Reaching New Heights

Photo from Video Games Live Facebook

WEEKEND REPLAY: Saturday night was a Big Deal - finally time to go to Video Games Live! We've been looking forward to it for months now.

The show was at the gorgeous, historic Paramount Theater. Annabelle had decided long ago to wear her Princess Peach dress, which has been hanging in the closet untouched since Halloween. CJ was dressed in a Super Mario t-shirt. Rick and Ken showed up and told us there was a costume contest. That apparently caught CJ's attention because as we were walking out the door for the show, he had an about face and declared, "I want to wear my Mario costume to help Annabelle win the costume contest." At that, we started scrambling around frantically trying to find its parts (including a stick on moustache). Here's a photo (from Halloween) of them in their costumes.

Walking to the theater, CJ and Annabelle started attracting attention and once inside, they were like mini celebrities, with a number of people coming over and asking to take their pictures or have their pictures taken with them. Rick signed them up for the costume contest; they were to report to a certain part of the lobby at 7 p.m. When we did so, we learned they'd be going backstage (!!!) and then ON stage (!!!!), as the contest would be judged by crowd applause.

Christian went with the kids and Ken, Rick and I headed for our seats.

Christian reports that before they went out onto stage, show producer/host Tommy Tallarico came over to the group and told all those costumed, "You all look great, but here's your winners," and then took CeeJ and Bee's photo with his iPhone. :)

Soon after, the contestants paraded out on stage. CJ and Annabelle roughly in the middle of the pack, both waving to the crowd. All of the costumes were great, not that you could tell it by my crappy video (below). Unfortunately since where I was sitting was pitch black so I couldn't see the camera's buttons, I've only used that camera once before, and I was taping it on the sly as cameras were prohibited. That, AND an usher was standing right in front of me, nearly entirely blocking the kids. At least you can hear CJ & Annabelle introduce themselves. ...

And if you click here, you can get another crappy video of them being named winners. :) They got a great big bag of swag, including a hat, a shirt, a patch, four or so CDs, a show program and more. I was really proud of them - not for winning, but because they did so well on stage. Neither one got stage fright and they did a great job introducing themselves. (So many of the other entrants mumbled their names.)

The kids and Christian finally made their way up to our seats and the show began. One of the first medleys the orchestra played covered music from the Mega Man series (link is to video from the Seattle show shot by someone else). Mega Man is definitely one of CJ and Annabelle's favorite franchises, so that was great. And CJ's current obsessions/subjects of study is the series of Street Fighter games. Imagine how THRILLED he was when they launched into SF songs!

The orchestra was powerful - you could feel the music even in our balcony seats - and the choir hit all the right notes. Vocal soloist Lara was impressive, and her fingers were flying all over the flute when she played a Zelda compilation.

I spent most of my time watching the show, but I also watched CJ and Bee a fair amount. They were having the time of their lives. I wish we could take them to a performance like that every night - but then I suppose it wouldn't be so special. ...

SKYWALKER: I didn't really have an academic game plan today, but as soon as I scooped up a library book, our day just played out rather nicely.

The book was "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers." It was about Philippe Petit's amazing walk on a wire stretched between the Twin Towers in New York City on August 7, 1975.

I recalled seeing a video version of the book on BookFlix, so I cued that up and the kids read along with the paper version. (You can also view it on YouTube. It's worth the 9:50 if you have it to spare.) It told the story of the French street performer who became obsessed with the idea of walking between the World Trade Center towers, 1,340 above the ground. Petit planned the stunt over the course of several years.

He and co-conspirators posed as construction workers to gain access on the evening of Aug. 6. Part of their gear was a 450-pound cable and a custom-made 26-foot long, 55-pound balancing pole. They also had a bow an arrow, which would be used to shoot a guide line from one tower to the other which would then help them stretch the cable between the towers.

Petit was up all night preparing and just after 7:15 a.m., he stepped off the roof of the south tower and out onto the cable. He walked the wire for 45 minutes, crossing back and forth between the towers eight times. He mixed a few tricks and poses in amongst his strolling.

When he did finally step off the wire, he was handcuffed and arrested. (He later called the rough treatment at the hands of ticked off police officers the most dangerous part of his stunt.) However, Petit's "punishment" was being ordered to put on a free performance in a NY park.

The book noted that "Now the towers are gone." At that, both CJ and Annabelle asked, "What happened to them?"

So that led us down the 9/11 path. I wasn't quite ready to show them actual footage from that day, so I was happy to see that BrainPop had an animated feature about that awful day. It did a good job of covering the facts.

After, I turned our attention back toward the wire walker. I wanted the kids to see real photos of him instead of just animation, so I hopped onto YouTube. There I found a short interview with him, which we watched.

From the news interview, we learned about the award (Sundance, Oscar) winning documentary film "Man on Wire" about Petit's feat. I was happy to discover that was available via Netflix's instant play, so we watched that this afternoon. It was fascinating - there was so much great video footage and lovely photo stills from his preparation of that stunt, and the mates that helped him were interesting characters. It was suspenseful and inspiring - definitely worth checking out.

One of the wonderful by-products of watching the documentary was that we got to see lots of footage of the Twin Towers being erected. It was so cool to see the construction and get a better feeling for the scope of the project. What an architectural and engineering marvel. I am glad we all have that appreciation and vision of the World Trade Center Towers now, as 9/11 has so filled our minds with all those HORRIBLE images of what became of them.

And so, in addition to a little math, and some technology, that was the bulk of our academic day - learning about the life and times of a French wire walker. I'm sure LOTS of K-2 classrooms did the same thing today, right? :0

GOING OLD SCHOOL: Much to CJ's delight, today we FINALLY hooked up the very old school Atari 2600 system I bought off shopgoodwill.com. "Wow, it's wood," CJ marveled, checking out the simulated wood grain.

Needless to say, he spent time today checking out classics like Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac Man, Combat, Pinball and even horrible games like E.T. and Gremlins. (A near truism in the video game world: Good movie = bad game.) They are soooooo low-tech looking compared to

CJ mentioned he wants to invite Steve Wiebe over to play Donkey Kong. :)

MORE YOSHI: The work on the Yoshis continued today. (And the day before. And the day before.) Annabelle worked on internal organs for her project.
CJ did a whole lot of painting this weekend and today, most of the work involved getting Yoshi's moving screen/shield/schnoz piece in place.
We also worked on placement of the items (Yoshi and his gear) in the "cockpit.

BACK TO BALLET: After a 3-week winter break, Annabelle was back to ballet today, which made her hap-hap-happy. Christian captured her on his cell phone's video camera through the door on the window during their free dance. She's the one in the Big pink skirt.