El Seed

For the past couple of years, my husband and I have taken to naming the houses we lived in. The house we bought in Cville was “Chez Nous Nouveau.” The place we rented in Altoona on Juniata Gap Road was “Juanita.” And the house we bought in Altoona was named “Chateau Neuf (9)” because the number (512) is 2 to the 9th power. (That’s what I get for living with a computer geek. But the name satisfied the French geek in me, because “Neuf” also means “New.”)

We were stumped for a little while about what to name our current place in El Cerrito, until one day I was writing the words “El Ce…” and it dawned on me: “El Seed!”

For those of you who did not enjoy “The Tick” cartoon of the early 90s, El Seed was one of the funnier villains — a giant sunflower who sounds like Ricardo Montalban in “The Wrath of Khan.” El Seed is angry at the human race for the way it has mistreated plants, and he plots revenge and world domination. Our favorite bit of dialogue:

El Seed: “Do you know what I am thinking, Bee Twins?”
Bee Twins (2 female bees who assist him, in a droning hum): “How much you hate the humans?”
El Seed: “How MUCH I hate the humans. In fact the whole animal kingdom, I am not too fond of.”

Ok, so maybe you have to see it, AND enjoy the humor of the Tick, but anyway… when we saw this sunflower costume at the local toy store, we KNEW that Sam would go as El Seed for Halloween:

With that look, world domination is certain.