Happy New Year!

Lady Di's been feeding me a little too well this Holiday Season. Cherry pie with a crisp buttery crust. Yum! Oh, yeah, and my daughter, Caroline, made us some lovely chocolate macaroon cookies (Diane got a couple of 'em, but you gotta know I did most of the damage). Now, what to do about the four or five pounds I've packed on...

Anyway, I hope everyone's New Year is fun and safe.

Some Times You Feel Like a Nut; Sometimes You Don't.

You remember that old commercial for Mounds and Almond Joy candybars? Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't? No? Well, I do. It was like that for the denizens of 590 Otis Road last week. Among the movies we viewed over the Christmas holiday were "The King's Speech" and "Little Fockers". Both films feature Academy Award winning actors, but it's pretty unlikely you'd confuse them with each other.

"The King's Speech" is a much-ballyhoo'd critic's darling. Critically acclaimed, sure; but it's also entertaining and emotionally satisfying. "The King's Speech" follows the personal struggles of the man who would become King George VI. Colin Firth plays the stammering George brilliantly. George is pushed by his wife, played by Helena Bonham Carter, to seek the help of an untitled Australian-born speech therapist, played by Geoffrey Rush. Rush turns in an Oscar-worthy performance as a frustrated actor turned speech coach, Lionel Logue, but it's Helena Bonham Carter's work as George's wife that I enjoyed the most (but then again, she makes any movie she's in better: "Fight Club" was the Brad Pitt/Edward Norton show, but without Carter's foil it'd've been a lot less; Beatrix LeStrange in the Harry Potter movies would've been a good role for anybody, but she owns it now).

And what's a movie about British Royalty without an exploration of class differences? Interesting juxtaposition between George's need to consort with commoner Logue for the good of the Empire; and that of his brother, "David"- briefly King Edward- who abdicated in order to experience connubial bliss as husband to twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson. This is a wonderful movie. It's a history movie that plays like a sports movie: Will George be able to set aside his fears to lead his people at the on-set of World War II? Will he learn to love himself and to be and have a friend? Will be able to get through the most important speech of his life? When George greets his wife at the end of the movie, you can almost hear Rocky shouting "Adrian!" into the crowd at the end of his title fight. As we walked out of the lovely Terrace Theater in Charleston, Lady Di heard a fellow theater-goer opine, "That's the best movie I've seen in five years".

Which brings me to the other movie I saw over the weekend...

"Little Fockers" is the third installment in the Ben Stiller/Robert DeNiro "Focker" franchise. I didn't expect much, and I wasn't disappointed. Projectile vomiting, crotch jokes and broad humor are generally a hit with audiences, if generally not with critics. I'm not sure The Three Stooges ever won an Oscar, but I'd bet you money that more people know Curley's laugh than the name of
Citizen Kane's sled. You don't go to McDonald's looking for Roast Duck with an orange glaze, do you? During our visit to the Boro's lone movie theater, one lady howled with laughter during "Little Fockers". I saw her talking to her husband as we all exited the movie. "Well, I kind of enjoyed that", she noted, with a look of embarrassment. Me, too (just don't tell anybody).

Merry Christmas!

Culture Club.

I'm not in any book clubs; Lady Di is in one, though, and I get to feed on the crumbs under their table. She buys the books from Walterboro's Downtown Books, reads 'em (mostly), and discusses them over coffee or wine. When she's done with the selections, I get my grubby little mitts on 'em. Lately they've been on a curious cultures kick: Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larson; The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, and Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian are all good glances into different ways of life.

I didn't want to read "Three Cups of Tea". Pakistan and Afghanistan are really a long way away, and they're filled with Muslims, for cryin' out loud! But the book is really good. American Greg Mortenson started out as a mountain climber, but his failed mission to scale the second tallest mountain in the world, K2, in Western Himalayan range in Northern Pakistan changed his life. The book, well told by David Oliver Relin, is part biography, part adventure story, part sociology treatise, and part travelogue, seasoned with a pinch of philosophy and great deal of human compassion. It turns out that girls, even Muslim girls, are treasures, and deserve a basic education. It turns out that a lot of villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan don't have even basic buildings for schools and no money to pay teachers. Mortenson makes a compelling case that private, moderate, people (whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or whatever) had better build and support schools, or folks with more extremist views will. It also turns out that Mortenson is a pretty amazing guy.


The plots in Stieg Larson's "Girl" series, feature lots of suspense and action, and conspiracies and subplots galore. Kind of like a Swedish John Grisham, but with less smart-ass dialogue. It makes the "different cultures" list because the sensibility in many of the Swedish relationships in those novels just feel different from American ones: John McEnroe's American hot-tempered tennis star versus the cool resolve of Bjorn Borg.


Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" (with art by Ellen Forney) was an insightful, personal, and very readable novel about Arnold "Junior" Spirit. Arnold is a kid raised in a loving, but highly dysfunctional, home on Wellpinit, an Indian Reservation in Washington state. He struggles in that community, and in Reardan, the nearby white community where he ultimately attends school, but that the struggle is what molds us. As Arnold observes:

"(My friend Gordy) tutored me and challenged me, but he made me realize that hard work- that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task- is joyous.

In Wellpinit, I was a freak because I loved books.

In Reardan, I was a joyous freak."

It's a novel, but it feels true. Was it Chief Seattle who said, "I don't know if it happened or not, but I know it's true"?


When Lady Di suggested I read "The Help", I'd categorized it as "chick-lit", and only reluctantly cracked the cover. Author Kathryn Stockett presents the stories from the viewpoints of several different protagonists in pre-Civil Rights Act Mississippi: Aibileen and Minnie are African-American maids- "The Help"- to aspiring writer, "Miss Skeeter", and mean-spirited Hilly, and Skeeter's other white bridge-club friends. I was just born the year this novel is set. The schools my brother and I attended in Florida were segregated until about sixth grade (fifth grade for my brother), though our pee-wee football teams were not. I remember Rosa, my grandmother's maid, and Kathleen, my mom's maid, as people that cared about me and my brother. It never occurred to me to wonder what their lives were like. In spite of myself, I came to care about the characters in "The Help", and felt a modicum of satisfaction at the emotional payoff at the end of the book.

Leaf Me Alone.

On the first day of Christmas, I'm pretty sure the pear tree in which the partridge perched wasn't a Callery Pear Tree. Sure, Callery Pears are pretty. But if the pear tree that that present presenting personage was a Callery, said dude better've gotten his lady a decent yard-guy to go with it, because those trees are messy. Big time.


I think I moved ten or twelve wagon loads of those stupid leaves. Times like these, I remember the words of an interesting old bloke who owns a jewelry store downtown: "I got no use for anything deciduous". Amen, brother. Amen.

Watts Going On.

Not counting outside porch-lights, flood lights, and in-door appliance lights, our residence contains 66 lightbulbs. That's a lot of lightbulbs. Most of the bulbs in the house are standard, garden variety incandescent bulbs. Compact Florescent Lightbulbs (CFLs) use considerably fewer watts of energy to produce a comparable number of "lumens". It only takes 13 watts for a CFL to produce 825 lumens of light, which is about equal in brightness to the 850 lumens produced by a standard 60 watt incandescent lightbulb- less than a third of the energy to produce the same amount of light (I had to look this stuff up in Wikipedia. Hey, I'm no math-wiz like my friend Sarah's daughter, Kendall!).

Lady Di has been striving, of late, to render 590 Otis Road a "greener" space, so we used a $25.00 Lowe's giftcard we'd gotten to purchase some CFLs. So far, we've replaced about a quarter of the incandescent bulbs in the house. Why not more? Well, CFLs cost about five times as much. The energy savings will let us recoup that expense eventually, but five bucks a bulb is still a lot of cabbage.

...and they're not that pretty, yet, either. No point in having a nice chandelier if you have to pack it with ugly bulbs! Still, the technology's improving. You can get CFLs to use with dimmer switches now, so it can't be too much longer before they can make them attractive enough to display at dinner parties.

Santa, You Sleigh Me, Too.

Among some old Christmas decorations that I consigned to the wastebin was this brutal relic. Apparently, some intrepid "Twilight" extra wanted to make sure the undead got their share of toys, and put the bite on the fat man. If a wooden stake is what you need to kill a vampire, then I guess the only way to kill a vampiric Kris Kringle would be with a Kringle kris, like the one at left. Well, that's what it looks like, anyway.

Santa, You Sleigh Me.

Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, David Banner and I all have alter-egos. The first three assume the identities of Batman, Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk, in order to fight crime and their inner demons. Most years, I assume the persona of the Big Guy, Saint Nick, to entertain at my niece's dance recital (if you want to check out 2007 and 2008, then double-click those years).

The Green Room was abysmal. I've got to get a better agent for these gigs.

The spread also left something to be desired (actually, I'm pretty sure that these goodies were for some event earlier in the day... or week. Didn't taste too bad, though).

Showtime!

Oh, and there was dancing, too. In fact, Niece Allison (second from the right, I think), was in nine different numbers.

Allie's sister was cute as a button.

New Traditions: Taylor

Consider the Christmas Octopus: A blue one's sure to cause a fuss. Octopi are rarely blue, they're scarcely seen by any sailor. Still, azure is my youngest's hue; so this ornament is meant for Taylor.

New Traditions: Tyler.

Tyler's my twin who likes red; "It's better'n blue", so he said. "My ornament's briny, but it's not so tiny. That it won't pinch off your head!"

New Christmas Traditions: Caroline's Ornament.

I've said it plenty: I've got lots of boys, but only one little girl. Caroline is twenty now, but she'll always be my only little girl.

New Christmas Traditions. Part I

Lady Di and I put up a few Christmas lights, set out some old decorations, and bought a little tree last weekend. In going through her old ornaments, I found a few that were funny, in a kind of dark way. My friend, Gale, noted that my "ornery-ments" post was a little cynical. "Get in the Christmas spirit. I hear you bought some new ornaments. Post them". Fair enough.

Diane brought me to Pier One Imports to look at candles last weekend. This is not something I did during my bachelor incarnation. I don't mean I seldom visited Pier One when I was single; I mean that I NEVER during that stretch visited Pier One (or Bed, Bath and Beyond. Or Hallmark. Or any other place where more than ten percent of the inventory is scented candles). Hardee's stock, on the otherhand, has taken a beating since I wed. But I digress... Whilst at POI, we acquired new ornaments to mark our new adventure. This first one reminded me of my oldest son. Kind of goofy, but special. Here's to you, Davis.

Rent-a-Friend.

Monday's "Wizard of Id" was a little funny, and a lot true. Here. Take a look. I'll wait.



We all want to be heard, but mostly we don't want to listen to other folks when it's their turn. I remember walking into a house a few years ago, and watching five people all talking at the same time. Five mouths moving; no ears listening. It was beyond chaotic. My pop used to call counselors "rent-a-friend". Now, dad wasn't what you'd call progressive. You got a cut? Put some dirt on it. You got a cramp? Walk it off. You got problems? Well, GEICO kinda summed up his viewpoint:

Holiday Ornery-ments.

We've survived Thanksgiving, and we're crashing head-long into Christmas. Time to decorate the tree and remind ourselves of the joy and goodwill that the Season promises. Here we go...

Santa and toys got to be a joyful thing, right? Wait... Since when does Santa carry a soldier (toy or not) that's bigger than he is? Times have changed, I guess. If you're gonna be busting in to people's houses, you probably ought to be packing heat.

What's wrong with this one? Well, in a nutshell, I'd say that Baby Huey here is totally lacking in Holiday Spirit. Shoot, he (or she. A blue or pink blanket might've helped here) looks more like Susan Smith's other child than Moses in the bullrushes. 'Course, I've been wrong before. Maybe that's why the Santa Nazi is lurking in the background.


Whoa! Who ticked her off? The idea of an Blonde Alpine skier is not so bad, but she is clearly not in the Christmas spirit.

Well, this one's actually kinda nice. Peaceful looking manger scene. The guys that made this clearly understand the real meaning of Christmas. Wonder who made it?

Oops. China isn't exactly a hotbed of Christianity, with numbers somewhere between 3/4 of a percent and 4 percent of the population, depending on whom you ask. At least they aren't snarling.

Cleaning Out My Closet.

My junk tray is getting kinda full. Time to clean it out. Stuff's not that old, right? Now, let's see... Couple of old cell phones. Can I recycle those? Probably not. Throw 'em in the garbage. Belk's bill from a few months ago. I might oughta pay that. Hey! Free tickets for the Boro's only bowling alley! Uh, they apparently expired two months ago. Pitch 'em. An Einstein Bagels receipt from the Detroit Metro Airport. My server was Khalil. I wonder if Khalil knows Einstein was Jewish? "86" it. A CVS receipt. I got it marked "recorded". Wonder why I saved it. Ah, there's a coupon for a $25.00 gift card. Shoot, that'll come in handy for Christmas. Let's see how long I got to use it... Oops, expired in July. Into the wastebasket with you (does anyone ever say "wastebasket" anymore? My grandmother, Baba, I think used to say that. Perfectly fine word. No need to throw it out). Ooh, a warning ticket from the Charleston County Aviation Authority Police for Careless Driving. Musta been when I almost mowed over that pilot. Hey, it's not MY fault he was in the cross-walk when I was circling the airport waiting for Diane's brother to fly in from Seattle. Those pilots (and members of Congress) don't have to get those "up close and personal" patdowns. Perhaps I was prospectively harboring a little resentment. Wonder where that comes from? Eminem knows (Speaking of "warnings", you know Eminem's a fairly controversial rapper, right? Probably not a good idea to play the following video if you don't like that sort of stuff).