verbatim

Racism, Still Thriving

I just watched a truly spine-tingling interview with some life-long Democrats in West Virginia explaining why they could never vote for Obama. Most of them beat around the bush, saying things like, "I just—I just don't agree. That's—I'll just leave it at that. I just don't agree that he should be president of the United States." But one comes right out and says, "I don’t feel like—put the black man there—no prejudice or nothing but I just don’t have—I just think he should not be there." I've never spent time in any of the overtly racist regions of our nation, and I have to admit I never imagined it was still that prevalent and blatant. Holy crap.

Meanwhile, yesterday's Zogby poll has Obama beating McCain 47% to 37% or Hillary beating McCain 41% to 40%.

Boo!

Last night Andy went to a private screening of "Jack in the Box," the indie horror movie that was filmed entirely in his dungeon-like basement at work last year. I would have gone, but I'm too much of a wuss I had to stay home with the kids.

He said it was really cool to look up at the big screen and see his familiar basement and all the actors whom he'd gotten used to seeing every day for a long while. For him, that made it not so scary. Here's the plot summary:

Jack in the Box was written and directed by Frank Kerr, and tells the story of a group of aspiring actors locked in a room and forced to play a deadly game of musical chairs. The film’s tension escalates over 89 minutes, as characters are slowly taken out by an unseen villain, and the game is whittled down to one remaining “winner.”

You can watch the trailer here.

Hang in There, Teddy

When I first heard that Ted Kennedy had had a "stroke-like seizure," I felt as though I'd been punched in the stomach. It was just one oomph shy of the feeling I might have had if the news had been about someone I knew personally. Since word came out that he in fact has a malignant brain tumor, I have more than once had to check with CNN.com to make sure he hadn't died—people are already talking in grim "obit terms."

Even before this happened, I'd been wondering whether this would be his last term in the Senate (it's up in 2012, when he'll be 80), but I certainly never expected that he wouldn't get to finish it out. From what I've been reading about his condition, it seems really unlikely. I find myself experiencing a mixture of dread and panic about his vacated seat. I have every reason to believe that Massachusetts will come through with a good, solid liberal replacement, but who can possibly begin to fill those huge shoes?

Yes, I'm a life-long Massachusetts resident; yes, I'm a liberal Democrat. But regardless of all this, I have just always felt an immense admiration for this "last lion of the Senate" (uttered by none other than John McCain, and I believe he meant it with all his heart). Surely no other senator has done as much as Ted Kennedy both for his constituency here in Massachusetts and for the millions across the country who've benefited from his unflagging commitment to help the poor, the oppressed, and the disenfranchised over the last four decades.

I've always been willing to cut Ted Kennedy an enormous amount of slack for all he's been through. Any other man who lost two brothers to assassination, another brother to war, a sister to a plane crash, another sister to a lobotomy, and a number of other relatives to bizarre accidents would, quite understandably, want to withdraw completely from public life. But not Ted Kennedy. He just kept at it, doing what he and his family always believed they were meant to do: The Right Thing.

Wednesday Link Dump

1. The reason I didn't get much done this morning is that I was too busy peeling these colorful screen-sheets with my mouse.

2. I discovered the Anti-Label record, um, label a few months ago (via that last issue of No Depression—damned if I know how I'm going to find out anything about music from here on out) and was delighted with the free downloadable music sampler (the link is in the left sidebar of the blog). I started subscribing and was almost instantly rewarded when Tom Waits decided to interview himself there. Excerpt:

Q: What is a gentleman?
A: A man who can play the accordion, but doesn’t.

3. Remember when I found a bunch of cool, old John Prine videos on YouTube? Well, ol' JP himself must have had the same idea, because now they're all collected here—plus a few I'd never seen before.

4. I'd be willing to personally buy a truckload of LifeStraws for some village in Burma (or China or anywhere for that matter), wouldn't you?

5. Wanna go green—but wait, maybe more like celery-green than all-out grass-green? Try the daily tips at the Ideal Bite:

We know that you would just love to "do the right thing" for yourself and the planet if it were convenient, fun, inexpensive, and made you feel good.

Every little bit (bite?) helps, right?

Knap! Knaetter! Knak!*

The other part of my MomCentral "assignment" (for which I will receive an Amazon gift card, just so's you know) was to review the new Rice Krispies website, Childhood is Calling. It's a well-designed, colorful, quick-loading site filled with resources aimed at encouraging us to just enjoy our kids while they're kids—and let them have fun too!

Specifically, the folks at Kellogg's have partnered with the nonprofit Playing for Keeps to launch Operation Spark, whose goal is to remind parents of the important of play in our kids' development. I try to make a conscious effort not to overschedule my kids, but even so, we occasionally have days filled with rushing around from here to there, from school to activities, from practices to lessons, from appointments to errands. It never hurts to be reminded that some good, old-fashioned family play time can be just the ticket to "regroup" after a long, hectic day that saw everyone flying off in different directions. We've occasionally done something as simple as a game of Uno, which takes all of 15 minutes but serves as a point of connection for the whole family.

In addition, the site has links to cute little games that kids (mostly the younger set) can play on their own or with a parent or friend. And of course no Rice Krispies site would be complete without recipes for many variations on Rice Krispies Treats. All in all, this is a very appealing website that offers solid parenting support without being sappy about it.

*You probably won't be too surprised to find out that my favorite part of the website was learning how they say "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" in other countries:

• Sweden: Piff! Paff! Puff!
• Germany: Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!
• Mexico: Pim! Pum! Pam!
• Finland: Poks! Riks! Raks!
• (French-speaking) Canada: Cric! Crac! Croc!
• Holland: Pif! Paf! Pof!
• South Africa: Knap! Knaetter! Knak!

In a Slump?

Over the years, I have on many occasions fielded questions about my productivity, ranging from "Do you somehow have access to more than 24 hours in a day?" to "Have you figured out a way to bypass the space-time continuum?" to "What, are you an alien?" I don't know how to explain it, but I've always been an extremely efficient person. I have always been able to squeeze more into a week than most people I know—reading more books and magazines, watching more movies, cooking and baking more food, and so on, all without sacrificing sleep, family time, or the usual "daily grind" of house-keeping, bill-paying, errand-running, and all that. Plus freelance work! And volunteering at school! And that "blog" thing? How does she do it?

Well, right about now, I'm kind of wondering the same thing myself. I don't know what's going on, but lately I can't seem to keep up. I haven't taken on any new responsibilities—indeed, I've given up on the gym entirely, I haven't had a huge work load for most of the last few months, I can't even remember the last time I did a sudoku puzzle—yet I'm still feeling as though I'm falling behind in everything. The next New Yorker on my pile is from November 12 (yes, I still insist on reading them in order), I've watched fewer Netflix DVDs in the last 6 months than I used to watch in any given 6 weeks up till then, and the 25-pound bag of flour I bought at Costco back when I was baking bread as fast as we could eat it is still unopened.

I sure hope this is just a weird phase I'm going through. I've always taken it for granted that I could just accomplish a lot more than anyone I knew. It wasn't as though I was competing with people, it's just the way it was. I realize that as I age, I won't be able to do quite as much as before, but I didn't think I'd have already peaked by now. And with the kids in school for more hours every day than ever before, I'd have thought I'd be even more productive lately. Mais non. I hope to be reporting soon that I'm back in the saddle. In the meantime, bear with me if it takes me more than than the usual few hours to reply to your comments or emails!

Want/Don't Want

Nancy suggests I get this to help me with my directional disability:

I don't care how convenient it might be for a picnic, no way am I buying wine in juiceboxes:

Two Thumbs Up

Last night we finally got to see "Iron Man," and I'm so glad we didn't wait too long and miss seeing it on the big screen. (I realize that many people have those enormous flat-screen TVs in their homes, but we don't, so if we miss the theatrical release of a movie and end up having to wait a year for the DVD rental, we end up watching it on a regular old 29" TV—not so great for movies with lots of special effects and such.)

I was probably the only person in the cineplex who knew nothing about "Iron Man" going into it, other than that it was an action movie starring Robert Downey—and getting great reviews. I didn't know anything about the plot and hadn't even seen a trailer, which is the way I like it. Well, I loved this movie. It was exciting, fun, and way cool. I have always loved Robert Downey, and I think he's just terrific in this.

Pete is dying to see this movie, but we've decided he's not old enough yet. If it were just the comic-book violence (of which there is plenty), I'd let him. But I think the PG-13 rating stems from more than a couple of scenes involving torture and terrorism and mass murder, all perpetrated by real humans, not fantasy superheroes. Indeed, even as Iron Man, Downey's character is not a superhero, he's just a brilliant engineer who can create machinery beyond what anyone else can even imagine—with computers and other gadgetry that puts 007 to shame.

Like action? Enjoy supercool special effects? Get a kick out of clever repartee? Love Robert Downey? Think Gwyneth Paltrow is cute as a button? Want to see Jeff Bridges as a bald, bearded bad guy? Go see "Iron Man."

They're Not That Grrrrreat!

The folks at MomCentral have asked me to review a new breakfast cereal from Kellogg's.* It appears that Tony the Tiger has taken a good look at his nutrition profile and made some changes. The result: Frosted Flakes Gold. Whereas regular old Frosted Flakes is made entirely from milled corn, the new Gold version contains 10g of whole-grain corn and wheat per serving. The Gold cereal also contains honey, so it looks more golden-colored than the whitish sugar-dusted regular version (although both cereals contain sugar and the ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup). The total sugar count for the Gold is 10g per serving, compared to 11g in the regular cereal. Most of the other nutritional info is also comparable—the Gold has just slightly more fat (0.5g versus 0g), sodium (190mg versus 140mg), and protein (2g versus 1g) per serving; both cereals have 110 calories per serving.

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you can probably guess that I don't buy sugary cereal for my kids (so the only way they've ever tasted regular Frosted Flakes is at someone else's house), preferring Honey Bunches of Oats (6g), Crispix (3g), and the like. More importantly, I no longer buy any products that contains that evil high-fructose corn syrup.

So, what did the kids think of the cereal? Steph didn't like it at all—she had the regular Frosted Flakes at camp and prefers that, so it must be the honey taste she didn't care for. Julie pronounced it "too sweet"—again, likely a reflection of the honey flavor, because she doesn't seem to mind other sugary-sweet things. Pete didn't care for it dry, but he liked it well enough with milk. (The girls don't drink plain milk, so they ate theirs dry.)

On the one hand, I applaud Kellogg's for putting their first tentative foot on the nutritional bandwagon by using whole grains, but on the other, I do wish they'd give up on the high-fructose corn syrup completely and reduce their use of sugar. Kids will happily eat less sugar without even missing it. Really.

*Full disclosure: I received a free box of cereal to try and will receive an Amazon gift card in exchange for providing this review.

Fenway, Up Close and Personal

Barbara and Jerry treated Andy, Pete, and Steph to a guided tour of Fenway Park last Tuesday. They weren't allowed on the field, of course, or even the dugout (I kind of thought they'd let them in there), but they did get to climb up on the Green Monster. It was a great day:

(Oh, don't worry about me and Julie; we had just as much fun. First we went to the optician to get her glasses tightened and then we ate Fritos while playing Clue Jr. They were so jealous when they got home.)

I love John Updike's description of Fenway (from The New Yorker back in 1960):

Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities. Its right field is one of the deepest in the American League, while its left field is the shortest; the high left-field wall, three hundred and fifteen feet from home plate along the foul line, virtually thrusts its surface at right-handed hitters. On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 28th, as I took a seat behind third base, a uniformed groundkeeper was treading the top of this wall, picking batting-practice home runs out of the screen, like a mushroom gatherer seen in Wordsworthian perspective on the verge of a cliff.

Meanwhile, Pete was supposed to go to the Sox game last night, but Jerry was still getting over a nasty bug, so they gave away the tickets. And just as well, because after a 1½-hour delay, they called the game on account of rain. That would have been such a disappointment. And the rescheduled game is tonight at 8:30, which is really kind of a late start for a kid, plus Barbara and Jerry had already planned to have company over. So, they'll take him in 3 weeks instead, and we'll hope for sunshine.