Here’s a great opportunity to spend some quality time with the kids, perhaps learn something about how computers are built and save a few bucks in the process. You and your kid can design and custom build pc just for gaming for a fraction of what they cost in the stores. They include plain English (gosh, I hope so!) instructions with lots of illustrations and full manufacturer warranties.

You can also get upgrade kits to increase your ram or replace your CPU. All you need is a screwdriver and you can save $100’s. The basic kit comes with a 2.2G Core 2 Duo, 2G SDRAM and a graphics card option - that’s a pretty good start and it’s definitely a kit with room to grow.

   

From Baltimore’s greatest director who created new classics like Hairspray and Pink Flamingos comes a different sorts of Christmas compilation.

A John Waters Christmas playlist;

1. Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer - Tiny Tim
2. Christmas Time Is Coming (A Street Carol) - Stormy Weather
3. Happy Birthday Jesus - Little Cindy
4. Here Comes Fatty Claus - Rudolf & The Gang
5. Little Mary Christmas - Roger Christian
6. I Wish You A Merry Christmas - Big Dee Irwin & Little Eva
7. Santa Don’t Pass By Me - Jimmy Donley
8. Sleigh Ride - Alvin & The Chipmunks
9. Sleigh Bells, Reindeer And Snow
10. First Snow - The Cocktails
11. Santa Claus Is A Black Man - AKIM & The Teddy Vann Production Company

Follow the NPR link below to listen to his commentary about putting this compilation together.

Sited Links:
Amazon.Com | A John Waters Christmas

Related Links:
National Public Radio (NPR) | Catchy And Rare; A John Waters Christmas
IMDB.Com | John Waters

   

You Are My Flower by Elizabeth Mitchell is as warm and engaging as any of Ida’s more “mature” works — a collection of traditional folk and country tunes culled from the songbooks of the Carter Family, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Elizabeth Cotten and others. This sweet, lovely set is family-friendly in the truest sense, appealing to young listeners while never so cutesy or cloying that adult ears will beg for mercy.

(Via PokeyPup.Com)

   

Yep, that’s right. Here’s the deal. Answer three questions correctly first, win a prize - it’s that easy. In true game show style, I have randomly chosen from the Parent Theme - the category of Children’s Stories. So all the questions fit in the said category.

The Rules: I have a bunch of unopened, never been played before video games that I could sell on Ebay or Craigslist but I am going to try a give-away. Unfortunately, this give-away only works if you are in the continental United States - sorry Alaska, Hawaii and the rest of the planet, nothing personal, I’m just not interested in paying too much for the postal.

Let’s see how it goes. I am going to ask three questions and the first one to get them right wins the prize. I will post the top three winners (correct answers + quickest time) after the contest is over — assuming there are three.

The Prize: The Game Titles include: Ultimate Spiderman, Tony Hawk Underground 2, Wolfenstein, Doom III and Call of Duty. This is a friendly give-away and I will not field any questions about the prizes beyond this information. If you win but do not find a game that you like or can play, I will move down the list to the next person who got the questions correct. Just to be clear, the Winner will get to choose one video game and it will be sent it via U.S.P.S.

Best of luck.

The Questions:

1. What is Tom Thumbs wife’s name?
2. What did Theodore Geisel feel his greatest work was?
3. What Children’s book inspired a video, a ballet and an opera?

You may want to add me to you RSS feed, because if this giveaway is successful (I imagine it will be), I will be doing random giveaways in the coming months.

Good Luck.

   

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A rotoscoped animation using unscripted footage from a hike in the woods with my 8 year old brother Julian. I rotoscoped it by hand drawing every frame, using a wacom tablet, even the titles.” ~ Ben Arthur, Filmmaker and Animator

   

I have been compiling what I hoped to be my own litmus test of sites that give fair and even-handed descriptions of movie content for different categories like violence, profanity, crudeness, et al. Even though, I feel that I don’t need some site to push their moral assessments of what is right and wrong for my children to watch - I kind of feel it is probably a good idea for me to consider what is out there and then judge. My pre-judgment is that these sites are biased in some way — either pro-entertainment industry or anti-entertainment industry — in some vague or not so vague way — even though most claim not to be. I wanted to share with you a couple of the sites while trying to figure out which ones align with the views and opinions my wife and I share. We (me especially) are starting to realize that even though we consider ourselves media-savvy we don’t necessarily know everything there is to know what’s media appropriate for our kids.

Case and point: we recently rented some new animated kids movie (I have daddy-brain right now and can’t remember), we were very excited to establish a family “movie night” complete with homemade caramel popcorn and other consessions. I was sure to make sure the surround sound system was on and balanced (so as not to blow our hair off when a character went “boom”). Well things didn’t go so well. My oldest one lasted about two minutes into the film. Evidently, dark moody scenes of animated mice creeping around the sewers scare the cheese-and-crackers out of him. Thank goodness for Kipper, that’s all I can say. That British puppy equals pure sunshine for my son.

When studying the different entities out there that give good unbiased (even biased, who knows, maybe I agree with their biases) reviews I was looking at one thing when visiting their site - who are they and why they think they have the authority to give fair and honest criticism and more important what are their affiliations with the media they’re judging. I was able to quickly parse the sites into two main groups - those who are sponsored (mostly non-profit) and the non-sponsored or for profit sites that tend to require a fee or membership. The sites that bill themselves as non-profit break into two factions; those that are sponsored by the media and those that aren’t, that may seem “plain and simple” but things get muddy when the idea of “media” becomes dubious or otherwise unclear (as you will see).

CommonSenseMedia.Com has a relatively deep database of reviews on everything from movies and television shows to DVDs and video games. They fall in the category of non-profit entity that are definitely linked to the media industry (there Board of Directors include Marcy Carsey of Carsey-Werner Productions and Mike Tollin of Tollin/Robbins Productions but also has Gary Knell, CEO Sesame Workshop and Ramon C. Cortines, Former Superintendent of Schools - New York, San Francisco on its roster). Although they’re tied to the media industry it is clear to me that both in theory and in practice they do their best to offer information that ultimately allows the parent to decide what is best for them and their children.

I was pretty surprised to see that the Motion Picture Association of America (M.P.A.A.) actually has some bare-bones resources and links for parents. I must admit, they were not my first choice, closer to my last. You will find a small section geared at educating parents about their rating system and providing links to other like minded sites (CommonSenseMedia.Com is one of them). One of the few services it offers is a Weekly Red Carpet Review which is little more than an outline of their general ratings for new releases. I imagine this is good for those of us who are comfortable enough with how the system works and enjoys the one-sheet layout of their weekly service.

The one site the M.P.A.A. recommends is PauseParentPlay.Org which feels more like a well packaged (albeit self-referential) portal. It is laughable. Its partners are humongous industry leaders like (more…)

   

CBS’s new reality show is neither “new” nor is it based on “reality” - discuss.

Now I can say with all certainty that CBS has a new hit with this concept, and I say that not because it is a great concept or because it has exceptional style or production value but because it is getting a boat-load of press. “Kid Nation” is a reality-based program coming out in which a bunch of kids are plopped in a fake old west town (called Bonanza) and are expected to form there own real-life SimCity - a functioning working society complete run by them.

40 children, 40 days, no adults eager to prove they can build a better world for tomorrow in the new reality series KID NATION. Settling in Bonanza City, New Mexico, once a thriving mining town but now deserted, these kids, ages 8 to 15 and from all walks of life, will build their own new world, pioneer-style. They will confront grown-up issues while coping with the classic childhood emotions of homesickness, peer pressure and the urge to break every rule. Episodes end with a town meeting in which the kids award one child a gold star worth $20,000, all leading to the grand finale, with an unimaginable test, the biggest awards and a special surprise for every child.” ~ CBS.com, Kid Nation Promo

Now as a media-savvy parent I can tell you a couple of somewhat obvious things after watching this promo; 1.) CBS is totally loving all the press, good, bad or otherwise, 2.) these kids are not *alone*, they are surrounded by producers and crew that are shepherding their every move, 3.) they are being fed very particular lines at key moments (I mean really, when have you ever heard an eight year old boy pontificating about working together?). The media-circus is focused on the implication of breaking well known labor laws and putting children in harmful, exhausting, strenuous or otherwise stressful situations. I am not opposed to these efforts by the news media in any way but if you want to see how children *really* act when there isn’t even the hint of adult supervision present see the 2002 BBC program, “Boys Alone” or the follow up program, “Girls Alone” directed by Kim Flitcroft for the British television series “Cutting Edge.”

These verite-style documentaries are absolutely frightening. They bring the images from “Lord of the Flies” to life. My wife and I saw this film years ago and were riveted to the natural dramas that unfolded. The first things the boys did once they realized there was absolutely no consequence to their actions (no reprimands, no punishments) were they absolutely destroyed the house. They ripped the banisters off the stairs, ripped pillows, over-turned mattresses.

What happens when you put ten eleven-year old boys in a house on their own for a week? Francine Stock talks to the novelist Nigel Williams about a television documentary, Boys Alone, which is aiming to create a modern day Lord Of The Flies.” ~ BBCRadio.Com, Promo By-line of “Boys Alone”

Now it needs to be said that these were introduced at the beginning of the program as “regular” kids from the surrounding suburbs. When it came to dinner-time it was like the dinner scene from “Elf” where Will Farrell’s character made spaghetti covered with chocolate sauce topped with marshmallows. And the swearing…. ‘nuf said. This program makes it painfully clear what children would be like in a completely unconstrained environment and it seems to be very different from what CBS is trying to sell us.

Related Links:
Kid Nation on CBS
TV Week Press Coverage of Kid’s Nation Production Labor Issues
Cutting Edge | “Boys Alone” on IMDB
BBC Radio | Front Row