In search of the fifth dimension

Tags

3D, depth, movies, pixar, storylines

Perfect Husband took me to a movie yesterday. Due to the appalling array of complete garbage that has been spewing into theatres these days, we haven’t seen a movie in a long time. However, we noticed that “How To Train Your Dragon” was getting a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and so we figured we’d go see it.

It’s a really cute movie. It has some great lines, a very cute dragon, and the storyline is basically “young misfit discovers that positive reinforcement is more effective than punishment”. Could it BE any further up my alley?

And yet…

Even though we enjoyed it very much, we both came out of it feeling… unsatisfied. Like getting a great dessert but missing the actual main course.

“Why is it,” Perfect Husband said to me when the last of the credits had rolled (yeah, we’re that couple you see that sits to the end of every movie, pointing out the bizarre names that go by on the screen), “that whenever we see a movie in 3D, the characters are JUST NOT?”

We realized that we have been spoiled by Pixar. When we go to see an animated movie, we expect to get a GOOD movie. Not just a fun or an entertaining movie, but a movie that really uses the medium that it has been created in. A movie which moves us. A movie about real people, with real issues, that really means something. A movie you could write an essay about.

Pixar doesn’t rely on goofy dialogue or physical gags to create a story. In fact, when Pixar introduces us to a character, they often don’t bother using words at all.

Wall-E goes a good seventeen minutes before he even says a word. By the time that seventeen minutes is up, we understand pretty much everything we need to know about him. The rest of the dialogue in the movie consists largely of single-word sentences, usually questions that aren’t answered. But the story probably the richest and deepest of all the Pixar movies to date.

Up‘s signature opening act condenses the entirety of a couple’s life together into a just few minutes, without a single word being spoken, and at the end of it… everyone in the room (including my husband) is sniffling and not looking at each other while pretending to pick dust out of their eyes, because no one wants to admit that an animated kids movie has just made them cry.

(If you haven’t seen Up, don’t worry, this is one of the opening segments, so it doesn’t exactly contain spoilers. That’s right. This is the opening of the movie).

Pixar doesn’t tell you. Pixar SHOWS you, and makes you care*.

By comparison, even a good Dreamworks film like “How To Train Your Dragon” sounds like

“HI I’M SO-AND-SO AND I’M A MISFIT. TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.

THIS IS MY DAD AND HE IS VERY UNLOVING FOR NO REASON THAT IS EVER EXPLAINED.”

The movie industry, Pixar excluded**, seems to think that if they make enough fart jokes and make the movie in three dimensions, then they don’t have to worry about things like character development, or deeper meanings. In fact, some of them advertise their movies as 4-D, instead of 3-D, which of course they can get away with since the fourth dimension is TIME, which all movies (except, arguably, The Andromeda Strain) naturally incorporate.

But the characters are as trite and flat as paper dolls. The most notable example being that atrocious cinematic abortion, “Fly Me To The Moon” which made us want to die inside, while self-flagellating with oversized maces.

I’d rather have depth of character, than depth of perception, if it’s all the same to you.

*Except, inexplicably, Cars, which is just Doc Hollywood but with anthropomorphic inanimate objects.  I guess if Dreamworks made a fluke good movie with Shrek the first, then Pixar gets one bad fluke with Cars.

**Again, except for Cars.

Another beef

I find myself continually displeased by the alteration in odour that pregnancy has wrought upon my nether regions.

Father-Son Chats

Excerpts from things I have heard murmured into my belly recently:

PH: Babby, you need to come out so I can hold you AND THEN I WILL EAT YOU ALL UP YUM YUM

***

PH: Hi, Babby, I’m your Daddy, but you can call me Snake.

Babby: *Kick*

Me: Did you just tell our child to call you SNAKE?

PH: Do you MIND? I’m TRYING to have a private conversation with my son.

***

PH: Hello, Babby, you are a babby. Want to hear a story? Once there was a babby, and he was loved very much, and then his uncle touched him in BAD PLACES.

***

And no, that last one was not biographical in any way, or a promise of anything to come, because our family isn’t into being evil.

Perfect Husband has just been negatively affected by the existence of this children’s book.

…It’s a good thing my son doesn’t actually speak English yet, but I despair about the world we are bringing him into.

One thing is for sure. HE WILL NOT BE READING THAT BOOK.

Motherhood is clearly just AWESOME

Tags

morning sickness, motherhood, pregnancy, worry

“I gotta tell you, Carol, you’re not selling me on this whole pregnancy thing,” my friend has told me several times recently.

For some reason, my stories about belly button rashes, nausea, inexplicable food preferences, painful feet and so on, don’t seem to be making her eager to repeat my experiences.

That feeling was probably reinforced this morning when I recounted in graphic detail my humiliating moment at the Skytrain station today, when I spewed a large puddle of vomitus (it sounds less gross when I add an “us” to the “vomit”, don’tcha think?) on the pavement, which everyone had to step around while studiously pretending it wasn’t there (wouldn’t want to embarrass the pregnant girl who splatters our walkways with vomit, would we?).

But for all that, I do actually like being pregnant. I like getting to know my son as he wriggles a little bit less subtly with each day that goes by (Corinne, I’m beginning to feel the snake-sensation you referred to). Some days I find it hard to believe there’s actually a person in there, and other days I feel a gush of affection for him that is hard to explain when my only proof of his existence is a wriggling bag of snakes in my abdomen.

I worry that I’m not doing well enough, though. Not eating well enough (like at lunch, when all I dared eat after the Skytrain Incident was New York Fries poutine, and only half of a small one at that), not playing him enough music, not singing to him enough, not looking at peaceful scenery enough. I don’t want to miss my own pregnancy, and sometimes I worry that my nightmare is coming true.

I really hope that my boss doesn’t extend my contract. As much as it will suck to be out of work three months before I am due, it would be nice to concentrate on resting, feeling peaceful (so the cortisol from my anxiety doesn’t turn him into a stress mess), and nesting (baseboards in the house would be nice, for example). But if he offers me more time, I’ll have to take it. Money is money.

On the other hand, I am strongly hopeful that I will never have the following conversation with my son, overheard on the bus home today:

Boy: “PLEASE can I have lego?”

Mother: “No, that’s why I bought you Lego VIDEO GAMES, so that I wouldn’t have to help you build stuff.”

(because apparently interacting with your son on a project that would teach him creativity and mechanical skills is an undesirable thing. See how much I’m learning?)

Boy: “You don’t have to help me.”

Mother: “Sit down.”

Boy: “YOU ARE BUYING ME LEGO.”

Do you like it?

Tags

family, funeral, kicking baby, pregnancy

He kicks where he feels the pressure.

It could be my hand leaning on my belly for support as it holds a book, or the lap part of my seat belt. It could be a hand pressing in, wiggling for his attention.

He responds, coming up from underneath like a shark.

BOOM.

If he gives a little twitch, and I poke back, there will be a thoughtful pause, and then an energetic retaliation in the same spot.

BOOM.

I don’t know whether the pressure annoys him, or whether he enjoys knowing where we are. He’s still small enough that he can move up under my ribs, or go down to cuddle on my bladder, so surely a leaning arm or a pressing belt could be avoided. Maybe he’s contrary. Or maybe he just likes saying “hey you! Pay attention!”

Things I may find out about him one day.

But in the meantime, we lie in bed every night, and he twitches, and I poke back, and he kicks harder, and I poke twice. If I move my hand drastically, he can’t spot the new location of my pokes right away. But if I move it just a little bit at a time, he’ll kick closer and closer until he is coming up right under my hand again.

I’m either annoying the hell out of my son, or playing with him. I’m not sure which he thinks it is.

***

In other news, I spoke to my mother last night. She says they buried my Nana in a Mary-Kay-Pink casket with brass handles. They kept the top open for the first part of the funeral, which makes me kind of glad I wasn’t there, and apparently the funeral home made videos, which my Aunt Helen is going to make copies of for everyone.

Mum said there was an awkward moment when my great aunt asked my mother how she liked the casket that they had picked out. My mother has a lot of awkward moments with my father’s side of the family.

“I think she would have liked it,” was what she settled on, and it’s probably true.

History in the making

Tags

commercials, Old Spice, the man your man could smell like

Wow. For the first time ever, Old Spice has made a commercial that I actually enjoy. It made me laugh out loud.

In Memoriam

1915-2010

Tags

death, grandmothers, life, old age, time

It was the nineteen thirties, in rural Nova Scotia. A young woman, just 18, was starting married life with her new husband, and her newborn baby daughter. They had some property, and a house which her husband was still in the process of building. Every weekend he’d add a little more to it. In the meantime, though, the wall studs stood bare as ribs, and the sound of hammering often echoed through the tiny home.

The young bride lived close to her parents. Her mother, still young herself, also had a baby daughter. The bride’s daughter, and her sister, were very close in age and growing up together – more like cousins than niece and aunt. But there was a difference between them. The new mother’s daughter was a first born baby, to parents just starting out. Her clothes were sparse – what could be knitted in the months of pregnancy. Their resources were slim. But the baby sister – ah, well, she was the youngest of many, to parents with piles of hand-me-downs, to parents well settled.

The baby sister had clothes and luxuries that simply were not available to an 18 year old girl and her new husband. The girl would look at her own baby in her skimpy clothing, and feel inadequate next to her mother’s experience and resources.

But what really got to her were the black leather booties.

Her baby sister had tiny leather booties, very fashionable at the time, while her own daughter’s feet went bare.

Those booties ate at the poor young mother, as she looked at her barren house, the exposed wall boards, and her little daughter. It ate at her that she couldn’t even afford leather booties, the way that her own mother could for her newest child.

And so, one day, her husband brought home a pair of booties. They were tiny, and soft, and fashionable, and expensive.

They were every bit as good as the baby sister’s down the road.

Fast forward seventy five years.

The 18 year old bride is now a tiny, 93 year old woman. She is a grandmother, and a great grandmother. One of her many granddaughters lives in the old house once built by her husband, who passed away more than 15 years ago. The house’s walls have long since been insulated and drywalled. In fact, they need some repairs. And so, they have been renovating.

In the walls, on a supporting board once used as a shelf, they found a pair of black leather baby booties.

They bring it to the tiny matriarch, and she holds them, and she smiles as she remembers.

…Fast forward another year. She is told that her oldest son is dying of cancer. She does not go to see him in hospital, can’t bear the thought of watching him struggle for his last breaths, but writes him a note, bidding goodbye to her child. Then she sits back and waits for death to claim her and take her back to him.

Her daughter, a grandmother herself now, comes by every day to care for her, but the visits are not always remembered. Mostly she sits alone in her room in the care facility, and looks out the window with big, puzzled eyes.

She reads and rereads letters from her baby sister, now an old woman too, and each time she reads the same letter, it is new to her.

She is told that she has now become a great, great grandmother, and she smiles vaguely at the picture of the tiny baby in a strange woman’s arms.

I am 27, and visiting my grandmother at Christmas time. My husband and I find her room and look in. She is sitting in her rocking chair, and clutching a blue teddy bear to her chest as she rocks back and forth, looking at nothing.

She recognizes me, and is delighted, but she never uses my name. She clutches the hand of the grandson-in-law whom she has no memory of meeting before, although she recognizes him from photographs on her wall.

She holds me tight in a gnarled old hand, with skin as fragile as tissue paper and soft as a baby’s. She shows us a picture of the great great granddaughter. She tells us that babies are such a blessing, that when I was born my hairline looked the same as my father’s. She asks me if we know what we will name our baby.

I won’t discover that I am pregnant for another week.

She rocks, and she holds us tight, and her eyes fill with tears when she realizes that we must leave soon. She shows us pictures, and she talks about when my uncle was small. She tells us that the nursing staff put snakes in her room at night. She has been terrified of snakes all her life.

“I don’t think they were real snakes, Nana,” we tell her gently.

She rocks, and she holds me close, and tells me how much she loves me, and she looks at us with big, sad eyes.

“I never meant to live this long…” she says miserably, “I keep hoping I won’t wake up…”

and our hearts break for her.

…I got a phone call today.

It would be wrong for me to be sad. I should be happy for her, relieved for her, and in a way I am.

But…

My Nana passed away today.

quick update

Yes, I am alive.

Yes, I am back from New York.

Yes, it was fun.

No, I am not happy to be back at work.

Yes, I am experiencing some schadenfreude when learning of the fiasco that was work when I was not there.

Yes, I will post pictures and make a proper post.

Eventually.

NYC in a nutshell

Tags

feet, latham hotel, New York, pregnancy, subway

Okay, my impressions and experiences of New York City thus far, in no particular order:

-Manhattan is not shiny. The city largely does not appear to have changed since the 1930s, with the exception of the vehicles and the advertising. The subway? Add electronic turnstiles to your mental image of an underground train from the days of the depression – that’s the New York subway It’s actually quaint and charming in a grimy sort of way, but coming from Vancouver where almost everything was built after 1930, it comes as a bit of a surprise.

-It’s not garbage day. It’s EVERY day that the sidewalks are lined with unending piles of garbage bags. This is apparently normal. Welcome to theBig Apple. The core is in one of those bags.

-Our downtown, three star hotel is tired, old, covered in construction dust, and has an elevator that takes ten minutes to arrive after you’ve called it, and sinks down the the basement helplessly if more than a few people are in it, requiring some to get out at the basement level so the rest can get back up to the first floor. We share our bathroom with the rest of the floor, and even with shower shoes, you don’t come out of the shower feeling clean. We were expecting this. We simply can’t afford oppulence in Manhattan. We just wanted to BE here, and have air conditioning. What came as a bonus, however, was the big empty room across from ours, which is dark and filled with sledgehammers and looking like a newly reopened crypt. What was even better was when we went to bed at 11, with it looming like a black hole across from our door, and then when we woke at 4 am for a bathroom run, somene had covered the entrance way with cellophane. Seriously – the city that never sleeps.

-We went to a taping of the Colbert Report, which features Michael J Fox, albeit on a screen from a camera backstage, and that was amazing.

-We saw Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island today and the weather was fabulous.

-We went to Greenwich Village to see the building which is the exterior shot from Friends, and that was delightful to me.

-The Village is charming and I loved it, and we found  a bookstore called Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books, which we immediately photographed and entered, leaving with several books and lighter wallets. We may go back, because we saw more things we wanted but couldn’t justify to ourselves.

-Pregnancy makes my feet want to die. It’s like someone smashed my metatarsals into smithereens with a sledgehammer and said “SO YOU WANT TO SEE THE FRIENDS BUILDING, DOOOO YOOOOU?” Yes, I’ve tried new insoles. Yes, we stop to rest my feet whenever I can say “LOOK! A BENCH!”. Yes, it’s all worth it. But my feet still really fucking hurt.

-Perfect Husband is afraid that pregnancy is going to make ME die. This may or may not be based on the fact that I nearly fainted on the subway on our way to our hotel Monday afternoon. So if I’m not totttering around town with a grin on my face, he worries that I’m either not enjoying myself, or about to pass out, or both. However, I am, and I’m not. Feet or no feet, creepy hotel or no.

Tomorro: Avenue Q,and I see the King Tut is in town. King Tut terrifies me. He is the stuff of my nightmares. I’m pretrt sure my necrophobia developed when my progressive private Montessori school decided to teach the eight year olds about Egyptian mummies.

So I think I have to go see King Tut.