Joe Walsh 'The Confessor'

By the way... Preston enjoyed today's musical selection by Joe Walsh as we made our rounds.

Against my better judgment, I took Preston to Toys ‘R Us this afternoon. He wasn’t as overwhelmed as I had hoped for and he definitely didn’t want any Bratz dolls. This was his first visit to a TRU in his five years of existence and I thought that he would flip is lid about all the wondrous toys to be found within the confines of Geoffrey the Giraffe’s domain.

To be perfectly honest, his lack of enthusiasm impressed me because he didn’t go off running around in the store like most of the other kids do. There were kids running around holding this and that and shouting, “I want this! I need this!” There were kids climbing the shelves and jumping into pools of toys like cliff-divers from the Fuji Islands. It was amazing!

The parents were shouting at their kids to get down, but they weren’t listening. I was like the guy in the back of the crowd gathered before a suicide jumper on a tall building shouting for the kids to jump.

Ahhhh… The Christmas Season is a beautiful time of the year.

We started off with a hearty meal from McDonald’s. Again, Preston doesn’t eat anything unless it’s in nugget form. I ordered the Quarter Pounder meal and lo and behold, it arrived as a Double-Quarter Pounder meal! The angels of fast food were smiling upon me today. Of course, it’s a different story for the angels watching over my arteries. I guess it was lunchtime for them too.

Preston received a Toys ‘R Us gift card for ten bucks on his birthday last week and we searched for something in his price range. And wouldn’t you know it, everything that he wanted started at $19.99. But for everything that fit in his range, I brought along a pad and pen to make notes so that he could decide once he gave the store the “once over”.

I made only one note and he kept coming back to the same thing, a Black Hawk Helicopter with army guys and other things associated with the army. It was $19.99 so I decided to kick in some dough to make that baby his. It was better than the metal sword that he wanted because the kid is crafty enough to learn how to sharpen that thing.

Preston has a deep love for weapons like knives, guns, swords, and nunchuks. Why? I do not know, but I’m pleased about it.

Then we dropped by where my friend Christine works because we have worked out a magnificent deal with our Netflix discs.

I’ve mentioned that she let me borrow ‘Kingdom of Heaven’, well… Since I had ‘War of the Worlds’, I brought it to her and swapped it for ‘Mr. And Mrs. Smith’. We’ll watch them and stick them in the mail tomorrow so that they arrive on Monday. I’m practically giggling about it right now. Neither one of us have to wait to see those movies. It’s pure genius and I don’t know why we didn’t think of it sooner.

As for ‘War of the Worlds’, I’m giving it four stars on Netflix. That means that I really liked it. Dakota Fanning’s character was really starting to get on my nerves, but the girl is one helluva an actress. I could expand on why her character got on my nerves, but that would take us WAY off the path here.

There is only one thing that I hated about the film and I don’t want to give away the ending, so I can’t tell you. But, if this movie were made in Europe, the ending would be a bit darker.

If you’ve seen the movie and want me to explain my point to you, drop me an email. eugene@rock92.com

Here’s the invitation to my Netflix buddy list. eugenebsims@yahoo.com

The effects in ‘War of the Worlds’ were cool and that made up for the lame plot of the kids visiting Daddy for the weekend. When the aliens made the attacks, it was Daddy’s job to keep them safe and return them to Mommy. The characters were all one-dimensional but I didn’t care because the flick is a fun ride.

And hats off to Tim Robbins! He played one helluva crazy guy and I didn’t even know he was in the movie. That was a nice surprise.

I looked for toys for ‘War of the Worlds’ at TRU, but I didn’t see any because Preston wouldn’t allow ME to look around. He wanted that copter and he wanted home.

And after leaving Christine’s place of business, we drove around Battleground Park. We stopped to take a look at the statue of General Greene and Preston said, “Unka Gene, he was big!”

He wanted to know what all the words were on the statue’s base and he made me read them to him. Even before I finished the first sentence, I believe he was sorry that he asked. I also explained that Greensboro got its name from Nathaniel Greene and how the lost battle at the Guilford Courthouse ultimately won the Revolutionary war for the colonist against Great Britain.

He thought the cannons were cool and he wanted to fire them. Crazy kid.

Maybe I’ll take him to the re-enactment battle in March next year. With all those weapons and death, I think that Preston would dig that.