sundries

[rm]

Tonight Patty and I are dining with friends of hers, then tomorrow it's my parents, and then Wednesday it's just us and Thursday night she gets on a plane. Deep breaths. What's great about Cardiff is this time I won't have to go those two - three weeks where it's impossible to hear from her. Those are always the worst.

Right now I have two pitches out that I'm waiting to hear on. My goal for the fall, if I can manage it, is to always have three things out awaiting answer. That way, nothing looms too large and neurotically in my head, and I produce more and get stuff done. Also, if someone says no, most of these things can be retooled for other potential markets/outlets/mediums/whatevers.

Meanwhile, 'tis the season in New York. We're just off Fashion Week, now moving into the New York Film Festival and shortly into the New York Musical Theater Festival. It's the most wonderful time of the year -- that is, if you care and have the time and the cash and the clout. Me? Any year I can't get into the opening night of the NYFF always feels slightly tragic to me. I saw Akira Kurasowa's Ran with my parents the year it opened the festival, sitting up in the balcony in a hand-painted sweatshirt dress and a big clunky antique anklet on that had been my grandmother's in the old country. Kurasowa spoke and everyone below us was in black tie, and you could feel in the air that it mattered. It's one of the only times I can think of where I wasn't where I wanted to be, but it was happily close enough.

Speaking of that time of year -- it's time for the Regency Assembly in New Haven CT -- October 16 & 17th. (yes, Dragon*Con Recency people, I still owe you a post, but you should come to this!). Baring extreme social excitement, this will probably be my last public outing before I leave for my 5 weeks in Europe at the end of that month, so if you want to say hi, come to Connecticut.

Girl on a Whaleship! In 1868 a six-year-old girl went with her family on a 3-year whaling voyage and kept a journal, now scanned in and available online.

The Deseret News has been sympathizing with illegal immigrants, angering much of its conservative and devout Mormon readership.

At the polls, it's anger vs. despair and that breaks down along gender lines: men are angry, women are despairing and may stay home from voting. I could make comments. I could make a lot of comments, but they'd reinforce a lot of gender dichotomous stuff I work hard not to believe in or pay attention to when it comes to my opinion other people, so I'm just going to let it sit there, because you're all smart enough to draw your own conclusions.

Paul Krugman, meanwhile, on the rage of the rich. Btw, it's worth noting that study after study show that something like 98% of Americans, when polled, define themselves as a higher economic class than they actually are. There's some interesting lines to be drawn through my first voter rage link to this one, in light of that.

Keeping kids safe from the wrong dangers: statistically, it's irresponsible to put your kid in your car and drive them to the orthodontist; they're a lot safer if they walk there. Alone.

The German foreign minister has entered into a civil partnership. Good on him. Article linked because it notes how civil partnership in Germany conveys most of the same rights as marraige, oh, except tax benefits and the right to jointly adopt children. I'm so sick of all these "I suppose that will do" footnotes. Also can you imagine having such a high-ranking openly gay official in the US? Yeah, thought not.

So, Boardwalk Empire: Scorsese is at his best when he's working with music, and the same is true for this show so far. Much of the rest of it feels flat, and it's perhaps my own biases (and the heavily rhythmic trailers) that left me feeling this was something of a disappointment. On the other hand, Scorsese is also often at his best when working with small New York stories, so there may be hope for this, even as Atlantic City is on the fringe of New York. Certainly, it's no surprise to me that what shines the most in this show so far is the surprisingly sweet and wry face of the young Al Capone, a figure who is so far, merely a winking footnote to the audience. "Think about what this man will become!" the show cries. But I want the show to tell me a damn story. I'll be fannish if I'm fannish, and I'm happy to do the intellectual work, but the show should do its own hopefully compelling narrative work.

I've also seen a bit of discussion about the presentation of race in the series (notably, an early sequence showing a white band in black-face). Yes, it's historically accurate. But, that doesn't make it unreasonable for people to talk about how it makes them uncomfortable or whether or not showing this moment is necessary to the construction of the show. It's not appropriate to dismiss that conversation, even if you ultimately disagree with the conclusions any particular person involved in it reaches.

Last night on Angel: We watched "Number 5" and the one about Wesley's robot dad. Both episodes are problematic, and both episodes are saved by their heart and their performances.

I really, really did not know what to do with "Number 5". Is this Angel does Tarrantino? How much of this is as things happen in a supernatural reality and how much of this is as heightened (un)reality narrative bias? Is this racist? Should Whedon ever be allowed near anything that pretends to be about South American or Latin American or Hispanic cultures? Ever? Because I remember "Inca Mummy Girl" and so do you. On the other hand, it had such a small, gentle, touching ending, and I do like the idea that everyone, even the dude you think it just a punchline has an important, meaningful story and deserves your respect.

The Wesley's robot dad episode has its own set of problems. Namely, robot ninjas raining from the sky. Ninjas are a crappy shortcut in terms of narrative and racial presentation (faceless Asian horde, seriously?). On the other hand, the performances knock this out of the park -- we see the awkward Wesley we remember from Buffy, we see a man who is both too ruthless (Wes, just because you have nothing left to live for and would happily give up your life for the greater good, doesn't mean everyone else is on that page) and too generous (for fuck's sake, TELL FRED) to be happy, and, ultimately, we see a man who doesn't know quite what to think about his own childhood. Was his father merely cruel (not that words don't do a lot of damage) or as was referenced in an episode way back (Patty had to remind me) actually physically abusive? What makes Wesley the worse man? the desire to connect with his father or the desire to kill him? None of this works without Alexis Denisof being able to run rings around a simple script (again, ninjas? must we?).

This is also an episode that speaks, again, to so much of early Torchwood -- Wesley and Angel touching base after a night of professional disasters. Wesley, worrying about how their fearless, remote, miserable leader is doing, more than being worried about his own pain related to robot girlfrienddad. I can see watching this and shouting at the TV "what is this? Why is it here? What is the deal with these two? It makes no sense!" and I see how you get from here to Jack/Ianto "Cyberwoman" - "They Keep Killing Suzie" -- because none of that makes any sense either, it just seems to thanks to sex.

It's worth noting that if I write about pop-culture and race on here, I invariably get a lot of Hetalia ads.

Comments

Learning to drive *smart*

[trinker.livejournal.com]

first of all...oh yeah, I get the whole beltway road rager thing. Boston and DC are absolutely at the top of "cities I have driven in that I *HATED*" list. (Weirdly, Dallas is the politest driving town I've encountered personally.)

When you're ready to start thinking about her driving...*if* it's not too distracting for you, I'd recommend you start talking about your decision process while you're driving. Just an ongoing commentary, so she learns what you're taking in. Some front-seat time before she starts trying to drive would be good, too. You don't get the same sense of the road from the back seat.

I learned to merge onto freeways by practicing on a surface street that had a similar "on ramp" type turn - no stop, just drive and learn to yield. I found it nervewracking, but until I could do that, I was trapped in suburban L.A.

Something I wish my parents had done for me is more training in learning how to adjust my mirrors, and to teach me what I could reasonably expect to see in my mirrors. I knew the mechanics, but not the conceptual tools. (The summer I got my license was full of parental marriage explosion drama, capped by suicide of a parent. It was not a good time, to put it mildly.)

I would park the car in a parking lot, set out some cones (or other appropriate height markers in all the spots where you should be able to see, and have your teen practice adjusting until they're visible. Set a few cones in the blind spots, or have people stand there, to give a real understanding of how that works.

I don't have a "learning to change lanes" exercise, but I note that it's one of my biggest points of nervousness in driving, even now.

(I'd do all my initial "learn how to steer a car" stuff in a deserted weekend morning parking lot, actually.)


Now, as far as learning defensive driving techniques...this may sound crazy, but I'd have her take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's basic motorcycle skills class. Learning to think like a motorcyclist has done more for my car driving skills than anything else. Constantly scanning the road for my escape route made a huge difference.

That's my plan for how my kids will be learning. I haven't tested this out, and I'm sure I'm missing some major things. I'm guessing that you're planning on a professional teaching some basic driving skills, anyway. I've tried to just cover the fine-tuning bits. I hope someone else reading this has more ideas.

Re: Learning to drive *smart*

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

And yeah, there will be private lessons on top of the crap they get through school. I may even see if it would be possible to get her to skip the school based lessons (more the actual driving part than the booked based part) because I was stuck in a car with an absolute idiot that terrified me and my gym teacher was hopelessly clueless.

You've got some really good ideas that make a lot of sense and sound really helpful.

And as we get closer to 16 (she's 11 1/2 now) I'll definitely talk more about the mechanics of driving.

Front seat time will have to wait a bit because I think Maryland's got a rule of who sits up front. Kids under 12 or 100 lbs. need to be in the back. (which is funny because there are lots of adult women who don't weigh enough to sit in the front seat ;-p) It's a seat belt/air bag safety thing.