The "Bridge Pedal" is an August thing here in Portland.
It's...very Portland.
The idea is that for most of a summer Sunday a whole bunch of the downtown streets are closed to vehicular traffic - including most of Portland's Willamette River bridges - and are turned over to non-motorized (okay, well, non-large-motorized, since there are always some e-bikes and scooters in the peleton...) travelers to explore.
It's a real fucking nuisance if you're trying to drive around it, and I recall that when it began back in the 1990s the usual suspects pissed and moaned loudly about it. But since an overwhelming number of non-assholes enjoyed and still enjoy it, the whiners have learned to deal with it, so the first Sunday in August the bicycle (and scooter and unicycle and whatever...) wheels roll over the bridges.
Oh, and you can walk part of the route, too.
When we first met this was something that my ex and I did together and enjoyed. We were both just recreational cyclists - although Mojo did dream of a bit more glory and actually rode a century, a two-day endurance ride of one hundred miles, although finding the reality less rewarding than the dream - but for this? That was just fine.
After my hips and knees started to fail, though, I got off the bicycle some time in the late-Oughts and even sold my old Kona "Lava Dome" by the time I started getting parts replaced in the Teens.
So I thought I was long past my bridge-riding days when my domestic world fell apart.
Since then, though...
First, I felt the urge to ride again. Remembered the joy I felt getting in the wind, pushing myself to speeds my legs no longer carry me with my feet on the ground. I missed my ex-riding-buddy, but I realized that I missed the riding itself. A lot.
And while I couldn't do anything about the one, I could the other. So...
I picked up a second-hand bike at our local repair-and-refurbish collective.
I started riding again, beginning with our North Portland "Sunday Parkways" a week or so ago.
And enjoyed that so much I decided to sign up to ride this year's bridges.
Top deck of the Marquam Bridge. Always a traffic jam...even with bike traffic.
The day cooperated; sunny but cool and breezy. I chose to put the bike on my car-rack and unload just above the descent from North Portland into Albina and from there downtown...
(which was a very good decision - I would have regretted adding in the extra two-dozen miles or so from there home to St. Johns after the full bridge ride.)
...and by the time I came off the Broadway Bridge I could take off my windbreaker, so the weather was perfect for riding. The startline on Naito Parkway was full, and my experience was that if you faffed around you'd get stuck in traffic, so I sidled as close to the start and...off we went, up the west ramp of the Morrison Bridge.
This year's route was curious.
In the Olden Times the way this thing worked was that you could just ride a "downtown" loop that took in the central Portland bridges, or, if you were ambitious, a longer course that included the two "outlying" bridges, the Sellwood to the south and my St. Johns Bridge to the north.
The Sellwood is just a mile or so from downtown, but the St. Johns is a slog; probably eight or nine miles along the St. Helens Road - dead flat and through the grimmest parts of Northwest Portland's industrial wastelands, then back through my neighborhood and down through Overlook and Albina.
That seems to have been a deal-killer, so this year we rode this:
Across the Morrison and then down the pretty bike-path "Springwater Corridor" (an old interurban rail line) to the Sellwood. Back up through John's Landing to the Hawthorne Bridge, back across to the east bank to loop back across the Ross Island to the Hawthorne again!
From there over the first of the two "big bridges"; I-5 northbound's Marquam, which looped around the I-405 freeway - going north on the usually-southbound lanes - to the last crossing to the eastside, the Fremont Bridge.
Once back into Northeast Portland the route swung down along the Interstate Avenue right-of-way I'd ridden that morning to get to the start line...only instead of the Broadway it crossed back into downtown on the Steel Bridge and we were done.
Fremont Bridge (looking west)
The taiko drum corps had their own iaidoka. Who knew?
Mind you, some things had changed since my cycling prime.
Back in the day I was a climbing beast. I was always a poor descender; frightened of crashing at speed, riding the brakes in a nervous sweat all the way down anything more than the gentlest of hills.
But going up? I was a fucking monster, "dancing on the pedals" and powering up the most awful grades. I vividly recall an afternoon in the Eola Hills with Mojo and two friends. It had been a nice easy ride until we started up the western side of the hills themselves.
The slope got steeper, and steeper, and the others got slower and slower...until I told them I'd meet them at the top. And just rode away from them like they were sitting still.
They caught up with me at a little winery near the western crest where I'd been waiting nearly half an hour; watered, rested, and - as soon as the three staggered to a halt - ready to go on again.
I was lucky to escape with my life...but, anyway. I was a hell of a hill climber once.
This year?
Not even close. The slightest incline had me spinning away in granny gear, passed by ancient gaffers and erratic small children. My days as the Marco Pantani of North Portland are clearly long gone.
Oh, well.
I rode slowly back to Overlook Park where I'd left the car. Put the bike back on the backrack and then treated myself to coffee and a pastry.
Fuck, I'd earned it.
Did the ride, and my enjoyment of it, make the world a better place?
Ohhellno. Don't even get me started on Fatso's idiotic vaccine order from today. We're still in the New Gilded Age with all that implies.
But it helped me feel a bit lighter. Like I'd accomplished some small something happy and good and just for my own.
Last evening I drove out to downtown Beaverton and watched the 2009 anime film "Summer Wars". It was great popcorn, gorgeously animated in the best anime style, and hit all the mange/anime-lover (i.e. me...) buttons; high school romance/angst, family drama, high-tech danger, goofy secondary characters, samurai, squid, baseball. It's fun.
After the show I went and looked it up and was unsurprised that the director was the same person who did "Belle", the gorgeous anime version of Beauty and the Beast that my daughter took us too several years ago.
Well done, Hosoda-san.
Anyway, as I was reading I was a bit bugged by the title.
Yes, it's about a war (well, "cyber-war") and it takes place over two days in summer, so, "summer wars", fine.
But.
The Japanese title is "サマーウォーズ in katakana, which is "Hepburnized" in the Wiki as "Samā Wōzu".
Okay, now; because I'm me (and do military history and martial sports that have Japanese connections) I'm very familiar with the Japanese word for "war".
And it's not "Wozu", it's 戦争, "Sensō".
I tried looking for some sort of katakana or hirigana versions that could be translated as "wozu".
Nope.
Then I plugged the katakana title directly into romaji, and Dr. Google gave me this: "Samāu~ōzu".
That's also not "war"; indeed, try and look up "ozu" and all you you get is either a place name or a personal/family name. All the other links went directly back to the film, suggesting that the katakana don't mean "summer wars" in the general sense of "wars fought during the summer" but specifically "the movie "Summer Wars".
So now I'm baffled; is the title some sort of phonetic "English"? "Summer" ("sama") "Wars" ("wozu") invented just for the flick? If so...why? Why not just call it 夏戦争; "Natsu Sensō", "Summer War(s)"? Is there some particular reason or meaning for naming it the way they did?
I'm now hooked and I want to know.
Doesn't make the flick any less fun; indeed, now I want to know more about the movie.
I'm going to break off for a moment from the Real World and just rant for a moment, because I'm sitting here trying to read and my lovely Bride has turned on the fucking Big Bang Theory again.
She loves the hell out of this sitcom, and it's her single most go-to form of video entertainment, to the point where I can be at the far end of the house and hear the laugh track and know without a scintilla of doubt that it emanates from the fucking Big Bang Theory.
(Since I'm gonna be using this term a lot, let's save bandwidth and abbreviate it TFBBT.)
This sucker turns out to have been insanely popular - so she's not alone - ran for twelve seasons, and made big stars out of at least two of the leads; Jim Parsons as the male lead, Sheldon, and Kaley Cuoco as the female, Penny. Supposedly each of them (and Johnny Galecki, who played second lead, Leonard) made something like a million bucks an episode and they made over seventy of the bastards.
That's some serious jack.
And I don't get it.
I mean, de gustibus nil disputandem and all. But to have gustibus for TFBBT? Really? C'mon!
Seriously. The thing is just that bad. It's one of those painful trainwrecks that leaves you wondering if the writers and showrunners weren't missing out on their destined careers as housepainters, baristas, or grips on a porn film set.
To make matters worse, it's backed by a braying Sixties-sitcom-grade laugh track that just serves to point out how gawdawful the supposed-"jokes" are.
I have problems with about 99% of "reality" television because "reality" usually turns out to be a cast of variously-dysfunctional assholes being miserable to each other.
Christ, if I wanted that I could go to work.
Somehow TFBBT manages to combine the unfunny-ness of an unfunny sitcom with the trash human resource of your average "reality" show.
No kidding. There's barely a salvageable human being on the screen.
"Raj" (a.k.a. "the Indian guy") is just an extended Apu joke; he's a whiny, clingy, constantly horny rich desi whose domineering parents bankroll his overseas adventures while his supposed American friends mock his race, his culture, his personality, and his pathetic attempt at a love life. The whole Raj idea should have been euthanized for the same reasons the Simpsons showrunners flushed Apu.
The three women characters are just different versions of female stereotypes; "Bernadette" is a ball-buster (who hooks up with the smarmiest male character) who improbably becomes the mommy-character, "Amy" is the girl-geek, all social incompetence and ugly clothes, and "Penny" is the hottie who uses her looks to gold-dig and manipulate.
The male leads are just punchable; "Howard" (the smarmy wanna-be-womanizer) is needy and whiny but with a nasty undertone, "Sheldon" is just a complete asshole who'd be shunned by normal humans, and "Leonard" is perhaps the worst of them all, a meeching little man who hates his roomate Sheldon's bizarre assholish behavior yet constantly defers, enables, and sucks up to him - why he'd want to stay "friends" with the gomer is beyond inexplicable. Leonard "gets" the hot girl Penny by lying and faking and pursuing her so relentlessly she just gives up and settles for him.
It's all just simultaneously sad and annoying, and my Bride loves it dearly, which makes it even more annoying.
And it re-runs constantly, so she can always find one playing somewhere, so as often as not the evening resounds with the braying laughter of TFBBT's idiot "audience".
Ugh.
I'm with you, Penny; rather than sit through a FBBT I'd spend the evening sanding my feet...
Let me start by saying that I'm not a "horror" genre fan by nature. I figure that between epidemic disease, war, and the collected work of Toni Tennille the world is replete with horror enough that seeking out horrible things to "entertain" myself is both redundant and insulting.
But I read a review of the film that said "don't go thinking you'll see the book on film; this isn't like the book at all..." and suggested that the book touched on much broader and deeper subjects than the living dead feasting on human brains.
And I can report that, yes, it does.
Not sure which part I've enjoyed more. The Palestinian recounting how his father dragged him to asylum in Israel where he found that the "Zionist plot" was, in fact, the true assessment of the rapacious dead rising from their graves? The former White House chief of staff sneering about misplaced idealism and political "realities" driving the failed response to the Zombie Apocalypse from his current job shoveling pig-shit at a manure farm? The old Red Chinese combat surgeon's tale of the very first "Victim Zero"?
Politics, espionage, corruption, democracy, dictatorship, free markets, hope and fear, delusion, skepticism, credulity...the book does a pretty damn decent job of describing all the ways people deal - or fail to deal- with the immensities of Fate and Nature that we try and pretend can't destroy us with a vast and utter indifference (not to mention the usual human miseries and buffooneries) at any moment.
Good stuff. If you're looking for a damn good summer read, you could do far worse than the "Oral History of the Zombie War".
Then go watch Shaun of the Dead.
Shaun: "Look, I don't care what the telly says, all right? We have to get out of here. If we don't they'll tear us to pieces, and that is really going to exacerbate things for all of us."
I had a bit of a slow afternoon yesterday, so I clocked out early and joined my family at our little Oaks Park.
I suspect that most cities of any size and age have at least one of these old carnivals, leftovers from the turn of the last century when "entertainment" was something you had to leave the house to find.
This particular one opened in 1905 as "The Oaks" - you can see why in the picture to the left. The oak trees that forested the river island bar still stand over the little park.
The story is that The Oaks had a serious rivalry with the "other" entertainment game in town in 1905 - the Lewis and Clark Exposition rising in what had been the swamps of northwest Portland. According to the Portland History website I linked to above "The Oaks" won, opening a couple of days before the Exposition.
I have a real affection for these old amusement parks. I spent a good portion of my childhood several miles away from something called Lenape Park, a similar old carny as close to the Brandywine Creek as The Oaks was to the Willamette River. The late Victorian carousel and the ginormous wooden roller coaster seemed gothic and exciting to me, child of the pre-electronic age that I was, and my love for the turn-of-the-century parks has stuck with me to this day. So I appreciate the lingering small-town, slow paced feel of Oaks Park for the ghost of the past that it is.
My kids, however, could care less.
They like Oaks Park because they like the bumper cars, and the carousel, and the kiddie rides (yes, even the Boy, who is really too old for the tiny rides his little sister enjoys). We spent the better part of three hours there yesterday riding the rides, eating hot dogs and curly fries, and dodging the showers that scudded past like unhappy memories.
The Boy measured himself against the go-kart scale again. He's so close. He said that he thought his next growth spurt would put him over the bar, and so he's even thinking about eating a vegetable if that will help.
I doubt it'll happen, but you never know; he REALLY wants to drive those go-karts.
They both loved them some bumper cars. I honestly don't recall how many times they rode them, but it was a lot.
Little Miss even conned me into riding; she wanted to drive and her brother, in the way of big brothers everywhere, wouldn't give up the wheel. She needed a co-driver, though, because her little legs couldn't reach the pedal. So I pushed and she steered and the whole macguffin was vastly entertaining. There's something truly primeval about the instincts aroused by bumper cars. When the lights come on and the sparks start to fly from the tin flag at the top of the long pole even the gentlest heart is gripped with an overwhelming urge to ram and destroy. Something about seeing the gleeful expression on your little daughter's face as she accelerates and slams some stranger backwards into the wall makes even the most doting daddy skeptical about the whole "sugar and spice" thing.
So we whiled away the afternoon at the silliest of diversions; going fast and spinning around,
getting outside of junky food,
(during which we found that curly fries make great tusks, by the way...)
racing from one ride to another,
and generally disporting ourselves in a completely socially-insignificant fashion.
Finally, even the unsophisticated joys of Oaks Park wore thin. The skies grew grayer and colder, the rain began to spatter down with a more serious intent, and the crowd, what little there had been, thinned to the point of dereliction. The three of us felt that we'd dragged the most worth we could out of the old park. We trooped out to the little Honda and piled inside, ready to follow Mommy (who, no fool she, had taken the opportunity to dump Daddy with the kiddos and abscond hours earlier) back to North Portland.
Behind us the gaudy lights and carny noises faded into the spatter of rain. But climbing the hill away from the old oak grove I could still see the cotton-candy glow against the darkening sky, like the faint corona of a carnival crowd a hundred years ago looking then for the same foolish pleasures we had just found and left behind us.
In the case you don't have any spawn yourself, or in the case you're one of those exemplary moms or dads that show up (with great regularity) in the "parenting" section of the local newspaper (Portland being Portland) extolling the college admission potential of their progeny that will result from the severe restrictions the parent(s) have placed on their vidiocy, or in the case that you are entirely too grown up to find value in visual storytelling intended for children, then this post is not for you.
I started this post when I was home sick last week, battling the nasty head cold gifted me by my bride (I love you, dear!) and after waking around 1pm I was unable to sit still and look at the humanitarian relief destination that is our house and decided to tidy up. I was refiling the littles' DVDs when I got to thinking - I haven't really talked about the kiddos and their taste in entertainment for some time.
I did a comprehensive review of the KidVid more than three years ago, just pre-Missy and at the time when the Peep was still in preschool. Those seem as distant as the dark ages now, and for those of you whose small people are still not yet at the point where they are demanding video entertainment by genre or title I thought I'd repeat the review of the nondriving portion of the family's current favorites.
Although I should state for the record that one thing hasn't changed; we ALL still enjoy the hell out of Disney "The Jungle Book", Disneyfied as it is and all.And after repeated re-re-viewings, I hold to my original premise: Kaa is still Pooh.
Of course, the biggest difference between three years ago and today is that we now have two little vidiots in the house, and their tastes are very different. So the only way I can do justice to both of them is to give you a summation of their faves by kid. And since youth and beauty trumps age and cunning, let's start with Little Miss.
MISSY Age: "four and a half" or "a big girl" Quote: "Some kids in daycare some day called me bossy and I don't like it because it makes me sad."Missy, like a lot of three- and four-year-olds, is very much at a tipping point, sometimes little girl, sometimes older toddler, and sometimes even quite babyish. Her video needs are less well developed than her brother. She will ask to see some particular favorites - the "Barbie" videos (more on which in a moment) being perhaps the most often requested - but not always and not even very often. She will also watch whatever her brother is watching and (usually) enjoy it. That said, she does have some particular favorites.
About a year ago she stumbled across one of the "Barbie" movies. If you haven't been exposed to one of these you should consider yourself as fortunate as a 14th Century villager left alive after the Black Death swept through her or his hamlet. The crude production values are part of the general awfulness, although perhaps you can excuse a fraction of it because the star of the show is a fucking plastic doll and the idea might be to have her move and act like one.But the plots are usually idiotic and what passes for dialogue is usually worse. But something in these injection-molded atrocities is aimed right for the tender little hearts of three- and four-year-old girls and it hits their center-of-mass like Simo Häyhä and Lyudmila Pavlichenko in a head-to-head 7.62 national match quality bake-off. I don't have to like it, but I have to acknowledge it. The Barbie people are as cunning as vipers.
There is only one mitigating circumstance to Barbie.Bibble.
This little clip from the otherwise eye-searing "Barbie/Fairytopia/Mermadia" (don't ask - the titles are as irritating as the rest of the Barbie farrago) is a good example of the welcome relief from the styrene disaster that is a typical Barbie film that the pastel "puffball" represents. The moment where he suddenly becomes Isaac Hayes - you HAVE to watch the clip, I'm serious - still makes me laugh and I've seen this bastard, like, 20 times.
It's not funny enough, mind you, to make watching the rest of the film tolerable for adults. But it does help a little.
Another current Missy favorite is this damn Tinkerbelle movie "The Great Fairy Rescue".
Now let me digress for a moment.In my opinion Tinkerbelle is one of the most despicable Disney characters in the entire canon. If you watch the original "Peter Pan" she spends about 9/10s of the film acting like a snippy, nasty, whiny, pouty little bee-yotch. And that's before she flat-out betrays her lord and master to his oldest enemy.
Given her actions you'd think she was insane from being all ate up with sexual jealousy over the Pan's interest in Wendy Darling, that is if you a) didn't know that Peter is obviously (obvious even to a crazy-mad jealous cartoon fairy) mentally about ten and wants the older girl as a mother, not a lover, and b) couldn't imagine the vile sprite balking at carnal relations with someone who, even as an adolescent boy, would have reproductive hardware about 4/5ths the size of her entire freaking body.
Ewww.
I loathe Tinkerbelle, the original Disney Tinkerbelle - she is the worst of the sort of thing that happens to a literary character when it is Disneyfied. At least the fairy in the original story throws herself on a grenade to save her love, rather than to redeem her own treason.
But as rotten as the is, at least the 1953 Tinkerbelle is true to her rotten little self.
The Tinkerbelle of this "Fairy Rescue" is an adorable sprite who loves kiddies (the macguffin of the flick is that she forms a "special bond" with the little girl who traps her) and later hangs her fairy ass out to help the girl and her daddy.
Now call me curmudgeonly but if you set a trap for me and catch me in it the only "special relationship" that's gonna result is going to be between my boot and your ass. And the classic spiteful little vixen Tink of the original would have done something pretty nasty to the girl just to feel good about it. But this Tink? Gah. She's like watching a happy Dracula or Cruella de Ville as Captain Kangaroo. It's just wrong, and nothing I can do will convince my little girl of that, so I sit and bite my tongue.Tinkerbelle. Rrrrr.
The third great love of little Missy's video life is another Disney, but this is "The Princess and the Frog". I can handle TP&TF. The titular princess is a spunky minx, the frog-prince is a idle libertine, and while the whole romance is hokey it isn't really in the Disney tradition of the princess riding off to become an ornament in the prince's castle.The supporting characters are tolerable, there is some genuine Dixieland jazz around the place, although the songs - did I mention it's a musical? The Disney formula dies hard - are the generic Disney/Broadway musical numbers.
And it has smitten the Little Girl with a great and consuming love for Daddy's gumbo, so I count that a point in its favor.
Other than that she still occasionally flirts with her daemon lover, Caillou. Everything I once said about Caillou still stands, BTW, so its fortunate for me that she doesn't often ask for him.She has also lost whatever interest she had in the KidVid she used to love; she will watch Dora when I turn it on but won't ask for it, she shows no interest in Kai-lan, or Yo Gabba Gabba, or Wonder Pets, or ponies, or...well, just about anything typically kiddish and televised circa 2010. I suspect that this is a good thing, but I am still waiting for the other preschooler shoe to drop. There's got to be something cunningly hidden in that sleek little head, some exquisitely painful juvenile atrocity like the gadawful "Berenstain Bears" that she'll turn out to luuuuurve.
But I sure hope not.
Now for the older kid.
THE PEEP Age: "Almost eight" (actually seven-and-a-half) Quote: "I don't care, and you can't make me care."
The Boy is all about one thing and that thing is Star Wars.
His current infatuation is with the Cartoon Network "Clone Wars" animation, which combines tolerable stories and really quite decent (for the small screen) digital animation with one really huge, insoluble problem: Yeah, that.
Because we already know that Anakin Skywalker is going to become Darth Vader, possibly the most magnificent villain in modern movies, it's hard for an adult to watch these little dramas and not keep thinking "Gee, I wonder when so-and-so gets it? What terrible fate is in store for him/her?"
The new series has introduced a little stable of characters around the original doomed friends-turned-enemies Anakin/Vader and Obi-Wan. And assuming that Lucas does not intend to mess with his film canon we know that most of them, like Anakin's padawan Ahsoka and his loyal clone Captain, Rex, will be gone by the time the events of the "Revenge of the Sith" occur and their buddy Anakin turns into the Meanest Daddy of All Time.
None of this phases the Peep, who just enjoys the blam-kapow space battles and the coolness of the Jedi, the badass-ness of gunships and blasters and the trappings of sci-fi wars.
The only thing I do try and divert him from is his second-grade righteous wrath at the fictional clone soldiers when they obey their orders and shot down their fictional Jedi masters.
"I HATE the clone troopers!" Peep declared after watching the "Order 66" segment of RotS.Because for a seven-year-old there can only be Good and Bad; and since the Jedi were Good (because he had been told they were Good) then the men in the story who "killed" them had to be Bad. I explained that soldiers were men under orders, that sometimes orders were wrong but that the men did them anyway, either because they were mislead or because the orders seemed right at the time. I'm not sure he understood. But at least he likes to play clone trooper now, sometimes, too.
We manage to get through repeated viewings of the Lucas ouvre'. His film idea of "tactics" still irritates me, clone trooper-of-sorts that I am, though I can now resist shouting "Spread out and find cover, you fucking spastic, grabasstic pieces of monkey shit!" when the troopers stand up and walk forward shooting. And I have learned to appreciate the more ridiculous bits of Lucas dialogue. The current Peep Star Wars fascination shows no sign of waning, though, so we'll see how well we manage to get through another year of it.
The other Peep kidvid fave - actually, it's becoming a mutual attraction - is the cartoon "Avatar".I can't say enough good about this show. It is well-written, well-plotted, and the visual style, a mixture of traditional animation and some of the cleverer anime' conventions, is pleasing to the eye. I like the fact that the setting is unapolgetically Asian. I like that the show's creators treat their creations with respect, allowing the characters to struggle with real problems of life, death, love, hate, loyalty, and betrayal. It's a damn good show.Avatar ran for three seasons on Nickelodeon, between 2005 and 2008. It's in random repeat on Nick now, and both the kiddos are always ready to watch an episode, each one containing enough broad humor and cartoon adventure for them to enjoy while containing stories and characters within are complex enough for a parent to enjoy.
I'll even admit to being personally rather fond of Zuko, the volatile prince of the Fire Nation, and his goth girlfriend Mai. He's a tortured guy whose internal struggle from exiled prince to redemptive king makes for damn good storytelling, and he and Mai have lovely twisted little relationship. His process of growing up over the three seasons is as well-crafted as any adult television. And Mai is everything but the standard-issue cartoon girlfriend; she has all sorts of issues of her own, only some of which revolve around the guy with the funny eye-scar. Whatever else the two are, they're never dull.I'd say that goes for the whole show, possibly the best kidvid my little ones have discovered to date. Hopefully their Avatar phase will outlast the Barbie-and-Jedi infatuations - possibly extending into another year and letting their dad get a look at the new "Avatar" incarnation, the "Legend of Korra". But it's well to remember that the only constant with children is that there is no constant.
So I imagine that I will have to do this over in another couple of years.
We're a vidiocy sort of family, so if you have any questions just drop me a line. From Scooby to Boobah, we've seen it all and done it all.
We can set your feet on the right path, young padawan. All you have to remember is that the Truth that draws you on like the lodestone to the Pole Star is that Velma is Teh Hot.See you around the couch, then..?
We have a favorite place to eat when we're looking for Japanese food:Sushi Takahashi is one of Portland's kaiten zushi places - in Japanese "回転寿司" or "conveyor-belt sushi". There are several of these in the area, but we've always liked this unpretentious little spot the best.
Now, let be be honest; you will not get the best...or the second best...or anything close to the best sushi in Portland - which is a damn demanding sushi town, perhaps the most discerning outside LA - at Takahashi. Which, believe it or not, is why I like it.
At bottom I'm a sergeant. I've been a student, geologist, mechanic's assistant, husband (twice), father (again, twice), medical assistant...but I suspect that the real key to my personality is the hackneyed sergeant's snarl: "Don't "sir" me, goddamnit, I work for a living!" I like things simple, practical and effective. If they are graceful and beautiful, all the better. But nothing irks me quicker than affected flourishes and posing that adds no value to the person, place or thing. Be what you are, dammit, be the BEST you can be, and quit prancing the fuck around.So kaiten zushi works great for me 90% of the time. It's tasty, quick, clean and reasonably priced. It's a workingman's kind of sushi, the kind of place you'd expect a couple of hard-handed riveters from the Mitsubishi yards to stop off at the end of a hard day building Imperial carriers to sink the Yankee Fleet to wash down some tekkamaki with a half-rack of cold Sapporos and argue about this year's Yomiuri Giants.
It's a fun place with good food for a good price. And the maguffin here is the little toy train that serves as the conveyor - my kids call this place "Sushi Train".
Well, tonight was Mommy's Night Off - I try and take the kids one evening during the week and several hours one weekend day to give Mojo some down time; otherwise she'd be jumped on as constantly as the cutest boy in an Afghan Army barracks.
I first proposed "Zoolights" or the Victorian Mansion place up here in Kenton or Peacock Lane and was informed by The Peep (in his best "how-the-hell-does-someone-as-frigging-stupid-as-you-walk-and-breathe-at-the-same-time" six and a half year old Who Knows It All voice) that "Lights are BO-ring". He confided that "Games are fun and you do stuff. Lights are boring because you just LOOK at them. Let's go the the Nickel Arcade!" Missy chimed in "Nickel Arcade! I want Nickel Arcade!"
So we went to the Nickel Arcade.
But before that Daddy got him some Tempura Tai.The menu says it's halibut, it's not - it's tilapia. But it's so damn good it can make a strong man weep, and its buttery deliciousness and spicy sauce make a perfect counterpoint to the hot oiliness of the cheap hot sake'. Two orders of tai and a flask of the hot rice wine and you're ready to charge Tokugawa'sashigaru with nothing but a cat toy.
Not that I want my children to try this.
I filled up on my favorites, Big Boy wanted nothing from train sushi but the chocolate cake dessert, and little Miss ate her Burgeville fries, and chicken, and some flying fish egg, (tobiko) and a little tamago (egg omlet), and THREE orders of amaebi (sweet shrimp).
Did I mention that girl loves her some shrimp?
Peeperman was at his loving and playful best, Little Miss was adorable and winning - she utterly charmed the little group of two sisters and their brother on our left to the point where Older Sister spent much of her evening smiling at and cajoling her - and made a glorious mess. It was a good evening with two sweet kids.And even the Nickel Arcade was good, cheap fun. We sure shot the hell out of those androids.
We arrived home to a languid Mommy in her pink spotted bathrobe who distributed hugs and kisses, toothbrushes and jammies and stories and bed. Where they are all three now, sleeping soundlessly, as the waning crescent moon sails overheadin the cold, deep, clear, dark, silent sky.
Speaking of Missy the Zombie Slayer, have I ever mentioned that I was and am a huge Buffy fan?
Yup. Secret vice and all that. Has nothing to do with a skweechy crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar, who, despite her lovely surname, I find entirely too Hollywood-skinny and affected. Haven't seen her in much of anything else, don't really care too. I'm not interested in the woman as a celebrity or even an actress at all...but I love the hell out of her Buffy. Which probably means that I actually have a crush on Joss Whedon, in a hot, manly, totally het-guy way, of course. Ahem.
Vampires being all the rage, I couldn't avoid the recent publicity surrounding the release of the "Twilight" movie. Twilight, for me, combines all the things I find irritating about the recent young-adult vampire trope; the looming atmosphere of adolescent gothy angst, the patronizing theme of the hunky prince "awakening" his princess' sexual nature with his, ahem, kiss (which, of course, seals her to him in a sort of icky, vampy "covenant marriage").
Gotta love how the cool, confident, competent Slayer proceeds to flip off Mister Cool Sparkly Broody Heathcliff Vampire and his wierd stalkyness before settling the entire icky business with the business end of a tent peg.
Did I mention how smart, cool, confident, competent women are utterly and infinitely devastating?
You can keep your emo arm candy. I'm down with the Slayer every time.
1. The reality of life in 21st Century America is that unless you live in a yurt, have the emotional and intellectual steadfastness of Marcus Aurelius or your offspring are less visual than mine, if you have a child you will encounter Kid TV. This morning I was blogging and thinking about the pre-daycare-tantrum to come and what we do in the mornings when the Peeper and I both wake up. We have a big sippy-of-milk-with-a-valve-all-the-way-to-the-top (coffee for me) and eat our toast (pop-tart, sometimes, for Himself) and cuddle on the couch. And often we watch "something good for me" which usually means a cartoon.
2. There's my fave up on top: Kipper. I think you'd like Kipper , too. He's quiet and thoughtful, in his cartoon doggish way. He has little adventures with his friends Tiger and Pig and is kinda the sort of cartoon person who, if he was a real person you'd probably enjoy spending the afternoon with just hanging out doing nothing in particular. Do people still do that? Peep likes Kipper when he's in a quiet mood - which is a lovely time for me because it's so rare. He's really sweet and huggy when he's quiet.
3. I've talked here before about Dora. Her giant cartoon head scares me, and several of her cartoon aspects are entirely too screechy and/or irritating (and yes, I'm talking about YOU, "Map"...) The Peep enjoys Dora but doesn't actively seek her show out. We'll watch it when it comes on if we're looking for "something good for me"...
4. Diego is one of Peep's favorite cartoons, which I've discussed at length earlier in the blog. Both Dora and Diego are relatively parent-painless (except for the fucking Map)
5. "Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks" is purely a Guy Thing. We love Meteor and watch him every morning before daycare. All the stories tell little lessons about stuff like friendship, honesty and caring. But we really watch it because we like to see Junkboy get all dirty. Peep and I, we like our trucks dirty.
6. I have nothing to say about the Berenstain Bears except "The horror! The horror!" It seems like this cornpone nightmare gets inflicted on us every time we watch PBS's "Good Night Show". My loathing for this has become a family joke, with Peep insisting we watch it so he can enjoy my groans of "No! Not the Bears! Anything but the Beeeaaaarrrrsss..!"
7. The funny thing is that the GNS exposed me to Peep's first crush: he luuuurves him some "Nina", the ectomorphic hostess of the show. Who, I admit, is pretty cute, and how cool is a kid's show host who does yoga? And since in PeeperWorld two people can't like the same thing (that is, if the Peep says "I like diesel engines" then I can't like diesel engines, I have to like steam engines, or hotcakes, or something...) I have to like Star. In fact, the person I really liked was Melanie, Nina's predecessor. Melanie turned out to be a very smart, articulate young actress who was canned for making a funny commercial suggesting that teaching kids "abstinence" was as useful as encouraging them to have anal sex so they wouldn't technically lose their virginity. And you thought that KidVid was all cartoon animals and things that blow up!
8. OK. Get real. How many 4-year-old boys would want to follow the adventures of a cartoon mouse ballerina. Not to mention that Angelina whines, like, all the time. Worse than friggin' Caillou. Nah, nobody whines more than Caillou. Michelle Malkin, maybe.
9. Scooby Doo. OK, how wierd is it that your kid is watching and enjoying a show that YOU watched and enjoyed when you were a kid.
The Scoobster hasn't changed, and the jokes are still just as dumb and the "ghosts" and "monsters" just as silly. The animation sure is better, and as the picture at right shows, the Scooby Gang has been slicked and updated for the 21st Century. But Shaggy and Scooby are still gluttonous cowards, Fred still stalwart, Daphne still heroic and Velma still cute n' nerdy.
Which, BTW, brings back the most divisive question of my adolesence: Daphne or Velma: hot, or not?
I was and am a confirmed Velmist: she's totally hot in a geek-girl, Janeane Garofalo-way. But the Daphneites have sound arguments, too.
Let's face it: a four-year-old could care less. But that's the Daddy's job - to guide little feet towards a proper manhood, to nurture the little fellow into an appreciation of geek-girlhood (and -womanhood) and the understanding that knee socks, a pleated skirt and baggy sweaters are the epitome of feminine coolness.
10. I hear the stirring of little Peepers and mommies. Time to go to work - see you again around here later in the week.
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Update 6/21 p.m.: well, Mojo reports that we did have the monster tantrum about going to daycare, so daddy will have some discipline issues when we get home tonight. At least the whole "I want a toy every minute" whining is getting less constant. And - for the record - I am in complete agreement with wzgirl (see comments) re: the New Velma - smokin'!! Love the new hair - and the glasses? You're a knockout, kid.
