April 27, 2009 by info.

I was driving around with Cole the other day, enjoying being together after being separated for 13 days. He said, “By the way, I’m going goth.” I had to ask him a couple times to make sure I heard him right. He’s only 6, remember. Yes, apparently he’s decided to start wearing black clothes and ghostly makeup. I asked him where he got this idea from: school? His sister? TV? Finally, he admitted: He got it from me.

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September 11, 2008 by info.

(Originally published on MOLI 7/10/8)

Many moons ago, I was in a band. My friend Michelle played bass, my boyfriend Jeff played guitars and sang, my roommate Paige drummed, and I played guitar and sang. We only had one gig, a going-away party for Michelle and me, who were embarking on a two-month road trip around the States; shortly after our return, we moved from Providence to Minneapolis and New York respectively. The, er, smoke has clouded my memory of the few songs we played – I think there was a cover of “Why Don’t You Smile Now,” a song by a pre-Velvets Lee Reed band – but I do remember our name: the Fiendish Thingees.

Pop trivia question: Where’d that name come from?

Bingo Ringo: A “fiendish thingy” is what George Harrison called an explosive device that was curled at the Beatles in the classic Richard Lester movie Help!

Paige and I were obsessed with this deadpan, madcap adventure – probably had something to do with that aforementioned smoke. Recently, I got to revisit my love for the flick that, along with the earlier Lester-Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night, is widely considered the antecedent of music video (“Show me the blood test!” says Lester in the documentary disc that accompanies the DVD). As I’ve mentioned before, I rented it for my five-year-old son, and now, he’s a Beatlemaniac.

It is one of the deepest pleasures of my adult life to hear my son singing in his wee little earnest voice, “Help! I need somebody/ Help, not just anybody.”

The Beatles were one of the first groups I got obsessed with as a kid myself (there was also the Jackson Five). They were already broken up even back then, but it didn’t matter: There was something timeless about those million-dollar melodies and their cheeky, appealing personalities. In the liner notes for the Help! DVD, Martin Scorcese quotes the critic Geoffrey O’Brien saying that “the Beatles’ music possessed a beauty so singular it might almost be called underrated.” As the filmmaker notes, it’s absurd to call the most-acclaimed group in history underrated, and yet, so it is. I’ve heard these songs a million times – and admittedly, for years, even decades, I hadn’t bothered to play a Beatles disc. But rehearing them now with Cole, the sheer number of perfect compositions is overwhelming. Even a five-year-old can tell.

I know it’s not very blogoteric new-discovery coolhuntery to write, in 2008, about the Beatles. But I believe that, as in literature, it’s always important to go back to the classics, and pop music simply does not get any better than “Ticket to Ride” (that syncopation!), “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” (most beautiful sad song ever?), “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl” (those harmonies), [your favorite Beatles song here].

It was Ringo’s birthday earlier this week, and he had a wish: for everyone to make the peace sign and say, “Peace and love.” Very ‘60s, but also, very today.

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September 11, 2008 by info.

(Originally published on MOLI 7/1/8)

Here’s my antidote for junk kid culture: good kid culture. Your daughter zoning out on preteen Disney musicals? Rent Help! and A Hard Day’s Night. Hyper-driven, commercial-laden Nick programming driving you nuts? Throw Modern Times in the DVD player. Cries for Happy Meals driving you crazy? Go out for sushi. My son hasn’t kicked his Hannah Montana crush or Power Rangers habit, but he knows the words to a dozen Beatles songs and loves Charlie Chaplin. And his favorite breakfast is a tin of surimi from the local Latin takeout restaurant: inch-long eels smothered in olive oil and peppers and garlic.

I’m not bragging about my five-year-old’s sophisticated taste. Okay, I am bragging — but I’m making a point too. A huge part of a parent’s job is to curate and expose him to culture. For me, it’s so much fun singing “Ticket to Ride” with Cole, I can’t even call it a job.

Of course, as long as Pixar’s around, you can trust your offspring with at least some of today’s pop culture. With Wall-E, the kings of animation have hit the ball way out of the park.

Anthropomorphic robots are a staple of cartoons and sci-fi; Robots and The Iron Giant are also excellent kiddie flicks. But rarely has a nuts-and-bolts character had the vaudevillian soul of Wall-E. He looks more than a little like E.T., and he serves a similar function: as an emissary from another planet (which in this case used to be our planet) who reminds us humans of the humanity we’ve lost in ourselves (ditto Iron Giant).

With his sad eyes, forlorn shabby appearance, and slapstick pratfalls, Wall-E also draws a lot on Chaplin. Like the Little Tramp, he will do just about anything for love. In Eve, he finds a va-va-voom modern girlfriend.

But Wall-E is no mere sentimental cartoon: It’s a pointed apocalpytic parable. Wall-E and his pet cockroach seem to be the sole inhabitants of an environmentally blighted Earth. Fat, lazy humans with their greed and consumerism have buried the planet in trash and then fled. It’s An Inconvenient Truth come to cartoon life.

Despite my opening graf, I’m not really a total snob. I like a lot of kid’s movies — better than most adult ones. We have a running joke in our house that we haven’t seen a new film that doesn’t feature a talking animal in years. And I don’t really mind.

Wall-E is quite simply one of the best. It’s definitely up there with Monsters, Inc., Toy Story, Shrek, Finding Nemo, and Bambi. The landscapes and artistic direction in the film are stunning, their towering bleakness lightened with comic touches, like the robot’s collection of found objects (a Rubik’s cube, lighters, a tape of Hello, Dolly! that provides the film’s unlikely soundtrack and romantic analogy). New York Times critic A.O. Scott called the first 40 minutes a “cinematic poem,” and that’s not wrong. Wall-E is the antidote. And the fact that millions are taking it in makes me feel more hopeful than ever about November 4.

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September 11, 2008 by info.

(Originally published on MOLI, 3/20/8)

The other day, for his fifth birthday, I took my son Cole to the Miami Metrozoo. We make this trip at least once a year together. The first time we were there, he was barely walking, but he toddled right up to the big black pot-bellied pig at the petting zoo and looked straight in its hairy face, in love. Another time, he was wooed by a cockatoo on a trainer’s arm. This year, he had a mystic experience with a one-eyed turkey.

Cole knelt to pet the tom’s feathers ever so gently. The turkey would puff up, shake its tail, make a little purr-like noise (yes, I suppose it was a gobble), push close to my son, and look at him intently with his one good eye. With wrinkly red skin covering their face and dripping from their beaks like molten plastic, turkeys are at least as weird-looking as pot-bellied pigs. But Cole, my wild manic birthday boy, seemed to have connected to this one’s soul. He was ever so docile and at one with this odd creature, as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world.

Zoos are places of beauty and brutality. We visit them to see the animals we love up close — to pay homage even. Yet, watching a polar bear pace or a lion stare apathetically at a noisy crowd, it’s impossible not to also realize we are bearing witness to cruelty, to vestigial colonialism — to nature trapped, shipped far from its homeland, and held captive. That’s part of why the public was so enthralled by the story of that tiger mauling a man in San Francisco in December: Even before we knew the drunk had taunted the beast, we guessed exactly where the killer was coming from.

In a PETA world, zoos are coming to grips with their own antiquated morality. A growing number have vowed not to raise any more elephants. (These very sensitive creatures need miles to roam; their psychic imbalance is a barometer of Earth’s peril.) In most zoos, old iron cages have long been replaced by lush landscapes; sometimes, it can be hard for visitors to find the damn animals!

With the advent of the Discovery Channel, or National Geographic’s 24-hour African watering hole camera, we don’t need zoos to show us far reaches of the world, like we once did. Still, as someone who wants to raise her child to be something more than a screen baby, I take him every year. After all, there are some things you can only learn from life unmediated and unedited. To really get a sense of how black and large a giraffe’s tongue is, you have to feed it green leaves. Education, rescue, and conservation are the core mission and the future of zoos. The disabled turkey was probably lucky to be sheltered here rather than on a farm. The Miami Seaquarium has a tank full of manatees too maimed by boat propellers to survive on their own.

“Look how long those birds’ legs are!” Cole marveled at the flock of pink flamingos that greet visitors to the Miami zoo. “And look how short that one’s are!” he said, pointing to a duck.

“Yes; isn’t it amazing how animals come in so many different shapes and sizes?” I said pedantically; I know a teachable moment when I see one.

“Oh yeah! And look how much beak that bird has!” Cole exclaimed, gesturing at one of the wild ibises that choose to make the zoo, rather than the nearby Everglades, their home.

I wonder how my son will feel next Thanksgiving. Will he remember his friend at the zoo, and feel differently about our turkey meal? That, too, could be a zoo’s mission in the 21st century. Even PETA would approve.

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March 20, 2007 by info.

Last night I read Cole for the first time a book he got for his fourth birthday (which was March 10), Not a Box. When we were done, I asked him if he liked it.

“Yes,” he said. “It was funny and engaging.”

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January 30, 2007 by info.

Today when I came home from work, Cole was playing his 24/7 Power Ranger jibber jabber game. After freezing me with his laser beam, he told me he would give me energy on these conditions: “Please don’t worry and don’t give up.”

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January 25, 2007 by info.

We were walking down Ocean Drive the other day, Cole in his stroller, grandparents nearby. We’d stopped to look at a table of wares being peddled as part of the Art Deco Festival — vintage this and crafty that — and someone’s dog snapped at him. “Sorry, he never does that!” the owner apologized. Except, of course, just did. Denial.

Cole had been cranky all day: woke up on wrong side of bed, tired of sharing me with my parents, or just his talent at being an asshole. Bitchy cur didn’t help.

Then we ran into a local publicist with whom I’m friendly. It was her first time meeting Cole, whom of course she’d heard all about before. “Hi there!” she said, in sunny PR voice and her very stylish hat.

“Go away!” Cole retorted in surly toddler faux-hawk. (The ‘do makes the man.)

“Cole!” I said. “Sorry, he’s a little cranky today.”

“That’s okay. I understand. I’ll go away, Mr. Cole.”

Cole looks up at her. “Why are you still here?”

I don’t know where he learns these things. But all my colleagues at the Herald want him to teach them to ward off flacks.

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