Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Movie Review: Game Of Your Life

Here I am again reviewing another movie for the the P&G Family Movie Night.  Game Of Your Life, which will air on Friday, December 2 on NBC at 8pm ET/7pm CT, was probably my favorite yet.  This movie dealt with an older cast of kids, freshman college age, and seemed a little more attuned to adults and kids alike.  I won't give away too much of the plot, but Zach Taylor, the lead actor in the movie played by Titus Makin Jr. wins a scholarship to a prestigious school for video gamers.  He is teamed up with three others to create the ultimate video game.  He ends up with 2 crazy brothers who are truly hilarious named Nathan and Donald played by Nathan Kress from ICarly and Adam Cagley.


These two guys are really great together and keep you laughing through the whole movie, even when things take a turn to the serious.  Sara Ramirez is the "producer" of the team, or the team leader.  She has some tough choices to make when Zach goes down the wrong path, and threatens the teams viability as a whole.  Lea Thompson (Back To The Future) plays one of the professors in the movie, and is also married to the dean of the school. Lea is great in her role of the wise mother type toward Zach. The resident bad guy is played by Tom Nowicki as Marcus Bentton.  When I say he is the bad guy, I'm not revealing anything you won't find out in the first or second act.  As always with the P&G family night they are trying to make a point.  In this movie I believe that the moral of the story was integrity.  I'll let you watch to find out why!  You can learn more about Game Of Your Life at http://www.familymovienight.com/ or head on over to Facebook http://www.facebook.com/familymovienight and visit the Family Movie Night fan page to find out more, and hear some buzz about the movie.  I hope you enjoy the show with the family.  I'll definitely be watching with the kids on Friday!  


Happy Movie!


Wacky Dad   


“I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Dad Central Consulting on behalf of P&G and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.”

Sunday, November 27, 2011

My Dishwasher Has A Soul!

Her Name is Bessie!
Alright I know this might sound weird, and maybe it is, I didn't get the title Wacky Dad for nothing.  I have been in a serious power struggle for the past few weeks with my dishwasher.  You need a little history about this dishwasher, so here goes.  As some of you know I am a contractor, and run jobs for Legacy Custom Remodeling in Rhode Island.  You have to forgive the plug, but this company has a lot of my blood, sweat, and tears in it, so I am shameless when it comes to promoting it!  Back to the story.  I was demolishing a kitchen, and a bunch of other rooms in a customer's house.  They told me to get rid of the dishwasher.  I asked why since it looked pretty new.  Apparently it didn't match the color scheme - they wanted stainless steel.  Being the scrounge that I am I saw dollar signs, and I opted to take it home and recycle it, instead of putting it in the dumpster.  It is a Kitchen-Aid, and is a pretty expensive model, and since mine was one step ahead of Fred Flintstone's dishwasher, I figured it would be a welcome upgrade.  I was right, I installed it, and it fired up and worked fine for a couple of years.  I guess around 2 years into it I had to replace some kind of over temp switch in it.  I diagnosed it online through Google, and bought the $30 switch at a local appliance repair shop.  I got another good year and a half out of it until recently my old girl started getting ornery again. I'd start a load, and come back 1/2 hour later and the clean light would be flashing - which it never does.  Again I Googled it and found a reset code online that would get the machine to run again, but much to my chagrin, I would get it to "wash" a load and then the damned thing would crap out again.  Something had to be wrong, and I was almost at the point where I thought I would have to break down and get a new one.  My wife even suggested calling an appliance repairman.  Of course she knows that this is the ultimate slap in the face to a Costantino male.  We would shoot a damned appliance guy if he showed up at the house.  If it's broken we can fix it, period!  Another day or so passed a light shined down from heaven on me and the back of a beat up old pickup truck.  It carried a precious cargo, a beat up Kitchen-Aid dishwasher!  Since I knew the guy who owned the truck, and knew that the dishwasher was destined for the scrapyard, I asked him if I could have it.  You know, everyone needs a parts dishwasher!  I took it home, and it sat for a couple of days.  I had temporarily gotten my dishwasher to work by whacking the shit out of the top panel, where I know the circuit board is installed. Eventually it crapped out again, so I woke up early the next morning and opened up the parts dishwasher and removed it's "brain" and installed it in mine.  I started it up and all systems seemed to be a go.  Unfortunately I had to get to work, so I couldn't stand next to it and listen to it run it's 90 minute cycle.  When I got home our babysitter told me that it finished it's cycle, and seemed to be working, but she seemed a little hesitant when she answered me.  In my gut I knew something was still going on with my old pal.  We ate dinner and I ran it through a cycle.  It seemed to run through fine, but when I opened it up and checked the dishes the stuff looked like it does when the dog licks them clean.  Sort of clean, but just a bit sketchy!  I tried again, and got the same results.  I came to the conclusion that I had some sort of water pressure problem - it looked like it was cleaning with dirty water.  Tonight after we got home I decided to take one more crack at the thing.  I took both dish racks out of Bessie (that is her name - yeah the dishwasher!) and started taking things apart.  I made it all the way into the bowels of the beast where I found some unnameable crap that was horrifying, but oddly beautiful to look at.  Beautiful because in my meat head heart, I knew I had found the problem!  Glass, plastic, sludge, some type of fabric, you name it, I found it!  With my head shoved up the rear end of Bessie, and my daughter Abby dutifully holding the flashlight at something close to steady, I cleaned the thing to perfection!  In a few minutes I put it back together and ran it through the long cycle with a load of dishes to really let the thing purge itself out.  It was the longest 90 minutes of my life!  I must have spent at least a half hour with my ear pasted to the door, listening to the cleaning sounds that were hidden from my view.  It sounded strong, powerful, like a young dishwasher!  The moment of truth finally came!!!  Ok wait for it....Shaaazaaam!  The dishes were all sparkling like friggin' crystal!  I mean this thing is cleaning like brand damned new!  It was like having an old friend cured from a disease.  I love that old dishwasher, and the more I work on it, and the more it performs for me, the more I like it.  I'm what I would call a born mechanic, I have worked on and fixed crap my whole life.  When you own a machine and put your heart and soul into it, they seem to take on a life of their own.  They become like family, sometimes they can be a pain in the ass, but you still love them for what they do and who they are.  I swear that old dishwasher of mine has a soul, and tonight she is doing her duty as finely as any fancy new dishwasher out there!  Nice job Bessie!

Love,

Wacky Dad