snowday

Yesterday there was a bona fide actual real, if light, snowfall in D.C. and now there is the best kind of winter day.  The snow piled up on cars and trees, the sky is brilliant blue and the streets and sidewalks are mostly clear to better accommodate the desire to put the babybug in the carriage and take a short jaunt to whole foods for baby bok choy, bread, yogurt, and cheerios.  Did you know they sell Cheerios at Whole Foods?  A chocolate bar will undoubtedly jump into my reusable eco-friendly shopping bag, but that’s okay because it will be dark chocolate and dark chocolate has flavanoids that are good for you. For dinner tonight we’re having asian stle noodle soup with pork.  

Getting a little chilly

Here in D.C. it’s getting a little chilly.  And darn it if I didn’t just look out the window and see some snow flakes.  I’ve looked away quickly in disbelief.  Okay, I’m going to look again — ARGH it’s snow for sure.  Although, snow in D.C. means something quite different from snow in the midwest, it doesn’t really inconvenience one at all, it’s just a slightly thicker and colder rain.  Today I’ve got some writing to do, and then I’m taking the baby bug to my friends house so we can watch her babybug while she gets some alone time.  Later today I hope to finish up my thoughts on the dynamic of the kids fight real monsters/adults fight metaphorical monsters.  ooppss — whilst I had my head turn, the babybug pulled all of my swiffer sweeper cloths out of  a box and onto the floor.  Next time I promise to have a camera ready. 

More thoughts on the Dark Age

Chris’s comment made me think about the episode the Dark Age some more, and also reread my post which was totally crappy, as well as full of typos (which I fixed — not all of them, just some of them).   This post was one of those instances — much like when I work on my dissertation — where I’m brilliant in my mind but then in actuality, when I go to type up my insights find I only have about a sentence and it’s not all that smart — rather pedestrian actually. Anyway, Chris mentioned that he didn’t like the relationship dynamic between Buffy and Giles that this episode evinces that the whole “do as I say not as I do” thing rubbed him the wrong way.  At the end of the episode Buffy summarizes the whole interpersonal discoveries by saying something like “well, I found out that in addition to being a grown up, you’re also a person and that’s kind of okay).    One of the things i wanted to explore in this blog series was why the later episodes — to my mind — failed so miserably, that is, what did they lack that the early seasons had?  and I think that this relationship between kids and adults and the horror world being something that belongs only to kids and a few priveleged adults is part of that.  Stephen King writes about this explicitly in the novel IT.  If you don’t know already IT is a monster that takes on the guise of the thing that the person confronting it fears most (kind of like a boggart, only it’s actually powerful and will eat you) — or else a clown, which is fine because clowns ARE the actual scariest things in real life.  King has one of its characters comment that IT preys on kids because their fears are finite, concrete, and easy to take form — werewolves, vampires, mummy’s, giant statues coming to life (did you know there actually IS a giant Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor, Maine?  I didn’t know that until about a month ago) whereas adults fear things like “taxes” “failure” or “stage 3 cancer”.  Hard to personify.   So, to return to the point about Buffy.  The creators of the Buffyverse pretty quickly found out that the best way to threaten Buffy emotionally was with things she couldn’t fight — adult fears — so in the first seasons, that happens the most when her friends and family and especially Angel are put in danger.  After Buffy confronts and faces her own death, that fear is just not going to scare her or us again.   But aside from this, in the 2nd and 3rd season, there are two or three episodes that threaten the “kids fight real monster while the adults keep the world running” theme of the show — The Dark Ages, where Giles is not the stable father figure to anchor Buffy’s world as she fights.  Gingerbread, (an episode I loathe) where the adults want to fight the monster world themselves, and Band Candy, where the adults revert to teenage irresponsibility so a monster can take a terrible tribute.  I’m sure there are others, please mention them in the comments. I think that the theme I mentioned earlier is an important theme of all horror movies that involve teenagers, and especially highschool — the idea is that the kids fight real monsters (which personify the highschool experience) and that they have to keep those monsters a secret from adults because adults (except a few who can be trusted to enter the secret world without blowing the cover) have to fight in the real world with its metaphorical monsters like taxes, death of loved ones, and fear of failure running and stable.  It is important that in the Buffyverse at least in the highschool years, the real monsters — vampires, zombies, and creatures from the black lagoon — were all personifications or some other English lit term for real fears and monsters that teenagers confront on a day to day basis — like peer pressure, jealousy, what have you.    I have one more thought about 60s and 70s live action Disney movies and this dynamic, but this post is already too long, so I’ll save it for next time. 

Eyeballs to Entrails, my sweet.

Season 2 — Episode 6: Halloween.

Can I just gush for a second? This episosde is SO GOOD, I can hardly function after watching it. One of the all time best hours on TV ever.

The plot: Buffy and freinds buy costumes from a man who casts a spell so that they turn into their costumes. Spike takes advantage of the situation to try to kill the now weak slayer, who has dressed up as an 18th century debutante. The only thing wrong with this episode is SMG’s horrible accent as a non-specific helpless girl from the past.

Everybody has a character arc that’s forwarded — Xander and his problems being a nerdy boy with a slayer for a friend, Willow’s self-confidence (although why does self-confidence have to equal dressing like a ho?), the relationship between Angel and Buffy, Spike’s continuing obssession with killing the slayer, and we even get to see a good side of Cordelia as she flirts good-naturedly with Angel in the Bronze where both she and Angel have been stood up — and of course we get the first glimpse that Giles is not simply the mild-mannered librarian, that he has a dark side, too — one that Ethan brings out with his presence just as surely as his costumes brought out internal weaknesses and strengths in Buffy and friends.

The more I watch this, the more I am impressed out just how tight the script is. All of the major plot turning points flow very naturally out of conversation that is completely in character. For instance, Willow and Giles figure out that the source of the evil costumes come from one particular store because of the confluence of three seemingly random, off the cuff remarks that turn out to have significance later: Cordelia complaining that she won’t get her deposit from Party Time costume shop back because it’s ripped; Giles intimating that Willow is wearing a risque outfit, and Willow responding to that intimation by telling him that Cordelia was dressed much more skankily than she — and then realizing that Cordelia hadn’t turned into her costume like Xander, Willow, and Buffy had.

By the end of this episode, Buffy and Angel’s relationship is solidified as Buffy finally gets the confidence that Angel loves her because of who she is, slayer warts and all.

The moment that we realize exactly what has happened is one of the most viscerally thrilling moments in the show — it’s shot so effortlessly — Xander in the street trying to find the cause of the newly errupted pandemonium, he turns and his toy gun drops down off screen and then his whole demeanor changes and he brings his gun up — and it’s a real gun. The abrupt presence of a real and dangerous military weapon in the clutzy and clownish hands of the hitherto helpless Xander, along with the stealy look in his eye and the obvious assurance with which he uses it, is the epitome of topsy-turvy in the Buffyverse. Our clue that something is seriously and terribly weird. The horror of the universe gone awry is brought to a climax when we realize that not only is Xander an amnesiac soldier but that Buffy is helpless. The savior is brought to heel. But we also learn that the Buffy friends can get it together enough by themselves to save the day — or at least to save Buffy.

Just this once I’d like to be the Overlooked One.

Season 2 — Episode 4: Inca Mummy Girl

This is a really sweet episode. It continues to explore the idea of evil actions done by people who are pressed into bad choices due to intolerable circumstances.

The plot here is that an ancient Incan Princess was called to be a sacrifice for her people at the age of 16. She was killed and mummified and then, in the 20th century, discovered and brought on a tour of museums. The ancient shield holding her in place was broken and she escapes and proceeds to suck the life out of a series of men to return and maintain her human appearance.

And she and Xander fall in love.

Ampata — as she calls herself after the innocent and good-natured foreign exchange student she ruthlessly slays (I feel so sorry for him) is a really sweet and beautiful girl who was chosen against her will. She provides a counterpoint to Buffy, who, like Impada, was called to die for the benefit of her people. But, unlike Buffy, who despite a certain ambivalence to her role as Slayer, does actually choose to do it (remember the finale of Season 1) over and over again, even though she doesn’t like it, it doesn’t seem like Ampata actually made peace with her role as Chosen One. And once she gets a taste of a normal life, she will kill anyone that stands in her way — even the person she claims to love — Xander.

The emotional arc continues to explore the Xander/Willow relationship–hammering home the idea that Willow loves Xander and he continues to see her as just a friend. We also see Willow wrestling with the realization that Xander is never going to like her. And we also meet Oz for the first time who shows us that he really gets Willow by falling for her in her Eskimo costume. See, there’s lots of sweetness.

But by far the sweetest scene is the end scene where Xander sums up the differences between Ampata and Buffy. We realize that, even though she bitches about it a lot, Buffy does actually choose day after to day to be the chosen one and to take the sacrifices and petty annoyances that come with it. She doesn’t shirk her duty. We know it now after this episode because we see, in Ampata, what it looks like for someone to make the wrong choices.

That ability to Show rather than Tell the differences between good and bad choices — is one of the real strengths of the early seasons of Buffy and it’s one that we start to lose about halfway through the 3rd season as the show starts to talk too much. But that’s a discussion for another time. Here, the real emotional pay off of this episode is that we finally have Buffy acknowledging to Xander, in a real way, that he was the one who brought her back from the dead.

More baby police

1. I was walking with my baby in the stroller and a woman passing us suddenly YELLED at me “He’s got that thing in his mouth!!! … the strap!!!” She was talking about the shoulder harness, which is very sturdy and okay for him to chew on and if I tried to stop him every time he did it I wouldn’t get anywhere. So I smiled and nodded and said “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…” like an idiot because she kept yelling “THE STRAP THE STRAP THE STRAP” until we were past her.

2. We were on our morning walk–again with the stroller–on a balmy 78 degree (F) morning when a little person (swear to God) sitting at a bus stop spotted the baby and started to go on about how cute he was. The she GASPED suddenly and said “Oh, he looks cold, isn’t he cold?!!” He was wearing a onesie and long pants (no shoes or socks) and it was 78 DEGREES outside.

3. And finally, while shopping with my husb, I was carrying the baby who was just wearing a onesie–it was about 90 F that day–a little 4 year old girl exclaimed in a loud and scandalized whisper to her mother “that baby’s not wearing any pants!”

baby police

Today in the drugstore I was accosted by the baby police. A petite wirey woman with supershort coppery blond hair addressed my baby — whom I was holding and said : “Everything is perfect except one thing mommy forgot.” And then she looked at me — like she’s giving me a quiz.

I shrugged.

His hat…he’s missing his hat, she tells me.

I gestured to my stoller and said, oh, well he sits in there with the shade all the way up and over.

And she says “It’s not enough” and proceeds to lecture me about how important a hat is and tells me, get this, if the sun does get in a baby’s eyes, I can turn the stroller around and walk backwards.”

At this point I wish that I was confrontational and had said “what are you the baby police?” Or else, “We’re inside. I put on his hat when we’re outside.”

But instead, like some grade schooler, I proceeded instead to get the baby hat out of my diaper bag so that she would go away.

Which she did.

Range tops

Look for the first post on Season two Buffy tomorrow. In the meantime check out the comments on the wrap up posts for season one.

So, it’s really hot where I live right now–as most places and very hot weather often drives insects inside. The other morning at around 8, I came downstairs with the baby and sat down at my kitchen island to eat breakfast or work on the computer or whatever and I looked over and I saw a BIG COCKROACH.

This cockroach was not behaving in ways that cockroaches usually behave. It was just sauntering around the kitchen floor, un-disturbed by the light, it didn’t scurry or scuttle or anything. It was just like, “hey man, what’s up? Pretty hot outside, right? I thought I come in here and chill out for a few hours.”

So, I did a little silent freak out, went upstairs, deposited the baby in his crib and came back down with a shoe to squish the totally too-cool-for-you cockroach. It never attempted to run and hide. (Normally, I would have gotten my husband to squish him, but my husband, is, alas, allergic to cockroaches. I can’t wait for the baby to be old enough for the responsibility of cockroach squishing to be his job).

Now, after this, my husband pointed out that the area underneath the range top was a little dirty and could perhaps be a cockroach magnet. So I agreed to clean under it. Let me tell you–it was disgusting. You never know how much stuff jumps out of your pots and pans and through the cracks surrounding the flames in the range top. It was all in there–4 different shapes of dried pasta, shriveled up little bits of sauteed vegetables, drips from cooking oil, little mouse turds from when we had a mouse a couple of months ago (yes, I should have cleaned under there after we got rid of the mouse–but my husband isn’t allergic to mice so it didn’t seem as urgent).

My point here is to tell you, if you have a gas range, lift it up and clean under there right now, today, before any more stuff can build up in there. use clorox disinfecting wipes and a vacuum with the narrow hose attachment.

You’ll thank me later.

Time test

sharp-eyed reader Chris noticed that the timing on my blog was off by 3 hours.

Turnos out my blog thought we were posting from London. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.

Proving that I can’t count or tell time…

Okay, now it should be fixed.