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“I’ve played some Dads in my day.”

Anyone familiar with Eugene Levy‘s filmography knows that the above statement is true. After all, this Canadian comedy legend played Jim Levenstein’s Dad in all eight installments of the American Pie sex comedy series. Not to mention that hyper-competitive papa in Cheaper by the Dozen 2. And let’s not forget that Eugene is currently appearing alongside his own children – Daniel & Sarah Levy — in Pop’s popular dysfunctional family comedy, Schitt’s Creek.

So given that he’s already played so many patriarchs, what made Levy decide to add one more Dad to his repertoire by voicing Dory’s father Charlie in the highly anticipated follow-up to Pixar‘s Finding Nemo ?

“To be honest, they didn’t have to pitch me on this thing,” Eugene recalled during a recent phone call. “I mean, it’s Disney Pixar. They’re the absolute best at what they do. Which is creating these great animated features that brilliantly blend comedy and emotion. Plus – what with Finding Dory being the sequel to Finding Nemo – you had the sneaking suspicion that this movie was going to do okay at the box office. So given that I was being offered the opportunity to work with the very best people in this field, that’s pretty much all it took for me to say ‘Yes. I’m in. Thank you.'”

Mind you, Levy agreeing to come voice a character for this new Disney Pixar production had something of an Old-Home-Week component to it. Given that the first big Hollywood production that Levy worked on – Ron Howard‘s Splash — was one that he made for the Mouse.

“Splash was the very first film that Disney released under its new Touchstone Pictures production banner. If I’m remembering correctly, the thinking behind Touchstone was that it was going to allow Disney to start making movies with more adult appeal,” Eugene said. “Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandell had written this script that was kind of Disneyesque in that it had a mermaid in it. But their screenplay also had this smart, funny, contemporary feel to it. Which was quite a departure from all those corny Don Knotts comedies that Disney was producing at that time. No disrespect to Mr. Knotts, by the way.”

“Anyway, Ron Howard was this big SCTV fan. Which is why he wanted myself and John Candy to come work on this movie. And when I look back at Splash now and realize that there were really only four characters in that film, I realize what a huge opportunity this project was for a Toronto kid like myself,” Levy continued. “Never mind that I got to work on the historic Disney Lot. Or that we shot scenes for ‘Splash’ on location in New York City and down in the Bahamas.”

But what really sticks in Eugene’s mind now as he looks back over the 30+ years since he shot Splash ? That Levy was part of Tom Hanks‘ big screen debut.

“And I remember being on set watching Tom work and thinking ‘Man, this kid is sensational. He’s so good. He’s so natural,’ ” Eugene enthused. “This was why – when we were working on Splash – you just kind of had this sense that you were working on something major. Something special. And then when the finished film came out and was such a huge hit — or for that matter, to see how well Splash had held up over the years – it’s been such a pleasure to be associated with that project.”

So does Levy expect to have these same sort of feelings when it comes to Finding Dory a few years down the line? Eugene admitted that voicing a character for an animated feature comes with its own unique set of challenges.

“I’ve been doing voice work for animation since Heavy Metal back in the early 1980s. And when you work in this field, it’s all about giving the director choices. Making sure that you’re giving him the sort of vocal performance that he can then actually work with,” Levy said. “Of course, what’s really helpful in a situation like this is if you’re working off of a strong script. And in the case of Finding Dory, the script was just terrific.”

“I don’t think that I’ve ever played a father like this before. One that – because he and his wife are dealing with this (SPOILER ALERT) learning-disabled child – have kind of this dark cloud hanging over them all the time. My heart goes out to any parents who are dealing with this sort of situation in real life. Where – because their child can’t retain something as fundamental as looking both ways before they cross the street – you know that you just can’t ever let that kid out of your sights,” Eugene continued.

“But that’s what so great about the way the people at Pixar have written & conceived Charlie. Another parent might have been beaten down, been riddled with angst & anxiety if he or she had a daughter with short term memory loss. But not Charlie,” Levy said. “He and his wife Jenny are clearly working hard at remaining positive, trying to stay upbeat. Doing everything that they can to try & help Dory have as normal a life as possible. And it was that aspect of this character which really made voicing Charlie interesting to me.”

And clearly the movie-going public was interested in finding out what became of Charlie’s daughter since the original Finding Nemo first arrived in theaters back in 2003. According to initial box office estimates, Finding Dory earned a record breaking $136.2 million domestically over its opening weekend.

Which showed that Eugene’s initial instincts about this project were correct. More to the point, given that this great bit of box office news broke on Father’s Day 2016 and Levy is now Hollywood’s go-to guy when it comes to Dads … Well, how appropriate is that? It’s certainly a better Father’s Day gift than a tie, don’t you think.

Mind you, to Eugene Levy’s way of thinking, the core message of Finding Dory (i.e., that ” … family is probably the most important thing in our lives when you get right down to it”) is the real gift when it comes to this new Pixar film.

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Top officials with the National Rifle Association said they do not support allowing guns in places like nightclubs where people are drinking — breaking from Donald Trump’s call for just that. 

In the wake of the massacre at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Trump said fewer people would have died if more people at the club had had concealed weapons. 

“If you had guns in that room, if you had — even if you had a number of people having them strapped to their ankle or strapped to their waist where bullets could have flown in the other direction right at him, you wouldn’t have had that tragedy,” Trump said last week.

Essentially, under Trump’s scenario, that would have meant more people — perhaps drunk clubgoers — shooting blindly into the crowded room.

On Sunday, CBS “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson asked NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre whether he thought Trump’s suggestion was “a good idea.”

“I don’t think you should have firearms where people are drinking,” he said. “But I will tell you this. Everybody, every American starts to have — needs to start having a security plan. We need to be able to protect ourselves, because they’re coming. And they’re going for vulnerable spots, and this country needs to realize it.”

Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, also said on ABC’s “This Week” that he didn’t want people at a nightclub shooting guns while drinking: 

COX: Of course not. Of course not. And you can’t be in a nightclub drinking anywhere in this country. What Donald Trump has said is what the American people know is commonsense, that if somebody had been there to — to stop this faster, fewer people would have died. That’s not — that’s not controversial, that’s commonsense.

KARL: But you don’t like the idea of people going into nightclub armed to the teeth?

COX: Of course.

KARL: OK.

COX: No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms. That defies common sense. It also defies the law. It’s not what we’re talking about here. 

However, gun rights groups including the NRA have long pushed for laws allowing people to carry loaded firearms in bars and other places that serve alcohol. When South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) signed a law in 2014 allowing residents to carry guns in bars and restaurants, she specifically thanked an NRA lobbyist and presented him with a pen for his work on the bill.

Trump was pushing the “good guy with a gun” theory, a favorite of groups like the NRA that want to stop any gun control measures. The argument is that mass shootings can be stopped more quickly if other people have guns and are able to fire back at the shooter. But there was actually a good guy with a gun — a security officer — at the Orlando nightclub. That fact did not stop the shooter, as the Los Angeles Times reported: 

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said an off-duty police officer working security at the club in uniform traded gunfire with the attacker.

Officials said that after police responded to reports of the violence, the attacker retreated to a bathroom with hostages. Police held back because the attacker made statements about having explosives, they said.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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I remember an argument I had with my father as a little girl, in which I declared with my “Independent Women — Destiny’s Child” brand of girl power and wisdom that he was not a feminist.

He gave me a puzzled, unimpressed look and responded “I’m not a feminist?” before rolling his eyes and leaving me to attend to his other two, less boisterous daughters.

In my ten-year-old mind, being feminist meant my dad couldn’t tell me to wash dishes or do laundry because a man shouldn’t expect women to be their personal Cinderella. I realize now how wrong my assumptions about my father and feminism were at the time. The man just wanted me to get my chores done.

A few years later, I got my first glimpse into Black feminism in the pages of book that I took from the bookshelf in his home office.

The book, No Disrespect by Sister Souljah, took me through a journey of my Black womanhood future. With the sentence, “I was born in the Bronx,” I started to feel like I really had opened my sister’s diary even though I now lived miles away from Seton Avenue.

As a teenage girl, I read Souljah’s words as a cautionary tale that portended difficult and complex relationships with Black men in adulthood. I also took note that growing into a Black woman meant fighting for self-definition and self-determination, challenging the views of womanhood that attack us from all angles including from the ones we keep close.

I suspect my father knew this too, so he made certain his daughters embraced our Blackness as we transitioned from girlhood to womanhood. He would drive from toy to toy store around birthdays and holidays until he found the Black version of the Barbie doll we had requested. He would buy my sisters and I copies of all the Black female coming of age novels like Coldest Winter Ever, Flyy Girl and The Skin I’m In. He never suggested our skirts were too short, clothes too tight, or behavior too unladylike. In one day, he would send us to swim practice in the morning, take us to the hair salon in the afternoon, and show us how to put air in our tires in the evening.

When he returned from his travels somewhere in the Caribbean or Africa, he would gift us jewelry, scarves, and dresses crafted by our Black sisters abroad. Above all, he ensured that our Black girlhood would be definitively Jamaican, reminding us that we were kindred spirits with Queen Nanny, the fearless leader of the Windward Maroons who freed nearly 1,000 slaves decades before Harriet Tubman was born.

My mother and sisters were a clan of women, but rather than play king, my father instituted in us more democratic principles — particularly that being a woman did not stop us from accomplishing or doing anything we put our minds to.

Some of the most significant lessons my father gave us had to do with what we should expect and accept from the men we dated. First and foremost, we should never depend on any man for anything, unless of course we were on a date — then he better be footing the bill.
Second, he advised us to pay attention to the relationship a man has with his mother. “The way he treats his mother, is how he will treat you” was just one of piece of wisdom he would dispense when we turn to him about our relationship problems.

Third, unlike fathers who feel compelled to control every aspect of their daughter’s dating life, my father let us learn love and heartbreak on our own. When we love a man, he likes him. When we’re ready to kick said man to the curb, he does not interfere except to remind us how many fish there are in the sea.

To be sure, our father offered us a perspective of men that called for us to demonstrate patience as we confronted the patriarchy and misogyny we faced from other Black men. The other day I called him, furious after an encounter with a mansplainer in serious need of a civics course. He calmly reminded me of the education gap between young Black men and women in the United States; to consider my knowledge a privilege and to rely on the always reliable option of choosing silence over clapbacks.

I probably will continue to choose clapbacks (I get that from my momma). Still, I am grateful to have a father who made room for my outspokenness to flourish despite what society expects women to behave like. To have him as a constant example of Black feminist fatherhood reminds me to expect and value loyalty, respect, and freedom to define oneself in all my relationships.

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Both Sony and Microsoft have confirmed that they are working on more powerful versions of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but they are yet to confirm precisely when these consoles will be released. One big advantage these consoles will have over existing models is that they will have support for native 4K gaming and the power boost required for an enhanced virtual reality experience. A new report suggests that the 4K PlayStation Neo is going to beat 4K Xbox One to market by coming out later this year.

The report claims that Sony is going to release PlayStation 4 Neo before the end of this year, while Microsoft has already confirmed that its 4K Xbox One codenamed Project Scorpio won’t be released before 2017.

If Sony’s console does arrive first it will give Microsoft plenty of time to see how developers utilize the more powerful console’s resources and whether the focus does remain on 4K gaming.

Sony didn’t talk about PlayStation 4 Neo at E3 2016 so there’s no confirmation from the company yet if this console will be released before the end of 2016. Microsoft did talk about Project Scorpio at E3, calling it the most powerful console it has ever made, and confirming that it won’t be out before the holiday season next year. Both companies are yet to provide an idea of how much these new consoles will cost.

If Sony is to release PS4 Neo this year it could make the announcement at the Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom, or the Paris Games Week. It may also hold a dedicated event for this console like it did for the PlayStation 4 back in 2013.

4K PlayStation 4 Neo Will Reportedly Beat 4K Xbox One To Market This Year , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.