Family Fare

As I sat and watched these two disparate souls, separated by so much, but drawn together by fate and circumstance, I couldn't help but reflect on my movie-going habits. The couple cavorted across fantastic landscapes, encountering all manner of bizarre creatures and completing one harrowing escape after another. While I stared up at the screen I thought about the human condition, which seemed a little odd, since I was watching "Wreck-It-Ralph," not "Cloud Atlas." I would have expected to have all manner of profound insights while watching the expansive tale from the makers of the Matrix trilogy and "Run Lola Run." I didn't expect to think too hard while watching a Disney movie set inside a video game.
And yet, that's where I found myself this past weekend. I sat with my wife, my teenage son and his friend, soaking up each brightly lit frame of the story of a misunderstood giant who just wants to fit into the blocky, sixteen-bit world of his game, "Fix-It Felix." Ralph wants to be a hero, not a bad guy. This is pretty elemental stuff, but once he goes wandering inside a universe that doesn't give much room for this kind of change. When he finds a little glitch in another game, who helps him become more of what he wants to be, the story takes off. It's a fairy tale and a meditation on contemporary society. "When did video games get so violent?" wonders Ralph, who had previously spent his time breaking windows and crushing buildings.
When did family movies become so entertaining? Maybe it was back when my son was born, or just before. When "Toy Story" first came out, it became safe, even a little bit hip, to a watch kids' movie. You can see John Lasseter's fingerprints all over "Wreck-It-Ralph." He's the guy sitting in the control booth at Disney. He is the man behind the curtain, which is interesting since the other upcoming movie that caught my eye showed up in the previews before Ralph: "Oz, The Great And Powerful." It comes to us from the director of "The Evil Dead" and the Spider Man trilogy, Sam Raimi. Produced by John Lasseter's magic movie making machine, Disney Studios.
I have drunk the Kool-Aid, and I look forward to the Marvel/Disney/Pixar/Lucasfilm production that tells the origin story of that big red pitcher with legs.

Checks And Balances

Let's all take a moment to praise our remarkably efficient system of governance. The one that hasn't been disrupted since the Civil War. The one that is going to select a new Chief Executive today, or over the next few days, or however long it takes to pull those "lost" votes out of the ditches in Ohio. Savor the fact that we have a pretty successful track record when it comes to holding elections, and no matter what the outcome is, there are built-in safeguards to keep us from turning into a fascist state or a socialist commune overnight. Those three branches of government turned out to be a pretty good idea, so thanks to all the guys down om Philly who put this whole thing together. Nice work, guys.
By the time the newly elected or re-elected president finds his way to the stage at his inauguration, there will already be a heap of work to do sitting on the desk in the Oval Office. Getting America back to work and figuring out how to keep us all safe from the rest of the world and ourselves will not be the work of any one man.
That's why I've gone all zen on this election deal. I've lived through Nixon. And Reagan. And a couple of Bushes. If that's the worst they can throw at us, I guess I'll be fine with that. Tomorrow I will get out of bed without the expectation of an armed presence in the streets to direct me to the nearest indoctrination camp. Quite the opposite. I expect that whoever ends up living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the next few years will have to spend a little more time figuring out just what they can do to make things work for me. By the people, for the people, if I recollect. Given the gridlock which has become a way of life in Washington D.C., I suspect that it will be some time before the insurgency or counter-insurgency will take anything that appears like control. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Consider me established and ordained, fellas. I'll be watching.

The Force That Binds The Galaxy Together

It bugged the heck out of me when I learned that Michael Jackson had purchased the Beatles' song catalog. That may be why there was little or no heck left in my system when I found out that Disney was buying Lucasfilm. Four billion dollars worth of Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, and copyrights to go along with them. As part of this engulf and devour move, Disney has announced that the next chapter in the Star Wars saga, Chapter Seven, will be released in 2015. If there was a trace of heck left in my system, that pretty well bounced it right out of there.
Please understand, I have worshiped at the temple of Mouse for most of my life. My first monster mask was purchased at the magic shop in Disneyland. Even then I wondered how the Universal Studios depiction of Frankenstein's monster could find its way to the shelves in the happiest place on earth. These were the days before intellectual property, I suppose. Ideas and images just floated around freely, with little or no hindrance, stopping only long enough to entice or inspire before moving on. This was before there were laws and lawyers. Or so I'm told.
Since then, the attorneys for the Mouse have been very busy. They landed in Times Square and malls across America. Then Star Tours opened up at Disneyland. Corporate Synergy. Indiana Jones followed a few years later. Then they bought up the Muppets. And then they bought Marvel Comics. Disney bought Pixar, or was that the other way 'round? All of a sudden, Mickey is palling around with Darth Vader, Kermit the Frog and Spider Man. As the center grows ever more massive, the pop culture universe is collapsing around its Disney core. In entertainment Monopoly, as soon as Disney gets a hotel on Park Place, the game is over. Maybe they can make a deal for the estate of Michael Jackson. Just don't let me catch Jar Jar Binks putting out any Beatles tribute albums, or I might go into heck foreclosure.

A Stitch In Time

If you've read Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time," you're probably familiar with the concept of a tesseract. It's a time travel device, described by otherworldly Mrs. Whatsit as a way to travel in time, rather than space, a "wrinkle" rather than a flat plane. I happily embraced this theory as I grew up, wondering when I might encounter such a neat trick. It is only now that it occurs to me that I have been tripping over these anomalies for most of my life in the form of Daylight Savings Time.
Spring Forward. Fall Back. As someone who spends his life tied to a system of clocks and bells, I am innately suspicious of any process that suggests that we would somehow wake up one morning with "an extra hour of sleep." Let's start with the time it takes me to wander about my house, searching out the various appliances and machines that require resetting. Those minutes are definitely coming off the bottom line. I'm pleased and happy to have a room full of computers at my school that can remember this switch for me, but the bell system and clocks there usually take a day or two to catch up to the vagaries of this government boondoggle. In another six months, I'll be back to wandering around my house and school, checking to see if all of those built-in chronometers have caught up to the arbitrary shift.
I suppose this is a confession of sorts: I can't relax and enjoy my "extra hour of sleep" because I'm too concerned about keeping track of the time I'm losing on the other side. This is no gift for me. I'm far too concerned with the minutiae of minutes. Is it really worth having those extra hours to have those extra hours to collect insects after your factory shift is over? 
Maybe you'd like to have the time you spent reading this blog back. You'll have to wait until April for that.

Channeling Weather

My father had a name for it: The Potbelly Syndrome. It wasn't a diet or exercise program. It was a theory he maintained about catastrophe, wherein people would gather at the general store after the fire, flood or blizzard to warm themselves around the stove, a potbelly stove, and commiserate about their experience. Maybe that explains why New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, had this to say about the federal response to Superstorm Sandy: “I have to say the administration, the president himself and FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate have been outstanding with us so far. We have a great partnership with them, and I want to thank the president personally for his personal attention to this.” This comes as a stark contrast to his assessment of Barack Obama in August as “nothing more than a Chicago ward politician.”
It comes at an awkward time for partisan politics. But that's not the way of nature. In an election that was all but void of discussion of global warming, along comes a very compelling talking point: Frankenstorm.  How about when we're finished debating tax code reform and battleships versus horses and bayonets we take a few minutes to talk about continuing life on our planet. Having a planet on which to have these debates pushes all of that talk to the side. For now, at least. The chance to politicize a natural disaster has been, for the most part, tastefully avoided. That doesn't mean that in the days leading up to the election that we won't be reminded of how things might have been done differently. We are a planet of Slow Learners. Sometimes things have to fall on our head to get us to realize that the sky, or parts of it, is falling.
I don't know who will win the presidential race, but I do know that Mother Nature's office isn't up for grabs. She managed to do the one thing that Occupy Wall Street never managed to do: Shut it down for two days. She's still going to do what she does, and we do our best to stay out of the way, and hopefully we'll all meet together around that potbelly stove to swap stories.

Grappling With The Past

When my son came home and complained of "feeling uncomfortable" when his PE class started a unit on wrestling, I felt bad. It took me a while to unravel just where that "bad" came from. I wrestled, way back in junior high school. It was the narrow pathway that lead me to the novels of John Irving. It was also the second time I was on a team. Even further back into the mist, when I was in fourth grade, I played Young America football. Then I took a few years off. My older brother had wrestled, and so there was a bit of a legacy at Centennial Junior High for the Caven boys. In seventh grade I was still far too consumed with the intricacies of locker combinations and social cliques to imagine spending my winter afternoons locked in that gym.
Social cliques? Maybe that was the key. I remembered that my neighborhood pal and chief tormentor had insisted that the only way I could overcome the plague of being in band was to go out for a sport. He was on the basketball team, after all, just like his brothers before him. It was my destiny to follow in my big brother's footsteps. The ones with the funny pattern made by a pair of wrestling shoes.
Of course, I found out, weeks after I had started attending the nightly practices and had our first match, that wrestling wasn't on the approved list of "cool sports." All those hours spent in a Bikram Yoga-style environment were not improving my social status. At best, I was getting an asterisk for doing something that was not band. At worst, I was grappling with other boys. Not cool.
All of this came flooding back as I considered my son's level of discomfort. I remembered how I didn't quit, even though I took a good deal of grief from "friends" who wanted to improve their junior high caste by pointing out just how gay wrestling was. And so, like my brother before me, I committed myself to sticking with it, through the season, and all through ninth grade as well. I even went to the district tournament that year. For "B" mat. I was never that good, but I stuck with it and as a result I was featured in a couple more yearbook photos.
All that time, we wrestlers labored in the shadows of the basketball team, who practiced in the less than sweltering gym upstairs. I endured countless bloody noses and any number of strained muscles and twisted joints. I endured.
I tried to explain that to my son. The Ultimate Frisbee player. He listened respectfully, and agreed to do his best. He's already had his picture taken for the Frisbee team.

Create A Space

In my mind's eye, I can see it. On two sides there would be floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out onto the woods below. "Below," because the room itself would be elevated, either on the second floor or stuck up on stilts. The light comes with a green filter through the rustling leaves. Inside, it is warm, even on those foggy mornings when the sun is still working on making its way to this place: my studio. Where I work.
This is the place where I go to create. Sometimes I draw, sometimes I paint. My typewriter is there on my desk, facing away from the window because I don't want to be distracted. It's not a big desk, but it is substantial and wooden, especially when compared to the drawing table that sits just to the left. From there I can look outside, since when I am making pictures I want to be able to draw in light. And sound. Behind me is a small sound system with shelves full of CDs. These are the ones that keep me inspired when the view isn't enough. Rock, classical, new wave, and lots of soundtracks. That is when the sounds of the woods outside aren't enough. This is where all of the children's books have been imagined and pieced together. This is where all my talents come together and make the dreams I had into a reality I can share. It's just a few short steps down the hallway from my bedroom so that I can get up early or stay up late when the muse strikes me. It's where I work.
At least that's where it was in my teen-aged imagination. It still exists in, pieces. I don't have a typewriter, but I have a desk where my computer monitor and keyboard wait for me to come up with the day's sentiments. If I turn my head, I can look out a window and see a pair of trees: one that I planted when my son was born, the other a weed of a plum tree that continues to flourish in spite of our lack of attention. All the drawing supplies are tucked away in drawers and cabinets throughout the house. If I decided to paint, I could find brushes and paint, but finding an uncluttered surface might slow me down. This is where I live. I work at a school where the trees have been sacrificed for the asphalt playground. The sounds I hear are children's voices. Sometimes I get clever ideas for entertaining them. I tell them stories. I even draw pictures, from time to time. This is where I work.