Category
Childhood
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Childhood
The Downside of Innocence
My 8-year-old daughter still firmly believes in Santa Klaus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. While this is sweet, it does put me in some awkward positions. To wit:
Her: “Daddy, can I have a pony* for Christmas?”
Me: “I’m sorry, honey, we can’t afford it.”
Her: “That’s okay – I’ll just ask Santa!”
*Or a similar high-priced gift.
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Childhood, Wiggles
A Truly Sad Day
I found out some sad news late last night – Greg Page, the Yellow Wiggle, is turning in his yellow shirt and retiring from the band due to health problems. It’s really surprising because he’s the youngest member at 34 – bandmate Jeff Fatt is over 50.
For a while my youngest son never missed an episode of The Wiggles, and they grew on me as well. Greg formed the band with Murray Cook and Anthony Field when the three of them met while studying to be teachers. The three then formed The Wiggles, later inviting Anthony’s old bandmate Jeff from The Cockroaches to join.
While some of their music is less than memorable, a lot of it is not bad at all, and even adults can enjoy songs like “Wiggle Groove” and “Sailing Around The World” – some adults, anyway. And kids LOVE them, and they love kids. They’ve earned every dollar they have made for that alone.
Greg apparently started having health over the past couple of years, including dizziness and nausea, and was finally dignosed with orthostatic intolerance, in which the nervous system does not make the necessary changes to compensate for changes in activity (even just standing up) or environment (entering a warm room).
So best of luck to Greg and the other Wiggles, and here’s hoping they keep on keeping kids happy.
Other musical news: I was out shopping with the wife the other day when she picked up a DVD of Schoolhouse Rock and jokingly suggested we get it. So we did. And that thing ROCKS! I can still remember a lot of these, although I don’t think I ever saw “Lolly Lolly Lolly” or “Interplanet Janet”, but of course I remember “I’m Just A Bill” and “Conjunction Junction”. And I can still recite every word of the Preamble to the Constitution thanks to the Schoolhouse Rock song.
My favorite, though, is “Interjections!” (“Hurray! I’m for the other team!”) which steals shamelessly from Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, i.e. “IN-TER-JEC-TIONS!”. And I have to beleive there’s an uncensored version somewhere in which they use somewhat stronger interjections.
Reading this over, I can see that I’m not getting across just how damn cool this sounds, so go here and listen to some of the samples (or check out the disc of all-star remakes).
It’s sad to me sometimes that today’s generation of kids won’t grow up hearing this on Saturday mornings between Bugs Bunny cartoons. Childhood ain’t what it used to be.
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Books, Childhood, Reviews, Wisdom
From The Mouths Of Babes
So last night the wife and I were watching Shaolin Soccer (not a bad flick, though the wife never warmed up to it) while the 2-year-old Powell ran around shooting darts from a balloon pump. When he pointed this thing at my wife’s head I stopped him sternly. “No!” I said. “Not at her face!”
“Okay, daddy,” he said, smiling. “You face?”
Maybe you had to see how he asked if he could shoot me in the face, but the veneer of suave sophistication coupled with the promise of violence makes me think he’s got a future as a Bond villain.
So Long, Farewell, Goodbye. I saw Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye a couple of weeks ago, for the first time in a long time (over ten years – I hadn’t met The Wife yet). Coincidentally, it was Roger Ebert’s classic review this past Sunday.
I know many fans of Chandler didn’t like this movie, but I thought it was squarely in the Chandlerite tradition. Elliot Gould’s Marlowe is a man out of his time, as Ebert suggests, and its illustrated in the movie by his ancient car and his devotion to his suit and tie (contrasted with his clothing-optional neighbors).
But I thought he was more than a throwback. This Marlowe is presented as a buffoon, but this is mostly a facade, a clown mask. Putting down the world with an endless series of wisecracks is the only way he can fight back. He’ll never be richer, or stronger, or more powerful than the people he deals with. His own friend calls him a “born loser”. So he makes it all a joke, but it’s strictly gallows humor.
He also seethes with resentment. He lives by a code and watches those who don’t get ahead, and it pisses him off. Even people he trusts take advantage of him.
Most of the other performances were good, too. Jim Bouton was just right as Marlowe’s old buddy Terry Lennox, who may have killed his wife. Nina van Pallandt was terrific as a friend of the Lennoxes who hires Marlowe to spring her husband from a rehab facility. Best of all is Sterling Hayden, whose turn as an alchoholic writer, once quite a man but now just a shell, reminded me of another fictional writer: Abraham Treahearn from Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss. Which is sort of appropriate since, in many ways, that’s a rewrite of Chandler’s original.
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