Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
|
|
|
M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
|
|
Saturday, November 28, 2009 Doorbusted I'm not big on standing in lines. You know those lines outside of clubs that are supposed to make you think they must be so cool inside, if people are willing to wait outside to get in? All that does is make me think of all the other things I can do right now, without waiting in a line, and without being surrounded by people who are willing to wait in a line to get into a club. In fact, the longest line I ever stood in that wasn't in an amusement park was for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and we all know how that turned out. You'd think I would have learned my lesson. Another thing we never do is Black Friday shopping. Generally, Trash has such a head start on the Christmas shopping by mid-November that there really isn't any point. But this year, with M. Edium getting old enough to covet some pretty pricey Star Wars crap (cue "circle of life" hand sign here, in the form of one finger orbiting a fixed point while aimed at the ceiling), there were some deals at Toys 'R Us we didn't think we could pass up. And the sales started at midnight, so I wouldn't even have to wake up early. Even better, I used the occasion as an excuse to steal a late-evening nap. "Wake me up at 11:15," I told Trash at ten p.m., feeling pretty sly for using a twenty-minute toy run to score an hour-plus snooze. When I left for the toy store at 11:20, I brought my book along to read while I waited in the car for the doors to open. But then, as I pulled into the parking lot, which was more full than I've ever seen at that store, I saw the line of people stretching around the far corner of the building. An oft-used Star Wars quote came to mind: "I've got a bad feeling about this." I parked as quickly as I could and left my book in the car (because it was Under the Dome and all the shopping carts were inside the store) to join the rapidly growing line. It went even further around the corner, all the way to the first entrance of the adjoining store. So I was glad I didn't waste any time joining it, or I would have been even further back than I was. Cue "circle of life" hand sign again, but this time rotate it ninety degrees so that finger is pointed at temple. By the way, all the conversations I overheard in the line during that long, cold, windy wait was about how crazy all these other people were. Now that the line was soon extending an entire city block behind me. The first of many text messages Trash and I exchanged that night was a picture of the line stretching out in front of me before disappearing around the corner. She texted back, asking if I wanted to just skip it and come back home. I said no, it's fine, I'm here. And I still thought I'd be able to get in and out of there in twenty minutes. I knew what I wanted and where it was, after all. I was only after a couple of things. I wasn't like those people in line with me, who would be spending hours in there loading up shopping carts high above the level of exit door clearance. The thing is that twenty minutes after midnight, I was still outside, waiting to get in. But I did make it in shortly after that. Even then, I thought I had an advantage over everyone else. The default path is to come in on the right side of the store, do a loop around the back, and come back out on the right. But since I knew what I wanted was on the right side of the store, I was able to cut through the narrower aisles that ran across closer to the front and get straight to the Star Wars department, grab one of the three copies of the large item I wanted (stacked right there in the middle of the aisle, handily enough), and move on. Well, except for the "move on" part. Getting that thing into my cart was the last thing that went smoothly all into that long, long night. More on that in a couple of days. posted by M. Giant 10:05 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Oy. I've got a bad feeling about this.
By Tuesday, November 24, 2009 Wake-Up Call There are few things I hate more than getting out of bed in the morning before I'm ready. Since that happens pretty much daily, it's usually the low point of my day. Of course, there are snooze alarms to gently ease you into your day, but we all know what a mixed blessing those are. Mine lives on my bedside table, and I can't even begin to tell you how good I've gotten at being so asleep I'm legally brain-dead, and yet still being able lash out at that snooze button like a king cobra, cutting off whatever the radio voice is saying before it's completed its first syllable. But I think I wore it out. A couple of weeks ago, my snooze quit working. I'd hit it at 7:00, and again at 7:09, and the next thing I knew, Trash was going "What the hell!?!" at 7:45 because it never went off again. Which was totally worth it for the extra rest as far as I was concerned, but Trash insisted I find a workaround. I actually considered replacing my old clock radio, which cost like ten dollars in 1990 money, but then I realized I already have a new one: my cell phone. I remember Bitter using hers for that purpose when she lived with us, and since she worked nights while I was working days down the hall, I used to overhear some snooze cycles that were nothing short of epic. So that first night, as a backup to my old alarm clock that snoozed in one cycle of nine minutes and then another cycle of 1,431 minutes, I had my cell phone out on the side table. That was pretty disorienting, that first morning. When you're in bed and it's still dark and you hear your cell phone ring, you know it's never good news. In this case, it was the worst news possible; it was almost time to get up. But I fumbled around, finally figuring out how to get the thing to snooze. I repeated the process a few times, each time conscious that it was getting later and we really needed to get up. But when I finally, at last, got out of bed, it was only 7:15. Looks like my cell phone is on a five-minute snooze cycle. Hmm. Again, it's a mixed blessing. Five minutes goes by awfully fast in snooze mode. But then so does nine minutes. Plus I get to have that decadent sense of "just a little longer" for a few more times. It took a while to work the kinks out of this new system. Like the night I left it in my sweatshirt pocket and had to get up and dig for it to make it snooze. After I got back in bed, it took me almost half of one of those five minutes to fall back asleep, and I'd already used up the first half of that minute. I still haven't made it up. But now I'm getting to be an old pro. Plus there's something else you can do with a cell phone you can't do with an alarm clock: hold it in your hand, muffled by the covers, with your finger on the snooze. This morning I managed to stretch things out until 7:20, which is longer than three snoozes on the old clock, but shorter than four. So really, I was still ahead. There are only two things that concern me. The first is that I have the phone programmed to do this Thursday through Friday, and if I forget to deactivate it the night before Thanksgiving, I'll be quite disappointed at not being able to sleep in. Or maybe I won't? Maybe I'll go ahead and savor the snoozing over and over, waking up just enough to squeeze the button and think, Don't have to get up over and over. I can't think of a way to start the holiday with more gratitude. The other thing I'm worried about is that it's probably only a matter of time before Trash makes me get one of those alarm clocks that jumps off the table and crawls under your dresser and won't stop until you get up to fish it out. posted by M. Giant 7:48 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:If you ever listen to the Gadgettes podcast on cnet, they did an entire episode awhile back all about various alarm clocks. Included: Clocky (the rolling one you mentioned), the Wakin' Bacon (wake up to the delicious smell of cooking bacon!), and the DangerBomb (connect the wires in the right sequence to shut it up!)
By I have a clock on which I can set one alarm for the radio and one for the buzzer. I set the radio for an hour before the buzzer. After I've drifted in and out of the news for an hour the buzzer isn't so bad. Only downside is the odd dreams I have in that hour of news.
By Sunday, November 22, 2009 Hair Tomorrow At some point in the last several years, I got tired of thinking about my hair. Like, at all. Once I caught myself actually envying my dad for the low-maintenance look he's been rocking for as long as I remember, but then I recalled that when he was my age he was being mercilessly mocked for it, primarily by me. My main issue is my cowlicks, and their failure to get along with the shorter hairstyles of recent years (or should I say of my 30s). I have enviably thick hair, even befitting a news anchor, but that stuff in back won't behave. No matter how much product I put in, I could end up looking like Cary Grant in front and Dagwood Bumstead in back. Finally, some time after M. Edium was born, I realized what it was going to take: a full, 360-degree buzz. So that's what I did. I've had about a dozen haircuts since then. And that was four years ago. So I here present, in timeline form, the lifecycle of my haircut. Day 1: Haircut. "It's been a while," I say to the stylist. I give the standard clipper settings, if she doesn't already have them on file. Sit and wonder why it takes so long to mow such a relatively small patch of real estate, as compared to my lawn. Become alarmed at how much gray is in the giant tufts gathering on the floor, because there sure as hell wasn't that much last time. Go home and listen to M. Edium look at me and go, "Whoa!" Shower. Towel-dry skull. Do not touch again for a week. Week 1: No Maintenance. Revel in how non-interactive my hair is. Possibly use a nail scissors to trim some longer strands that they always leave in the upper left corner of my hairline, possibly under the misguided impression that I'm worried about it receding and want to hide it. Enjoy ability to wear hats, hoods, and Darth Vader helmets with tonsorial impunity. There's nothing I can do with hair this length, which also means there's nothing I need to do with it. Week 2-6: Peak Time This window is when my hair looks its best. There's enough length to give it some volume, but not enough that I'm going to screw it up. A bit of mousse to keep it in a restrained tousle is all it takes to make me wish I left the house more. Week 7-9: Diminishing Returns It starts to take a little more work to make it look good, although even as that happens, its peak attractiveness begins to decline no matter how much work I put in. Week 9-12: The Telecommuter So named because in this stage, the best thing I can say about my hair is that I don't have to make it presentable to bring it into the office. As it flops forward over my forehead while standing up everywhere else, I again revel in wearing hats, hoods, and Darth Vader helmets, but for different reasons. Week 13: The Turnaround At this point, I give up on even trying to maintain anything remotely like the careless, forward-leaning bedhead I've been wearing for the past month, and just brush it all straight back with a dollop of mousse, like I used to wear it all the time for over decade. Now, and for the next month or so, my hair and I will be back in the nineties. Although for the first week or so of this stage, my cowlicks in back continue to stand up and be counted. It was during this stage that a schoolmate of M. Edium's once literally said to me, "Hey, cool Mohawk!" Week 16-18: The Wayback Machine My hair continues from the nineties, on past the eighties and into the seventies. I've never actually grown it out all the way into the sixties, although I did come close at one point during the early nineties. Week 19: Enough! Trash's decreasingly subtle hints about my need for a haircut, which have been accumulating for some time now, begin to morph into orders, blackmail, and threats. Which is a shame, because by this point, I was starting to get used to never being sure if the hair in my eyes is from my scalp or from my eyebrows. Maybe it's time to try that nineties-sixties look again. Perhaps it'll look better on me now that I am pushing forty, have more gray hair, and am almost two decades fatter. That must have been what was missing last time. Week 20: Day One "It's been a while," I say to the stylist. posted by M. Giant 9:54 PM 6 comments 6 Comments:You’ve just described my hair cycle far better than I ever could. I’m sending a link to my wife.
By I work for a non-profit, and my coworker has sworn not to cut his hair until our endowment reaches $1 million. Perhaps you could so something similar...say, until M.Edium gets his driver's license or graduates from college.
By If anyone is curious, we are currently at the end of The Turnaround period, moving forward rapidly...
By
Wow. I'm just impressed you can wait TWENTY weeks between hair cuts. (Note on Trash's behalf: not that you *should* wait twenty weeks between hair cuts, just that you have the ability and do so.) My husband gets his hair cut every four weeks. If he goes five, or God forbid, SIX weeks, he starts freaking out about how loooong it is. His hair, in the entire 17+ years I've known him, has *never* been long enough to flop.
By
Does the stylist always say, "I hope you appreciate it." or "I hope you're grateful for it." in response to how thick your hair is? My husband has insanely thick hair, has it cut every four weeks, and each and every time the stylist will comment on how thick it is, and hope that he is grateful for it.
By Nice. As you know, I have maybe 35% of the hair you do, covering 55% of the real estate. even so, I'm on a four-week cycle that I always intend to be a two-week cycle. I'm currently in a phase I call the "ehh, good enough."
By Thursday, November 19, 2009 Miles to Go I don't know how long it's been since it was still cool for bloggers to make fun of the ridiculous and overpriced crap in Sharper Image and Skymall. Probably since before I was one. But as passé as it may be to skewer products aimed at people with more money than sense, I'm not sure the same can me said of products aimed at people with not very much of either. Hence my appreciation for the Miles Kimball catalog, or as Trash and I like to call it, "Magazine O' Crap." Just look at a few of the things you never knew you needed, and still don't! For instance:  If you've been kept awake nights by the weight of the bedding on your feet, here's the solution. No more going to bed with stacks of books balanced precariously on the end of your mattress. Just the thing for the upcoming winter months to make sure you're getting enough freezing cold air from the room outside under your blankets and onto your toes.  If you love your cats, you want to be reminded of them at all times, including when you're doing your dishes. This darling sink liner is for you! And who knows -- if you're tired of your babies climbing up on the counter to lick drops off the faucet, maybe this creepy-ass item will be just the thing to spook Precious, Princess, Arthur, Fluffy, Eleanor, Rainbow, Leaky, Zuzu, Mr. Socks, Mathilda, Napoleon, Daisy, Chum-Chum, and Booger, and the others away for good.    Just because you're an old lady on a fixed income doesn't mean you're not in the market for some dickey. Yes, these ingenious shirt-tops will fool your friends, family, and caseworker into thinking that you're wearing a blouse under your sweater, when in fact the itchy fabric is chafing against your skin the whole time! Ha ha, joke's on them! (Miles Kimball is not liable for violations of "no shirt, no service" policies) Speaking of the upcoming winter, don't you hate it when it gets cold enough to wear long underwear? It's so uncomfortable and dorky. Fortunately you can get these:  Which are even more uncomfortable and dorky. Don't you hate when the wife makes you wear a hat outside, and your baseball cap doesn't count because it doesn't cover your ears? Those days are over:  Your ears are warm, but you still look cool. From a sufficient distance, that is. And speaking of cool, here's a spiffy way to protect your hair and makeup while you get dressed: it's a protector mask!  Crazy eyes not included. Also not included: the inner mask to protect your hard work from the protector mask. Now, lest you think this Miles Kimball is just Hammacher Schlemmer for pluggers, or some harmless half-crazy inventor down the street who's destined to marry Harriet Carter so they can produce a shelf-cluttering brood of useless but reasonably priced babies, take a look at this. But before you do, I need to describe it with four words that will make your blood run cold: not safe for work. You'll never look at grandma the same way again. posted by M. Giant 5:08 PM 13 comments 13 Comments:
oh, no, no, no.
By Actually the first item is something I've been looking for and didn't know it existed. My husband has Muscular Dystrophy and doesn't have the muscle strength to roll over and often gets tangled in the blankets. This would be the perfect solution! Thanks!
By I'm with Captivated - when I accidentally tried to destroy the ligaments in my calf and ankle, the weight of the quilt on my taped foot woke me up one night - the pain was excrutiating, and I thought that I must have completely ripped the ligaments in the night.
By Should I be nervous that two out of three comments support one of these products? And this is why America is still the best country in the world. Any and all products have a home.
By Ankles down tanning bed! That's perfect for those of us who do (or have in the past) spent too much time out in the sun playing softball and then don't want to go to the beach with that dreaded softball sock tan!
By This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
Why, oh why, did I click on that link? Whhhyyyyyyyy????
By Clearly neither you nor Trash has ever been a perimenopausal woman who would like to wear nice sweaters in the winter but is always hot. The layers of blouse and sweater? Too much. The sweater without a blouse? Unfinished looking. (Not that I'd ever wear a dickie, but that one seemed sensible to me.)
By This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By
Unfortunately, the first item seems like a good idea, and would indeed be a good idea, if it wasn't actually total and complete crap. My mom got one because of her plantar fasciitis, and the thing was so flimsy that it caved and collapsed from the weight of the blankets. Any bed covering that is light enough to work with that thing is probably too light to bother you anyway.
By I agree with the people who said that the first item, which keeps the sheets off your feet, is occasionally useful. I work at a Hospice and we use a product just like that to prevent/treat bedsores on patients' heels.
By That link lists two different products for two different prices but the picture is the same for both. I think one Miles Kimball is trying to pull a fast one on grandma...
By Miles Kimball; klassy with a K! ;)
By Tuesday, November 17, 2009 Choose Your Weapon As you may or may not be aware, I am well into recapping my third season of The Amazing Race for Television Without Pity. As you are almost certainly aware, my redoubtable predecessor at that gig was Miss Alli, a.k.a. my very good friend Linda Holmes. She recapped the other twelve seasons and left some very big shoes to fill. While she has continued to showcase her writing skill in other impressive places, she is still missed at TAR via TWoP, especially by me on Sunday nights when it's after nine and I've barely finished drafting the first act. The good news is that she is once again recapping this season, at her own site. I feel I haven't done enough to draw attention to this latter fact, but I hope to remedy that right now. So to that end, Velcrometer proudly presents the Internet's only TWoPper/ex-TWoPper recap portal. Simply click on the graphic showing the last name of the recapper you'd like to check out first, whether it's her or me. Then come back and click on the other. It's fun, it's easy, and to class it up a bit, I decided to build the graphical interface out of movie posters. Enjoy.  
posted by M. Giant
7:04 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:Hee hee, I always read both, but thanks for the notice. :D:D
By Man, I wish I could do some sort of equivalent thing, so you could have the Watson poster up there too (the one with Jude Law).
By Awesome. I always read both, too, but now at least I won't have to feel guilty about cheating on you when I visit my first love, the Recapper Formerly Known as Miss Alli.
By Saturday, November 14, 2009 The Host with the Most Remember reading about all the work we went to for M. Edium's birthday party last month? Well, M. Edium returned the favor for his mom. I think he put in just as much effort as we did, if you use a sliding scale adjusted for age of the person putting in the effort. Of course, they both got help from me. While Trash took it easy for a little while, M. Edium and I went upstairs to his room to work on preparing it for the party he wanted to host for her right there. This involved the two of us cleaning up his room, making his bed, and organizing all his books, toys, and stuffed animals. So already, Trash not having to do any of those things was making this one of her best birthdays ever. Once that was done, M. Edium and I made a few decorations to hang up on his already art-festooned walls (theme: Christmas), then moved his tiny table and chairs from the hallway into his room so we could all sit and drink apple juice. He brought one of this morning's donuts up and stuck some candles in it. Then he went up to his mom and bellowed into her face, "PARTY TIME!" which I think she would have appreciated more had she not just dozed off into a nap a short time before. She wanted to shower before coming to the party, so while she did that, M. Edium made me hunker in his lower bunk with him, forbidding me to say a word, even when she called out wondering where we were. He wanted to say "surprise" when she walked in. When she arrived a few minutes later, she was indeed surprised, if only by the fact that he was bothering to try to surprise her after telling her in advance everything he'd been planning to do. After we sang her "Happy Birthday," and she blew out the imaginary candle flames and opened her presents from him (a snap bracelet, a Christmas ornament, and a couple of pencils), so far the party was a huge success, but we didn't know what to do next. Until M. Edium had the idea that the stuffed animals should all take turns expressing their birthday wishes for Trash. Which was very sweet and cute, even if there was a surprising amount of overlap between their wishes for her and the stuff M. Edium has already requested for Christmas. M. Edium asked if she liked her party, and she sincerely said it was her best birthday party ever. I think he might even have done us one better, because unlike us, who vowed never to do anything like that again. M. Edium promised to repeat this special experience for his mom. Tomorrow. posted by M. Giant 10:15 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:
Awwwww, M.Edium is the sweetest!
By I'll take two please! Seriously, so cute! Happy Birthday, Trash!
By This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Not Getting Things Done I had the afternoon off and I was already in the car, so I was going to go pick up Trash's birthday present really quick. Trash called my cell and insisted I come home first instead. Yes, Veteran's Day might be a little early to start hanging Christmas lights on the roofline, but she doesn't like me up there when there's snow and ice on the ground and when am I going to have another chance to do it when it's 60 degrees outside? Without moving out of state, that is? I told her I'd just do my "errands" and then come home and get it done quickly. She said I could get it done quickly and then go do my errands. Or better yet, save even more time and order online. So I deferred to her birthday power and headed home. The first thing I needed to do was pull down the lights from the garage ceiling, where they had served as sole illumination for the haunted house. The nice thing about hanging lights for Halloween as opposed to for Christmas is that no one cares if they look random and tangled, but the downside is then you have to get them down without using a hedge clipper. Then I had to get the staple gun and the staples. I found both reasonably quickly, but one didn't fit inside the other, so I had to make a trip to the hardware store to get the right kind of staples. I thought about making a run for it and dong the birthday shopping while I was out, but I'm not good at switching tasks. Then I got home and found that a piece of my staple gun was missing, so I had to jury-rig it with duct-tape, and even then it only works when I hold it at a certain angle. Then I couldn't find the adapter that I've been using for 16 years that lets me plug light strings into my porch light socket. Fortunately I did find a yard stake with six outlets on it with a built-in timer and everything, but I couldn't get it to work at all. Trash suggested I hang the lights now and then plug them in later, which she never would have done had she ever hung a string of lights in her life. You have to have them plugged in as you're installing them, otherwise how will you know they suddenly don't work any more for no reason? Anyway, by the time I'd done most of what I need a ladder for, more than two hours had passed. So much for my timeline. But then, that night, after M. Edium was asleep, I got right on ordering her birthday gifts online. That went great, by comparison. I went into two different online vendors' sites through a points reward site we're part of, kept getting hung up, booted out, and kicked back to the beginning, all while distracted by Glee and Top Chef playing in the background, changed the stuff in the order around a bunch of times to spend just enough to get free shipping, attempted to use a store credit to do an online order (you can't do that), went around in circles trying to use a gift card and a credit card, and two hours later I didn't know what I'd ordered, from where, whether I'm getting my loyalty points, when or if the package will get here, or how much I'd actually spent. So that's a total of four hours spent attempting to accomplish two projects I thought would take a matter of minutes each. Sometimes I wonder how I ever get anything done at all. posted by M. Giant 8:58 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, November 09, 2009 Unhappy Feet Part of the reason Trash bought us a Wii last year was to help us get into somewhat better shape. Unfortunately, however, it turns out that most Wii games are really boring. And then it also turned out that most of them can be played just as well from a full couch-slouch, as Chao and Gerd always reveled in demonstrating. So last Christmas, one of the gifts I got Trash was a couple of Dance Dance Revolution games for the PS2 and a universal dance pad. Last week I took it even further: I plugged them in. Trash loves it. It took us a while to figure out the game interface -- how were we supposed to know that those unlabeled corner pads are also controller buttons, let alone that trying to supplement them with the handheld controller would result in that controller hijacking the game? -- but once we got the hang of it we really got our groove on. I started without Trash, actually -- just to test it, you understand -- and found myself surprisingly challenged by even the beginner level. Even at two steps per measure, it was deceptively difficult to shuffle my feet to the proper spot. Having lacked the foresight to install a chin-up bar directly above the dance pad, I discovered that one has to shift one's weight from foot to foot in order to make the steps. Nobody told me this. After a bit, Trash joined me, and tried out a technique that involved returning her feet to the center after ever step so she was never off-balance. I decided to try that and it worked much better. Trash was disappointed in this, however, having been enjoying watching my graceless Herman Munster style far too much. Luckily for her, there are four more difficulty levels to go after that. I made an attempt at a salsa song on "medium." Now I know what it feels like to sprint down the aisle of a school bus that's rolling down the side of a mountain. So of course we had to invite Chao over to witness the madness. And take part in it, of course. Naturally we made him go first, because that's the polite thing to do when you have company. He didn't seem to appreciate it as much as we expected, though. Meanwhile, I'm slowly improving. I think it's because I'm refusing to let my gameplay be hampered by things like grace and rhythm. Every time I stumble through a song, I want to use a Peter Boyle voice to bellow "Puttin' On the Ritz!" but I suppress that urge most times. Later, when it was time for me to start putting M. Edium to bed, I left Chao and Trash down there to see how many songs they could complete without me, and on what difficulty level. By the time I came back down to send Trash up for her shift with the boy, you'll never guess what I discovered those two up to. They were sitting on the floor, using their hands to slap the dance pad that they had divided into zones between the two of them. And the only reason they weren't on the couch was because they'd tried it and it didn't work. Of course I was disgusted. And yes, of course I joined them in repeated attempts to defeat David Bowie's "Let's Dance" in the level of difficulty known as "Please Just Kill Me." Which we ultimately did. Gerd would have been proud. posted by M. Giant 10:09 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:Thanks, M. I can assure you Gerd would have been impressed with our bringing a physical game to its least-effort-denominator. I've never seen anyone put the Wii-Fit balance board upright at the end of the couch so they could play while laying on the couch. She was brilliant in her own special way.
By Saturday, November 07, 2009 Fall Back I remember how psyched I used to get about daylight savings time, especially that one Sunday morning in the fall when you get to sleep in an extra hour for no reason. That whole day is great, actually. You keep getting that hour every time you look at a clock you haven't changed back yet, or the first time you get in your car. If I could figure out how to make my cell phone clock not switch automatically, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But there is one thing that everybody knows is thoroughly incompatible with DST, and that is a small child. Before they can read a clock, they have two ways of knowing what time it is. One way is to be told by a parent. The other way is their biological clock, which overrides the parent every time. I know, the cliché is that while the parents look forward to an extra hour of sleep, the kid wakes up Sunday morning at what is now six o'clock, before the sun is even up. We are lucky enough that M. Edium is developing the invaluable skill of sleeping in on weekends, so that's not what happened. It's the evenings that are doing us in. Ever since we got back from vacation, the weekday routine is that he comes home, has dinner, it gets dark, we hang out for an hour or two, he goes to bed. This week, that's changed. He comes home, has dinner while it gets dark, we hang out for an hour or two, he goes to bed. We knew enough to get him started on his bedtime routine "early" the first night, but I think we rushed him a bit. I think that's the only explanation for the fact that one night this week around bedtime, his tiredness hit him in such a way as to transform him into a miniature Rage zombie, screaming and crying so hard that he made himself throw up. And then also another night this week. Sometimes I used wonder what it would be like if we just skipped bedtime and let him crash when he's ready. Just forget all the battles to get him in his pajamas and brush his teeth, and wait for him to say, "I'd like to go to bed now, please." After this week, I know what it's like: 45 minutes after his normal bedtime, he starts saying things to us that if Trash or I said them to the other (adjusted for age inflation, of course) it would be the end of our 18-year marriage. Saturday morning, after Friday night's meltdown (when we had people over, as an added bonus), I apologized to him for not getting him to bed early enough and letting him get so tired he couldn't even deal with himself. I also promised to get him to bed earlier that night. But then the neighbors invited us over for s'mores, an hour before his usual bedtime and a half hour before when we'd planned to actually put him to bed. He was an angel the entire time. Kind of amazing what an entire litany of dark threats will do. But although he didn't throw a wobbler, I could tell he was tired by how quickly he fell asleep after I left his bedroom. I'd go on here, with some more philosophical speculation and maybe a punchline, but the truth is it's 9:30 on a Saturday night and I am whacked. I don't know what I'm going to do when I have to give this hour back in the spring, because I could really use another one now. posted by M. Giant 7:39 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:To tell you the truth, my nephew doesn't have much of a bedroom routine, at least not on our part. His bedtime is 8:30 PM on school nights, he's in kindergarten, and 9 on weekends. But, just because we put him to bed, doesn't mean he goes to sleep. He usually stays up another half hour to an hour coloring and reading, before he falls to sleep. You'd think he'd sleep late because of this, but he's almost always up way before any of us and on the computer or watching one of his videos. Getting him to eat is another matter. He won't eat anything, but Mac-n- cheese, unless you feed him, and right now he goes into jealous fits because my sister is pregnant with his baby brother, and any time we talk about him too much, he acts out to get attention. This is the little gem he gives us, -sad face- "I'm sad because I think when the baby is born you won't love me anymore." Now when he first said this maybe he meant it, but now he says it to get attention. So, you should be comforted that you have such a well behaved little one, no matter the time of the year. :D:D
By Wednesday, November 04, 2009 Happy Birthday Spooky Halloween Slide Show Magic Fun Time  Greetings! Captain Rex from Star Wars: The Clone Wars welcomes you to his fifth birthday/Halloween carnival extravaganza! Or I would, if that were one of the prerecorded phrases programmed into my helmet. Or if I could do an inexplicably Kiwi clone accent. Which I can't yet, because I'm just turned five this week.  Walk this way! And tell me if I'm about to run into something!  That's my dad. He looks good, doesn't he?     Behold the terror of the haunted garage! It didn't make that many kids cry (not shown). And I promise none of them were me, because I wouldn't go in it.  That's my friend Chao. He's the one who taught me that the word "pirate" begins with "R." You can't even tell his fly was open.  Check out the birthday cake my birth mom made! I think my dad ate the solid rocket boosters. That would explain a lot.  Thanks for coming! I hope you enjoyed the party! See you next year! We're going to do it all again, only bigger. Wait, dad, I'm not done yet!  Most photos by Lisa McCulloch posted by M. Giant 7:01 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:That is great!!!
By Incredible! So much work. And that cake! You guys are great parents.
By That all looks incredible! My favorite part is that you wore loafers with your Darth Vader costume. That made me giggle. :-)
By I don't know, the kid in red in the haunted house looks close to crying. Had someone jumped out at him?
By Monday, November 02, 2009 Cheap Flick This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I entered the Project Greenlight contest years ago. Not once, not twice, but three times. As you may or may not recall, the goal was to write a screenplay that could be produced for a million dollars or less. Back then I didn't understand how such a thing was even possible. But having recently seen Paranormal Activity, I've been thinking about how big movies with a five-figure budget come about, and what I know now that I didn't know then. Make people multitask. Professional camera operators are expensive. Professional movie actors are even more expensive. Even an amateur actor and an amateur camera operator can eat up a small production budget in a hurry. But if you can make one guy be both the leading man and the cinematographer, you've more than slashed your budget; you've disemboweled it. And it's not like you're asking anyone to do anything you wouldn't do, because if you're directing a movie like this, you're probably also the producer, editor, writer, and caterer. Have a small, no-name cast. Paranormal Activity and its spiritual predecessor, The Blair Witch Project, each had a total cast of about four or five people. Even their characters were no names; they had to go by their real names on camera. I don't know how that saves money, but obviously it does. I may have even read somewhere that this was how they were able to afford some additional special effects in Being John Malkovich. Don't show anything. Obviously everyone knows that crashes and explosions are expensive, and even the cheapest CGI gets spendy when Geek Squad charges by the hour. But you'd be surprised at the kind of other things that can run up the tab. Any kind of violence whatsoever, for instance. Which is why neither The Blair Witch Project nor Paranormal Activity ever let us see any actual killing. Even Kevin Smith's Clerks, which I think came in at about $17,000 despite breaking most of these other rules, abandoned the original ending in which Dante gets shot in a random hold-up. Sure, he filmed it, because I've seen it, but actually distributing it with the original release would have somehow cost an extra half-million. Shoot in sequence. Most big productions shoot out of sequence, to make the most of the availability of actors and locations. If the movie has an aircraft carrier at the beginning and at the end, they film the beginning and the end at the same time rather than renting the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln twice and doubling the chances of losing their security deposits. But word has it that both Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity were shot in sequence, and that couldn't have run up the tab too much. Although maybe if they'd "saved money" the way the big studios do, they would have cost six figures instead of five. Minimal locations. Blair Witch just went out into the woods to shoot, and I'm sure the production didn't cover nearly as much ground as the characters did, if you know what I mean. Paranormal Activity didn't even go that far, trapping the cast inside the director's house as though the camera were plugged into the wall. Sources disagree on whether the final budget for the film was $10,000 or $15,000, but either way I'm sure most of that went into renovating the house. So the issue then is how to translate these lessons to other genres. I've been brainstorming cheap screenplays all week, and now I just have to decide whether my next project will be a romantic comedy without kissing, a spy movie cobbled together from security camera footage, or a Western shot by the side of a freeway, or an historical epic that's about people who have the same names as my friends. I'll keep you posted. posted by M. Giant 8:41 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:You are correct about clerks. Did most of it using credit cards and filmed in the store he worked at. I'm a bit of a Kevin Smith nerd....Ok Ok a huge nerd for him
By 
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
