My boys enjoy "Arthur" on PBS, and it's a cute show, I'll admit. I actually enjoy it, too. One thing kind of merits a bit of deconstruction, though: namely, Arthur's best friend, Buster, and his family situation. Buster's folks are divorced, one of those little "real life" details they have in the show. They don't make a big deal about it. Buster's got a mediocre brain, at best. But what makes me curious is how Bo Baxter and "Bitzi Lynn" got together to begin with. First, their character sketches...
Bitzi Lynn Baxter: Buster's mom,who is divorced. She is the editor-in-chief of the Elwood City Times. She's overprotective of Buster and a frantic character, but has settled down a bit in later seasons. (In the early Arthur books, she had blonde hair, although the later books and TV show depicted her with auburn hair.)
Bo Baxter: Buster's father, who is divorced. He is a pilot. Buster flies with him around the United States in the spin-off Postcards from Buster series. In Postcards from Buster, he is shown with short brown hair and glasses. However, during his few appearances in earlier seasons of Arthur, his face is noticeably hidden from view, for instance behind a newspaper. His physical appearance has changed several times, and early appearances was partially concealed by various methods, such as Buster on his shoulders or Bo meeting him appearing as Santa Claus.
Now, Bo's a charter pilot -- he tends to fly small gigs for high-profile clients, so I understand this literal jet-setter's motivations, how he might be gallivanting around the globe, leaving kids in every airport. But what's the story with Bitzi Lynn? How'd she manage to win over Bo Baxter to begin with? I mean, look at her...
Bitzi Lynn Baxter, MILF??
I don't know what to make of that. Maybe Bitzi Lynn was quite the bad bunny in her youth? What's the back story, there? She tends to be quite the nervous nellie on the show, so it's hard to see just how she'd have much appeal, there, much in the way of game. Unless Bitzi Lynn is a real hellcat in the sack once she gets behind closed doors? I mean, Bo married her, at least for a time. We're not sure how long they were married, only that they were, and that they had a kid -- or was Buster an "oops" kinda baby? Was Bitzi trying to be the air traffic controller to Bo's high-flying pilot? Was she trying to ground him?
And with a name like Bitzi, it makes me think that maybe she was a groupie or something -- maybe she and Bo crossed paths when he was piloting a rock band around or something. I mean, Bitzi's kinda cute in a librarian/schoolmarm kinda way, but with that frenetic personality of hers, what's her big secret? How was she able to rope Bo in (even if only temporarily)? And what's more, who broke things off? Was it Bitzi or (in my opinion, more likely) Bo? I'd like to have seen pictures of Bitzi in her youth, to get a better understanding of how she got herself in that situation with Bo. Sadly, there's only a tiny picture of Bo available, so I had to blow it up...
Bo Baxter, with a kind of shit-eating grin going on.
I have this image of Arthur and Buster as teenagers, biking beneath a bridge and seeing "Call Bitzi Lynn! Night or Day!" spraypainted on one of the bridge supports, and Arthur asking "Buster, is that referring to your MOM?"
Ohio had not one, but two of the "20 Cities You Don't Want to Live In...Yet" -- Cleveland and Dayton (5th and 10th, respectively). Way to go! Alas, Youngstown didn't make the cut. I guess there's bottom of the barrel, and there's gazing into the abyss, where cities are concerned. Still, it's kind of a downer that Flint and Detroit are on that list, but Youngstown isn't. It's worse off than Flint, Michigan? Yikes.
Had a great day with the boys, and great weather, too, which made it nicer. We played catch in the park, and the boys ran around, up and down hills, from tree to tree. B2 lost his first tooth yesterday, and, of course, the Tooth Fairy left him a coin under his pillow, which thrilled him. He was asking about the Tooth Fairy, and I said she was like a pixie, only shyer and nicer. He was so excited to find that coin, he climbed his bunk to wake his big brother to show him. A dollar coin, naturally, since that's "gold." Haha!
I took the boys grocery shopping today, as well as a trip to Target to get'em a few new pairs of jeans and some shirts. I had bought'em school clothes in the fall, but they're growing so quickly, I needed to get'em a couple of backup pairs.
The boys are getting so brotherly, it cracks me up -- they're inclined to tussle, wrestling their way across the apartment. It amuses me, since B2 is still much smaller than B1, but is feistier and fiercer than his big brother, who puts up with it until he reaches a point of no return, then goes after him. Cracks me up, watching them go -- it's like the cartoon equivalent, the dust cloud with arms and legs everywhere!
I watched "Deliverance" the other day, after not having seen that movie for a very long time, and while it's likely labeled an "Action/Thriller" movie in the pop culture, I can't help but think of it as a Southern Gothic Horror movie. It's not even the graphic man-rape in it that makes it so -- I mean, of course, that's certainly part of it -- but there's just a dread and creepiness that flows throughout it. Even the famous "Dueling Banjos" moment is fraught with an eeriness, the inbred-looking banjo boy...
And the setup of the movie -- four "city boys" plan a canoe trip that goes horribly awry. It feels very Horror to me. The dread and terror of the movie hangs heavily over it -- the unwelcoming, downright hostile Mother Nature all around them, the darkness and quiet of the woods, the unfriendly natives, the secrets and lies, the very real destruction of friendships in the face of the horror they encountered? I dunno. It feels like a Horror movie, albeit one that is marbled with Southern Gothic sensibilities, which likely are why it is better-regarded critically than more conventional Horror fare. I mean, the theme that runs through it is that Mother Nature's a bitch, and sure as hell wants to make Man her bitch -- that's what the movie's about, ultimately.
Ed, the Jon Voight character, is the protagonist -- when alpha male Lewis (Burt Reynolds) is taken out because of injury, it falls to Ed to rise to the occasion, to "play the game" as Lewis puts it. Bobby (Ned Beatty) is the smug, chubby city slicker who gets the bejeebers buggered out of him by the local, while Drew (Ronny Cox) is the affable, friendly, guitar-sporting fella who ends up dead and disfigured on the river. Each of the guys is kind of a facet of manhood -- Drew, the kind-hearted soul, is destroyed by the decision to bury the body of the dead mountain man. In a way, he's fortunate that he drowns in the river, because he surely could not have lived with the decision to bury the body. Lewis, the one who is likely most comfortable with things "going South" as they did, breaks his leg and is effectively taken out midway through. Bobby, the least prepared of them, ends up completely bitchslapped by the experience (literally). Ed, who is somewhere between Lewis and the other two -- that is, he's an experienced outdoorsman, but he's always been in Lewis's manly shadow, find himself ultimately able to kill and intent on surviving the experience at any cost (although it's clear that Bobby is traumatized by Ed's ruthless transformation as the movie evolves -- you see it in Ned Beatty's face when Ed tells them they have to come up with their fake story to try to ensure that the bodies they buried aren't found. It's like he can't even believe he's hearing this coming from Ed.
Of course, there are no supernatural elements in it, so quibblers might take issue with it being a Horror movie, but then again, people often consider "Jaws" to be a Horror movie, too, with a very real monster in the form of the massive great white shark. It's funny for me, because I don't really think of "Jaws" as a Horror movie, but I always think of "Deliverance" as one -- I think it's squarely because of the bleakness and dread inherent in the latter movie, and the very real sense that the characters in "Deliverance" will be forever haunted by what happened on that trip. There is no happy ending for those characters -- Bobby has to live with the shame and humiliation of being man-raped and having to lie his way out of his complicity with hiding three bodies (including Drew's body), Lewis appears likely to have lost a leg (putting an end to his he-man lifestyle), and Ed is haunted by nightmares and an understanding of what he's capable of. Since the movie came out in '72, I'm sure the Vietnam War hung heavy in the zeitgeist at the time, and it could perhaps be seen a kind of parable of that war, and the horrors of it. For all the horror of a shark attack, the movie itself telegraphs its dread with the John Williams score, whereas "Deliverance" delivers far more dread per square inch with simple silence and running water, with a verdant forest and feral hills. There is terror in those woods (and there's a curious moment before the rape scene, too, the night before, when the men are camping, and Lewis stalks out into the woods, saying he heard something -- that setup feels very classic Horror movie, although it's not played for that, it still communicates that: danger, lurking in the shadows).
Anyway, just musing. "Deliverance" feels more than being simply an action movie with horrific moments -- rather, it feels like a true-blue Horror movie, served up Southern-style, with all that this entails. And even when Ed, Bobby, and Lewis make it back to "civilization" (itself the soon-to-be-gone town of Aintry -- or is it Aintree? I can't remember -- this woeful, doleful little town that is going to be drowned when the dam is completed, and is being moved -- the church rolled away, the graves disinterred -- an image that is quietly horrific when seen through Ed's eyes in the wake of their own burials in the wilderness) -- anyway, even when they make it to Aintry, the Southern hospitality is underpinned with the clear dread of Bobby and Ed that the Sheriff (played, ironically enough, by James Dickey, the poet who wrote "Deliverance") doesn't believe their story, but lacks the evidence to lock the men up for murder -- he says "I'd like to see this town die a quiet death." Having delved into the literal and moral wilderness, the men find it hard to embrace civilization again (and, again, the Vietnam specter hangs heavy over this in tangible-yet-understated ways, versus, in my opinion, the ham-handed and overpraised way it looms in "The Deer Hunter" [which came out six years after this movie]). It's like they've seen the black underbelly of the world, the horror of Nature and Human Nature, and are forever marked by it. It makes the happy ending of "Jaws" (which always seems to top the mainstream "best of" Horror movie lists) seem completely panglossian by comparison. With "Deliverance," it's like the saying that when you kill someone, you kill yourself, too -- or part of yourself, anyway, dies with the person that you kill. I think part of Ed died in that river, and it's never coming back -- his nightmare (the hand rising out of the water) and him laying awake in bed beside his wife, clearly troubled, shows this, while the "happy," frenetic dueling banjo theme plays in an echoing rejoinder. Ed and Bobby and Lewis survive, but they'll never, ever be the same again.
Today had wonderful light -- just beautiful light. Of course, I didn't have my camera with me, naturally! I'm having some red wine and bread at the moment. I may reheat the pasta I had the other night. This weekend'll likely have me going on a big grocery run with the boys, if I'm industrious.
1) Geeky little brother to his big sister: "I'm gonna tell ALL your friends about your FAAAAKE tan."
2) Right as I'm crossing the street, a woman in a Mercedes stops at the light, and the Mercedes hood ornament breaks and lands on the ground at my feet. *TING* I knelt and picked it up, walked it over to the woman, who hadn't even realized it had popped off.
I love that "Atlas Shrugged" tanked in the theaters. Randroids aside (and any Randroids reading this, you know what? You're all lame -- read Nietzsche, instead; that's who Ayn Rand had a real hard-on for -- maybe read that while listening to Rush; it'll be a more rewarding experiencing than wallowing through Rand's shit-awful prose), it's just gratifying to see that even in supposedly go-go capitalist America, a turgid melodrama extolling the virtues of a moribund ideologue's fevered dreams of propertarian propriety holds scant appeal. Loving it. And that the producer blew $20 million in producing this bomb, and has already declared he's not going to produce the next parts of the trilogy -- BRAVO! The cherry on top of the sundae. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I have risen, I have risen, indeed! I hope the weather's as nice today as it was yesterday. That'd be swell! One liability with the bigger, better camera is that it requires more thought and care as to its transport. I got a little camera bag for it, but the nice thing about my older camera is it was so portable, which allowed me the opportunity for off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment shots. The new one requires more deliberation on my part. Ah, well. I'll get used to it. Also, its power source is AA batteries, which appear to allow for about 330 shots before the sucker runs out of juice. I'll have to dig out my rechargeable batteries, if I can still find them, and avoid wasting batteries.
You know, everybody talks about the Easter Bunny, but what about his more volatile cousin, the Ester Bunny? What about him? Hope the Ester Bunny has a good holiday, too! ; )
I saw "Hanna" today -- the trailer for it had seemed promising, but I was disappointed by it, ultimately. The fractured fairytale gloss of it fused with a kind of thriller element just didn't quite work -- the characters weren't well-developed enough for it to be character-driven, and the plot wasn't strongly drawn enough for it to be plot-driven. The action sequences weren't particularly stunning, and since everything was kept a step or two behind the curtains, there wasn't much to draw the viewer into the movie, alas. The title character looked very otherworldly, thanks to the striking young Irish actress, Saoirse Ronan, but the overall story just lacked the bones and weight to carry the premise anywhere. You've heard of damning through faint praise? Well, there's damning through faint film-making, and this had that. A lot of running, and yet going nowhere fast. Eric Bana did a credible job as her father/handler, and Cate Blanchett was steely-eyed (although she had precious little to do, really -- I'm curious why she took this gig, honestly), but there's something off about this movie -- I blame "Inception" -- I'll call it the "Inception Effect" -- faint film-making (I know a lot of people were sucked into "Inception's" seeming complexity, but it wasn't complex at all, was just crowded, and had many layers thrown into it to basically camouflage the meager fare of the plot to begin with. "Hanna" feels to me like a movie made in the spirit and/or style of "Inception," with the same meager results, only worse. The Inception Effect is like having a bunch of people crammed in a room at a party, but nobody's saying or doing anything interesting, and we're all supposed to overlook that, to be impressed by the volume of the chatter, without realizing that nobody's saying a thing worth remembering. Sorry if you liked that movie; I found it incredibly boring (except for the side plot that should have been the heart of the story, rather than the dream-caper aspect of it).
I bought a new camera, at long last -- I've had my old 6 megapixel (5x zoom) Olympus camera for many, many years now, and decided I wanted something stronger -- I got a 14 megapixel, 21x zoom Nikon DSLR camera. I'm well-pleased with it so far. I'll give the old Olympus to the boys -- B2 has already taken to playing with it, taking shots of his own. He and his brother'll be thrilled to be able to take pictures with it. I'm sure he'll have broken the camera in a week or two. Haha! I'll have to make a note of that, if/when it happens!
The weather was fabulous today -- 68 degrees and sunny. Windy, but very nice. It started out very cloudy and cool, but warmed up nicely. I went biking downtown. Really need to fix the alignment on my bike's rear tire, but have been putting that off. Now that prime riding season is beginning, I may attend to that.
I'm going to have to supplement my Great Friday with a Super Saturday and a Stellar Sunday, clearly! I'm going to get a lot of writing done this weekend. Exene has the boys, so I'm going to work on screenwriting, methinks. Try go bang some of that out. Always a challenge for me, but I've had a couple of ideas that have stubbornly banged around in my head for some time, and I want to just throw them on paper (or, well, into the computer, anyway) so they can vacate my brain. The weather appears to be very conducive for this kind of effort -- lots of rain and cold.
