti pot, Teddy blew out the biggest, longest, thickest, grossest tube o' goo from his nose that papa's ever seen. He wanted to take a movie of the neti session this morning, but Teddy put his foot down and said absolutely not. You can thank Teddy personally.

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 Welcome to the game. Now submit all your money and weapons and you may begin.

 No one said that going thru the land of exploding wigs of death was easy. Willie rolled a 32 and a quarter which means he has been blown to smithereens.

 Smithereens I say.

Egad, now I don't have anybody to play with. Undo that last turn.

This is a map of the landscape of a new game we're working on based on Dungeon's and Dragons. Basically you run around the map and do all of the situations that we've thrown at you and if you survive you add more futures to the game and play again. The only rule is to act like a fool and pretend all the cards are the same (quote from Polka Bats and Octopus Slacks). Click the map to see the hilarious details like the eye of Sowron and Land of the Spider Pigs.

 Hamburger night and somebody is taking pictures of us eating again. Grrrrrr.

Double grrrrr. Leave me in peace so I can digest this cow.

 Pancake saturday, and look who's learning to make batter. I say is assault and batter-y.

Waffle time! Can I have more turkey bacon because I let you take a picture of me with a waffle?

Egad, they've got me wrapped up in leather straps. Luckily I don't have to do this for real for another 14 months. Plenty of time learn, but whoever had these before me had a huge head--this thing keeps dropping down over my face. Make it stop.

Copyright 1997-2012, The Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

2/26/2012

Sorry it's been such a long hiatus. We've been here doing our regular stuff, and doing an extra good job of hiding from the camera. We had mid-winter break this past week which was okay--we didn't do much--watched a bunch of movies and went to the store for potato chips. Papa reminded us that money can be exchanged for goods and services, and we think potato chips are the greatest good of all. You can try to argue with us, but you'll lose. For behold, the terrible crunch of the potato chip defeats all.

We've been steadily expanding Stupidopolis (Trademark, patent pending) and the game is getting more and more complicated. Some day we'll have to actually write down all the directions and get rich off the proceeds.

Happy leap year. Don't forget to set your calendars one day ahead.

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 Right after Nana's visit the snow started falling and it didn't stop for a couple of days. What this meant for us was that we had a 2 hour school week. Before we get too happy about it though, we face the prospect of an extension onto the end of the school year to make up for the missed days. Foul! Snow days should not need to be made up! [Ed. note: Seattle Public Schools owes us for the missed child care they should have provided.]

At most, we got about 9 inches, and it basically stayed around due to the cold temps. And that, ladies and germs, was our winter.

 The snow flurried a little, that's how it managed to cover the BBQ which is under cover from the balcony above. It didn't stop papa from BBQing anyway. Hooray!

 Leading up to Valentime's day a little birdie whispered into our ear that it would good politics to send out strategic valentimes, so construct and send we did. If we missed you, tough beans. As papa likes to annoyingly sing, "just be thankful, for what you've got..."

 Ah gluestick--no horses died in the making of this valentime.

 As was said above, a quest was embarked upon in search of the wild potato chip. We stalked our prey in the land of Safeway. Spying it, we cornered it, purchased it, bagged it and ate the contents of its sleek body. Yummy.

New high score on papa's airplane landing game! Now maybe I'll be qualified to become and air traffic controller after they go out on strike again and get fired. I'm pretty good at getting planes out of the air, I average only one crash for every 57 landings, but that includes jets, private planes and helicopters (which account for most of the collisions). I figure nobody really cares about the helicopter crashes so FAA, here I come!

Copyright 1997-2012, The Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

1/15/2012

Snow! Finally. Well, we really only got about an inch and a half, but in our neighborhood that should mean that we'll have snow around for the next month or so. It can't be very bad because papa took the car our this afternoon to go to a wedding at the shul.

Nana came to visit and we had loads of cookies and other treats for people who came by for visiting and dinners and stuff. Thankfully, we got to sample them too, early and often.

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 I could learn a thing or two from nana, like now I can be a two fisted cookie eater. COOKIE!

Okay, back to our calm outward appearance as we plan for world domination. Step one, control the banks. Step two, control the oil companies. Step three, return our library books on time. Step four, eat celebratory cookies. What has any of this got to do with two guys reading books on a couch? Slow news week, obviously.

Copyright 1997-2012, The Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.


Scroll down to the bottom for pages from the site's beginning in 1997.

1/1/2012

Happy Chanukah. Happy Solstice. Happy New Year everybody. Rejoice -- the days are getting longer. Good thing, too -- since it's fully dark at, like, 4:30 pm, our parents think it must be time for us to go to bed. (To that we say, Feh! It's winter break -- clocks are irrelevant.)

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One of the fun things we did during Grandma and Grandpa's visit was make cream puffs and decorate cookies... er, no, TWO of the fun things.... and here are two loyal members of the Quality Qontrol Qommittee, reporting for duty.

Unlike how our Mom learned how to make cookies in Home Ec ("first you take the pre-made dough..."), WE make our dough from scratch. Er -- scratch that; Grandma makes the dough from scratch, and we step in for the fun parts.

Sponge... scalpel... clamp...

Any time you're ready, cookies...

Artists at work, carrying on the family tradition.

We're a mostly cooperative team, sharing colors and so forth, though our specific styles are still evident.

Spécialités de la maison. Try to guess...

...which artiste....

...came up with which chef d'oeuvre. (And who put their cookies on top of a comic book?!?)

Ah, the festival of lights... and books... and (trying not to) laugh(s).

 
Our neighbors bring us special December cookies every year (yum!). This year we invited them to come decorate with us. We don't have pix of their cookies, but trust us, these girls know how to wield colors!

A guy can get self-conscious after a while.

Time to relax after a harrowing day of play. (Thanks Esther for letting us share your couch.)

Sixth night already?? We need more latkes.

I wonder what would have happened if the Maccabees had all insisted on lighting their own chanukiot...

...seems like the holiday would be a bit shorter.

Happy 2012 everyone! Can we go to sleep now? How do you turn down the volume on all those fireworks?

I know I won't sleep a wink -- but I just couldn't resist!

What are you staring at -- doesn't everyone get a celebratory direct-injected wallop of whipped cream on New Year's Day morning?

Copyright 1997 - 2012, The Berman Brothers-Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.