Where Have You Gone, Joe diBloggio?
It is interesting (and worrying) how much more important the last post seems because it was not quickly followed by other, more well thought out and sensitive posts. Please be reassured that it had been intended only as a small blowing off of parental steam before plunging ahead into more interesting musings on youth, creativity and theater. It was not, as it now seems to me to appear, a major rant against the beautiful boy (who is doing very well and is in general, not all that sensitive about things scatalogical, I promise). Clearly, however, my lack of sleep, mound of applications to first grade (for Daniel, not for me), the Thanksgiving weekend and the dreadful and total ennui that comes over me whenever I enter my parents’ house changed my blogging plans somewhat. Nevertheless, like Edmund Hillary, I will carry on. (And on and on.)
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Apparently, there was a study which examined what people enjoy most about Thanksgiving and most said something like: the chance to be all together with the family. This is probably my number one reason too, but some days I’m not sure why.
I love my extended family. Nevertheless, my aunt knows everything and likes to tell you about it, sometimes in Italian (even though she’s Irish), my mother worries constantly about whether all the food will be hot at the same time, my father dislikes my aunt and hides in the television room (called the porch, for unknown reasons) and otherwise criticizes anyone’s toaster oven technique. My sisters and I spend much of our time confused as to why holidays in our childhood home seem so tense and fraught when normally we get along really well and have fun together. Our male partners mostly look a bit stunned.
My children love holidays in my parents’ home. They are entertained by a slew of adults except when suddenly, all the adults mysteriously disappear and then they wonder what they heck they should be doing. Then they demand to play Cranium, which has established itself as the game to play, but they’re really not old enough to get hummed versions of Stayin’ Alive or want to spell gargantuan backwards on the first try. Or any try. We did play some Battleship and then Daniel was introduced to the world of GameBoy via his sort of not really but probably cousin Aidan. Aidan is eight. Or almost eight, and has a GameBoy. Daniel fell madly in love and spent most of the two days Aidan was around curled up with him on the couch gazing loving at his GameBoy. It looked rather sweet, actually, and Aidan was very good natured about the whole thing, but you know what is now number one on DantheMan’s Christmas list.
The rest you know. Food was consumed, pie devoured. Children were entertained and migraines were survived (not mine, Ed’s). Birthday’s were had in a sort of extended remix way, since the actual birthday was on Thanksgiving and so cake happened the next day but presents happened in a random way (including today) and that’s just fine. Next year, though, I may plan a bit more fiercely and get taken out to the rodeo or something else wacky. Very much enjoyed an afternoon and evening with the lovely and wonderful Excellent Walker and Pedestrian Rage (yes! in the flesh!) and many drinks were drunk by all.
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This was going to be the bit about youth and vibrancy but actually that deserves its own little post so this will be merely a passing comment about 5’9″ basketball players with springs in their feet. What a shot. Makes me wish I was even mildly interested in sports.
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I have been knitting, you will be surprised to hear. I have not, however, managed to photograph anyone. While you wait, I offer you this instead. 
Why do these three look so depressed? It’s because they’ve just watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (the only film they’ve seen actually in a cinema all year, poor things) and it was, well, not good. Mike Newall (the director) does, however, really understand adolescent boys and he really understands boarding school so if you can ignore the fact that the rest of the film is incoherent, badly edited dodo droppings, it’s worth a peek. From a sociological viewpoint. Cute scarves, though. Probably a knitting pattern already out there.
Hey! I don’t have an email address for you to send you the info about this week’s fiber nite at my house. email me at purlewe AT earthlink DOT net for more info, OK?
really? i sat through the whole movie with my mouth wide open. i cried several times, and walked out of the theater with a profoundly threatened sense of what good story telling should or shouldn’t be. and while the other three films made me satisfied with my filmwatching self, this one sent me flying to my roommate’s bookshelf, and i’m finally reading the darn things.
I agree. The movie could have been longer to add in details – could have left out some parts of scenes. Though I did cry a bit too…
Hey Dan — I am so curious what captured you so because I really respect your opinion and it is interesting that we should have had two such different reactions — I would like to think of myself as a reasonably good judge of film-making (though this may just fall into the category of “I know wot I like”) but while I enjoyed this, I thought it was nowhere near as good as the last HP film, and not really up to what I had expected. There was far more spectacle than plot; the director relied on our having read the book; Hermione was inexplicably weepy and weird; there were very strange cuts from one scene to the next; and several other very odd things. Then, considering how much had to be cut out, I question what was inserted, including that whole roof-hanging dragon thing.
On the other hand, I did like the Weasley twins for the first time in the film series, and thought that male adolescence was thoughtfully and endearingly captured. I also liked the pure theatricality of some of the larger scenes (like the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang entrances and all the children hanging out by the goblet of fire). So not a complete washout. Just not as good as I wanted to be, and overall, not a good film.
I have many more opinions, of course, as always but more about that later.
I agree that the editing was a bit weird, ESPECIALLY at the beginning. But, as someone who hadn’t read any of the books, I followed the story pretty well, and was 100% engaged the whole way through. Something about the sexual tension between the three main characters really anchored the story this time around. You know: great, horrible things happen in the world. Horrible, massive things happen to YOU. And then there’s sex. And the two just coincide, ambivalent to each others’ respective existences. That’s the first thing that comes to mind, as I try to defend this film. The second is that, for the first time in years, I believe that convoluted internal logic is an admirable goal for a storyteller. I’ve been raging against this, as of late. I’ve demanded that art refer outside of itself, and not merely within itself. But the more that film became about its own self-made and narcissistic mythology, the more it spiraled outwards, and caught my own fears and secrets in the tempest. I basically have to redesign my play, of all things, because of Harry Potter, of all things. Oy!
ps: Yes, she was inexplicably weepy and weird. But aren’t we all?
I completely concede the marvellous burgeoning sexuality thing, but thought that was almost better captured in Hermione last film. And then the last film also had Harry riding on a basilisk and relishing the power of the wind and the beast between his thighs and I found THAT wonderfully captured his emerging sexual self.
I thought rather more could have been made, particularly of Ron’s love/hate with Hermione thing, but can see what you mean — it makes the whole maze wanting to absorb the children back into the dark earth with its twining roots make more sense — a sort of Freudian secret self trying to obliterate one’s awareness of power and self.
I actually think the director didn’t get girls very well, which annoyed me mightily. I like boys. Very much, and I like movies about boys, but I’ve always liked Hermione as a ballast to Ron and Harry and I thought she was reduced to something much less than she is, whereas the last film had her as a much stronger, brighter, less whiny character whom I admired.
Hey — come over for some wine and we’ll talk — also, although I’m planning a blog that is in part about your amazing show, there’s lots we could talk about that too. xoxoxo
I meant hippogriff naturally. Naturally.
I thought I left a comment. What is that, blog amnesia?
One: holidays are like some kind of torture we have to suffer through to get to the heart of the matter. I believe the same is true of family. Parents, that is.
Two: Harry Potter has lost his magic.
Three: You really are a knitting goddess. And a goddess of all sorts of other things.
if the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
injurious distance would not stop my way,
for then despite of space i would be brought
to have wine at your house,
and talk about harry potter
and my play, which i sort of imagined you disliked, and so was waiting enthusiastically to hear some criticism from one of the greatest theatrical minds i’ve ever encountered.
xoxo
d