"This is going to be fantastic!"

I’m ashamed of my son. I shouldn’t be. I should be accepting, I know. But…here he started making this wonderful clay Brachiosaurus and a T Rex last week for another stop animation attempt, and was making backgrounds as well, and stopped. Y’know what he’s spending his time doing?

He knows nothing about IPods and he calls them shuffles. He films PBS’ Arthur in short bits as it’s airing, reframing things and adding in his own dialogue and sound effects, mostly to do with Martians and lots of screaming. And he intercuts these things with other stuff as well.

“Look at my shuffles!” he crows. “Aren’t they great?”

He just threw over one of our chairs. “Pick that chair up!” I call out, thinking he just tossed over the chair for no reason at all.

“Mom! I’m making a movie here! Be quiet! The chair’s supposed to fall over! Great, now I have to reshoot that!”

So I shush. And he throws the chair over again, with accompanying improvised dialogue.

“This is going to be fantastic!” he says, running over.