Monthly Archives: November 2002

Lessons in Capitalism

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Some time ago we started giving Dave a
small weekly allowance. We don’t actually give him the cash; instead, he
accrues a certain amount each week in the Bank of Dad. That means that
when David asks how much money he has, I check the record in my PDA and
see how many weeks it’s been since I last paid anything into his account.
Then I add the resulting amount to his balance and tell him how much he’s
got.

Now, for quite some time David has been agitating for a Bionicle. (It’s
a kind of Lego toy.) For quite some time we’ve been telling him that
if he saves his allowance he can buy that kind of thing for himself; in
the meantime Christmas is coming.

This afternoon he said, “Dad, when it’s my birthday I want you to take
my seven dollars and buy me a Green Bionicle.” I said, “Dave, you’re
a little confused. If I buy you a Green Bionicle for your birthday,
I’ll be spending my money, not yours. And if you have seven dollars
(or whatever a Green Bionicle costs), then you don’t have to wait until
your birthday.”

So naturally he said, “Dad, can we go to Toys’R’Us today?”

I checked, and indeed his account in the Bank of Dad was well over
seven dollars, and so there I was, stuck, the victim of my own
teaching. And so we did. It wasn’t what I had planned to do with
my early Sunday evening, but on the whole I think it worked out rather
well.

And so did the Green Bionicle. Dave put it together all by himself,
following the instructions, and it’s really rather cute.

Soccer Update

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My five-year-old has been playing AYSO soccer this
season, as I believe I’ve mentioned before. It’s been something of a
trial for me, as the games are scheduled on Saturday, and usually
Saturday morning.

Now, Saturday morning is my chief project time. I can get a lot done on
personal projects in the evenings, but Saturday is the only time when I
can tackle larger things–when I have several hours together and have the
gumption to focus on something difficult for that length of time. Having
a soccer game take (effectively) a two-hour bite out of that time has
brought my productivity to a screeching halt.

Today, however, the soccer game isn’t scheduled until 1:30 this
afternoon, so I have the morning to myself. Well, mostly to myself; Dave
is sitting on the other side of my desk playing with Legos and
occasionally making staccato “Twang, Twang” noises (I think he’s shooting
something–best not to ask). It’s looking like a good morning.

More Kvetching

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The dearth of book reviews early in the month isn’t helped by the
fact that my current book is a slow, thick one: a biography of Sir
Richard Francis Burton. Burton was a 19th Century soldier and
adventurer; he’s best known these days for his pilgramage to Mecca (he
was one of the first Europeans to go there), and for his translation of
the 1,001 Arabian Nights (the original translation, and still the raciest,
I’m given to understand). More about him when I’ve finished the book.

Good Eats Watch

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There’s exactly one TV show that Jane and I make
it a point to catch every week: Good Eats. It’s a cooking show on the
Food Network, and it’s funny. The chef, Alton Brown, is a regular kind
of guy; he wears hornrim glasses and he’s got bad hair and he usually
wears Hawaiian shirts–or sometimes bowling shirts. The show is filmed
inside of a house the purports to be his (nice Craftsman-style kitchen),
and it’s all about cooking well–not just how to prepare a particular
dish, but the secrets, the gotchas, and why it all works the way it does.

And it’s funny. The show is rife with weird camera angles (it often looks
like you’re looking out of the oven or refrigerator), weird props (a
Magritte-like painting of a roast turkey floating in mid air), and odd
story lines.

For example, there was the show where Butter was on trial, complete with
an English judge in a wig. There have been several episodes of Food
Gallery (a take-off on Rod Serling’s Night Gallery show); one of them
was on how to do souffles, and another was about cheesecake. There was
the Scrap Iron Chef show. There was the show about crepes, where
Alton’s psychiatrist insisted that he get in touch with his French side.
There was the Thanksgiving show on how to properly cook a turkey–and
the following week’s show which purported to be a documentary that was
originally about the making of the Thanksgiving show but turned into a
documentary of the horrible things that happened when the cast and crew
were snowed in together after the Thanksgiving show. There was the show
where Alton’s wife sent him on a vacation to the Pacific Northwest to get
some enforced rest and relaxation with absolutely no cooking; he caught
a salmon and smoked it in a large cardboard box outside his hotel room.
There was the Oats show in which Alton and a partner, both dressed
in kilts, showed (more or less) how to make haggis with a claymore and an
outrageously bad Scottish accent.

You get the idea. It’s on at 6 PM and 9 PM PST (9 PM and 12 PM EST)
Wednesdays and Saturdays on Food Network. The Saturday show is pretty
much always a rerun.

Kvetching

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One problem I had not considered when I started this web log was
the dearth of material at the beginning of the month. I usually write
book reviews a few at a time, and then post them over the next few days.
It gives you folks something to read every day, and means I don’t need to
be writing every day. But the last thing I do every month is finish
writing reviews of all of the books I’ve read, and then those reviews go
into Ex Libris
instead of into the web log. And then, the next
day, I have no reviews to post. Which means I need to write bilge like
this to fill the space.

I suppose I could drone on about the California election, but the only
thing on the ballot that I’m at all exercised about is a proposal to allow
voter registration up to and including Election Day. At present, there’s
a deadline–you have to register some weeks (30 days?) before Election
Day.

Now consider–Joe Blow goes to the polls on Election Day, and registers
to vote–at every precinct in the county. How can this be prevented?
The proposed measure provides for stringent new anti-fraud mechanisms,
but I think it’s wishful thinking. Rigging an election can be a powerful
temptation, and the stakes can be high; I’m in favor of putting as many
obstacles as possible in the way.

So I’m agin’ it. We’ll see in the morning how many folks agree with me.

Redwall, by Brian Jacques

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If you’ve got kids of the right age, you’ve probably heard of
Redwall; not only is it a popular and still growing
series, but the first book was made into a PBS TV show. That’s
where David first encountered it, and he was too excited for
words to find out that we actually had a copy of the book for
me to read to him. It took us the tail end of September, all of
October, and the first few days in November, but by golly we
did it.

A quick plot summary: the peaceful mice of Redwall Abbey are
known all over the countryside for their willingness to help others.
But an evil rat, Cluny the Scourge, is coming with his horde; he wants
to take Redwall Abbey for his castle. The Abbey was founded in part by
the great warrior mouse Martin, who defended it and then pledged himself
to peace. Now a young mouse, Matthias, must find Martin’s armor and
sword, and take up arms to defend Redwall as Martin did. So it’s about
knights and armor and derring do and battles and brave scouting missions;
it’s a coming of age story, naturally; and since it’s written for kids
there’s lots of good stuff about the importance of forgiveness and
turning enemies into friends. Martin succeeds, of course, and a great
celebration is enjoyed by all.

I find I need to approach this review from two points of view,
David’s, and my own.

David loved it. He was thrilled. I couldn’t possibly have had a
better audience. If Redwall the novel has any faults,
David was immune to them.

Now, my point of view. I bought our copy of Redwall
some years ago; I often like kid-lit if it’s done well. I liked it,
with caveats, but didn’t feel at all motivated to by any of the
other books in the series.

Nothing about this reading changed my mind. The writing isn’t great.
The prose frequently edges into the purple; a good editing could make
it a much cleaner, crisper read. The plot is rather contrived.
The quest for Martin’s sword involves hints which require Martin to
have been seriously prophetic, for which no decent explanation is given.

The laws of physics get stretched in a cartoon-like way far more often
than I like. And no, I’m not being overly critical here. It’s one thing
if the laws of physics are stretched by magic–that’s part of the story.
So are talking mice who live in an abbey. But in this case, they are
simply stretched to make the story work properly.

I can almost hear the author saying, “Yeah, that’s implausible, but the
kids won’t care.”

And he’s probably right a lot of the time. But I think that books for
younger readers must play fair and follow the rules. The author is
free to set the rules; and one of the rules for Redwall is
that it’s a world more or less like our own. The rules of physics apply.
To break them just to make the story come out is an insult to the readers
and an unwarrantable liberty on the author’s part–the more so as
(given its vocabulary) Redwall is clearly aimed at the teen
market. These kids are smart enough to notice these things.

It doesn’t really read-aloud well, either (most flaws are at their most
visible when read aloud), and it doesn’t break up into nice chunks for
for bedtime reading. You finish a chapter with Matthias in a serious
cliffhanger, and it doesn’t get resolved until a full chapter later, for
example. Plus, the chapter lengths vary widely. I can’t really criticize
these last two points so much, though, as it just reflects that
Redwall is really a book for much older kids.

Now, there’s a lot to like here as well. The plot is fine, and the
storytelling was adequate. I wasn’t writhing in bored horror as I read
the tale to Dave. Jacques clearly accomplished what he set out to do.
But I really wish the writing was better and the solutions a little
less strained.

I believe this was Jacques’ first book; it may be that his writing
improves in the subsequent volumes. I have every reason to expect that
I’ll find out…but it’s with a sigh of relief that I remember that
we’ll be starting Prince Caspian tomorrow night.

The Seven Samurai, by Akira Kurosawa

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The Seven Samuria is a good flick. Dave Jaffe brought it over on
Friday night, and we watched it and ate popcorn and (it’s a loooong show)
I went to bed rather later than I usually do. I’m afraid I’m not enough
of a film buff to understand why it’s considered such a classic, though
I will say that Kurosawa certainly understood how to let the images tell
the story. The dialog is kept to a minimum, and used pretty much only to
impart information that couldn’t be gotten across visually. The acting
was good, too, with the exception of the early scene where the villagers
are falling all over themselves emotionally because the bandits are
coming. That was a little too far over the top, a little too pathetic
for words.

If you’ve never seen The Seven Samurai, as I hadn’t, a plot
summary would be helpful.

You see, there’s this small community that’s being preyed upon by
bandits. The bandits are just waiting for the harvest before they make
another attack; until harvest, the community won’t have anything worth
stealing. The community sends out one of their number, a
positive-thinking if slightly odd fellow, to go find some warriors to
protect them from the bandits. He finds a troupe of warriors and brings
them back home, only to find out that they are in fact a troupe of
travelling circus performers. Still, with luck and a little ingenuity,
they manage to drive off the bandits for good, and all is well.

Oh, wait…that’s not The Seven Samurai, it’s A Bug’s Life.
The Seven Samurai is somewhat different–the village sends out
several men who manage to enlist one samurai, who enlists the others
needed, and the successful battle owes everything to the skill of the
samurai and little to any particular peasant. There’s no “Flick the Ant”
in this movie. But there’s a distinct family resemblance.

And I guess that just goes to show how influential Kurosawa is.

Bolinda

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“From what I just read, she was enough.”

“Enough to be getting started with, I guess. You can’t run a sideshow
with only one attraction.”

“But what an attraction!”

“That’s true. She was the foundation of his fortune, right enough.
‘Course, she ruined him too.” Hank leaned over and spat in the can by
the wood burning stove, then tipped back in his chair, front legs off
of the floor. “You never saw her, I collect?”

“You know I never did, Hank. That was all before my time. Hasn’t
been a carny through here since I was a boy.”

Hank nodded. “Has been a long time at that. Used to be we’d get ’em
three times a year, spring, summer and fall, like clockwork. All us
boys’d skip school to watch ’em set up. ‘Cept in the summer, of
course, there was no school in the summer in those days. We’d sneak
into the sideshow to see the geek, and have nightmares for days. I
recollect how Bobby Hill terrified our entire boyscout troop with
a dead chicken head after that. But I’m rambling. It gets that way
after a while….”

“So go on about Bolinda, Hank.”

“Oh, yes, Bolinda of Bolivia, the Living Atlas. ‘Course, she was
really from Brooklyn, but it’s not like anyone was paying to hear her
speak. They had this booth, d’ye see, a big booth with canvas all
round, open to the sky, and a little stage at one end, with a curtain
behind it. You’d pay your nickel to get in, and then she’d come out
from behind the curtain wearing a few inches of cotton. ‘Tain’t
nothing to what what you see on TV these days, like that Pamela
Anderson, but let me tell you back then it was hot stuff, with North
and South America curving down one side, and Africa on the other. All
us boys knew that after supper they did a special show, where you paid
50 cents and got to see the Azores, and maybe even Australia. We
thought a lot about Australia in those days. Never met anybody who’d
actually seen the special show, though some boys liked to claim they did.”

“So how did she ruin him?”

“Well, it was the drinking, wasn’t it.”

“She was an alcoholic?”

“‘Twasn’t so much that as the beer. You throw back enough sixpacks
while sitting on your little stool behind the curtain, and it’s bound
to have an effect. Got so she’d come out from behind the curtain in
stages, like the phases of the moon, and then she’d be so tipsy she’d
kind of sway. We’re not as scientifically backward out here as the
cityfolks like to think, but I guess twarn’t no one wanted to see
continental drift up close and personal.” Hank spit into the can
again. “I finally got to see Australia when I was in the Navy. It’s
a fine place, but it didn’t have a patch on old Bolinda.”