So, once a week , we have our Wacky Wednesday, where we have breakfast food for dinner, Lily takes an early bath and gets into jammies and then we all sit down on the couch to watch a movie together. We had 101 Dalmatians from Netflix and when I reminded Lily that's what we'd be watching, she said she wanted "Something without a bad guy."
I looked at Jen and she looked at me and said "Totoro it is," and that's what we'll watch tonight, but we're running out of movies, so I'm sending out the call for suggestions.
Lily's favorites include Mary Poppins and the Sound of Music, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo. (She watched most of Nausicaa too, and didn't get bothered until the Ohmu started going into the acid lake at the end). We've seen almost everything by Pixar and most of the Disney Princess movies. She likes Kim Possible, but Jen feels it's not really age appropriate, so I think we'll wait a while before we put that in regular rotation and she likes Strawberry Shortcake, and Dora the Explorer but Jen and I will flip out if we have to watch that again.
So, suggestions? We'd prefer something that can be streamed through Netflix, but that's not a deal breaker. Also high on the list is something that adults can tolerate (or preferably, enjoy).
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Everything I need to know, I learned on Tralfamadore
Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
Listen: No, he hasn't.
I mean, Jesus Christ, how hard is this to understand?
I bring this up because whoever wrote the wikipedia entry about Slaughterhouse-Five seemed to think it was a book about time travel and aliens, even going to the length of editing out any mention of alternate interpretations.
I first encountered the book in high school, and read it and didn't see what the big deal was. Then I found it again as an adult and thought that it was the saddest thing I had ever read.
Here is this boy, shipped off to World War II. He sees horrors that he can't understand, but he survives and returns home and settles down and forgets about it. But he can't really forget, and when his wife dies, he simply goes very quietly insane, because that's the only way he can make sense of anything any more. He doesn't want to live in a world where his wife is dead, so he creates one.
Hemingway said: "The world breaks everyone, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills - it kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very brave, impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you, too, but there will be no special hurry."
Vonnegut said: "The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."
I was thinking of Issac Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut lately. We don't seem to have a lot of high profile atheists any more. We've got Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers and both are pretty awesome, but they don't shape a generation like their predecessors did. Meyers has a reputation for abrasiveness. I like his blog and I thought something he wrote was particularly illuminating:
We were talking about Mister Rogers in a previous post, and I can't think of a more unlikely pair than a mild-mannered Presbyterian minister, and a famously prickly atheist but you know, they're both saying the same thing here. If someone is telling a destructive lie, it is your responsibility to stand up and point that out.
Listen: No, he hasn't.
I mean, Jesus Christ, how hard is this to understand?
I bring this up because whoever wrote the wikipedia entry about Slaughterhouse-Five seemed to think it was a book about time travel and aliens, even going to the length of editing out any mention of alternate interpretations.
I first encountered the book in high school, and read it and didn't see what the big deal was. Then I found it again as an adult and thought that it was the saddest thing I had ever read.
Here is this boy, shipped off to World War II. He sees horrors that he can't understand, but he survives and returns home and settles down and forgets about it. But he can't really forget, and when his wife dies, he simply goes very quietly insane, because that's the only way he can make sense of anything any more. He doesn't want to live in a world where his wife is dead, so he creates one.
Hemingway said: "The world breaks everyone, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills - it kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very brave, impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you, too, but there will be no special hurry."
Vonnegut said: "The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever."
I was thinking of Issac Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut lately. We don't seem to have a lot of high profile atheists any more. We've got Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers and both are pretty awesome, but they don't shape a generation like their predecessors did. Meyers has a reputation for abrasiveness. I like his blog and I thought something he wrote was particularly illuminating:
Everybody seems to imagine that if Granny says "Bless you!" after I sneeze, I punch her in the nose, and they're all busy dichotomizing the skeptical community into the nice, helpful, sweet people who don't rock the boat and the awful, horrible, bastards in hobnailed boots who stomp on small children in Sunday school. It's just not right...There is a fair point being made, that there are multiple strategies that work to convince people to rethink bad ideas, and they don't all involve punching people in the face…and many of the best strategies do involve politely listening and criticizing. But I think the best ideas involve a combination of willingness to listen and politely engage, and a forthright core of assertiveness and confrontation — tactical dickishness, if you want to call it that.
We were talking about Mister Rogers in a previous post, and I can't think of a more unlikely pair than a mild-mannered Presbyterian minister, and a famously prickly atheist but you know, they're both saying the same thing here. If someone is telling a destructive lie, it is your responsibility to stand up and point that out.
Monday, August 9, 2010
An unlikely paladin
On gaming websites, there are occasionally discussions of which fictional characters would be paladins. If you're not familiar with the word, a paladin in this context is someone so virtuous that they dedicate their entire lives to opposing evil wherever they find it. (The concept was taken from the peers of Charlemagne and strongly influenced by a 1961 fantasy novel by Poul Anderson, Three Hearts and Three Lions.) D&D has a concept called alignment, with two Axes, Good-Neutral-Evil and Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic. You take one from column A and one from column B, resulting in nine possible alignments. Paladins must be Lawful Good.
In these discussions, somebody usually names Superman right away and Captain America shortly after that, and there is some debate if Batman is a paladin of sorts, and then as the thread wraps wraps up, people start nominating the Punisher and the any character they happen to like.
Paladins and Lawful Goodness are concepts that are frequently misunderstood by many gamers, who think that paladins must be overbearing moralizing hypocrites or gullible simps.
I was thinking about Mister Rogers the other day. A blog I follow linked to an article about him, so I spent some time reading about him. He was such a profoundly decent human being. I don't think anyone would argue that he's anything other than Lawful Good. This is the quote that made me think of him as a paladin.
That's what a paladin should be. Patiently, modestly, pushing back the darkness and advancing the light, day after day.
Over at Mental Floss, there is a list of fifteen reasons why Mister Rogers was the best neighbor ever. I especially liked this one.
In these discussions, somebody usually names Superman right away and Captain America shortly after that, and there is some debate if Batman is a paladin of sorts, and then as the thread wraps wraps up, people start nominating the Punisher and the any character they happen to like.
Paladins and Lawful Goodness are concepts that are frequently misunderstood by many gamers, who think that paladins must be overbearing moralizing hypocrites or gullible simps.
I was thinking about Mister Rogers the other day. A blog I follow linked to an article about him, so I spent some time reading about him. He was such a profoundly decent human being. I don't think anyone would argue that he's anything other than Lawful Good. This is the quote that made me think of him as a paladin.
He was barely more than a boy himself when he learned what he would be fighting for, and fighting against, for the rest of his life. He was in college. He was a music major at a small school in Florida and planning to go to seminary upon graduation. His name was Fred Rogers. He came home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, once upon a time, and his parents, because they were wealthy, had bought something new for the corner room of their big redbrick house. It was a television. Fred turned it on, and as he says now, with plaintive distaste, "there were people throwing pies at one another." He was the soft son of overprotective parents, but he believed, right then, that he was strong enough to enter into battle with that--that machine, that medium--and to wrestle with it until it yielded to him, until the ground touched by its blue shadow became hallowed and this thing called television came to be used "for the broadcasting of grace through the land."
That's what a paladin should be. Patiently, modestly, pushing back the darkness and advancing the light, day after day.
Over at Mental Floss, there is a list of fifteen reasons why Mister Rogers was the best neighbor ever. I especially liked this one.
And one more quote and a cartoon from xkcd:
Mister Rogers seems to have been almost exactly the same off-screen as he was onscreen. As an ordained Presbyterian minister, and a man of tremendous faith, Mister Rogers preached tolerance first. Whenever he was asked to castigate non-Christians or gays for their differing beliefs, he would instead face them and say, with sincerity, “God loves you just the way you are.” Often this provoked ire from fundamentalists.
He had already won his third Daytime Emmy, and now he went onstage to accept Emmy's Lifetime Achievement Award, and there, in front of all the soap-opera stars and talk-show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are ... Ten seconds of silence." And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, "I'll watch the time," and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked … and so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds … and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, "May God be with you" to all his vanquished children.
For Keeps
We walked to my Grammy's on Thursday. On the way back, Lily was trying to explain something to me. She said "I have a...guess about that flower,," but clearly that wasn't the word she was looking for, so she tried again and said "I have a hype-pot-toe-cyst about that flower." She kind of garbled it, but she was trying to say "hypothesis", and she clearly knew what it meant. Apparently, she picked it up from a show on PBS, Dinosaur Train, where one of the characters uses the phrase regularly. I'm just continually amazed by how much she absorbs. The other day she was being super whiny about something trivial and I almost said "Sucks to be you!" and now I'm glad that I didn't because I'm sure that's a phrase she would have retained and repeated.
It's funny how she's becoming the sum of her experiences and there are factors that don't come from Jen or me, but from what she experiences as an independent entity. She wants to be smart, and it's good that have that as a goal, but after I complimented her about her use of hypothesis, she asked if she were the smartest kid in the world. I told her that she was very smart and she replied, "I want to be the smartest kid in the world, so everyone will love me!" and I'm rather ambivilent where that line of reasoning is going to lead us.
Lily went up at my father's house on Saturday (where she canoed. Pictures will be forthcoming) , and Jen and I wound up watching a movie. It was "For Keeps", which did not in fact star Kevin Bacon, as each of us had remembered. Apparently there was a 1988 movie about youth pregnancy directed by John Hughes and there was a 1988 movie about youth pregnancy starring Molly Ringwald and they are not in fact the same movie. Consider my mind blown.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has observed how odd it can be to have two fundamentally identical movies released at almost the same time. On one hand, it's not entirely inexplicable, as these similar movies are not pulled like a rabbit from a hat, but rather arise from factors already present in the environment. (This still does nothing to explain how we had two movies about middle distance runner Steve Prefontaine released back to back, however.) Examples of this phenomenon abound, like Antz and A Bugs Life, or Serenity and the Human Centipede.
Anyway, the movies was okay despite it not being the one we thought we were getting. I like Molly Ringwald. She's pretty and speaks French, and seems to be an all right person. (I'm sure that Molly Ringwald is happy to know that she has my approval. (Then again, it's been a quarter century since the Breakfast Club was released so maybe she is.)) She's engaging enough to carry the movie. It didn't change my life, but I don't regret the time we spent watching it.
We attended a birthday party for one of Lily's little friends on Sunday. It was a little tumbling party at a local community center, pretty similar to Raphael's party earlier in the year. Lily was impossibly cute, in rather stark contrast to how she'd been behaving earlier in the day. It's funny how much personality she has. When the kids were in a semi-circle around the people running the party, I knew how she'd sound when asked her name, and the exact tone of voice. "Lily!" very distinct and assertive. And I knew that she'd say "Mint chocolate chip!" when asked her favorite ice cream flavor.
When the woman running the party pretended to forget the lyrics to Happy Birthday, and started singing "Row, Row, Row your boat" instead, Lily said "I can help you. 'Happy birthday to you...'" Jen called that one from miles away.
It's funny how she's becoming the sum of her experiences and there are factors that don't come from Jen or me, but from what she experiences as an independent entity. She wants to be smart, and it's good that have that as a goal, but after I complimented her about her use of hypothesis, she asked if she were the smartest kid in the world. I told her that she was very smart and she replied, "I want to be the smartest kid in the world, so everyone will love me!" and I'm rather ambivilent where that line of reasoning is going to lead us.
Lily went up at my father's house on Saturday (where she canoed. Pictures will be forthcoming) , and Jen and I wound up watching a movie. It was "For Keeps", which did not in fact star Kevin Bacon, as each of us had remembered. Apparently there was a 1988 movie about youth pregnancy directed by John Hughes and there was a 1988 movie about youth pregnancy starring Molly Ringwald and they are not in fact the same movie. Consider my mind blown.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has observed how odd it can be to have two fundamentally identical movies released at almost the same time. On one hand, it's not entirely inexplicable, as these similar movies are not pulled like a rabbit from a hat, but rather arise from factors already present in the environment. (This still does nothing to explain how we had two movies about middle distance runner Steve Prefontaine released back to back, however.) Examples of this phenomenon abound, like Antz and A Bugs Life, or Serenity and the Human Centipede.
Anyway, the movies was okay despite it not being the one we thought we were getting. I like Molly Ringwald. She's pretty and speaks French, and seems to be an all right person. (I'm sure that Molly Ringwald is happy to know that she has my approval. (Then again, it's been a quarter century since the Breakfast Club was released so maybe she is.)) She's engaging enough to carry the movie. It didn't change my life, but I don't regret the time we spent watching it.
We attended a birthday party for one of Lily's little friends on Sunday. It was a little tumbling party at a local community center, pretty similar to Raphael's party earlier in the year. Lily was impossibly cute, in rather stark contrast to how she'd been behaving earlier in the day. It's funny how much personality she has. When the kids were in a semi-circle around the people running the party, I knew how she'd sound when asked her name, and the exact tone of voice. "Lily!" very distinct and assertive. And I knew that she'd say "Mint chocolate chip!" when asked her favorite ice cream flavor.
When the woman running the party pretended to forget the lyrics to Happy Birthday, and started singing "Row, Row, Row your boat" instead, Lily said "I can help you. 'Happy birthday to you...'" Jen called that one from miles away.
Friday, August 6, 2010
When a Problem Comes Along, You Must Whip It
I watched Whip It last night with Jen and found it rather disappointing. On paper it looked great. Ellen Page! Alia Shawkat! Roller Derby! In practice, well...
It's not unwatchable, but it clearly wanted to be the next quirky Indie hit so much that it hurt.
Drew Barrymore is a terrible director. (Not that I'm a huge fan of her work anyway. I share the sentiments aired in her rather scathing fame audit.) One scene in particular was especially awful. Ellen Page was looking at a boy in the parking lot and then some headlights from another car turned on to illuminate him. It looked like an effect you'd get from a spotlight in a high school play.
It suffers in comparison versus other movies, in particular Ghost World. When bespectacled Ellen Page dyes her hair blue in an act of rebellion that sabotages a public appearance, I couldn't help but think of bespectacled Thora Birch, doing the exact same thing eight years earlier. (In an interesting but meaningless coincidence, both movies are 111 minutes long.)
The dialogue. Ugh. It makes the painful "This is one doodle that can't be un-did, Homeskillet" line from Juno seem like model of verisimilitude.
There was so little there that I'm having trouble coming up with anything to say, and I've refined navel gazing to an art form. Ellen Page was cute as a button. Alia Shawkat was characteristically awesome and managed to look like Sara Gilbert. Andrew Wilson was playing his brother Luke's character from the The Royal Tenenbaums. A post-menopausal Drew Barrymore was playing a twenty-something skater. I liked Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern as the parents. I can usually take or leave Jimmy Fallon, but I absolutely wanted to murder him after about thirty seconds here. Um...The skaters had amusing names.
Meh. I'm tired about writing about Whip It. I'm going to write about Ghost World instead.
Hmmm...why did I like Ghost World and not Whip It? I guess because Ghost World never talked down to me like Whip It did. As I get older, I find myself becoming more conservative about certain things, and "I lied about roller derby because I knew you wouldn't let me do it if I asked!" no longer strikes me as a particularly persuasive or sympathetic argument.
Jen never much liked Ghost World, but I love it. Scarlett Johansson was an actress before she was a movie star, if you care about the distinction, and this is my favorite role of hers ("Some people are ok, mostly I just feel like poisoning everybody."), but it's Thora Birch as Enid who really carries the movie.
She's snarky and detached, and she's doing the same things she's always done, and she can't understand why they aren't working for her anymore. Plus, it has one of my favorite lines.
Enid comes home. Her father calls her into the kitchen, and tells her that he's resumed dating Maxine, an ex-girlfriend of his whom Enid hates.
Also, there's a great scene at the movie theater, when Enid is working the concession stand:
Not only is that funny, but she gets chewed out by her manager afterwards, and she looks ready to cry. She's really trying to make a go of it in the adult world, but she can't quite fit in, not without changing herself, and she's not willing to do that. She doesn't understand that by rebelling against the values of mainstream society, she's letting it define her as fully as if she had embraced them.
She seems to have full awareness of her own futile and self-destructive behaviors - even as she is engaging in them, but she can't imagine any other way to live her life until the very end, when she gets on the bus. It feels like she's earned, if not a happy ending, then at least her second chance.
It's not unwatchable, but it clearly wanted to be the next quirky Indie hit so much that it hurt.
Drew Barrymore is a terrible director. (Not that I'm a huge fan of her work anyway. I share the sentiments aired in her rather scathing fame audit.) One scene in particular was especially awful. Ellen Page was looking at a boy in the parking lot and then some headlights from another car turned on to illuminate him. It looked like an effect you'd get from a spotlight in a high school play.
It suffers in comparison versus other movies, in particular Ghost World. When bespectacled Ellen Page dyes her hair blue in an act of rebellion that sabotages a public appearance, I couldn't help but think of bespectacled Thora Birch, doing the exact same thing eight years earlier. (In an interesting but meaningless coincidence, both movies are 111 minutes long.)
The dialogue. Ugh. It makes the painful "This is one doodle that can't be un-did, Homeskillet" line from Juno seem like model of verisimilitude.
There was so little there that I'm having trouble coming up with anything to say, and I've refined navel gazing to an art form. Ellen Page was cute as a button. Alia Shawkat was characteristically awesome and managed to look like Sara Gilbert. Andrew Wilson was playing his brother Luke's character from the The Royal Tenenbaums. A post-menopausal Drew Barrymore was playing a twenty-something skater. I liked Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern as the parents. I can usually take or leave Jimmy Fallon, but I absolutely wanted to murder him after about thirty seconds here. Um...The skaters had amusing names.
Meh. I'm tired about writing about Whip It. I'm going to write about Ghost World instead.
Hmmm...why did I like Ghost World and not Whip It? I guess because Ghost World never talked down to me like Whip It did. As I get older, I find myself becoming more conservative about certain things, and "I lied about roller derby because I knew you wouldn't let me do it if I asked!" no longer strikes me as a particularly persuasive or sympathetic argument.
Jen never much liked Ghost World, but I love it. Scarlett Johansson was an actress before she was a movie star, if you care about the distinction, and this is my favorite role of hers ("Some people are ok, mostly I just feel like poisoning everybody."), but it's Thora Birch as Enid who really carries the movie.
She's snarky and detached, and she's doing the same things she's always done, and she can't understand why they aren't working for her anymore. Plus, it has one of my favorite lines.
Enid comes home. Her father calls her into the kitchen, and tells her that he's resumed dating Maxine, an ex-girlfriend of his whom Enid hates.
Maxine: It's really quite something to see you all grown-up like this, Enid. I'd love to know what you're doing now. I can't help but feel I had some small part in how you turned out. What are you studying? You were always such a smart little girl.
Enid: I'm taking a remedial high school art class for fuck-ups and retards.
Also, there's a great scene at the movie theater, when Enid is working the concession stand:
Customer: Hi, can I get a medium 7-Up?
Enid: ...Medium? Why sir, did you know that for a mere 25 cents more you can purchase a large beverage? And you know... I'm only telling you this because we're such good friends: Medium is really only for suckers who don't know the concept of value.
Not only is that funny, but she gets chewed out by her manager afterwards, and she looks ready to cry. She's really trying to make a go of it in the adult world, but she can't quite fit in, not without changing herself, and she's not willing to do that. She doesn't understand that by rebelling against the values of mainstream society, she's letting it define her as fully as if she had embraced them.
She seems to have full awareness of her own futile and self-destructive behaviors - even as she is engaging in them, but she can't imagine any other way to live her life until the very end, when she gets on the bus. It feels like she's earned, if not a happy ending, then at least her second chance.
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