Galvanizing

Middle's new fandom theory: Captain America is actually one of the Tolkien Eldar.

Youngest (looking at a picture): That is an excellent cement mixer.

Spouse: Bill and Ted's Ready-Mix Truck.

Me: Be aggregate to each other.

Me: Oh, good, we've got the right chocolate for proper chocolatey baked goods.

Spouse: Does anyone ever make baked bads?

Me: That was that TV show, Baking Bad. You know, the chemistry teacher who made cannabis edibles.

Dinner table conversation:

"What if the Frantics sketch 'Ti Kwan Leep' were about Jedi training?"

"Yoda as the sensei!"

"The wine of purity Ti Kwan Leep is."

"Ed Gruberman, fail to grasp Ti Kwan Leep you do."

"Head, boot to."

Youngest child is very into Frozen, and middle child, while claiming to dislike it, can be regularly caught singing "Let it Go" or "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?"

So after reading some reviews of the Macavoy & Radcliffe Frankenstein, I now have "Do you want to build a monster?" going through my head.

[while middle son is watching sundry Love Bug & sequels clips on Youtube]

Spouse: This person online is theorizing that Herbie is just Christine toned down for kids.

Castiron: Huh, no one appears to ever have written Herbie/Christine.

(later)

Spouse: You know, the timing actually works for KITT to be the offspring of Christine and Herbie.

[No, this is not what I'm requesting for Yuletide.]

"And now that they've been pushed into the ocean, Godzilla and MechaGodzilla will perform a synchronized swimming act!"

Middle Son was suitably amused/perplexed.

(This is Godzilla. This, in spite of appearances, is MechaGodzilla. Middle Son takes after me in renaming his toys after characters in his fandoms.)

1.   You know those decals that parents put in their car's rear window to brag about what school sport their kid plays?  (For readers unfamiliar with this bit of possibly-regional American culture, here's an example.)  Spouse keeps saying he wants to make and sell some with first names of famous dictators.  I now want a set that references Marvel's Avengers -- "Clint" with a bow and arrow, "Thor" with a hammer, "Tony" with a science-club-ish logo, etc.

2.  Tonight's household discussion began with The Cat in the Hat and ended with the idea of William Shatner, Time Lord.  (Yes, there was actually a logical progression.)  (If a Time Lord was a redshirt, would anyone notice that they were regenerating?)

3.  And on that note, is there a Doctor Who fic where Martha Jones says "I'm a doctor, not a TIme Lord"?

4.  Now that we have a PC working well enough to run The Master Genealogist, I've been doing a little bit of genealogy research online, and I've found the marriage licenses for my paternal grandmother's second and third marriages.  (#2 we knew about; #3 we didn't.)  It's very interesting which records list her as widowed (1940 census; marriage license #3 [when there was a license for husband #2 marrying someone else a couple years earlier) and which list her as divorced (marriage license #2, which was after the 1940 census).  (Divorced was almost certainly the correct status, though I've never been able to find any documentation; if the Los Angeles Superior Court's archive & records center is open to the public, some day I want to go there and see what I can find.)

5.  What's especially interesting: When I searched the census index for husband #1, my grandfather (or at least, the person who I get my surname from), who I know was actually alive in 1940 (and for many years afterwards), I did find a person with the right name, age, and birth state...who was an inmate in a federal prison.   While I can't confirm that it's the right guy, if he is, it would certainly explain why my dad and his siblings were told that their father died overseas in WWII when in fact he was alive.

6.  Sadly, everyone who'd know what the heck was really going on with my grandparents is long dead, and they probably wouldn't have been willing to tell the gory truth anyway.

7.  Genealogy is really fun.

Spouse's new idea for a horror movie: "The Island of Dr. Thoreau."

(Presumably it's full of people claiming to be going back to nature and the simple life while mooching off their friends.)

And then there's the Island of Yves Moreau, where strange and horrifying creatures do Bulgarian and Quebecois folk dances....

(Castiron arrives home from errand.)

Spouse: You haven't missed much; they haven't figured out they're brother and sister yet.

***

Castiron: Ewww. This opera is making me glad that my sons don't have a sister.

***

[Spouse comes back from putting short people to bed.]

Castiron: You've just missed a half hour of Wotan and Fricka arguing. There's one for dangerous jobs -- Marriage Counselor to the Gods.

Spouse: Why does Fricka have Madeline Kahn hair?

Castiron: Oh, like in Young Frankenstein? I think it's just a reflection. [waits for next closeup] No, it's a hair ornament.

Spouse: Why did Mel Brooks never do a takeoff on the Ring?

[later]

Castiron: Yeah, she's figured out that Wotan's been sleeping around a bit. His child support payments must be amazing.

Spouse: Eh, he's a god; he can get away with it. Hey, with the eyepatch, Wotan looks like that hangman that keeps appearing in Mel Brooks movies. [a minute later] It's good to be a god.

[later]

Spouse: Why haven't the Muppets done the Ring?

Castiron: Miss Piggy as Fricka; she wouldn't even have to act.

Spouse: I can't quite see Kermit as Wotan, though.

Castiron: Janice as Brunhilde?

Spouse: "Oh, like, wow, great battle!"

Castiron: Gonzo and Camilla as Siegmund and Sieglinde?

[later]

Castiron: Is it just me, or does Brunhilde look like Maggie Smith?

Spouse: She must not have been very busy.

Castiron: Yeah, she probably just decided that if she was going to sing in a Wagner opera, she'd better do it now before she doesn't have the stamina.

***

[We both take a break; Castiron goes outside for five minutes to take out the rest of the trash and comes back in to discover that the battle scene at the end of act II is half over.]

Castiron: That figures. Forty minutes of expressive singing, and then as soon as I leave the room, the plot happens.

***

Spouse: What are those, the guns on a battleship?

Castiron: Valkyrie seesaws?

***

We quit for the night shortly afterwards, so I have no comments on the magic fire-surrounded rock, which we'll presumably see tomorrow anyway.

I do have to say, though, that Anna Russell's analysis of The Ring of the Nibelungs is an excellent preparation for watching the real thing. Plot synopsis, major leitmotifs, and a recognition that this really is over-the-top stuff.