‘Gallack Fiore…

Go ahead. Ask me what my five-year old son’s favorite movie is.

Hell – ask his mom. His grandparents. His teachers at school. His friends at school. All of the parents of his friends at school. Every single one of them will tell you the same thing: there’s no performance steamier than Marlon Brando’s sex romp called Last Tango in Paris.

A close second, per my kid, is Disney’s Cars. Which, I must admit, is a really, really good movie. Most of the Pixar films are, in fact, because they reach different audiences on so many different levels. Cars was a bit more unique because it went into some uncharted territory for Disney, but it was embraced by the racing industry to the extent that everyone who had anything to do with motor vehicles at the time got a part — from Richard Petty to the Car Guys on NPR. The jokes were clever and, at times, way over the kids’ heads. (George Carlin plays a VW Microbus who brews his own “green fuel,” if you get my drift.) I can find something new almost every time I see it.

And that’s a whole lot of times. Because the kid wants to see it. Over and over and over and over again. He has his rituals — sometimes reciting the dialogue alongside, sometimes recreating the races with the cars he already has, and often asking us lots of “why” questions which we simply can’t answer. (“Why do cars need pit-stops?” “Why isn’t Route 66 on the map anymore?” Wikipedia has been keeping me one step ahead, but barely.)

Anyway, we get a kick out of his rote memorization skills. These evening he surprised me by starting our nightly ritual of Counting the Omer a few steps ahead of me — as he had already memorized some of the Hebrew! Which we certainly didn’t punish him for, even hough it had nothing to do with the Cars movie. But we also like his imitations of Cheech Marin and, of course George Carlin, both of whom have pretty big parts in the film.

Of course, George Carlin’s character, Fillmore, is the icing on the cake. He’s dead on with phrases like “I’m not the only one who’s seeing this, am I man?” when Lightling McQueen is hurtling through the air. Also, his observation late at night watching the town’s only traffic light: “I’m telling you man — every third blink is slower.” Or his explanation as to why his “organic fuel” hasn’t swept the nation: “It’s a conspiracy, man!”
The danger of this is his frustration when we make him do something he doesn’t want to do – and he comes back with It’s a conspiracy, man! Hard to get out of that one…

For the past three days, he’s been repeating a phrase: ‘Gallack Fiore. He’s playing with us and wants to know if we want some. You know — if we want ‘Gallack Fiore. We had no idea what he was talking about. He would answer “You know — from the Cars movie!” As if there was an entire scene revolving around this phantom ‘Gallack Fiore. We still had no frickin’ idea.

But finally — this evening socKs and I decided to own the night. We asked which character said “‘Gallack Fiore.” Look – the kid is five years old. We don’t expect his diction to be perfect, but at least it’s usually something we recognize. But this time? Not so much.

Anyway, it was (of course! Duh…) Fillmore’s (George Carlin’s) line. But still — we had no idea what this was.

Tonight we struck back. We watched the entire movie on the DVD player at five times the normal speed. We made sure he would focus — so he could let us know which scene exactly we kept on misunderstanding.

And finally? We got there. What he had been pronnouncing as “”Gallack Fiore was actually “Organic Fuel.”

‘Gallack Fiore <–> Organic Fuel. It all makes so much sense to me now. I thought maybe the kid was learning Klingon on the side or something…

And it was somewhere around this point that I decided to record a new audio commentary track for the film “Cars” starring the kid and his dad, both watching the movie carefully. Think of the market potential! The secrets! The new volabulary!

So that’s precisely what we did. I present you, ladies and gentlemen, with the viewers’ commentary of “Cars.” Make sure to start just as the Disney logo is appearing on the screen right after that “The Audience is Listening” thing.

I’ll even let it be a free download. I’m just waiting for it to render in my audio application. Better luck next year…

EDIT: socKs corrected me on this one after inquiring with the kid this morning. The corrected phrase has been updated. Makes a whole lot more sense now, doesn’t it?

Oh — and here‘s an MP3 of the commentary for those who are interested — all 1 hour and 50 minutes of it.  If I get enough requests for a FLAC version of it I’ll post that as well. 🙂  Enjoy the spasstic coughing from me and the pleas from my son for a granola bar about 63 minutes through…

[audio:cars-alt-soundtrack.mp3]