If you ever want to know how to be a great parent, just watch tv, then do exactly the opposite of what they do. While watching Frozen: How it should have ended, I reflected on how terrible parents are in movies and television.
Top Ten Neglectful and Horrible Parents in Movies and Television

10. Lion King: Scar told the King, "I was first in line before the little hairball was born." So after telling his son all the things he needed to know to rule the kingdom, Mufasa decided to let Scar babysit his kid. Wow that was a bad decision. Scar told Simba about the elephant graveyard, and basically set up a plot to have the kid killed. At this point Mufasa and Simba had a little chat that should have started out with, "How did you find out about this place?" But instead, he turned it into a tender moment, and the next day he let Scar babysit again. Awesome job Mufasa!

9. Goonies: First off, someone should have taught these kids to not scream so much. I might be able to stand watching this movie if it wasn't for the screaming. And parents should talk to their kids about how they dress when they leave the house, yikes. So we know the main parents are somewhat neglectful, but then it seems every parent in the entire community just vanishes when they are needed. Is there a, come-be-bad-parents seminar that made them all miss the fact that their kids were in danger?

8. Phantom Menace: There are two sets of bad parents here and they are both connected to young Anakin. First off the actor's parents should never have let him take that role. There is a certain point where parents need to step in and say, "you're just not a good actor." It would save the entire world saying it over and over for the rest of his life. Second set of terrible parents, is the mother slave. Why would you let your son go with strangers who are incapable of repairing a vehicle on their own? Think about it. If you are going to send your kid with someone, pick someone who is fairly capable of taking care of themselves, and someone who doesn't gamble with things he doesn't own. Bad mommy award goes to you.

7. X-Men: When I send my kids to school I do a tour of the school. While I like the X-men and I love Xavier's school, I think the parents should have noticed something was up with their kids, and they should have looked into the school. I know I would think it was odd if my child couldn't, let's say, open his eyes without blowing a hole in the roof of our house...

6. Cypher Raige: If you don't know who this is, you are a better person for not knowing. If you do know who this is, I am sorry you wasted part of your life. I saw the movie for free and still felt like I was severely ripped off! If you are thinking to yourself, "I need to look up who that is." Don't. If you already did, and you're thinking, "Oh yeah, I saw an ad for that movie, maybe I should go see it." Double Don't!

5. Dora: Who let's their kid hang out with a monkey? Get her to a daycare where she can make real friends. Or put up a fence so she knows how to get home without a magic map. At least advise her to avoid Crocodile Lake from time to time. The list goes on and on.

4. Frozen: If my kid had special powers that were targeted by fear, I don't think I'd lock her away from the world and make her afraid of herself and her powers. These parents pretty much ruin the bulk of their children's lives and we're all supposed to be happy at the end when the daughters are finally able to be together. They could have been together from the start if the parents hadn't been terrible. At least they won't be around for the sequel.

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: They are teenagers, keep an eye on them. No teenager should be running around in the sewer and getting into fist fights in the night time while in disguise. And give them some vegetables from time to time, pizza is good, but probably want to limit it to once a week. Bad rat daddy.

2. Bedtime Stories: This single mom, with a principal certificate leaves her children in the care of her incompetent brother while she is across the country job searching. That I can understand. But the junk she feeds them before she leaves, yuck! What a terrible human being!

1. Harry Potter: I can forgive Harry's parents for dying, but the rest of the parents in this movie/book series are made up of the most useless people ever! Don't you care at all about your children? I think that if my child was attacked by a troll at school, I'd pull them out. I sometimes think the Dursleys were the only parents with any brains in the whole bunch. Lesson learned: Keep your kids away from magic.

Picture from http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/10/20/hail-satan-or-day-1-at-microsoft/

So today is trash day... fun day. I loaded the trash up in the golf cart, in the passenger seat, and drove it down to the end of the driveway.

For an added measure I put my arm around the trash bag and imagined what I might say if someone were to see me driving down the road with my trash bag date.

"Hey baby, I know some people think you're trashy, but I like you the way you are. I don't mind the smell either." Then I'd pat her on her back. "I know you're a bit round in the middle, but I actually like you that way, the bigger the better."

What I wouldn't tell my 'date' is that I'm actually using her. I know it would break her heart if I told her the truth. "I'm going to drop you off at this corner, then I never want to see you again."

So in case you've ever wanted to know what is going on in my mind... There you go.

Picture taken from: http://noarlungapackaging.com.au/trash-bags-77ltr-garbage-bags/

I remember the day my dad agreed to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System with Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt. To my best recollection it was about the same time the Super Nintendo was coming out and the price had finally dropped on the regular Nintendo. We loved that gaming system!

We played on there for hours. It was so funny watching my dad try to explain to us why Mario was breaking laws of physics, and you couldn't change direction while you were already jumping, and my mom using her index finger and middle finger to push the A and B buttons instead of her thumb, and my grandmother coming over and schooling all of us at Duck Hunt. That sweet old lady could sure blast the daylights out of those ducks!

I have so many great memories with Mario and Luigi. So I'm going to change things up and make a list of the things I LOVE about Super Mario Brothers. Well specifically Super Mario 1 and 3. Let's just all admit Mario 2 was pretty terrible.

1. It didn't have zombies. I know there is a huge zombie craze going on right now, but I'm not into it, and I'm glad Mario didn't need to mess up his boots jumping on their heads.

2. There was no blood whatsoever. I don't mind seeing a small red patch where some monster used to be, but seriously I don't need to see blood spatters and guts flying everywhere. I'm not sure what these modern videos are trying to do. I'm not saying we should go back to 8-bit graphics but I sometimes think things are a little much.

3. I was playing Plants vs. Zombies 2 with my son the other day and I was doing pretty well, until the zombies started getting all wild and crazy. They had chickens, dynamite, pickaxes, and all sorts of other crazy things. I also needed to start moving plants on sliders, which was new. Every creature did something different and you had to fight each one in a unique way, while they all came at the same time. It had way too many moving parts. I liked when turtles all walked at the same pace, and they all traveled in groups of three, and I could kill them all the same way.

4. I hate 3D. The more I write the older I feel, but seriously, who came up with the idea of having 3D movies? I can't stand them, and I don't like 3D video games either. When Halo came out I was the guy standing around with my gun barrel pointed up in the air spinning around while the other people ranked up their score by shooting me. I think the only time I wasn't last place was when I accidentally killed someone. I also want to take this time to apologize to anyone who was ever on my team in Halo because I probably shot you.

5. I love Mario's story. Bowser kidnapped the princess, let's go get her. It doesn't need to be complicated. I don't know anyone who actually likes the long complicated stories from video games. In most cases the skip button is used and we don't even see it. Let's keep it simple.

6. I also like that when you got good at Mario you could beat the entire game start to finish in about thirty minutes. That was pretty fun. It was still a challenge, and still fun, but didn't take up the whole day. When we had other games, we would sometimes go back just to see how quickly we could get through the game. Fun times!

7. Setup was easy. When we started we clicked 1 or 2 players, then we played. Simple. I didn't need a profile with my own avatar and preferences. My preference was Mario, but as a younger sibling I usually got Luigi.

What fun memories I had with those Italian Plumbers. The tough part is whether I want to share it with my kids. If I do, I'm sure they'd love it and I'd get sick of it, and I'd have to write a top ten list about all the things I hate about Mario...

Image from: http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.

I loved the Smurfs when I was a kid. I loved the characters, the blueness, the stories, even the music. (La La La La La La - La La La La La) So great!

So I thought I'd introduce them to my kids. (I guess I haven't learned yet that if there is something I enjoyed from my childhood, leave it alone) Well watching Smurf's now is an entirely different experience.

The voices alone make me want to punch them in the smurfing head, but it gets much worse from there.

1. The proportions are all off! Smurfs are not as tall as three apples, like it says in the introduction. They are more like as tall as one apple, they often hide behind things that are smaller than an apple. In fact they sometimes have proportionally small apples that they eat. Their homes are massive mushrooms. Have you ever seen a mushroom that smurfing big? I don't think so. Just pick a size and be consistent.

2. Gargamel and Azrael have got to be the dumbest criminals in the world, if they can't catch a bunch of blue bugs. And after they do catch them it seems they always keep them alive, waiting for them to escape. Seriously, get a brain! If you need them alive, smurf off their legs, or knock them unconscious, or take their hats and accessories so they can't tell each other apart.

3. What are we supposed to learn from the Smurfs? Blow up your friends, be a whinny know-it-all, only develop one characteristic, don't wear shirts? They pretty much ignore any good advice, and then their papa smurfs them out of trouble. I'm not sure if there is anything good we can take from these little blue devils.

4. Stereotyping is not very smurfy.

5. Smurfette has gotten a bad reputation over the years. I know she's the only girl in a village filled with shirtless blue midgets, and somehow a baby smurf comes, but it's a kid show so I'm not going to accuse her of being a flirt, or worse. I just think she's really really smurfing stupid. "Oh Papa, I'm just a dumb blonde, please come and help me get out of this problem I've created..." I think If I were Papa Smurf I'd let her get eaten by Azrael, but perhaps he likes the eye candy.

6. Magic is really smurfy in the world of the Smurfs. It seems that the only consistent thing is that Smurfs posses some kind of magic so that if Gargamel can ever get his act together, he could somehow use them to make gold. I know they're blue and they are small and all that, but if they really do have magic qualities, why it is that only Papa can actually use magic? Why doesn't he teach the others to make potions? Maybe if he gave them something to do, they wouldn't be out ignoring his warnings all the time.

7. Why are their hats all bent over? I wonder if Smurfs originally had funny shaped heads. If they just have normal heads, someone should teach them about baseball caps, or stocking caps. If not that, they could just embrace their baldness, that would be smurftastic.

8. I get holes in my socks much more than I smurf holes in the knees of my pants. I'm just saying that they should probably reconsider their pants. They probably wouldn't need Tailor Smurf to do so much work if they just made shoes separate from their pants. Smurfette has shoes, so somebody must know how to make them. It really can't be all that easy to get dressed either. I know I wouldn't want to wear smurf pants all the time.

9. I was talking to my smurf about the smurfing show the other smurf and we smurfed that it just needs to smurf rid of some of the smurf and it would be smurfier. I said, "I want to take that smurfing smurf and smurf him into the next century." But I might be a smurf extreme, and you might think I'm a smurf of a smurf for suggesting that.

Brainy would probably tell me, "Why didn't you make a list of ten? Papa Smurf always says, list should have a nice even number." But then I could be the lucky smurf that gets to either ignore the annoying fool called 'Brainy' or the other guy who throws him violently on his head end then tosses his book too.

So now that my kids are hooked on watching the Smurfs I get to relive my childhood fun, or a least ask myself, why the smurf I ever liked that show!

Picture from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.happ.smurfs

Before Frozen came out, we bought the sound track, and started playing it. It quickly became a family favorite that seemed to play all the time. The kids knew all the music, and so we decided to make a rare trip with the entire family. We took the kids to the movie theater, which is a long and funny story for another day.

Anyway, for the last several months we've seen dozens and dozens of variations on every Frozen song posted on Facebook and Youtube. Getting annoyed at Frozen music would be the normal reaction, but here is where I have a serious problem.

I have had the Frozen music in my head for weeks, it haunts me in my sleep, I find myself humming it all day long, but then when I log onto Facebook and see a new parody, or a concert by the cast, or Live at the Oscars, or live at a family talent show version of the song, I can't help but click on the the thing. It's a crazy addiction. My brain is wired so that when I see the thumbnail I click. I know you think those videos have gone viral, they haven't, I've just watched them a billion times myself. I think I need help... I just can't let it go.

First off, I want to apologize for the audio, but when I thought about fixing it, I asked myself, "Why would you fix it? It's supposed to be bad."

Anyway, I had a fun time putting together this silly video for you to watch and make fun of some of the rules, and exceptions to the rules in English! Enjoy!