Girl Detective

I took 4yo Drake to Wall E last weekend. I told him if he got scared we could leave; last year we left Ratatouille early on. This year things went much better. He got scared toward the end, but agreed to stay when I promised him Wall E would be OK. He thought Eve the robot was really cute, and he laughed aloud (as I did) many times, during both the short movie about the magician and the feature film.

I loved this film. The visuals and wordless story were so transporting that I often forgot I was in a theater, much less watching an animated film. The two lead robots are charming; the plot about fat/wasteful humans is on the obvious side, but not obnoxiously so.

We saw an afternoon show. There were many families there, and part of what made the experience enjoyable was listening to the kid commentary along the way. One girl summed it up well as the credits began to roll, “That was a GOOD movie!”

Discovered later, from link at The Morning News, a very sweet story about Pixar and Wall E. (Note: link fixed; thanks Becca!)

From Salon, a celebration of all things bacon:

Anthony Bourdain has called bacon the “gateway protein” for its astounding ability to lure vegetarians back to the carnivorous fold

Link from The Morning News
An earlier post with the same title

From the LA Times review of Mark Bauerlein’s Dumbest Generation:

The problem is that instead of using the Web to learn about the wide world, young people instead mostly use it to gossip about each other and follow pop culture, relentlessly keeping up with the ever-shifting lingua franca of being cool in school. The two most popular websites by far among students are Facebook and MySpace…

This ceaseless pipeline of peer-to-peer activity is worrisome, he argues, not only because it crowds out the more serious stuff but also because it strengthens what he calls the “pull of immaturity.” Instead of connecting them with parents, teachers and other adult figures, “[t]he web . . . encourages more horizontal modeling, more raillery and mimicry of people the same age.”

From “The Burden of the Humanities” by Wilfred M. McClay at The Wilson Quarterly:

Lamentations about the sad state of the humanities in modern America have a familiar, indeed almost ritualistic, quality about them. The humanities are among those unquestionably nice endeavors, like animal shelters and ­tree-­planting projects, about which nice people invariably say nice things. But there gets to be something vaguely annoying about all this cloying uplift. One longs for the moral clarity of a swift kick in the ­rear.

Both articles were linked from Arts & Letters Daily, and both reflect on questions I wrote about in an earlier post on education and classics. Bauerlein’s book implies that people read too little. McClay’s piece suggests there’s peril in reading too much.

There can hardly be a simple answer, but I find the proliferation of articles on these questions interesting. There’s a clear dissatisfaction with the current state of education. Is it just this generation’s “woe is us” lament, or if there is actually a qualitative difference?

I approached Disney’s Enchanted, a mix of live action and animation, with low expectations. Few reviews were glowing, until the DVD review in Entertainment Weekly convinced me to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised.

Amy Adams voices, then plays, Giselle, a beautiful girl who speaks to animals. She is not a princess, though she is set to become one after she meets the prince, voiced and played with tongue in cheek by the handsome James Marsden. His stepmother, the evil queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), is determined not to give up the crown, so she sends Giselle down a well to NYC, where the action becomes live. There she meets Patrick Dempsey, a divorce lawyer, and wacky hijinks ensue.

For Disney, it might even be considered transgressive. The film pokes, albeit gently, at the Disney princess paradigm. Giselle isn’t a princess, and the prince is rather dim, in contrast to his smile. The cartoon characters have simple views of life: they fall in love in a day, live in countries just beyond the forest, and burst into song on a regular basis. There is a very funny scene when Giselle calls up animals in NYC to help her clean Dempsey’s apartment. Instead of the cutesy wood animals of the animated section (or the Snow White scene to which it pays homage), she summons cockroaches, pigeons (one of the them one legged) and rats. She sings a “Happy Working Song” while they clean, including a shot of toothbrushes used to clean the toilet. (That three songs from the film were nominated for Oscars, including this one, was silly. There must have been better songs in other movies that got passed over for this trifle.) There’s further winking in the casting. Dempsey’s girlfriend is played by Idina Menzel, who voiced the princess in Hercules. The women who voiced Ariel in the Little Mermaid is his secretary, and the woman who voiced Belle in Beauty and the Beast also has a cameo.

This could easily have been trifling and saccharine. Yet Dempsey’s charm, Marsden’s ironic prince, Sarandon’s campy queen, and Adams’ charming heroine, combine to make this quite good. My 4yo son Drake watched half of it with us. The July 4 fireworks woke and upset him. Any innuendo went over his head, and while the queen frightened him, he really liked Pip the chipmunk, so it was a good parentally guided viewing.

My friend The Big Brain lent me an advance copy of Burnout, the newest graphic novel from the DC Minx line, for young adults. The Minx books have gotten a lot of praise, and I’m in the minority (for example, praise at Boing Boing); I hate them. I think they’re full of young-adult novel cliches that were tired at least a decade ago. I could do a plot summary, but I think a cliche summary will function just as well:

Teenage protagonist was abandoned by father
Mother is in relationship with abusive, alcoholic jerk
Jerk has a hottie son whom protagonist has crush on
Hottie has a secret, which protagonist learns
Minimum of other characters (dog, best friend, and best friend’s uncle)
Hottie comes to bad end; protagonist and mother escape to new life

Perhaps the only difference between this story and the typical teenage problem novels of the 80s and 90s (which I quoted Michael Cart about, here) is that there is an ambiguous, not-happy ending. To me, this was a by the numbers YA book with OK art.

Better choices? Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Yes, they’re more serious. But they’re also really good. Gray Horses by Hope Larson, and Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan have good, believable female protagonists. And for good YA novels, check out the Printz award winners.

At The Edge of the American West, a Cookie Monster clip from The Colbert Report: Stephen Colbert is upset that cookies are no longer the number one snack of children in the US. He blames Cookie Monster, who comes to defend himself. Letter of the Day on Sesame Street, his appearance on NPR, and now this; Cookie is definitely my favorite monster.

Thanks to my friend Blogenheimer for the heads up.

The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen
As is the razor’s edge invisible…

Love’s Labor’s Lost is a bizarre and entertaining play to read. The King of Navarre and three friends vow to study for three years and eschew the company of women. Then the princess of France shows up with three friends. She wants to bargain for war funds and the property of Aquitaine. The King must meet with her, and the men’s strict vow is immediately undone; they fall hopelessly in love with the bewildered women. The men profess romantic love and attempt to trick, charm and woo the women, who see through their schemes. The women toy with the infatuated men, there are plays within a play, then a messenger arrives with sad news for the princess. A typical comedy would end with four (or more) weddings. Instead, LLL ends with a death, and no marriages.

There is an abundance of playful language, puns and malapropism. The play progresses from the men’s idealistic vows of chastity and intellectual study, to their idealization of the women. It becomes grounded in reality, though, with death. The men’s view of women as either goddess or whore is ridiculed, and the women are complex, capable and intelligent. It’s easy to see why many scholars believe this is a proto-feminist text.

I read this play in anticipation of a production of it I hoped to attend. Alas, life intervened, and I wasn’t able to see the play. My dear friend Thalia, instrumental in my adult approach to the Bard, taught me that reading the plays was a two-dimensional endeavor. Reading the play without seeing it performed is not a complete experience. Plays were, and are, meant to be performed and interpreted on stage. The film of LLL is poorly reviewed, so I won’t seek it out. I’ll wait for a production, and hope it’s not too long distant from my reading. For now, I’ll imagine that I could attend this one in the fall, with this geek-fan-favorite actor as Berowne.

Joshua Gans at Game Theorist (”Musings on economics and child rearing”) blogging about disciplining his youngest child:

When it comes down to it, this blog is a censored version of my parenting life. It is not and I do not claim it to be a full record. And when it comes to Child No.3, who is soon to turn 4, the terrible twos have seemed to lasted well beyond what one would have hoped.

Same here at Girl Detective. I try not to gripe about the daily grind; if I do I try to make it humorous. But my husband G. Grod and I have struggled with discipline issues, too. Gans’ post is long, but I found it worthwhile itself, and for the Slate article it linked to on timeouts. Both are matter-of-fact about dealing with kids. Gans candidly calls his struggles “the war” and the Slate piece mentioned, more than once, the desire of a parent to hit a child when things escalate.

Before I had kids, I didn’t believe I ever would, or even would want to, hit a child. (All you parents of multiple kids may now take a break to laugh your heads off.) As with most (all?) of my pre-parenting “I nevers,” this got proved wrong pretty quickly. Parenting books say things like “model the behavior you want” and “don’t lose your temper.” Good ideas in theory, but much harder in practice. And frequently not effective, even if done “correctly.”

Both the Gans entry and the Slate piece are refreshing in their realism. The Slate piece points out that most people misunderstand the purpose of timeouts, and offers these useful guidelines:

1. brief
2. immediate
3. done in isolation from others,
4. administered calmly…and without repeated warnings

(Mostly unrelated, other than they all interested me)

When to wear sunscreen? Almost always. (Sheesh. Next they’ll tell us to wear it to bed.) (Link from The Morning News)

How to store bread? Only for a day or two, loosely in plastic, or in ceramic.

You can too wash mushrooms!

Josh Whedon’s internet comedy, Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog, is coming July 15, 2008. (Preview here. Link from Everybody Loves Saturday Night)

Heh heh.

19

Created by OnePlusYou

(Link from Mommy Tracks)

So how is it that I can’t manage my not-quite 5yo and my 2yo?

I Watch Stuff has the trailer for the movie adaptation of Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery-award winning book, The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread.

I was surprised how cutesy this preview looked. The book is quite dark, even violent at times. DiCamillo is an advocate of not writing down to kids; she trusts her readers with stories that include life’s difficulties and injustices, as well as hope and redemption. I hope that this adaptation is more true to the book than the preview indicates.

Correction added later: The animation for the Despereaux movie is not done by the same team who did the bizarrely beautiful Triplets of Belleville. (Thanks to Camille of Book Moot for giving me the heads up that this had changed.) The directors previously worked on Flushed Away, Seabiscuit and Pleasantville. Check out the cast of voice talent, though. It’s impressive.

From the Wall Street Journal, “Get Out of Your Own Way: Studies Show the Value of Not Overthinking a Decision” (link from Arts and Letters Daily and The Morning News)

The brain, they have found, appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision….

Such experiments suggest that our best reasons for some choices we make are understood only by our cells. The findings lend credence to researchers who argue that many important decisions may be best made by going with our gut — not by thinking about them too much….

Moreover, the more factors to be considered in a decision, the more likely the unconscious brain handled it all better

These studies throw the concept of “free will” into question. If our body knows ten seconds before our brain does what the decision is, are we really choosing? Not addressed by the article is what happens when the body makes a decision, and the person overthinks and overrides it. (Story of my life, I believe.)

I am reminded of Douglas Adams’ directions for how to fly in the Hitchhiker books: Throw yourself at the ground, then forget that it’s there.

At Where the Hell is Matt, Dancing 2008. I loved this. It made me laugh and smile. And I bet 4yo Drake is going to love it, too.

Link from Jim Walsh at MinnPost and Morning News

Facebook, that is. Apparently not.

A friend from high school recently emailed that she’d joined Facebook. She’s an international athlete, and found it was a good way to stay connected to friends around the world.

I decided to test the waters, and have since found many, many friends who were already there, from all different parts of my life: family, former co-workers, neighbors, Philly friends, high-school classmates, and more. (Interestingly, no college classmates yet.)

I’m a bit overwhelmed by the scope of it, and the time-consuming possibilities. Remember back when google became a verb, because people looked up old friends? Facebook is like a school yearbook for the world. I’ve even gotten a friend request from someone I don’t know or can’t remember. What’s the etiquette for that? I may have bitten off more than I can chew, here.

I was vacuuming the basement yesterday when 4yo Drake and 2yo Guppy lost interest and ran off. I heard them laughing. Then I smelled something, and went running.

They had gone into my husband G. Grod’s office; Drake had been spraying Guppy and the floor with Endust for electronics. Drake’s shirt and Guppy’s hair were wet with cleaner. I yelled about poison. I mopped. They cried. I tried to get them out of the office; they refused. G. Grod yelled, and I hustled the boys upstairs for an unplanned bath with shampoo.

While Guppy was in the bath, Drake played with the cord on the window blinds, putting it around his neck. While Drake was in the bath, Guppy grabbed, opened and spilled the bottle of baby shampoo. They’d really learned their lesson, no?

I sometimes think it’s largely luck if children survive to adulthood. There are things we can do to help them along (like putting toxic cleaners up high, or not having them in house; sigh), but the world is dangerous and kids are curious, a dangerous conjunction.

Denis Johnson’s short story collection, Jesus’ Son, got on my radar during The Morning News’ Tournament of Books. Several judges preferred it to Johnson’s more recent book, Tree of Smoke. I thought ToS was quite good, so I was intrigued to see what Jesus’ Son would yield.

I liked to sit up front and ride the fast ones all day long, I liked it when they brushed right up against the buildings north of the Loop and I especially liked it when the buildings dropped away into that bombed-out squalor a little farther north in which people (through windows you’d see a person in his dirty naked kitchen spooning soup toward his face, or twelve children on their bellies on the floor, watching television, but instantly they were gone, wiped away by a movie billboard of a woman winking and touching her upper lip deftly with her tongue, and she in turn erased by a–wham, the noise and dark dropped down around your head–tunnel) actually lived.

This passage, about riding the train in the city, described how I felt as I read the linked stories–along for a whiplash ride. The unnamed main character is addicted to heroin and alcohol, and stumbles through bars, rehab, relationships, jobs and crime. The writing is beautiful, while also conveying both the horror and kaleidoscopic nature of addiction. The stories and book are brief, but powerful. If you like the short story form, these charted new territory when they were collected in 1992, and still resonate today.

From the New York Times, “A Drink in Search of a Frosty Mug” (link from The Morning News)

Originally, root beers were more like herbal teas, bitter infusions of roots, vines, herbs and spices, including sarsaparilla, sassafras and licorice. Nowadays, the basic components include anise, wintergreen and vanilla, with the addition, perhaps, of flavors like ginger, cloves and mint.

Out of 25 brands (strangely not named), Sprecher of Wisconsin took the top slot. Sprecher is one of my favorites, along with 1919, made here in Minnesota.

This graphic novel, Hellboy: The Right Hand of Doom, reminded me why I stopped buying individual issues of Hellboy, the darkly humorous horror comic. Publisher Dark Horse does a fabulous job of collecting them, and author/artist Mike Mignola adds lots of interesting extras. The first short story, “Pancakes”, featured a two-year-old Hellboy, and made me laugh out loud. And the last story, “Box Full of Evil,” not only gives interesting background on Hellboy (those aren’t goggles on his head) and contains some of the funniest panels of series, I think:

Hellboy: Hey…what’s that in the corner?
Abe Sapien: Is that a monkey?
Hellboy: HE’S GOT A GUN!
Monkey: [BLAM BLAM]

I first learned about the Vietnam War by reading a set of Doonesbury books: Even Revolutionaries Like Chocolate Chip Cookies, Just a French Major from the Bronx, The President is a Lot Smarter Than You Think, Don’t Ever Change Boopsie, and Bravo for Life’s Little Ironies. I don’t remember how old I was when I went scrounging around my parents library looking for something, anything, to read. Collecting the earliest strips starting in 1970, these books covered student riots, race relations, women’s rights, the Vietnam War, unemployment and more, all seen through the characters of schlump Michael Doonesbury, football star B.D. and activist Mark Slackmeyer. Butthe supporting characters made me love these books: Rufus the tutoring student, wacky Zonker, ditsy Boopsie and mad scientist Bernie. The cartoons are funny, depressing and political, and probably as good a way as any to learn about the early 70’s United States. They’re also a good complement to my recent reading on the Vietnam War.

The days of overdue books, hefty library fines and interminable waits for best-sellers are over in Chicago.

The city of Chicago just got a big tech upgrade to its library system. Patrons can now reserve and renew books online, resulting in fewer overdue books. (Link from Blog of a Bookslut)

Not, to gloat, but we’ve had that at the Minneapolis Public Library for ages. (Suck it, Chicago! Heh, heh. Just kidding.) It’s a great system. I hate to burst the bubble, though, but there are still interminable waits for bestsellers. For example, I’m 116 (of 163) on the request list for the Into the Wild dvd, and I placed the request in January.

Have you visited your local library lately?