- I must be old because my brother has just turned 45. (hi bro) Eeeeek!
- On the plus side, his favorite birthday food is angelfood cake ... which my mom hates because it is not chocolate. So for the past several years we have had a tradition of making a dark chocolate fondue and everybody dips the cake and strawberries and banana chunks and other fruit in the fondue. Yum! Sadly, while raspberries go so well with dark chocolate, they do not hold up well to being skewered and dipped in hot liquid. It was just a mess rather than making it to anybody's mouths.
- One neice was talking about something --- music, I think --- and kept talking about "the 90s" in the same tone of voice that I talk about "the 60s." When I commented on how weird it was for me to hear talk about the 90s in this tone of them being totally distant and past and closed down and irrelevant, she goes, "well yeah. That's cause they are --- that was a totally long time ago!" Oh, I am cut to the quick! At least she was born in the 80s and thus can remember the 90s, unlike my other neice and nephews. "Yeah dude, they are starting to talk about "the millenium" in that same way already," another tells me. Sigh.
- Likewise I rewatched 10 Things I Hate About You today while going through a pile of bills and stuff --- it's still a cute movie, one of my fave teen Shakespeare adaptations, although time has proven that Julia Stiles really is incapable of acting and I had been giving her too much benefit of the doubt in that film --- and since we were on the subject of the 90s I mentioned it. "Ohhh, god, that movie is sooooo mid-90s," said my niece with an eye-roll. "it's cute" I protest. "Soooo dated" was the reply. This whole exchange is funny because I was having warm fuzzies during that movie because the "shrew" character reminds me a lot of this neice, who is blond and sarcastic and individualistic and strong and I wish she read The Feminine Mystique and listened to Bikini Kill like that character. Still, she's good people.
- Likewise my neices are both talking seriously about getting married and having babies because now that they have graduated, what the hell else do you do with your life? This makes me feel not only baffled by their logic but reeeeeeeeeally old at the thought of them with babies.
- After dinner and the presents we're all still sitting around the table talking and my various nieces and nephews are telling stories about various cute and crazy squirrels they have seen at their schools and when visiting college campuses. One neice starts talking about a cute video someone shot at Santa Cruz of a big squirrel and a little squirrel and I break in: "Noo! That was UCLA because I have seen that one! Someone posted it on my facebook!" It's here. I explained the "plot" and how cute it was and they all laughed and my brother started talking about some photoshopped squirrel pictures his friend sent him, where the squirrels have been spliced into various Star Wars scenes. My dad shakes his head and drops his forehead into his palm. "My god." he says. "And this is why we're going to lose in productivity to the Japanese." "Yeah," I say, "but at least we'll be happy."
Sunday, July 5, 2009
I'm Oooooooold!
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7 comments:
In solidarity, I just wanted to note that I watched 10 Things last night. In spite of the lame acting, I am riveted by it. Also, it's nice to see a teen movie in which the goddess everybody's dying to date looks totally normal. Pretty, etc., but not a bombshell.
An alternate response to your father would be to point out that worrying about the Japanese is sooo 80s--we're all afraid of the Chinese now!
I also love Ten Things, and not only because it is one way to introduce very reluctant students to Taming of the Shrew but also because it's adorable and sorta funny (Larry Miller as the father is particularly hysterical, and Heath rocks, of course).
Kinda upset that they're now making a series based on it. It can never measure up, can it?
Ah!
I include the first installment of Prime Suspect with the amazing Helen Mirren in a seminar I teach on 'Women and Detective Fiction.' I think of it as completely contemporary. The last time I taught it the students were quite entertained by how "dated" the hair and clothing styles were. The scary thing was, I couldn't see it as they saw it at all. Looked normal to me! On the other hand, for reasons I won't try to explain, I have recently watched some episodes of the 1970s TV version of Nancy Drew starring Pamela Sue Martin, which I watched as a young thing. Now that's dated...
hylonome: 80s! He's straight-up stuck in 1945! Trust me: growing up we never owned anything made by the Japanese and my parents would always give weird glaring "looks" at Asian people on the street while shuttling me away from them. They never really adapted to moving to California.
Ink: yeah, I saw ads for the show; must have been why they reran the movie. But I am sad, because good movies are always about a plot arc and a character developing along the way, and a sitcom by definition has flat static characters who learn the same lesson/get out of the same scrapes every week. A waste of a good movie. Same thing with Clueless.
I'm very late reading this, but just had to share a recent discovery - freeze the raspberries, THEN dunk them into the melted chocolate - ummmm so good, and there's a good chance of them making it to the mouth intact!
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