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So I gave blood yesterday. I like to give blood because it is one of the few services I can do for others while putting my feet up and reading a book. I’m O-positive, which is the most common blood type, so my blood is in high demand. (Not quite as high as O-negative, which is the universal donor, but still high.) I would think that all blood types would be in high demand, but they always talk about needing type O. I’m type O. Interestingly enough, I lived for about 28 years thinking my blood type was B-positive. My mother told me I was B-positive, and that’s what was on all my emergency forms. Fortunately, I never needed a blood transfusion.
After getting partially ex-sanguinated, I went to the “canteen area” to get my free snacks. I had some Cheese Nips thin crisps. I don’t really care for Cheese Nips, but I didn’t want to have the off-brand cookies or the iffy trail mix or the raisins. In addition to Cheese Nips and juice, I also got a pin that says “Holiday Hero”–because it’s Labor Day weekend and they always need more blood on holiday weekends because people get drunk and hurt themselves, I guess, so giving blood on Labor Day weekend is extra special. It deserves a pin.
Maybe if more people gave blood throughout the year, we’d have plenty of blood for Labor Day weekend and they wouldn’t feel the need to give out these pins. No offense to the Red Cross, but I don’t want the pin. I’m okay with the “Be Nice To Me” sticker. That’s fine, because it comes with a little reminder of when I can give blood again, and I can stick it on my calendar. I won’t, but I could, if I wanted to. It serves a purpose. Plus, I like others to be nice to me. They aren’t, but I appreciate having someone remind them anyway. I could theoretically do without the stickers–I wouldn’t get upset if they just stopped giving them out, and I wouldn’t forget to give blood because there’s a quarterly blood drive at the church, and aside from that, the Red Cross calls me when they want more blood. But whatever.
I don’t mind the stickers because a) they’re cheap, and b) they’re biodegradable, if not recyclable. By contrast the pins are a) cheap, but not as cheap as stickers and b) not biodegradable. I suppose they’re recyclable, if you wanted to…melt down some cheap metal and…I dunno. Never mind. If you were to recycle it, it would consume energy, not to mention the energy that’s already been expended in manufacturing the things in the first place. It seems a waste of time, energy and money to create and distribute these things–I didn’t even mention the tiny plastic bag they’re wrapped in–when very, very few blood donors will end up using them. You know, they have special pins for first-time donors and those who have given three gallons or five gallons or ten gallons (cumulatively–heh), and okay, that’s fine. I suppose someone who’s given ten gallons deserves a medal of some kind, even if it’s a tacky one. But just because the blood drive happened to coincide with a long weekend? Seriously, none of us is expecting such a thing.
Also, this pin is ugly. I mean, it’s not hideous–if a small child were to happen on it, he probably wouldn’t scream or anything–but…how shall I put this? It’s a tie tack. Yes, I know it’s a “pin.” But it’s a tie tack. A woman is not going to stick this in any fabric that she wears. And it’s not going to go with anything. It’s just going to be a distraction. It’s a white square with a beach umbrella and some coconut drinks. And the Red Cross logo. It’s not subtle. It’s not elegant. I totally appreciate the thought–they’re glad I gave blood. I’m glad that they’re glad. But really, I am doing it out of the goodness of my heart and so I can get an hour away from my kids. I don’t do it for the pin. I don’t even do it for the free cookies. Because, frankly, the cookies suck. But that’s okay. I give with no expectation of reward. But if you’re going to reward me, stick with the free cookies. They are also biodegradable.
Reader Poll! [Insert theme music here]
Do you give blood?
a) Yes, six times a year.
b) Yes, at least once a year.
c) I’ve given in the past and probably will again.
d) I’ve given in the past, but don’t plan on doing so again any time soon.
e) No, I can’t for medical reasons.
f) No, I can’t for religious reasons.
g) No way, needles are the worst!
h) I gave once to impress a chick, but now I’m married to her, so that’s over.
Have a great weekend, everyone. Remember, I bled on a table for you, so if you’re going to get in an accident, make sure it’s not your fault
From the Associated Press:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. –
An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.
“It causes a lot of conflict on the playground,” said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.
Running games are still allowed as long as students don’t chase each other, she said.
Fesgen said two parents complained to her about the ban but most parents and children didn’t object.
In 2005, two elementary schools in the nearby Falcon School District did away with tag and similar games in favor of alternatives with less physical contact. School officials said the move encouraged more students to play games and helped reduce playground squabbles.
This story reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to write about for a long time, except that other issues–such as the upcoming presidential election, Mormon movies, and the weather–have been preoccupying me.
OUR neighborhood school banned tag. Princess Zurg came home from first grade and informed us that there was a rule against “chasing.” I thought she must mean that there was a rule against unwanted chasing. Because surely they still let children play games, like tag. No, she said, all chasing games were against the rules. This really bothered me at the time, but I never complained about it because I was too busy complaining about their inadequate accommodations for disabled students. I just had to shrug my shoulders and say, “Oh well, paranoid public schools,” and make a mental note to find other opportunities for my children to engage in such innocuous activities.
Then Mister Bubby came home from kindergarten and said there was a “no running” rule. Even Princess Zurg–who didn’t have much of a problem with the “no chasing” rule because it was, after all, a safety issue (you can never be too careful)–was incredulous. “You mean there’s no chasing,” she said. “You can run, just not chase.”
“No,” MB said, “you can’t run OR chase.”
“Maybe that’s a rule just for kindergarteners,” she said.
“No, it’s a rule for the whole school,” he insisted.
I was incredulous myself. But again, I was preoccupied with other issues, so while I was certainly upset in the philosophical sense, I could not spare any moral outrage on behalf of tag, especially since MB seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride. But even if it doesn’t bother my kids, it still bothers me, for one simple reason:
IT’S TAG!
I understand that some children don’t like to be chased. Some kids are okay with being chased at some times and not at other times. Some kids are a little too aggressive with their chasing. Sometimes when you “tag” someone, you might be overzealous and maybe hit them. You might trip. You might trip someone else. I understand all the risks. I just don’t understand the remedy.
Just how often children have to be hospitalized for tag injuries? I’m sure there are freak occurrences, like two kids run into each other head on and one of them gets a concussion, maybe even sustains some brain damage. I would not put that outside the realm of possibility. Someone could trip over a tree root and break a bone, maybe. Someone with a heart condition maybe shouldn’t play tag. I don’t know.
But safety concerns apparently aren’t the issue in Colorado Springs, where they banned tagged after some students complained about being chased against their will.
Here’s an idea: why don’t you make a rule about not playing tag with people who don’t want to play tag? “Only willing participants may play tag.” That sounds like a good rule to me. A little more complicated than “no running.” A little more nuance than some school-age children are prepared to deal with. But here’s another idea: why don’t we stop micromanaging children’s games altogether? Not that recess should be some Lord of the Flies free-for-all. But would a tiny step in that direction be such a bad thing?
I’m totally against bullying and harassment. When I was in grade school, one of the boys in my class and his buddy used to throw rocks at me on the way home from school. That was uncool. Okay, they weren’t big rocks, and they weren’t aiming at my head, but still, it was annoying. That’s what I recall thinking at the time. “This is annoying. I’d like to walk home without having rocks thrown at me. I wish they’d go do something else and leave me alone.” And yes, I was ignoring them. I’ve always been good at ignoring people, or at least pretending to ignore them. But they still kept throwing rocks at me, and I was still annoyed. So I told my mother, and since we didn’t know the boys’ parents, my mother talked to the principal. The principal talked to the boys’ parents, and the parents punished the boys. (I’d like to point out that at no time were the police or the district attorney’s office involved. Shocking, I know.) The boys were reasonably annoyed with me for getting them in trouble, but they didn’t throw any more rocks at me. I wish I could say we all became good friends and that I eventually married one of them, but that would be a fiction. (I’m sure SD threw some rocks at girls in his youth, too, but that’s neither here nor there.) We didn’t stay enemies, either. We lived happily ever after in mutual indifference to one another, which was just fine with me.
See, that’s an incident of harassment that didn’t even occur on school property, yet the school did, I think, play an appropriate role. As far as I know, the boys never received any school discipline, which was fine, because none of this occurred during school hours or on school grounds. If they were throwing rocks at me at recess, I would have expected them to get, I don’t know, detention or something. Have to stand in a corner or clap erasers or something. Write “I will not stone innocent bystanders” a thousand times. How did they punish us in elementary school? I don’t know, I was always a perfect angel. But I digress. That was then. Nowadays I’d expect that maybe the whole student body would be barred from walking home without an adult escort. Because nowadays the world is crazy.
At PZ’s school they are not allowed to pick up sticks. I assume this is because they don’t want anyone hitting or poking others with sticks, or running and tripping and accidentally impaling themselves with sticks. (As far as PZ knows, kids are still allowed to run at her school.) That makes sense. I can understand telling a youngster who’s running with a stick, “Hey, stop running with that stick! You could trip and fall and impale yourself!” I can also understand telling youngsters who appear to be engaging in a mock sword fight with sticks, “Hey, put down those sticks, you could poke each other’s eyes out!” (I’m not saying that I would be so uptight, mind you, but a reasonable amount of uptightness is tolerable, I think.) I definitely understand telling a youngster who’s beating another youngster with a stick, “Hey, stop beating that other kid with a stick! And get thee to a principal’s office, go!” That is all reasonable stuff.
Telling a kid that she can’t pick up a stick to write in the dirt or build a home for the ants or some other non-violent act seems a little…excessive.
I don’t tell PZ this is a dumb rule, and I don’t complain about it, because I understand why these rules are made. I do. It’s the same reason I end up screaming at my kids, “Aaaughhhhh! That’s it! No more talking! No more touching! No sounds! Only breathing!” It’s simpler than saying, “No screaming, yelling, teasing, whining or threatening!” and “No hitting, kicking, poking, scraping, or smashing!” and “No fake flatulence!” It’s also simpler to say, “No picking up sticks.” “No fighting with sticks” and “no running with sticks” and “no striking menacing poses with sticks” is unnecessarily complex.
Likewise, “No playing tag” is simple. “No running” is even simpler. But isn’t there a better way to deal with children’s conflicts? Something that doesn’t suck all the fun out of childhood?
Just wondering.
So there is a lull in the 2008 presidential campaign, I’ve noticed. I’ve taken this opportunity to reconsider Mike Huckabee. As you already know, I’m very fond of his name. It makes me want to like him. There are a handful of things I don’t like about him, including his proclivity–disturbingly common among “conservatives”–to tout constitutional amendments as the solution to our moral ills. You know, I think burning the flag is terrible. But I don’t want to amend the constitution to put a stop to it. While I think Roe v. Wade was a legal catastrophe, I’m not to keen on a Right-to-Life amendment, since my opposition to Roe is based largely on my belief that abortion is not a constitutional issue. Like most Americans, I have a moderate political position on abortion–though NARAL and the South Dakota legislature would have us believe such a thing isn’t possible–and I think that, barring a Mt. Sinai event, such dicey ethical issues should be worked out legislatively. And while I’m a big fan of heterosexual marriage–have one myself, you know–I’m not a big fan of the Definition-of-Marriage amendment because a) I really think marriage laws should be hashed out by state legislatures and b) as with abortion, I think it’s folly to engage the issue on these terms. “Wrest the fifth, ninth and fourteenth amendements, will you? Well, we’ll just add another one! Deal with that–ha!”
Aside from those academic issues, I have a very practical reason for opposing these constitutional amendments: they’re non-starters and a complete waste of time. And any politician who says he’ll make one or more of these amendments a priority in his administration is not catering to me. Let’s be adults, shall we?
Of course, Mike Huckabee is hardly alone in his constitutional amendment fetish (Rudy Giuliani being the major exception among Republicans, which is one of the reasons I lean toward him), so I try not to hold it against him too much, because I still really like his name and all. And he’s got kind of a jaunty smile. Also, I’m very impressed with his support for the Second Amendment, which, for those of you who went to public school, is the infamous right to bear arms.
It’s not that I’m some kind of gun nut. I don’t own any guns, I didn’t grow up with guns, I’ve never fired a gun, I don’t plan on buying a gun any time in the near future. But even during my “progressive” years, I’ve never been a gun-control nut, either. Maybe I’m thick this way, but I’ve never understood the logic of placing restrictions on law-abiding folks owning guns. People who are prone to shooting innocent people are not prone to obeying laws, so…? It’s not that I think the gun industry should be totally unregulated–I don’t think we should be selling pistols to children, for example–but every time there’s a gun-related tragedy, people start talking about how we need more gun control. “Flout our laws, will you? Well, we’ll just make more! Deal with that–ha!”
So gun control is not important to me, but one thing I hate about election season–not hate as in moral-outrage hate, but hate as in extremely-annoyed hate–is the way politicians try to suck up to the gun lobby by going hunting with some NRA members, hoping to score a big AP photo of themselves dressed in orange vests and holding up some dead birds, thinking it will make them look more macho. I guess. It’s not that I’m against hunting per se–I mean, I don’t have strong feelings about hunting. It seems rather a dubious “sport” to me, but, you know, whatever. Shoot your birds, shoot your small varmints, it’s really no skin off my nose. But only do it if you really want to shoot birds and small varmints. If that really is your idea of a good time, just knock yourself out. I don’t need to see pictures of it. I don’t care. What bugs me is how everyone feels the need to pretend that they just looooove hunting, and that is why they would never do anything to undermine our precious Second Amendment–because America without bullet-ridden animals is like America without baseball or apple pie.
It’s especially lame when the politician in question clearly is not big on hunting in real life. I don’t want to name any names. Let’s just say that if Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani shows up in my newspaper at any time during this campaign in an orange vest and carrying a limp quail–well, I don’t know what I’ll do. People are effing crazy. I’ve said it before, but what I really want is a politician who will voice support for the Second Amendment without pretending that he loves him some animal-killing. Someone who will tell the NRA, “Listen, guys, I support your right to protect your homes and yourselves from criminals. I even support your right to off a deer with an AK-47, if that’s what it takes. But hunting–not really my thing. Maybe we could just have lunch instead.” That, to me, would show character. Heck, I’d be impressed with a politician who didn’t support the Second Amendment and would just freaking admit as much. That would show character, too.
Which brings me back to Mike Huckabee, who says he is a hunter, been a hunter all his life–and probably he is, unlike some cats I could mention *cough* Mitt Romney *cough*–but makes it clear that the Second Amendment is not about hunting. As crazy as this sounds, it’s about the people’s right to defend themselves against threats to their lives and liberties–the right to protect themselves from their own government, if necessary. (You see, you liberals could have gotten rid of George Bush a long time ago if it weren’t for all those silly gun laws. I’m kidding. It’s a joke. A little Second Amendment humor to brighten up your Tuesday.) It’s an idea that may seem a little antiquated in this day and age–a little too Ruby Ridge for some folks–but nevertheless, that’s the purpose of the Second Amendment. It’s about freedom, not about proving yourself more technologically advanced than non-human creatures.
So put that down as the number two reason to vote for Mike Huckabee: he is unafraid to express support for the Second Amendment without an orange vest. The number one reason is still his name. (Go ahead and say it. You know you want to.)
When I sit my younger children down at the table and put food on plates in front of them, they eat nothing.
When I let them roam about the house, grazing like animals in the wild, they eat plenty.
I find this distressing.
Last week in review:
Monday–While engaging in horseplay with Princess Zurg, Mister Bubby falls head first into the coffee table corner, resulting in an open wound near his eyeball. Sugar Daddy takes him to the urgent care, where he receives two stitches, of which he is very proud.
Tuesday–Eh, nothing.
Wednesday–SD starts building the play structure in the back yard. That evening we go with friends to see Spamalot! at the Keller Auditorium. Try to find a decent place to eat near the Keller, end up eating at the Quizno’s. Friends get those new sammies. SD and I eat cookies. Cookies are good. Spamalot! is good. Worth the money we paid for the tickets? Doubtful. But, you know, it’s a night out and I like cookies.
Thursday–SD finishes (almost, close enough for horseshoes) play structure in the back yard. SD takes MB and Elvis to the Timbers game at PGE Park. SD is hoarse afterward from all the screaming he did at the unsportsmanlike player from the visiting team. And he’s always made fun of soccer fans. Whatever. At least he doesn’t take out his rage issues on the family. All boys have a good time.
Friday–MB gets his sutures taken out. That part of his face still doesn’t look pretty, but at least it isn’t gaping open. SD takes PZ and Girlfriend to the church Daddy-Daughter Campout, at some campsite near Astoria. A fun time had by daughters and daddy until it becomes clear that Girlfriend has no intention of sleeping in a tent. Probably because she hasn’t nursed in several hours, and where is Mom anyway? Seriously, where is she?
Meanwhile, back at the homestead, the boys and I are having a movie and popcorn night. Elvis is mostly having a popcorn night. MB and I are watching 101 Dalmations, the live-action version starring Glenn Close. Not my selection. Ahem. After the movie, I put Elvis to bed. MB says he wants to stay up until midnight. I say, sure, it’s no skin off my nose. So we watch It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown!, followed by three vintage episodes of The Muppet Show (guest stars: Elton John, Julie Andrews and Gene Kelly). MB wants to have a “sleepover.” So we camp out together on the family room floor, tell each other secrets, giggle, and do each other’s hair. Actually, I pass out on the floor, MB sleeps on the couch, and at 2 a.m. my back is killing me. The mammary glands aren’t feeling so hot either. (No commentary, please.)
Saturday–SD and the girls arrive circa 1:30 p.m. SD promptly goes upstairs to take a five-hour nap. Girlfriend, oddly enough, does not feel like sleeping. She is filthy and smells like campfire. Mmmmm. She is happy to be reunited with Mom. Mom’s mammaries are happy too. (Again, no commentary necessary.)
Sunday–SD takes another nap, but not for five hours. He also makes dinner and does the dishes, so get off his back already. Geez. After doing some light housekeeping and several loads of laundry, I spend an inordinate amount of time reading blogs. It’s the weekend, so nobody’s really blogging, so I’m reading archives. Then I make cookies. I like cookies.
Today, so far: I have failed to find our registration renewal form for the minivan. The tags expire next week. On the plus side, I have cleaned my desk. I have also eaten some cookies.
MB’s stuffed bunny and PZ’s stuffed bunnny are going on a date. They order two carrot Sobes. I think it’s going to work out between them.
This afternoon I’m going to the eye doctor. I think my eyesight has degenerated. If I have to get glasses, SD wants me to get those thick rectangle-framed ones so he can live out his Seduce-the-Librarian fantasy. I guess.
So how many of you have heard about the Miss Teen USA contestant who was asked why she thought one-fifth of Americans couldn’t locate the U.S. on a map, and she said it was because a lot of people don’t have maps and also because we need to help South Africa and Iraq…or something…? I’m not here to make fun of her because the poor girl’s been humiliated enough. My mind is still reeling from the part where one-fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a map. Are these people non-English-speakers who didn’t understand the question? Who can’t find the U.S. on a map? If they couldn’t find Mozambique on a map or Cuba on a map or, heck, even Canada on a map, I wouldn’t be surprised, but the U.S.? For real?
Test your geographic knowledge of the world’s countries–including, I believe, the U.S.–here.
Okay, I just took that quiz and got an A+, so it was obviously too easy. Take this one that I got an F on instead.
“If you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House.”–Michelle Obama, on her husband’s great role model-ness.
Really? Bill Clinton couldn’t run the White House? Ronald Reagan couldn’t run the White House? Fascinating.
“The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes. It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”–President of the American Association of Publishers and former U.S. senator Pat Schroeder, on why the average liberal reads one more book per year than the average conservative.
Actually, I read that book, No New Taxes. (I also read the sequel, Read My Lips.) Not quite as compelling as War Is Not the Answer or Bush Lied–Soldiers Died, but you know, compelling in its own right. (Ha ha–get it? Right?) My personal favorite is No Justice No Peace. That one’s a classic (but a little over some people’s heads).
I also appreciated If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention–but it was sooooo long. (Worse than Harry Potter!) And I admit that I could only get through half of Somewhere in Texas, a Village Is Missing Its Idiot. It was a tad too subtle for me.I’ve tried to get a copy of Buck Fush, but apparently it’s been banned in the suburbs. I can’t even get Amazon to ship it to me out here. I hear it’s the same basic plot as the short story “BUllSH**” but more literary in tone. I do like me some literary literature. I suppose I’ll have to go downtown. Oooh, maybe then I can also pick up that new title, Who Would Jesus Torture? (I love edgy humor) and see if there’s a new installment in the Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home series. The last one was a real page-turner, but I had to hide it behind a copy of Stay the Course to avoid being the object of withering glares from my neighbors.
What can I say, my community is really conservative. There was a big brouhaha recently over our school district’s new math textbooks. The teachers wanted Two Americas: One Rich, One Poor, but parents insisted on Marriage = One Man + One Woman. They said it would save us money because it could double as a sex ed book, but I don’t know. I still say they should have stuck with Tax Cuts for the Rich. Whatever happened to the basics?
“We tend to think of older people as not being sexual. But we ought not to take sex off the table just because of someone’s age.”–Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau, who led a recent study of the sexual habits of post-reproductive persons.
I agree completely. Let the older people have sex where they want to. Sure, it’s riskier on a table, but it should still be their choice. Are they not adults?
While I was in California my stepmother told me that I should start telling her and my dad now which of their many possessions I’d like to have “after they’re gone.” This is weird to me because I remember when my mother was dying, she started asking each of us what things of hers we wanted to have, and that was very painful because she only had two weeks to live and I didn’t want any of her things, I just wanted her to keep living. My mother was not a woman of many possessions, anyway. Or rather, she was a woman of many temporary possessions, not the sort of things one usually bequeaths to anyone else. My parents’ life together was one of looking forward to the day when they would have more money (or fewer liabilities) and more time (or fewer responsibilities), and finally be able to get something nice and go someplace exciting. My father actually went to a lot of exciting places on business—Europe, Russia, Japan, Hawaii, who knows where else—but it was not usually practical for my mother to go with him. She did accompany him to a conference in Boston once. That might have been the only trip they took together (alone) since their honeymoon. It’s ironic, in the Alannis Morrisette sense, that just as they were on the cusp of empty-nestdom, she should leave the nest herself. Wherever she is now, I reckon it’s at least as nice as Hawaii, but I think my dad still wishes in retrospect that he had taken her to Hawaii when he had the chance.
My dad is well aware of the opportunities he missed with his first wife, so he hasn’t made the same mistakes with the second one. Of course it helps that he has more money and all that et cetera, but still, he’s learned his lesson. Also, my step-mother isn’t shy about telling him what she wants. Or what she doesn’t want—but she only tells him about that after he’s already given it to her. And then she tells anyone else who will listen about how much she doesn’t like it and why on earth would he buy such a thing for her. It’s a bit hard to take because a) despite his documented shortcomings, my father is very thoughtful about gifts—even if it isn’t what you wanted, he sure has a lot of reasons why he thought you’d like it, and b) my mother never got anything as nice as the stuff Dad buys for Step-mother.
Step-mother is a wonderful woman in many regards, but she could use some work in the graciousness department. I don’t claim to be a paragon of this virtue myself, but I do know that if my husband bought me a piece of jewelry that he thought I’d like, I’d suck it up and wear it. At the very least I would refrain from calling it “tacky.” While we were there last week, I got to see my father at his wit’s end, trying to explain to his wife that the earrings made from diamond chips he gave her for their tenth anniversary really were diamonds.
“I don’t see how they’re any different from cubic zirconium,” she said.
“Because they’re diamonds! They’re 100 percent diamonds, made from carbon! Cubic zirconium has zirconium in it!”
“So I have genuine fake diamonds?”
“You have genuine REAL DIAMONDS! And they weren’t cheap, either!”
That’s when I told her that if she didn’t want her genuine fake diamonds, I would gladly take them. Only I’d pass them off as real. Then everybody laughed. Which was good, because I was about to punch her. Also, I don’t have pierced ears, so a fat lot of good genuine diamond earrings would have done me. Maybe I could have bequeathed them to somebody.
Which brings me back to my original subject. My mother had no jewelry to speak of, aside from her wedding ring, which she was buried with. It was a simple white-gold band, just like my father’s. My dad remembers that they bought the set at Monkey Wards for $65. It’s a sweet story, I think, but that’s neither here nor there. She also had no china, fine or otherwise. I think she used the same white Corelle dishes for the first twenty years she was married. Then she bought some dinnerware with a country goose theme. This was after she decided that she was going to be into geese. She bought some goose glasses to go with them, but quite a few of them broke. She couldn’t find the same pattern anymore, so she bought some slightly different goose glasses to replace the broken ones. A lot of those broke, too. I inherited the lone surviving goose glass a couple years ago. It has since broken. I wasn’t too torn up about it, though, because I’d also inherited the goose dishes and the goose salt-and-pepper shakers, which are packed away like they were fine china, and not just some country kitchenware that isn’t my particularly my style. I have naught against geese, country or otherwise. I just have my own dishes that I registered for at Target ten years ago, and I hardly ever use those, either. We prefer Spiderman and Barbie plates at our house.
I also have my mother’s old melamine serving platter. It’s yellow-green and too thin and thus has a crack in it. I don’t use it anymore. It’s entirely useless, and not valuable. It’s not even attractive. I keep it because it was my mother’s, just like I keep her old reading glasses, which she may very well have bought at the Pic’n’Save, for all I know. They are in the same cheesy glasses case I made her for Mother’s Day in my eighth-grade home ec class. It’s one of those plastic-grid needlework crafts, a yellow flower with a white background. It is, of course, filthy. It’s been filthy since a week after Mother’s Day twenty-three years ago. Good Lord, twenty-three years. The glasses and the case are in the bottom of my temple bag because the last time I went to the temple with my mother, she had me carry some of her stuff in there. Sometime after she died I cleaned out my temple bag and found them, and I just left them there. Where else would I keep them?
What’s left at my parents’ house is a whole lot of pretty nice stuff I don’t want. What I want is the crap stuff I grew up with. I want the Keane paintings my mother bought in a garage when she was still young and single. They aren’t worth anything and I reckon my husband would sooner die than have them on his walls—but they are integral images of my childhood, and therefore they appeal to me. They are both night scenes. One is of a lone little blond girl sitting on a step of a long staircase in the moonlight. The other is of a young woman on a busy street. In each picture the subject is staring straight at you with their giant eyes. Yes, it is creepy and weird. (This was before Margaret Keane became a Jehovah’s Witness and started painting happy pictures.) My mother bought the woman-on-the-street picture because it reminded her of herself—a young single woman on her own. She even looks like my mother did in those days (at least as much as anything Keane painted could look like a human). In the background there’s a sketchy image of a man who looks like the young version of my Dad. To us that gave the painting a sort of mystical quality, since my mother was years away from meeting Dad when she bought it. Dude, her destiny was right there in the freaking painting, and she had no idea! My brother has that painting. I suppose it’s appropriate, since he’s the only single one left among us. Maybe he’ll meet a blond woman with giant eyes someday, and their kids will be similarly impressed by the magic painting that can tell the future.
After my mother died, everything she owned became a holy relic to me. There was so little, materially speaking, to remember her by. She hated having her picture taken because she hated how fat she looked, so we have very few pictures of her. Most of the things she had were not meant to last. They were meant to be used until they could be replaced with something better. This is why I still have Post-It notes that my mother wrote on. Stuff that should have been thrown away a long time ago has taken on ridiculous significance simply because I know there will be no more of it. It will never be replaced with something better.
I suppose this is the legacy my mother left me, that I can live with not having the best of everything—but also that I won’t have forever to do what I mean to do. As much as possible, the doing should be done now. It shouldn’t be saved for later.
The husband and I do not get out to the cinema much. The last movie we saw in an actual theatre was a charity screening of Serenity, benefiting Equality Now, back in June. Before that, I don’t know…I think it was X-Men. Just kidding. Golly, I honestly don’t remember. Point being, we see most of our movies on DVD, but lately–what with The Simpsons being on DVD and all–we haven’t even been renting any movies lately. But Friday night we felt like watching a movie, so Sugar Daddy went to the Blockbuster and came home with two rentals. You will never guess which two. No, don’t even bother because it is impossible that either of these titles would ever cross your mind in a million years. Are you ready? Battlestar Gallactica and Church Ball.
For the blissfully ignorant, Church Ball is one of many films produced by Halestorm Entertainment, the premier B-movie studio of Mormon cinema. Technically, all Mormon cinema is B-movies, so Halestorm is really the premier C- or D-movie studio of Mormon cinema, but I digress. Halestorm specializes in self-consciously Mormon comedies of low budget and marginal quality. Some of these films have flashes of brilliance, or at least really funny parts, but most of them are just unadulterated crap. Like you look at the box and think, “There is no way this could possibly not suck.” And none of their films could possibly appeal to anyone outside the Mormon community. They are designed to make money off of those Mormons with disposable income who will laugh at anything. Halestorm’s best contribution to the genre thusfar is Sons of Provo, a mockumentary about an aspiring Mormon boy band called Everclean. It’s no Some Like It Hot, but it is consistently entertaining. If you like that sort of thing. We got enough laughs out of the trailer to gamble that it would be worth a look-see, and ’twas.
Anyway, perhaps it was the success of Sons of Provo which led us to have elevated expectations for Church Ball. That and the fact that Gary Coleman has a supporting role. Yes, Gary Coleman and Fred Willard. How could it not be at least a little bit good? Oh, come on! Somehow, though, Halestorm managed to screw it up. As SD said, it was like they had a brainstorming session about what would make a funny movie and then filmed the brainstorming session. Only it was one of those brainstorming sessions where you realize afterwards that the ideas only sounded good because you were drunk at the time. Except that the Halestorm guys are Mormons and thus probably were not drunk, but maybe goofed-up on Mountain Dew. Who knows?
It started promisingly enough, what with an elderly sister being escorted past the church gymnasium and getting beaned in the head with a stray basketball, but it was all downhill from there.
Here’s the story. Once upon a time the Church embraced basketball as a fun and wholesome way to build community and promote fellowship (as opposed to the usual, unwholesome fellowship people had been subjected to in the past). As a side note, this is actually how my uncle–my mother’s brother–was introduced to the LDS church, through a church ball league. Unable to play basketball for his school team, he accepted a Mormon friend’s invitation to play for his church team, the only catch being that he had to go to church with him (at least as long as the basketball season was going on). My uncle really did want to play basketball that much, and eventually decided he wanted to be a Mormon, too, so he got baptized, and shortly thereafter so did my grandparents and my mother. So in short, if it hadn’t been for church basketball, my mother would never have become a Mormon and thus probably wouldn’t have married my Mormon dad, and I would never have been born. So if you enjoy reading this blog, thank a Mormon basketball player. Or something.
Anyway, the joke is that basketball is the official church sport and that the men take it way too seriously and are so competitive and crazy when it comes to actual games that all Christian sensibilities and decorum fall by the wayside–a situation fraught with opportunity for humor, both wholesome and otherwise. (Actually, when some Mormon friends of our heard there was going to be a movie about church basketball, they asked, “How are they going to keep it PG?”) So we have our hero of Church Ball, a guy named Dennis, who plays for the Mud Flats team, a ragtag bunch of lovable losers who love the game but can’t play it worth a darn and whose uniforms don’t match. The Mud Flats team is in a deep-seated rivalry with the Crystal Springs (I think–Crystal Something) team, who are their polar opposite: they have awesome uniforms, play like professionals and in short are “winners”–not the good kind of winners, though, but the kind of winners that are jerks and need to be taken down a peg or two. Crystal Springs has been the church league champion for like, twenty years, and they are just soooo freaking obnoxious about it. Why are these two teams rivals when there’s no real competition between them? Well, Virginia, it seems that it’s personal. The two brothers who dominate the Crystal Springs team, Brad and Brent–or Buck and Bradley, I don’t remember–have been bullying Dennis ever since they were all kids, and that really irritates him. But what can he do?
So the Mud Flats bishop (Fred Willard) is a former church ball player who also nurses an unhealthy obsession with the sport. You can tell he is something of a “character,” because he insults the referees from the sidelines and works on a playbook that he hides behind his scriptures during church meetings. Also, he wears an eyepatch. This is possibly the funniest thing about the movie. But I digress. The bishop tells Dennis that the Higher-Ups have decided that the church won’t sponsor the basketball league anymore and that this is their last chance to win that championship trophy and he wants Dennis to lead Mud Flats to victory, once and for all. Dennis protests that he’s no coach and besides, their team is terrible, so how could they ever win? The bishop appeals to his sense of religious duty, so Dennis accepts the challenge. Then he breaks his tailbone in the first game and has to scramble to find a replacement so they won’t have to forfeit the rest of the season. The rest of the movie is a journey toward self-awareness and redemption, wherein Dennis and his teammates fellowship a disaffected (but athletic) church member, recruit Gary Coleman (it’s a long story), eat fewer doughnuts, and meet a Magical Black Man, whose sole purpose is to teach the clueless white guys that everyone is a winner, you just have to look inside for their special talent.
This would all be well and good if it worked, but it doesn’t, for the following reasons (in no particular order):
1. The actor who plays Dennis is miscast, at best. He is what you would call “low-key.” He conveys absolutely no energy or enthusiasm or emotion of any kind that would indicate that he is invested in the outcome of this story. In any given scene, games included, he looks like he would actually rather be taking a nap. I wished he would take a nap, too, and maybe he would wake up and be interesting, but that never happened.
2. The film is narrated by Dennis’s wife, a peripheral character who has nothing to do with ninety percent of what transpires onscreen. So why is she narrating the story? So she can tell us that Dennis loves basketball. Because we would never know if it was up to Dennis to show us how much he cares about basketball. The film relies a lot on Dennis’s wife to tell us how Dennis feels about what is going on around him. And also to point out how silly all of this male posturing is. My goodness, boys, it’s just a game. Why don’t you get that???
3. Like most Halestorm pictures, the editing is slightly off. Key characters are introduced far too late. Everyone’s timing is half a beat too slow. You know where all of this is going and you don’t understand why they don’t just get there already. What’s taking so long? Mormon Standard Time?
4. The film relies on stereotypes but they’re really poorly-drawn stereotypes. Most of what we know about them is what Dennis’s wife tells us.
5. Like 99% of Halestorm pictures, the tone is uneven. It can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be. The good thing is that there’s no distracting conversion/coming-to-Jesus subplot, but there are all these other distracting subplots that I think are supposed to be funny and/or heartwarming (like the Mud Flats janitor with the bad heart who’s in love with the overweight church organist), but are actually just mildly irritating.
6. Fred Willard is utterly wasted. And I don’t mean that he appears to have been stoned during filming. That would have resulted in a more entertaining movie. No, he is far too restrained here. Fellows, you don’t hire Fred Willard so you can rein him in. He needs to be let loose and free to say whatever insane thing comes to his brain. His character habitually makes fleeting references to wild times in his past–like the time he almost lost his spleen–but keeps cutting himself off with, “But that’s a story I’ll save for another time,” and you just want to scream, “No, Fred! Don’t save the story for another time! Tell the story now! Any story would be better than the one we’re watching!” Don’t put Fred Willard in a corner, people. That’s all I gotta say.
And lastly, but definitely not leastly,
7. Mormonism has been neutered out of the picture. There are no explicit references to anything specifically Mormon, no one ever says the word “Mormon,” and this may very well have been a self-preservation strategy, because if I were the Church and somebody made this crap movie about me, I would have to excommunicate some people. Just kidding! But seriously, in a misguided attempt to give the story a more generic framework–and theoretically have a wider appeal, as unlikely as that seems?–they lost the opportunity to make a story about something real. These folks are all certainly Mormon (except for Gary Coleman–it’s a long story), but it’s a secret–shh. The result is that it feels phony–neither hot nor cold and therefore to be spewn out of the mouth, if you will. Mormon stories don’t have to be a niche market, if you invest them with some authenticity. People enjoy well-told stories about real people and situations; they don’t want to have to fill in the blanks themselves–that’s the storyteller’s job. You need to let your freak flag fly, Halestorm. That’s my advice.
I’d promise you a review of Battlestar Gallactica and an essay on the Mormon obsession with it, but I’m afraid I’d have no intention of keeping that promise. Happy Monday to all!
The era of Madhousewife Willingly Taking Elvis Into Safeway has officially ended. I wish I could say it was nice while it lasted, but it really wasn’t, and that is sort of the whole point.
Mister Bubby is having his first playdate with a friend from his kindergarten class. Hey, it only took me until almost-first-grade to arrange it. He is so excited that he’s set the kitchen timer for the 105 minutes until said friend arrives.
I have decided to give Princess Zurg one more go-round with the Zoloft. We aborted our last attempt to modify her behavior chemically because her teacher thought the drug might be making her crazier, even though it was technically too early to tell. Too many variables to consider, though, so we said never mind and let her resume her non-drug-enhanced meltdowns. Now that she is no longer in school or vacationing out of state, I figure we have a good base line, so back on the Zoloft she went Tuesday morning. The problem with PZ and prescription drugs is that she can’t swallow pills, so she has to take liquid Zoloft, which is a concentrate that has to be mixed with so many ounces of a) water, b) lemonade, c) lemon-lime soda, OR d) orange juice, and nothing else. I ran out of lemonade and had to open up the bottle of 7Up this morning. I am not in the habit of keeping orange juice in the house because Elvis loves it, despite the fact that it gives him diarrhea (though SD has bought him a couple half-gallons in the last month and the effects were not quite as horrible as I’d remembered–or maybe I just didn’t change enough of his diapers). She won’t take it with water because it tastes really gross, i.e. like sertraline and not at all like water. The point is that it’s a pain in the neck to use liquid Zoloft, so I’m trying to teach her to swallow pills. This is somewhat akin to teaching your goldfish algebra, but I persevere. This morning she successfully swallowed some of those decorative cookie sprinkles. I need to move on to something larger than that but smaller than a Tic Tac. Any suggestions? Why they can’t make chewable Zoloft, I’ll never know.
Starting while we were on vacation, Girlfriend wants to nurse approximately forty-seven times a day. Now, I’ve always nursed my children more times per day than some would consider prudent, but I’ve never been a forty-seven-per-day mother. At first I suspected that she just needed more attention. I’ve tried paying her more attention, but she isn’t interested. What she’d really like to do is nurse, thanks. It’s like she’s storing up for the winter. You know, nursing on demand is fine when they’re little, but once they get to the size when you can’t carry them on one arm while you do stuff with the other, it is just not practical.
In the last two weeks my husband has lost his Amazon card and his debit card. Now it appears that he’s lost his Target card–which we just had replaced a couple months ago because the number was stolen. I’m beginning to think that he is waging a passive-aggressive war on our culture of conspicuous consumption. That, or he doesn’t want to do the shopping anymore. All I know is that we’re out of food, I won’t take Elvis anywhere anymore, and SD has no means of paying for groceries. I’d start delving into the food storage, but we’re such lousy Mormons that all we have is spaghetti and green beans. Not even real green beans, but those French-sliced canned green beans, which taste even less like green beans than regular canned green beans. Oh, and there’s some rice. A lot of rice, actually. Your mouth watering yet? I thought as much.
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