Thomas has recently discovered television commercials. While I was afraid in the past that he would start craving the toys and food he saw on TV, in fact it's much worse. He appears to be susceptible to everything he sees advertised.
Thomas: "Mommy, mommy! Can we get that?"
Me: "You want to get a 30-year mortgage with a low down payment?"
Thomas, bringing me a book, "Mommy, can you read this to me? I don't know my language."
Thomas, showing us his hand, "Hey, look what I smell like!"
Me: "Thomas, what's wrong?"
Thomas: "Mommy, I'm pretending to be a king who's crying because he got married."
Thomas is helping me with dinner.
Me: "Thomas, you're doing a good job."
Thomas: "I'm doing a great job, Mommy."
Monday, July 23, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Harry Potter and the Humongous Hype
This is not a Harry Potter-bashing post. My copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pre-ordered around Jan., came Saturday and I've already finished it, so count me among his fans. Still, as Marc Antony, via Shakespeare, once intoned, "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him", even as his speech goes on to remind the Romans why Julius wasn't such a bad bloke after all. What kind of bloke is Harry? Why does the whole planet seem to care so very much?
Tolkien, like Rowlings, was also once vaulted into an instant spotlight, but even he had to have a specific movement and time--the drug-addled sixties--to explain his sudden popularity. Rowlings barely had time to blow her nose before her first novel started disappearing off bookstore shelves in droves. Potter also has Frodo beat on another score: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has sold more copies alone than all three Lord of the Rings books combined, and Tolkien has been hanging around a lot longer than "the boy wizard". I know these stats won't exactly shock anyone--the Harry Potter Hype Machine has been in full bore since the first book rounded up kids and adults alike into one big cult of four-eyed magic mania--but can anyone explain them? Modern Library's list of 100 Greatest Novels isn't short for science fiction/fantasy writers--it has Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, even Ayn Rand--but J.K. Rowlings fails to make it. And that's not just the Board's list, that's the Reader's list, too. TIME Magazine's list is similarly Potter-less. So why are these tales of a scar-faced, wand-waving adolescent squashing all but a handful of religious tomes as the best-selling books of all time?
Greater minds than mine have attempted this question and it's probably better suited to some comparative lit's Ph.D. thesis, but I can't help but wonder. On the face of it, Rowlings' writing is solid, but hardly splashy and she slides a bit in the later books, probably because no editor dared touch them. She occasionally attempts to use a simile or metaphor when she's actually describing the real appearance of something--in this book she says the ground-up shards of a mirror were "like glittering dust". She overuses a pet plot device--having Harry overhear details crucial to his mission from unsuspecting antagonists--all too often, culminating in the near constant mindmeld Harry shares with Voldemort that endangers Harry only once, but ever afterwards gives him an easy, constant update on Mr. Name Unspoken's whereabouts and activities. She also can't resist the "all is revealed" moment, either, where characters get together to rehash in clunky exposition what's happened and how it all fits together, especially the cliched bad guy "monologue" ending--"Before I kill you, Harry, here's how I did everything prior to this point!"
But wordcraft is not enough to sustain a book--and its lack isn't enough to condemn one, either. The book I finished prior to picking up Harry Potter was a much more literary sci-fi called Life by Gwyneth Jones. Jones' writing slaps Rowlings sideways. It is beautiful, poised, provocative, and requires careful attention. Her characters are sharply and poignantly drawn. The plot is driven less by adventure than by, well, life as her title indicates and it has some uncomfortable and challenging things to say about gender in a modern world. Still, a few weeks out of it and it's mostly slipped my mind. Nate and I had a similar reaction to a movie called The Fountain which we saw because Nate is a big fan of director Darren Aronofsky. The Fountain also has a lot of very pretty packaging--it's a very visual arresting film. But we were strangely unmoved at the end, despite the fact that characters spend most of the film wracked with grief. "Bloodless" is how I described it to Nate and he agreed. We simply didn't care what happened to these people.
And on that score, I think Harry Potter gets a punch back in at its more literary counterparts. Even if many of Rowlings' peripheral characters are more caricature than real (the Dursleys in particular come to mind), Harry, Ron and Hermione, a classic heroic triumvirate, have enough personality for all of them. Through seven books, they've grown up and the magical wonder of the first book is appropriately mirrored in the grief of the seventh book as they (and we) see the things we found so amazing in childhood take on deeper and darker meaning when viewed from adulthood. Rowlings isn't afraid to let them fully experience adolescence, either, even in front of a backdrop--evil maniac torturing and killing his way to triumph--that seems too serious for explorations of young crushes, hormonal-induced depression, and--for Ron--suddenly discovering your childhood girl friend has breasts. In the final book, the three of them are finally of majority and they strike out on their own together, trying to do what they think is right without the reassuring guidance of better-informed adults. The thing they realize is that adults are not especially well-informed either. Every decision is wrought with peril, and often, regret. Courage has been described as not the absence of fear, but going forward despite fear. Rowlings proves that courage is really the going forward despite doubt. Because of these things, the characters endure, grow large in the mind of the reader. We want them to win. We wish we could help them--we read voraciously alongside them as if we could.
And what Rowlings might lack in wordcraft, she more than makes up for in storycraft. I read the first book several years ago and dismissed it as so much fantasy fluff. It wasn't until after the first two movies had come out that I decided to try them again and from there, I read books two through six in a few months' rush (rather dumbly, I didn't wait until all seven books were out, so I was forced into the position of waiting restlessly for its debut, after having rolled my eyes at all the hype and giddiness that accompanied earlier books to stores). Small nuggets in the first few books that had seemed out of place, or too easily come by grew with meaning in each following book. By the seventh book, a carefully laid heroic arc for Harry becomes shockingly clear, building on these little dropped hints across what now amounts to thousands of pages. It reminded me, not favorably, of some other fantasy series I have read where the writers start out clever and smashing in the first few books and then you realize by the third or fourth book that they shoved all their great ideas in early and are petering out now (Robert Jordan, anyone?). Rowlings seems to have infinite patience. Something laid without adequate explanation in the first book might not reappear until book six or seven and to find it again is like a treasure hunt, like discovering on Antique Roadshow that ugly old painting of grandma's is actually worth $30,000. How she managed to keep track of it all should be made required study by all writing students.
Some people have complained that her later books have too much filler surrounding the center action. Maybe so, but the Tolkien that everyone admires suffers the same complaint on re-inspection--clearly the man was more interested in the literary and historical aspects of his own novels than the driving plot (Frodo's destruction of the ring comes very early in the last book and comes off as anti-climatic. Tolkien really needed an editor like Peter Jackson). It's hard to blame Rowlings that she has grown to such mammoth proportions as a writer that editors are loath to harass too much change out of her (would you complain to your money cow that her milk is too creamy?) Tolkien's "filler" was a lot of droning place descriptions and non-sequitor singing. Rowlings maybe spends too much time worrying what Harry is thinking about in between the moments where he's actually doing something. She is invested in him. So apparently are millions of other people.
I'm pretty sad to see Harry go. The seventh book is the best of the series, invested with real emotion and a well-executed bang-out ending--if anyone was worried. It's been a little disappointing for me to emerge back into the real world, where the chance to participate in an epic battle against evil is pretty slim. Here's hoping that some bright young writer is just waiting in the wings to emerge as the next grand storyteller and give us all a reason to stay home on Saturday nights, curled up with a good book.
Sidebar: While reading Harry, I was thinking of the idea of being the protagonist in my own story--how absorbed I am in my own concerns and how narcissistically my own world seems to revolve around those concerns, as if other people are the bit players in my drama. In Harry's world, several characters make the ultimate sacrifice and their deaths get varying levels of attention, but hey, this is Harry's story and Harry triumphs, so it's all for the best, right? I'd be interested in hearing what people think about being the bit player--would you be okay with being a footnote on the way to glory, fighting your tiny square of the fight, if a Harry Potter-like hero needed your minuscule help to accomplish his/her goal? I'm not talking about soldiers in an army, necessarily, but ordinary people who hear the news, decide for themselves what they think they ought to do, and suffer the consequences of those actions, maybe without much acknowledgement either. What do you think?
Tolkien, like Rowlings, was also once vaulted into an instant spotlight, but even he had to have a specific movement and time--the drug-addled sixties--to explain his sudden popularity. Rowlings barely had time to blow her nose before her first novel started disappearing off bookstore shelves in droves. Potter also has Frodo beat on another score: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone has sold more copies alone than all three Lord of the Rings books combined, and Tolkien has been hanging around a lot longer than "the boy wizard". I know these stats won't exactly shock anyone--the Harry Potter Hype Machine has been in full bore since the first book rounded up kids and adults alike into one big cult of four-eyed magic mania--but can anyone explain them? Modern Library's list of 100 Greatest Novels isn't short for science fiction/fantasy writers--it has Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, even Ayn Rand--but J.K. Rowlings fails to make it. And that's not just the Board's list, that's the Reader's list, too. TIME Magazine's list is similarly Potter-less. So why are these tales of a scar-faced, wand-waving adolescent squashing all but a handful of religious tomes as the best-selling books of all time?
Greater minds than mine have attempted this question and it's probably better suited to some comparative lit's Ph.D. thesis, but I can't help but wonder. On the face of it, Rowlings' writing is solid, but hardly splashy and she slides a bit in the later books, probably because no editor dared touch them. She occasionally attempts to use a simile or metaphor when she's actually describing the real appearance of something--in this book she says the ground-up shards of a mirror were "like glittering dust". She overuses a pet plot device--having Harry overhear details crucial to his mission from unsuspecting antagonists--all too often, culminating in the near constant mindmeld Harry shares with Voldemort that endangers Harry only once, but ever afterwards gives him an easy, constant update on Mr. Name Unspoken's whereabouts and activities. She also can't resist the "all is revealed" moment, either, where characters get together to rehash in clunky exposition what's happened and how it all fits together, especially the cliched bad guy "monologue" ending--"Before I kill you, Harry, here's how I did everything prior to this point!"
But wordcraft is not enough to sustain a book--and its lack isn't enough to condemn one, either. The book I finished prior to picking up Harry Potter was a much more literary sci-fi called Life by Gwyneth Jones. Jones' writing slaps Rowlings sideways. It is beautiful, poised, provocative, and requires careful attention. Her characters are sharply and poignantly drawn. The plot is driven less by adventure than by, well, life as her title indicates and it has some uncomfortable and challenging things to say about gender in a modern world. Still, a few weeks out of it and it's mostly slipped my mind. Nate and I had a similar reaction to a movie called The Fountain which we saw because Nate is a big fan of director Darren Aronofsky. The Fountain also has a lot of very pretty packaging--it's a very visual arresting film. But we were strangely unmoved at the end, despite the fact that characters spend most of the film wracked with grief. "Bloodless" is how I described it to Nate and he agreed. We simply didn't care what happened to these people.
And on that score, I think Harry Potter gets a punch back in at its more literary counterparts. Even if many of Rowlings' peripheral characters are more caricature than real (the Dursleys in particular come to mind), Harry, Ron and Hermione, a classic heroic triumvirate, have enough personality for all of them. Through seven books, they've grown up and the magical wonder of the first book is appropriately mirrored in the grief of the seventh book as they (and we) see the things we found so amazing in childhood take on deeper and darker meaning when viewed from adulthood. Rowlings isn't afraid to let them fully experience adolescence, either, even in front of a backdrop--evil maniac torturing and killing his way to triumph--that seems too serious for explorations of young crushes, hormonal-induced depression, and--for Ron--suddenly discovering your childhood girl friend has breasts. In the final book, the three of them are finally of majority and they strike out on their own together, trying to do what they think is right without the reassuring guidance of better-informed adults. The thing they realize is that adults are not especially well-informed either. Every decision is wrought with peril, and often, regret. Courage has been described as not the absence of fear, but going forward despite fear. Rowlings proves that courage is really the going forward despite doubt. Because of these things, the characters endure, grow large in the mind of the reader. We want them to win. We wish we could help them--we read voraciously alongside them as if we could.
And what Rowlings might lack in wordcraft, she more than makes up for in storycraft. I read the first book several years ago and dismissed it as so much fantasy fluff. It wasn't until after the first two movies had come out that I decided to try them again and from there, I read books two through six in a few months' rush (rather dumbly, I didn't wait until all seven books were out, so I was forced into the position of waiting restlessly for its debut, after having rolled my eyes at all the hype and giddiness that accompanied earlier books to stores). Small nuggets in the first few books that had seemed out of place, or too easily come by grew with meaning in each following book. By the seventh book, a carefully laid heroic arc for Harry becomes shockingly clear, building on these little dropped hints across what now amounts to thousands of pages. It reminded me, not favorably, of some other fantasy series I have read where the writers start out clever and smashing in the first few books and then you realize by the third or fourth book that they shoved all their great ideas in early and are petering out now (Robert Jordan, anyone?). Rowlings seems to have infinite patience. Something laid without adequate explanation in the first book might not reappear until book six or seven and to find it again is like a treasure hunt, like discovering on Antique Roadshow that ugly old painting of grandma's is actually worth $30,000. How she managed to keep track of it all should be made required study by all writing students.
Some people have complained that her later books have too much filler surrounding the center action. Maybe so, but the Tolkien that everyone admires suffers the same complaint on re-inspection--clearly the man was more interested in the literary and historical aspects of his own novels than the driving plot (Frodo's destruction of the ring comes very early in the last book and comes off as anti-climatic. Tolkien really needed an editor like Peter Jackson). It's hard to blame Rowlings that she has grown to such mammoth proportions as a writer that editors are loath to harass too much change out of her (would you complain to your money cow that her milk is too creamy?) Tolkien's "filler" was a lot of droning place descriptions and non-sequitor singing. Rowlings maybe spends too much time worrying what Harry is thinking about in between the moments where he's actually doing something. She is invested in him. So apparently are millions of other people.
I'm pretty sad to see Harry go. The seventh book is the best of the series, invested with real emotion and a well-executed bang-out ending--if anyone was worried. It's been a little disappointing for me to emerge back into the real world, where the chance to participate in an epic battle against evil is pretty slim. Here's hoping that some bright young writer is just waiting in the wings to emerge as the next grand storyteller and give us all a reason to stay home on Saturday nights, curled up with a good book.
Sidebar: While reading Harry, I was thinking of the idea of being the protagonist in my own story--how absorbed I am in my own concerns and how narcissistically my own world seems to revolve around those concerns, as if other people are the bit players in my drama. In Harry's world, several characters make the ultimate sacrifice and their deaths get varying levels of attention, but hey, this is Harry's story and Harry triumphs, so it's all for the best, right? I'd be interested in hearing what people think about being the bit player--would you be okay with being a footnote on the way to glory, fighting your tiny square of the fight, if a Harry Potter-like hero needed your minuscule help to accomplish his/her goal? I'm not talking about soldiers in an army, necessarily, but ordinary people who hear the news, decide for themselves what they think they ought to do, and suffer the consequences of those actions, maybe without much acknowledgement either. What do you think?
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Wedding Throwdown: Mormons vs. Those Other Guys
So much has been written about the American Wedding that I'm not sure I've got anything of substance to add. Still, there's something about attending a wedding that makes a person want to psychoanalyze the state of American life and its unions in particular. Yesterday, Nate and I attended the wedding of Nate's cousin, Laila. Nate's uncle, Brian, is the freewheeler of his family, having defied his more traditional father's wishes on more than one occasion: he went to Harvard instead of MIT, majored in English instead of a "man's field" like engineering, he plays the sitar professionally and is married to Shubha, the only professional female surbahar player in the U.S. Laila is his adopted daughter with his first wife, Sandra, and their only child at all, so naturally the event of her marriage needed to be a grand affair.
And grand it was. I wore adult shoes (3-inch heels), ate adult food (caviar and expensive imported cheeses), had adult conversations ("Oh yes, Princeton is a lovely little town"), and did some very unadult dancing (I shook it to "Mony Mony", but declined to do the macarena). On separate occasions, Nate and I each got hit on (his bailed when she found out he was married, mine already knew I was married and waited until Nate had left to break out his line). I declined to have my champagne glass filled several times until an exasperated waiter went ahead and filled it anyway (when I tried to tell him no while he was filling it, he just leered at me).
I've had the privilege of attending the nuptial ceremonies of several major religions: Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, and Mormon (both in and out of the temple) and I've concluded that the Mormons are the most efficient. Most of the time, while the officiator might make a little five to ten minute speech about why marriage is a good thing, it's still just a quick "Do you?" and "Do you?" affair. All these recitations of poems, singing of singers, ceremonial hand-wrapping and/or glass crushing, etc., these don't make it into the Mormon wedding. As a Mormon, therefore, you can feel a bit cheated. That's why the Utah "Wedding Breakfast" was invented, to smash all that stuff back in. In fact, while the Mormon wedding is the most efficient, the Mormon wedding day is usually the longest. Most Mormons get married in the morning, then there's a wedding breakfast, afternoon pictures at the marriage site and at the reception site, and at least one wedding reception in the evening. Mormons can't get over the need to be efficient, though, so unlike the demure sit-down $100-a-head dinner of most wedding receptions, Mormons invite everyone they know (and everyone else they know) to bring a present, walk quickly through a receiving line of bride, groom, and close relatives, then sit at a table for another ten minutes eating mints and drinking sprite mixed with sherbet before feeling compelled to go home in order to free up their seat for someone else. The efficiency level increases as the servers are usually young women from your ward, the platers are relief society members, and the reception site is most likely to be the cultural hall of your ward building, with the receiving line posted under a rented trellis by the basketball hoop.
I suspect it's because with most Mormon families having a multitude of children and with a large population of young adults getting home from their missions all the same time, the procession of weddings in a town with a high Mormon population can get to be a little overwhelming. There are always wedding reception invitations on my parents' countertop whenever we visit them in Utah and the lucky couples are usually the child of someone my parents knew from something, however briefly. "Who's this, Mom?" "Oh, that's the daughter of the woman I stood next to in line at the supermarket." Knowing you only have to go for a few minutes to say hello, then devour your mints and take off enables you to attend four or five weddings in a week. Of course, the gift-giving can get a little prohibitive, but only family and close friends are expected to give actual presents. The 500+ additional reception invitees can usually drop a few bucks in a collective fund for the bride and groom to buy themselves a nice couch. The system is well-established.
Nate and I took the Mormon wedding efficiency one step further by squashing the wedding breakfast and reception into a single event (we ate breakfast with family and friends upstairs at our reception hall, then went downstairs afterwards to start greeting additional guests). We gave our poor photographer a bit of a heart attack, since there was so set picture-taking time--he was forced to follow us around at our reception (efficiency decrease: we didn't have a receiving line), waiting until we stopped talking to people, then dragging us out to snap as many pictures as he could before we escaped again. The whole thing was over by two in the afternoon. Frankly, most of it is a wonderful blur. Two events stick out in my mind: 1) seeing Nate for the first time after our temple ceremony, flanked by his brothers and decked out in his Scottish finest (Nate's ancestors on his mother's side are Stewart Scots). My heart nearly popped out of my chest, and 2) Nate pulling a sword out of his belt for me to cut the cake (and getting to lick the frosting off the sword tip to the appreciative yells of the crowd).
I wouldn't presume to say which wedding style is better: Mormon efficiency vs. Everyone Else opulence. The opulence, frankly, is more fun and when yours is the only immediate wedding in town, you get a little more attention for it. The party is louder and goes longer--and the food is far better. There are first dances and toasts (Mormon weddings, lacking alcohol, also lack the drunken friend salutes that make most weddings so entertaining), multiple courses and wedding singers. The Catholics in particular get to have an entire worship event, audience participation included, to go along with the wedding itself. The length of the ritual begins to wind itself tightly with power, culminating in the well-known recitation of vows that, by their very familiarity, seems to unleash a collective feeling of spiritual joy. There is something wonderful to be said about spending half a day really feting someone you love as they start into a completely new chapter of their life, combining your collective good wishes into a foundation for their marriage which will largely have to continue without your help.
Mormon efficiency is a cultural thing--in Utah, we have made efficiency into a worship art. However, Mormon wedding efficiency has its own unique origin, tied to the same reason most Mormon engagements are so short:
We're anxious to get to the hotel.
And grand it was. I wore adult shoes (3-inch heels), ate adult food (caviar and expensive imported cheeses), had adult conversations ("Oh yes, Princeton is a lovely little town"), and did some very unadult dancing (I shook it to "Mony Mony", but declined to do the macarena). On separate occasions, Nate and I each got hit on (his bailed when she found out he was married, mine already knew I was married and waited until Nate had left to break out his line). I declined to have my champagne glass filled several times until an exasperated waiter went ahead and filled it anyway (when I tried to tell him no while he was filling it, he just leered at me).
I've had the privilege of attending the nuptial ceremonies of several major religions: Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, and Mormon (both in and out of the temple) and I've concluded that the Mormons are the most efficient. Most of the time, while the officiator might make a little five to ten minute speech about why marriage is a good thing, it's still just a quick "Do you?" and "Do you?" affair. All these recitations of poems, singing of singers, ceremonial hand-wrapping and/or glass crushing, etc., these don't make it into the Mormon wedding. As a Mormon, therefore, you can feel a bit cheated. That's why the Utah "Wedding Breakfast" was invented, to smash all that stuff back in. In fact, while the Mormon wedding is the most efficient, the Mormon wedding day is usually the longest. Most Mormons get married in the morning, then there's a wedding breakfast, afternoon pictures at the marriage site and at the reception site, and at least one wedding reception in the evening. Mormons can't get over the need to be efficient, though, so unlike the demure sit-down $100-a-head dinner of most wedding receptions, Mormons invite everyone they know (and everyone else they know) to bring a present, walk quickly through a receiving line of bride, groom, and close relatives, then sit at a table for another ten minutes eating mints and drinking sprite mixed with sherbet before feeling compelled to go home in order to free up their seat for someone else. The efficiency level increases as the servers are usually young women from your ward, the platers are relief society members, and the reception site is most likely to be the cultural hall of your ward building, with the receiving line posted under a rented trellis by the basketball hoop.
I suspect it's because with most Mormon families having a multitude of children and with a large population of young adults getting home from their missions all the same time, the procession of weddings in a town with a high Mormon population can get to be a little overwhelming. There are always wedding reception invitations on my parents' countertop whenever we visit them in Utah and the lucky couples are usually the child of someone my parents knew from something, however briefly. "Who's this, Mom?" "Oh, that's the daughter of the woman I stood next to in line at the supermarket." Knowing you only have to go for a few minutes to say hello, then devour your mints and take off enables you to attend four or five weddings in a week. Of course, the gift-giving can get a little prohibitive, but only family and close friends are expected to give actual presents. The 500+ additional reception invitees can usually drop a few bucks in a collective fund for the bride and groom to buy themselves a nice couch. The system is well-established.
Nate and I took the Mormon wedding efficiency one step further by squashing the wedding breakfast and reception into a single event (we ate breakfast with family and friends upstairs at our reception hall, then went downstairs afterwards to start greeting additional guests). We gave our poor photographer a bit of a heart attack, since there was so set picture-taking time--he was forced to follow us around at our reception (efficiency decrease: we didn't have a receiving line), waiting until we stopped talking to people, then dragging us out to snap as many pictures as he could before we escaped again. The whole thing was over by two in the afternoon. Frankly, most of it is a wonderful blur. Two events stick out in my mind: 1) seeing Nate for the first time after our temple ceremony, flanked by his brothers and decked out in his Scottish finest (Nate's ancestors on his mother's side are Stewart Scots). My heart nearly popped out of my chest, and 2) Nate pulling a sword out of his belt for me to cut the cake (and getting to lick the frosting off the sword tip to the appreciative yells of the crowd).
I wouldn't presume to say which wedding style is better: Mormon efficiency vs. Everyone Else opulence. The opulence, frankly, is more fun and when yours is the only immediate wedding in town, you get a little more attention for it. The party is louder and goes longer--and the food is far better. There are first dances and toasts (Mormon weddings, lacking alcohol, also lack the drunken friend salutes that make most weddings so entertaining), multiple courses and wedding singers. The Catholics in particular get to have an entire worship event, audience participation included, to go along with the wedding itself. The length of the ritual begins to wind itself tightly with power, culminating in the well-known recitation of vows that, by their very familiarity, seems to unleash a collective feeling of spiritual joy. There is something wonderful to be said about spending half a day really feting someone you love as they start into a completely new chapter of their life, combining your collective good wishes into a foundation for their marriage which will largely have to continue without your help.
Mormon efficiency is a cultural thing--in Utah, we have made efficiency into a worship art. However, Mormon wedding efficiency has its own unique origin, tied to the same reason most Mormon engagements are so short:
We're anxious to get to the hotel.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
A Candle (or five) for a Man
As I mentioned earlier, my sister Alyssa is here with us until Sunday. Roughly three years ago Alys was visiting me when we were first living in New York. We headed down to 5th Avenue south of Central Park to see the notorious stores: Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany's, Bergdorf Goodman, etc. Right across the street from Saks is the very famous St. Patrick's Cathedral which Wikipedia lists as the "largest decorated Neo-Gothic-style Catholic cathedral in North America". It's an absolutely stunning church, and has millions of visitors a year. Inside there are stations for various saints where a petitioner can pay a dollar and light a candle. Those three years ago, Alys, who was having fairly dismal luck on the dating scene (One of her dates refused a piece of gum she offered because, as he put it, "Ah, I'd just swaller it."), lit a candle to St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, and put out her hopes for a decent man to come along.
Well, maybe because we're Mormons and not Catholics (in which case, our actions yesterday may not have helped much), or maybe St. Andrew has a sense of humor, but about six months later my sister met a certain Scottish-descended laddie with whom she began a long and pretty ineffectual romance. Fed-up with the whole thing, she told me before she came out that she had just one wish: that we could return to St. Patrick's and light a different candle to a different saint in the hopes that maybe someone else could get the job done a little better.
I made a video diary of our quest, but unfortunately, the audio appears to be screwed up on a few of the files. I am working on the problem and as soon as I can post all of them, I will. Until then, here are the working ones:
In the end, we spent six dollars (St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes got two dollars) and lit five candles. Slease, I hope you get good one this time. :)
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Music and memories
It feels like we're living in an unprecedented age of being able to revisit our youth through music we used to love. I had a few tapes as a kid, though most of my music tastes ran to the stuff my older brother and sister listened to when they were teenagers and I was impressionable and also desperate to impress. Of course, I used to say I loved '80's music, but I have to admit that I only loved a very narrow segment of it--i.e. whatever was in their tape decks.
At the same time, I had my own private music, stuff no one knew I liked, songs I listened to mostly alone as a kid (a lot of my childhood was spent hiding the things I liked for fear of ridicule or reprisal. My older siblings were--and are--pretty blunt in expressing their views and being the least mature in a lot of ways made my preferences easy targets). Not surprisingly, as an adolescent girl--even as my older brother was introducing me to Pink Floyd's The Wall--I really went for easy listening love songs of the Richard Marx's variety. I thought George Michael had the best voice and there were several Phil Collins songs on my private top ten list of GREATEST SONGS EVER. I didn't have the money to buy my own music and I didn't want to ask someone in my family to sport me the cash (ridicule thing again), so most of the time I listened to the radio fanatically in the hopes that every now and again I could catch a favorite and get it secondhand onto my own tape recorder.
Of course, I grew up, music changed, I changed, old tapes got lost, new ones got made (some even from boyfriends) and I forgot--unintentionally or deliberately--a lot of those private songs that seemed to have so much meaning to me only a few short years ago. In college, I acquired a whole new host of music tastes, mostly through the music collection of my roommate (having never bought music, I just wasn't in the habit and I couldn't stand to waste money on an album before I had heard it through completely and knew I would actually like it). Lots of angry women and their guitars, mostly. Then again, there were still the private songs, a list of which I was starting to keep on my lab computer (I ran a computer lab in the basement of the science building and had staked out a private computer for myself). In the early days of file sharing and mp3's, people on our local network were making music compilations and sharing them over their Apples. My friend Rachel and I spent a lot of late nights in that lab, playing music and doing roley-chair ballet.
Well, I'm an adult now and my CD collection is still pretty lacking (I hate to buy CD's. I really really do). My music collection on the other hand has exploded out, thanks to iTunes (I did a bit of the "free" music sharing back in the day when that was the only option, but you get tired of the sneaking, the bad recordings, the unreliability of downloads and all that). Like I said, you lose old tapes, and then later, old CD's, and you forget. There is a wake of old songs behind us, a musical coming of age history and until now, it was primarily lost, even to us. But just today, I downloaded Savage Garden's To the Moon and Back, a pretty silly song with too much synthesizer and yet listening to it over again, I was back in the computer lab, dancing around with Rachel and the roley-chairs. Here is my history, for 99 cents a piece at a time. Some things I downloaded and eventually erased again--like Billy Joel who was a big part of my childhood, but whose music just hasn't translated well into my current tastes and most of Ani DiFranco who is a very talented songwriter, but I left angry feminist angst at Bryn Mawr. Other songs, however, are wriggling back into my collection, if for no other reason than I like to remember being a little girl, sitting on the edge of my bed with a tape recorder, waiting, just waiting for that song to come on the radio. Yeah, I bought Richard Marx's Hold Onto the Nights. Just because romance didn't turn out to be what I thought it was, doesn't mean I can't remember, and enjoy, my old romanticized version of it.
I love finding my musical past on iTunes. Here's one of the ways I'm finding my musical future: http://www.pandora.com/
At the same time, I had my own private music, stuff no one knew I liked, songs I listened to mostly alone as a kid (a lot of my childhood was spent hiding the things I liked for fear of ridicule or reprisal. My older siblings were--and are--pretty blunt in expressing their views and being the least mature in a lot of ways made my preferences easy targets). Not surprisingly, as an adolescent girl--even as my older brother was introducing me to Pink Floyd's The Wall--I really went for easy listening love songs of the Richard Marx's variety. I thought George Michael had the best voice and there were several Phil Collins songs on my private top ten list of GREATEST SONGS EVER. I didn't have the money to buy my own music and I didn't want to ask someone in my family to sport me the cash (ridicule thing again), so most of the time I listened to the radio fanatically in the hopes that every now and again I could catch a favorite and get it secondhand onto my own tape recorder.
Of course, I grew up, music changed, I changed, old tapes got lost, new ones got made (some even from boyfriends) and I forgot--unintentionally or deliberately--a lot of those private songs that seemed to have so much meaning to me only a few short years ago. In college, I acquired a whole new host of music tastes, mostly through the music collection of my roommate (having never bought music, I just wasn't in the habit and I couldn't stand to waste money on an album before I had heard it through completely and knew I would actually like it). Lots of angry women and their guitars, mostly. Then again, there were still the private songs, a list of which I was starting to keep on my lab computer (I ran a computer lab in the basement of the science building and had staked out a private computer for myself). In the early days of file sharing and mp3's, people on our local network were making music compilations and sharing them over their Apples. My friend Rachel and I spent a lot of late nights in that lab, playing music and doing roley-chair ballet.
Well, I'm an adult now and my CD collection is still pretty lacking (I hate to buy CD's. I really really do). My music collection on the other hand has exploded out, thanks to iTunes (I did a bit of the "free" music sharing back in the day when that was the only option, but you get tired of the sneaking, the bad recordings, the unreliability of downloads and all that). Like I said, you lose old tapes, and then later, old CD's, and you forget. There is a wake of old songs behind us, a musical coming of age history and until now, it was primarily lost, even to us. But just today, I downloaded Savage Garden's To the Moon and Back, a pretty silly song with too much synthesizer and yet listening to it over again, I was back in the computer lab, dancing around with Rachel and the roley-chairs. Here is my history, for 99 cents a piece at a time. Some things I downloaded and eventually erased again--like Billy Joel who was a big part of my childhood, but whose music just hasn't translated well into my current tastes and most of Ani DiFranco who is a very talented songwriter, but I left angry feminist angst at Bryn Mawr. Other songs, however, are wriggling back into my collection, if for no other reason than I like to remember being a little girl, sitting on the edge of my bed with a tape recorder, waiting, just waiting for that song to come on the radio. Yeah, I bought Richard Marx's Hold Onto the Nights. Just because romance didn't turn out to be what I thought it was, doesn't mean I can't remember, and enjoy, my old romanticized version of it.
I love finding my musical past on iTunes. Here's one of the ways I'm finding my musical future: http://www.pandora.com/
Adventures with Blair and Family
This summer, instead of heading back to Utah, we're hosting a phalanx of family members. The first to arrive were Blair and family. Thomas was practically hysterical waiting for his cousins to get here. I've decided we probably should have given him a sibling a little earlier in his life so he could have someone to really play with all the time. That seems to be what this particular child needs. Every time we climbed in the car to go anywhere, he would ask, "Where are my cousins?"
"They're in the car behind us."
"Are they coming with us?"
"Yes. They're just following us in their car."
Stopping at a light: "Where are my cousins? Don't go, Daddy! My cousins are not behind us!"
"Thomas! Yes they are!" And so on.
Anyway, we enjoyed many an adventure for a relatively short weekend. On Sat. we headed back into New York to eat some authentic NYC pizza, climb the Empire State Building, and take the ferry down to the Statue of Liberty. Even Sethie got in on the pizza eating action. At the ESB, there was a skywriter, but even after much staring at the message, we still couldn't decipher it (It was degrading quickly). I'm posting it here. Let me know if you can tell what it says, cuz I sure can't.
Anyway, on we went to the Statue of Liberty. Long ago when I was college student, my friends and I spent our spring break tooling around the east in Rachel's car (hi chica!). We went to D.C. (where we stayed with Blair, actually) and to New York where we climbed the Statue of Liberty. Back in the day, you could wait an interminable amount of time (like 6 $&#*%! hours) and climb an interminable amounts of steps (like 100 $&#*%! thousand) in order to stand in the the tiny crown space and overlook the city. Okay--that last bit sounds kinda grumpy, but it was a pretty cool experience for all that and something you can always bring up (I think I brought it up at least four times this weekend). After 9/11, they closed the Statue of Liberty out of concern, not unreasonably, that it would be the object of a terrorist attack. Much later, they reopened her, but climbing to the crown is forever a relic of the past. Now you can take an elevator to an observation deck about midway up, but that's all. My time in Lady Liberty takes on a new significance.
This time, though, we arrived too late on the island to even go to the observation deck. The 1 train was under repair and after much flailing around trying to get to South Ferry, we ended up on Chambers St. looking for a van taxi to haul the lot of us down to Battery Park. The driver who finally picked us up looked pretty dismayed as we all piled in (he said later he wasn't allowed to pick up so many people at once. Sorry, dude. Maybe you should have mentioned that a little earlier, eh?) and when I told him we were going to Battery Park, he said, "Do you know how to get there?" Um, YOU SIR, are the TAXI DRIVER. Isn't that YOUR JOB to know where to go? We didn't exactly request a backalley warehouse or something. This is BATTERY PARK, at the bottom point of the island. GO SOUTH! Anyway, Blair gave him a nice tip. Blair's a good guy that way (the van driver we got on the way back not only didn't seem to mind all
of us piling into his taxi, but had no problems finding Penn Station. He also got a good tip, but he actually deserved his).Can I just say how I love New York? Every time we leave there I instantly forget how hard the day-to-day living was in the city and all I remember is how amazing and wonderful it was to live in such close proximity to world-renowned sites. I used to say, "If you're bored in New York, it's your own fault." Even the standing around in Battery Park was fun. We got ice cream. We listened to some classy street musicians. We breathed in the scent of the Atlantic Ocean. On Liberty Island, we walked around to the base of the statue and the adults crashed in the shade while the kids chased each other around (and made some little friends--incidentally the same friends showed up at the beach in Belmar, NJ where we went on Mon. Eerie!)
And here's the coolest thing about New York. You're always bound to run into some old friends (Nate and I were commenting to each other how in Salt Lake, if there was some guy in a spidey suit at the park, you'd be calling the police, not lining your kids up to get their picture with him, let alone giving him money).As I mentioned earlier, on Monday we drove 
about 45 min. east to Belmar, NJ, part of the long, sparkling Jersey shore. Admittedly, I have never been a beach person and all those people I've heard go on and on about the allure of the ocean just sounded like crazy people to me (of course, they were from California, so the aura of crazy was on them anyway. Har! Hi Nolan!). But this was a blast. The kids had a great time playing in the water and on the sand, we found little scuttling crabs, we got some much needed sun, and standing there, looking out across the vast ocean, feeling for a moment my pupils dilating and getting a rush in my own smallness, well I think maybe I have an inkling of what they're talking about.
about 45 min. east to Belmar, NJ, part of the long, sparkling Jersey shore. Admittedly, I have never been a beach person and all those people I've heard go on and on about the allure of the ocean just sounded like crazy people to me (of course, they were from California, so the aura of crazy was on them anyway. Har! Hi Nolan!). But this was a blast. The kids had a great time playing in the water and on the sand, we found little scuttling crabs, we got some much needed sun, and standing there, looking out across the vast ocean, feeling for a moment my pupils dilating and getting a rush in my own smallness, well I think maybe I have an inkling of what they're talking about. 
Thomas, especially, seems to destined to be a beach rat. He spent almost our entire time there in the water, despite the fact that it was a chilly 65 degrees and by the time we finally got him out his skin was purplish and he was shaking all over. No matter, he wanted to go back, even though his teeth were chattering so badly he could barely articulate that. He was absolutely
fearless, plunging into wave after wave, even ones that were taller than he was, ones that turned him over and dragged him under. Without Nate there to haul him back up to air, he probably would have happily drowned himself. We've been debating what kind of activities he should be doing this summer--I guess swimming is probably what we ought to be investing our money in.We barbecued in a little park in Belmar and then had to wish Blair and fam farewell. It's so sad--they are moving now to Romania and won't be back this way for several years. It's hard to finally get some family on this side of the country only to lose them again. We miss you already!
More pics and videos of our adventures follow below. Next up on the family adventures list--my sis, Alyssa! (showing up today!)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Soccer time
I don't like the term "soccer mom". It's an innocent enough sounding moniker, but there are so many layers of baggage attached to it implying who you are and what you think that I feel snarly whenever I hear it. Nevertheless, Thomas shouldn't suffer just because a label makes me crazy, so we signed him up for soccer.
Right now, he's in a soccer camp for the 3-5 set. "Coach Danny" seems to understand what it takes to get a four-year-old to actually kick a ball around for an hour. He has them stay on "soccer island" which is surrounded by "sharks and jellyfish", so they shouldn't kick their balls outside of it. They kick their balls through orange cones he calls "dragon teeth" and they often have to get their ball from one end of the "island" to the other, crossing over his "pirate ship" along the way. Thomas goes there all excited and finishes each day pink-cheeked, sweaty, and eager to go back the next day. For me, it's worth the expense to see him getting some exercise that also makes him so happy. However--and this is no dig at men in general, just an observation in a limited subject pool--the dads that seem to come along to the camp have been, uh, less than satisfied with the way the camp is run. "When are they going to do some drills?" one of them asked yesterday. "I took him out of the YMCA soccer camp because they weren't really drilling them and I think this place is even worse!" Another dad saw his little girl get her ball kicked by another kid and shouted at her, "Well, now your ball's gone! Are you happy?" to which his wife replied, "Now that's unnecessary, stop it." He said back, "Well, I think it is necessary. She's needs to learn."
Now let me say again, these kids are between the ages of 3 and 5. Most of them bring little sippy cups to camp as their water source and their shinguards are about the length of one of those rocket popsicles. Am I not expecting enough of Thomas that I'm satisfied with the fact that he goes there and comes home happy and that while his soccer skills will probably still leave much to be desired at the end of the camp, he will still associate "soccer" in his mind with fun and friends? To me, there still seems plenty of time for sports to become intense and competative and I suspect that that will also be fun for Thomas at a certain point, to really test his mettle against other players and have the chance to win something for himself. I don't think that time is now. I think I'm going to wait on his signal to determine when that time is.
Coach Danny is definitely from Jersey. Check out the accent.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Tagged
Ooh--I really feel like I'm moving up in the digital world here. I've been tagged! I don't know what this is, but I suspect it's like one of those emails people send to all their friends with stuff in it like their shoe size and whatnot. What makes this less obnoxious? I didn't send it to you! You came here to read it! Or maybe not. Maybe you are navigating away, right now--no wait! There's a treat at the end of the post if you keep reading...
8 Random Things about Me:
1) I love sushi. Though I prefer good sushi, I'll even eat bad sushi. Supermarket sushi. Hole-in-wall sushi. I once got a case of full-body hives from bad sushi. Did not deter me. I try to stay away from the raw stuff now if the joint serving it is at all sketchy, but sometimes I just can't seem to help myself. All together now...ewwwwww.
2) I'm a pretty staunch conversative politically, though while I think John Kerry would have made an absolutely terrible president, someone needs give Mr. Bush a serious swift kick. There's a difference between sticking to your guns and stubbornly refusing, like a two-year-old, to notice all the mounting evidence that a particular course of action wasn't a good idea.
3) I used to think two people got married because they wanted to spend all their time together. Sixty thousand work, school, and child-rearing hours later, I've realized that if you've found someone who can make you laugh, is willing to watch a little Star Trek with you, and who doesn't seem to mind your neuroses, then you can be happy even if you don't get to see them all the time, and the time you do get to spend together seems pretty rich.
4) I'm going to be 30 this Sept. Yikes. Time for the requisite, "What have I done with my life?" self-examination.
5) What have I done with my life? I am currently working on yet another fiction novel. No, I have not had any of the previous novels I've worked on published, though I have some nice rejection letters. I love the writing part. I hate the attempting to convince someone else to put it in stores part. Nate has been threatening me to put some actual effort into that part or else (no more sushi for you!)
6) I've only responded once to one of those "about me" emails. It said "Diamonds or Pearls?" I said, "Electronics."
7) I really like cats, but don't have any at the moment. I can't stand dogs.
8) Sethie has been whining for a few minutes while I type on this thing. I really ought to go get him, but I want to finish my own thoughts first! Har! Narcissism, thy name is me.
I tag Dan, Heather, and Kendra
So where's the treat you say? What? Wasn't all of that treat enough for you? No? Then watch this movie.
8 Random Things about Me:
1) I love sushi. Though I prefer good sushi, I'll even eat bad sushi. Supermarket sushi. Hole-in-wall sushi. I once got a case of full-body hives from bad sushi. Did not deter me. I try to stay away from the raw stuff now if the joint serving it is at all sketchy, but sometimes I just can't seem to help myself. All together now...ewwwwww.
2) I'm a pretty staunch conversative politically, though while I think John Kerry would have made an absolutely terrible president, someone needs give Mr. Bush a serious swift kick. There's a difference between sticking to your guns and stubbornly refusing, like a two-year-old, to notice all the mounting evidence that a particular course of action wasn't a good idea.
3) I used to think two people got married because they wanted to spend all their time together. Sixty thousand work, school, and child-rearing hours later, I've realized that if you've found someone who can make you laugh, is willing to watch a little Star Trek with you, and who doesn't seem to mind your neuroses, then you can be happy even if you don't get to see them all the time, and the time you do get to spend together seems pretty rich.
4) I'm going to be 30 this Sept. Yikes. Time for the requisite, "What have I done with my life?" self-examination.
5) What have I done with my life? I am currently working on yet another fiction novel. No, I have not had any of the previous novels I've worked on published, though I have some nice rejection letters. I love the writing part. I hate the attempting to convince someone else to put it in stores part. Nate has been threatening me to put some actual effort into that part or else (no more sushi for you!)
6) I've only responded once to one of those "about me" emails. It said "Diamonds or Pearls?" I said, "Electronics."
7) I really like cats, but don't have any at the moment. I can't stand dogs.
8) Sethie has been whining for a few minutes while I type on this thing. I really ought to go get him, but I want to finish my own thoughts first! Har! Narcissism, thy name is me.
I tag Dan, Heather, and Kendra
So where's the treat you say? What? Wasn't all of that treat enough for you? No? Then watch this movie.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Transformers--less than meets the eye?
In a little less than a week and a half, Transformers will be storming into theaters. Poor Nate is losing sleep in anticipation of this movie. Expectations of the 20 to 30-something male set seem to be running very high and rightly so--the 
trailers I've seen are blustery fun, benefiting from 10 plus years of aggregate CG realism that started with a T-Rex splaying his toes in the mud.
I used to watch the cartoon Transformers with my brother Nolan, just as we watched G.I. Joe, He-Man, Thundercats, Voltron and many other archetypal testosterone-fueled 80's cartoons, so I think I understand a little when I talk to guys of my generation about those old TV shows and toys and hear the near-worship in their voices. I watch my son playing with the Transformers toy Nate got him recently and recognize the same captured imagination. He doesn't really know what an Autobot or a Decepticon is, but he knows burly good guys and snarly bad guys when he sees them.
Which gets us to the real reason, of course, that a Transformers movie is debuting right about now. Nate bought Thomas an updated Optimus Prime for his birthday, before Thomas knew who Optimus Prime was. Generation X finally has enough wallet power to make remarketing its nostalgia a worthwhile endeavor. But there's a danger in that, too. Jessica Winter has an excellent article over at slate.com that, on the surface, is about Sony's new "Minisode Network"-- offering old TV shows shrunken down to bite-size--but is ultimately about the inevitable let-down of seeing your old favorites with updated eyes. Now that we have cable and a DVR again, we've been recording reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation, appointment TV with my family when I was growing up (the only show, in fact, we were ever allowed to watch on Sunday). I recognized, I think, the kitschiness of the show back then even (Geordi's visor thingamajig is essentially the banana clip hair accessory that was so ubiquitous when I was kid. I had three or four), but it definitely suffers a lot on repeat viewing. Although Patrick Stewart's booming Picard is still a kick,
the them
es and the outfits and the space monsters --all are painfully cheesy. Hey Deanna Troy, is your hairstylist a time-traveling New Yorker from circa Seinfeld? And check out Wesley Crusher's Y-front pajama uniform (Incidentally, Wil Wheaton does a hilarious column reviewing old Star Trek episodes at tvsquad.com. Being Wesley Crusher may have, har, crushed his onscreen career, but it set him up brilliantly for a future of self-parody).
Maybe Star Trek: TNG is too easy a target, but I loved it (and still do, I suppose. After all, I'm DVR'ing the episodes, right?) and the pain isn't just a matter of seeing it age poorly. I have to wonder: was it ever really that great to begin with? I was also a huge fan of a little anime called Robotech (maybe you've heard of it), which was leaps ahead of other cartoons in sophistication--unlike G.I. Joe whose characters always got to parachute free of their burning planes, Robotech people didn't always come home, not to mention the interracial relationships, sexual innuendo, and bad guys who weren't just bent blindly on universal domination. And yet, watching it recently, oy. The voiceover narration is ridiculous and is it too much to ask that writers give Minmei at least one additional song to perform other than the ear-bleeder she sings about fifty times?
I don't know if Transformers will be a good movie. Michael Bay is the director. He got his start in music videos and is best known for Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, not exactly plot-heavy--or even plot-at-all--movies. The characters have had their street cred logically, if a bit presumptuously, updated (Does the name Bumblebee really make sense for a Camaro?) and it can't possibly be worse than the previous Transformers movie. Still, I'm not sure I want my memories muddied. The newest line of My Little Pony toys is also out in force these days and I'm kind of glad I have little boys and not little girls. Some cows are just sacred.
Watch the theme trailer. See the movie. Decide for yourself.
(UPDATE! The little girl in the trailer is holding a My Little Pony plush toy! Not completely random considering that Hasbro is the maker of both MLP and Transformers, but at whom is this particular product placement aimed?)
trailers I've seen are blustery fun, benefiting from 10 plus years of aggregate CG realism that started with a T-Rex splaying his toes in the mud.I used to watch the cartoon Transformers with my brother Nolan, just as we watched G.I. Joe, He-Man, Thundercats, Voltron and many other archetypal testosterone-fueled 80's cartoons, so I think I understand a little when I talk to guys of my generation about those old TV shows and toys and hear the near-worship in their voices. I watch my son playing with the Transformers toy Nate got him recently and recognize the same captured imagination. He doesn't really know what an Autobot or a Decepticon is, but he knows burly good guys and snarly bad guys when he sees them.
Which gets us to the real reason, of course, that a Transformers movie is debuting right about now. Nate bought Thomas an updated Optimus Prime for his birthday, before Thomas knew who Optimus Prime was. Generation X finally has enough wallet power to make remarketing its nostalgia a worthwhile endeavor. But there's a danger in that, too. Jessica Winter has an excellent article over at slate.com that, on the surface, is about Sony's new "Minisode Network"-- offering old TV shows shrunken down to bite-size--but is ultimately about the inevitable let-down of seeing your old favorites with updated eyes. Now that we have cable and a DVR again, we've been recording reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation, appointment TV with my family when I was growing up (the only show, in fact, we were ever allowed to watch on Sunday). I recognized, I think, the kitschiness of the show back then even (Geordi's visor thingamajig is essentially the banana clip hair accessory that was so ubiquitous when I was kid. I had three or four), but it definitely suffers a lot on repeat viewing. Although Patrick Stewart's booming Picard is still a kick,
the them
es and the outfits and the space monsters --all are painfully cheesy. Hey Deanna Troy, is your hairstylist a time-traveling New Yorker from circa Seinfeld? And check out Wesley Crusher's Y-front pajama uniform (Incidentally, Wil Wheaton does a hilarious column reviewing old Star Trek episodes at tvsquad.com. Being Wesley Crusher may have, har, crushed his onscreen career, but it set him up brilliantly for a future of self-parody).Maybe Star Trek: TNG is too easy a target, but I loved it (and still do, I suppose. After all, I'm DVR'ing the episodes, right?) and the pain isn't just a matter of seeing it age poorly. I have to wonder: was it ever really that great to begin with? I was also a huge fan of a little anime called Robotech (maybe you've heard of it), which was leaps ahead of other cartoons in sophistication--unlike G.I. Joe whose characters always got to parachute free of their burning planes, Robotech people didn't always come home, not to mention the interracial relationships, sexual innuendo, and bad guys who weren't just bent blindly on universal domination. And yet, watching it recently, oy. The voiceover narration is ridiculous and is it too much to ask that writers give Minmei at least one additional song to perform other than the ear-bleeder she sings about fifty times?
I don't know if Transformers will be a good movie. Michael Bay is the director. He got his start in music videos and is best known for Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, not exactly plot-heavy--or even plot-at-all--movies. The characters have had their street cred logically, if a bit presumptuously, updated (Does the name Bumblebee really make sense for a Camaro?) and it can't possibly be worse than the previous Transformers movie. Still, I'm not sure I want my memories muddied. The newest line of My Little Pony toys is also out in force these days and I'm kind of glad I have little boys and not little girls. Some cows are just sacred.
Watch the theme trailer. See the movie. Decide for yourself.
(UPDATE! The little girl in the trailer is holding a My Little Pony plush toy! Not completely random considering that Hasbro is the maker of both MLP and Transformers, but at whom is this particular product placement aimed?)
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Seeing myself...
I dropped Thomas off at the kids play area in Wegmans for the first time today while shopping. I don't know why I've never done it before, but I know the impetus this time: Thomas got lost the last time we were in Wegmans, the first time, shockingly, I have lost him, ever. A store employee brought him to me about fifteen minutes after we started having them frantically look for him and although I pretty much assumed he had wandered innocently away and hadn't been snatched by someone, I still got a little teary-eyed to see him again. I used to really disparage those parents who had their little kids on leashes, but once you've been on 34th St. or Times Square in the middle of tourist season, you start to see the logic of that kind of thing (yes, Thomas had a leash in NYC when we were downtown).
Anyway...kids play area. This is not a post about life lessons learned from losing little ones--it's a post about me! Inside the area, a boy was playing a video game. None other than Jeremy McGrath Supercross World, for which I have programming credits from my time at Acclaim Entertainment. I tried explaining to Thomas that Mommy had worked on the game the little boy was playing, but he was more interested in the Backyardigans toy display nearby. The woman running the play area just looked at me, bored.
Well, it was something anyway. Next I just need to catch someone reading my book at the library or some such. Of course, that particular goal would be more easily reached if I had a book published. That's next on my list of grand accomplishments. :)
Anyway...kids play area. This is not a post about life lessons learned from losing little ones--it's a post about me! Inside the area, a boy was playing a video game. None other than Jeremy McGrath Supercross World, for which I have programming credits from my time at Acclaim Entertainment. I tried explaining to Thomas that Mommy had worked on the game the little boy was playing, but he was more interested in the Backyardigans toy display nearby. The woman running the play area just looked at me, bored.
Well, it was something anyway. Next I just need to catch someone reading my book at the library or some such. Of course, that particular goal would be more easily reached if I had a book published. That's next on my list of grand accomplishments. :)
Monday, June 18, 2007
Mmmmm tasty...
You may not always admit it, but sometimes as a parent, you give your kids something simply for the entertainment value of watching them react to it. "Life is full of surprises," you might say. "I just want them to get used to that idea." But the truth is, what you want is the postable reaction shot, so Grandma and Grandpa can see how cute little Junior is crying in dismay because you stuck a fuzzy caterpillar on his face.
I remember Nate and I giving a certain baby named Thomas a piece of pickle once. Thomas, like all babies, was so eager to shove everything into his mouth before investigating and vetting the object that it was a constant source of amusement giving him strongly-flavored items. Ha ha! we bad parents thought, There he goes shoving it in his mouth again! He never learns! Thomas eager sucked the pickle, then stopped, then did that full body Ugh shimmy. Then of course, he grabbed the pickle again and shoved it back into his mouth. More shimmies followed. When you can't afford to go out, you can always stay home and do this to your children. Free fun.
Yesterday I was fixing Nate his Father's Day Burger, and simultaneously feeding Sethie his regular smash-up of veggies and fruits. I laid a slice of pickle on Nate's bun, then paused and glanced sideways at Seth noshing on squished bananas and peas. I even gave the pickle an extra dip into the jar juice, just to make sure it was packing a lot of oomph. "Nate!" I called. "Come see this! I'm going to give Sethie a pickle!" Side by side, we dangled the thing in front of Sethie's mouth. Out came the little tongue. We waited, thinking maybe we should have grabbed the camera. He tasted it.
And tasted it and tasted it and then forcefully grabbed it out of my hand and started munching on it. No face. No shimmy. Just an angry fist-pumping cry when I tried to take it back from him.
Curses, foiled again.
I'm sure soon enough Thomas will be telling me he smashed up my car, just to get the reaction shot on his cameraphone for his friends. Humiliaters beware--tables turn all the time. But maybe Sethie won't. Maybe this child is immune to our deviancy. All I know is that he's happy now in his high chair if there's a pickle on the tray.
I wonder if there are any fuzzy caterpillars in the yard.
I remember Nate and I giving a certain baby named Thomas a piece of pickle once. Thomas, like all babies, was so eager to shove everything into his mouth before investigating and vetting the object that it was a constant source of amusement giving him strongly-flavored items. Ha ha! we bad parents thought, There he goes shoving it in his mouth again! He never learns! Thomas eager sucked the pickle, then stopped, then did that full body Ugh shimmy. Then of course, he grabbed the pickle again and shoved it back into his mouth. More shimmies followed. When you can't afford to go out, you can always stay home and do this to your children. Free fun.
Yesterday I was fixing Nate his Father's Day Burger, and simultaneously feeding Sethie his regular smash-up of veggies and fruits. I laid a slice of pickle on Nate's bun, then paused and glanced sideways at Seth noshing on squished bananas and peas. I even gave the pickle an extra dip into the jar juice, just to make sure it was packing a lot of oomph. "Nate!" I called. "Come see this! I'm going to give Sethie a pickle!" Side by side, we dangled the thing in front of Sethie's mouth. Out came the little tongue. We waited, thinking maybe we should have grabbed the camera. He tasted it.
And tasted it and tasted it and then forcefully grabbed it out of my hand and started munching on it. No face. No shimmy. Just an angry fist-pumping cry when I tried to take it back from him.
Curses, foiled again.
I'm sure soon enough Thomas will be telling me he smashed up my car, just to get the reaction shot on his cameraphone for his friends. Humiliaters beware--tables turn all the time. But maybe Sethie won't. Maybe this child is immune to our deviancy. All I know is that he's happy now in his high chair if there's a pickle on the tray.
I wonder if there are any fuzzy caterpillars in the yard.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Father's Day
A toast and tribute:
To my long-time friend Daniel Grover, whose 10+ years of patient, involved fatherhood has been a constant inspiration to me...
To my brothers, Cory, Blair, Brett, and Nolan whose happy, healthy, and self-secure children are a testament to their own devotion as fathers...
To my sister Alyssa who has often had to be both a mother and a father to her three girls and all the tireless, uncomplaining effort and love she has put into raising them...
To my father-in-law, Peter, whose fearlessness, zeal for life, Christ-like compassion, and independent spirit have made me want to be a better person...
To my own father, Norman, who has always declined to tout his own accomplishments, but who is well-loved and admired by everyone who knows him, who tried hard to teach me financial responsibility, work ethic in education and professional obligations, and good humor in life, but who most of all taught me all these things without words but by his quiet example, and who blesses my life every day with his wisdom, constant mindfulness of my family, and his ability to make me laugh...
And to my husband, Nate, whom words cannot adequately describe, who fills my heart so full it feels as though it will burst out of my chest with the overwhelming love I have to for him, whose unobtrusive devotion to doing what is right for our family silently reminds me that I ought always to be doing the same, whose willingness to be climbed and clobbered on proves to Thomas that he loves him deeply, and whose fearlessness in the face of dirty diapers shows what a true man ought to be like. Everyone tells me that my boys look just like their daddy--even better if they could grow up to BE just like their daddy...
To all of you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You bless my life and inspire me. Fathers get a bit of the short shrift out there when it comes to their contribution, but I hope you all recognize the immense good you do in the lives of your children and that they wouldn't be the people that they are without you behind them.
To my long-time friend Daniel Grover, whose 10+ years of patient, involved fatherhood has been a constant inspiration to me...
To my brothers, Cory, Blair, Brett, and Nolan whose happy, healthy, and self-secure children are a testament to their own devotion as fathers...
To my sister Alyssa who has often had to be both a mother and a father to her three girls and all the tireless, uncomplaining effort and love she has put into raising them...
To my father-in-law, Peter, whose fearlessness, zeal for life, Christ-like compassion, and independent spirit have made me want to be a better person...
To my own father, Norman, who has always declined to tout his own accomplishments, but who is well-loved and admired by everyone who knows him, who tried hard to teach me financial responsibility, work ethic in education and professional obligations, and good humor in life, but who most of all taught me all these things without words but by his quiet example, and who blesses my life every day with his wisdom, constant mindfulness of my family, and his ability to make me laugh...
And to my husband, Nate, whom words cannot adequately describe, who fills my heart so full it feels as though it will burst out of my chest with the overwhelming love I have to for him, whose unobtrusive devotion to doing what is right for our family silently reminds me that I ought always to be doing the same, whose willingness to be climbed and clobbered on proves to Thomas that he loves him deeply, and whose fearlessness in the face of dirty diapers shows what a true man ought to be like. Everyone tells me that my boys look just like their daddy--even better if they could grow up to BE just like their daddy...
To all of you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You bless my life and inspire me. Fathers get a bit of the short shrift out there when it comes to their contribution, but I hope you all recognize the immense good you do in the lives of your children and that they wouldn't be the people that they are without you behind them.
Father--to God himself we cannot give a holier name!
-William Wordsworth
Friday, June 15, 2007
Thomisms Redux
Thomas, starting a new level on a computer game: "Well, here comes nothing."
Thomas, poking me in the arm with his doctor's kit: "I'm the nurse."
Me: "Uh, where's the doctor?"
Thomas: "The doctor is playing hide and seek. You have to find him if you want him to make you feel better."
Thomas, poking me in the arm with his doctor's kit: "I'm the nurse."
Me: "Uh, where's the doctor?"
Thomas: "The doctor is playing hide and seek. You have to find him if you want him to make you feel better."
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Thomism
Me: "Thomas, would you like to go the store and look at bikes?"
Thomas: "Mommy, can we get one with twenty wheels?"
Me: "Um, they only come with two...oh, do you mean training wheels?"
Thomas: "Yeah, those."
Thomas: "Mommy, can we get one with twenty wheels?"
Me: "Um, they only come with two...oh, do you mean training wheels?"
Thomas: "Yeah, those."
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
No reason
I just like this picture of Sethie. I put Thomas's shoes on him. For some reason, it seems very funny.
Do I have too much free time?
logical fallacies or "That's why you're still kids, cuz you're..."
Thomas, looking out the window this morning, "Mommy, I see Isaac's grown-ups getting in their car."
Me: "Well, they're probably going to work."
Thomas: "But Daddies don't go to work in their car. They go on the train."
I remember when I was kid, I was always trying to fit my observations of grown-up life into some sort of recognizable pattern. There are so many concepts which are common and well-understood at the adult level that must just baffle children. I'm sure Thomas doesn't even really know what "going to work" means other than Nate leaving us in the morning and coming back home in the evening.
The most terrifying logical fallacy I had as a kid was that when a man and woman got married, his parents died (because my father's parents had died before I was born, while my mom's parents were still living). This didn't really bother me at first, not until I realized that the person most likely to get married among my siblings was my oldest brother. Ahh! Imminent parental death! Well, I'm glad to say they're still kicking and my brother has been married twenty+ years now. Then again, is it more or less terrifying that death follows no logical pattern, can't be predicted with certainty, and instead hangs a little pallor on us all the time?
Sometimes being the knowledgeable adult isn't much better.
Me: "Well, they're probably going to work."
Thomas: "But Daddies don't go to work in their car. They go on the train."
I remember when I was kid, I was always trying to fit my observations of grown-up life into some sort of recognizable pattern. There are so many concepts which are common and well-understood at the adult level that must just baffle children. I'm sure Thomas doesn't even really know what "going to work" means other than Nate leaving us in the morning and coming back home in the evening.
The most terrifying logical fallacy I had as a kid was that when a man and woman got married, his parents died (because my father's parents had died before I was born, while my mom's parents were still living). This didn't really bother me at first, not until I realized that the person most likely to get married among my siblings was my oldest brother. Ahh! Imminent parental death! Well, I'm glad to say they're still kicking and my brother has been married twenty+ years now. Then again, is it more or less terrifying that death follows no logical pattern, can't be predicted with certainty, and instead hangs a little pallor on us all the time?
Sometimes being the knowledgeable adult isn't much better.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Another Paige in the La Barge family scrapbook
A big congratulations to my brother Brett, his wife Alyson, and their two girls Piper and Paris on the newest addition to their family: Paige La Barge. Alyson is in China right this moment picking her up. You can see pictures of her on their blog: http://threepsinapod.blogspot.com/ (or the Brett's fam link on the right). This is actually the second Paige in our extended family, since my sister's youngest daughter is also named Paige. The more the merrier!
Safe travels and lots of love, Al.
Safe travels and lots of love, Al.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
And just like the movies, we play out our last scene
My handsome man (and our little man)
It was our anniversary last night, the big post-paper one (Why is the five year anniversary called "paper" anyway? Is it meant to say that your relationship is still fragile? Maybe the hope that both of you are still thin at this point?). For an anniversary present, I gave Nate the book "Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement" since he is my anarcho-capitalist. He gave me a ticket to a chocolate tasting from "La Maison du Chocolat", a very schwank chocolate place in the city. For Mormons who feel that, culturally, you are missing out on this whole wine-tasting phenomenon, this can be your thing. I've become a real chocolate snob in my ripening age (milk chocolate is for little children, unless accompanied by peanuts and nougat), and Nate has been bringing me home chocolate tidbits from this place for a few special occasions, so, ooooooooh, I can't wait.We left the kids with Cat and her husband Jason (Bless you, friends, bless you), then took off for our new favorite sushi joint in Princeton--Soonja's--where we stuffed ourselves. It takes a lot to get stuffed full of sushi, but we did our best. And then, then, then, la finale, the ultimate, the one thing we had been waiting to spend these precious, fleeting moments of alone time on...
We saw Spiderman 3 in the movie theatre.
I love chocolate. I love sushi. I love movies. I love stadium seating. I love whispering snarky comments in Nate's ear at crucial, over-the-top moments. Spiderman 3 had a lot of these moments, just begging for a comment or two, which made it even better. When Nate and I were dating and first married, we hit the movie theatre at least twice a month. When we lived in Salt Lake on Yale Ave., we went to the Tower Theatre, an indie spot, all the time (and ate sushi at the tiny dive across from it. Three white guys rolling sushi while head-banging to heavy metal. The sushi was good for all that, too). You would think living in one of the greatest movie capitals of all time, I would have been at the movies pretty much all the time, but I've hardly seen any movies in NYC. Why? Children. Hiring babysitters is prohibitively expensive when you're students and begging off friends means YOU owe THEM babysitting next time, an obligation to be carefully weighed against the current crop of showings. Instead, Nate and I spent our precious few moments of child-free time going to book signings at the Union Square Barnes and Noble. We saw some greats (at least to us): William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Terry Pratchett, Orson Scott Card, etc. etc., so no real regrets. Still, I wish we wouldn't have had to choose between the writers and the reels. As Violet sang in the movie (based on the book), "I want the world. I want the whole world!"
Maybe some day in our old age, Nate and I will be eschewing the popcorn munching for something classier (we did get to see Alfred Molina during his Broadway run in "Fiddler on the Roof", which was great, but we wouldn't have thought to go if Nate's parents hadn't been in town and I don't know if I would have cared so much if he hadn't played Doc Ock in Spiderman 2), like actual theatre, or art gallery openings, or some such. I doubt it and sincerely hope not. I heard the theme of Star Wars while in my mother's womb and it's been in my blood since. It's a good date if I get to whisper in Nate's ear, "Hold off dying, Harry, while I accept a hasty, wrap-up apology from the Sandman here." (see Spiderman 3, really)
We went home, thanked our friends profusely, and went to bed. Happy Anniversary indeed.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Trenches cont...
Thomas, Seth, and I ventured back into New York yesterday for his preschool "graduation". This past year I was a part of a group of women running a cooperative preschool for our children (NYC preschools being notoriously expensive and difficult to get into). I could go on and on, extolling the virtues of these lovely women who toiled weekly to create lessons, games, and art projects for the kids to do, but that would be a LOOOONG post. We had a lot of fun and Thomas made so many friends, he was genuinely heart-broken that we had to leave our group behind with the move. We left about two weeks in advance of the end of preschool, so fortunately, we got to venture back into the city for one last goodbye (and a little bit of pomp and circumstance).
We took the train to Penn Station, then rode the A up to 181st St. At 42nd St., a large, caucasian man with a bushy, white beard and what appeared to be an orange blanket tied around his head (it hung all the way down his back) got on our subway car carrying two garbage sacks. I noticed him, but didn't pay much attention. Once the car started moving, though, he pulled a small folding stool out of a bag and brought it over to sit by us. He was staring at Thomas. Now, I've lived in the city for about three years and I've had all kinds of experiences with people on the subway. Very few have made me genuinely nervous, but this guy was large, we were at the end of the car with hardly anyone else around and I had both boys, which makes it difficult to make a run for it. He was staring and smiling and I was waiting, hands curled into fists, for something to happen. He points at Thomas, then reaches into one of his garbage bags--and pulls out a balloon. He proceeds to fashion not one, not two, but three balloon animals for Thomas, all the while making silly faces, fooling with the balloons, and generally making Thomas laugh.
He rode with us to 168th St. at which point he got off. Thomas was sad to see "Santa" go, as he had been calling him the entire ride. I felt bad for the guy because I suspect he was hoping I would give him a little money, but the only thing I had with me was a twenty and as nice as the balloon animals were, they weren't worth my only large bill.
Again, wish I had had my camera. I haven't been able to find it since we moved. We have too much stuff--I need some kind of intervention or something.
We took the train to Penn Station, then rode the A up to 181st St. At 42nd St., a large, caucasian man with a bushy, white beard and what appeared to be an orange blanket tied around his head (it hung all the way down his back) got on our subway car carrying two garbage sacks. I noticed him, but didn't pay much attention. Once the car started moving, though, he pulled a small folding stool out of a bag and brought it over to sit by us. He was staring at Thomas. Now, I've lived in the city for about three years and I've had all kinds of experiences with people on the subway. Very few have made me genuinely nervous, but this guy was large, we were at the end of the car with hardly anyone else around and I had both boys, which makes it difficult to make a run for it. He was staring and smiling and I was waiting, hands curled into fists, for something to happen. He points at Thomas, then reaches into one of his garbage bags--and pulls out a balloon. He proceeds to fashion not one, not two, but three balloon animals for Thomas, all the while making silly faces, fooling with the balloons, and generally making Thomas laugh.
He rode with us to 168th St. at which point he got off. Thomas was sad to see "Santa" go, as he had been calling him the entire ride. I felt bad for the guy because I suspect he was hoping I would give him a little money, but the only thing I had with me was a twenty and as nice as the balloon animals were, they weren't worth my only large bill.
Again, wish I had had my camera. I haven't been able to find it since we moved. We have too much stuff--I need some kind of intervention or something.
Some preschool pics (Thomas is in the Superman shirt)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)