Wow! It's been about a month and what makes it particularly shameful is that for most of it I've been on vacation. Let us (royally) rectify it with a simple list of amazing, cool, stupid, and insipid things that have occurred:
1. Xmas shopping. Strollering Ian through the mall about a week before Christmas day I was pulled aside by a TV news crew and asked about "last minute shopping". I scoffed, "Last minute! This hardly qualifies!" And truly, a week before doesn't. But then I realized that this was precisely the sort of reaction they were looking for: they wanted a dude (preferably a shlubby dad) to do the shlubby dude dad thing and talk about how they are lazy sacks of crap and usually buy all their inadequate sloppy gifts on Xmas eve. In other words, they wanted me to be the Family Guy, or what have you. But when they turned on the camera and the lights and the lens was glaring me in the face I said the stupidest thing. When they asked me if I'd ever waited until Xmas eve to shop, my wits deserted me and I uttered the reprehensible cliche, "Been there, done that." UGGHH! How could I do it? And after they edited my interview down, that phrase, of course, was nearly all they retained. There it was on the 11 o'clock news! It's (almost) enough to make one sympathize with Sarah Palin...
2. Got out and saw TWO MOVIES! K and I have been out to the movies twice since Ian was born in July 2007, and here we were seeing The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Avatar within a week of each other. Fox I thought was the better of the two, if only because Wes Anderson actually respects his audience's intelligence enough to not beat them senseless with cliches. I liked the stop-motion animation too--always have, always will. Avatar was a visual feast and impressive as everyone has endlessly remarked (so there's no point in flogging it) but James Cameron still only seems interested in telling obvious, formulaic stories. He pushes all the right buttons and plucks all the right strings (more cliches! will it never stop?) so, yeah, you can let go and let the formula take you for a ride. But at the end of it, you feel like you've just gotten off another Disneyland attraction. To echo Hardware Wars: You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss ten bucks goodbye. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_Wars
3. Read. A lot. And not student papers (yesssss!). In preparation for Paul Collin's Feb visit to Clark, I read The Book of William, Sixpence House, and Banvard's Folly. I think I've enjoyed the last one most of all--13 historical narratives describing people who dreamed big and fell hard--usually into complete obscurity. A fascinating visit into the alcoves of history. Started reading Dennis Wheatley's To the Devil--A Daughter, hoping it'd be as fun as its totally insane Hammer film version. It's not. It's terrible. Bad writing, bad dialogue, and worst of all preachy (in an anti-socialist, pro-orthodox Christianity sort of way). Unstomachable. And I'm so bummed.
4. Took Ian to see Santa Claus. We talked it up for weeks and when we finally made it to Christmas Land at Macy's he totally clammed up! I think he was a tad overwhelmed. He loved the robot reindeer and elves, though. He had to pet each reindeer's nose. Dasher wasn't in his stall, however. Ian concluded that he was taking a nap.
5. Ate, drank, and made merry.
CD
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