the anti-nudge July 31, 2008
As the great Charlton Heston once said: ” {You can take my IUD} out of my cold, dead {uterus}“.
thanks, yo! Your check’s in the mail…
I pulled a Homer! July 22, 2008
So, this past weekend the family watched “The Simpsons Movie”. The girls loved it, and can’t stop quoting it. I became obsessed with “Spider Pig”. So imagine my glee when I saw that Dina had a little red plastic piggy bank in her room!
“Kids! Look at me! Look at me!” I shouted from the top of the kitchen counter as I slid the pig along the ceiling.
“What are you doing?” Bassie asked?
“Ohhh!!! Spider Pig! That’s funny!” Dina laughed. “Let me try!”
So they did. Then Bassie handed the pig back to me. “Uh, Mommy…” she said, pointing at the top of the kitchen wall.
Spider Pig had left little red marks all along the wall, like a good little Spider Pig. They came out with some mildly abrasive cleanser, but my embarrassment at doing precisely what Homer did will be harder to scrub away.
Lawrence of Arabia = Fun for the Whole Family July 13, 2008
The girls stayed up until the intermission last night (12:30). They’re watching the second half now.Their favorite part: Lawrence losing his compass and watching his servant die in quicksand. I think it reminds them of “The Princess Bride”.
My favorite part: Alec Guinness. He gets all the good lines; and he looks good in robes. My favorite: “For him mercy is a passion; for me it is good manners. You decide which is more reliable.” Nice.
(Although, to Anthony Quinn’s credit, “Give thanks to God that when he made you a fool he gave you a fool’s face” is quite possibly the greatest “neg” ever.)
I also think it was a wonderful choice to cast “Europeans” as the two main Arab tribal leaders, further blurring the lines between “Westerner” and “Arab”. Of course, casting fay, bleach-blonde, pasty Peter O’Toole is a nice contrast to Guinness and Quinn. And, of course, he ends up being the most stereotypically “Arab” of them all. I’m sure that’s an insight that has never been made in the thousands of reviews of this movie since 1962.
No!!!!!! July 11, 2008
Walking and driving around Boston, my sense of geography is microcosmic. The city feels self-contained, and could be anywhere. I didn’t realize what a psychic comfort this was to me until I found myself watching the weather forecast on the local news last night. Why, I thought, is the meteorologist standing right in front of the Midwest? I can’t see Chicago, dude! And then, he made some comment about some uncharacteristically high humidity for Sunday. “Well, it’s been lovely today, though. Hey, that’s why we live in New England.” Uh, who lives in New England, honey? I live in the Midwest! Wait, no! I Don’t! I live in narrow-streeted, pub-covered, glorious-leaf-changing, concerned-by-Atlantic-hurricanes, Kennedy-loving New England. Whoa. I miss you, Chicago.
where’s joseph campbell when you need him? July 7, 2008
Because he’d really get a kick out of watching the girls deconstruct universal human myths then string them back together into a spontaneous narrative (I know, I know, my kids aren’t the first to have done this. But they’re the first one’s who have done this that came out of my womb, so back off!).
Note: This all takes place in and around the pool (yeah, the one in our building…whatever…), and what you see below is my best attempt to faithfully preserve the story, including all plot points and language, as it was presented to me:
Dina stands at pool’s edge watering the water plants. She has me float along inside a floating basketball net contraption, which I soon learn is the floating prison in which I have been imprisoned for 15 years. She, too, it seems, has been imprisoned, on this island. Bassie, it turns out, has been living on this same island, but far on the other side, because the great forces have kept them apart or horrible things would happen. What horrible things, I ask. Bassie explains that should she and Dina meet, Dina would transform into a man, with whom Bassie would feel instantly in love; but upon Dina’s retransformation back into a girl, Bassie would be so heartbroken that she would kill Dina on the spot. Bassie now has to enter into a series of water ballet-like moves to turn the forces of the universe against their nature so that Dina will not transform, setting into motion this horrible course of events. When Bassie finishes, I ask if she is a sorcerer. Oh no, is the reply, but her father was. He was killed by a man much like Darth Vader, but his name was Light Vader and his look was so piercing it would bore through you at a single point. Her mother, it seems, is living happily on a distant planet. If Bassie wants to see her, she can conjure up a bubble which will float in her hand, and present a shimmering image of her mother for her to see. She hasn’t the power to teleport herself back to her mother, and anyway, she has become accustomed to this small island, where she cares for the fish, and they, in turn, care for her, as much as they are able.
A hero on the brink of her call to adventure…
“Let’s hear it for nonconformity”. “Um, what is ‘an actual line said without irony in a recent McDonald’s commercial, Alex?” July 2, 2008
Hipsters and hip young families “changing how we live, how we relate, how we eat…chicken for breakfast? I’m just that anti-establishment, dude…” Brilliant, if by brilliant you mean “preposterous yet effective marketing”.
