On Parenting

Big happenings recently with people I know. One is three months pregnant, another is about to adopt a child, and another was engaged to be married today. Valentines Day 2006 was very interesting to say the least. As a married parent myself, I couldn’t be any happier for these folks! It harkens me back to a day when many things in life that I now enjoy were once very much unknown quantities. Once upon a time I thought that eventually I would like to settle down, get married, start a family. Those goals were very nebulous and not much effort was made to make them happen—they were definitely B-list priorities. To be certain having a child would make it easier for me to go to my favorite store, Toys R’ Us, and not look like a pederast. When my father passed away I experienced a profound sense of regret that I had not made any of those tenuous goals come true. My father, like his father before him, did not live long enough to see his first grandchild and that cold realization struck me like a sledgehammer to the forehead. Being the eldest child, it should’ve been my torch to bear.

Thus when my then good friend, soon to be partner, now wife told me about this time seven years ago that she was expecting, the news was greeted with a mixture of emotions. Hooray, I’m going to be a parent!! Oh my God, I’m GOING TO BE A PARENT!! This manic swing went on for about a month until that fateful morning we went to the doctor for the customary anatomy scan. This is done to make sure that no life-threatening deformities exist, and especially to make sure that the spinal column has developed and been closed off properly. We had decided to hold off until the outcome of the scan before we told anyone about the baby, just in case something was wrong. Thanks to other obligations, mostly my college class schedule, the anatomy scan would be the first time I would see the baby in real time on a monitor. The doctor conveniently seated me right next to the monitor so that I would have an unobstructed, front row seat. The monitor itself wasn’t very big, perhaps an eight inch sized screen, but it was good enough for me. As the doctor began prodding my wife’s stomach with the ultrasound device, grainy, undefined shapes began to appear on the monitor which slowly began to form the shape of an in-utero baby. And for the first time I saw my daughter move, apparently annoyed by the ultrasound waves; now she moves because she’s annoyed with other things, usually me or her mother. According to my wife, based on the look upon my face, although the child was only a few inches long, I became wrapped around her pinkie finger at that time.

As the months progressed, I learned some early lessons about being a father. The first one came at the baby shower, where the father is almost invited as an afterthought. The focus, rightly so, is on the mother and child at these functions. But I discovered that as the father, all sense of personal identity is forfeit. No longer was I a person with a name; I had become reduced to the lowest common denominator—the donor of half of the child’s chromosomes, including the all important one that determines gender. My work, apparently, was over. While wife and child enjoyed being known by their names, I was just “the father.”

As the due date approached, there were birthing classes to attend at the hospital—free if you planned on giving birth at the hospital! For the months preceding, the whole idea of a baby being on its way was something intangible. It’s hard to explain—you know a child is on the way, you receive the gifts and such, but for me it was not until we went to the birthing classes that the utter reality of an impending birth finally hit home. Perhaps it’s tantamount to a professional athlete who suddenly finds themselves in the post-season; the time for playing for fun is over, you’re now playing for all the marbles. The birthing class was my post-season, with instruction on breathing techniques during labor and how to perform basic maintenance on your child being my reality check.

After nine months of floating inside my wife’s abdomen (I made a similar comment at a birthday luncheon thrown for me by co-workers not too long ago, and I’m confident I unintentionally freaked one of them out when I said that), the baby came by C-section so much of the birthing class was wasted. But there are many things that the birthing class cannot teach you or prepare you for, and these are lessons that I’ve learned over the past several years. For example, they say you’re never more vulnerable than when you bare your soul to someone else. Rubbish. You’re never more vulnerable than when the baby’s diaper is off. At any given moment while you are in between diapers there’s a definite possibility of catastrophic explosive decompression of the bladder and/or bowel. It’s a lesson best learned once. My first solo diaper change took a risky few minutes; it didn’t take me long to cut down the changing time to something that would put most NASCAR pit crews to shame.

Feeding time is also a learning experience. More often than not a child will open their mouth because they’re ready for more food. Sometimes they open their mouth because they have a sneeze coming on. A child who sneezes with a mouth full of food has a very wide spray pattern and there’s no way you can avoid it. After you are done cleaning pureed peas off your face (or my personal favorite, the Fruit Medley dessert), be sure to check the ceiling; an eight foot ceiling is no match for a child who sneezes with a mouth full of food.

As the child gets older, there are other lessons to learn. No matter how hard you try, occasionally a “bad word” slips through and that’s the one they remember and will give it a test run at their daycare. There’s no such thing as a quick trip to the store; a shopping excursion that would normally take you about five minutes gets turned into an hour long affair as the child just absolutely HAS to check out the toy aisles. Eventually the child will learn to “play the game.” For instance, one morning I was taking my daughter to daycare before heading off to morning classes. She was between eighteen months and two years old at this point. From her car seat she said she did not want to go to school that morning, so I asked her why not. After a brief hesitation, she said, “Because I love you.” I had then and have now no doubt that she does love me, but that was the first sign that the child had learned to manipulate emotion for personal gain. She has a bright future in the worlds of business, marketing, or as an attorney.

For all the frustration that comes with a child, I do love being a parent. I wouldn’t mind one more child, to be honest, but I think that ship has sailed. So I will have to be content with the single child and try to raise her to be an upstanding member of society while uttering words and phrases that sound suspiciously like those I heard my own parents say to me some years ago. Why? Because I said so, that’s why!

The Prelinger Archive

Have I mentioned that I love movies? Boy, I sure do! It was about this time about five years ago when I happened across a very cool website—the Prelinger Archive. I know that many of my friends have heard me mention the site before, but I also know that many of my friends aren’t reading this blog anyway so I’ve fodder for another writing topic. The Prelinger Archive is located in San Francisco and contains over 48,000 films, mostly industrial and education-based material. Of the total number of films in their archive, about 2,000 are online, and of those I’ve consumed quite a bit of bandwidth through my home ISP downloading a sizeable percentage of the films.

A couple of weeks ago Rick Prelinger, who created the archive, came to the university where I work to speak mostly on issues of access to public domain material. As he was recapping a brief history of the online version of the archive, he mentioned that the response to the site was much greater than they anticipated and the tremendous number of users caused the site to crash. During a break in his talk, I went up to introduce myself and to apologize for being one of the guilty parties that caused the crash.

Of all the movies available for downloading, by far I’m a big fan of the social guidance films. These cheesy “how-to” films geared towards kids and teenagers are very dated in terms of their presentation, but their core message, for the most part, remains intact. I’ve literally a ton of these movies downloaded onto CD-Rs, so much so that I’m not even sure anymore exactly what’s in my collection. But there are a few standouts that I can recommend.

Dating Dos and Donts /What to Do on a Date
Where were these films when I was 25? Gosh, I sure could have used the swell advice these films dole out. Maybe my dating career wouldn’t have been so disastrous had I known about taking a girl to a weenie-roast or to a carnival, where she could perform erotic mouth and tongue gestures on a huge pile of cotton candy.

Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Things
A story of a boy who doesn’t take care of his toys, or anything else for that matter. For some reason I think the kid looks a little like a young Michael Stipe. I showed this one to my daughter who understood the basic premise: clean up after yourself, take care of your toys. Now, whenever she sees roadkill either in or next to the street, she imitates the best line in this movie: “Aw, they’re dead!”

Let’s Be Good Citizens at School
This one’s a freakish little film where it’s reinforced that being obedient in school results in being a better member of a democratic society. Includes a nice profile of Harvey, the gayest, um, I mean, the happiest kid in school, as he marches past his adoring fans, waving like Il Duce to the admiring throngs. Did they have Ritalin in 1953?

A Date With Your Family
Three kids pretend they enjoy family dinners and their parents while they secretly scheme to kill them for the insurance money. A recommended movie, but creeeeeepy.

Dinner Party
A girl tries to throw a birthday dinner party for a friend and everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. The patronizing narrator is a very nice touch; he makes the Catholic Church pale in comparison in terms of guilt factor.

Dining Together
Two lobotomized children in tacky sweaters celebrate a fairly sterile Thanksgiving. Pure science fiction; we all know that 99.9% of all males over the age of seven are glued to the television on Thanksgiving, either watching football or the cool toy commercials during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This film will make you happy, and it’s good to be happy.

A Visit to Santa
A film so unspeakably bad that Ben Affleck could conceivably star in a re-make. Two children, the generic Dick and Ann, travel by “magic helicopter” to see Santa before his trip around the world. As luck would have it, the North Pole looks A LOT like the typical 1950s ranch-style house. It has the look of a Christmas party gone wrong, with the spiked eggnog-laden parents waking the kids at 2 in the morning because they have a great idea for the Super 8 camera.

Passion of the Fender

It was early in the second period of the women’s basketball game on ESPN. Number five Tennessee was playing number four LSU in Knoxville, where LSU had a 0-16 record going into the game. A loss by Tennessee, which did happen, would effectively knock them out of a chance for the SEC championship. Tennessee was on a scoring run, cutting into LSU’s lead and finally making the game interesting. From down the hall floated the haunting refrains from the Beck CD, “Guero,” accompanied by a small voice singing along with music. My daughter may only be six years old, but she’s really into music. I’m glad I’ve got a little Beck fan in my household, and I’ve been able to introduce her to other bands and music with a reasonable degree of success, such as the Foo Fighters, Rush, the Ramones, The Strokes, Death Cab for Cutie, the Andrews Sisters (!). I think she’s ready for Led Zeppelin and The Who, definitely ready for The Byrds, and at least seven years away from listening to Tool. But I also have this fear that we’re living on borrowed time, that sometime within the next few years she’ll be seduced by the dark side of music, the side of the music industry that continually fills the market with crap because crap sells. You know what I’m talking about, the Britney Spears and Ashlee Simpsons of the world, lacking in substance and all about style.

As I listened to her sing along in her bedroom it occurred to me that I was about the same age as she when music really began to make an impact in my life. Music always seemed to be playing in our house, be it on the radio or on the record player. Indeed there are plenty of pictures of me holding a toy guitar or playing a set of bongo drums. I can clearly recall hearing Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, or Jim Croce on the radio. Croce, I can say, was the first musical artist that I was a fan of, and I never turned the radio off during the summer of 1973 whenever “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” was being played. About ten days before my birthday that year as I was eating breakfast before heading off to school, my mother told me that Croce has been killed in a plane crash. I still recall that day as though it happened yesterday. But hearing all these wonderful songs on the radio made me think, “That’s what I want to do, I want to play music.”

Most people like music, they’re content listening to their favorite artists and going to concerts. Then there are people like me, for whom music goes beyond like or love and into the area of passion, the ones who desire to pick up a musical instrument and learn to play it in a quest to create music of their own. We’re the ones who drop large amounts of money on musical equipment, guitars, amplifiers, and effects pedals. We’re easily detectable in music stores, going in for a simple set of guitar strings and wind up staring at the line up of guitars hanging on the wall. We have dark bags under our eyes because we lay awake in bed trying to figure out how to finance that 1962 Gibson we just found or concocting some elaborate scheme to covertly purchase a new guitar, sneak it into the house, and convincing our spouses that it’s not new, we had that guitar the whole time.

Growing up listening to guitar-driven music in the 1970s, I thought I wanted to play a six-string electric. After all, they got all the cool guitar solos. It wasn’t until I heard musicians such as Chris Squire from Yes, Geddy Lee from Rush, and to an extent Sting while with The Police that I realized a bass guitar could be more than just something caught in the background with the rhythm section. Despite my passion for music and my multiple requests for at least an acoustic guitar as a birthday present, I was a late bloomer when it came to actually picking up a guitar; I was an ancient twenty-three years old when I finally bought my first bass guitar. It wasn’t much to speak of—it was cheap (which I could afford), the fretboard was very wide, the action was set too high, and the strings required quite a bit of effort to get them to resonate—but it was mine and it was a bass I could learn on. It wasn’t until just over a year later when I purchased my first real bass, a Fender Jazz Bass, that I realized what a clunky guitar that first one really was. In comparison, the jazz bass was an absolute gem, a nice, narrow rosewood fretboard and an excellent action that didn’t require that I hit the strings nearly as hard.

It was roughly six years from the time I bought my first bass guitar to the time I thought I was ready to join a band. I met my friend Jon at the beginning of 1994, having been told in advance of our meeting that he played guitar. It’s funny in hindsight that we hit it off well but were both wary when bringing up the prospect of playing together. About six months after that meeting, Jon and I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to go see the Rolling Stones. It was there that I first met Jon’s friend Bear; it would be many, many months before I even knew what his first name was! The following weekend the three of us gathered at a local watering hole for pitchers of beer and to discuss our ideas for a band. Before too long we were practicing at least three or four times per week, working up a few sets worth of original material. Our practice space was very small, about the size of a walk-in closet, and was barely large enough for all of our equipment. About a month after moving in another band who had a larger, neighboring space moved out and we promptly took over their former home. We decorated our digs with a patina of 1000 Christmas lights, posters, a couch, and the unusual composite images I created for fun—including one of Wayne Gretsky firing Sinead O’Connor’s head into a hockey goal.

Practice sessions were numerous over the next few months, as we fine-tuned the songs we had and wrote new ones. Most of our tunes were loud and raucous, with a few slower ones mixed in for good measure, and most of them were under three minutes long (one three-verse tune clocked in at a blazing fifty-seven seconds). We finally got to play our well-rehearsed songs in early 1995, opening a show at one of the larger venues in town for the band Dash Rip Rock. It was a good show, but we’d played better in rehearsal and it was a start. More shows were in our future over the next few months, including opening for some friends of ours who were also basement practice space dwellers like ourselves. Unbeknownst to us our last show would come toward the end of 1995 at a club now converted into a dining/brewery establishment. The evening started with pitchers of beer at our favorite bar, which just so happened to be conveniently located upstairs from our practice space. By the time showtime arrived, we were perhaps not in the best condition to play. Still, we played very well given the amount of beer we had drunk. For all the time we spent rehearsing our songs, it was well that the band went down like a drunken, fiery comet; we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Most of the members of the band we opened for liked us, especially the bassist. The singer, however, reacted very coolly to our set; perhaps that's the typical reaction expected when you’ve just seen your band get its ass kicked by the openers.

Our band kind of dissolved/morphed into something else with the remnants of our friends’ band for who we had opened for just a few months earlier. The new band/project (depending on who you asked) just wasn’t that fun for me, and I eventually showed up one Saturday and moved all my gear out. For the longest time I did not pick up my bass, and it wasn’t until 1998 that I played in public again, a brief set for a fundraiser. Another drought in playing followed, and it wasn’t until 2003 that I played in something resembling a band setting again. But the time off from playing made me a better bass guitarist as I spent a lot of time just listening to songs, how they were constructed, and how the bass line wove the melody.

My friend Jon called me up this past weekend. Answering the phone, from the other end I heard, “We’re putting the band back together,” a line from the movie “The Blues Brothers,” which I understood immediately. It seems it’s time to dust off our guitars and re-embrace our love/hate relationship with music. And why not? As we like to say, “Hell, it’s cheaper than therapy.”

The Awful Truth

No, nothing on a very personal level to be seen here nor is the title of this post a reference to the short-lived t.v. show of Michael Moore's with the same name. Rather, "The Awful Truth" is a 1937 film starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne that I happened to catch last week. This probably would've been posted last week had the stripper at the kindergarten musical not been more interesting fare to write about.

Grant and Dunne play a couple whose marriage is heading for divorce. He doesn't trust her, and there's a strong implication (though never explicitly mentioned) that he cheated on her. While they're waiting for the sixty-day period to expire before their divorce is final, they each take turns trying to disrupt the other's attempts at getting re-married. For the better part of the first hour Grant manages to break up a blossoming romance between Dunne and a young Ralph Bellamy. If you're used to Cary Grant in later roles, such as North by Northwest or Operation Petticoat, he comes off pretty swarmy and not very likeable in his role of Jerry Warriner. It's not the type of character that I'd become used to seeing Grant play, even with 29 movies to his credit in the five years leading up to this one. At one point my daughter pointed to the screen and said, "That's George Kaplan!" I didn't get the reference at first, but then realized that Kaplan is the non-existent American agent that Grant is mistaken for in North by Northwest.

After breaking up Dunne's romance, Grant gets his comeuppance during the later part of the movie. He's dating again and engaged to a woman who's active in society. When Dunne shows up at Grant's apartment on the day their decree becomes final and accidently answers a phone call from his new fiance, he concocts a story that she's his sister, which just creates more problems as his fiance's family now wants to meet her. At the apartment of the fiance's parents later that evening, Dunne shows up acting the part of a ditsy woman with a drinking problem, much to Grant's dismay.

An excellent film I hope to record sometime in the future. The director, Leo McCarey, earned a Best Director Oscar for this film. McCarey is also responsible to creating the team of Laurel & Hardy while working with Hal Roach, and for directing such films as the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup" in 1933, "The Bells of St. Mary's," and "An Affair to Remember."

Toppers International Showbar and Kindergarten Musical

Last night was one of those memorial mile-markers in life—my daughter participated in her first kindergarten musical program. For the month leading up to the big day we were treated to many previews of the program as she practiced singing the songs at home, complete with hand motions and dancing. All five of the kindergarten classes at her school participated, each wearing different colored t-shirts to distinguish one class from another. Each class was also dressed as different animals to go along with the jungle theme for the evening. My daughter was a zebra, and afterwards I kept calling her “Marty” after the zebra in the movie, “Madagascar.” For an hour these kids sang and danced their hearts out for a capacity crowd of mostly family and friends in the school’s dual purpose cafeteria/auditorium; I think even Busby Berkeley would’ve been standing off on stage right nodding in approval. I should say that most of the kids sang and danced their hearts out; there were a couple of kids for whom it was obvious they were absolutely not having a good time. At one point I thought one of them was going to be sick. They’re kindergarteners, so they weren’t exactly ready for off-Broadway, but it was fun and funny and a good time was had by all.

Now I wouldn’t be writing about this if something strange didn’t happen. The lowlight of the evening came before the show even started. My wife and I arrived early because the child needed to be at her classroom half an hour before the start time, and we also wanted front row seats (it’s easier to take pictures from there). We had been in our seats perhaps five minutes when this girl, apparently a parent of one of the kindergarteners, sits down next to my wife. Something about her immediately made my spidey senses start tingling, some intangible feeling that there was something odd afoot that I should pay attention to. I’m not a professional when it comes to sizing up and assessing a person at first glance, but I was dead-on with this one. After ten minutes of squirming in her seat trying to get a signal on her cell phone, she finally is able to make a call to her mother in one of the most jaw-dropping conversations I’ve ever had the misfortune of overhearing.

For a moment I thought that perhaps I had fallen asleep and was dreaming that I was in the middle of a Blue Collar TV skit. But, alas, it was no dream. The conversation starts with this girl telling her mom all about her new car and how much it cost and how fast it will go (can you believe 150 miles per hour?!?!?!) and that her mom just HAS TO see it. I imagine the urgency of her mom seeing the car comes from the distinct possibility that this girl will wrap it around a phone pole in a Boone’s Farm haze while testing to see if it really can top-out at 150.

From there my wife and I are entertained by this girl’s ongoing saga with her soon-to-be-ex-mother-in-law and how she hasn’t seen her grandchild in over six months, and proceeds to get into detail on her divorce, which seems to be all but a done deal. She’s asking for child support, of course, from that no good husband of hers (whose name, I swear, is Elvis) . Then comes the memorable statement of the whole conversation. Everything up to this point leads up to this one sentence, the verbal equivalent of a professional wrestler pile-driving your head into the mat. “My attorney said that my job as a stripper might hurt my case some, but he done a good job so I gave him an extra $100.” At that point the show was just starting so the conversation came to a close, but not before my wife and I exchanged stunned glances and I made sure there were no poles in the cafeteria—just in case this girl felt like dancing along.

PhotoMat, where is thy sting?

As it always seems to happen, I was presented with yet another photographic opportunity on my way to work the other morning. And as it also always seems to happen my camera is never with me whenever I am presented with a great or, in this case, oddball subject for a photo. To be certain a Canon Digital Rebel is hardly a point and shoot camera. What would suit my needs would be a camera phone or a small and very portable digital camera.

The stoplight near the parking deck where I normally deposit my car turned red just as I was approaching the intersection. Normally I hate to be stopped like that, especially when I'm pushing the fine line between being on time or late. But on this particular morning it was a blessing. Waiting in the traffic coming from my right were two Hispanic women in an SUV that was four times too big for them. It gave the appearance of two kids playing in their parents' car, pretending to be driving. They were dressed in uniforms of emerald green, their hair matted and spit-curled on their foreheads, their facial expressions the textbook definition of dour. Given the direction they were heading it quickly became clear to me that they were on their way to jobs at the Holiday Inn. There are actually two Holiday Inns in town about two blocks apart, largely divided by a public housing project (Berlin Wall, eat your heart out). It would explain their condemned-man grim expressions; cleaning hotel rooms for a living can't be that much fun, not even with perks like free shampoo and conditioner. But as these two women headed off to their low-paying, service industry jobs, I had to laugh in spite of myself. The combination of hairstyle, facial expressions, and green uniforms reminded me instantly of two Oompa Loompas from Willy Wonka. It didn't help much when the song lyrics popped into my head: " Oompa Loompa Doompadee Doo, we're gonna clean this guest room for you...." And my camera was nowhere to be found!

Career path to oblivion

Of late I've created more space for my collection of books, which is good considering how many I have stored in the damp, musty shed behind our house. For the record, damp and musty storage sheds are not the ideal places to house ones collection of books. I'm hoping that the damp and musty smell will go away once they've completely dried out. While going through the boxes where the less essential parts of my life have been housed for the past several years, I happened across a bunch of old paperwork from a company I used to work for, including old company newsletters, insurance papers, printed email messages and faxes containing jokes and stories.

The company's name was Rhone Merieux, an animal health company. I recall that I was offered a job with them after a three month hiatus from the work force, their offer being quite timely as I was down to my last few dollars. The position was as an assistant in the company's Marketing Services department, which numbered a total of four persons, myself included. My job was to maintain the warehouse where the literature detailing the company's various products were housed--basically keeping the sales force fed and watered with product detailers and making sure they received their weekly sales reports. Not an overly difficult job or one with many responsibilities, but having left a job a few months before that was difficult and with many responsibilities, it was a welcome respite.

Those of us in Marketing Services had renamed our little cubicle area, "Surly World." I don't know if we were surly as much as we were thumbing our noses at the rest of the marketing department who didn't seem to appreciate what it took to coordinate with sales reps on multiple veterinary conferences or ship two tons of material a day prior to national sales meetings. It's one thing to work in a supporting role when what you're doing may eventually move you up the company ladder. Problem was that we started at the top of the ladder, we weren't going to be moving up. I had worked similar jobs prior to that, but at least this one didn't require that I wear a polyester uniform while flipping burgers.

Despite feeling less than appreciated, the job wasn't that bad. In fact, there were times when it was downright fun. One day the gentleman who was in charge of the facilities, after hearing our complaints about our cubicle area, commented that chickens should be housed on the other side of the cubicle wall. Naturally, the next day we had a few dozen pictures of chickens that I had printed out hanging from the ceiling. Riding the pallet jack around the warehouse was good exercise and a good way to stay warm during the winter in a warehouse with no climate control whatsoever. From time to time the VCR/TV combo that was shipped to trade shows needed to be tested with episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to make sure it worked properly. Ah, and then there were those occasional watergun shootouts with the telemarketers. When one of our regional managers had a slide projector malfunction during a dinner meeting, a parody "Surly World Production" was sent via voicemail for a handful of sales reps reenacting the event, crumpling paper used to simulate the slide projector bursting into flames. Unfortunately for that particular regional manager, he had a good sense of humor, which we took complete advantage of. In hindsight, we were a little too merciless on him (sorry Steve!).

Naturally, all good things come to an end. In 1997 the company merged with another and was undergoing some fundamental structural changes. In the ultimate corporate kick to the groin, on the day after Thanksgiving I received my letter that my services would no longer be needed. I had already been accepted to college a month before so I wasn't that concerned. My "fair" severance pay was less than what I make per month now, and I had to stretch that to last three months--ironically the same amount of time I had been out of work when I was hired by them. It was with no small amount of satisfaction that I heard that they had outsourced my job to an outside company for $2 million per year which was not doing as good a job keeping the sales reps fed and watered.

But that was eight years ago. I can't begrudge a company for making a business decision, and besides, it's not my job that I miss--it's the people I worked with. Many of the people I worked with were good people and fun to work with. Though I occasionally look at the open positions on the company's web site, I know going back wouldn't be the same. Reflecting back, the job is like a black hole on my resume, with no skills that I can think of that I've taken and transferred to the jobs I've had since. But I'm okay with that; it was fun while it lasted.

Quality programming

Some filler while I work on my next full-length posting. Ditch the dish, the current battlecry for Comcast. Oh, how they’d love for everyone to sign on for their cable television services. And they’ll even give you $400 for ditching your dish, even if the very small print says the money is a $25 credit on your bill each month for sixteen months. We got rid of cable three years ago to move to a satellite service and we’re not looking back. I can say I’m very happy with the satellite service that we’ve got right now (but I’m not saying which—no free advertising here). And it doesn’t hurt when your uncle is a senior manager in the company, so if a customer service rep wants to get snotty with me and I threaten to have their job, there’s a really good chance I can make good on the threat.

Currently we get around 180 channels at home, including quite a few of the digital music channels. The music channels come in handy if you need background music for whatever reason, and they sound great through the home theater system. The remaining channels are quite varied in terms of their programming, and a few of those just leave me scratching my head. I generally ignore the religious and Spanish language channels, and I’ve setup my receiver to not even display Fox News on the program guide. But I can’t explain why there’s a TV Guide channel, after all the service comes with a program guide so you can see what’s on at what time and get a summary of each program. Why do I need a channel that says the same thing? It seems as though the only thing on the TV Guide channel are insipid programs featuring Joan and Melissa Rivers covering some Hollywood event or repeated reruns of their covering said Hollywood event. Collectively, the mother-daughter Rivers duo has more plastic in their bodies than in my entire GI Joe collection, and that’s quite a bit of plastic, folks.

The Horseracing Channel is another one of those programming jewels that just seems to be filler for the satellite company so they can say meet the 180 channels for the package I’m subscribed to. Because, of course, 180 channels sounds much more impressive than 179. The programming is what you’d expect—horseracing and nothing but, 24-7-365. But by far my favorite unusual channel is RFD-TV. This channel is geared towards rural, middle America so I’m nowhere near their target audience. Only on RFD-TV can you find programs on classic tractors, cattle auctions, or live coverage of the annual national FFA convention. In my opinion the jewel in the crown of this channel is Big Joe’s Polka Show, which runs at 7 p.m. on Wednesday nights and again at 10 p.m. on Saturdays. The premise of the show is simple: our host, Big Joe (Joseph Siedlik), introduces polka bands of varying quality who play their music for the modestly-sized group of people on the dance floor. It would be American Bandstand if Dick Clark wore lederhosen and the dancers were 50 years older. Some of the dancers on Big Joe’s show are younger, perhaps in their 20s or 30s, a few children, but by far most of them are senior citizens, giving the show the appearance of one of those “Am I a candidate for hip-replacement surgery?” infomercials. The production value of the show is higher than it was a couple of years ago; it now looks like they have about $500-1000 for each show for production. Still, I find Big Joe useful for one reason (other than humor), and that is it’s the only show that will send my daughter running to her room, hands covering her ears.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

This is a great time of year for people like me. I love movies, especially older movies from the 1930s and 40s. Each year Turner Classic Movies runs its “31 Days of Oscar” programming, a whole month’s worth of award-winning films, so there’s never a shortage of films from the 30s and 40s during the month of February. I prefer older movies because there’s less reliance on special effects than what one generally finds today. Hollywood these days is bound and determined to crank out one big money spectacle after another. Got a screenplay with a huge plot hole? Easy! Just fill it with a $20 million CG special effects shot of something spectacular, such as aliens blowing up a city. It’s a quick and easy way to box office boffo! I was recently reminded of this short-on-story-long-on-effects phenomenon when I watched the movie “Twister” with my wife. Afterwards, I turned to mi esposa and commented, “Jesus, that was awful! The plot’s thinner than a McDonald’s hamburger!” While I appreciate what it takes to create a computer generated effect and how it can add to a movie, it seems that Hollywood has lost the ability to tell a story.

So what are my favorites? Here’s my short list--the complete list is too long to post here.

Citizen Kane: Orson Welles’ story of Charles Foster Kane and the investigation into his dying word, “rosebud,” was almost never seen by audiences. Welles’ based the character of Kane a little too closely on newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. When Hearst caught wind of the script, he tried everything he could to make sure the final print of the film was destroyed. When he was unsuccessful in that attempt, he used his newspapers to discredit Welles and his movie. In the end Hearst was never the same person again and Welles never had nearly as much control of his films as he did with Citizen Kane.

The movie is a series of flashbacks depicting Kane’s life as a newspaper reporter tries to decipher the cryptic “rosebud” comment. As the story progresses and Kane becomes more of a public figure, he seems unable or unwilling to reconcile his private and public lives. He ruins his marriage and political aspirations when he engages in an extramarital affair to a woman he would eventually marry only to have that relationship fail as well. Despite being the American success story, despite all his wealth and successes, Kane ultimately dies alone. Unable to love others he himself is not loved and this may explain why his dying thought is of the sled he had when he was a child. Perhaps he longs for the innocence of childhood, or maybe to be a child again and live life over once more, correcting those mistakes he made during his life.

Best Years of Our Lives: No matter how often I see this one I never tire of watching it. The 1946 tale of three servicemen returning from the war to find that their homecoming is not the wonderful experience they thought it would be. Dana Andrews plays an Army Air Corps officer who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder; Frederic Marsh is a former army sergeant who comes home with a drinking problem; Harold Russell plays a sailor who has lost his hands when his ship sank, leaving him with two prosthetic hooks in their place. While he has come to terms with losing his hands, he has a difficult time with his family’s reaction to his hooks. To ensure a reasonable degree of accuracy to the issues these characters experience, director William Wyler hired a crew composed entirely of veterans. Meanwhile, cinematographer Gregg Toland was able to manipulate his cameras to create a depth of focus that put objects in both the foreground and background in equal focus, something unheard of until that point.

In real life, Harold Russell lost his hands in a training explosion at Camp Mackall, NC in 1943. Samuel Goldwyn saw Russell in the documentary, “Diary of a Sergeant” and decided to change the role of Homer Parrish from suffering from shell-shock to one that reflected Russell’s situation. Later on, Russell would become the first, and to date only, person to win two Oscars for the same role (supporting actor and a special award for being a role model of hope for returning veterans). Other cast members in this film include Myrna Loy as Frederic Marsh’s wife, Teresa Wright as Marsh’s daughter and later Dana Andrews’ love interest, and the incomparable Virginia Mayo, who is superb in the role of Andrews’ philandering wife. An excellent movie that faithfully depicts many of the issues returning veterans faced in post-war America.

The Grapes of Wrath: The cinematic version of John Steinbeck’s story of the Joad family’s trek from the dust bowl of Oklahoma to the fertile fields of California. It’s one of those rare occasions when a good book is turned into a good movie, even if there are some deviations between the two. John Ford directed this movie, and this film effectively launched Henry Fonda’s career (much like Ford had done for John Wayne in 1939 with “Stagecoach”). The movie was released in 1940, the same year Steinbeck won a Pulitzer for the book. I often think this movie should be in color, especially those shots of scenic vistas during the Joad’s trip west. However, black and white really captures the grittiness of the Depression—not to mention some of the lighting effects just wouldn’t be the same in color. The ending of the movie is one of hope, quite different than how the book ends. There was much speculation at the time how Ford planned on ending the movie; this was to be expected considering the book ends with Rose of Sharon miscarrying her baby and then breast-feeding a starving man they find on a railroad car. Such a finale would have made the collective head of the Catholic League of Decency explode like a Fourth of July rocket. To hide the true ending to the movie, Ford distributed the script to the entire cast--minus the last six pages of course.

Sons of the Desert: I never really liked Laurel & Hardy films when in my younger days, but this one was a great re-introduction to their work. In this film, Stan & Oliver want to attend the national convention of The Sons of the Desert fraternal order, but Oliver’s wife objects as she has made plans for a vacation trip to the mountains. The boys decide to trick their wives by hatching a plot where Oliver fakes an illness and is ordered by a doctor (really a veterinarian) to take a trip to Hawaii to recover his health. Instead, the boys head to Chicago and the convention. While in the Windy City, where they’re having fun and ill-advisedly hamming it up for newsreel cameras, the ship to Hawaii they are supposed to be on sinks during a typhoon. The film then becomes a comedy of errors as the wives, played by Mae Busch and Dorothy Christy, discover the plot and exact a measure of payback. The movie runs just over an hour, but for being made in 1933 I think its comedic value holds up quite well.

The Andy Hardy Series: Okay, these aren’t great movies in comparison, but they’re a guilty pleasure of mine. All told there were 17 movies featuring the ongoing saga of Judge Hardy’s Family between 1937 and 1958, and the series was a big moneymaker for MGM. Though people familiar with the series know that Judge Hardy was played by Lewis Stone, originally Lionel Barrymore was cast in that role for the 1937 debut of the series, “A Family Affair.” It was clear at that time that Barrymore was suffering from a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis, which would confine him to a wheelchair in 1946s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The movies are preachy and somewhat cornball by today’s standards, but they reflect a certain innocence and sentimentality of a time gone by. And as a student of history I enjoy seeing and hearing the technology, fashions, and swell linguistic idioms as a snapshot of Americana several decades ago. Mickey Rooney’s character of Andy Hardy is a bit naïve and more than just a little misogynistic. He perpetually finds himself in situations of his own doing for which there is no easy way out (asks two women to marry him, sells a car with bad brakes to his friends for $20). But perhaps Andy Hardy was meant to be a good example of a bad example, showing others what not to do.

Ouch!

Karma has conspired to again remind me that I'’m not as young as I used to be (but still think I am), as if I needed reminding. I'’ve adopted the standard resolution for a new year to attempt to lose some weight. When I was younger I could eat just about anything I wanted and didn'’t gain a pound, even if I wanted to. Others would tell me that that would change once I hit thirty; of course, I just laughed. Who'’s laughing now?

In order to accomplish my resolved goal for this year I'’ve stepped up my physical activity. This past weekend I was playing racquetball with a professor that I work with when suddenly a sharp pain shoots through my right hip down to my knee. Given where the pain was emanating from I was pretty confident I had just pulled a hip flexor muscle. I have occasionally had problems with my right hip flexor, even in my younger, more physically fit days. There were times when it would make its presence known during baseball and soccer games. But I'’ve never pulled it like I did this past weekend. The surprising thing is that five days after the fact, the injured area is still sore to the touch despite the hip flexor being buried under other muscles. I checked some sources to see what to do to rehab the muscle and it'’s not encouraging. Depending on the severity it could take anywhere from two weeks to six months! So much for racquetball for now...and possibly golfing, two miles walks in the neighborhood, sitting down without a nagging sensation in my hip....