Does Charlie Kaufman Do Kids' Shows?

After a summer of seeing too much TV morphing our otherwise delightful child into a hyperactive head-spinning, glassy-eyed spazola, Nate and I decided on a new schedule for T. now that school is in session: he can watch TV, but only in the evening and only after he has cleaned up (this may not sound like much of a requirement, but in a single morning this kid can turn a perfectly tidy living room into that scene from Temple of Doom where Kate Capshaw wades through the room of bugs--just insert "Mom" in for Capshaw and "toys/food/food containers/clothes/wrappers/whatever/etc." in for the bugs).

So Thomas normally picks Noggin to watch, but one day, I switched the TV on for him and left the room (he knows how to switch the channels), only to come back a little while later to hysterical laughter. I mean, I know Dora can whip off a clever line or two in Espanol, but she's no Ellen Degeneres, so I had to wonder what he was watching. Turns out it was...wait for it....

America's Funniest Home Videos.

After recording Homicide: Life on the Street for me, the DVR had left it on WGN which apparently shows reruns of AFV after H:LS (who is their program director?). And Thomas--he must have felt he had inadvertantly stumbled onto the greatest comedic spectacle his young eyes had seen since his dad introduced to him the The Three Stooges (or "Stooches" as T. calls them).

I will admit, I am a TV and movie snob. With a few exceptions (I have a soft spot for old school sci-fi like ST:TNG) I like pretty much highbrow stuff and I'll turn off any show that dares even a single male groin injury, especially if perpetrated by balls and/or small children. So I've seen AFV maybe five times in my life and all at other people's houses. Thinking I'd somehow missed some hitherto unseen hilarity, I sat down and watched it with him for a minute.

Nope. Still the same cats falling off television sets and men getting hit in the groin by balls and/or small children. But Thomas was wiping tears of elation out of his eyes, when he could manage to pull himself back off the floor after a particularly gut-busting dog-chases-sock-runs-into-wall segment. 

A friend and I once joked about forbidding our kids from watching certain shows not because the content was too adult or something of that sort, but because they lacked sufficient artistic merit. "Thomas, turn that off! The characterization is embarrassingly shallow and the director is so self-conscious, the shots can't even maintain their sense of ironic detachment!" 

Har. But how much do you lax your standards for your kid's entertainment? For all the people who turn off Barney because of its cheerful brain-washing mindlessness, what exactly do they turn it to? Masterpiece Theatre? I liked Blue Clues when Steve Burns was on it, but once they replaced him with "Joe", the whole show fell out of its "day in a kid's life" motif to a bizarro mock-fantasy that defies its own inner logic. In other words, it sucks now. I still let Thomas watch it during his TV time if he wants to. Creative criticism seems particularly petty and silly when applied to kids' shows which aren't exactly trying to win over the Academy. 

But how low-brow is too low-brow? For a while, Thomas's favorite movie was The Master of Disguise, a Dana Carvey-vehicle that would be considered terrible even if we lived in an alternate universe where Pixar had never existed and the artistic pinnacle of children's entertainment had become Disney's straight-to-video bastardizations of its own franchises ("Snow White VII:Snow White Goes on Extreme Makeover"), but I let him watch it. In fact, I recorded it on our DVR and let him watch it more than once. He has most of it memorized. Ditto The 3 Ninjas.

Per T.'s request, I've started recording AFV so he can watch it during his TV time. In fact, he's watching it right now while I'm writing this and having what appear to be seizures, but are, yay, only full body laughter spasms. Meanwhile, Sethie is running around behind him, laughing whenever he laughs and scrutinizing the television, clearly trying to figure out, on a deeper level, why the paragon of wisdom, his older brother, finds this show so funny (just like how a seven-year-old me tried once to understand the apparently hidden aesthetic quality my older sister saw in Days of Our Lives. Sethie, my little mechanical observer, are you destined to grow up disillusioned?)

If this were a column in a newspaper, no doubt I'd be getting vilified in the comments section. There's a part of me that thinks I should be. But I just love the sound of T's uncontrollable giggling. If the source is harmless but, really, kinda stupid, does that mean I shouldn't let him watch it? 

I don't know. It's hard to concentrate over the sound of his happy hysteria. 

Thomism

Thomas, describing the abilities of the LEGO plane he built: "It's so hard, it could kill your face in just one minute!"

Me: "Oh yeah?"

T: "Yeah, so stay away unless you want to get dead."

No, No, VERY BAD!

Dear Little Kidlets,

Never put anything in your mommy's and daddy's paper shredder, even if it looks like it fits, especially your fingers and toes because they will come out looking like Mr. Quarter here.

Dear Mommies and Daddies,

Stop putting your shredder where little kidlets can find it.

Sincerely,
The Management

Had a Hard Day

Dear Sethie, I know you're having a hard day when you wake up from your nap completely hysterical and inconsolable. What were you dreaming about? Toy price inflation? The drop in the value of our 401K? The fact that it's probably going to be ten years or so until you can grab your things back from Thomas without having to resort to knee-biting?

I wish you could tell me.

Alabama Baby

Nate and I are both the babies in our families--he's the last of eight and I'm the last of six, which means that we both have a few nieces and nephews who really aren't that much younger than we are. So I guess it shouldn't be much of a shock that these previously little kids have grown up, gotten married, and are now having babies of their own. Last month, Nate's niece Julia had her first baby, a little boy named William.

And this month marked the debut of my own grand nephew, Tristan. 

I was ten when my niece, Meg, was born. Since then I've seen her in a few fits and starts as my sister moved around the country (and the world) and it just seems like they kept replacing the model I knew with a bigger, older version. Toddler Meg--Pop!--kid Meg--Pop!--adolescent Meg--Pop!--teenage Meg--Pop!--grown up married Meg!

And then the most dramatic pop of all--Mommy Meg! 

I just can't get over it. I don't even feel that old.

Anyway, here's some baby pics. 

Here's Mr. Tristan in all his black-haired glory. Meg

actually looked just like this as a baby.

My niece Meg with Tristan. Aw! I can't believe

she's a mommy! Still weirds me out a little. But

she's doing a great job.

Meg's younger sister, Amber, with the baby. Amber did even

some more dramatic "popping" between visits. She literally

grew several feet. She's model-tall now and just as lovely.

My sister Alys with Tristan. I hope I look that good

when I'm a grandma.

Me giving Tristan a little smooch on the head. It's been 

two years since I had a smoochable baby! Toddlers are much

less likely to hold still when you want to kiss them.

To My Little Survivor, Happy Birthday!

And thanks to Gloria Gaynor for creating the most widely applicable song in the history of music.

Thomism

Thomas: "My friend Emma said she is going to church tomorrow."

Me: "That might mean she is Jewish and going to synagogue, then."

Thomas: "Jewish?"

Me: "Yes."

Thomas: "But she speaks English."

Squirrelly Business

I'm from Utah originally, so the only time I ever saw squirrels was on camping trips into the wild where their adorable scampering became synonymous with happy, holy nature. When I started school at Bryn Mawr College out on this end of the country, I was amazed at the hundreds of squirrels around, doing their adorable scampering business all over the lawns of my new school. I said to my friends, "Look at all the squirrels! Aren't they so cute? I just love all the squirrels here!"

Of course, they all looked at me like I had developed instant leprosy and were likely also wondering if I had a possible malignant brain tumor to boot. (I had a similar experience once--on the giving end--when my friend Miriam commented out loud how cute she thought cows were. I think we were watching some TV program. I asked her, "Have you actually SEEN a cow in real life?" She admitted that she hadn't. I told her I would give her a tour of their fetid stinky "cuteness" next time she visited me out in rural northern Utah).

The truth is, squirrels are the rats of New Jersey (though, don't get me wrong, we have rats here, too. They are, however, surprisingly less annoying than squirrels). Ah, yes, they are fuzzy-tailed, light-footed bundles of cuddliness, but there's a reason they are all over people's lawns and trees. They are not there to pose for pictures. They are little anarchists. They do not acknowledge your property rights.

More frankly, your house. Come winter-time, squirrels like to nest in hollow trees which are dry and cozy. Your attic is the biggest, nicest hollow tree a squirrel has ever laid eyes on. Your attic is the holy grail of hollow trees. It is not just cozy: it has its own heat source. It's as warm as summertime in there! And spacious, too. This Jersey rat has just landed the squirrel-equivalent of a New York City penthouse. 

And just like a new and annoying young Hollywood starlet occupying said penthouse, it doesn't know the meaning of "bedtime". In fact, that's when the party is just getting started. It's up there, with its little squirrel friends and its squirrel catering service, and just possibly its hordes of squirrel offspring, at all hours of the night scampering here and scampering there, making sure everyone is having a good time and there's enough squirrel drink to go around, while the crotchety old neighbors downstairs (us!) are trying to get some badly needed rest. Banging on the ceiling will cause everything to go quiet for a few seconds, but soon enough, the party starts right back up again and this time, there are no squirrel police you can call about noise violations.

As you may have determined, we currently have a squirrel in our attic. It arrives around 7 pm, just as darkness is setting in and leaves again around 7 am when Nate is heading to work. Attempts to scare it into leaving, such as screaming, stomping, banging, and sticking squirrel dolls with pins, have done nothing other than turn us into screaming, stomping, banging, voodoo'ing lunatics. The squirrel is quite content to live above such chaos. Meanwhile, I had to sleep yesterday with earplugs in, which was great for not hearing the squirrel all night long, but also meant if my children were screaming bloody murder for their mommy, I missed that, too. 

Tonight, Dave, our handyman, is coming by to look for holes in the roof where our squirrel starlet squatter is getting in and tomorrow an exterminator will be coming to live trap the creature and cart it off to someone else's backyard. Hopefully that will be the end of it.

We'll see.