Once Again

I'm going to see "The Artist" again this evening; it's the first time I've seen a movie twice since "Midnight in Paris." I'm greatly looking forward to it!

The winds are howling outside. Proper winter has momentarily arrived. Although, with the steam heat in my building, it's all toasty in my place.

I kept waking up last night, so I'm a little sleep-debted. Meh. I could try to wrangle a bit more sleep, I suppose, but I doubt it'll happen. When my brain wakes me up, that's that (almost always).

Gonna do a big grocery run tomorrow, my usual monthly foray, with the snow offering a slight complication to the mix, but no big deal. Just makes it a bit more of a PITA to park.

Happy Friday the 13th!

Snow, Man!

Finally got a winter storm! Can't believe this is our first one -- that we're nearly into mid-January, and this is the first proper snow we've gotten! Amazing.

The boys are stoked, of course, hoping to take the sleds out. We'll see if we get enough snow (and if it stays -- supposedly the temps are going up again).

It certainly looked pretty, though.

Shout It Out

Lost my temper the other day, which is a rarity -- this old guy blithely ran a stop sign at a pedestrian crosswalk I happened to be crossing, and the guy nearly hit me, had to swerve to avoid me, and I shouted at him "STOP SIGN. STOP. SIGN!" and then gestured, yelling "PEDESTRIAN! CROSSWALK! YOU [BLEEEP-BLEEEP] IDIOT!" The guy saw me and took off. He looked like he was afraid I was going to stomp on his car (and I was tempted, but I held back). I was so pissed, for like a minute, which is about how I operate. I so seldom lose my cool like that, but when somebody does stuff like running a stop sign and nearly clipping a pedestrian (who happens to be me), it pisses me off. The moment made me realize how rare it is for me to get pissed like that. I try to take most things in stride, and am largely successful at that -- I don't whine or complain, I don't get pissed very often. I do get annoyed from time to time, but that's about it. It takes something particularly bad to piss me off, I guess, and even then, I am probably likelier to laugh at the absurdity of it than to shout about it.

Speaking of shouting, I took the boys to their favorite pizza place, and we were in a nice corner booth, and across the room was another family -- dad, mom, and two boys, one of whom was very young, I'm guessing about 4 years old? My boys were kind of fascinated by that, because the little kid looked over at us and made noise, and my sweet boys waved to the kid. But the dad was this surly guy, and he actually yelled at his kids a couple of times (one of the exchanges was him yelling at his son "Go ahead! Take a bite of the pizza, you'll burn your mouth, and I guarantee you'll never do THAT again!"), and it totally upset my boys. They were like "Those poor kids; they have a mean, yelly daddy!" And the dad was browbeating the waitress, too, which was upsetting to me (he kept after her, kept carping about things, barking orders, like "Bring me another water. With lemon. Make it a FRESH lemon! And plenty of ICE! No, wait -- make it a LIME. Do you understand? A FRESH. LIME." -- and he's yelling this at her) and the waitress caught my eye as she went off to do that with a look like "Yeah, that guy's a fucking asshole!" B1 said to me later about it (I always know when something bothers him like that, because he mulls it over and will talk to me about it later) "Why'd he yell at the little boy? The kid was too young to know he'd done anything wrong. That'll just scare him." I just said that some parents thought yelling was the way to keep their kids in line, and B1 said "But that doesn't work; it'll just make the kids mad or scared of their own parents." B2 had his own opinions on it, mostly saying that he was really glad I wasn't a "Yelly Daddy." And I'm not, thankfully; I take most everything in stride where the kids are concerned. I think Exene yells more than I do, from what the boys say. I don't know; I think seeing a "Yelly Daddy" in action seemed very strange and unfamiliar to the boys, so they reacted to it with contempt and dismay.

Of course, if they'd seen me at that stop sign, they'd have been shocked by that, too. And if I'd had the boys with me when that prick had run that stop sign, I'd have probably broken his windshield with my invective.

The Artist

I saw "The Artist" tonight, the black-and-white silent movie, and it was great! I enjoyed it mightily. It was everything I think "Hugo" aspired to be. Amazing achievement, and I'm so glad I saw it on the big screen. As a movie lover, it was just so much fun to watch the director's clear love of movies show in how he shot it. A picture-perfect period piece, and as a silent movie, no less! I was very impressed.



I really enjoyed "The Artist." Everybody about it was enjoyable -- the casting, the costuming, the shots, the situations -- it was both staggeringly self-referential and postmodern and incredibly entertaining. It's the first movie I've really enjoyed in a long time. It was a sweet lil' love story, an exercise in cinematic style -- funny, inventive, delightful.

And it was really weird for me, since I watched "The Shadow" last night, which was a fairly lavish, if somewhat empty retro movie (which had Penelope Ann Miller in it, among others), and tonight I watched "The Artist," which had a much-older Penelope Ann Miller in it!!! WTF? That was just very trippy.

Totally worth your time, and a trip to see a silent movie about silent movies in this day and age. Bravo!

Happy Birthdays!

To the King...

And the Thin White Duke!

Remember the A La Mode

I had a strange and amusing dream last night, which was in a kind of documentary style, about this decorative Alamo that was, for some reason, in Chicago, and this tycoon who had flown into O'Hare, and had seen that Alamo as he was coming in, and had asked one of his friends where he should stay, and one of them quipped "How 'bout the Alamo?" To commemorate this, the guy then hollowed out the decorative Alamo (which was about the size of a tool shed) -- he had landscaping around it, and had stairs leading into it from either side. Inside it was this very shiny, liquid-smooth black benches, with rose- and blue-hued neon and argon lighting. The whole effect was like something straight out of the 80s. You could just sort of hang out in this odd, Vegas-seeming Alamo, with, of course, a commemorative plaque recounting the story of this bizarre construction, which had become a kind of legendary tourist attraction. I was there with my mom, explaining that to her, so there wa the straight-up documentary voiceover part of the dream, and then there was me explaining the place to my mom, who found it amusing, as well.

Landa

Having watched "Inglorious Basterds" again, the villain, Hans Landa, really stands out. The Austrian actor (Christoph Waltz) who portrayed him did a great job with the character. Definitely one of the best cinematic villains to emerge in years.

Landa Laughing

Landa montage (fake trailer)

It's not easy to take something freighted with baggage like a Nazi character and make him more than a caricature of evil, but Landa was a great character, combining a serpentine charm with a toadlike oddness and a diabolical intelligence to make for a perfect villain. Any scene he enters, you can't help but feel dread, and, to his credit, Tarantino uses him masterfully throughout the movie.

Radiator

I don't know if the hissing radiators did it to me, but I dreamed I was driving a Mercedes and the thing was perilously close to overheating, so I stopped the car somewhere and checked the radiator, which was nearly out of water, and went about filling the radiator up. Some celebrity had a cameo in the dream, like the gal who was fetching the water. It was like Claire Danes or Naomi Watts or somebody equivalent. I can't remember, now, but I kept having her get water, before realizing that there was a hose nearby, and that I could use that, instead. Anyway, I took care of that, only to wake up to the sound of the radiators, so I think my subconscious was on task, trying to solve the problem of it being too hot and/or me being thirsty, etc.

New

So, now it's 2012. Woo hoo! Nothing much exciting to say. It's frickin' cold out. Winter is finally, properly here, at least for the moment. True to form for Chicago, it'll likely hang on until March. We'll see if we get another mega-blizzard like last year. I think the pattern of the warm(er) temps and accompanying moisture in the air raises the risk of a big-ass snowfall. We'll see if it happens.

Here We Go

Wow, the end of 2011. I won't get particularly reflective about the year, except that it was a much better year for me than the past few years the preceded it, no question about it. I intend to make 2012 even better, still. This'll be the year I turn 42, which is bizarre, truly. My 30s evaporated, dominated as they were with two wonderful boys and dealing with Exene. Still, it's weird to think that as B1 turns 10, how different my world was at 32 than now. A lot of the stress fractures were there between Exene and me back in 2002, of course. In fact, having kids was probably THE ultimate stress fracture. I think I enjoy parenting more than Exene, who faces the endless randomness, chaos and disorder of the world with much more stress than I do -- and if kids represent anything, it's endless randomness, chaos and disorder. My tendency to roll with everything was exactly what I needed to be able to handle parenting. Anyway, now ten years on, it's amazing how it all moves forward, seeing my boys growing up and becoming more themselves, growing into themselves. It's such a tender time.

On to a bigger, better, brighter future for us all. The end of this year will be whacked, of course, with all the loonies thinking the world's going to end. They'll be disappointed to find that, well, no, the world keeps on going. Funny, that. And wonderful.

The Boys are Back in Town

The boys came back yesterday, and seemed to have a good time in Ohio. They got haircuts while gone -- I'm guessing Exene had her family pay for that. They were very glad to see me, especially B2, who kept hugging me and kissing me and telling me he loved me. Very cute. B1 was glad, too -- the first thing he did when he got in was he aimed his new telescope at the Moon and called me over to look at it. Sure enough, he'd zeroed in on it perfectly, and it was fun to look at it in detail. I can tell in his quiet, Capricornian way how much he digs that telescope.

Cannot believe the end of 2011 is nearly here. What a year it's been, too. I jokingly call it "The Year of the Dave" to my folks, just from all of the stuff that has gone on this year, and the contrast from 2010 to now for me.  The last several years have been surreal, really. I'm tackling 2012 head-on, not with resolutions (because I really don't believe in resolutions per se -- that whole New Year's tradition feels contrived to me -- you should be resolute every day, not just one day a year, right?) but with a To Do List (TDL), stuff I need to get done. 2011 was very productive for me, across the board, but I want to get much more done, so I'm on that.

May the Farce Be With You

I blame my Star Wars ruminations of late on the Playstation 2 Lego Star Wars games, which I'd taken out of storage recently and played with the boys, along with other games. I'd had a Playstation 2 that I'd effectively mothballed after B1 was born, just because who has time to play games when you're in the middle of Baby Boot Camp, right? It was amusing for me to see the save dates on some of the games (like GTA III: San Andreas and Vice City, more blasts from the past). Anyway, now that the boys are older, I decided to bring out the console and we've been playing a bit. They love it, of course, although hearing them squabble as they play is both amusing and disarming -- nothing gets the boys more pissed at each other than trying to play Lego Star Wars together! One pushes the other's character off a cliff, one takes the other's coins, etc. Of course, I try to communicate and/or demonstrate the value of teamwork to the boys, which, I think, is slowly seeping in, although usually they're like "I want to team up with Daddy!" since I can usually get through a level. We take turns, since there are three of us, so it'll be B1 + B2, or B1 + me, or me + B2.

So, playing those games (the original one being far more entertaining than the actual prequel movies) has made me philosophical about the Star Wars universe. Now, of course, the Star Wars universe is space opera central, isn't a place of deep thought or characterization, but it's possible to think about the Empire as a kind of revolt of the norms against the paranormal oligarchy of the Jedi. I mean, as Obi-Wan said to Luke, "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

From a certain point of view, the Jedi could be seen as the hitmen for the Republic, who we're supposed to accept as innately virtuous. However, from the point of view of a norm, a Jedi would seem oppressive and frightening. Here is this person who has paranormal abilities and a lightsaber who will cut you if you cross them, or Jedi Mind Trick you. We're told the Jedi are a force (pun intended) for Good, because they have benign avoidance of Anger, Fear, and Hatred -- the tools of the Dark Side of the Force. But a Jedi is a warrior, remains a human weapon, at heart. And a weapon is always going to be an instrument of oppression, even if used for ostensibly good purposes. So, there's that.

And there is the sticky wicket of the Dark Side of the Force, the eternal temptation of the Jedi to go bad and become Sith Lords (of whom we only see a few, right? Sidious, Maul, Tyranus, and Vader). The bad apples that spoil the barrel, the indictment of the power principle, basically. The Sith are nowhere near as numerous as the Jedi -- again, we just see a handful of Sith -- but they completely overturn the Jedi-enforced order of the Republic. All those Jedi (multiple generations of them) are no match for Sith machinations, and are nearly wiped out by their dark counterparts. But that the Sith exist as a defined entity points to a larger infrastructure in place -- an entire shadow organization of Sith out to overturn Jedi order, which gets at my problem with the paranormal police force the Jedi represent: if the Jedi can't prevent the Sith from appearing, and the Sith are so great at overturning Jedi order, this is a fatal structural flaw in the system.

It points to the peril of this Force thing to begin with -- if your enforcers are perennially vulnerable to "going bad," and only a few Sith are capable of demolishing your order (or worse, are capable of flourishing in the shadows, creating a shadow conspiracy that will destroy your order), when what good are you, anyway? It points to the fragility of this seemingly long-lived order. Of course, all of this happened to serve the needs of the plot, but at the same time, it makes me wonder how Luke (and Leia) could possibly restore order to the Galaxy in the wake of the Empire. I mean, if legions of Jedi were mowed down, at a time when the Jedi order was at its greatest, how could those two right things? What's more, would they even be righting anything, or merely returning to baseline -- namely, Jedi as enforcers of the New Republic. What's to stop another bad apple from spoiling the barrel again? It's not like Anger, Fear, and Hatred are hard to come by -- even Luke nearly succumbs to it several times, and lord knows Leia's quite the angry one.

And since, as Yoda and others said, the Dark Side was "quicker, easier, more seductive" -- it makes me think that those who can get their hands on the nanites that let people channel the Force, sooner or later, somebody else is going to go that quicker, easier, more seductive route again and presto -- a new Sith Lord for the New Republic. And it all repeats. Now, in the short-term, obviously, with Luke and Leia being the only two sporting the Vader bloodline, who is apparently the strongest Force-bearing soul ever, that threat isn't realized, yet. But a few generations hence? And it's a big Galaxy, after all. Anything can happen -- and entropy always wins -- Order inevitably becomes Chaos.

In a weird way, it almost feels cyclical, ala "The Matrix" -- that the New Republic will stand for awhile, and then Chaos will intrude, and we'll get another Empire of some sort. Much of that hinges on the appearance of another Palpatine/Sidious, of course, who just sort of appears.

Even though the Empire was led by Sidious and Vader, it was really a melange of normal humans, clones, starships, and droids. That was the real foundation of the Empire, with Sidious and Vader at the top, acting as dark mirror Jedi, keeping this order in check through fear -- or a different brand of fear than the Jedi had been pimping. The norms really formed the backbone of the Imperial order, were its administrative and business class, with the Sith and the Stormtroopers as the muscle.

If I were a norm facing the devastation in the wake of the collapse of the Empire, I'd be like "To hell with the Jedi. We don't want anymore Jedi around -- the risk is too great. Sooner or later, they're going to go bad, and we'll have Sith on our hands again, and they're going to frag us."

This is one of those things that would have some scold friends of mine saying "You have wayyy too much time on your hands." But it's still fun to think about.

Boyo

The boys reached Ohio safe-n-sound, although Exene said that B2 puked on her (and himself) around five hours into the trip. Knowing B2, who is prone to carsickness, they probably had some McD's or something at some rest stop point in the bus trip, then he hurled later. I know from hard experience (hell, B2 first car-puked in the White Donkey, years ago, in his baby seat -- from that point onward, I was always mindful of not giving him much in the way of food while on the road). Knowing Exene, she didn't pack any "barf bags" -- even though B2 bus-puked on their last trip. I meant to remind her to bring some barf bags when I dropped the boys off with her, but hadn't remembered until a few hours later, when they were already on the road.

But, aside from that, they got where they were going. I really miss my guys. Having them gone from the city, knowing that they're not here, makes Chicago feel terribly empty to me. It's kind of funny, really -- when they're with their mom, in the city, even though they're not with me, I at least know they're around, and take some comfort in that. When I know that they're actually in another state, and are nowhere near me, then it makes me feel terrible, it colors everything around me.

With kids, your focus shrinks, your world zooms in on your household, and it's a wonderful thing -- I mean, it's like your eye in the storm of life, this place of peace and safety, your home (obviously, with kids, everything's far from peaceful -- but there is a peace even in the joyful noise of childhood, at least I think so). It's why empty playgrounds are creepy -- playgrounds require children in them to be joyful places. Take the kids away, and all you see is this vacancy where kids belong. A home can be like that, too. B1 turns 10 years old next month -- I'll have been a dad for a decade when his birthday rolls around. That matters a lot to me.

Anyway, I miss the boys. They're supposed to be back in town tomorrow evening. I'm looking forward to that.