Annachronisms

Appinion: "Angry Birds"

2010-06-29T00:16:00.001-07:00

When pigs run afoul of these feathered foes, all you-know-what breaks loose.

So long, solitaire! Farewell, FreeCell! There's a new kind of evil in town, and it's called "Angry Birds." This top-rated application for the iPhone/iPod Touch is a cross between addictive puzzle games like "Snood" or "Tetris" and "Gorillas"—that ancient DOS game where you vanquished your foe with well-aimed exploding bananas.

This time, however, you're flinging furious fowl at green, gloating pig heads. The birds are in a tizzy because porcine villains have taken their eggs, and your job is to go get them some justice. In each cleverly and cartoonishly drawn puzzle level, you are confronted with a number of pig heads winking and smiling among a variety of obstacles. All you have to do is aim your preloaded slingshot, let the birds fly at their foes, then watch the pigs poof into points.

This is easier said than done, of course. But the clever creators have mixed up the difficulty levels so that the puzzles are not always progressively challenging. Sometimes, I'll be stuck on a level for a day or two; the next evening, I can blow through 10 levels in no time. This keeps me from getting loser's fatigue, and I sincerely appreciate it. After all, it's already a losing proposition to spend hours at a time on a silly game—at least, this one gives me the happy victory song I crave more than once every three days!

To keep the game interesting throughout the seemingly infinite number of levels, you aren't just aiming the same bird. Instead, there are a handful of bird types, each with different "talents." One can drop bombs. One is a bomb. One is speedy and strong. One is weak but can shatter glass in triplicate. And one is, well, red. You're armed with different combinations and numbers of birds for each level. The trick is to use each one wisely to clear the course.

The upshot? "Angry Birds" is a stroke of evil genius. The good news is it's hard to imagine a more perfect game for the iPod Touch—it sets the bar high. The bad news is that it is so wildly successful, a barrage of homages can't be far behind. We professional procrastinators will have our work cut out for us to stay one step ahead of the games coming our way!

Angry Birds: *****

New Blog

2010-04-14T13:20:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I've been here, although I plan to post something soon. After all, I've seen more movies than ever lately, and I've actually read some books that I like, which means that I don't have to torture you with long, enraged passages about books that I hate (see the last post) anymore.

In the meantime, please check out this new blog, which chronicles my pathetic attempts at guitaring.

Book Beat: South of Broad

2009-10-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

"Broad" is the word for Pat Conroy's latest novel.

There's something inherently likable about Leopold Bloom King, the 18-year-old hero of South of Broad by Pat Conroy (who also wrote Prince of Tides). He's a kind, well-meaning kid with a sarcastic sense of humor and a deep, dark past that includes juvenile probation for cocaine possession and stints in mental institutions after his older brother committed suicide at the young age of 10. The story begins just as Leo is finally turning his life around. He's got a paper route, his probation is almost over, he's starting his senior year, and for once, he's going to be a normal teenager. Or so he thinks.

His parents, anxious that Leo's days are busy and full, ask him to look after the new kids coming to school that year--and soon he has assembled a motley crew of friends who bond for life. Conroy makes it abundantly clear that this group of eight would have been almost impossible in 1969 in Charleston, South Carolina. Besides homely, middle-class Leo, there are two African Americans, two poor orphans from North Carolina, one openly gay kid and his vampy twin, one girl jock, and a couple of snooty rich kids thrown in for good measure. The drama, tensions, sexual relationships, etc., soon begin, with Leo's undying loyalty serving as the glue that holds the group all together. As a team, they tackle bigotry of all kinds, horrible pasts, psychotic relatives, and even disease--it gets pretty mawkish.

This was kind of a dirty trick. I was hoping for one kind of novel--a sort of Holden Caulfield adventure with Leo at center stage--and wound up reading a soap opera. I admit that I was reluctantly hooked for most of the book, even if I rolled my eyes a lot (especially when the plot leaps ahead 20 years and this unlikely eight-some is tackling the AIDS epidemic). Despite the abundance of plot and melodrama, Leo's uniqueness kept me turning pages. I wanted to know if he'd ever be able to heal--or at least accept--the gaping hole that his brother left in his life.

But, ultimately, there's just too much going on here. Too many characters. Too many issues. Too much melodrama. When I finally buckled under and finished the last 100 pages, I was not surprised to find that they were rife with rape, abortions, suicide, cold-blooded murder, and hurricanes. Too, too much.

Also disappointing: the dialogue. Everyone in the book has the same sarcastic one-liner approach to life that should have been Leo's alone. You can't tell who is talking without the attribution, and it's too bad.

Of course, while I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone, it wasn't a complete waste of time for me. I enjoyed Leo's complex relationship with the Catholic church--how he was anchored to it, in love with its ritual and routine, and yet was not completely comfortable with it and even alienated sometimes. There's a funny moment when he says that his childhood finally made sense after he found out that his mother was a nun before she married his father. Catholic humor.

The Catholic references also double as references to James Joyce. Leo's mother is a Joycean scholar with a passion for Ulysses, and references to this staggering work abound--probably more than this amateur reader of Joyce's masterpiece could pick up on. Some are blatant, like the pivotal role of Bloomsday (June 16, which is the date that the events of Ulysses take place) or the names of Leopold Bloom King and his brother Stephen Dedalus King, which are the names of Joyce's two heroes. Others are a little less so--for example, the last sentence of the book is very similar to the last sentence of Ulysses.

In keeping with the Joycean influence, the city of Charleston itself serves as a central character, and probably some of the best stuff in the novel is the portrait of the complexities of this Southern city. But the novel just doesn't hold together with its overcrowded plot and burgeoning cast of characters with nearly identical personalities. Do yourself a favor, and skip it!

South of Broad: **

Fine Dining: On the Road to McBesity

2009-08-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

Why this mom gets extra points for bringing home a Happy Meal.

Swim class ended today, and what better way to reward hard work than with the timeless McDonald's Happy Meal? I mean, everyone knows you have to start associating success with fatty foodstuffs early—otherwise, the young 'uns won't have a good reason to try hard. So age 15 months and change seemed just about right for the hallowed nuggets, fries, and a toy. But who knew just how much value $2.79 could buy? Here's a taste:

More ingredients in the milk. The boring white stuff in your fridge usually has two measly ingredients, milk and vitamin D3 (for us indoor types who don't get enough sun). But the McDonald's Milk Jug has so much more! We're talking skim milk and concentrated skim milk here, people, with vitamin A palmitate thrown in for good measure. Now that's a milk jug.

Potatoes the way nature intended. Nurturing your toddler's palate to appreciate vegetables can be a long road—so why not take a short cut? Blanketed in a child-pleasing blend of salt and grease, French fries will instantly make your baby a root-vegetable fan without the tantrum. And good news for moms: You'll never have slave over mashed, boiled, or baked potatoes ever again.

Less cluck for your buck—the way they like it. For picky eaters, nothing says "no thanks" more than a possible run-in with protein. That's why the tiny "all-white meat" portions of these chicken nuggets take a backseat to the substantial cloud of fried batter surrounding them. Let your dog have at the meaty center, then serve up those crispy shells and bask in your little one's smile. She'll thank you for it, and so will the retail clerk at your plus-size baby clothing outlet.

Critical thinking challenge. If mealtime conversations with your toddler usually consist of "that cup is NOT a hat" and "the dog already had her dinner," try livening things up with a brain teaser or two. Look no further than the Happy Meal bag itself for such promotional puzzles as: "Take a break—/Get Outside! / It's Fun to / RUN and JUMP / Online and Off!" Explaining that your DSL connector cable is not a jump rope will never be more fun.

Advanced play opportunity. Sure, you can ask for an age-appropriate toy for your under-three-year-old—if you're a wuss. Say goodbye to Mensa if your kid can't operate a pull-apart Lego car without getting the teeny, weeny wheels caught in his throat.

McDonald's Happy Meal: *****

Reel Time: The Time Traveler's Wife

2009-08-18T22:44:00.000-07:00

This film adaptation of the popular novel doesn't deserve such bad reviews.

Our book club doesn't go in for the traditional assigned reading with postmortem discussions. Instead, we each bring in a good book from our private stashes, give a Reading Rainbow-style recommendation to the group, then pile up our treasures on the center table. When the coffee-house staff starts stacking chairs and closing up the patio, we sort through our riches for the loaners that most intrigue us. We read them at our own pace (no pressure to finish before the next meeting!), then repeat the process. The result? No one feels ashamed about falling behind. No one worries about a book not being "literary" enough. And we each get to read books we enjoy without having to slog through stuff that doesn't interest us. It's great!

With so many wonderful choices and diverse interests before us, it's rare that all of us will read the same book--but every once in a while, one races through the group like wildfire. The first time this happened was five years ago when one of us brought in The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. A romance with sci-fi tendencies was an unlikely hit for our group, but the characters were so well drawn, their experiences so relatable, and their situation so compelling that none of us could put the book down.

The story chronicles the relationship between Clare and Henry, a guy with a time-placement disorder that acts a lot like epilepsy. The result of Henry's uncontrollable time-traveling "episodes" is that Clare meets Henry for the first time when she's six years old--when Henry meets Clare for the first time, however, she's in her twenties. As you can imagine, this makes for an interesting relationship!

The film version opened last weekend to mostly mediocre reviews. Rotten Tomatoes lists it at 36%--a dismal number (though not as dismal as the 8% awarded to the animated Garfield a few years back). I'm not sure why the critics have been so harsh. Our book club saw the film as a group over the weekend, and most of us really enjoyed it. Sure, it doesn't incorporate all of the lovely nuances of the novel--but it was a fairly faithful retelling of the plot, and we all recognized the characters we'd come to love in the book.

Here's where the film got it right:

Casting. Eric Bana, with his troubled eyes and sexy hair cut, gives Henry the brooding, sensitive streak that is so endearing in the novel. He also spends a good portion of the movie with his shirt off (clothes don't time-travel), which is a crowd pleaser in a theater full of women. Rachel MacAdams is a decent Clare as well. She's perhaps perkier than I expected the novel's introspective heroine to be, but this makes for good contrast with Henry's more reserved character. The actors play wonderfully off of each other to create the tenderness between the characters that is so essential to the book. To the LA Times reviewer who said that the film's stars had no chemistry, I give a big whatever with a raspberry on top.

Production design.

Overall tone. While the two-hour film can only cover so much of the novel, each major plot point is present and, with few exceptions, these feel as natural as they do in the book. This means that the overall feel of the story is present in the film version. The tenuous, but loving, relationship between two people in an impossible situation comes through loud and clear, as does the theme of living with loss in its many iterations. Overall, it's a moving, interesting story.

That said, there are many areas where the novel excels that the film could not possibly touch. While the film was quite satisfying from my perspective as a fan of the book, it definitely is the lesser of the two works. Here's why you should check out the book:

A story for both girls and boys. The reading men in my life, including my husband, really enjoyed the book--something I chalk up to Henry's manly exploits in the novel that got stripped from the screenplay. The film version is definitely aimed at the ladies. You rarely see Henry's more dangerous adventures, and Bana's screen time is dedicated more to being a leading man than to being a guy's guy. But the novel's Henry is much more complex and interesting. He regularly gets into fights when he lands naked in the middle of nowhere--and he has to be scrappy and resourceful to get himself clothed and oriented between episodes. The sense of danger that pervades the novel is mostly absent from the screen version, which focuses more on Henry's complicated feelings about Clare. But even those scenes in the novel are infused with a uniquely masculine perspective that didn't seem to make it to the reel.

Parallel narratives. While the film favors Henry's perspective, the book gives both Henry and Clare equal weight. In the novel, one chapter gives you Clare's POV; the next focuses on Henry's. This back and forth builds the tension of the story--and it serves to make Clare as round a character as her time-traveling counterpart. In her accounts of her long waits for his return, her frustrations, and her worries for his safety, you also feel an unbearable suspense for Henry's fate--which is often left open at the end of his chapters. That subtly increased tension is an art that just can't make it to the silver screen.

Less creepy child interactions. In the novel version when six-year-old Clare meets a thirty-something Henry alone in a meadow, the creepiness of the situation doesn't really stand out. This is probably thanks to Niffenegger's telling of the story through Clare's childlike perspective to give the meeting a magical quality. The film version of this scene, with Bana towering over the child actress, gives it a much more Lolita quality--an ick factor that took me right out of the scene. It's too bad this pivotal plot point wasn't handled better in the film.

Character-driven time travel. Usually, I roll my eyes when I hear the words "good book" and "time travel," but this is a remarkable exception. At first read, the rules Niffenegger creates for time travel seem entirely plausible (they unravel a little on closer inspection, but they're still pretty good). Henry's "episodes," often brought on by stress, come across as entirely organic, which means that time travel in this case is not at all a nifty plot device. Instead, it's always a reveal about Henry's character. The movie doesn't really go into the logic of Niffenegger's time travel, a weakness that might leave viewers who are new to the material dissatisfied. The film also leaves out some interesting, and very human, interactions between Henry and his past selves (thanks to gintastic for the reminder!).

The Time Traveler's Wife (book): *****
The Time Traveler's Wife (film): ***

Chain Chat: Ralph's Lives Up to Its Name

2009-07-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

In which I blow off bullet points for an astounding real-life encounter with supermarket kind.

I tend to avoid Ralph's supermarket. We have a lovely small grocery store nearby (a smaller chain called Fresh & Easy) that rocks my little world. And we have Trader Joe's, too! But every once in a while I end up at Ralph's, either to get a missing ingredient or because I happen to be in the neighborhood. Well, after today, I won't be going back for a looooooooong time. (I want to say never, but never say never, right?)

I should have seen the weirdness coming when my progress was blocked multiple times by carts parked smack in the middle of the aisles. Usually, this doesn't happen in every aisle, but today was special. The old lady muttering mild expletives under her breath in the bread aisle was another omen I ignored after giving her a suitably wide berth.

When the time came to check out, there were only two lanes open, and as the salty-tongued lady was at the end of one, I chose the other. The fresh-faced young 'un manning the register waited too long to inform me she was closing the lane after the next customer, so I strolled back over to the ever-lengthening lane behind Old Mrs. Potty Mouth. I was about to unload my groceries, when the manager came over.

Now, the manager was at one time one of my favorite checkers at this establishment. She was always quick and polite and funny. But as manager, she's an imposing woman. Loud, large, and no-nonsense authoritative. Before I could place my chickens and eggs on the conveyor belt, she personally escorted me to a lane that she said was just opening up. Of course, it was just the same lane I'd been to earlier--the little chickadee must have been told that going on break in the middle of a cash-register rush is not store policy.

Anyway, there was already a guy in line--a fortyish athletic-looking fellow who'd spent the better part of his time in the grocery aisles taking up more than his fair share of space. But that doesn't mean he deserved what followed. To my chagrin, the manager boomed him out of the line. "THERE WERE PEOPLE WAITING," she shouted.

"But I was waiting, too," he noted calmly, and not improperly.

But she would have none of it. She badgered him loudly until he put his cart in reverse. Suddenly, I found myself in front of him, too disoriented and embarrassed to remember to do the proper thing and let him ahead of me. When I finally realized what I had done, most of my groceries were already on the conveyor belt. I made myself look him in the eye and say, "I'm so sorry about that. That was so confusing."

He met my eyes, not unfriendly at all, and said, "That's OK. They should have more checkers." He continued to make me feel better and worse at the same time by being extra sweet to baby G, who was happily playing with the Cheerios box in the basket.

After that, the experience kept going downhill. Little chickadee coughed dramatically all over her hands before giving me my receipt (sigh), but the weirdness wasn't over. Just as I was about to peel out of there with the packed cart, the frail little employee who bagged the groceries stepped in front of me. She had surprising stamina for her appearance--it looked like the effort of hefting just one soup can into a shopping cart would be enough to overwhelm her.

I stopped the cart, adjusted the baby on my hip, and moved my wallet to my free hand.

"That wallet you have," she said. "I saw it on TV."

I should mention that the wallet in question is a handy all-in-one number with a key-chain, a cell-phone pocket, and a zipper pouch with pockets for ID, credit cards, etc. But it's not particularly unusual looking. It's a pretty shade of red, but that's its one real distinguishing feature. And I'm pretty sure she didn't see this particular wallet on TV--my wallet-giving benefactress doesn't watch infomercials.

Uh-oh, I thought. This is not going anywhere good."It... it was a gift," I mumbled, hoping this true tidbit would get me out of the conversation in a hurry. The last thing I wanted was to prolong my Ralph's experience by chin-wagging about wallets with the bag clerk.

"$19.99," she said, awed. She turned to the baby in my arms. "Your mamma has good taste."

Good meaning expensive, I could see. Mortifying.

"Can I see it? I think it's the same one," she said, reaching out her hand. "With the pocket for the credit cards..."

While technically, the touch of one cart wheel would have felled her, I couldn't do it. Pretending not to understand, I turned the wallet over in my hand, just showing her the back of it. "Yeah, that sounds like it."

"Well," she said conspiratorially. "Your friend got it on the Internet."

It is rare that I find myself at a loss for words, but rack my brain as I might, I could not come up with the proper, expedient response. "Oh," I said finally, practically doing a wheelie with the cart in my 180-degree getaway maneuver. "You have a good day, now."

"You, too!" she called after me, in a voice that said she knew my secret and would keep it forever.

There are tons of reasons not to go to this Ralph's. Like the time I saw the customer sneeze liberally all over the open vegetable displays. Or the day the rotting produce oozed out all over the floor of the fruit section, tripping up unsuspecting elderly customers until I practically had to sit on a manager to get a clean-up on aisle one already. And there was the time the staffer didn't know what barley was and showed me white rice after a 20-minute wait. But this really takes the cake. They won't be seeing this wallet again for a looooooooooooooong time. Preferably never.

Tot Time: Easy Entertainment

2009-06-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

Who knew everyday things could be so much fun?

Before baby G arrived, I always figured we were the world's most boring household for kids to visit. Sure, we could muster up a stuffed animal or two, but most visiting tots had to make due with the toys they brought. Otherwise, they had to be content testing out our doorknobs or having staring matches with the dog.

Now that baby G is here, we are much more kid-friendly. There are bins of toys to rummage through and mats to play on and plenty of kiddie lit to read. But while baby G enjoys all of these things, some of the most entertaining items in the house were things we had all along. Who knew?

But before I tell you what they are, let me lead with a disclaimer: Obviously, all children have to be supervised when playing with anything so that they don't hurt themselves (or anyone or anything else). The most harmless-looking magazine can be a paper dagger in the wrong hands, after all!

Now that that's out of the way, here are five household items baby G can't get enough of:

Laundry. If you think that age nine months is too early to get your child excited about chores, think again. Pulling out the laundry basket turned out to be a really fun way to entertain baby while getting some housework done—an almost unthinkable combination. At first, baby G contented himself by pulling out the items one by one (socks and washcloths are still favorites). Then as he got older and bolder, he was able to empty the basket at lightening speed (progressing to challenging items like our jeans and bath towels). The basket itself serves as fort, walker, and toy-collection bin. (Look out! He also tried to use it as a step stool once.) Of course, baby G soon figured out it was also fun to unfold the laundry. But for the most part, I can work around the sabotage by putting the piles up higher (like on the back of the couch). So, it's still a lot of fun for both of us!

Greeting cards. Since birth, I've been an incorrigible pack rat, which means I've got enough old birthday cards and holiday greetings in the garage to start a museum. So, I was just delighted when baby G took an instant liking to the Valentine sent from his clever aunt. She knew that he would be mesmerized by the hologram on the front. We're talking 10-minute stretches of total concentration while he turned it over and over in his hands. Luckily, that fascination transferred to the two-dimensional variety as well, and we now keep his birthday and holiday cards in a stack for him to look through now and then. Of course, we keep the very special ones out of reach, as there are occasional casualties, and we also have to look out for paper cuts and any ingesting of corners or torn pieces. But for the most part, baby G is very careful with them. He's also a huge fan of the musical/talking ones. He loves puzzling over opening and closing them to make the sound start and stop. Those especially require supervision, of course, as the wee speaker system is loaded with tiny parts that could easily find their way into baby's mouth.

Plastic bins. This should have been a no-brainer for me, as many of us grew up rummaging through our parents' Tupperware cupboards. But I didn't realize how much fun babies can have taking toys out of a bin and putting them right back in again. This activity has not only given me hope that baby G somehow got the tidy gene that I don't carry, but it has also encouraged him to be even more mobile. To fill a bin to the brim, he will go to great lengths, including a crawl across the room to find just the right toy. Then he'll pick up the toy and either stand up and take a few steps toward the bin, or he'll do this rather strenuous-looking knee-walk to get where he wants to go. It's pretty fun to watch!

Magazines. Like many households, we get a stream of magazines and catalogs in the daily mail. Back issues are a great way to give baby G something to look at. Sometimes when he's sitting at the breakfast table with his dad, they'll both be flipping through their own magazines. It's adorable! Anyway, the photos in magazines like Parents or Real Simple seem to catch his eye, and he's a huge fan of the detachable magazine subscription cards. For the most part, he's very careful turning pages, and sometimes I'll hand him a magazine when he's in the playpen so he can be entertained while I'm catching up on e-mail on the adjacent couch. Of course, there is the occasional rip fest, at which point, I generally take the magazine away and replace it with a board book or something that doesn't have edible pieces. In addition to the safety concerns, I'm not excited about him learning to rip up pages, as I fear for our books and other important papers. But, a magazine packs easily for visits to friends' houses, and baby won't miss it if you accidentally leave it behind.

The dog's collar. This was an accidental discovery. One day, the dog was sleeping on the couch next to the collar that I must have removed but forgot to put away (see pack rat reference above). When baby G came up to the couch to visit the dog (always an adventure for both parties), he noticed the collar, picked it up, and began jingling it like a baby rattle. He had a huge grin on his face the whole time. So funny! He also held it up to the dog and giggled like crazy when she sniffed at it. This had the added benefit of keeping him distracted from the dog's very pullable ears. But, when he gets too exuberant and the metal license on the collar becomes a blur to the naked eye, I worry for his teeth and those of anyone within a three-foot radius. So, this is definitely something we only let him play with once in a while and with hawk-eyed supervision. Still, it's pretty hilarious to watch him crack up over it like it is the best and funniest discovery on the planet.

These were some fun discoveries for us, but surely there are plenty of everyday delights we've overlooked. Any suggestions?

Weep Watch: Three Surprise Tear Jerkers

2009-06-07T19:11:00.000-07:00

Why I now carry a hankie everywhere.

Maybe I'm in denial, but I never thought I was a weepy person. Sure, I cry over things, but certainly not every other day. Except for this week. This week, I found myself boo-hooing behind 3D glasses, in my car at the gas station, and in front of my parents' TV. I'm telling you, I'm probably dehydrated now. Here are the culprits:

The "Songs Around the World" project.

Pixar's Up.

This part from President Obama's D-Day speech:
I know this trip doesn't get any easier as the years pass, but for those of you who make it, there's nothing that could keep you away. One such veteran, a man named Jim Norene, was a member of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Division of the 101st Airborne. Last night, after visiting this cemetery for one last time, he passed away in his sleep. Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that he might not return. But just as he did 65 years ago, he came anyway. May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with, and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here.

For my fellow wimps out there, here's a song for you.

Tube Talk: Kiddie TV

2009-05-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

How to earn those square eyes early.

Baby G and I caught whatever bug was going around a couple of weeks ago, and so I took the opportunity to introduce him to the Magic Box. Passive entertainment isn't such a bad thing when everyone is cranky and congested. Not that baby G hasn't been exposed to what I like to think of as "second-hand TV." When we watch "The Daily Show" or "Nightly News with Brian Williams," baby G is in the playpen right beside us. But now that he's starting to do a Jon Stewart-inspired exaggerated shrug and chuckling with the studio audience, we might have to be more careful. Which is why we started watching programming made for kids—the following three programs in particular:

Sesame Street. I loved, loved, loved "Sesame Street" as a child (and looooong after)—but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the neighborhood is still the same after all these years. Sure, there are new people and monsters on the street, but Oscar still lives in his trash can and Maria and Luis still repair toasters at the fix-it shop. And, of course, it still has an unabashed alphanumeric agenda, with fun songs and commercial parodies featuring the letters and numbers of the day.

I had forgotten how clever Sesame Street is—the writers do a good job of keeping parents engaged, too, with parodies like "Law and Order: Missing Letters Unit," "The Adventures of Trash Gordon," "A's Anatomy," and "The Amazing Alphabet Race." Also, at least one celeb features prominently in each episode. This morning, I cracked up when James Blunt and Telly Monster sang "My Triangle", a parody of the singer's ubiquitous "You're Beautiful." I appreciate this because I now know who James Blunt is, which I'm pretty sure knocks 5 years off my age. I also love that Sesame Street isn't afraid to throw in $10 words, like when Cookie Monster's favorite snack broke in two and left him feeling "slightly lachrymose." How often does "lachrymose" appear in a laugh line? So great.

Probably the biggest change is that the last 15 minutes or so are now a segment called "Elmo's World" starring the red-felted Muppet with the Jar-Jar-like voice. Luckily, this little monster is a lot less annoying than he was back in the day. "Elmo's World" is geared for the youngest viewers, and baby G does perk right up when "Cat"—his word for Elmo, and any Muppet, for that matter—appears on the screen. Elmo explores one theme every day—usually anatomy like feet and eyes, or activities like jumping and helping. Sure, I have some beef with the creepy mime bit and the annoying ending song where Elmo plinks out the tune to "Jingle Bells" and sings the word of the day over and over. ("Eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes eyes"—yeesh.) But it does get the message across: After the segment on "teeth," baby G was pulling back our lips and shouting "chooch!"—a word that now serves for both "tooth" and "couch."

Anyway, it's pretty great that baby G and I have something to watch that we both enjoy. After 40 plus years, "Sesame Street" is still the gold standard of children's programming. *****

Yo Gabba Gabba. When my brother called to tell me about this show, he said he didn't know if it was the greatest thing ever or the worst acid trip for kids he'd ever seen. You get the indie/emo flavor from the intro of this Nick Jr. program, which you can check out here. The show opens with the host—a young guy called DJ Lance who sports Buddy Holly glasses, a fuzzy orange Cossack, and a matching jumpsuit—grooving across a white screen with his boombox. ("What's that?" The kids are going to want to know.) He opens the box to reveal what looks like a set of five grodie Gumby figurines that magically come to life (as people in full-body suits) when he lifts them out.

The characters have babytalk names—Muno, Foofa, Brobee, Toodee, and Plex—and their neon color palette comes straight out of a highlighter set. The character voices aren't as shrill as the Chipmunks, but they have a similar timbre—maybe more like a higher-pitched version of the little green aliens from Toy Story. In other words, they hover close to annoying, but are fairly watchable. To frenetic beats, the characters sing about being polite, going to sleep, the seasons, the dangers of crossing the street, etc.—and the show is broken up with little segments of kids dancing or bizarre interludes such as Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh teaching kids how to draw or DJ Lance making funny faces.

The problem with "Yo Gabba Gabba" is that the imperative prevails! Dance! Smile! Play! Every song is a command, and has maybe 10 words in it. After what seemed like the billionth chorus of "Don't give up, don't give up!" I wanted to rebel and quit everything. This is the kind of show I imagine kids have to watch in dystopias like the one in 1138. Dance! Like it! Or else. ***

Dora the Explorer. I was prepared to love Dora. After all, she's a smart, bilingual girl protagonist with cute gear that all the kids seem to love. Girl power! The 30-minute cartoon airs on Nickelodeon, and I set the DVR to record every episode.

Boy, was that a mistake! It is absolutely unwatchable. Dora and her friends—a monkey and a map—have such obnoxious, shrill voices (or is it the same voice?), that I'm pretty sure they can pierce small ear drums. The show format is a lot like an activity book maze. In each episode, Dora and friends must solve a problem by getting from point A to point B through a variety of obstacles. To stay on the right path, the characters break the fourth wall and ask the viewers to shout out answers to questions, such as "Should we go LEFT or RIGHT?" While Dora and pals re-shriek the question over and over, an arrow icon hovers on the screen for a very long time before clicking on the right answer. How lame! And this happens over and over again. It is interminable. Even baby G turned his back to the TV.

I was most disappointed by the bilingual element—there seemed to be very few Spanish vocabulary words, and the ones they used weren't reinforced well. One segment of "Sesame Street's" "Murray Has a Little Lamb" introduces more Spanish vocab than three episodes of Dora combined. So, I bid adios! to the tot icon and turned on Magnum P.I. Hey, there's only so much kid stuff a person can watch in a day! **

Growing Pains: Aging Alert!

2009-05-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

Five ways to tell this spring chicken is now a summer fowl.

I watch "Nightly News with Brian Williams."

I hyperventilate over $9 tickets to a matinee.

I get all wistful when I hear that song from The Breakfast Club.

I give my neighbor the hairy eyeball when her boyfriend roars up the street on his hog.

I call a motorcycle a "hog."

Reel Time: Required Viewing

2009-05-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

In which the Schoolmarm of America goes all multimedia.

No curriculum is complete without the multimedia element. And by multimedia, I mean the old-school '90s definition: the VHS tape. (This was before every student was hooked up to a series of tubes called the intarweb.) Sure, I guess the principals of the era counted the overhead projectors and blackboards as "media"—but it was really the portable TV cart with the attached VCR that made their hearts swell with pride.

We students also thrilled at the sight of the TV cart. Not only did this mean an hour with no lecture, but it was also guaranteed that the teacher would spend a good 15 minutes treating the VCR like an exotic animal he had never seen before. After gingerly attempting to jiggle the wires, press every button, and cue up the tape, he would throw up his hands and threaten to lecture—at which point, the one techie kid per class would leap to his aid and have the video playing in no time.

The substitute teachers, however, had it down. They understood that their sanity depended on dulling our senses with whatever magic light show the teacher had provided, which meant it was up and running the minute the bell rang. In high school, our health teacher was the most regular sub, and she was no nonsense about the VCR. After pressing Play, she would plant herself at the teacher's desk (where she could not see the video) and periodically glare at us over her book. I'll never forget her livid face when our European history class erupted at the orgy scene during Caligula, the PBS series we were watching as a supplement to our lessons on the Roman emperors. She had her back to the TV when she threatened us to settle down or else—so she didn't see the guys in togas playing the Roman equivalent of spin-the-bottle behind her. For us Catholic school girls, whose in-class videos were usually about martyrs in South America, this was funniest thing we'd ever seen! And you can bet that we remembered this scene from Caligula long after we forgot the succession of emperors.

All this is the long way of saying that if I were magically to become Leader of the World (as posited in the last post), I would supplement my subjects' required reading with some required viewing for extra indoctrination. Here is what would play on the VCRs across my domain:

A State of Mind. This eye-popping British documentary follows two young girl gymnasts who are preparing for the Mass Games, a massive-scale pageant in honor of North Korea's Kim Jong-il. They train for hours every day for months to prepare for this one event. The film, released in 2004, provides an intimate look at family life in one of the world's most enigmatic dictatorships, and the disturbing devotion the people of North Korea have to their Dear Leader, despite the terrible conditions (especially food shortages) that plague the people. In one telling scene, family members pause to curse the United States when the electricity goes out during a routine blackout. North Korea isn't known for open access to journalists, so this might be the closest any of us gets to the viewpoints of its citizens.

Hell House. Lest anyone believes that scary brainwashing only happens on the other side of the world, welcome to Hell House, a chilling look at one iteration of fundamental Christianity on our own soil. This 2001 documentary follows the young members of a Baptist church outside of Dallas who put on a graphic, haunted-house-style pageant depicting what happens to those who don't live their version of a Christian life. Visitors to Hell House go from room to room to witness horrifying skits featuring "un-Christian" choices and subsequent damnation—at the end of which, each attendee is offered a conversion opportunity. It's jaw-dropping. Make sure you have a light comedy on hand for a chaser. You're going to need it.

Koppel: Iran, The Most Dangerous Nation. Ted Koppel is basically the man. In this 2006 documentary for the Discovery Channel, Koppel plumbed the source of tensions between the United States and Iran by (gasp!) actually speaking to people in Iran. The range of interviews and perspectives he gets from people of all walks of life there is truly enlightening. We need more journalists like Koppel, who delves into the complexity of the problem rather than just regurgitating the propaganda from both sides.

Koppel: The People's Republic of Capitalism. Koppel's four-part series on modern China, which aired on the Discovery Channel right before the Beijing Olympics, focuses on the economic boom in that nation and how it affects our own economy. With the same balance he brings to his series on Iran, Koppel talks to everyone from farmers and industrial laborers to business moguls and American factory workers. He also spends a fair amount of time on the rising middle class. Did you know that a black Buick is the ultimate status symbol over there? I didn't. This series captures China at a pivotal point in global history—and it serves as an invaluable primer for those of us who don't know much about today's Chinese culture.

The Hobart Shakespeareans. Some titles on this list left me whimpering in the fetal position; others just made me anxious—but this 2004 documentary warmed the frigid cockles of my heart. Under the guidance of Rafe Esquith—author of the excellent book about his unorthodox teaching methods, Teach Like Your Hair Is on Fire—the fifth graders of Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in Central Los Angeles put on a full-length Shakespearean play once a year. For most of these students, English is not the primary language spoken at home—so their perfect, passionate delivery of the Bard's dialogue is truly moving. The film also highlights the many ways Esquith goes above and beyond in the classroom: extra math lessons before school begins, guitar classes at recess, and even a field trip to Washington, D.C. Esquith puts all of his energy into helping his students become hard-working, courteous, independent thinkers who refuse to be held back by the sometimes harsh economic realities of their childhood. It's a continuing story of hope and a must-see.

Anything else I should add to the list before I put on my world-domination tiara?

Book Beat: Required Reading

2009-05-14T15:12:00.001-07:00

If I were Schoolmarm of America, this would be your homework.

This might sound high-falutin' coming from someone who spent the first half of the year bingeing on a trashy mystery series and even trashier vampire novels (which I devoured with the enthusiasm of a little girl savoring her first Halloween stash, by the way). But, I feel like we as Americans have a serious lack of interest--or possibly access?--to the perspectives of other peoples in other countries. And we remain ignorant at our peril. Globalization is here, folks. In this interdependent world, we can't afford not to know our neighbors, even the ones that are millions of miles away.

This is especially true of the Middle East. I, for one, knew next to nothing about Iran or Afghanistan until these proper nouns started making the daily headlines. But the news blurbs I was reading and watching never gave me a sense of the peoples, cultures, and personal challenges that make up these dots on a map. And so I was profoundly grateful when friends, family, and chance brought me books that help put a human face on some of the world's greatest challenges.

I'm also not convinced that we Americans know our own story that well. That's why if I ever take over the world (and the chances of that are slim, dear reader!), I would not only raise taxes to fund my palatial pool, but I would also require essays from every man, woman, and child on the following books:

Three Cups of Tea. After a failed attempt to climb K2 in 1993, an American nurse named Greg Mortenson found himself being nursed back to health by the villagers of Korphe, Pakistan. In gratitude, he pledged to build the village's first school. Since then, the Central Asia Institute he founded has built more than 50 schools in some of the most needy villages in rural Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of course, it was no easy accomplishment--and Mortenson and co-author David Oliver Relin describe the fierce obstacles he overcame, including a chilling encounter with the Taliban. The book argues that the way to defeat Islamic extremism in this area is through building access to education--particularly for girls. Three Cups of Tea provides a rare glimpse into village life, and the overall message is surprisingly hopeful.

Persepolis. The first half of Marjane Satrapi's memoir in comic book form tells the story of the fall of the Shah and the rise of the Islamic Republic from her perspective as a little girl growing up in Tehran in 1979. The fear, cruelty, and extremist restrictions of the time are all the more horrifying from a child's point of view--especially one so inquisitive, passionate, and funny. The second half of Satrapi's tale recounts her experiences as an expatriate in Europe, and how the experience of displacement nearly killed her. Satrapi is as candid about her own flaws as she is about her country's--which is why I prefer her story to Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, who fills too many pages celebrating her own intelligence. Both Satrapi's memoir and the 2008 film adaptation provide an enlightening look at how drastically Iran has changed since 1979--and how it has changed the people who live there.

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. In this short story collection, Ben Fountain describes such vivid characters, places, and situations that it is easy to forget these tales are fiction. Almost every story takes place in a third-world country--the descriptions of which are informed by Fountain's extensive research and travels to Haiti--and centers on the impossible choices the characters living there have to make every day. Will the American relief worker in Sierra Leone steal blood diamonds to keep her women's shelter going? Should the Haitian fisherman turn over the guns and drugs he finds on the beach to the police? Can the American golf pro in Myanmar turn a blind eye to the shady business dealings he sees on the course? Fountain's smooth, polished writing style is funny, poignant, and intelligent. His American characters are often at odds with their own privileged backgrounds and the destitution they see as expatriates, and how they deal with this displacement makes for intense reading. Fountain's collection is fiction at its best.

Ake: The Years of Childhood. This 1989 memoir from Wole Soyinka recounts his early years--ages 4 through 11--growing up in his hometown of Ake, Nigeria. Soyinka, who became the first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, parallels his own coming of age with his country's search for identity, as both seek to reconcile the African, Western, tribal, and Christian influences that continually contradict one another. The book ends with an amazing account of the rebellion launched by the village women, including Soyinka's mother, against the dictator in power. It's an eye-popping account of a part of the world we so rarely hear about here. I first encountered Soyinka's writing in a college class--his novel The Interpreters is a haunting portrayal of intellectuals wasting away under the corrupt Nigerian government--and I had the pleasure of hearing him read from the sequel to this memoir (You Must Set Forth at Dawn) a couple of years ago at my alma mater. I highly recommend that one, too--although it is much more dense and even abstract at times. Still, it is a gripping read about the succession of corrupt and violent dictators in Nigeria, Soyinka's acts of rebellion and self-imposed exile, and his ever-present longing to return to his native soil.

Dreams From My Father. Long before our Commander in Chief hit the national political scene, he wrote a memoir about his search for identity as a biracial American. The book, which was written in 1995 after Barack Obama headed the Harvard Law Review, focuses mainly on his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, his years as a community organizer in Chicago, and his first encounter with his brothers, sister, and extended family in Kenya. Obama, well-known for his beautiful oratory, is also a gifted writer, with the literary sensibilities of a novelist. He writes with objective candor about his struggle to define himself as an African American man (especially because he had no African-American male role models as a child) and come to terms with the enigma of a father he met only once. The Kenyan section is especially moving--where Obama is at once at home and at sea in the bosom of the family he never knew. It's a fascinating glimpse into the events that shaped this president--and a much more intimate experience than his political expositions in The Audacity of Hope.

Assassination Vacation. This treat from radio commentator (and voice of Violet in "The Incredibles") Sarah Vowell describes her obsession with presidential assassination trivia. This book is chock full of info about the assassinations of Lincoln, McKinley, and Garfield infused with Vowell's own funny anecdotes about her road trips to all of the locations, museums, and libraries involved in her research (often with her twin sister and young nephew in tow). Vowell's flare for weird details, her quirky personality, and her passion for American history and civics makes this an entertaining read from start to finish. It's so much fun that I promise you'll soon forget it's homework.

OK, class dismissed! Homework question: What books in this vein do you recommend?

Destination: Procrastination

2009-05-13T01:19:00.000-07:00

Postpone almost anything with these five evasive actions!

Get another glass of water. C'mon, you know it's good for you.

Check Google News. How will you know when the sky is falling if you don't refresh the page every five seconds?

Throw on a load of laundry. If you don't make your socks a priority, no one will.

Catch up on your correspondence. Let the friend who e-mailed you six months ago know you're still kicking.

Update your blog. At least you won't be putting that off anymore.

On Queue: "The Prisoner"

2009-04-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

What's not to love about this '60s British spy series?

The 1967 British television show, "The Prisoner," is one part Bond and one part 1984, with a splash of "Gilligan's Island" for good measure. You've got a spy trapped in the world's resort-iest prison, the creepy surveillance squad who watches his every move, and the amusing antics (art competitions, sun bathing, afternoon teas) that break up the monotony of his entrapment between daring escape attempts. We've watched only the first two installments of the 18-episode series so far, but "The Prisoner" is already our new favorite thing!

You can get the flavor of this quirky spy show from the opening credits, which shows a British agent (Patrick McGoohan) resign, go home to pack, and then fall victim to knock-out gas. The first episode opens with McGoohan waking in what appears to be his own room in London—except the view from the window looks like a European seaside resort. Turns out he's in the Village—an idyllic holding area for captured spies complete with restaurants, beautiful beaches, and even an old-folks' home—where he'll be kept until he reveals the reason behind his resignation. Of course, he won't talk, not before he knows who's in charge or where he is. The second-in-command, known as No. 2, gives him a number—No. 6—and an ultimatum to comply or he'll have to spend the rest of his life in the Village. So, of course, No. 6 spends every minute plotting his escape, when he's not provoking his captors with cutting remarks over tea.

The pilot alone is worth the price of admission. Here's why you should fast-track "The Prisoner" to the top of your queue:

Tons of secrets! Where the heck is the Village? Why did No. 6 resign? And who is the mysterious No. 1 that no one sees? A good guy? A bad guy? A guy at all? Not to mention there's a new No. 2 every five minutes. What happens to the old ones?

An attack weather balloon! Yeah, you read that right. This bad boy thwarts all escape attempts from the Village with its creepy, floaty roundness. Imagine that fluffy bubble that chauffeurs Glinda around Oz, only less pink and on stealth mode. CREEPY.

Femmes fatales galore! In the first two episodes, No. 6 has already encountered three deadly damsels, each trying to play up her distress so that she can get close enough to probe his secrets. It's kind of fun that these aren't the era's fragile females—even if they're ultimately out for No. 1.

High-tech hijinks! Dude, nothing is more hilarious than seeing what looked "high-tech" in the late '60s. Doors open by themselves (oooooh!), radios play without off-switches (aaaaah!), and furniture springs fully formed from the floor at the press of a button (whooooa!). The set designers went disappointingly Star Trek for most of the baddy HQ—bleeps, bloops, tiny blinking lights, and a wall-sized video screen—but kudos to whoever came up with the rotating surveillance see-saw.

Campy quirks! Whip pans, quick cuts, and crash zooms abound. Pleasant PA announcements blare M*A*S*H style in the courtyard. Thunder crashes in the opening credits over images of No. 6's resignation. Not to mention there is a silly salute between Villagers, who hold the OK sign up to their eyeballs, flick their wrists, and say, "Be seeing you!" There's a tongue-in-cheek quality to the whole thing that keeps the episodes entertaining. Can't wait for the next disc!

"The Prisoner": *****

Reel Time: Six Flicks in a Year

2009-04-19T12:14:00.000-07:00

A few films we saw live and in person.

If it weren't for the writers' strike of '08, rocky SAG negotiations, and general economic malaise, our household could probably take responsibility for Hollywood's reduced profits this past year. We're movie junkies, and until last spring, you'd find us at the neighborhood multiplex most weekends. We'd even stand in line for opening blockbusters (until we got wise about buying tickets in advance), and when the spirit moved us, we'd brave the traffic for a special showing at the Nuart, the El Capitan, or the Egyptian. We didn't go to hundreds of movies a year—but definitely dozens.

Last year, we saw six. While some parents apparently have no qualms about bundling up their infants and schlepping them to the latest horror flick (gasp!), we have not taken our addiction that far. At this point, a noisy, jerky light show would probably scar baby G for life—not to mention, he hasn't cottoned on to the magic of sitting still and staring at a screen for two hours. We still sneak the occasional Netflix rental (sometimes even managing to see the whole thing in one sitting!), but a trip to the cinema is rare. Thanks to the generosity of babysitting grandparents, however, we do get to the theater every once in a while. Here's a rundown of our ticket stubs from the past year:

WALL-E. *****
This was a perfect first film for new parents! Pixar's signature storytelling prowess, the eye-popping animation, and the toe-tapping sample from Hello Dolly absolutely delighted us. And Ben Burtt's sound design was truly out of this world. We loved this story about a lonely, trash-compacting robot so much that we've seen it twice on DVD, too. Not only is it a lovely story about robot love, but it's also got some interesting social commentary about consumerism, obesity, and laziness that gives one pause without killing one's joy. The DVD extras—especially the commentary from director Andrew Stanton and Burtt's sound-design interview—are worth checking out!

Tropic Thunder. **
One thing that happens when you haven't been to the movies in a while is that all the previews start to look amazing. We kind of fell into that trap with this uneven comedy directed by Ben Stiller, which follows a war-movie cast that gets dropped into the middle of an actual war zone. Implausibly, the actors spend a great deal of time believing that the whole thing is an elaborate set, before having to best the bad guys for real. Stiller leads a great cast, but some performers are wasted. Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance is pretty amazing (he plays an Australian method actor who undergoes a pigment-changing surgery to play an African-American character in the war film), but Jack Black is underused as a drug-addicted stooge. There are some really great moments—such as the hilarious fake movie previews at the beginning—but the over-the-top violence of the war scenes is too jarring. It's uncomfortable to watch, which was probably the point, but not my cup of tea.

Quantum of Solace. ***
This was sleek, action-packed, forgettable fun. I remember so little of this 007 flick that I can't even report on it properly, which is why it gets a retroactive three stars (although at the time, I may have given it four). Calling a Bond film "plotless" isn't very descriptive, as a plot is rarely required—but this installment directed by Marc Forster is more plotless than usual. It picks up just after Casino Royale, which blew my little mind with its intensity, thrilling base-jumping scenes, and prominent Sony ad placements. Now that was a Bond film. Quantum of Solace is just a series of very cool car chases—but nothing amazing. Except, of course, Daniel Craig, who gives Bond a rugged athleticism that injects new life into the franchise.

My Name Is Bruce. **
We have a working theory that Bruce Campbell movies are much more enjoyable if the B-action star is actually in the room with you. This is the second time we've seen him live at the Nuart (the first was for Bubba Ho-tep, in which he plays an elderly, mummy-slaying Elvis), and his Q&A session was definitely the highlight of both evenings. He's got this uncanny way of combining sarcastic put-downs with genuine fan appreciation. For example, when Rabid Fan Woman in the front row proffered roses and a bottle Jack Daniels, Campbell demurred, saying he doesn't touch "brown liquid," and handed her five dollars for her trouble. Someone else got a fiver for saying that My Name Is Bruce was his favorite Campbell film, proving that some people will say anything for a buck.
Bruce Campbell directed this film about a monster-plagued town that hires (surprise!) B-action star Bruce Campbell to vanquish it. Of course, just like Tropic Thunder, it takes Bruce forever to figure out the monster is real. The monster itself, a Chinese war god that haunts the town cemetery, has some pretty entertaining wrath—but the surrounding lore and the portrayal of the Chinese character (Ted Raimi) who explains it are uncomfortably racist. Campbell does an OK job behind the camera (he admitted he only directs when he has to), but the script is a real drag. There are a couple of decent laughs and Campbell is a good sport about the self-parody as a drunken jerk, but the overall concept doesn't sustain a feature-length film. It's more of a B-movie knock-off than a spoof. Is there such a thing as a C-movie? Apparently so.

Gran Torino. *****
I wasn't sure what to expect from this film, which was teased as old Clint Eastwood taking down gangland USA with a rifle. It looked both cool and ridiculous—like a wild urban romp. But that's not what it was. Against the backdrop of violent racial tensions—underscored by Eastwood's character's seemingly endless supply of racial epithets—is the story of a cantankerous widower and Korean war vet who is out of place in a changing world. That world is his own neighborhood in Detroit, where Eastwood spends his days drinking beer on the porch and cursing the neighbors, most of whom are Hmong refugees. It doesn't help when the kid next door tries to steal his prized Gran Torino as part of a gang initiation. Of course, Eastwood eventually befriends this kid and his sister and finds himself going up against the neighborhood gangsters as advertised. Probably the most chilling performances are from the actors who play Eastwood's sons and grandchildren, whose sense of entitlement and total lack of caring for their aging family member are all too lifelike. After the credits rolled, I felt like Eastwood had told me something true about the world, and I can't stop thinking about the film. I'm not sure why this one didn't get an Oscar, unless the Academy was tired of adding to Eastwood's collection. The song over the credits also made my day, punk.

Duplicity. ****
This heisty rom-com probably deserves only three stars, but I'm feeling generous because it was surprisingly delightful. Sure, it is a little long, a little choppy, and a little convoluted, but Clive Owen is easy on the eyes, and his performance as former-MI-6-agent-gone-corporate-spy is fun and enjoyable. Even Julia Roberts, who usually annoys me, does a decent job as the CIA agent who gets under Owen's skin, and Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson give hilarious performances as warring corporate bigwigs. I'm not going to go into the plot—because it's one of those where the less you know (and the lower your expectations), the more fun you will have—but I'm tickled that writer/director Tony Gilroy also wrote The Cutting Edge, which I have loved shamelessly since I was 13. Before you skating haters write him off for this, however, please note that he also penned the Bourne scripts and wrote and directed Michael Clayton, which was excellent. So there!

Music Beat: Classical Escapes

2009-04-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Don't find yourself stranded without these five classical albums.

Way back in the 90s, we kids would sometimes pass the time with questions like, "If you were stuck on a desert island, what five albums would you take with you?" Obviously, that was long before these newfangled iPods with their infinite storage capacity made the whole thing a moot point. If you were alone on a desert island with an iPhone, you'd probably never want to leave. You'd have every album and movie known to man, and if your private beach had WiFi, you could Google for coconut recipes, blog about raft building, and Twitter picts of yourself with your volleyball BFF to the folks back home.

But let's say ye olde deserte islande is back, and you're stuck with a Sony Walkman and five classical CDs. Which ones will keep your mind off the circling sharks? Well, I'll tell you.

Portrait of Vladimir Horowitz.

Humoresque: Favorite Violin Encores. My grandmother played this album so often that I get synesthesia every time I hear it. From the first note of "Flight of the Bumble Bee," I am on the couch in the my grandmother's den reading a book and chewing on the Riesen chocolate she just tossed me from her chair. This compilation from the great violinist Isaac Stern (who lived from 1920 to 2001) combines folk favorites such as "Greensleeves" and Brahms' "Hungarian Dances" with classic staples including Debussy's "Clair de Lune." His violin becomes almost a human voice in Schubert's "Ave Maria" and Foster's "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair." Both Schubert's "Serenade" and Mendelssohn's "On Wings of Song" are achingly beautiful. This collection marries the lively, robust sounds of Copland's "Hoedown" (better known as the "Beef: It's what's for dinner" melody) with the melancholy whimsy of Kreisler's "Liebesleid." Each track is a treasure—it's hard to imagine a more delightful, satisfying collection.

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons. When I got my first stereo, I used to close the door to my room and pretend to conduct these four famous violin concertos. Air-conducting to a recording behind closed doors has its advantages—the musicians never make mistakes, and no one can see you flailing your arms like an idiot. Each concerto depicts a season. The opening violin strokes of "Spring" always make me sit bolt upright with a grin on my face. It's joy and precision and lyricism all bundled together. What's not to love? Our family once huddled on the steps of the National Museum in Prague to hear a live concert of "The Four Seasons"—it was surprisingly intimate and such a delight. If you can hear it live, don't miss it!

Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez; Fantasia Para un Gentilhombre. My parents used to play the LP version of this album for guitar and orchestra during almost every dinner party. This beautiful performance by Australian guitar soloist and Andres Segovia protege John Williams (not the one of Star Wars fame) gave me a lifelong love of classical guitar. Somehow, the quiet voice of the guitar doesn't get swallowed up by the full-bodied roar of the orchestra. The first movement begins almost like a call and response between the guitar and the strings, winds, and brass. But the instruments ultimately weave together to build the energy of the piece, which crescendos to a spectacular finish. Wikipedia says this all much better—but it's probably best to just hear it for yourself.

Classic Williams: Romance of the Guitar. No album is more relaxing and refreshing than this gem from guitarist John Williams (the same soloist who performs the "Concierto de Aranjuez" mentioned above). The tone throughout the album may be gentle, but that does not make it boring. In each recording, Williams' guitar is as expressive and arresting as a good storyteller. Ponce's "Scherzino Mexicano," for example, may build on a repeated them, but the way Williams brings out the louds, softs, and pauses of the piece makes each repetition feel fresh. Every track is richly textured. As in Stern's "Humoresque," Williams' instrument becomes the human voice for some tracks, including Myers' "Cavatina" from the film, "The Deer Hunter"—a simple, but haunting melody. There are faster pieces, too, such as deFalla's "Danza Espanola" that highlight Williams' technical prowess. The album ends with the Adagio movement of Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez," which usually leaves me wanting to hear the whole piece from start to finish—which is why I'm bringing both albums to my desert island.

Of course, this is the age of the iPod, so no need to settle for just five albums. What classical treasures would you stash in your life vest?

Music Beat: Soothing Show Tunes

2009-04-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

Musical numbers that put the "lull" in "lullaby."

When baby G arrived last year, he kept a simple schedule: Eat for an hour, sleep for an hour, repeat. Once we figured this out, it wasn't so hard to find a cat-napping rhythm of our own. Still, sleep deprivation does funny things to the brain—and the cells storing my musical memory short-circuited.

Like many new moms, I sang to the little guy all the time. But instead of the beautiful, child-appropriate ballads my mother sang to me, I was streaming pop music circa 1990. We're talking Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," NKotB's "The Right Stuff" (ugh!), and the chorus to Snoop Dogg's "Who Am I (What's My Name)?" In one particularly bad moment, I churned through a piece of meta-pop from Neil Diamond called "The American Popular Song." That pulp—with the telling lyric "The American popular song goes on and on and on"—had been moldering in a corner of my brain since the early 80s.

Obviously, baby G's musical education needed an overhaul! Today, our MP3 player administers regular doses of indie rock songs, folk tunes, jazz sessions, British rock anthems, and classical recordings—but our favorite staple is the musical soundtrack. And why not? The lively song-and-dance numbers are like primary colors—bright, cheery, simple, and entertaining. So, it's no surprise that five of our favorite lullabies come from musical soundtracks. Here they are:

"Moonshine Lullaby" from Annie Get Your Gun
Illegal brewing has never been more soothing than in Bernadette Peters' rendition of this treasure from Irving Berlin. We saw her in the 1999 Broadway revival—and the incredible energy she had on stage comes through loud and clear in the recording. With lyrics like the following, how can you go wrong?

"Behind the hill,
There's a busy little still
Where your Pappy's workin' in the moonlight.

"Your lovin' paw
Isn't quite within the law,
So he's hidin' there behind the hill.

"Bye, bye, baby.
Stop your yawnin'.
Don't cry, baby,
Day will be dawning.

"And when it does,
From the mountain where he wuz,
He'll be coming with a jug of moonshine."

You get the idea.

"Stay Awake" from Mary Poppins
Julie Andrews tenderly delivers this clever piece of reverse psychology from Sherman and Sherman on the film soundtrack. The lyrics may preach resistance to bedtime, but the sleepy melody promises to carry kids off to dreamland before they can put up a fight:

"Stay awake, don't rest your head.
Don't lie down upon your bed.
While the moon drifts in the skies,
Stay awake, don't close your eyes.

"Though the world is fast asleep,
Though your pillow's soft and deep,
You're not sleepy as you seem.
Stay awake, don't nod and dream;
Stay awake, don't nod and dream."

"Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music
When I was 10 and wanted my cat to climb up on the bed with me, all I had to do was sing this Rogers and Hammerstein favorite from The Sound of Music. What can I say? The cat had taste. There's something intimate and comforting about the acoustic guitar accompaniment (which my mom played for me when she taught me the song). And the lyrics are hopeful and happy, with a dash of nationalism—just what every kid needs, right?

"Edelweiss, Edelweiss,
Every morning you greet me.
Small and white, clean and bright,
You look happy to meet me.

"Blossom of snow,
May you bloom and grow,
Bloom and grow forever.

"Edelweiss, Edelweiss,
Bless my homeland forever."

"Good Night, My Someone" from The Music Man
My mom taught me this ballad from Meredith Willson's The Music Man for one of those elementary school talent shows, and I just loved the idea of singing a lullaby to a person I'd never met. The unknown person, of course, is one's true love: "I must depend on a wish and a star as long as my heart doesn't know who you are." Swoon, right? This chorus came right back to me when I was rocking baby G one night, which gave me hope for recovered brain cells:

"Sweet dreams be yours, dear,
If dreams there be,
Sweet dreams to carry you close to me.
I wish they may, and I wish they might;
Now goodnight, my someone, goodnight."

"A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" from Cinderella

version

Maintenance

2009-04-12T22:48:00.000-07:00

It's been too long between posts, dear reader (yes, you!). So, here turns the new leaf. The next few entries will be experiments with that HTML staple, the unordered list, in the hopes that this will encourage shorter, more positive, and more frequent updates. Only time will tell. Stay tuned...

Paper Trail: Confessions of a Diaper Hypocrite

2009-01-12T09:38:00.001-08:00

How I tossed my environmental conscience into the landfill.

Guilt and worry—two special feelings I can't seem to shake, especially when it comes to the whole diaper debate.

One of the things I obsess about is what the next wave of Earth settlers will find when they dig through whatever remains of our civilization. I imagine squads of saucers deploying teams to puzzle over Crocs, rifle through broken Bakelite, and crack the code for LOL and OMG.

(Inevitably, this train of thought leads to my wide-awake paranoia about being one of the bodies they put into the alien museum—you know, like the mummies encased in glass at the British Museum? "What big hips they had," they'll say. "How short and wide they were!" After seeing the gift shop at the King Tut exhibit in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, I made my whole family promise never to make my death mask into a lolly pop or a pencil eraser or any other novelty item, thank you very much.)

And of course, what civilization excavation scenario leaves out the landfills? Our entire story is in the trash. I imagine the poor suckers who sort the stuff will end up with two piles that tower over everything else: skyscrapers of old cell phones and used diapers.

Now, I don't mind if the aliens go through my address book—but decades' worth of baby poop? TMI, people! Sure, it'll give them incontrovertible proof of our dietary habits, but really. Let's make them work a little for it, right? Also, couldn't they just reconstruct us all like the world's worst Jurassic Park knock-off? People of science laughed at me when I ranted about this, telling me that it was unlikely any DNA would be present. But then I read an article about the world's oldest poop—14,000 years old with DNA in tact!—and vowed that no one in our family would leave such a souvenir.

Most sources on the diaper debate—cloth vs. paper—will tell you that it's basically a wash when it comes to the environment. Paper products eat up trees and build up in landfills (up to 20 years to biodegrade!), while cloth diapers have pesticides in their past and require bejillions of gallons of water to scrub them clean. Even Bill Nye on his guilt-inducing show "Stuff Happens", which catalogues the environmentally unfriendly things we do in every room of the house, didn't give a definitive answer. The skeptic in me thought that maybe paper-diaper advertising fixed the fight—although I never stopped the TiVo long enough to confirm my suspicions.

Still, since almost every paper diaper is also individually wrapped in plastic before it's discarded, I couldn't help but think that reusable cloth diapers were the way to go. Cost is comparable, too, if you opt for a diaper service (those who wash their own cloth diapers come out slightly ahead). My parents gave us the best gift of all: the first few months on a diaper service. In fact, it was the same diaper service they'd used in my baby days—Dy-Dee Diapers is pretty much the only game in Southern California. And they are wonderful! Not only did they spirit away the mess and leave us fresh, clean diapers every week, but they also introduced me to exciting inventions. No more leaky, uncomfortable plastic pants for this generation! Now, there are snazzy covers that close easily with Velcro and these marvelous Snappi things that secure the diapers without pesky (and nasty!) pins.

So, the cloth experiment was off to a great start! Of course, we gave ourselves a special paper dispensation for travel. And when people came to visit (no need for visitors to have to go straight to the dry cleaners after stopping by, right?). And when we ran out of clean diaper covers. And when we had a surplus of paper diapers. And when we got lazy. Some weeks, we were probably 50/50. But over the holidays, we pretty much abandoned cloth altogether. No leaks, fast securing (a must when baby figured out how to roll over on the changing table), less bulk for baby, and easy disposal. Sold!

And sold out. It took me a week or two to admit I'd abandoned my principles for the sake of expediency. But today, I canceled the diaper service. Everyone tells me not to beat myself up. They say our contribution of waste is just a drop in the bucket—the very "everyone is doing it" argument that made me crazy when I was on the cloth side. It's the kind of thinking that giant landfills are made of. So, no, I DO deserve to feel bad about this. After all, my guilt will likely erode over the next few months—but our diapers won't!

Dy-Dee Diapers: *****
My paper cave-in: *

Book Beat: Is the Rainbow Fish a Red?

2008-03-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

Children's story values flash over substance.

Let's take a moment to pity the children of English majors whose parents' uncontrollable lit-crit tendencies keep the books their peers love out of their reach. Our first child is not even born, and already I'm culling his library for unsavory messages, tacky topics, and egregious grammar. Will he have a severe knowledge deficit if he doesn't read Everyone Poops? This mom is willing to risk it.

Currently on the chopping block is Marcus Pfister's The Rainbow Fish. Despite its vibrant cover and shimmering illustrations, the story has a dark underbelly with a warped message about how to make friends.

The Rainbow Fish (RF) starts out as a vain jerk. He won't play with the other fish because he's "too beautiful." Another fish asks him if he can have one of his shiny scales. RF is quite justifiably appalled (after all, that is a piece of his body!), and the beggar fish swims away. Then RF has an odd moment where he asks an octopus why no one likes him (how RF got from being "too beautiful" to caring about what others think is not explained). The octopus advises RF to give away his shining scales: "You won't be as beautiful, but you will have friends." Heeding this advice, RF gives away all but one of his scales and swims off happily with his new scale-sporting friends. The end.

Um, let's go back to: "You won't be as beautiful, but you will have friends." What a message! Arguably, the word "beautiful" could represent RF's vanity here—meaning he had to let go of his snotty attitude in order to befriend others. But literally—which is how I think most youngsters would read this—it sounds like having a distinguishing characteristic all your own is a bad thing. Distribute the wealth, or else the proles will get you! Worse is the idea that you have to buy friendship by giving away the part of yourself that makes you who you are. The Rainbow Fish gave up his rainbowness to be part of the pack. The word for that in the adult world is sell-out.

If the other fish in RF's world were also special and had something to share, I wouldn't be as bothered by the overall story arc. In that case, there would have been wonderful opportunities for lessons celebrating the uniqueness of individual contributions and the rewarding result of cooperation. But as is, RF comes across as a stereotypical bourgeois pig, who gives in to proletariat demands to share his wealth in exchange for social status. What kind of worldview is that for a child? It sounds like a Faustian bargain to me.

True friendship can't be bought—not with shiny scales or bits of one's soul. While the value of sharing and being unselfish can't be stressed enough, it can never be gained at the expense of one's integrity. Maybe it's asking too much of a children's book to make that distinction, but it's enough to keep The Rainbow Fish off our baby's shelf.

The Rainbow Fish: *

Tube Talk: PBS Bio-Pic Is Pure Austen-tation

2008-02-04T16:25:00.000-08:00

The drama centers on an unsympathetic heroine who wishes she were a missus.

If the premise of the PBS bio-drama Miss Austen Regrets—that all women live to rue something in their pasts—is true, then my regret is sitting through the whole 90-minute film without changing the channel. In this fourth installment of the "Masterpiece: The Complete Jane Austen" series, writer Gwyneth Hughes presents the novelist in her final years, ruing her spinsterhood, sparring with her much younger niece over men, and generally wallowing in self-pity—all qualities that go unrewarded in Austen's own novels. What would the original think of such a shallow copy?

It's no wonder that fans of Jane Austen's works become obsessed with the writer herself. After all, very little is known about her beyond what you would find in a fourth-grade book report. Yes, there are the basic facts—year of birth, year of death, years of residence in one part of the country and another, not to mention an extensive genealogy—but there is very little insight into her interior life. No diaries survive, and beyond her novels themselves and the tenuous written memories of her surviving relatives, there are just a few personal letters to hint at the character of the person who wrote them.

Nearly 200 years after her death, reconstructing that character is still a feverish trend in the literary world. As Kathryn Sutherland notes in her introduction to the 2002 Oxford University Press edition of J.E. Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, "it is not facts and information we crave but intimacy and identification." That desire to know the author better—in the same way that readers become intimately acquainted with her heroines—unfortunately leads to wild speculation on the part of critics and biographers, who cast many Jane Austens based not on available information, but on Catherine Morland-style extrapolations of small details.

Miss Austen Regrets provides a perfect example of decontextualizing the surviving source material. Among Austen's surviving letters, the most tantalizing are those addressed to her niece, Fanny Knight, who was 18 years her junior. In these letters, Austen discusses Fanny's love life, particularly whether she should accept a proposal from a certain gentleman and how to read the signs of her own heart. In these letters, she praises Fanny warmly for her complex character and feelings, and it is obvious that Aunt Jane had nothing but the highest esteem for her young niece. It is fun to see how Austen's opinion—whether Fanny should accept or wait for a better offer—oscillates from nearly one paragraph to the next. Her excitement seems genuine, as does her earnestness to prove helpful without overinfluencing Fanny's own thoughts on the matter.

Hughes' script borrows heavily from these letters, placing verbatim lines into face-to-face dialogue scenes between aunt and niece throughout the film. Rather than the comeraderie Austen's letters suggest, Hughes uses these conversations to fuel conflict between the two characters, who get into heated discussions about weighing the values of love and money in marriage. Hughes also paints a Jane (Olivia Williams) who, at 40, flirts shamelessly with men and even begins to have feelings for her brother's young doctor—feelings that cause an unlikely rivalry to develop between Jane and Fanny (Imogen Poots). Frustrated, lonely, and perpetually defensive, Jane becomes more wretched and dissatisfied as her physical condition deteriorates. At long last, the film ends with Fanny's own wedding—three years after Jane's death—and somehow Fanny finally realizes what all her aunt's fuss was about. Unfortunately, the audience is left in the dark.

Whether Jane Austen truly wrestled with loneliness, self-doubt, and long-standing regret can never be known. But it does seem that someone with her wit, intelligence, and humor would not have spent her days in long laments as this film suggests. While the lack of hard evidence leaves plenty of room for biographical interpretations, it seems unfair to bend out of shape the few surviving artifacts. In the quest to know her better, why not look for Austen's thoughts about life and society where they are most well-preserved—within the pages of her novels.

Miss Austen Regrets: *

Tube Talk: "Grey's" Blacks Out Marriage

2008-01-11T09:11:00.000-08:00

At Seattle Grace, commitment is toxic—and often fatal.

Okay, I admit it. When it comes to television and movies, I'm a sucker for the romantic comedies with the ludicrous obstacles, the longing looks, the delayed gratification, and the really bad jokes. This plot construction has been a time-honored girl magnet since Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice hit the stands, and probably even before. But, it doesn't work for every medium. With television shows, the push-me, pull-me between romantic leads can only hold water for so many episodes. Eventually, someone has to make a decision—and often, the decision kills the chemistry that attracted viewers in the first place. (Remember how unwatchable "Lois and Clark" became as they prepared for the wedding? Ick.)

"Grey's Anatomy," ABC's primetime hospital soap, charged out of the gate with the formula in full effect. Girl (Ellen Pompeo's Meredith Grey) meets guy (Patrick Dempsey's "McDreamy"), who is (gasp!) her boss. After falling for him anyway, she finds out he's married. Will he leave his adulterous wife for his adulterous girlfriend? There you have the first two seasons of "Grey's Anatomy." Silly premise though it was, the show was peppered with interesting patient story lines, good supporting characters, and fairly sharp, funny dialogue—enough to keep me coming back week after week.

But once the main conflict was resolved (early in Season 3 when boy and girl FINALLY choose each other), the engine of the show cranked to a halt. If this had been a film, the music would have swelled, the credits would have rolled, and the audience would have fumbled for their car keys on their way out the door. But, no. A zombified version of the show still limps along. Whether the creative juices haven't yet been replenished or whether there are too many new cooks in the kitchen, the strong characters developed in the first two seasons have become plot puppets with little consistency from week to week. For instance, is the Dr. Bailey (Chandra Wilson) who let her husband walk out the door without a fight last night really the same Dr. Bailey who told her coworker that the people you love always have priority over your career? It's almost like the writers haven't watched their own show.

In a strange effort to revive the show and keep ratings high, the writers have been viciously hunting down all couples since the end of Season 2, when a main love interest was killed off after proposing to one of the interns. This seemed okay at the time, as it felt like a one-time bout of bad luck. But Season 3 and Season 4 have ruthlessly mowed down every married (or potentially married) couple in its path. The idea of marriage is either toxic (Cristina and Burke, Callie and George) or fatal (Denny, George's dad, and Meredith's step mom don't survive). After running out of main characters to break up and guest stars to kill off, the writers fell upon supporting roles, leaving both the Chief and Dr. Bailey on their own after decades of marriage.

Season 4, which ended abruptly with last night's episode as a result of the writers' strike, has decimated the playing field. No couple is left standing, with the possible exception of McDreamy and his new scrub nurse, Rose (Lauren Stamile). There are no interesting combinations left, and the patient plot lifts have been flat to nonexistent for the past two seasons. The show has stagnated as much as the characters' love lives. Sharp dialogue has been replaced by terse, stale phrases and lingering, awkward beats—usually between the titular character and McDreamy trying to out-break-up each other.

Of course, it's unrealistic to assume that every couple that walks down the aisle (or talks about it) will live happily ever after. But many do stay together—and marriage doesn't have to be a fallow field for writers. After all, "I Love Lucy," "The Cosby Show," and even "Everybody Loves Raymond" lasted for years on the air with (gasp!) married protagonists that kept the audience interested. If ABC must keep the malingering "Grey's" on the air, there has to be more than a group of single losers to keep viewers engaged. Exploring more mature relationships—and bringing back the light, witty touch from earlier seasons—could pull it out of the downward spiral.

"Grey's Anatomy": **

Darjeeling Limited: Short-Changed Release?

2007-10-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

If you're a fan of director Wes Anderson, you probably already know about the short film "Hotel Chevalier" that serves as a 12-minute prequel to the full-length feature "The Darjeeling Limited." But unless you are in the know, chances are you will miss out on many of the feature's more satisfying subtleties. Bizarrely, the 2005 short will not be released with the film in theaters—and while the prequel will make for a meaty DVD extra, it seems a shame that it won't be available to theatergoers trying out Anderson's oeuvre for the first time (although it is available through iTunes). Anderson's ability to tie in the most minute details throughout both works will largely go unnoticed—and the character development of Jason Schwartzman's Jack may just fall flat without the back story.

Unlike the feature film, which takes place on location in India, the prequel is set in a Paris hotel room, and the tone for the film is vewy Fwench, not least because of the wistful bistro ballad "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)" by Peter Sarstedt, which plays prominently throughout the film (it also recurs in the feature). In the film, Jason Schwartzman's character (presumably the same Jack from the feature, although he is unnamed) receives an unexpected visit from his toothpick-toting ex (Natalie Portman). There's not a lot of dialogue, but obviously a lot of unfinished business. After taking inventory of the hotel room—achieved through Anderson's signature wide-angle close-ups on a quirky collection of props from a numbered piece of luggage to a stuck butterfly beside the gizzards of three music boxes—things take a turn for the extwemewy Fwench, and it is not long before Natalie is in the nude.

Despite Schwartzman's unfortunate tendency to make the act of kissing sound like he is slurping gazpacho, this scene between them is tender, and you can see why Jack will still be obsessed with his ex in the feature film despite the obvious but unspecified hurt she has caused him (Portman makes the briefest of cameos in the feature itself, but her character is a point of discussion between Jack and his two brothers [Adrian Brody and Owen Wilson] as they make their way by train throughout India). The dialogue here is sharp and skillful—the should we/shouldn't we at it's most brutal, honest, and funny.

Schwartzman's character then invites Portman's to see his view of Paris, and there is a lovely slo-mo scene where he carries his robe to her and helps her into it. As he ushers her through the vewy Fwench doors to the balcony, he takes a long look behind him before following after her. Anderson has a wonderful knack for using slow motion to highlight moments like these—and in it, we see their whole relationship.

In Anderson's production design, no item is random. Every quirky prop, color, and set piece usually has a specific character insight or plot point to communicate. In this one, the numbered suitcase with the initials JLW features prominently in one shot, when Portman slips something into it that will reappear in the feature. Several other threads also pick up in the feature, including Schwartzman's barefoot look, which Anderson decided to carry over from the short, despite the drastic change in terrain from hotel carpet to Indian desert.

On its own, the short is tender, intriguing, but a little odd. It doesn't quite tell a whole story. It really needs the greater feature to contextualize it, despite the fairly drastic difference in tone and style between the two films. At the same time, the feature requires the short to complete its meaning as well. It's all the more confusing that they will not be shown together. If you can, see both of them. While neither compares to the taut genius of "Rushmore" (1998) and "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001), they are certainly good examples of Anderson's talent in their own right. His abilities to mix whimsy and melancholy, and to both entertain and enlighten, are rare delights—and "The Darjeeling Limited" and its sister short "Hotel Chevalier" deliver the delight if not the overall satisfaction of the two previous films.

"Hotel Chevalier": ***

Tagged: "Courtesy" of the US Postal Service

2007-09-26T13:23:00.000-07:00

When it comes to property defacement, the USPS sees no reason to apologize.

When we moved into our house four years ago, the previous owners left their rocking chair, barbecue, and patio furniture, but took the house numbers. As weird as that seemed at the time, it didn't bother us too much. We hired painters, unloaded our boxes, and settled in to home ownership. Days became weeks and then months and then years, and friends and relatives found us without a problem—and our mail appeared in the painted metal box by our porch steps every day without incident.

Last month, our lovely mail carrier of all of these years retired, and with her, my good will for the postal service. The next week, right before we were leaving for the weekend, the mail box beside the porch caught my eye. More specifically, the numbers written on it with a black Sharpee caught my eye—our house numbers. The new mail carrier was the obvious culprit, being the only person with a motive to commit such a crime.

Now, the mailbox had also been left by the previous owners, but it was cute and decorative, so we kept it. They had taken a metal box and painted a faux patina on it to match the faux patina on the brass panels on the front door. Obviously, removing the Sharpee marks was not going to be an option, because that would also remove the paint. The mailbox was ruined.

Incensed, I quit worrying about packing my toothbrush and camera and scoured the US Postal Service Web site for their customer service number. It took some digging, but I found it and was relieved to learn that it was a 24-hour service. After 45 minutes of waiting on hold and listening to the same two prerecorded USPS advertisements for the entire time, a woman came on the line. She took my name and address, but when I explained my complaint, she stopped me. "Because it's after 5 p.m., I can't help you with that," she said. "You'll have to call back tomorrow." "But you're a 24-hour service," I reminded her to no avail. She wouldn't even take a note. My husband patiently listened to me rant about the entire exchange all the way to the airport.

After a relaxing weekend away, I called the USPS first thing on Monday morning. This time, I waited less than 5 minutes, and the person on the other end of the line took my information right away and said I'd be receiving a call back from a representative from my local branch. Sure enough, within two hours, I got a call from our mail-carrier's boss. It was obvious from her tone that she'd never been wrong about anything in her life and that she rarely lets another person get a word in edgewise.

While she expressed some concern that her mail carrier was going around tagging people's private property with a Sharpee, she was more fixated on our lack of house numbers. When I said that this had never come up in all the years we've lived here as the numbers are painted on the curb, she sort of mentioned that normally we would have received a written notice first, but that everyone had to have house numbers on the house. (Never mind that a walk around our neighborhood revealed that a few dozen other houses are numberless and likely still receive mail.) She was intense, and I wanted off the phone. I was too flustered to remember to ask for compensation for the damaged property. I said we would obviously be getting house numbers, but that we would appreciate being alerted in future before the mail carrier writes on our stuff, and left it at that.

At 11:30 the next morning, the doorbell rang. Although the tall woman with the severely tied back hair and semi-professional attire didn't give me her name, I recognized her voice immediately as the house-number champion. I came out onto the porch and showed her the mailbox, and she proceeded to tell me that not only should we have house numbers but that the mailbox was also too low. I stared at her, not believing that this was the "apology" I was receiving. While I don't dispute the necessity of house numbers, our ignorance didn't seem to warrant property defacement. The mail carrier himself eventually joined us, and his boss pointed to the mailbox, saying, "See that, she didn't like that you did that." And he said, "But I had to see the numbers." And she said, "Well, you could have written them inside the lid of the box." Finally, I found my voice. "No, he shouldn't have. I was here the whole time. He should have let me know the problem so that I could fix it." It was like I hadn't spoken.

By the end of this 5-minute encounter, I had been scolded on two counts of mail-carrier thwarting and had not received one shadow of an apology. Before I had the chance to broach compensation for the defaced property, the woman's phone rang, and she answered it, backing down the driveway. I halfheartedly remembered my own manners and shook her hand as well as the mail carrier's. He assured me he would continue to try to do his best, and I nearly bit my lip trying not to say something about if graffiti was his best, how bad could his worst be?

I fumed and stormed and raged after they left—but I knew further action with this crew would result in dirty bureaucratic fighting and perhaps unexpected deliveries that weren't mail. On the bright side, my husband spent the rest of the week making a customized, attractive set of house numbers that are now proudly displayed above our door.

Of course, apparently, he didn't work quickly enough for the USPS, which sent us a form with the line item "No house numbers" checked. The handwritten comments section of the form looked dishearteningly like it had been composed and filled out by a first grader using unlined paper for the first time. It recapped the face-to-face encounter without any mention of the defaced property and reminded us to put up house numbers as agreed as soon as possible. So much for an apology! While this enraged me afresh, I felt slightly vindicated that the form existed—the very form we should have received before the mail carrier ever uncapped his Sharpee.

USPS customer service: *

Tagged: Painting the Town Red

2007-09-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

Hometown graffiti hotline comes to the rescue.

About nine o'clock on a cool, clear summer night—and a school night at that for all of us work-a-dayers—I walked my friend to her car, which was parked outside of our house. As I hugged her goodbye before she stepped into the driver's seat, the street lamp in front of our yard drew my eye with every suburbanite's horror: graffiti. The word Dhoofuses* dripped redly down the lamp post, each jagged letter standing out against the gray concrete.

After ascertaining that the ne'er do wells had left my friend's car in tact (which they had), I waved her off with repetitive statements about how we'd never seen anything like this—not in this neighborhood. She didn't look terribly freaked out by it, but I certainly was. As my friend drove off, the embarrassment ebbed, and the paranoia set in. Who were these hoodlums calling Dhoofuses? Did they have something against us nerds? Would we be murdered in our beds clinging to our pocket protectors?

My husband didn't buy into my grisly scenarios. He was mostly sorry that the graffiti was emblazoned onto a concrete surface, over which, he imagined, the city would slap an ever obvious, sloppily painted square as cover-up. On the bright side, he told me, the word was legible and not even obscene. Eventually, even I conceded that the "h" was more amusing than threatening, and we could call about it in the morning.

Anger and paranoia kept sleep at bay, however, and I leapt out of bed at an ungodly hour to search for solutions on the Web. Without too much trouble, I found the city's FAQ page and was surprised to see that graffiti had made the list of frequent topics. Like many other communities in the area, our city has a graffiti-removal hotline. You can call any time of day or night to leave a voice message detailing the location of the offending scrawls, your contact information, and any other necessary details. While on the one hand, I felt "handled" and unimportant, it was oddly satisfying to be able to take even this preliminary action in the dead of night. No need to wait until 9 a.m. to talk to a bored bureaucrat! After leaving my message, I had no trouble falling asleep.

In the light of day, my feelings of empowerment were gone, but so was most of my ire. Dhoofuses glared ugly and bright in front of the house, but it didn't seem as creepy in direct sunlight. Sure, I'd left a message on the hotline, but I didn't expect action from the city any time soon. It was likely they'd never even press play. We would just have to figure out something to do in the meantime—maybe wrap it in a sheet, I thought as I pulled out of the driveway to run shopping errands.

As I followed my normal route through the neighborhood, a pattern emerged. Red, scrawly Dhoofuses adorned lampposts and city signs about truck weight limits all the way to the main road. The ruffians had traced their path through the neighborhood—but not a piece of private property sported red letters. Suddenly, I felt better. The scamps weren't calling us Dhoofuses—that was their name for themselves. I also tried to quash the tiny spark of gratitude I felt for their conscientious defacing of only city property. Of course, the result was still ugly and annoying—but didn't it mean something that they weren't tagging houses and family pets? Didn't that make them more likely to be bored teens than psychokillers?

My mind eased, I concentrated on finding whatever goods and groceries were on the list that day and loading them into the car. On the way home, I reminded myself to take note of the various Dhoofuses locations so that I could record them on the answering machine of futility. I turned into the neighborhood and questioned my memory. Hadn't I seen evidence of the Dhoofuses on that truck weight limit sign on the corner? Maybe I hadn't. I slowed to turn into our driveway and stopped halfway. The lamppost was completely clear—no paint of any kind. I got out and rubbed the surface of it, looking for scratches or flecks of red paint. Nothing at all. If I hadn't had witnesses, I would have been hard pressed to prove Dhoofuses had ever been there.

With a rush of gratitude, I thrust my groceries into the kitchen and high-tailed it to the phone. I dialed that precious hotline number and gushed praises of the most sincerely inarticulate nature, describing the phenomenon as if no one on the other side of the phone had ever heard of such a miracle. "There was graffiti, and I called, and now it's gone," I stammered. "It happened while I was at the store. I didn't even see a truck." I couldn't shut up, and it wouldn't surprise me if they changed the hotline number immediately after hitting delete.

But the gratitude is real. When the graffiti appeared on our lamp post, I felt that my faith in the community would be forever shaken, that I would always be looking over my shoulder and wishing for the good old days before the hoodlums put their mark on every tree. But I was surprised to find that just the fast response from my city's graffiti-removal hotline made me feel such civic pride. Dhoofuses will come and go, but we don't need to cherish their memories. Removing graffiti as fast as it appears means my city isn't ready to let the vandals win, and that it's actually trying to keep this a good place to live. It's not often these days for me to feel a surge of pride for my government, but just this one little piece of tax-paid magic in my favor gave me a much needed dose of hope.

Graffiti-removal hotline: *****

*The word has been changed to bring less satisfaction to the guilty—although, presumably, the Dhoofuses know who they are.

Cover to Cover: The Robber Bride

2007-07-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

Atwood's women characters are more than sweetness and light.

Sugar, spice, and everything nice. If this is the time-honored recipe for little girls, what is the recipe for grown women? Stories don't suggest ingredients, but they often present two outcomes—the beautiful princess with a heart of gold or the evil, ugly crone. While these archetypes have their place in literature, they obviously can't reflect the complexity of real people and, more particularly, the intricate relationships between women. Few authors bring these neglected themes to the page better than Margaret Atwood, whose female characters are made of equal parts bitter and sour to blend with the sweet.

I recently read Atwood's The Robber Bride (Doubleday, 1993), which deliciously balances friendship and betrayal within a group of women. Three friends, whose husbands and lovers have been seduced by the same woman named Zenia, meet every month for lunch—both for the company and to support each other as they move on with their lives. During one such meeting, Zenia, thought to be dead, walks into the restaurant more alive and more beautiful than ever. The revelation shocks the three friends, and the novel takes us back through each of the women's histories as they try to make sense of their relationships with their lovers, families, Zenia, and each other.

Even though Zenia is obviously the wicked witch in this story, none of the three heroines is a perfect princess. No one knows this better than they do. Although they appreciate each other and fill a needed space in each other's lives, they still grate on each other's nerves. They don't even like themselves some of the time. What they don't say to each other is just as weighty as what they do say, maybe more so. While they share their heartbreaks and biggest fears, the little things they keep to themselves create tension. Two friends don't like it when the third spaces out over lunch, but they never tell her in so many words. One friend secretly rues enlisting the interior decorating passions of another. Another wants to replant her friend's garden but is too shy to ask again. Atwood laces each chapter with these little cracks in their trust, but even the subtle examples reveal so much about the characters and the ultimate strength of their friendship despite these fractures.

Each relationship is finely balanced so that the friends keep each other at bay while still being intimately connected. They try not to step on each other's toes, but are careful that they don't get stepped on either. Atwood does all of this consistently but lightly, and the lightness is what makes the relationships plausible. So much of the communication results from minute, almost involuntary, calculations of words, gestures, and silences—calculations any reader who has ever wondered "Is it me, or is she giving me a look?" will recognize as authentic.

These nuances help unlock the mysteries of each of the three friends' lives, which keeps eager readers like me turning pages. Unfortunately, like other Atwood novels, the ending comes abruptly and half formed, as if the author just ran out of paper (the last chapter even says, "Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end."). But I don't regret the time I spent with her characters, who are so richly developed. With Atwood's novels, her delightful and compelling beginnings coupled with strong, intriguing characters usually make the journey worthwhile.

The Robber Bride: ****

Backyard Buzz: Tales of a Live Bee Removal

2007-07-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

Finding your hidden hive is only the first step.

Just one beehive can produce 100 lbs of honey in a year, a lesson we learned the hard way when a bee-suited man removed 20 lbs of the golden stuff from behind a panel of our hot tub. We were lucky—the egg-laden hive was ready to hatch a new generation of worker bees, who likely would have set up a new home 10 feet from their birthplace. The dog, who had refused to go into the western half of the backyard since the bees established dominance, would have been beside herself.

Obviously, with a three-month-old hive humming away under our noses, we were pretty slow on the uptake. Sure, we noticed more bees in that part of the yard, but it didn't seem like anything serious. It was the dog that brought them to our attention. One day, she burst through the dog door, an angry bee riding her rear straight into the house. There must have been more encounters like this, because once in a while, she'd have a swollen eye or toe. Eventually, the dog didn't even venture into that half of the backyard. She'd pull up sharply at the avocado tree with a wistful glance at the ball we'd thrown for her on the other side.

As a general rule, we don't like assaulting creepy crawlies that take up residence in the backyard. But no one messes with our dog, so I started looking for bee-removal services.

Breaking Out in Hives
It's no secret that bee colonies are declining, a crisis with the potential for severe environmental impact, especially for agriculture, which relies on cross-pollination. So, I was surprised to find that standard bee-removal service leaves no survivors.

It took a little digging, but I eventually found a company called Wilson's Honey and Bee Removal that will transfer bees to a new home. Naturally, this is the more expensive option—but we couldn't bring ourselves to kill nature's best pollinators. The next day, I greeted the bee man, who glanced at the line of bees streaming steadily in and out of the spa. "Oh yeah, you see that?" he asked. "When they have a highway like that, there's definitely a hive."

As he pulled on his bee suit over his jeans and T-shirt, he chatted pleasantly about some of his more recent jobs. Apparently, he'd pulled 200 lbs of honey out of a Hollywood celebrity's mansion, requiring the star to build a whole new wall. I could feel my eyes bug out. Before this, my understanding of beehives had come from Winnie the Pooh cartoons, which showed them as small, endearing shapes the size of birdhouses. It had never occurred to me that one could actually bring down the house.

The bee man pulled a protective mesh veil over his face, then wrapped duct tape around his wrists to ensure no bees got between his sleeves and his gloves. I had expected him to arrive in a full Hazmat suit complete with oxygen tank, because there is no way I would go near a bee highway without such a thing. But the final product resembled a painter's suit, and a well-worn one at that, with tears and rips barely patched with more duct tape. He grinned at me through the mesh, then told me he was going to walk over to test whether these were killer bees.

I put on my brave face. "Excuse me? Did you say killer bees?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Most of the bees in Southern California are killers now." He pointed over to the spa and said that if the bees tried to attack him instead of protecting the hive, that would confirm it. Pretty soon, he walked into the fray, and immediately, agitated bees flurried around him, angrily head-butting his veil and painter's suit. He got a distance away from them, but a few stragglers persisted. As he casually swatted them away, he told me, "Yep. Killers."

Killer Curiosity
Getting stung by one killer bee is not going to kill you—but if you incur the wrath of a swarm, you can die from the effects of hundreds of stings. Alternating between terror of killer bees and guilt over letting our dog share a yard with them for so long, I stood in the far corner of the yard with my camera to watch the bee man pull the side panel off of the spa. He explained that I should be fine at that distance because they'd be concentrating their wrath on him—but if a bee started head-butting me on the forehead, I'd better head inside. Apparently, that's the warning signal before the attack, as stinging is fatal for a bee and, therefore, a last resort.

It didn't take long before a disgruntled bee gave me the warning in no uncertain terms, and I fled behind the screen door to watch as the bee man used a shop vac to suck in as many live bees as possible. "The live removal still applies to killer bees?" I asked, not wanting to exterminate them but less sure we were doing the planet a favor.

"Oh, yeah," he said, "with the exception of the queen." Killer bees are still honey bees and play a vital role in the pollination process. The bees from our hot tub would be trucked out to a bee farm in the California desert where they'd be placed in a hive with a European queen bee. By cross-breeding the bees with regular honey bees, their violent streak would be watered down in future generations.

Honey Dos—and Don'ts
Between bouts of running the shop vac, the bee man scraped out the honey comb with its 20 lbs of honey inside. He stuffed the side panel of the spa full of cotton-candy-colored insulation, then screwed the panel shut again. He poked insulation in every gap he could find on the other sides of the spa, then waited for more bees to cluster so he could collect the stragglers. He told me that we'd see bee traffic for the next four to ten days, as many bees would still be out collecting pollen, but eventually they'd get the message and move on.

Before he packed up his truck, he handed me a plastic grocery bag with a chunk of honey comb from our very own hive. I proudly carried it to the kitchen sink, settled up with the bee man, and called my mother-in-law with a full report of the adventure.

Halfway through the conversation, I heard buzzing and tried to ignore it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one bee struggling through the plastic bag. No big deal. Then there were two sitting on top of the bag. Then four. Now it felt like a horror movie.

If my mother-in-law hadn't brought me back to my senses, I would still be standing there agape as a zillion bees took up residence in the kitchen. With all bee compassion drained from me, I bashed the bag with the best weapon at hand (the spaghetti pot) and hurled the whole mess into the outside trash. It was a low point for this live-bee-removal supporter, and I hoped this was the final test of my loyalties. After all, how many hives can one house have? Surely, one is enough.

Epilogue
"Uh-oh," said my husband, as we watched a few bees hover in the general vicinity of the spa last week. We'd been seeing them for a few days and hoped it was just a fluke. But as we saw ten or more of them entering a hole in the front panel, we knew we had to summon the bee man.

He arrived yesterday with his shop vac and cleared out a hive from behind another panel of the spa. This time, the bees weren't killers, and there was only a little bit of honey, probably only two weeks' worth. The bee man took special pains to ensure the honey comb he saved for us was bee-free, and we can now enjoy the one benefit of a backyard bee infestation.

As the bee man left, I tried to hide my dismay when he handed me the refrigerator-magnet version of his business card—the kind you put up for services, like pizza delivery, that you use all of the time. As much as we appreciate the good work the bee man does and would gladly recommend him to friends and neighbors, we hope we never have to call that number again! With an extra layer of pink insulation protecting the spa, bees won't be getting in any time soon—hopefully, that means they'll buzz off for good.

Wilson's Honey and Bee: ****

Tube Talk: The Bear Necessities

2007-07-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

"Man vs. Wild" introduces couch potatoes to the great outdoors.

For most Discovery Channel watchers, braving cross-town traffic is an adventure, and an unairconditioned movie theater is roughing it. But every week, we couch potatoes can watch as Bear Grylls—the man in Discovery Channel's reality series "Man vs. Wild"—overcomes challenges in the most hostile environments on Earth, from the scorching Australian Outback to the frigid French Alps. Given only the clothes on his back, a knife, a flint, and a water bottle, Grylls must find a way back to civilization while feeding, hydrating, sheltering, and protecting himself throughout the journey.

Vicarious Viewing
"Man vs. Wild" puts viewers in the odd position of watching passively while a man scrambles to find basic needs. It's especially guilt-inducing to tune in during dinner. While I savor mouthfuls of home cooking, Grylls scrambles in the dirt to collect nutritious creepy crawlies, such as ants, termites, and maggots, or something more substantial, such as turtles, live fish, or meat from a lion's fresh zebra kill. While I sip my wine and adjust the volume, Grylls writhes in discomfort after drinking unboiled water in the rain forest. As I settle back into the cushions, Grylls flattens out in a snow cave he dug with his bare hands.

The chances that this TV junkie will set foot in a place containing quicksand, lions, sharks, or avalanches are next to nil. But I still appreciate Grylls' do-it-yourself narration style. Here's what I mean: While making his way through Utah's Moab Desert, Grylls purposely immersed himself up to the chest in quicksand to give viewers a tutorial on how to escape it:

"And the way to try to get out of it is that you've got to stop fighting and try and then lift your body up and wriggle to the surface and change the angle," he said between gasps as he demonstrated the technique. "Pull an arm out. Then ease the left leg out. Try to monkey crawl your way out. Okay, now I'm on the surface, and then just monkey crawl, and you can cross a lot of quicksand in this way." Grylls went on to explain that muck like this would require him to swim the Colorado River rather than walk across to civilization.

Believe it or not, these tips rub off on you. For example, while reading a novel, I called foul when a character who was pulled from freezing water was immediately swaddled in sweaters. Anyone who watches Grylls knows that to avoid hypothermia, you have to strip off all of your clothes, dry off with nearby powdery snow, get your blood pumping with some push-ups, then find some dry clothes and huddle by the fire. Not bad for someone who thinks going to the grocery store at rush hour is too risky, eh?

Grylls also gives facts about the terrain, its people, and its history as he makes his way along. At least once in every episode, he recounts a story about specific hikers, how they got lost, if they survived, and why or why not. My hope is that these episodes become mandatory watching for anyone who wants to travel these areas. His clever thinking, extensive knowledge of the plants and animals in each area, and navigation strategies would certainly heighten awareness of the dangers in the areas for future visitors.

Survival Skills
In a recent interview with KROQ's Kevin and Bean, Grylls modestly described his current career of survival as "one of the few things in life I can do well." Grylls, 32, spent three years in the British Special Forces, which involved rigorous survival training (including being dropped in the Alps wearing nothing but a trenchcoat and laceless boots while evading search teams and dogs for three weeks). During his time in the Special Forces, he broke his back in three places in a parachuting accident. Miraculously, he was able to make a full recovery in 18 months, and he went on to become the youngest man to summit Mt. Everest and survive.

Discovery Channel producers approached him with the idea for the show, and he has had a pretty rigorous shooting schedule ever since. He travels with at least one cameraman, who is not allowed to intervene unless there is a life or death situation. Unlike Grylls, the cameraman is equipped with all of the rations and gear that he needs as well as a radio to call for help only in desperate situations.

During an interview with Conan O'Brien, Grylls said that the show's producers want to up the ante in upcoming epsodes, which means greater personal danger. Yes, Grylls is well qualified for his intense job. Still, I worry about him. Does he sneak some sunscreen to keep melanomas at bay? Without mosquito protection, can he avoid their deadly diseases? Will he tumble down a mountain with the picture of his wife and two boys still tucked securely in his shoe? At some point, he will have to wonder whether it is worth it to undergo these perilous adventures for the entertainment of people who press the volume button for exercise. Hopefully, his survival instincts will let him know when to quit.

Man vs. Wild: *****

(This just in 7/24/07: Times Online recently reported that Grylls doesn't necessarily grin and bear it in the wild, but spends some nights in nearby hotels. This is very disappointing. While it doesn't change the fact that many of the stunts he performs are amazing, it troubles me that he hunts animals for food if he's got a continental breakfast waiting for him at the nearby inn.)

Wii View: Sweeping the Floor With Harry Potter

2007-07-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

How can a game with boring tasks be so addictive?

Unless you're Mary Poppins, you probably don't think of tidying up as a game. But the makers of the Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix video game hope you will. Players who haven't seen the film of the same title will come away thinking that wizards and witches spend more time straightening up the hallowed halls of Hogwarts than actually saving the magic world from evildoers. That said, the game is surprisingly fun. Plenty of puzzles complement the story line, and the Wii Remote acts as a wand that allows you, as Harry Potter, to lift, repair, repel, and grab items the magic way.

A Wizard's Work Is Never Done
The game follows the storyline of the fifth film in the Warner Brothers' Harry Potter series, which is based on the book by J.K. Rowling. While this means a few combat scenes, most of your time is spent meeting characters who send you on miniquests to collect items all over the castle. This can get tedious at times, especially as Hogwarts is a sprawling place, but to keep your interest, programmers have hidden "discoveries" in every room. As you make your way through each floor, you can hang portraits, repair vases, find statues, and uncover other hidden treasures for points. These discovery points boost your power and unlock bonus features (including videos about the making of the game) located in a room on the second floor.

Some "discoveries" are so cleverly hidden and delightful to find that they keep the game moving despite the mundanity of the tasks. For example, you can produce a feast in the Grand Hall or release each of the four house ghosts. Other tasks seem pretty mundane. To chase down all of the discoveries, you'll find yourself making beds, mopping floors, sweeping courtyards, and watering plants. The creators seem obsessed with chores—the game even starts with Harry tidying up the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix—perhaps to show that kids with magical powers also have to help with the housework.

Discovery points also are rewarded for winning minigames, such as snaps or chess, and you can go on miniquests for professors to unlock lesson-related games, such as practicing charms in Professor Flitwick's classroom. Most of these activities rely on spells taught by different characters at various points of the game. One of the best activities is actually part of the main storyline—Severus Snape's occlumency lessons demand that you wave the Wii Remote furiously to keep the intimidating professor from reading your mind.

The game relies on cut scenes (and sometimes sloppy transitions) to keep you moving through the story. While you have only one formal task after the final cut scene, you can take your time exploring Hogwarts to build more discovery points or just admire the trophies you've collected. The story remains faithful to the film, and while it isn't complex, the world of the game is enjoyable enough to keep you engaged.

Building Hogwarts From the Ground Up
Although the Wii doesn't do as good a job of rendering graphics as its competitor consoles, most of the visuals in the game come through well enough. However, up close, the details dissolve, especially when you "examine" a note or a wall hanging, and it's hard to tell whether this is intentional. Overall, however, the people at EA Games, who also developed the games based on the other films in the Harry Potter series, did a good job of creating the sprawling property of Hogwarts and remained very faithful to the film's set design. The Grand Hall is especially accurate, and even places that aren't featured in the film, such as the boathouse, are well imagined.

In an effort to be even more accurate, EA Games employees scanned the faces of every cast member from the film—but the result is ghastly up close. Alan Rickman's Professor Snape likeness has the pupilless eyes of a horror-film ghost, and Maggie Smith's Professor McGonagall looks like death warmed over. Still, from afar, the characters are recognizable, and details like these make the film come alive.

The game incorporates excellent sound design. EA Games licensed composer John Williams' "Hedwig's Theme" from the film, which adds an aura of authenticity. In 5.1 surround sound, there are plenty of background noises populating the halls, from chattering portraits and heckling students to the ambient sounds of bird calls, wind, and even dishes scraping together. Twenty-two cast members from the film—including Rupart Grint, who plays Harry's sidekick Ron—also voiced their characters, which adds to the feeling that you're navigating through the film's world.

Not So Smooth Moves Slow You Down
While effort obviously went into the visual and sound design of the game, navigation didn't get the same treatment. Using the Marauder's Map, you choose your destination, and dark footsteps appear to show you which direction to go. Unfortunately, these footsteps are often difficult to see and do not render quickly enough when you move at top speed. They also go missing periodically, and you have to reselect your target to find them again. Savvy players will work to unlock all of the secret passages to cut down on navigation time, especially the tedium of running up and down the seven flights of the Grand Staircase.

Rendering errors contribute heavily to navigation frustration. Certain areas of the map are slower than others, and you can feel the system chugging to render the room in some cases. The characters of Ron and Hermione, who constantly follow Harry, often get in the way when you change direction. Camera angles don't shift easily, making it difficult to view targets at the roofline, and sometimes the heads of Ron and Hermione will block your view during a cutscene (although, sometimes these heads aren't rendered correctly and you can see through them). There are also bizarre rendering artifacts throughout the game, such as on the Grand Staircase where four rectangular shadows stutter and flare as you pass by.

Falling Under Its Spell
These annoyances aside, the game is fairly engaging and a fun way to explore the film's re-creation of Hogwarts. Harry Potter fans will enjoy the chance to cast spells and interact with the characters in this world, especially while waiting for Book 7 to arrive!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix game for the Wii: ***

Dog Spot: Huntington Beach

2007-07-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

This Orange County city gives dogs the run of the beach.

The minute you bring home a puppy, you are unofficially initiated into a group you probably never knew existed—the dog owners' network. Almost immediately, you get sympathetic smiles from more experienced dog walkers as your 20-lb pup pulls you around the neighborhood. When you finally tangle leashes with another owner on your block, it escalates to encouraging words, and pretty soon, you're swapping stories and trading tips on everything from nutrition to discipline.

Probably the most valuable pearls of wisdom involve public places where dogs are welcome. In Los Angeles suburbs, many parks, beaches, and restaurants are off limits to canine companions, and with good reason. Not all owners are diligent about cleaning up after pets, and there are also discipline and safety issues to consider, especially when dogs are around small children. However, dogs also need places to run—and small suburban backyards don't always cut it.

Some communities offer parks and other areas where well-behaved dogs can play off leash—mostly thanks to lobbying efforts from organized dog owners. The Orange County community of Huntington Beach gives dogs plenty of play options, making it one of the best destinations for So Cal dogs. The area's crown jewel is a one-mile, leash-free stretch of beach—a rare treat for you and your dog.

Hit the Surf
Each year, more than 100,000 dogs take to the sand at Huntington Dog Beach, located off of Pacific Coast Highway between 21st Street and Seapoint Street. The designated beach is below street level, which keeps your dog safely away from traffic on the main road. When you arrive, park in one of the two parking lots, and bring plenty of quarters, as metered spots run 25 cents for every 10 minutes. If you plan to be a regular, membership parking permits are available.

A nonprofit organization administers the beach and employs cleaners who work every weekend and some weekdays. You will appreciate the ready supply of clean-up bags available from 60 dispensers along the beach, and there is even a dog drinking fountain located beside one of the towers.

Dogs of every size and breed play on the shore and in the surf, and many humans enjoy the beach along with them. Surfers and swimmers brave the water, and plenty of people lay out on towels and blankets despite a steady stream of dogs rushing by. With so much activity, dogs can be distracted easily by water fowl and other dogs. To keep your dog engaged, bring Frisbees or tennis balls—and pack a few extras, as it's easy to lose one in the waves.

Even though dogs are off leash, most owners keep their pets under control, which makes Huntington Dog Beach a fun and safe place to spend the day. While your dog enjoys running about unfettered, you can relax a little, too. Most people there will actually welcome attention from your canine friend!

Park It Here
After a full day at the beach, you and your dog will probably be ready to eat. In the nearby Huntington Central Park, you'll find a popular pet destination for refreshment—the Park Bench Cafe. Dog owners sit around plastic tables shaded by umbrellas, while at their feet, dogs enjoy bowls of fresh water. The menu tempts humans with wholesome cafe fare, and there's a also a special selection for dogs, including chicken strips and ice cream. For pets watching their weight, there's a kibble option as well. It may take a little while to be seated, but friendly service, good food, and pleasant atmosphere make it worth the wait!

After lunch, take a stroll around the park. While dogs have to be leashed here, they won't be bored. There are plenty of ducks and other water fowl to keep them entertained as you walk along tree-lined paths beside the pond. A fenced-off dog park on the premises gives your dog another place to play off leash, if chasing birds at the beach didn't prove to be as tiring as you'd hoped.

Find a Spot
As dog owners become more organized in their communities, efforts are underway to encourage more dog-friendly places in L.A. For example, lobbyists hope to open up Dockweiler Beach in Playa del Rey to dogs, which would mean that L.A. residents and their pets wouldn't have to travel to Santa Barbara or Long Beach for a day on the sand.

To find places that welcome dogs in your community, the Internet provides great information about restaurants, hotels, and other businesses that cater to dogs. But one of the best resources out there is The Dog Lover's Companion to California. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the best parks, eateries, and other dog-friendly destinations in every area of the state.

Huntington Dog Beach: *****
Park Bench Cafe: ****
The Dog Lover's Companion to California: *****

Tube Talk: Hours of Bauer

2007-07-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

When you tune in to "24," one of Jack's days is also one of yours.

Catching the regular air time of the Fox television series "24" is dangerous enough to TV addicts, but the DVD boxed sets are even more lethal to reformed couch potatoes. Each of the one-hour episodes occurs in real time, which means every 24-episode season takes place during the course of one day. But unlike the average person's day, each hour is fraught with life or death situations that demand decisive action from hero Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), an agent for a government counterterrorist agency. Of course, every hour ends on a cliffhanger to keep viewers in knots between episodes. Thanks to the DVDs, however, that suspense doesn't have to last long. If you're not careful, popping "24" discs could eat up every spare hour of your weekend.

The show's premise alone was enough to keep our household "24"-free for six whole seasons. The irony is that while Jack Bauer combats terrorists, plans intricate rescue missions, and rockets through L.A. traffic, his viewers are practically inert. The series logo—the number 24 presented like the display of a digital clock—tells you exactly what tuning in will cost you, and we didn't want to waste an entire day in front of the TV. Of course, we have no trouble finding time for the ABC series "Lost," which had 24 one-hour episodes during its second season. But there is something alarming about seeing the total time so flagrantly advertised. Also, "24"'s premise adds pressure—obviously every hour has to count, so how can you possibly miss an episode? It smacked of a trap, and we carefully avoided it.

Our resolve completely broke down when my brother thrust the six DVDs for season one into our hands. We recoiled like it was poison, then started the first disc. The show has all the elements TV addicts crave—fast-paced action, high-stakes drama, and surprising twists. A show with this premise risks slowing down for long stretches, but by constantly shifting the focus to different characters, the episodes hardly lose their breakneck pace. Before we knew it, we'd pounded seven episodes in a row! Of course, we were chagrined, but not surprised. It was everything we'd feared, only worse: We'd enjoyed every minute of it.

It's a small consolation that each episode lasts only 44 minutes without commercials, so DVD viewers can get away with 17.6 hours in front of the TV instead of the whole 24. Even so, 17.6 hours! Multiply that by six seasons, and you get a number I can't bear to think about, and that doesn't even account for inevitable future seasons (there may be a feature film as well).

Obviously, the time viewers commit to "24" is really no greater than what they spend on other hour-long dramas, most of which have at least 24 episodes per season. But these are still dangerous times for TV addicts. It used to be that you could catch TV shows only in real-time, with occasional VCR recordings reserved for favorite programs you couldn't bear to miss on your nights out. This encouraged selection. But with digital video recorders and DVDs, any show you ever had a passing curiosity about is within reach. For TV lovers, this could mean more couch time than ever before. In 2004, Americans spent an average of 10 hours per week watching television, with an additional 10 hours per week on the Internet. I would love to research how TV on DVD has affected those statistics, but I can't. We're about to start Season 2 of "24."

First season of "24": ****

Wii Views: A Nongamer's Game Guide

2007-06-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

Best buys exploit the controllers' surprising range of motion.

There's a reason that demand for the Wii console quickly exceeded supply when Nintendo launched the game system late last year. Released as an underdog to Sony's much touted PlayStation 3, the Wii flew off the shelves, overshadowing Sony's upgrade in number of units sold, if not in graphics quality. The secret? While Sony and Microsoft systems target serious gamers, Nintendo's unit is designed for casual gamers—people who know a joystick when they see one but rarely sit through anything more involved than Minesweeper or Tetris.

The novelty lies in the Wii controllers. The first is the Wii Remote, a remote control-like device with a wrist strap. For most games, players move the Wii Remote to mimic the movements of real-life activities from bowling to mixing cake batter. A supplemental controller, called the Nunchuck, features a traditional joystick. The controllers hook together for two-handed games such as boxing and even semaphore.

Successful Wii games offer players a range of motion and activity, without involved button presses. The best games have no barrier to entry, which makes the console attractive to gamers of all ages and ability levels. Will families give up excruciating board games like Candy Land for a round of Wii tennis? One can hope!

As with any system, some games are better than others—and at $50 a pop, gamers can't afford not to be choosy. Some games incorporate unique uses for the controllers, while others rely on old standbys, such as complicated button combos. The best games make it easy to pick up the Wii Remote and play as soon as the disc loads.

Wii Sports. Packaged with the console, Wii Sports offers the perfect introduction to the controllers. The Wii Sports games allow players to use Miis, or avatars that they customize on the main console menu. Novice players are bound to fall in love with Wii tennis, which is the easiest game to play and the most addictive. Gamers swing the Wii Remote like a racquet to serve and return the ball, and the controller even vibrates when the racquet makes contact. This "freebie" has one of the best multiplayer capabilities for the console—up to four players can participate in a tennis match. Also included: baseball, bowling, golf, boxing, a series of training games for each sport, and a daily skill-level test. Rating: *****

Raving Rabbids. If you buy only one game, this is the one you want. A group of disturbing-looking rabbits kidnap your character (Rayman, for gamers in the know) and drag you off to a Romanesque arena where you face a variety of rabbit-ridden challenges to earn your freedom. These activities range from the tame (sheering sheep) to the gross (pulling worms from rabbit teeth). Players have to beat at least three of the four challenges in each level to advance to the boss round (usually a first-person shooter involving suction cups). If you're not in the mood for story mode, you can play any of the unlocked games in single- or multiplayer settings. Rating: *****

WarioWare: Smooth Moves. Players have to think fast to beat minigames throughout Wario's home town of Diamond City. In each leg of the story arc, gamers must change how they hold and move the controller to complete successive, timed activities, including sauteing vegetables, shaving mustaches, and posting flyers. Offering some of the best uses of the Wii Remote, hilarious challenges, and entertaining (and skippable) transitions, WarioWare: Smooth Moves is delightful for single players. However, it falls short in multiplayer mode: Gamers are forced to take turns and share a controller—which is easier said than done and not nearly as much fun as a real-time competition. Rating: ****

Mario Party 8. This disappointing successor to the GameCube version irks from the opening screen when a frogman with a talking top hat promises to manage every minute of your play. Gamers must beat a series of board games, relying more on luck than on skill, to unlock second-rate minigames. Several of the minigames—especially those that involve hammering, shooting, or navigating—feel like rough drafts for the Raving Rabbids or WarioWare: Smooth Moves versions. Unskippable transitions and an overactive "save game" reflex constantly interrupt play. Even multiplayer gaming feels like a chore with minigames that require too many button combos and delicate movements. Rating: **

Wii Play. Packaged with a Wii Remote, these nine games offer more multiplayer opportunities, but on a less polished level than Wii Sports. Gamers use their Miis to play pool, table tennis, and Pong, or just go fishing—there's even a game resembling Duck Hunt. Rating: ***

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. For gamers looking to commit, the latest of Link's princess-saving adventures comes to life with both the Wii Remote and the Nunchuck. While the game relies on many button combos, movement is mostly intuitive, and each sword trick is explained as it comes up in the story. The narrative may be melodramatic at times, but it's engaging enough to keep you moving from challenge to challenge, and the content-rich settings offer several minigame breaks and collection quests. The dungeons are fairly extensive—if you start to lose interest in puzzle-solving, there are a variety of Internet walkthroughs, but the most detailed, sympathetic, and easy to navigate is at GameSpot. Rating: *****