steveprattfamily.com The adventures of the Pratt family in Vancouver - Steve, Lisa, Cedar, Dawson, and Sandy (the dog).

So Cedar turned 6 yesterday.  6!!!  She got loads of great presents, including a watch, a kids camera, and a “Canadian Girl’ doll that she has been desperately craving for close to a year.

Another perk of birthdays in our household is that Sandy always helps to unwrap the gifts…

But the highlight of the big day was her birthday party.  She invited 14 girls, all 5 or 6 years old, to our house for a “Ruby The Red Fairy” party.  For those not in the know, this is a reference to the Rainbow Fairy collection of books about a vast variety of fairies who are constantly being plagued by the dastardly efforts of Jack Frost and his army of half-witted Goblins.

So our house was quickly filled up with Fairies of all colours of the rainbow.  After the girls arrived, Lisa revealed a secret to me - that I had to pretend to be Jack Frost for the duration of the party and, at some point, steal all the presents the kids had brought for Cedar.

It was all VERY funny.  I wrote a note that was quickly discovered - it revealed Jack Frost’s plans to steal all the presents and sent the fairies into a hyperactive panic.  I sent several more notes during the next hour, each one increasingly odd, but getting the girls more and more riled up.

They went over the top when Jack Frost actually ’stole’ all the presents while they were out in the yard playing, although they quickly found them hidden on our front porch.  They TOTALLY lost it when the presents went missing a second time and it took almost half an hour to find them.

However, karma is a weird thing. After all the panic I caused, I got paid back big time.

After we recovered the presents for a second time, we hid them under a blanket so that Jack Frost wouldn’t be able to find them again.   When the kids were in the kitchen eating cake, I moved the presents yet again and hid MYSELF under the blanket.  The kids came roaring in after cake, extremely pumped for the present opening.  One of the kids ripped off the blanket, at which point I popped out and screamed that I was Jack Frost and scared the living hell out of them.

I hopped up in triumph, surveyed the screaming and mad psychosis I’d created, and enjoyed more than a small bit of satisfaction at a job well done.

And then… WHAMMO!

One of the girls ran up and HAMMERED me in the nuts.  HAMMERED.

Fairies win again.  Poor Jack Frost, who hobbled off to find an ice pack.

Posted under Cedar News, Humour

Cedar has recently become obsessed with money.  I think it’s because she’s wanted several toys, including something called a Canadian girl that costs about $100 (!), and we’ve told her to wait until her birthday and Christmas.  She’s become frustrated that she can’t get what she wants exaclty when she wants it and has decided that getting lots and lots of money is the solution to all her problems.  (Scary how early that gets ingrained…).

Cedar and I began bargaining - she wanted me to give her $100 for doing nothing.  I told her that you don’t just get money for free because you want it - you have to earn it.  If she wants money, she has to do something of value, like chores.  I also told her that no matter how many chores she did, I would never give her $100.  Maybe $1.

After about 15 minutes of hard-core negotiations, we came up with a win-win solution yesterday.  Cedar rubbed my feet for 5 minutes and I gave her 65 cents.

The Maggot is infuriated. (She claims its horrible that I paid our daughter money to rub my feet, but I think she’s just jealous that she didn’t think of it first.)

Posted under Cedar News, Children, Humour

This is what happened when Dawson went upstairs to play with Cedar in her bedroom…

Posted under Children, Humour

Posted under Cedar News, Humour

It’s true.  I discovered the sad, ugly truth this weekend.  The Maggot has been playing games behind my back… with several of my closest friends.  And all of it has been cloaked under a veil of secrecy, designed to keep me in the dark.

This is the man at the epicenter of it all: Clax Vandle (not his real name - more on that in a minute…)

I USED to consider him one of my best friends.  You see, I was under the impression that Clax hated and despised Facebook and had decided to never join.  However, due to several factors (including alcohol), it came to my attention this weekend that he is indeed on Facebook using the pseudonym of ‘Clax Vandle’ in place of his real name (which will now remain anonymous).

THEN I found out that he has been ‘friends’ with my wife on Facebook for almost a month… as ‘Clax.’

And THEN I found out that the two of them have been playing Scrabulous games online since he joined!!!  (AND my wife only invited me to play Scrabulous last week!!!)  THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!

And THEN I discovered that my wife has been playing Scrabulous with several of my other friends, none of whom have ever invited ME to play Scrabulous.  THIS IS A DOUBLE OUTRAGE!

You think you know someone and then they stab you in the heart with a virtual scrabble tile.  My wife is a Facebook floozie.  A two-timing social networking tart.

And I am a cuckold.  A Scrabulous-ed, Facebooked, friendless cuckold.

Posted under Family, Humour, Rant, Web/Tech

There is nothing like seeing artists at the top of their game.  I think I’ve been spoiled by working at an indie music network, where I almost take amazing performances and compositions for granted because I’m around it so much.  But this weekend, I was in genuine awe after a couple of stellar comedy showcases in Vancouver.

Promoter Will Davis, who seems to bring just about every cutting edge comic out there to Vancouver, put on a weekend featuring Patton Oswalt (probably the best working standup out there), Janeane Garofalo, Greg Berhendt, and… TIM AND ERIC!

Being a HUGE fan of both Patton and Tim and Eric, this was about the best comedy lineup I could dream of and they didn’t disappoint.  Fellow comedy freak, Jordan Kawchuk, came to both shows, too, and we were blown away.  Patton did a full set at the Vogue theatre on Friday night, and headlined the Comedy Death Ray show on Saturday at the Commodore (Comedy Death Ray is basically just a standup showcase with phenomenal ‘alternative’ comedians on the bill).  Both nights, he just killed. 

Patton put out a new comedy album last fall, Werewolves and Lollipops, and having bought it and listened to it several times, I was fully prepared to hear all the bits that I already knew, sensing that my enjoyment of the show would not be the surprise of new material, but in seeing the live performance.  In his hour long set, he did ONE JOKE from the album.  Everything else was totally new, including great material about his experience at the Oscars last weekend. In total control, the audience hanging on his every word, he was simply amazing. 

Second to last on the Comedy Death Ray bill was my personal obsession, Tim and Eric, doing their first live show in Vancouver.  I LOVE how original they are.  The entire 20-minute bit was trying to persuade everyone how great Papa John’s pizza was.  It was in a similar vein to their brilliant fake marketing campaign for Shrek 3 this past summer - the conceit is that they do a lot of free work for companies that they love.  It began with hurling slices of pizza into the crowd, singing a Papa John’s song, and evolved into a brilliant bit about how the biggest perk of switching to Papa John’s was the availability of a Papa John’s email address (steve@papajohns.com) that, for an extra premium, included pizza-themed 3D emoticons.  There were lots of people, like Jordan and I, who were killing ourselves laughing, and there were chunks of people, like my wife and friend Clay, who didn’t get it and honestly couldn’t understand why we thought it was funny.  After the show, they seemed genuinely interested in trying discover why we thought it was hilarious because they couldn’t comprehend it. And when you try to explain why something is funny, it never, ever works.  So Tim and Eric continue to polarize with their utterly unique comedy style - I love it!

The best part of the weekend for a giant comedy nerd like me was getting to actually meet most of them.  Jordan and I had a really interesting talk with Tim & Eric, who are both great guys (although we probably came across as creepy, obsessive stalkers).  And we also got to talk fairly briefly with Patton and Janeane (who knows more about Canadian politics than most Canadians - she even knew Bill C-10, the attempt to allow the government to withdraw funding from ‘offensive productions’.)

All in all, a helluva weekend that leaves me completely inspired and
in awe of the unique and brilliant minds working in comedy today.

Posted under Humour

For those who haven’t heard about it, "2 Girls, 1 Cup" is the latest internet video sensation.  There are loads of videos with millions of views on YouTube featuring people watching a horrifically graphic video involving 2 women, 1 cup, and bodily fluids.  The funny thing, most people have probably never seen the ACTUAL video - the phenomenon and entertainment factor is in witnessing the reactions of others watching it.  People screaming, dry-heaving, running away - they are genuine reactions of disgust, shock, and amazement.  Here’s a compilation sampler:

WELL, Jordan at CBC Radio 3 has created a tribute called "2 Girls, 1 Bed" based on a new ‘controversial’ video from beloved Canadian singer-songwriter, Hayden.  There are reactions and the ACTUAL video!!! Check it out…

Posted under Blogs, Humour, Music, Web/Tech

My children are obsessed with Tim & Eric’s sketch, ‘Spagett!’  Okay, okay, so maybe I ‘helped’ get them obsessed by playing it about 50 times.  However, while mindlessly bored in the rain this weekend, we made our own video tribute to the original.   Here’s Cedar and Dawson’s Spagett!…

And here’s the Tim & Eric version:

Posted under Children, Humour, Television

I took a few brief minutes of video around the tree this year and put together the highlights in iMovie.  Kudos to Sydney for providing a theme…

Posted under Children, Christmas, Humour

Lisa and the kids took off on a mid-week camping trip to Salt Spring and I couldn’t go because of work commitments.  I did, however, take full advantage of their absence.
Jordan Kawchuk invited me to his favourite haunt, the local Legion hall at Main & 23rd, for the Friday night Meat Draw. For those not in the know, the Meat Draw is exactly what it sounds like - a raffle for a variety of meat.  Patrons show up and buy tickets ($2 / 3 tickets) for draws that start at 4:30pm and go every half hour until 6pm. Each draw, you need to buy new tickets and in each draw, there are five winners chosen. There are a wide variety of ‘meat packages’ - there’s prime rib, spareribs, chicken, a breakfast pack, pork chops.  Just like bingo, someone at the front of the room calls out numbers and the winner goes up, presents their ticket, chooses some meat, and then picks the next ticket.
I’ve been a few times before and despite having a few drinks and a good time, I’ve always struck out when it comes to winning any meat.  It’s actually pretty crazy how many people are there each week - each draw appears to have over 200 tickets minimum purchased.
So we get there this past Friday and settle in.  I was cocky - earlier in the day, I emailed Jordan that I had ‘the meat jitters’ and was feeling very lucky.   However, 4:30, 5, and 5:30 passed without any beefy glory.  In the 6pm draw, tickets 1, 2, and 3 are drawn and gloom is settling in over our table.  And then some magic lucky dust was sprinkled over our group from an unseen meat fairy.
I won the second to last package of meat and our whole table squealed like the pigs whose meat we were hoping to win!  We high-fived and I trotted up to the front.  It was like I had won an Oscar (except instead of instead of a golden trophy recognizing my excellence, broadcast to billions worldwide, I was picking a bag of meat in front of about 40 people in a bar).  I was flustered and forgot to draw the next winner.  I looked in the two remaining bags and they were both golden - prime rib in one and a breakfast pack in the other.  I opted for breakfast pack and headed back to the table, only then realizing that the final winner was ALSO from our table.  It was a double meat moment to savour.
Even more pathetic, we all got back to the table and immediately began phoning our families

“Omigod - I just won 3 pounds of meat! Can you believe it?“

Everyone else in the legion thought we were idiots (which we were).
Here’s a meat montage of a giant heart-clogging breakfast the next day - sausages, 24 eggs, hashbrowns, and a steak.

Posted under Humour