"Sixteen dollars!" I remember the bad casino-like carpet, the stairs with the little lights, and the look of absolute disbelief/disgust on my dad's mustachioed face as he lamented the fleecing he endured for four of us to see Ghostbusters. Sixteen bucks for four people. I don't think that candy bars were a nickel, but that's about how old I feel whenever I think about that moment... and sadly, I think about that moment almost every time we go to the movies and the prices seem crazy. I project into the future when my kids laugh about their parents spazzing about $15 movie tickets and then feel like Dr. Evil when he can't wrap his brain around the money flux of one generation...
There is one consistently good movie theatre deal in this town. At the Lincoln Center Film Center they have a little theatre with a fairly small screen where they show family movies. It's $6/ticket and they show children's foreign movies (often they will have somebody sit in the back reading the subtitles into a microphone for the little ones who can't read -- depending on the reader it's either a) cool/funny b) neutral or c) distracting/irritating). I like thinking that hearing all the foreign languages is giving the kiss of life to my kids' foreign-language-specific neurons that otherwise might wither, die and look like microscopic Easter grass. They also show classics (i.e. it was at this theatre that we saw Elvis in all his politically-incorrect/sexist, yet highly-likeable glory in Blue Hawaii... If there are sexy-sneer neurons we're keeping those alive, too).
Today we went and saw The Blue Tiger. It was made in the Czech-Republic and absolutely beautiful. The sensibilities were all inline -- the poor, nerdy, artsy, nostalgia-channeling, naturalists were the heroes while the money-grubbing, modern, clean-lined folks were the bum-holes. The child actors were great. The occasional overlay of animation was fun. Perhaps one of my favorite elements was that the children consistently brought their parents into whatever was happening. So often it seems like movie-adults are bumbling idiots who can't be trusted with what's going on. While I get that this is the construct that works so that the movie-kids can have their adventure, I worry that it's a missed opportunity to teach not-movie-kids to partner with their folks. Today the movie-adults didn't do anything superhuman -- they just offered ideas and support and were cool. In one scene the overweight, badly-dressed mom with bad teeth was chatting with her daughter and The Boy leaned over and whispered, "She kind of reminds me of you." I took it as a major compliment -- hoping of course that he was referring to the insightful things that she was saying to her girl.
We came home and looked up where the Czech-Republic is on the globe (I mentioned that "when I was a kid" it was called Czechoslovakia...). We also found out that there is a Blue Tiger -- a Maltese Tiger that is a "blue" slate grey color (and might be extinct). We talked about how maybe somebody heard about the book Blue Tiger written in 1924 by an American explorer... and their brain started playing around and came up with the loveliness we saw today.
Brains are weird, but often do cool things.
Ugh. The little creep gave me his little creeps. I've been feeling achy and cranky and freezing cold all day.
Today there was quite a bit of listless wandering about the messy apartment. Too cold to go out when we feel like junk. Blech. The Sister manned the ship while I did some volunteering (before I realized I was going down...), and even once I was home she was still managing things as the only functioning not-small person... but even she's slightly strung-out from the too many moving parts associated with college applications. We're falling apart.
Aside from some art (The Girl), and some report-writing about marine life (The Boy), there was a math lesson on arrays.
Somewhere in the fog there was a viewing of The Apple Dumpling Gang. Don Knotts. (That's a complete sentence.)
Finally The Dad came home and took them over to the church gym for some running around. The good news is that Judd the Red Chicken is about back up to speed. Whatever this is, it's short-lived. (I'm trying to subtly imply that the crappy parts to the scheme are short-lived and life in general goes better for people who know that even when things are blech there are still good days to be had... and there's still Don Knotts... but I'm too murky-headed to make this work.)
Considering it's winter break we started off all sorts of academically-competitive what with piano and math knocked out by 11:00... but The Boy kept slinking back to his bed. After some snarky things said by both parties (I might have accused him of faking it to get out of going to Anthropologie to check out the sale; he might have accused me of not letting him do whatever he wanted when every other kid in the world had the day off; I might have countered by explaining that he's pretty much "had the day off" since September; etc.) I thought to check his temperature... sure enough, a 102-fever. By this evening he felt well enough to hang out on the couch and be half-heartedly silly, so hopefully it's a bug that was drastically weakened by the super-human quantities of chocolate and carbs that the host-body consumed yesterday.
Once we get back up to speed we will build some of the Christmas spoils into the curriculum.
It certainly moves swiftly. With one more deep inhale and exhale Christmas will be over. Things will be tucked away with the understanding that much will happen between now and when we unpack them again.
In the movie Elf Central Park is on Santa's route. Last year we wondered if we would find any signs of Santa if we walked through the park on Christmas Eve. We found bells and sparkly stuff (magic?), and pieces of cloth that looked like it might have ripped off of an elf uniform, and a torn piece of parchment that had people's names on it -- perhaps the naughty/nice list? I kind of expected to find those things... What I wasn't expecting the kids to find was sleigh tracks and reindeer scat. It seems like if we provide the means to find something, the children can take it much further...
Tonight we will go again. We might find some expected things... Having now been inducted in the 100-viewings-of-Elf-club, I'm kind of expecting to find a bottle of maple syrup? I'm most excited to see what the children find that I'm not expecting. It's the convergence of adult expectations/preparations and childhood imaginings that make the magic.
After going to Macy's and asking all the elves their elf names we came up with our own on the subway home. I'm Mistletoe (which is totally stupid... I kissed a kid on the top of the head as I said it... How is it that the mom always ends up the dork of every family activity/project?). The Sister is Cough Drop. She started out as Gum Drop, but then we made fun of her for kind of being a hypochondriac and decided Cough Drop would be funnier. Judd the Red Chicken is Eggnog. The Girl is Arctic Fox. The Dad wasn't there so the children dubbed him not Silverback, but Silver Unicorn (very manly)... A man sitting across from us was laughing until we got off at our stop. I'm sure he was thinking that I should have been Cuckoo Clock...
So from all of us, Silver Unicorn, Mistletoe, Cough Drop, Eggnog, and Arctic Fox, we wish you a very Merry Christmas. And if you don't celebrate, we wish you a very Merry Tuesday.
