Archive for October, 2006
22 items.
The power of the poor over the rich
October 20th, 2006 |Posted In: General, Social Studies (the big grab bag)
Several weeks ago I chose not to write about something but Nora Ephron’s blog at the Huffington celeb Joint about her being oh I guess so gushingly deliciously close to casino mogul Steve Wynn’s pushing an elbow accidentally through Picasso’s “Le Reve” brought the something back to mind so I guess I will write about it. Plus I’m not over the damn cold and every time I swallow daggers pierce through my sinuses into my eyes. It’s unpleasant.
Back on October 5th seems there was in Las Vegas (about the time I guess as the elbow through the Picasso incident) a “Most Powerful Women Summit” and I don’t often read the Huffington page but in Bloglines the Fearless in Vegas: The Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit headline for some reason caught my eye. Which was a post by Huffington on how wonderful it was for Huffington to look around and see all these fearless women who decided not to be held back by “self-limiting beliefs” and go for the gold (or at least feeling like they really owned the gold they already had).
There were several things in the post that struck me. The premiere one being the below paragraph.
The tone for the event was set at the opening dinner last night, where Nora Ephron read the hilarious chapter about “maintenance” from her best-seller I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, and brought the house down when she got to the part about how, after looking at a bag lady, she realized: “I am only about eight hours a week away from looking exactly like that woman on the street — with frizzled flyaway gray hair I would probably have if I stopped dyeing mine; with a potbelly I would definitely develop if I ate just half of what I think about eating every day; with the dirty nails and chapped lips and mustache and bushy eyebrows that would be my destiny if I ever spent two weeks on a desert island. Eight hours a week and counting.”
Had I just read what I’d believed I’d read? I’ve not read Ephron’s book and I’m not inclined to. Perhaps in the next paragraph Nora went on to say that no, actually, one of the things that kept her from being like the decrepit bag lady with the gray hair and pot belly is the support network (if not sanity) that money provides.
Oh, wait, no, but that’s exactly what she was saying, wasn’t it! Ha ha! If not for her botox and salon money, Nora would look, horrors, just like that hag in the gutter.
Such hilarious, knee-slapping irony that it’s the bag lady who doesn’t watch her diet while Nora makes do on less food! Staying with that for the moment. In Nora’s post My Weekend in Vegas in which she talks about being present at the skewering of the Picasso, in the first paragraph she remarks on staying at The Wynn which has the greatest breakfast buffet, even greater than the Bellagio. The day you die and go to heaven, there will not be a breakfast buffet as good as the one at the Wynn, which is oh too bad for the bag lady, because she’s missed out completely, hasn’t she.
The second paragraph is on dinner at the SW Restaurant named after Steve Wynn, which has the best steak she’s ever had. She then details the Picasso puncture. Then dinner the next day at SW because it’s so damned good you have to go back and they had corn with truffles. And the next day the key lime pie at Joe’s Stone Crab was even better than the key lime pie at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach.
Mmmm-mmm-mmmm. One can only imagine what the baglady with the potbelly gut is dining upon with such relishness that she can’t put a cap on her appetite like Nora. But as it’s not Wynn breakfast buffet worthy, the best in the world, which Nora has managed to push her chair away from before bloating copiously, then it goes without saying that the only reason the bag lady’s in the gutter is because she at some point in her life was unable to muster the morals to fence her animalistic passions with reason and plot her destiny with a discerning eye for guarding against the more dire catastrophe.
Arianna Huffington and Nora Ephron, these are supposed to be the strong fearless women that we’re supposed to imitate, abandoning “self-limiting” beliefs.
No, you’re probably right, I should read Nora Ephron’s chapter on “Maintenance” before remarking on it based on a post made by Huffington on a self-congratulatory talk for the fabulous few femmes at the Most Powerful Summit, a self-congratulatory talk that, y’know, “set the tone” by reminding them all that if not for their moral self restraint and hair dye they’d look like the bag lady on the curb. Nora did probably cushion it with the acknowledgement we should be self-accepting but aren’t. Perhaps she even thought to tuck a $10 note in the bag lady’s hand, or perhaps she didn’t if it was likely to go straight to alcohol. Better to spend the money at the craps table.
Brrrrrr. Shivers. What a power the poor hold over the rich when just the sight of them visits the wealthy with morbid self-reflection on “If not for the grace of money there go I…” Makes much more sense than the old, “If not for the grace of god…” line and certainly packs it all in a nutshell.
4Comment
Sigh, all of us being down with the cold since the week’s beginning is fraying our nerves somewhat. And certain things are driving me bonkers. Like the rumble.
We live in a near 100 year old apartment building and our wood floor is set directly on a concrete foundation. We think it’s this that makes us feel like we are living on top of a generator that continually vibrates the apartment and sounds always like someone is outside with a diesel truck running. I read the post at Boingboing on the Taos Hum and also read accounts where people describe a constant vibration accompanied by the sound of a generator or diesel truck…sounds exactly like what we have here but as I mentoned I think we can reliably attribute our hum and vibration to sitting on a concrete slab in the middle of the city.
The vibration and hum is soooo strong that I always forget that we don’t have a basement under us with some big generator because my brain’s only relative experience is that of a generator, so all day long I think I’m sitting on top of a generator and when I’m trying to sleep I always think of it as a truck parked outside idling.
H.o.p. talks about it off and on and so does Marty. H.o.p. sometimes lies down with his ear to the floor to listen to it. It’s a constant. No matter where you go in the apartment, it’s there. There’s no escaping it. You can’t stand atop the bed or chair or anything and escape it. Stacking carpets on the floor does no good. Everything in the apartment is afflicted with the rumble. It’s not a matter of nearby traffic or anything like that. It’s just a constant buzz-jiggle vibration and diesel-like hum.
You never tune it out but you do get somewhat used to it. Like I said your brain just registers it as you sitting atop a generator. Every so often I feel a need to remind myself of the reality of the situation and tell myself, “You don’t live on top of a generator, there is not another floor under this one.”
Today it’s a bit disconcerting. I’ve been wishing all afternoon that I could levitate, however briefly, and escape the vibration for a second.
What day is it?
Tuesday I went to bed optimistic. I was feeling a little better. I’d had some laughs. The cold would certainly be gone when I got up.
It wasn’t! In fact, I felt godawful freaking horrible when I woke up. Though not immediately. First I laid there and wondered what world I was in? What day? What year? Who was I? Who were those people making those strange sounds just outside the bedroom? I felt no connection, because I am lost in a freakin’ Michelangelo Antonioni cold. Yeah, his films are a wonder and when you’re nineteen you think, “That film would make a great life setting…for a week, maybe a month”, you ignore the fact everything is so damn bleak because Monica Vitti is poetic in shades of gray and the shadows and light on Maria Schneider’s face are just perfect as she stands in the car and looks back upon a life barely begun…but you don’t really want to be the Jack Nicholson character staring up at the ceiling from his bed, lost in a terminal identity crisis.
Agh. So the mind as isolation tank connects with its taproot nerves and it came to me who I was and where I was. (Taking the Tylenol cold medication probably played its part.) I stood because I’m a parent after all and H.o.p. was in the next room and being a parent demands you stand and go in and see to your child. He was, amazingly, also still snotty, tissue dangling from his nose, still congested. So, I wasn’t the only one. My head felt like, I don’t know, it was filled with liquid lead. I went into the bathroom and blew my nose for the first time since I’d gotten up and what filled the tissue took me so by surprise that my first amazed response really was, “Eeeew, looks like a disgusting art installation”. A pond of colorful mucous like nothing I could remember having produced in all my many years of colds. And I blew my nose and blew my nose and blew my nose some more.
I got H.o.p. something to eat and blew my nose some more and put aside any thought of doing anything constructive, and no I did nothing constructive, at least not anything I can remember. I may have and it’s slipped my mind. We did watch some show on the Loch Ness mystery that I’d ordered from Netflix for H.o.p. and Marty made a really good hot hot peppers on chicken dinner because I wanted something hot that would cut through the morbid gackle that had been flooding my sinuses. He did a fine job but it didn’t, as he had promised, take my face off.
Today is I guess Thursday and I got a couple of hours sleep last night unimpeded by the cold finally and today I’m feeling better though the cold is still hanging on. H.o.p. was up all night again with it but he’s feeling better as well, wrestling with still being a bit sick but well enough to be peeved over being sick and wanting to party party party and Marty stayed up with him and spent his time coming up with pet studio peeves he posted on boards where occasionally producers and engineers let off steam. Which was fun to read because he never does that. And now Marty, who has a weaker version of the bug (didn’t hit his head as hard), is sleeping.
This cold will go down in my personal history as the Michelangelo Antonioni cold. Not as bad as some other colds I’ve had but had its own special disorienting quality with a special personal pizza of grotesque toppings.
Two events added a little levity to our tissue-packed day on Tuesday (H.o.p.’s working with me on a third roll).
(1) When Marty got home in the evening a cat that belongs to a woman upstairs decided it’d had enough of being locked out of the building in the rain and zipped past Marty into the building and then into our apartment. We spent a little while looking for her before I found her behind the futon. Way back behind the futon and what serves as an end table, tucked down in a bookshelf scrunched behind the futon. She was scared and shaking and so I talked to her a while and eventually she stopped shaking and laid down back in the shadows. We couldn’t entice her with lunch meat as ours had gone bad (we’re not big sandwich fans) and she was having nothing to do with a bowl of milk. Many fine compliments paid her weren’t drawing her out either. Finally we simply opened the door and she bolted for the outside hall
and turned and quickly ran back in our apartment
and we got her back out
and she ran back in
and we got her back out and she stood at the door staring up at me with curious eyes like she was wondering what role we should play in her life, if any, and I informed her she needed to go make eyes at her mistress instead and that was that.
Long ago when we were living in a garage apartment we acquired a great cat in just such a manner. She ran in and refused to leave. We learned her owner had been hospitalized then not returned to her apartment, so we took the cat in. We named her Paloma and after a while gave her to a friend who really, really, really wanted her (and we were too much on the road) and Paloma caused her to crash her car on the interstate (got under the pedals) and the friend was uninjured but Paloma took off across a farm and that was the last seen of Paloma who was a great cat with loads of friendly personality. She was also a very small cat–very small for her size when she entered our lives and she never grew any larger. Then later one Halloween night a little cat zipped in past some kids, which again we thought was a kitten, but she also never grew any larger. She turned out to be very ill and I’ll stop writing about that as it’s making me sad. Nothing could be done and she died within the year that we took her in. Was one of the sweetest cats in the world.
We’ve not had a cat now for about three years, after our last couple died of regular old age. I was kind of reminded what it is like to have a cat and briefly enjoyed it. But I thought also of the huge vet bills we’d spent over the years on animals, and that made me grateful that this cat has an owner upstairs, otherwise we’d have likely ended up with a new cat after putting up “Lost Cat” posters to which no one ever responds. Seriously, an animal is something we can’t take on at this point in our lives.
The number two bit of levity. (2) A delivery slip dated the 10th arrived in our mailbox. Why we didn’t get it until now, I don’t know but that’s the way things are around here. I couldn’t remember expecting anything, so what could it be. Marty got the box at the PO and was carrying it in when the cat slipped past him. So first we all attended to the cat (H.o.p. loved trying to help coax her out and went on about how beautiful she was) then turned our attention to the box. It was from BrainPOP. A few weeks ago they had come across some nice things I’d written about them in a blogpost where I also offered a couple suggestions, and they wrote thanking me and offered to send H.o.p. a t-shirt and replace his Brainpop Almanac which I mentioned was worn out with religious use. And here were t-shirts (one signed) and a brand new signed almanac and a couple of pens and a mouse pad to boot.
Needless to say, H.o.p. was thrilled. He forgot his tissues for the moment and looked several times at the autographs and pulled on a t-shirt and grinned big. He thought it all better than terrific. It was major grandioso terrificalist.
When he was done ogling he settled down and started popping the bubble wrap.
And yes he had been at BrainPOP earlier in the evening watching the flash animations on the Blues and Filmmaking. And after he was done with the bubble wrap popping he went to his computer and replaced his mouse pad with the BrainPOP mouse pad and went to BrainPOP again and watched a flash on Monotremes and then told me all about spiny anteaters. With tissue wads stuck up his nose. While I sat and blew mine. But we were feeling a little better by Tuesday evening so we were making fun of each other’s sniffling and nose blowing.
Really, that was super nice of BrainPOP. H.o.p. is a super fan and is happy as can be.
For a few minutes yesterday AM H.o.p. woke up saying he was sick, something about his chest hurting etc. and fell back to sleep. Marty was worried. But on Saturday at acting class the regular teacher wasn’t there as she was sick and I’ve heard a lot about “sick” going around and I figured that H.o.p. was getting a cold (hopefully, and not the flu) and this was the first vague symptom (like his mom, irrelevance comes naturally to him)…plus his conking back out for hours was a good clue that the little boy wasn’t up to par. What it meant though was we didn’t make the couple hour drive to Marty’s mother’s for her birthday and that H.o.p.’s Uncle David went on alone. And H.o.p. stayed conked out and stayed conked out and stayed conked out and then was suddenly up and feeling quite good and then was quickly conked out again and then was up and bright again and then was conked out again.
And now here I sit in my red, black and white cotton penguin jammies (not plush though) with a Tazmanian Devil cup of Throat Coat with honey and a big roll of white toilet tissue (have a 6 pack so don’t have to worry about running out) from which I keep peeling sheets, whittling it down quickly, blowing mountains of goo out of my head (believe me, this is not unexpected, after the way I was feeling and sounding earlier today) and H.o.p. is feeling better than he was yesterday in that the cold has now focused itself where it belongs, in his head, and he has been in baby bear fashion helping momma bear whittle down the toilet paper roll not quite twice as fast as his head cold is thankfully not as gooey, but is made up for with dramatics such as when he qoke up today with a plaintive wail of, “Help me!” followed by, “I want Tylenol!”
“I’m having sinus problems!” he complained.
“You’ve got a cold,” I said.
“Oh.” Toilet tissue jammed up his nose. “It’s my allergies,” he said, resistant. He hates allergies (he’s got them, like his mom) but he’ll take them any day of the week over a cold.
Yes, the observant note that H.o.p. has toilet tissues as well, whereas I’m making do with toilet paper that’s not newsprint ready but will still leave me with a roughened nose eventually. That’s because…well, I don’t know why. But H.o.p.’s got the few remaining, coveted sheets because I’m too lazy to go over and bully him over it and take them from him.
He could tell earlier today I was getting sick too. Mom not being able to speak was a good indication. Because I couldn’t speak he did sign language for “I love you” hoping that it would make me feel better. Because I couldn’t speak and he was feeling better than I was, what this mainly meant to H.o.p. was that we did no spelling or math or anything else today, and we will likely not be tomorrow, and he was smart enough to hide his pleasure over this behind sympathy and hugs. As he told his dad, “I don’t want to make her feel any worse.”
Now I’m trying to figure out what medicine I want with this cold. Like I have any choices sitting around in my cabinets. I thought I did have some Tylenol Cold medicine but can’t find it. I may have thrown it out since anything that is Tylenol and for sinus or cold and is a white caplet makes me ill. The yellow caplets are fine but the white ones upset my stomach. Oh, wait, here I have two white caplets of Tylenol cold medicine left over from last year which escaped being thrown away. Good, I will now take them and risk the upset stomach.
OK, so I took the Tylenol cold caplets that on better days have a gag-me saccharine bite to them that reminds actually a good deal of why I resort to Throat Coat as a last resort as well, and I remember distinctly now how I felt the last time I took this stuff, like someone was thrusting fizzy balloons up my sinuses and calling it delightful and head-clearing and soothing when in fact it’s discombobulating hell that has the rest of my unsettled body wondering where went my head and unable to interpret the world and how to act without it…AHCHOO…excuse me, so sorry, while I discharge another 30 pounds of goo. Then I burp, because this stuff makes me burp. “Poor you,” H.o.p. says.
Update: It’s later and I’m drowning my sorrows in a bar of dark chocolate. AHCHOO! More tissue. More chocolate. This is our first bonafide major snotty cold of the season and I’m actually pretty pleased about that.
What music did H.o.p. choose for the day? Arvo Part’s “Miserere”. He does have a broad range of tastes, that kid does.
The Alliance’s Acting I class for 3rd to 5th grades ended today and parents/interested parties got to come in for the last hour and hear a bit of what had been going on the past 6 weeks and watch a little skit. H.o.p. was *very* excited to have us there, introducing me to the entire class. “This is my mom!” Talk about feeling welcomed by your child. He was determined everyone should know who I was. He was just plain excited in general.
They showed us some of their loosening up exercises, working the old muscles, and face muscles too. Did a game of “Elevator” where each person who gets into the elevator improvises a character and the others have to follow suit and do their version of that character. Did a game where they split into two teams and the audience had to suggest a certain thing each team was to pretend to eat. One team did ice cream and H.o.p. ensured that his team did pot stickers. Then they had to act out certain emotions or characters suggested by the audience as they crossed the “stage”.
I kept a straight face when the teacher asked them to talk about some of the things they’d had difficulty with/had learned and the subject came up of what happens if the director gives you a role you’re not happy with and the teacher basically did a talk about how the director knows best and the director will give you roles that will give you an opportunity to learn and learn more about yourself. I thought well, you know, this is just fine that they’re teaching them to always do what the director says because it’s just prepping future actors for H.o.p., as his temperament has less to do with doing anything you ask him to do and more finding a way to do what he wants and expecting you to do what he asks and enjoy it…such as his making sure that they were going to be eating pot stickers and sometimes totally ignoring what he was supposed to be doing in favor of trying to figure out how to end up doing what he wanted to do.
H.o.p. did a great zombie at one point. And when one of the children prompted them all to be cats, he did a nice job with that. He hadn’t a clue at how to posture in the Elevator game (when posturing was prompted) and when one of the girls entered doing the Princess Wave, he just stood and stared, trying to figure out what in the world that was about.
The kids did a grand job. Some of them have obviously been doing this for a while and talked some about the other acting they do. The little play that they did was just the right length with just the right number of lines for both the experienced and inexperienced, giving each one opportunity to communicate a character. H.o.p. remembered all his lines and acted out reading a newspaper because of course somehow he failed to communicate to us that he needed one. What he’d really wanted for his role was a real honest-to-god hockey helmet (though he doesn’t care anything about sports) so he could put horns on it he’d seen at a theatrical store and pretend he was a fan of the Ice Dragons but somehow we never got around to doing that and I rue it…really rue it…though I admittedly wasn’t thrilled with spending money on a hockey helmet he would never use again…and I was thinking in terms of choices, if we do the hockey helmet then we can’t do such-and-such, and I really should have done the hockey helmet. Somestimes I’m just so damned stupid about these things. Seriously, when he brought it up I knew, knew, knew that he was right, that theatricality demanded the hockey helmet but…like I said, I’m a dimwit. Kick, kick, kick myself on that one.
I enjoyed watching them all but of course I particularly enjoyed watching H.o.p. and was excited that he was excited and happy that he was happy with it all.
If I had anything to suggest it would be that they had the lines printed out for the kids and notes printed out as well. I imagine that they don’t because they reason that it gives the children a chance to practice note-taking skills and their writing. But H.o.p. is dyslexic and he needed assistance with this…and I was hoping this would be an activity that relied very little on on-the-spot writing and reading, whereas there was a good bit of note-taking and writing involved. They were very good at helping him however and though I understand none of the kids treated H.o.p. differently because of it, he is sensitive to this. Such as tonight when we were doing our AVKO spelling, his Uncle David was visiting and he worried about his Uncle David hearing and had us do it very, very quietly because he didn’t want David to hear when he needed to correct a word.
What I did like is they stressed the idea of play, play, play.
H.o.p. is the boy with long brown hair and blue sweat pants, right there, seated between the girl in the denim blue jacket and jeans and the girl in the pink jacket. He does a spectacular bow at the end. He’s got that down for sure.
He had not one bit of stage fright!
H.o.p. is signed up for Acting II, of course.
Anyway, I’m just a proud mom and happy that he was happy with it all.
I guess this is the DSC-F717 white fog I've read about
October 14th, 2006 |Posted In: General, Whee, field trip (or kinda)
Several months ago I read of the white fog that will hit some Sony DSC-F717 cameras after about two years plus of use. I hoped this was something I’d escape but over the past couple of months the picture quality seemed to be degrading, was nothing like it was last year, and so I think it was already happening.
This must be that white fog people were talking about as it has suddenly appeared all over my pics, along with dark banding. Most of my pics from the fair had it last week. Tonight we went out to a corn filed maze and hay ride and it is on every single one of my pictures, very evident.
Sigh.
I’d searched all over the internet for images of the white fog so I thought I’d post this since I’d not come up with any.
It was a really nice camera while it lasted. Got some absolutely remarkable pics of the Grand Canyon with it last year.
Update: I neglected to write that we had a nice time at the corn field maze Friday night, which was certainly an unlucky 13th for some. On our way down there the other side of the interstate was backed up for miles and miles due to a wreck, and then our side of the interstate began to clog up, slowed to a crawl, and we came up on a wreck that the police had reached already but the ambulance had not, smoke still rising in the air from the cars.
At the “farm” there were goats and pigs and cows to see adjoining a refreshment/merchandise area housed beneath large twin decaying silos. There was a ride for kids, and a regular hay ride pulled by a tractor and another spooky hay ride. The kids did the kiddie ride and then as we had young young kids with us we went for the regular hay ride. A fair number of people were there but none were in line for the regular hay ride, so we got it all to ourselves…and as we rode it got chillier and chillier.
After that there was a cannon out of which you shot corn ears trying to aim at something about the size of the side of a barn (almost, not really). We had gotten the all-inclusive tickets so we each tried our hand at this and each missed despite having three shots. The deal was that if you hit the target then you’d get a free drink. My sister-in-law asked if anyone had gotten a free drink that night. The attendant said that about 35 people had.
Then we walked the corn maze, which had a large-sized maze and a small one for kids. First we did the kid maze, but as the kids wanted more of it we then did the regular maze, which was quite large and included a bridge in the middle upon which we could stand and survey the surrounding maze. We were in the maze for at least 45 minutes, perhaps an hour. Throughout the last twenty minutes, maybe longer, a person on a bullhorn kept calling for Wesley to please come to the front of the maze and join his party which was preparing to leave. When we emerged the operation was shutting down for the night.
Here and there in the maze were guide signs posted which gave you two opportunities at a correct guess for the right direction to go in. The first question was an easy agricultural-related one and the second question always had to do with University of GA’s Bulldogs. None of us knew anything about the Bulldogs but it was obvious that the owners of the maze were passionate on the subject.
It was all, of course, the kind of night kids love. H.o.p. warned of ghouls at every corner in the maze and would pop out with the flashlight shining up from under his face. We had borrowed two flashlights–he took possession of one and one of his three-year-old cousins took possession of the other. The two three-year-olds were soon riding upon the shoulders of their parents throughout, and H.o.p. insisted upon leading the way. Every time he fell behind a little he’d run up front saying, “I’m leading the way! I’m leading the way!” This was fine until near the end when we were all quite ready to be out of the corn maze.
One of the attendants said they will try to keep the maze open until around November 18th but they doubt it will last that long as they always have trouble with people coming in and messing it up, plowing their way all through it, trampling the corn. Signs posted at the entrance asked for people to please stick to the path.
I took a number of pictures but the white fog and dots and the dark banding so heavily masks 98 percent of them that there is no correction of them even in Photoshop. I’m still hopeful I may be able to rescue at least a couple of the kids.
Over at my brother’s afterward we picked up the 3/4 size violin I started on as a young child as H.o.p. has occasionally over the years expressed an interest in experimenting with a stringed instrument. Amazingly, it has a pretty rich tone! And from what I could see isn’t going to need any repair as it’s still solid. Will need a new bridge and strings, that looks to be all. The seams are good so it won’t need to be glued. The hair on the bow could probably stand to be replaced but will suffice. The nieces had a great time trying their hand at it, fascinated.
Some lively Morris Dancing here.
Got there by discussions with H.o.p. Thursday on the Green Man. For which he seems to have an affinity, which is why we were discussing it, as for some reason he came upon it again Wednesday night and said he wanted to know more about it. So Wednesday night I said, “Tomorrow”, and that’s one thing we did a good bit Thursday, looking at pictures of Green Men and Women and talking about them. And he pitched himself into drawing some Green Men as well.
The use of the sticks is interesting to me and I wonder if this style descends from training for fighting, or maybe the use of sticks was adopted from something such as? Or at least the styles of dancing I’ve seen on video reminds me of this.
There is debate as to how began the use of blackface for the Border style of Morris Dancing but it has nothing to do with the minstrel shows here (as some have speculated). Part of the video shows dancers in blackface that brings to mind chimneysweep smudging (think “Mary Poppins”). I forget how the chimneysweep in the book was described, been a while since we’ve read them to H.o.p., but I wonder if the dancing in the movie didn’t borrow from the idea of the Morris Dancers? And from whence the use of blackface if it didn’t originate with sweeps, which I doubt it did. Some write that it had to do with concealing one’s identity for sake of honor when one went “busking” (the dancing being used for the raising of money) but that sounds more to me again something that became an explanation. As one individual points out, in small communities, blackening one’s face wasn’t going to do much for hiding who one was, which was what I had thought when reading of the busking excuse, though there may be at work the idea of adopting a different identity of sorts which hasn’t necessarily anything to do with the concealing of who one is.
Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange” certainly seems to have borrowed some from Morris Dancing.
Bar-B-Q at the Georgia National Fair, 2006
Bad, killjoy me.
This is just to let you see how dumb I am. As we walked through the thick sweet Bar-B-Q smoke, Marty said, “I want that! That looks great!” And me, what did I say but, “I’m scared of fair food.” So what did Marty end up with but an expensive bland hot dog.
The next day he mentioned again how that bar-b-q had looked good and I said, “Why didn’t you get it?” and he replied, “because you said no.” I said, “I didn’t say no.” He said, “You said you’re scared of fair food.” I said, “Yes, but I didn’t mean you shouldn’t get it!” He failed to see the distinction.
I go back and look at this picture and think Marty and these people were right. That looked like some good bar-b-q. Oddly enough, had we been way out on the road in some other state I would probably have said, “Sure, great!” But because we weren’t on the road, I said, “I’m scared of fair food.” I even believe there was a sign on this place that said it was a local establishment. And as you can see there are tables inside and they are filled with people. But, no, I was in, “I’m scared of fair food” knee jerk reaction mode.
Just like I said to H.o.p., “No, you can’t play any of the fair games. They’re all rigged.” What’s wrong with playing a rigged game if you know that it’s rigged and you don’t mind blowing a few dollars? Had we been out on the road in some far state, I would probably have said, “Sure, great!” because I’m being a tourist and I’m prepared to be bilked as a tourist as long as you treat me nicely and entertain me while bilking me.
Georgia National Fair Midway, Game of Oops
H.o.p. surveying the basketball toss at the fair
H.o.p. mentioned a couple of times before going to the fair that he wanted to do one of the ball toss games. At the fair he mentioned it once and I didn’t even give him a chance, replying, “It’s all rigged, it’s all rigged.”
His first time at the fair…I feel like I should have let him play the game and regret that I didn’t. Even though it’s all rigged. Seriously, what’s the point in going to a fair if not to be bilked. It’s not like it isn’t the rule in everyday life either…like at the elections…so I shouldn’t be so hard on the fair.
Despite explanations, H.o.p. doesn’t get what it means for something to be rigged. He doesn’t get it. “But I have very good luck,” he insists.
I’m also one of those people who doesn’t trust fair food and so I didn’t eat anything until the end of the day when I was starving and went for a funnel cake, having never had one. Looking at all the brightly colored food emporiums in the pictures makes me wish I had eaten something…like a philly steak sandwich or a kielbasa. A kielbasa is sounding really good.
(Originally published 10/10/2006.)
