Backtime Soaks It All In: It's A SpongeBob Christmas

It's that time of year for TV specials like Rudolph, The Grinch, and that Charlie Brown piano music plays in your head for a month.

So when a new Christmas Special premieres, which has taken the time to recreate old-school animation and write original songs, you give it 30 minutes of your time. It's a SpongeBob Christmas doesn't disappoint.

As you might imagine SpongeBob is in the holiday spirit, spreading the joy of the season throughout Bikini Bottom to all his cranky friends.

But Plankton has an evil plot, to spread Jerktonium throughout the region and turn everyone ornery, so that when Santa comes, he'd be the only one who's not on the naughty list. So he laces his delicious fruitcake and enlists the unwitting SpongeBob to distribute it.

And SpongeBob is quite the salesman, since he loves the fruitcake and is unaffected by the Jerktonium. Plankton also resorts to Plan B, creating a robotic SpongeBob bent on destruction.

When SpongeBob goes to Sandy to find out why everyone is acting like jerks at Christmas time, she discovers Plankton's plot. SpongeBob wonders why he isn't affected and she does a quick X-ray.

It's obviously because of his tiny brain and huge heart. The antidote is a song, that SpongeBob sings all over town, "Don't Be A Jerk, It's Christmas." The he uses the fruitcake dispenser to destroy his metallic doppelganger.

So Plankton's plan is foiled, and Santa (voiced by the omnipresent John Goodman) officially brings Christmas to Bikini Bottom.

So what, is SpongeBob too sophomoric for your taste? Don't be a jerk, it's Christmas.

Backtime's De-Evolution is Complete

It says it in the Backtime profile: dime store observer on all things. When I started blogging over 4 years ago, I never thought I'd envision the day that a video game review would ever be posted.

Despite having an Atari and the handheld pioneer Coleco Quarterback as a child, and dumping several hundred quarters into Tetris throughout my college years, I never considered my youth misspent on video games. I certainly didn't waste my time with them as an adult. Until now.

The kids love their Wii, and I have been sucked in. And despite the reputation, video games do have some redeeming qualities.




Kids with delayed development in motor skills gain eye-hand coordination. Kids with autism learn to use their imagination to think in the abstract and find shortcuts.

Of course there's the problem of obsession that all kids have whether it's with TV or computer time. A balance needs to be struck.

The 8-year old guy loves his car races whether it be Cars 2 or Mario Kart. The 5-year old girl loves Tangled, a role-play game based on the Disney movie. It's actually pretty exciting to play as Rapunzel (her) and Flynn Rider (me) - they need to partner up to work together to accomplish tasks.

She's a little young to master the car races but the perfect blend has been found in SpongeBob's Boating Bash. Not only does it have the characters that she knows and loves (and could watch endlessly), but the game's main thread is boating school.

The premise is that our friend SpongeBob has failed his boating test at Mrs. Puff's Boating School 78 times in a row and is hopeless. At least until shady shyster Seymour Scales enters the game. He offers SpongeBob the opportunity to take his D.R.I.V.E. classes.

D.R.I.V.E. stands for Destruction, Recklessness, Impairment, Velocity, and Escape. The challenges are a cross-mix of boat races and demolition derby.

The controls are fairly intricate - there are two separate brakes: one to drift to a stop, and a hand brake to make hairpin turns.

But most importantly in Boating Bash whether you're a kid or a novice gamer dad, it's OK to crash - often.