Taking stock

So tonight was the actual night for trick-or-treating.  Last year was cold and windy; this year, it was clear and 70 degrees: a much more pleasant walk.  There seemed to be fewer houses with their lights on this year than last -- maybe it was because Halloween was on a weekend last year rather than  a Monday night -- but, as always, the people in our neighborhood are very generous with their handouts.  By the time we made the loop around our neighborhood and zigzagged down most of the cross streets, both kids pumpkins were almost full to the brim, and Eric was tired and ready to go home.  I took him back to our house when we passed by, while Tommy took Faith on to hit three more streets.  She had to pack her stash down to keep it from overflowing the plastic pumpkin, and Tommy was carrying it for her when they got back.  Last year, I weighed each pumpkin at over three pounds.  This year, Eric's clocked in at 3.5 pounds, while Faith's almost tipped five!  Here she is, sorting her loot.

Halloween weekend

After the Fallapalooza Friday night, the rest of our Halloween weekend activities weren't specifically Halloween-y at all.  On Saturday, the kids went back to the science museum for Saturday museum school classes.  Faith learned about flight and how to fold six kinds of paper airplanes, and Eric learned about stars, comets, and asteroids.  Here they are on the handy photo-op prop just outside the education building, the big metal tortoise.

Premature celebration?

I was sitting in McDonald's yesterday morning while Faith was at Zoo Academy.  They have TVs constantly running a news channel, and I saw my first Christmas commercial of the year.  It was for air freshener.  I know it's silly to expect them to wait until Thanksgiving, but couldn't they at least wait until after Halloween to start with the jingle bells?

Halloween again

It's the first day of our Halloween weekend, which began with Fallapalooza at our church tonight.  Faith was Dorothy again because the only way to talk me into buying her another pair of red sequined shoes was to agree they could be part of a costume.  Dorothy was a popular costume at the festival this year.  Our children's minister was dressed as Dorothy with her husband as Scarecrow and their new baby as the Lion; our music minister's kids were dressed as Dorothy, the Tin (girl) Woodman, (girl) Scarecrow, and toddler boy Cowardly Lion; and there were at least three other blue gingham jumpers I saw over the course of the night.

Eric is a member of Lightning McQueen's pit crew.  Yes, he is wearing pajamas.  I could purchase a Lightning McQueen pit crew Halloween costume which is basically just a shirt and pull-on pants printed with Cars logos, or I could put him in the Cars pajamas he already owns which are basically just a shirt and pull-on pants printed with Cars logos.  I'm cheap and lazy.

Fallapalooza was less hectic than it has been in the past this year.  Usually, we've had Faith going one way and Eric another, and each of us follows after one of them helping them with the games and carrying their candy buckets and prizes.  This year, Faith met up with her best friend early in the evening, and they took off together; we only saw them a few times in passing until it was time to go.  Three more years, and Eric ought to be at that point, too.  No more Halloween stress!

What Faith is reading now

Had my cursor blinking in a blank post last night when Tommy went to bed.  He has a bad cold and is very cranky and started yelling out at me wondering if I was ever going to come to bed because it was 12:30.  Actually, it was 11:15, but I went ahead and shut the computer off anyway and went to bed.  So I'll owe you an extra post this weekend.  We have Halloweenish activities Friday, Saturday, and Monday, so it'll be a busy one.

Faith just finished reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.  She enjoyed it and wondered if there was another book in the series.  Dahl did leave it very open-ended.  (Last lines: "Well, Charlie," said Grandpa Joe.  "It's certainly been a busy day."  "It's not over yet," Charlie said, laughing.  "It hasn't even begun.")  I assumed he did so on purpose so that he could write another sequel if it proved lucrative.  I didn't realize that Great Glass Elevator wasn't released until after the Gene Wilder version of the original book.  The timing would indicate that he wrote it to cash in, but Wikipedia tells me he hated the movie (not without good reason).  Perhaps he hoped to distract attention from it.  The same Wikipedia article also tells me he intended to write a third book, Charlie in the White House, which is exactly what Faith thought the sequel should be called.  (Honestly, it doesn't take a great deal of insight to come up with that: They're on their way to the White House when the book ends.)  I have to be relieved he didn't write that book, though; the whole political satire bit is a little unpleasant and quite dated today.

Today she read chapter one of Mary Poppins.  She's also working her way through the Encyclopedia Brown series for "pleasure reading", although my copy of book #5 has been misplaced.  I know I used to have the whole collection through book #13.  Honestly, I didn't know there were any more of them than that.  The latest one was released in 2011!  I suppose Encyclopedia and Sally use iPads now and Google things to find out about them instead of riding their bikes to the library.  Sigh.

Modernizing the Muppets?

From The Hollywood Reporter:

But in relaunching brands, Taylor says, it's crucial to make sure you "don't disenchant their core audience." That is where the path for the Muppets is challenging. The old Muppets guard -- a group of writers and performers involved in creating the franchise -- is eager for the neglected troupe to shine again, almost desperate in their longing for the film to work. But though they have not yet seen it, some wonder whether screenwriter and star Segel -- an obsessed Muppets fan -- has a true grasp of the characters they helped create....

 The concern among Muppets insiders is that Segel and director James Bobin (a writer on Da Ali G Show and Flight of the Conchords) didn't have a complete understanding of the Muppets characters or were willing to sacrifice the characters' integrity to land a joke. "They're looking at the script on a joke-by-joke basis, rather than as a construction of character and story," says one.

 A small example is in one of the many trailers Disney has released, when Fozzie makes a fart joke. "We wouldn't do that; it's too cheap," says another Muppets veteran. "It may not seem like much in this world of [Judd] Apatow humor, but the characters don't go to that place."

There is a list of similar concerns: Kermit would never live in a mansion, as he does in this movie. The Muppets, depicted in the script as jealous of Kermit's wealth, would not have broken up in bitterness. The script "creates a false history that the characters were forced to act out for the sake of this movie," says an old Muppets hand.

"I'm very hopeful the characters are as warm and loving to each other as they were when Jim was directing," says Bonnie Erickson, executive director of the Jim Henson Legacy, dedicated to keeping his work in the public eye. Erickson, who designed and built the original Miss Piggy, says she's "very excited" that Disney is putting so much energy into bringing the Muppets back but acknowledges that she's nervous. "I'm hoping the standard of excellence that Jim set is maintained," she says.

Frank Oz, the most famous living Muppets performer -- known best as Miss Piggy -- spoke more harshly in a recent interview with the British paper Metro. "I wasn't happy with the script," he said bluntly. "I don't think they respected the characters. But I don't want to go on about it like a sourpuss and hurt the movie."

The irony is that Segel wanted to make the film because he is such a passionate Muppets fan. Even the old guard acknowledges that Segel wants to do right by the Muppets, but many feel the pervasive attitude on the film was dismissive of those who originated the characters....

 It might be that some of the original Muppets crew are overly possessive. But so great are the concerns of some Muppets performers who were involved in making the film that sources say a couple of key players -- including the performer behind (or beneath) Kermit the Frog -- considered removing their names from the credits. But they didn't, and a Muppets veteran says the gesture would have been costly to the performers and fruitless. "It doesn't send any message," he says. "[Disney] wouldn't care...."

Then-chairman Dick Cook couldn't interest his own movie executives, so Kermit and friends were assigned to the studio's special-events group. Cook engaged Oz to develop a script, which Oz was to direct. (He had directed The Muppets Take Manhattan as well as live-action movies includingLittle Shop of Horrors and What About Bob?) But as that film was on the brink of getting a green light, Cook was ousted.

While the special-events unit was developing the Oz script, Cook's executives were talking to Segel. When he pitched the idea for a Muppets movie, those previously unenthusiastic executives became more interested. The fact that Disney moved ahead on the script Segel wrote with Nicholas Stoller left the old Muppets pros suspicious, as one puts it, that "this is a case of Disney wanting to get into the Jason Segel business," as opposed to reviving the franchise. This insider adds, "My biggest hope is that it comes across as a Muppets film and not a Jason Segel film that the Muppets happen to be in."

 

Hey, ride.

Tonight we all went to a hayride with some families from church.  I haven't been to a hayride since youth group and enjoyed the chance to eat a hot dog blackened from the fire and a real s'more made on a coat hanger rather than in the microwave.  (Side note: The new flat square marshmallows are a terrific innovation; makes s'mores much less sticky and likely to burn your fingers due to squish-over.)  The kids had a blast.  Lots of little boys there right around Eric's age for him to run around and play with, and they were thrilled with the ride sitting on a haybale in a trailer pulled behind a pickup.  They apparently do this every year (this is our first year in this Sunday School class), and the kids are already looking forward to going again next year.

It's beginning to look a lot like...

My daily trip to the mailbox tells me the holiday season is gearing up: The catalogs are starting to pour in.  Our first toy catalog of the season was HearthSong, which was one of my favorites when I was a child.  Faith and Eric have already been through it several times, picking out all of the things they want, virtually all of which are impractical: trampolines, big inflatable balls you can climb into, zip lines which I explained had to actually be attached to something, puppet theaters, giant bowling games, chairs that hang from the ceiling....

Two babies!

Since shortly after Eric was born, Tommy has been beseiged with requests for "two babies!", that is, when he's holding one of the kids, the other one wants up as well.  I've taken a lot of photos of him with two babies over the years, and lately every time I do, I say it might be the last time he's able to carry one in each arm as they grow bigger.  He keeps managing it, though.

Hello, World Series!

I have, since Saturday evening, been enjoying some carefree time between the end of the American League Championship Series and the beginning of the World Series when I don't have to worry about the fate of my team.  Tomorrow, the anxiety begins again....

I wonder if Mr. Reynolds will give me extra credit for Bio class....

As a follow-up to the bean-in-a-milk-carton-with-a-fold-down-flap experiment, we were supposed to move on to sprouting beans in three cups, then putting one in a dark cupboard and stopping giving water to another to show that -- *gasp* -- plants need light and water.  

But I did that experiment when Faith went through the kindergarten curriculum, and Eric had the benefit of having already been through the preschool book and learned that plants need four things: sunlight, water, soil, and air.  So I decided to switch up the experiment a bit by planting beans in four cups and depriving each of one of the necessities from the beginning.  I wasn't really sure if any of them would sprout, but here's what we got:

These beans got sunlight, soil, and air but no water.  After a week, we dug them out of the dry soil to see that they didn't start to sprout at all.

These beans I put in a cup on a wet paper towel; they got sunlight, water and air but no soil.  To my surprise, they sprouted!  They look kind of like little aliens, but they sprouted.  Today, three days later, they've even poked their heads above the edge of the cup.  On Friday, I had to lift the wet paper towel out of the bottom of the cup to get a good photo of them.

These are the little albino beans from the dark cupboard: water, soil and air but no light.  This evening, the furthest-along one has a freakishly long stem in a vain effort to grow up high enough to find the sun.

And these are the beans that got sunlight, water, and soil but no air.  Of all our four cups they grew the healthiest.  Of course, being shut in a Ziploc gallon freezer bag isn't the same as being in a vacuum in a bell jar, and I did open it once to water them so it's not overly scientific.

Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow (well, mainly just beans)

See?  Here I am again, putting off my Friday post until Sunday, just like I said.  You give me an inch, I'll take a mile.

Here is Eric with his bean plants, now grown even taller.  He has the flap of the milk carton open, so you can see the roots beneath the soil.  You could see them even better, if I had had clear plastic wrap on hand instead of using purple.

If it's Thursday night, it must be "Person of Interest"

One little detail that bugs me about this show: Finch built his computer for "the government" to conduct surveillance on ... well, it's assumed on the whole country.  And yet, whenever someone's "number comes up" for them to investigate, it's invariably in New York City.  Are people in the rest of the country not worth saving? It's better on my sanity to assume that the machine is, in fact, only surveilling people in NYC until the assumption is proven wrong.  Honestly, I don't think the show's creators are at all clear on the concept yet themselves and are leaving it intentionally vague.

Loved me some Reese tonight, though.  After "24" ended, I read an article that opined that the appeal of the show was not, as some liberals feared, the ideology (simplified in their minds, at least, as "the furriners are out to get us, let's waterboard some Arabs") but the illusion of competence.  Millions of viewers would love to believe that, if imminent disaster did threaten, there would be someone like Jack Bauer willing and able to do whatever was necessary to stop it, rather than the more likely scenario of someone filing some paperwork in triplicate, passing the buck, and figuring out a way to blame it on the other party or the previous administration.  The character Reese projects that same sense of uber-competence, of always being in control and one step ahead of the bad guys.  It's a lovely little fiction: There's no one really that capable and that ruthless in protection of the innocent, but wouldn't it be nice if there were?  He's like Batman, and his physical resemblance to Christian Bale doesn't hurt, either.

Up late watching baseball tonight...

...so I'll just leave this here.

If you can read this blog, why can't you whistle while eating crackers?!?

So I'm reading a newspaper article about "Five," a film about breast cancer, and I get down to the end and find the obligatory line from executive producer Kristin Hahn:

It's our way of saying, "We've put astronauts on the moon.  We've accomplished the unthinkable as a country so many times.  If we can put astronauts on the moon, surely we can find a cure for cancer."

This is one of the dumbest lines that keeps getting trotted out like it's oh-so-insightful.  And it's not; it's not at all.

Would anyone ever dare ask this question in any other context?  "Roger Bannister, you broke the four-minute mile.  Why can't you play the piano?"  "Michael Phelps, you won eight Olympic gold medals.  Surely you can also climb Mount Everest."  "Dr. Crick and Dr. Watson, if you could discover the structure of the DNA molecule, surely you could have also written the great American novel."  "Mikhail Baryshnikov, come on now; you're holding out on us."

What does building a spacecraft capable of delivering humans to the surface of the moon have to do with stopping a process occurring inside the human body at a cellular level?  And what's with the smug insinuation that sending astronauts to the moon is a childish waste of time that could just as easily have been spent curing cancer, like NASA is fooling around doodling in the margins of their notebook or texting their girlfriend when they should be studying for finals?  What prevents me from turning it around on the filmmakers?  "Geez, Jennifer Aniston, if you can make millions of dollars pretending to be someone else in front of a camera, why can't you cure cancer?  I'm pretty sure no one would miss The Bounty Hunter or Love Happens.  Couldn't you have spent your time and energy with a little more thought about the betterment of your fellow human beings?"

Feed the Muppets!

So Sesame Street is introducing a "food-insecure" Muppet.  Where even to begin?  Well, obviously, with the very descriptor.  "Food-insecure?"  What kind of adjective is that?  What's wrong with the English language these days that we have to come up with nonsensical hyphenated words to express ourselves?  I mean, parse that "word" (and I use the term loosely).  Would anyone have had the slightest idea what it was supposed to mean fifty years ago?

Secondly, does Sesame Street really want to go there?  This is a neighborhood where no one pays for anything. Muppets just waltz into Hooper's Store and order food, and Chris or Alan puts it on the counter in front of them.  No money ever changes hands.  How the heck does someone manage to be "food-insecure" in this place?  Are they just too stupid to walk into Hooper's Store and ask for free food like everyone else does?

Finally, Sesame Workshop's endless self-congratulatory press releases on their new Muppets (the first female Muppet main character!  the first HIV-positive Muppet!  the first "food-insecure" Muppet!) are cutting to ribbons their defense against the Bert-and-Ernie-should-get-married crowd.  Their lame response has been "They're Muppets, and Muppets don't have a sexual orientation."  Well, Muppets don't need to eat, either.  If they can get all proud and pleased about the introduction of Abby Cadabby (first female Muppet main character! (totally dissing Prairie Dawn, by the way)), then Muppets can apparently have gender.  And if Elmo's World can treat us to a scene in which a red furry Muppet in a hospital bed gives birth to baby Elmo (obviously under the effects of the universe's best pain medication, judging from her cheerful laughter just before the doctor announces it's a boy), then Muppets can have biological functions I don't even want to think about.

There's no U in "irony"

Growing up, I went to a private school that required a uniform so whenever I went somewhere after school -- piano lessons, church, Campfire Girls, etc. -- I was always wearing my dorky little plaid jumper while all the rest of the kids were in real clothes, and I hated it.  Yes, I could shed the plaid and wear the gym shorts that went under them for modesty and ease of changing for P.E., but I wasn't fooling anyone.  Gym shorts with my school's name on them and a white button-down shirt with a Peter Pan collar do not a fashionable ensemble make.

Flash forward to today, and now all the public school kids are wearing uniforms.  My homeschooled kids are now the one standing out in the crowd at the McDonald's PlayPlace because they're wearing real clothes while all the rest of the kids are in khakis and solid navy or white polos.

More about Person of Interest

Watched the third episode last night.  From what I've read, the second episode had a notable drop-off in ratings after the premiere.  Perhaps I am once again being taken in by my residual goodwill for a cast member.  Then again, there have been some excellent TV series that have suffered from low ratings.

I find myself more interested in Finch's mysterious backstory than in Reese's.  Tonight we saw another flashback to Reese's old girlfriend who supposedly ends up murdered sometime before the present day.  She approaches him in a chance meeting in an airport in 2006, obviously still hung up on him but sporting a really chintzy engagement ring.  Obviously as unimpressed with the diamond as I was, she offers to dump her fiance if Reese will just ask her to wait for him (which, naturally, he does sotto voce after she walks away).  Very cliche.  Just once, wouldn't it be nice if the ex-girlfriend turns out to be happily married and not just settling for some architect who'll keep her warm and fed and dry while still pining after the action hero who got away?  Oh, well, we know she ends up dead anyway, so why bother giving her a more interesting life?

The most interesting facet of the episode to me was the appearance of the late, lamented Captain Montgomery from "Castle" (sorry, but Sherry Palmer has yet to do anything but annoy me as his replacement), playing a bad guy who owns a bar and sets up bank robberies by military veterans on the side. I swear the bar they shot in is the same one from last season's finale of "Castle" where Ryan and Esposito discovered the photograph that implicated the Captain in the Huge, Convoluted, All-Encompassing Conspiracy which the show feels necessary to include.  (Really, going to do a post on "Castle" one of these days.)

What Faith is reading now

Faith finished The Cricket in Times Square and chose Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator for her next book.  I had forgotten how Strangelovian (or perhaps, in a more contemporary vein, Monsters-vs-Alien-ish) Dahl's portrayal of the U.S. government was.  It's really a bit cynical for an eight-year-old.  Of course, I remember thinking it was hilarious when I read it as a child.  She likes it because it has short chapters.

Ironically, after reading her one required chapter a day in that book, she sat down to re-read The Boxcar Children, which she finished and then started Surprise Island.  I've blogged before about my concerns about her reluctance to read one chapter a day when she'll turn around and pick up another book off the clock and rush right through it. I've realized it probably has to do with the fact that I make her tell me about what she's read when she finishes a chapter of a "required" book: She's hesitant to read more than one chapter for fear that she'll forget some of what happened when she has to tell me about it.  I'm hesitant to drop the requirement because there have been more than a few occasions when she hasn't really paid attention while reading and hasn't been able to answer basic questions about what she's read.  I suppose that's just the difference between required reading and reading for pleasure.  Perhaps I shouldn't worry about it and just let it be.

Free speech triumphs ... for now

An update to this post.

Simon: Are you always this sentimental?

Mal: I had a good day.

Simon: You had the Alliance on you, criminals and savages... half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded including yourself, and you're harboring known fugitives.

Mal: We're still flying.

Simon: That's not much.

Mal: It's enough.

A Little Princess

Faith was invited to the birthday party of the little girl across the street last Saturday.  It was a princess party at a little tea room and foofy children's boutique, and all the girls had their nails polished and eyeshadow and blush applied and dressed up in fancy dresses.  She got to keep the crown and fairy-princess wand as a party favor, and she didn't wash her face for two days to keep her pink eyeshadow on as long as possible.

Breaking the Fourth Firewall

So, today we're going to get a little meta and blog about blogging.

You might have noticed that this blog post is being typed today (Sunday) and not on Friday like it was supposed to be.  Friday night, after I'd gotten the kids bathed and pajamed and brushed of tooth and flossed and ointmented of gums and have-you-gone-potty-I-don't-care-if-you-think-you-don't-have-to-try-anywayed and bedtime storied and kissed and tucked in, I was left staring at a blank New Post screen.  There are several times I think of something reasonably clever to write about during the day, but by the time I have the time to actually sit down and blog, I'm just too exhausted to try to squeeze a few paragraphs out of an idea.  That's what happened to me Friday night.  I knew I had two off-days coming up in the weekend, so I decided to grant myself a reprieve and blog on Saturday.

Only obviously it's not Saturday.  It's Sunday.  Because once I'd granted myself one reprieve, it was easy to procrastinate again and grant myself another.  Which leads to some thoughts about this blogging resolution:

First, I need to take better advantage of the weekends to "pre-blog": get some posts typed up over the weekend so I can just grab one, polish it up, and post it on those weekday nights when I just want to turn the computer off and go to bed.

Second, this daily blogging is murder.  Can't keep this pace up next year.  Which leads to...

Point the third: if I don't have the pressure of (week)daily blogging, what can I use to motivate myself?  I obviously need the motivation a resolution brings, but without a set schedule, I'm prone to procrastinate.  A commitment to, say, three blogs a week won't work, because as much as I may have the best of intentions to post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the very fact that I can put it off to one of the other four days in the week will most likely equate to not blogging until the end of the week and a great deal of effort put into semantical issues like, Is Sunday technically the first day or the last day of the week, because it depends on which calendar you're using?

So, is a puzzlement.  I have three months to think about it.