Iowa Photo Journal 14: Mission Select: Sidewalk Chalk

Yesterday we went outside and saw a bunch of neighborhood kids and parents/adults gathered down the street a bit, so we went to see what the hub-bub was all about. This afforded us the first real opportunity to get to know the neighbors. Of course I'm terrible with names, but some of the Mom's were Susana, Rachel (maybe?) and two or three others. There was also a Mr. ??? who lives with his wife across the street. I don't think they have kids. They run the B&B there. It turns out there are several B&Bs on our street.

Everybody was super nice, and all seemed to love living here. They did say that it gets pretty crowded when school is in session, and the weather we've been having has been a bit unusual. Normally it's hotter this time of year, but one Mom also said the real hot part of summer is usually only a couple weeks long. Bek liked talking to the Mom's as they have a lot more in common with her than the young people in her class.

One of the activities all the kids were doing was drawing with sidewalk chalk. Emmett joined in right away. The older boy there, who Max & Emmett recently purchased some hotwheels cars from at his "yard sale", was jumping on a pogo stick. Max tried it once without much luck as it requires you to be heavier than he is. I tried it too - it's harder than I remembered, but I was unquestionably plenty heavy for it.

One or more of the kids had drawn a long path on the sidewalk that Max, Emmett and I investigated, and which led to some sidewalk chalk play today. One of the Mom's left some chalk on a chair on our porch, which the guys put to use.

Todays photo journal entry is, Mission Select: Sidewalk Chalk. So titled because the newest movie rented from Netflix is "Rescue Heroes: The Movie" and they have loved it, with resulting related play.

It's a pretty dopey movie, but it's certainly infinitely better than the previous Netflix rental, "Hotwheels Acceleracers: Ignition", which is the first of a series of mini-movies that, at least in "Volume 1", more or less glorifies gang life. You get the impression that by the end of the series they'll all be best of buddies, having learned their lessons, but it still depicts and pretty much celebrates the sometimes violent rivalry between the racing teams (gangs). Indeed the film starts with one member of a team trying to kill, or at least seriously injure, another teams member during a street race, because apparently the intended victim had caused the death of one of their members, though all of this isn't entirely clear, and he isn't successful in his goal.

It's painfully difficult for an adult to watch this, as you might imagine, mind-numbingly idiotic Hotwheels movie, and perhaps its creators had hoped that parents wouldn't be able to stand watching it and thus would never notice the gang life stuff in it. I don't know. Even though I have this problem of not being able to avoid watching a turned on TV (or equivalent), I was never able to actually watch all of it. It's impossible. However, I was able to see enough of it to become wildly unsure about letting the boys see volumes 2 and 3. Having said that, they certainly were completely enthralled with the Hotwheels show and, from talking with them about it, it's not clear that they actually understood the gang life parts of the movie. For instance they don't seem to have any understanding of what was being depicted in the opening of the movie other then that it was a super fast race. It went over their heads. I've tried to tell them of the parts of it that I didn't like, and that has left an impression on them. They both now state that it wasn't a good movie. Of course, they also state that they can't wait to see volume 2. Emmett several days ago said to me that the Rescue Heroes movie is good, but the Hotwheels movie isn't, because after he watches it he usually starts bopping people. It's pretty much true too.