Lauren: PHP, Pee-Wee's Big Holiday

Lauren
Sat April 30 2016

Pizza: Patrick's Homemade Pizza

We had weekend guests... nieces Hannah and Reagan were here! So that meant extra pizzas all around. I made four this time, all with my standard dough recipe and Carfagna's pizza sauce. Reagan likes cheese. Trevor really only likes black olives on his pizza. (for confirmation, check the sidebar of keyword labels used in this blog). Hannah wanted pineapple. Lauren and Beth wanted apple and bleu cheese (and I wanted some bacon!). I wanted sausage with onions and peppers. Beth wanted me to throw some mushrooms on the sausage pizza. The kids grabbed slices before I could take full pie shots. Ta-da!

Movie: Pee-Wee's Big Holiday

I saw the trailer for this a month or two ago and thought "That's exactly what the world needs. New Pee-Wee!" And I was right, because the movie was great. It contained many classic Pee-Wee bits, like the Rube Goldberg devices, Pee-Wee misquoting people, a road trip, and meeting interesting strangers. All in all, a very solid entry. Recommended.

Movie Trailer

DUBSMASHES

for Pee-Wee's Big Holiday

Lauren gets us going

Hannah and I play the parts of Joe and Pee-Wee

Reagan is too shy to do it, but Hannah closes it down perfectly

Trevor: Anges, Jungle Book

Trevor
Sat April 23 2016

Pizza: Ange's carryout.

No pictures because I forgot, but today's Ange's order was noteworthy because of two things: It was Lauren's first pizza night as a vegetarian, and because they heard my order wrong and I got a half pineapple and green pepper and half only-bacon pizza. Only bacon is a sub-optimal topping combination, btw. Not recommended.

Movie: Jungle Book (2016)

It was a nice evening so the Longs loaded up VANessa and went down to the South High Drive-In, which is still very much alive and well (even if they have the most 1998 of web pages). It had been years since we had gone, but I'm glad we did. Thanks to cousin Jimmy Mac and his better half Jennifer for the hookup. The movie itself was very well done. The animation was some of the most lifelike I'd ever seen. The only part that fell flat was King Louie (Christopher Walken). That felt a little forced. Everything else was thumbs up.

Movie Trailer

DUBSMASHES

for The Jungle Book

Trevor picked the movie, he's up first with his Sher Khan!

Next, Beth gets a go as Bill Murray's Baloo

Then I get a turn as Sher Khan

Beth: The Secret of Roan Inish, PHP

Beth
Friday April 8 2016

Pizza: Patrick's Handmade Pizza

Everything tonight is being brought to you by Ancient Age bourbon, the runaway winner in multiple Long households for the category of "Best Bourbon Sold In A Giant Plastic Jug". Mmmm. Tonight, we mixed it with Dailey's sour mix and some soda water for a classic whiskey sour. The pizzas were good, but Beth felt that my attempt to switch up the apple pizza from bleu cheese to cheddar lacked whatever it was she was looking for in the pizza when she requested it. I don't think that substitution earned a repeat appearance. Smoked sausage is always awesome with onion and pepper and  the cheese pizza got a little pinch of the cheddar just because that's what the whiskey wanted. Sometimes, I roll the dough so thin that I have a usable 4th piece, so I rolled it as far as I could and made Trevor's pizza from that. He enjoys getting a special pizza, and I'm only too happy to not infest the good pizzas with those filthy black rings. Gross. We had one jar of Carfagna's pizza sauce and one jar of Classico, so of course I used the Classico for the kids' pizzas and saved the good stuff for ours. Parenting!

Movie: The Secret of Roan Inish

My mother lent this movie to Beth and I because the three of us are going to Ireland in September (whoop whoop!) so we're naturally drawn to these kinds of things. The movie started out "Super boring, and hard to understand. Can I go play Minecraft?" and ended up with "That movie was actually OK". I concur, little man. I concur. I wouldn't really recommend this movie, because it isn't for everyone. The acting is, uh, sub-optimal. The settings and locations, though...

Movie Trailer

DUBSMASHES

for The Secret of Roan Inish

Naturally there weren't many available pre-made sounds in the Dubsmash banks for this movie, so we had to create one. Since Beth was the one who picked the movie, by law she had to do the smash.

Patrick: The Avengers/Portal, Ange's

Patrick
Friday April 1 2016

Pizza: Ange's

We love Ange's pizza. In addition to being the closest pizza place to our house since Napoli's closed like 8 years ago (R.I.P. Home of the Pizza Foldover!), it's seriously delicious. You can't go wrong there. X-Large Sausage and personal black olive.

Movie: The Avengers

I'm just going to come out and say it, but this movie was a just a placeholder because Lauren and I were playing the original Portal video game, and you can't eat and play at the same time,  and it was Pizza and a Movie Night, so we felt we had to kind of go for it. But we only watched about an hour of it, then got back to the game. Movie review: We've seen it 5x already, it's great, blah blah blah.

Avengers Movie Trailer

DUBSMASHES
for The Avengers

Tony's epic comeback:

Tony's witty retort:

Game: Portal

Oh, heck yes. One of the greatest video games of all time, and I was sharing it with Lauren because Beth was out on a ladydate. Trevor didn't like the game so much, so he was mostly watching inane Youtube videos done by idiots with British accents who play Minecraft and then record it. I DON'T UNDERSTAND. Oh yes, PORTAL. Words aren't enough. It's something that you have to experience to understand it's greatness. It's like the Arrested Development meets Prison Break of the VG world. So great.

Portal Teaser Trailer

DUBSMASHES
for Portal

GlaDOS wants you to know - you've hurt her feelings.

GlaDOS wants to hurt YOUR feelings.

The little gun turret does not appreciate being manhandled by a test subject.

BONUS LINKS FOR STICKING AROUND THIS LONG:

1) Link to an online flash game based on Portal

    (NOTE: this is NOT the greatest game in the world....no. This is just a tribute)

2) Crazy 6 minute Portal live-action short film

    (directed by Dan Trachtenberg and with a music director who wants to live inside Trent Reznor's         personsuit)

3) 7-minute live action Portal short film

    (This one is a little darker)

Lauren: Mr Peabody and Sherman, PHP

Lauren
Friday March 25 2016

Pizza: Patrick's Handmade Pizza

Mmm... Sausage, onion, and orange pepper, Hawaiian deluxe with bacon and pineapple rings, and Trevor's standard olive/cheese. Baked perfect, tasted great, complete victory.

Movie: Mr Peabody and Sherman

This movie is a weird one-off from a Rocky and Bullwinkle side gag, some forty years after it's inception. Seems a strange time to revisit, but, the whole plot of the movie involves time travel, so I guess we'll accept that. The characters are just so endearing, it works on all levels. Well done, thumbs up, etc etc etc.

DUBSMASHES

for Mr Peabody and Sherman

Should have played Right Guard at Michigan State

Homegirl loves her some cake

Juvenile humor is pretty much always funny

Beth: Superman Man of Steel, PHP

Beth
Friday March 18th 2016

Pizza: Patrick's Homemade Pizza
Pretty standard three pizza mix - smoked sausage and red peppers, pepperoni, and cheese/olives. Trevor insists on olives for his pizza, and has for many years. Carfagna's pizza sauce, Italian 4-cheese blend cheese, and some plain shredded mozzarella. Good stuff. The pepperoni pizza stayed in a little longer because the crust on the bottom wouldn't harden up. I ended up pulling it off the pan and baking it on the rack for an extra 3 minutes, after an additional 3 minutes... I should just go to the rack immediately if it's not ready when the buzzer rings. The top and the sides were a little more burnt than I would like. It was still good though.

Movie: Superman Man of Steel (2013)

I will cop to not having seen the Superman movie that came out before this one, the one with Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. I thought it looked dumb, and I just figured this was more of the same. But with the new Batman vs Superman movie coming out, Beth chose this one to get a little backstory. We're all glad she did, because Man of Steel is actually a pretty good movie. The prologue on Krypton is interesting. Trevor was scared enough to sit on my lap during one of the darker scenes, but he was fine. 

DUBSMASHES

for Superman Man of Steel

Beth as Zod! Grrrwwwrr

Lauren as Zod! Puuurrrrrrrrr

Patrick as Clark sharing with Trevor

Trevor: Pirates of the Caribbean - Curse of the Black Pearl, PHP

Trevor
Saturday, March 12th 2016

Pizza: Patrick's Homemade Pizza
I enjoy making delicious pizzas for my family. Tonight, we had our very special Apple, Bleu Cheese, and Bacon. That's always a huge hit. If you're coming over for pizza night, request that one. Also in the mix was a sausage and red pepper, Trevor's standard half cheese/half black olive, and special pizzas for a guest who is gluten-free and doesn't eat dairy. (LINK to review of the gluten-free crust we used) For the rest of the pies, I used my standard dough recipe and Classico pizza sauce.
Pizza was on point tonight.

Movie: Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl
Trevor has been talking about watching this for a couple weeks, so it was no surprise that when it was his turn he picked it. A great and classic movie through and through. Every time I see it I wonder why Johnny Depp didn't win the Oscar for his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, one of the all-time great movie characters. Like everyone is still transfixed by Sean Penn's performance in Mystic River. As if!

NEW FEATURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you guys hip to Dubsmash? It's this super fun app that lets you lipsynch to various audio sources. The kids and I love it. We're going to start doing a Dubsmash for each movie that we pick. The rules are: He or She who chose the movie MUST do a  Dubsmash for the blog. Then anyone else gets to join in the fun if they want.

DUBSMASHES

for Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl

Trevor gets the first go!

It was his idea to use the empty juice bottle. Clever boy.

Then Patrick and Lauren have a turn

and finally Lauren, Trevor, and Patrick sing the classic pirate shanty

Postscript: So I started this blog so we could keep track of whose movie night it is, and somehow I messed it up immediately. This should have been Beth's week. Ugh. Sorry honey! You get the next one, then Lauren, then me, then you, then back to regular schedule.