EenieMeenie

I spent one of the last afternoons of 2012 with my wife watching Peter Jackson’s film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. At nearly three hours, the movie turned into an investment of time and interest on our part. What an investment, though. Hobbit careens through the theater with a sort of controlled frenzy that leaves the viewer with the tandem desires of wanting to see more while wishing to go off quietly and barf from dizziness. There has been much discussion of the 48 frames per second rate Hobbit is presented in and I’m not going to belabor the argument here. Having seen this fast-moving, roller coaster of a motion picture the way it was shot, I wouldn’t want it any other way. Granted, I did get a little worn out and had to ask my wife several times when the Titanic was going to sink, signalling the end of the movie.

For all of the swiftly tilting, swooping action Jackson presented in his vision of Middle Earth, I really enjoyed the quiet moments in Hobbit. The part of the journey that might be so completely unexpected for moviegoers and even Bilbo Baggins himself is the camaraderie aspect of his journey. Bilbo, the settled, agrarian villager finds himself in the company of others and learns valuable lessons about life and himself. He must learn to embrace the near-kindred fellowship of dwarves and a crusty old wizard. Last night, I started to really consider that we’re all asked to do the very same as Bilbo in some way. As I tucked into our annual New Year’s Eve bounty with good friends last night, it occurred to me that each year we renew our bonds and take on the great unknown. The same thought came to mind today as my family started our pre-bowl game soup buffet. In each instance, I took a good look at the people surrounding me and thought how the upcoming year is going to be no ordinary one. No year ever is. 2013 will undoubtedly be a swooping, careening, 48 frames per second journey of unexpected proportions. God willing, I’ll be blessed to be surrounded by these same people at next year’s celebrations. I’ll do my part to carry them through the journey, because I can’t think of people I’d rather be surrounded by.

Now, I know it’s customary to associate any talk of Hobbits with Zeppelin, but as my wish for your blessed 2013, I’ll defer to Dylan:

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.

Lyric: Bob Dylan, 1973/2001 Ram’s Horn Music, reprinted without permission

#2013 #48 Frames Per Second #Bob Dylan #Forever Young #life's Adventure #New Year #New Year's Day 2013 #Planet Waves #Ringing Out 2012 #The Hobbit #The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Podcast Episode 13: Andy BooBoo

This week’s podcast riffs on a few stories (google jailed Russian punk bands for details) and goes nuts for reality TV. After relaxing with some Moutain Dew and Redbull, enjoy this episode. Have fun, see you around the blog.

Podcast Episode 13 Andy Boo Boo

#Honey Boo Boo #Honey Boo Boo Child #Mitt Romney #P***y Riot #Paul Ryan #Red Bull and Mountain Dew #TLC #Toddlers & Tiaras #Vladimir Putin
About two months after I stopped my regular running routine (i.e., I quit running altogether and began a torrid affair with my couch), there came the inevitable day when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My body had begun the long, ugly battle with gravity. My physique started to resemble that of E.T. This development makes sense in light of the constant urge to waddle down the street after Reese’s Pieces and penchant for shouting things like “can’t a brother get some M&M’s?” Have I mentioned that I get beat up for saying stupid things like that? I’m much easier to smack down now that my body has morphed into the shape of a fat little extra-terrestrial. Over the weekend, while padding through the mall and using my finger flashlight to look for gum under benches, I stopped in front of a store selling all in one starter boxing kits. This, my highly evolved candy seeking brain told me, might be a good way to get some needed exercise and help alleviate all of that getting pasted for yelling absurdities.

Upon bringing the box into the house Monday night, my 10-year old daughter Anna glommed onto the set. We love boxes at our house. The decision was eventually made that I should waddle the box over to center of the living room and set up the kit. Anna was entranced. The kit consists of a weighted punching stand, boxing gloves and a jump rope. I adjusted the height of the punching bag for Anna and the child immediately adopted the set as her own. Hugging the bag, it was like we’d finally given her a sibling. She announced to her mom and I that she’d named the punching bag “Steve.” No reason. She just thought it looked like a Steve. Anna then began a sort of dance passive-aggressive (actually, mostly aggressive) co-dependency with Steve. She’d hit her new friend a half-dozen times in a blind rage and then hug the bag and tell it everything was going to be okay. Last night, Steve the bag got the worst of it. Tuesday was Anna’s first really cognizant viewing of a Presidential election, and she took it on candidates she didn’t like. Well, she took it out on Steve. Ticked off by the endless prattling of pundits, Anna went nuts on Steve every time she passed the bag. It’s good for her I suspect. Most adults don’t have a Steve to process through. I just chased down a trail of mini-Snickers bars and waited for her to go to bed so I could get some punching time in.

#Boxing #E.T. #Election Day 2012 #Reese's Pieces #Running
When two people become parents there are certain concessions that have to be made. To start raising a child is almost like selling all of Manhattan for $23 in beads and a couple of bottles of fire water. Still, to be a dad and watch my child grow up into a good, morally centered, self-aware human is life’s greatest reward. To think that all I had to give up was the relationship my wife and I once shared. Not the entire relationship, but the one that is still a mystery to my child. My wife Lori and I speak in parent code, but our child is onto us. She knows that we used to be friends in a murky past life. Sometimes, on days when she’s busy growing up, Lori and get to have a few moments remembering life before we were mom and dad.

We don’t really have many formal dates. Formality usually gives way to being our weird selves. The other day, when our child was at drama practice all day, Lori and I rode around having those strange conversations where we didn’t have to stop and explain anything, or revert to secret parent code. We were in the car, which I was driving way too fast, because it was only ourselves that would be thrown from the wreck. Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All Of These Years came on and I made the mistake of saying to Lori “This pretty much sums up my life.” The first line, unfortunately, is “I met my old lover on the street last night.” Lori asked what old lovers I meant and I had to reassure her that she is and will always be the oldest. Not reassuring. She brightened up and nodded after the second verse began (“I’m not the kind of man who tends to socialize. I seem to lean on old, familiar ways”). “Oh. That’s you. So? What lovers?” Later, enjoying more time alone (i.e, time in which we weren’t going through pre-teen drama prefaced with the screech of ” but ma-ah-mmmm”), we started watching Homeland. I like any show that doesn’t feature talking, aquatic cleaning supplies. If you’ve never watched Homeland, it has two constant threads running through it. Torture and half-dressed women. Lori told me to stop staring at one of the non-torture threads and I brushed it off with “Oh, well. She’s not my type.” See? This is why it sometimes works best to have children around. They are the honesty patrol. Children act as a firewall between dad’s stupidity and mom’s ears. My daughter Anna will usually shrug when asked to repeat my stupidity and shout “I don’t know what he said. I was watching Spongebob. You guys are soooo weird.” We won’t be watching TV until I can somehow assure Lori that nobody on televison is my type. She’s my type, because she puts up with casual stupidity. In any case, Anna’s home tonight and it’s back to speaking in code, leaning on old familiar ways. I don’t get in as much trouble with code.

#Homeland #parent code #parenting #Parenting Pre-teen girls #Parentspeak #Paul Simon #Postaday #Spongebob Square Pants #Still Crazy After All These Years postaday
I am a rotten, sniveling television viewer. Easily bored, prone to wandering, apt to wear the same outfits as Rachel Maddow (although, not nearly as well). Last Monday night presented a prime-time example of my wah-wah-wah TV watching attitude. NBC’s new J.J. Abrams produced series, Revolution, debuted and I rated it as a two shrugs up show. I’d spent quite a few summer evenings watching past episodes of Sons Of Anarchy, Mad Men and Downton Abbey. The truth is, these were shows that spoiled me for even the best that the networks have to offer. The premise of Revolution is intriguing. The first episode, promoted to death during the Summer Olympics, imagines what the world might be like 15 years after every electrical device in existence stops operating one night. Planes crash, cars stop, former Lost-ie Elizabeth Mitchell looks on pensively. The world a decade and a half post-lights out could easily use the Talking Heads Nothing But Flowers as a soundtrack. Future citizens use wrecked cars as crock pots. Corn fields have replaced the Dairy Queens and 7-11′s. The show then loses power. Under martial law, the kids go all Hunger Games, walk to what’s left of Chicago (“Look! I found Andre Dawson!”), and try to reunite with kidnapped relatives. Slackers. They should have played Yahtzee and waited for Con-Ed to com out and fix the lights. Midway through the premier of Revolution I was waiting for Elizabeth Mitchell’s character Rachel to come back and detonate the nuclear device, destroy the island and remind us that it was all a dream. Instead, we watch the youngsters seek out Bella’s dad from Vampiretown, USA. He’s a winner. What’s with the chip on this guy’s shoulder? He’s tending a bar full of post-apocalyptic freaks! That’s the closest to a Mos Eisley acting gig as he’ll ever get.

Sons of Anarchy was a rough hour of TV to watch last week and doesn’t promise to get any better. Still, it was well a written, not-terribly cheesy hour. There was cause and effect, moral ambiguity, flawed and misplaced emotion. Gee, what weird concepts. The kind of weird behavior you’d expect when the lights have been out for 15 years (or, roughly the last time someone paid the electric bill at NBC).

#Downton Abbey #Elizabeth Mitchell #J.J. Abrams #Mad Men #NBC's Revolution #Nothing But Flowers #Revolution #Sons of Anarchy #Sons of Anarchy Season 5 #Talking Heads
Friday night entertainment in small-town, middle America is often where you find it. Follow the noise and you’re bound to be rewarded with something interesting. Last night the students at Coloma High School (that would be in the southern reaches of Michigan. The Indiana Riviera, as it were) put on a talent show to benefit anti-bullying efforts and promote a substance free lifestyle. The kids were great, and I give them a lot of credit for taking the stage with songs and comedy. My 9-year old daughter Anna, the sage wisdom behind many of these blog posts, was in attendance. To say she’s impressionable would be an understatement. Anna takes in whatever she’s viewing with the rapt attention of an alien being sent to observe and report on the weird cultural rituals that make up life on Earth. It was in this way that she fell for an 18-year-old guitarist. Like riding a laundry basket on wheels, downhill and with no soft landing in site, I am raising a pre-teenage girl. All I could do was hum Wilco’s Heavy Metal Drummer all day today (“…she fell in love with the drummer/another then another…”). Here we go.

The boy in question is a great Christian kid, and I offer him all the hearty congratulations in the world on his graduation this coming week. He is the unwitting victim of Anna, however. Some girls develop crushes, but Annabanana goes Doctor Who on whomever (or whatever) piques her interest. She was reverse engineering his guitar playing. Once, when she complained of boredom, I told her to grab her pink kiddie guitar with the busted fret board and play Hanna Montana tour bus. Instead, she found a Hal Leonard book and taught herself two chords. Good thing our young friend is off to college soon. Anna’s not after him, it’s his chords she wants. I caught her head banging, unprompted, when the kids struck up Smell Like Teen Spirit. I am so in trouble.

#Coloma #Coloma High School #Hannah Montana #Heavy Metal Drummer #Michigan #Smells Like Teen Spirit #Wilco
Last night our family made the long anticipated trek into the forest to select the perfect Christmas tree. Well, not so much the forest. We drove over to Home Depot and wandered around the deserted garden department where the trees were unceremoniously stacked according to type and price. The only staff out in the 30 degree chill was a forlorn looking twenty-something year old clerk, sitting on a folding chair staring into space. The seagulls circled above, because no one told them to shut their beaks and find another place to paint with poo. In the end, we found a Scotch Pine that was reminiscent of our family tree (leaning over in a lazy way, not enough branches). The forlorn girl perked up and helped us load the tree into our waiting Chrysler Partsmobile. I started to perk up myself, thinking that this had gone better than holiday decorating forays when I was a kid.

When I was 11, my parents decided we needed to invest in a new tree. We were solidly fake tree Democrats in those days. Mom and Dad had me get the Sears catalog and phoned in for a respectable fake shrub. When we got to Sears receiving, the clerk brought us the wrong tree. An electrified Blue Spruce. Gorgeous, according to the package photo. When I tried to protest, dad and mom simultaneously elbowed me in the stomach. They weren’t fessing up. We owned no vehicle, and Dad knew we couldn’t put the tree on top of a cab. We ended up lugging the boxed tree onto a city bus. If it wasn’t humbling enough to put the tree on the wheelchair lift, I learned humility by having to pay an extra .50 ¢ tree fare. Embarrassing, or not, there’s no tree like the one in my folks living room (that they never paid full price for).

#Christmas #Christmas Trees #Home Depot #Scotch Pine #Sears #Sears Catalog
I don’t expect my blog, or any of its readers, to sort out my various life hang ups. That would be asking a lot from paid professionals, let alone the people who stumble across Mostly Teachable. One mental mutation I recently overcame was refusal to drive anywhere. Other than the mile to work and back each day, I’d park the car and live as a passenger. There was no earthly reason for this. My wife, full of saintly patience, would chauffeur our young daughter Anna and myself from place to place, while I shouted absurdities from the back seat. When Anna was a preschooler this was fun for her. Like having one’s very own overgrown idiot for company. I’d make up songs, or we’d develop a life for her old dollhouse boy who’d lost his clothes years before. The odd little doll boy enjoyed adventures, such as the thrill of flying a helicopter, or being smashed over the head, while wearing only shoes.

All odd behavior comes to a natural end. If it doesn’t, rifts start to form in relationships. For Anna, the final straw was having her not-quite-all- there companion making up alternate lyrics for boy band songs. Did you know that any Justin Bieber song can be re-written into a show tune with lyrics about teenage male incontinence? Absolutely. She’s over him, partly due to his advanced age, and partly because dad besmirched his bladder control in song. Anna’s moved on to the dark side of rock and roll, but in her Bieber days I was banished from the back seat for singing one non-pee ditty about J.B. entitled “Gravy” (‘And I was like ‘Gravy, Gravy, Gravaay. Gravy you’ll always be mine’). My wife started handing me the keys each time we left the house. “Might as well drive so you don’t annoy her.” I now pilot, yelling “Don’t make me come back there!” like a normal parent. Sometimes I hum a forgotten song about mashed potato toppings.

#Baby #Don't Make Me Turn This Car Around! #Backseat Drivers #Justin Bieber
Watching tonight’s episode of Downton Abbey, I was reminded of how much it takes for a wedding to actually take place. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil any of the salient plot points. The episode got me thinking about my own wedding day. I remember waking up on the day Lori and I were married and wondering why everything seemed so calm. Almost surreal. I’d stayed the night before in the hotel where we’d spend our wedding night. This added to the unreal quality of the situation. It was a little weird to be alone in a room with a heart-shaped hot tub. Of course, I’d rigorously tested the tub out. You know the drill. Washed my socks in it, made bubbles, pretended to be the captain of a very small, awkwardly designed boat. Getting to the wedding venue was about like driving the hot tub. I really wanted to eat fried chicken. That morning I awoke in a very clear frame of mind. There were two things I wanted for my future. Fried chicken and to pilot the hot tub some more. First, chicken. I got in the car and drove off in the general direction that chicken might be found and purchased. After a nice winding drive along some tree-lined roads, I noticed that the road narrowed. Eventually the pavement ended and I was just bouncing along a dirt road in the forest. The day was one in which you could positively savor the sunny, early fall weather and not pay any attention to pressing responsibilities. Like getting married.

The road ended at a padlocked gate and I was forced to quit bouncing along and turn around. Back then, I drove a vehicle with a sun roof and could climb half-way out of the car and get some perspective on the world. Looking at the world from the top of my Buick, I realized a great truth about my wedding day: poultry might have to wait. Responsibility kicked into my chicken-fried mind and a second truth occurred to me: my socks were still at the bottom of the hot tub. Now, I’d need to get socks and find chicken. Then I thought about my fiance Lori and reality forced me to sit back down in the driver’s seat and point the car back toward town. I really loved her more than anything in the world and still do to this day. I needed to be at our wedding on time. Love may mean never having to say you’re sorry, at least according to the movies. Arriving late for one’s own wedding is something for which a man will apologize forever. Driving in dust cloud (inside the car, because the roof was open), I made my way to the wedding in time for pictures. On the way I’d found a Popeye’s. When they asked me at the drive-through what I wanted, I was giddy. “You’d better give me two thighs. Today’s my wedding day.” I don’t know what that means, either.

#Downton #Downton Abbey #Love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry Love Story #Popeye's #Wedding Day #Weddings
Today was my friend’s birthday and she really wanted to celebrate by taking all of her friends bowling. I love going to the bowling alley. Each trip to the alley is like taking a trip back in time. Bowling itself is mysterious. Throwing 14 pounds of glazed pottery at a bunch of overturned clubs is endlessly entertaining. Truthfully, I started out the day with a 14 pound ball and worked my way down the weight scale. Pretty soon I was lobbing a softball at the pins. Kids are fun to watch at the bowling alley. A 35 pound kid sliding down the lane because he can’t dislodge his fingers from the 6 pound ball dragging him along is a little frightening. Then there is the ever-present need to remind teenagers to get their faces out of the ball return.

Patience, Grasshopper. Though you set it free, the bowling ball will always return to you.

One of the time warp aspects of going bowling is the fact that nothing has changed since the Reagan administration. I was in my bowling groove today, starting to at least pick up spares when the music switched from Bush I era Vogue-ing to Girls Just Wanna Have Fu(uh-un). Girls do just want to have fun, but crabby, middle-aged men just need to bowl. I love watching good bowlers. A woman on the next lane threw a turkey like it was nothing. She had this arc on the ball that launched it several feet over the lane. One of the great things about bowling with the onscreen scoring set up by the staff is that they don’t have the proper letters to make up the names of each player. Today I was “Wanda.” Not bad. Last time I played as “Frieda.” The bowling alley also offers mixed drink selections, which I’d hope are not intended for little kids with bowling balls stuck to their hands. The special this time was called a “Dirty Librarian.” We had a librarian in elementary school who never showered. I’ll drink to her, but please let me mix the libations myself.

#Bowling #Bowling Alleys #Why Haven't Bowling Alleys Changed Since The 70's?