80's on the 18th......final episode

No I'm talking Star Wars....I'm talking final episode of your favorite TV show. Being that all the networks announced their fall lineups this past week it made me think back to some of the final episodes of TV shows I watched as a kid. Sometimes they have the benefit of knowing it's the last season going into so they actually have an ending and other times they meet their untimely doom by no being renewed in the off season and you are left hanging or worse yet cancelled mid season.

Growing up in the 80's the biggest final episode (still to this day) was that for M*A*S*H*
I loved watching this show. Now most of what I remember watching were the reruns but I still watched Klinger, Hawkeye, Hot Lips, Radar, Frank and the rest of the 4077th like clockwork. This show probably led me to watching China Beach years later too....well that and Platoon & Good Morning Vietnam came out the prior years which led to an interest in the Vietnam war.

What boy in the 80's didn' watch Knight Rider & A-Team too; though I can't remember how they finished.

A show that started in the 80's that I really enjoyed too was Quantum Leap and the way they finished the show was tricky to say the least. But I won't give it away.

Where this is leading to is that I never watched the final episode of my favorite TV show of all time that is LOST. I mentioned to my wife a while back that I have purposefully avoided watching it and actually refuse to. It was such an ingenious show with intertwined well thought out make you think plot lines for every character that I never wanted it to end. And I would rather have my own conclusions and beliefs to all the "whys" & "what ifs". It was crazy the amount of time every day people put into trying to decipher stills of every single scene to find clues and inferences that would give credence to their theory. Granted the internet age has helped accommodate all these LOSTIES with websites, blogs and communities dedicated to unraveling the show's symbolism and connecting all the flash backs & forwards.

I could go on and on about LOST but I won't but I am glad to see a lot of the actors from that show are venturing back into the acting world with new various new series. This fall there appears to be some interesting new shows that aren't just mindless reality junk coming to a TV set near you.

80's on the 8th......Mother's Day

It's funny seeing Mother's Day relived as an adult as my own kids do things for their mom that I did for my mom when I was their age. And a lot of times it's not necessarily even for mother's day but they'll make things in school and bring them home and tell her they made them for her. We still have a few creations floating around the house that I made and what made me think of it was my oldest two boys were comparing the clay faces they had made in art class. While they got good laughs out of making fun of each others and pretending to drop them; it gave my wife a heart attack because she truly cherishes their efforts. But for this past week they have had specific projects in school to do for their moms.

I remember as a kid making poems, pottery, cards and various other items sometimes with a packet of flower seeds to be planted for my mom. This week my youngest son brought home a customizable flower pot with interchangeable I Love You Mom sayings. My oldest wrote his mom a poem because that's what they are covering in school....it may or may not have made her cry I didn't see. And my middle son used his artistry to make a home made card. What my wife didn't realize was that our 2 yr old daughter had made her a card earlier this week but she makes them all the time with her markers and colors and they get hung on the fridge for a little while until they're replaced by the next one. Well Elli wanted to go get her card when she saw her brothers giving theirs to mom.

It's now become tradition that the kids and I plant their mom flowers for mother's day which these last few years have been spent on the soccer field. But I do get varying amounts of help which I'm sure I was the same way as a kid....I was more than willing to help until I found out how much work it actually was or that I got bored. Luckily with 4 kids I can usually get enough effort out of each of them to get the job done.

So thank you to all you mother's who love all us kids...big and small. Now if we could just get Father's Day moved to during the school year so we can get cool stuff done for us.

Testing the equipment

This is a follow up to my most recent reminiscing of the 80's. 
Last week I touched upon the the fact that a grade school boy in little league wearing a "cup" will instinctively test it to make sure it works. Here is my own son testing the acoustics of his equipment as proof to that theory; as generations of boys have tested the hypothesis and have consistently proved that us boys can't not cup check our ourselves repeatedly.



*****Sorry I removed the video*****

Unfortunately I did not get the video of him trying to get his "gear" off as my wife was laughing hysterically, crying and nearly peeing her pants (why women do this I don't know but that's another theory for another day).