Girl Detective

Once upon a time, I was a show-going fan of the Grateful Dead. My then-boyfriend was a Deadhead who introduced me to the music and the culture. We played “name that singer” listening to tapes on the way to the stadium. Was it a Bobby song? Jerry? Or a trick question–the rare Phil tune, and the thankfully even rarer tunes by whichever poor keyboard player hadn’t yet exploded?

One of my favorite parts of the scene, though, was the parking lot. Before and after the show, people tailgated, and sold wares from the back of their cars and trucks. Sure, there were drugs and alcohol around. I was more interested in the other stuff: T-shirts with beautiful designs and lyrics, bootleg tapes of classic shows, beaded jewelry (I once bought a lavender ankle bracelet with bells), and food.

Once, after a show at Buckeye Lake, we made our way through the parking lot. I was sweaty and thirsty from dancing; the shows lasted at least two hours. I was also very hungry, and thrilled when a girl in a swirly dress wandered by calling, “Bagels! Veggie bagels! Cruelty-free, love-filled bagels!” I remember that bagel as one of the best foodstuffs I’ve ever eaten. Whole wheat, with cream cheese, dill, cucumber, fresh tomato, salt and just a few thinly sliced red onions. It was heavenly.

I just tried to recreate the dish. I didn’t have tomatoes, and I skipped the red onion. It was tasty, but lacked a little something. Perhaps it was the joy and the camaraderie of the parking lot.

My husband G. Grod, 5yo son Drake, 3yo son Guppy, and I just returned from a week in Miami with my family. We had a good time, and did a lot of fun things. But it was very different from my expectations beforehand.

Here’s what I thought I would do on vacation:

What I actually did:

So, mostly good. As usual, G. and I wished for even more downtime grown-up time. Lessons learned: Boys need to learn to swim. Be more even more careful about sunscreen. And adjust expectations and pack lighter for things like books and movies.

After weeks of drowning in unread posts at other sites and blogs, I am DONE! Caught up! Whew!

I had fun doing it. I have whittled down the sites I follow to those that entertain, inform and/or educate me. The volume of unread material was daunting, but reading it was still a joy.

I didn’t get the Google Reader magic message, “You have no unread items,” though, since I still have some Sepinwall reviews of episodes I haven’t watched of Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, Dollhouse and Breaking Bad.

But watching those shows, and reading their reviews, and trying to keep up and not get so weeded again with my online reading? Those are all to be done some other day.

I purchased Christie Mellor’s Three-Martini Family Vacation in advance of our first full-on family trip. I haven’t yet read her previous one, The Three-Martini Playdate, though many of my parent friends have recommended it. I found this a funny, refreshing, if sometimes guilt-inducing, tonic to the current culture of over-parenting. I read it in the car to and from the beach in lieu of entertaining my kids in the backseat. I presumed, correctly, they could manage a 30 to 60 minute drive.

Trust me, there is never going to be the “perfect time” to go on a vacation, and if you wait for the ideal moment, you will be old and gray, and too finicky to want to travel anywhere you can’t have your shredded wheat and regular “programs.” Do not wait. Go now.

Traveling with children in tow can be challenging, but so can traveling with anybody who doesn’t want to do exactly what you want to do exactly when you want to do it. It’s annoying, but there you are. You could put a rucksack over your shoulder and abscond in the dead of night, leaving your broken-hearted family to pick up the shattered remnants of their lives without their mommy or daddy, or you could give it a try, and discover that “traveling” and “with children” don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

A few of her key points:

Teach your kids manners, self sufficiency and to be considerate of others as soon as they’re able. You, they, and others will all appreciate it in the long run.

Avoid places full of children, as they tend to be noisy, active, intrusive, and lack the manners mentioned above.

Three-martini parenting isn’t about ignoring your kids. It’s about finding balance between grownup time and kid time. Play with and attend to your kids. Within reason.

As much as possible, eschew social pressure. Remember the best vacations can be simple, cheap and even local.

This is a book one shouldn’t judge till one’s read it. It’s supposed to be humorous and tongue-in-cheek–one of its points is to lighten up. Consider it as a girlfriend’s take-it-or-leave-it advice. Mellor doesn’t pretend or claim to be an expert. She’s just another parent in the trenches, who’s been there and done that.

At Lianablog, she creates a formula to make your own NPR name. I have to jigger things around a bit to incorporate my middle initial into my first name, but it DOES work. As for the smallest foreign town I’ve visited, I’ll have to pull out an atlas. (Link from The Morning News)

Ooh, I think I’ve got the last name: Saffron Walden.

At Wired, Neil Gaiman, who does not actually live in Minneapolis, is interviewed about his “love letter” to Batman, while the monthly books go on hiatus and DC “reboots” the character and comics. He’s also got interesting stuff to say about comics made into movies. (Link from The Morning News)

It’s been over three weeks, and I’m still reading Peter Matthiessen’s nearly 900-page Shadow Country, winner of the 2008 National Book Award. The long book is worth the read, but was slow for me to get into because of a huge panoply of characters–I stopped about page 60, went back to the beginning, and kept a character list.

Shadow Country is historical fiction, taking on the myriad legends surrounding southwest Florida pioneer Edgar Watson. About 30 years ago, Matthiessen submitted a 1500+ page manuscript to his publisher. They said it was too big, so the whole was carved, apparently inelegantly, into three parts: Killing Mr. Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone. Matthiessen merged the three, then edited to create this new version and complete tale, Shadow Country. I see it as Matthiessen’s “director’s cut.”

It’s a dark, complex, fascinating book about a similarly dark, complex, fascinating character. I can see why Matthiessen has spent his life wrestling with the life and legends of Watson. But I hope to find my way out into the literary sunshine again soon.

Here in Minnesota, we almost have a new senator. Fingers crossed that they can get this resolved within six months of election day.

At The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Geoffrey K. Pullum declines to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style:

The book’s toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can’t help it, because they don’t know how to identify what they condemn.

I never quite “got” The Elements of Style. I was amused by its cranky-old-man tone, but still couldn’t fathom much difference between “that” and “which” except “which” is used after a comma and “that” is not. (Link from Blog of a Bookslut)

In “Neo-Neo Realism“, from a recent New York Times Magazine, film critic A.O. Scott resists the easy answer of escapism, for what audiences want in films:

what if, at least some of the time, we feel an urge to escape from escapism? For most of the past decade, magical thinking has been elevated from a diversion to an ideological principle. The benign faith that dreams will come true can be hard to distinguish from the more sinister seduction of believing in lies. To counter the tyranny of fantasy entrenched on Wall Street and in Washington as well as in Hollywood, it seems possible that engagement with the world as it is might reassert itself as an aesthetic strategy. Perhaps it would be worth considering that what we need from movies, in the face of a dismaying and confusing real world, is realism.

He notes that the ancestor of this new new wave of realism is The Bicycle Thief, so anti-escapism isn’t really new. But he offers a number of films in example–Wendy and Lucy, Sugar, Chop Shop, and more–that honor the audience by offering up real characters and not dumbing things down. Meanwhile, they manage the surprising, true-to-life feat of ending on notes of quiet hope, even in the face of tragedy and difficulty.

Scott’s analysis is intelligent and stirring. Suddenly, and as if I needed it, I’ve got a lot more movies I’d like to see. And a lot more little ones that I’m going to have to hunt for in theaters, as these little quiet movies don’t get a lot of screens.

I’m just wondering what comes after the new-new realism? The Grateful Dead song, “New Minglewood Blues”, became “New New Minglewood Blues” then “All New Minglewood Blues”. Will we see an all new realism sometime in the future?

We bought our house a little over four years ago from a couple with two little kids, about eight and five. We noticed the five-foot chain link fence around the yard, and the padlocks they left for them and thought, huh.

Drake was just over a year old, and I wondered if I’d eventually need to lock him into the yard. Sure enough, last summer he made several breaks for freedom, a few times enticing little brother Guppy down the block. We brought out the padlocks. They screamed. They wailed. But they stayed in the yard.

During a recent thaw, Drake and friends were playing outside, then Drake entered the house from the front door, not the back, and barefoot.

“Weren’t you in the back?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I took off my boots, threw them over the fence, then climbed over.”

I looked out and saw his boots on the ground in front of the fence. So much for security and padlocks. I think he’s picked up a few things at circus school. I can only hope Guppy, who is a solid citizen with a low center of gravity, will remain earthbound a little while longer, and not follow his brother over the fence.

Lifetime and Bravo have finally settled their lawsuit over season six of Project Runway, which will air this summer on Lifetime.

Meanwhile, Bravo comes back swinging and doesn’t bother to pretend it’s not a rip off, with The Fashion Show, with judges Isaac Mizrahi and Fern Mallis.

For those of us left with a bad taste in our mouth after Top Chef Season Five, no date has yet been set for Season Six, though casting took place earlier this spring. Better yet, at least two Twin Cities chefs auditioned!

Meanwhile, though, Bravo keeps the culinary reality goodness alive with Top Chef Masters, kind of like an American Iron Chef a la Top Chef. (link from ALoTT5MA)

Sally Hawkins was bruited about as a likely best actress nominee for her role as Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky, but didn’t make the final list. It’s a great performance, though, in director Mike Leigh’s odd little movie that’s more deep character sketch than a coherent story.

Hawkins as Poppy is simultaneously fascinating, likeable, and annoying. She’s so upbeat, and so little brought down by the things that wear on others, that she seems almost surreal. The supporting characters, including a sympathetic flat mate, tightly wound driving instructor, stunningly cute social worker, and her class full of elementary kids, all serve to highlight this bizarrely enchanting character. Fair warning: my husband G. Grod gave up part way in when he couldn’t discern a plot and started to fall asleep. I feel asleep about half way through, in a strange and difficult scene between Poppy and a homeless man. Worth watching but not if you’re looking for a story with a beginning, middle and end, or feeling sleepy.

This was the seventh dvd that came into the library for me in the past three weeks, and the thirty-third movie I’ve watched this year. When it rains, it pours. I’m hoping to get back to more reading and writing soon. We’ll see if I can manage that.

People who talk in movie theaters irritate me. The exception: kids in movies for kids. They talk, and it delights me. I can only hope they’ll unlearn that behavior by the time they’re seeing movies for old people, like me.

5yo Drake and I went to see Bolt at the Riverview Theater with friends. The kids, 5, 4, and 2, were entranced by the show. There were lots of “Dog!” and “Wow!” comments. The story was easy to follow, had cute characters like pigeons and a hamster, and Bolt was endearing, though I found his eyes a little too creepily realistic looking. I like my cartoons to look cartoon-y, thanks.

The plot is a mash up of Toy Story and The Truman Show. Bolt thinks he’s a superdog, but he only plays one on television. When he is accidentally released into the real world, he has to learn to deal with not being super. Along the way, though, he also learns how to be a real dog, which he finds is not a bad trade off.

I doubt the movie would have been so enjoyable with older kids, and it most certainly wouldn’t have been on its own–everything is good, few things are great. But watching it with kids, and experiencing their wonder, along with real-butter popcorn and movie candy, was a delight.

Ironic parallel: Rhino the hamster spends most of his time in a plastic ball. 70’s pop culture mavens may remember one of John Travolta’s, the voice of Bolt, early movies, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.

5yo Drake and 3yo Guppy’s 8th-grade babysitter had one of the lead roles in her middle school’s production of West Side Story. Drake’s love of music runs deep, and he’s become enamored of musicals (Sound of Music) and music from Musicals (Mamma Mia! and “What a Piece of Work is Man” from Hair) so I thought I’d give it a shot.

It went well. Drake enjoyed the music, didn’t seem troubled that he couldn’t follow the story (a good thing in my book), and we sat behind the orchestra, so he got to see that as well. I gave him the option of leaving at intermission, but he wanted to stay. The kids in the play did a great job, and Drake sat through his first full-length musical. (Less winning were the grandparents behind me who talked at normal volume throughout and had to wrangle an 18mo toddler. But their other grandkid was in the play, and this was middle school, not the Guthrie, so I didn’t ask them to keep it down.)

Soon after, I saw a flyer for another local middle school’s production of Harry Allard and James Marshall’s Miss Nelson is Missing. Buoyed by my previous success, I thought it would be good for Drake and Guppy. The play itself would have been about an hour, which is what I expected. Alas, in the admirable spirit of including everybody who wants to participate, there were musical numbers between EVERY scene, so the show lasted two hours. At the end of the play, the last of its run, there were speeches, and thank yous. And more speeches. And more thanks yous. Finally I grabbed my kids and tried to make an exit.

Guppy was not on board with this plan. “I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE!” he screamed as I carried him out of the auditorium. He continued to scream, plus hit me, as we made our way through the school and outside. I put him down, he threw himself to the ground screaming and kicking. By this time the play was finally over. Playgoers streamed around us. I put him on his feet and dragged him resolutely to the car. He continued to cry and scream, and refused to get in his car seat. Mothers in the parking lot gave me sympathetic looks. Elderly people gave me dirty looks. Drake screamed because Guppy was screaming. I waited a few minutes, then wrestled Guppy into his seat. He screamed all the way home, where I handed him to G. Grod and said, “He needs a diaper. And he’s been crying for 30 minutes. I’m going to lie down.”

G got him quieted within minutes, so my frayed nerves and I could take a nap. But not before I swore off middle school musicals for a while.

This Saturday past, my husband G. Grod was at a democratic convention to support a candidate for city council. It would take most of the day, so 5yo Drake and 3yo Guppy and I would be on our own.

We were basically just lounging about in our pajamas, until Guppy wandered in waving an empty gummy-bear vitamin bottle. One that had been at least 3/4 full that morning.

I grilled both of them. Denial, denial. So I called my dad, a retired doctor, to confirm what I thought I had to do:

Make ‘em barf.

Guppy seemed the likeliest suspect, so I corralled him and stuck my finger down his throat. Voila. Gummy-smelling barf. I had to do this several times, and then take a break, during which time he tried to hide from me. I tracked him down and did a second round to be safe.

In the meantime, I realized that neither boy could be trusted, and even if Drake hadn’t ingested the vitamins I might as well be fair to Guppy and possibly use this as a teaching moment. So he had his turn in the bathroom. Surprise; he barfed up a substance remarkably similar to Guppy’s.

I was very matter of fact, quiet and firm during all of this. Amazingly, neither of them bit me. They were screaming, crying, running. Kind of like Jurassic Park, where I was the velociraptor. After, though, I calmed them down, explained why too many vitamins were bad, and why they had to get them out of their stomachs. They didn’t seem to hold a grudge.

I, on the other hand, now know better than to buy candy-like vitamins for my kids. Both are lousy eaters. Drake would subsist on yogurt, bread and sugar if I let him. So the multivitamins were recommended by their pediatrician, and serving to fill in some of the gaping holes in their diet. Now, though, they’re on their own. Scurvy and rickets, here we come.

I reserved Frozen River from my library months ago, along with Man on Wire and they came in at the same time. Interestingly, that documentary is about something so fantastic that this film seemed more real to me by comparison.

Melissa Leo is a mom of 2 boys in northern New York, struggling to make the down payment for the double wide of her dreams when her husband runs off with the money and gambles it away. He’s a Native American, and in looking for him on the reservation, she learns about a lucrative black market in transporting immigrants.

I was astonished by Leo’s performance, by turns raw, sad, despairing and hopeful. Often bleak, but not without hope, I thought the movie was very well done.

I tried to see Hamlet 2 in theaters last year but never managed. I was on a Hamlet binge at the time so it seemed a good remedy for much of the rest of the tragic stuff I was watching and reading. Alas, I didn’t love it, and didn’t laugh much. Comedies are so subjective, perhaps even more so than other types of movies. Any time I write I loved one, a commenter says they didn’t, and vice versa. So I hope there’s some love out there for Hamlet 2, but there wasn’t much love chez Girl Detective.

I do, though, highly recommend watching the video for “Rock Me, Sexy Jesus“. Not only is it so catchy it might never get out of your head, that part of the movie made me genuinely laugh.

I requested the documentary Man on Wire from the library around Oscar nomination time. It didn’t win, but I recommend seeking it out.

Phillipe Petit is a tightrope walker/performance artist who worked with a group to string a wire between the World Trade Center Towers as they were just finished in the early 70’s, then walked the wire in front of a growing crowd that came to include the police who eventually arrested him when he came off the wire. I won’t spoil the details of his crossing, as I found them jaw dropping.

Petit has a huge personality, and it’s a captivating story, told through interviews, clippings, along with Petit’s own photos and videos. It’s also eerie and strange to see the towers during conception and construction, since the images of their loss are still so fresh and raw.

Two asides:

1. While typing this, I repeatedly mistyped “wire” as “wife,” which has an entirely different implication.

2. Man on Wire (just typed “wife” again) came in for me at the same time as Frozen River and Hamlet 2. It was a bizarre trio to watch close together.

PAJAMAS are the other thing you can buy if you’ve gained weight and need some retail therapy. I try not to indulge these days, but am awfully tempted since I saw Robin wearing these Mandarin Hipster pajamas on How I Met Your Mother the other week.

It wouldn’t be the first pair of pjs I sought after seeing on the tube. I got the Yummy Sushi pajamas after I saw them on Buffy the Vampire Slayer years ago, and love them still.