We received our first real blast of winter today, resulting in everyone staying home.
We saw it coming; last night we banked on this and treated Clark to a later-than-usual bedtime. We watched the first half of Star Wars.
He did move at all - completely glued to the movie - until the scene where Luke whines to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru about having to postpone his application to the academy. That scene marks the point where it stops being about the "robots." He liked watching them.
After that, he was up and down, sometimes watching the movie and other times running around the room. We turned it off right as they free Leia from her torture cell.
During Darth Vader's first scene, in the very beginning of the movie, Rhonda and I both did the silly Vader-heavy-breathing sound effect, which he thought was hilarious. Quite a bit later, during the part where Vader realizes that Obi-Wan is somewhere on the Death Star, Clark did the breathing all on his own. I'm sure that's going to be a turnkey moment when he's sixteen and looking back trying to figure where it all went so wrong.
And then this morning - as I was showing Rhon Nintendo's latest unexpected weirdass Wii upgrade, the Everybody Votes Channel - Clark takes the remote, holds it like an NES controller and announces that he wants to play "Mar-o."
No shit. He kept urgently saying "Mar-o, Mar-o," until we understood. Now, I showed him Super Mario Bros a couple weekends ago, but we had not played it since. And yet it stuck in his little head.
All he can do is hit the Jump button, by the way. But I guess that is fun enough. I boot it up and Mario stands on that first 1-1 screen, jumping until time runs out.
Oh, and about that Everybody Votes Channel: Huh? I think that dark launch was met with a collective note of confusion. I mean, NOBODY had any idea this was coming, and then bammo there's your Wii glowing blue telling you about it. In the age of internet rumor and instant dissemination, Nintendo still can sneak up and toss a bonus at you. I like that Nintendo still enjoys surprises like this. I've certainly been impressed by Sony (although not lately), but I don't think I've ever been surprised by them. Nintendo, on the other hand, surprises everybody whenever they can. Fun.
Not that Everybody Votes Channel is the most incredible thing ever. It's just this odd little polling station where you drop your Mii onto your answer... which Nintendo then counts and reports back later with the final tally. It's dopey stuff like "Dog vs. Cat" and "I'd rather live in the 18th / 22nd Century."
I wonder if the next Wii revision will come with EVC and the other free downloadable Channels built in?
You can also submit suggestions for upcoming votes...
