Great Good Fortune

Leonardo Da Vinci’s face has never been captured for posterity. I find it amazing that we really don’t know what one of the most famous artists of all time looked like.

Or do we? Check it out!

Christopher Walken has that certain little Je ne sais quois. Simultaneously funny, creepy, and a tad off-kilter. Can you picture him reading children’s stories? I was intrigued.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, here he is reading Goodnight Moon and the Three Little Pigs.

If you really like the guy, you might also check out the recent article about him in Esquire.

What do you think of him?

I just finished watching Little Miss Sunshine on a couch date with hubby. While there was not much remarkable about the majority of movie, the final scene was priceless. Absolutely had us rolling in laughter at the absurdity of it!

I experience considerable revulsion regarding the whole child beauty pageant industry (insert any J0nBenet R@msey comment you wish here). Fortunately, this movie spared viewers most of the grotesque, and simply highlighted the little girl’s “competition.” And these other girls! I could do a perfectly passable Jewish mother faint here… with these sweet little things all dressed up and acting– nay performing– like adults, it was just grotesque. And Olive was just such a sweet little normal girl, nothing fake or scary here. I’m sure that was an intended farce in this movie.

[If you have not yet seen it yet and intend to, you can stop reading now as I will spoil it.]

This was truly the perfect setup for Olive’s performance. Her dance had been foreshadowed as something that Grandpa taught her: he had been the sole one who really took an interest in coaching her. The only clues preceding this were that Grandpa swore like a sailor and also coached his teenage grandson to basically bag anything on two legs that moved. That, and Grandpa had chosen her music (brief hint of something amiss when the sound engineer asks: “Are you sure that’s your song?”)

That’s when Olive started dancing to “Super Freak”! Now, you can see where this is heading, right? Olive proceeds to do a nice little bump-and-grind strip tease, provoking an near-coronary in one of the judges, other little contestants being ushered out of the auditorium, and riotous laughter in our household. Totally effing hilarious!

When a pageant official tried to remove her from the stage, her family joined her in the dance. They had no clue up to this point what dance Grandpa had been coaching, and instead of letting her suffer alone with the horror of the audience, they jumped onstage and finished it all out, together. Now that’s family. Twisted, off-beat certainly, but family.

Sarah McLachlan is such an amazing woman. Have you seen her latest video? If not, it’s truly a must-see. Go ahead, do it now, it’s quick… I’ll wait.

I bow low to the divine in you, Sarah, for making the choice you did. Spending the $150,000 earmarked for the video on various human investments around the world really rocks my world.

I find it inspiring to see this kind of choice being made, running deep in the vein of social consciousness, similar to Bruce Springsteen and (much as I’m reluctant to give spotlight to) Angelina Jolie. While I really can not in good faith credit the latter for selling the first U.S. pictures of her baby to People magazine for $5 million, then donating it to UNICEF…. why do these two charitable events seem different in my mind? Am I just being snarky?

I think what it boils down to for me is the influence of the paparazzi. That our society condones tendering money for pictures of a famous infant vs. simply the motivation to make the world a better place with no exploitative human tradeoff.

What do you think?

A little gem of a book landed in my lap last month, lent to me by a friend. If you have not heard of it, Confessions of a Slacker Mom by Muffy Mead-Ferro is a damn fine read.

Three realizations profoundly struck me:

1. So very many things out there profess to "help" us learnbetter ways to parent; whatever happened to parenting using our naturalinstincts? Why do we feel perfectly justified lecturing each other over perfectly valid, personal family choices?
2. Our daughter has Too Much Stuff (well, this is nothing exactly new; more of a renewed belief.)
3. I realized I have been much too over-protective of my daughter.

Who cares what everybody else is doing? We didn’t do family bed, but who am I to tell someone else it’s a lousy choice? I chose to breastfeed longer than the 12 months recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and it worked well for us. Others choose to bottle feed, for a variety of valid reasons; as long as the kid gets fed, whose business is it to decide the delivery mechanism? I was fortunate to be able to stay home with my daughter for her first year before I had to return to work for financial reasons. I have experienced being both a stay-at-home and a work-outside-the-home mom. And both are damn hard. But would I condescend to lecture someone who returned to work (or stayed home full time, for good) because they truly love their job and were good at what they did? No way. My opinion and my husband’s about our own little family are ultimately what counts– for our family.

Why should my daughter have more toys that she could possibly ever play with? Does she really need more plastic things in her life? I have repeatedly heard the tale of how my favorite baby toys were sticks and dirt. And really, that has not changed so much. I still love gardening and getting my hands dirty, and I don’t think I turned out all that bad.

Probably my favorite chapter is "The world isn’t childproof." The basic premise is: protecting our children from every little bump, bruise and fall does not teach them to be more careful next time. But maybe, within reason, falling off the chair they repeatedly insist to stand on– off-balance– while reaching far above their head just might teach them to be more cautious next time. I would not follow this for very young babies and learning-to-walk toddlers, but certainly for older toddlers.

Should it be a parent’s goal to get their child through their formative years without a broken bone or set of stitches? Perhaps. I think for some crazy reason that had been a subconscious goal of mine. But I now subscribe to the belief that we– even at early ages– learn best from our own experiences. And if I as a parent am too busy protecting my child from all possible traumas, aren’t I also limiting her potential for learning by experience?

Please don’t get me wrong– I will not knowingly put my daughter into dangerous circumstances. But if I’ve warned her a half-dozen times that she needs to sit down while the wagon is moving, and she yet again choses to stand up then slips back into the wagon and bumps her head and starts crying over the unexpected conk, am I such a terrible parent? Usually she learns from such events, and later I hear her lecturing her dolly about the dangers of standing up when the wagon is moving. Game, set, match.

Dr. Sears and company have never held me in their thrall. But Mrs. Mead-Ferro certainly has. I encourage you beg, borrow or buy a copy to read, and I welcome your thoughts.

Since she had a rare nap, we took the sprout and Grandma to see the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie tonight. She handled it like a trooper! Her cute little voice piped up with questions more than a few times, but it was totally appropriate in a child-filled audience. (My favorite came half-way through: "Mommy, why is it so DARK in here?" followed by a very studious inspection of the whole audience.)

My impressions: Depp pulled off a smart-mouth Wonka that had me laughing out loud. But why did they have to make him look like Michael Jackson? Totally creepy! Depp is handsome enough already, and now we all can see he makes a very attractive woman as well.

In this version, Tim Burton created some history for Wonka. I ponder: was any of that in Roald Dahl’s original book?

On the down side, I found the words to the oompa loompa songs nearly unintelligible. The songs seemed very over-produced and obviously more concern was given to the CD recording than for the live theater audience. Some parts were a tiny bit too scary for a three-year-old (especially the LOUD intro music sequence), but overall it was a great family outing.

I’d give it one-and-a-half opposable thumbs up (of two possible). If you’ve seen it, what did you think?

We had our first "date night" in seven weeks. It totally reinforced for me why we are interviewing for a babysitter! We saw Batman Returns and had a nice dinner out. Two thumbs way up for the movie. I knew nothing about the movie ahead of time and had no expectations going in, so it was completely exceeded what I hoped for.

Seeing Bruce Wayne orphaned at a young age reeeeeaaallly made me think a lot about finalizing our ideals/plans for what we’d like to have happen in terms of guardianship for our daughter, and getting our living trust in order. Just when I thought my "To Do" queue was shrinking… but of course this item on the list is the most worthwhile endeavor imaginable.

It’s pleasing to a multi-tasker like me when something so cherished as a rare date with your spouse simultaneously becomes a valuable life planning tool.

I really just don’t get so-called Reality TV.

Not that I’m a total virgin to the genre. The only shows I’ve ever watched regularly are Survivor and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. We’ve seen most of the seasons of both, and were onboard with Survivor Season 1.

I’m glad that Survivor is no longer about just plain trying to stay alive, because honestly, it was so painful to watch those early groups of people literally starving while they tried to compete. Those early season Survivors are some bad ass people, let me tell you!

Would I ever try out for Survivor? I don’t think so. Though I do thinkI’m tough enough to eat larvae, straight talking enough to share some well-considered words, and still remain nice enough to make it tothe Final Four at Tribal Council.

It is interesting to consider the evolution of these shows. The producers seem to have evolved the episodes just enough so that the human relationships and drama are drawn to the forefront, rather than simply the physical survival aspect that is key to some.

I ponder: what makes this type of TV so prevalent? Why do we watch it,and why is it the fastest growing genre of TV programming today?

A sampling of shows I’ve seen listed recently:

• So You Think You Can Dance (of course this caught my eye!)
• The Amazing Race
• The Bachelor
• Blow Out
• The <insert celebrity name here> Show [Oh puh-leeze!]
• Hit Me Baby One More Time

And those are only the ones I’ve seen… once. Well, the last one more than once… I am a child of the 80’s after all. If you want to see a really scary long list, check out Reality TV links.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY shows (yes, I counted)! Who is watching this stuff? Why do we do it? Why has the genre blossomed out of control during the current presidency?? (I digress….)

The Bravo network seems to adapt many of their series from shows thatoriginate in Great Britain, so it’s not completely an Americanphenomenon.

I don’t think that very many of these shows really showcase what "real" life is like for these people. Instead, there is always an angle, something that some producer somewhere deems worthy of our attention.

So, what do you watch? Why do you think the genre is exploding? Please comment and share your thoughts– I am seeking opinions and perspective.