what's on Evan's mind

you hear what you want to hear

Listening to the Gin Blossoms:

Sage: "Did he just sing 'When I was Cinderella'?"

Eric: "No, he sang 'On Allison Road.'"

Sage: "Oh. It really sounded like 'When I was Cinderella.'"

by the way, Evan is interested in cameras

I spent most of a recent parent-teacher conference discussing cameras and what to do about them. Evan's teacher finds them in the margins of spelling tests and math homework. Here's one in the hand of a simile skydiver:


And here's Evan in the shower this evening:

grounded

Evan: "Do you ever wish you were invisible? And could fly?"

Eric: "I sure do. I think invisibility and flight would be two of the coolest super-powers to have."

Evan: "Yeah, except then you'd feel obligated to go after bad guys all the time. If I were invisible and could fly, I'd be like, 'Hey, I'm only in third grade. Let the cops handle it.'"

the ultimate prank

I can say without risk of hyperbole that this is 10,000 times better than any other movie.

descent of man

Evan: "Yeah, my State Travel Convention poster board is in pretty bad shape. Probably because Ethan and Skylar and I rode it down the stairs like a toboggan."

Eric: "Okay, that's going on the blog."

Evan: "I have footage if you need it."

top banana

Evan: "Why don't you believe in ghosts?"

Eric: "Same reason I don't believe in flying bananas."

Evan: "Really? Do you realize that monkeys can throw them? You could put a jet pack on a banana, or strap it to a firework. What if you took one into space and then let go of it. Astronomers would look through their telescopes and say, 'There's the Big Dipper. There's Orion's Belt. And there's Evan's Banana.'"

auto-focus

Tonight I offered Evan $2 if he could go half an hour without talking about cameras. He spent fifteen minutes talking about them indirectly by asking if he could talk about boom mics or shotgun mics or movie-making or other things related to cameras. Then he spent about five minutes pounding his fist on the table and stuffing his cloth napkin in his mouth and looking like he was going to go crazy and asking how much time was left. Then he accidentally mentioned a camera.

a room of one's own

Evan: "That'd be cool if Grandma Sue had guest rooms that were decorated specifically for Sage and me. Sage's would be all princess-y and mine would be all camera-y."

Sage: "No, mine would have ninjas. But they wouldn't be all black and white. They'd be pink ninjas. With lots of flowers and peace signs."

one vision

Evan, bless him, is the most monomaniacal person I've ever met, and in the last 6 months or so his enthusiasm has shifted almost completely from Legos to cameras. He thinks about them all day, talks about them whenever he talks, and, apparently, dreams about them every night (if his morning dream-report is to be believed). Here's a small snippet from a typical monologue:

"That'd be cool if someone created a really awesome ghost-hunting TV show that drove all the other ghost-hunting shows out of business, and so they gave me all of their equipment. And then the awesome ghost-hunting show got driven out of business by a cooking show, and so I got all of their equipment too. I'd have, like, 70 static night-vision cameras and 50 tripods."

so obvious

Evan: "I've figured out the secret to making cats happy: Talk to them in the voice of Mike Tyson."

resting her case

Sage: "Evan is forcing me to watch a show I don't want to watch."

Sonja: "What show?"

Sage: "MythBusters."

Eric: "Sage, after you've had breakfast, you can watch a show that you want to watch."

Sage: "Hannah Montana?"

Eric: "Except Hannah Montana."

Sage: "Why can't I watch Hannah Montana?"

Eric: "Because I said so."

Sage: "You used to let me watch Hannah Montana all the time!"

Eric: "I know, and you started turning into a sassy teenager."

Sage: "No I DIDN'T!"

Eric: "Yes you did."

Sage (flopping melodramatically on the bed): "Does THIS sound SASSY TO YOU???!!!"

Eric: "No, that sounds more whiny."

Sage: "SEE!"

you call this archaeology?

Evan's idea for a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" prequel: "Teenage Indiana Jones and the Pimple of Doom"