Light over Dark

I’ve been holding onto an unusually intense dream that’s appropriate for today.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, was leading a very small tactical team including me on a covert mission deep within the Kremlin. We all were incredibly silent and the living quarters were eerily vacant as we breached them, so I figured there had to be help from the inside — which just got me even more worried that our mission was to, you know, take a certain someone out, quite possibly for the greater good of humanity but perhaps at a cost to my own since I was new to this stuff.

Once we arrived in a long, ostentatious dining room, a signal was given and a bunch
of children filed in. Then a film projector started up and unspooled Star Wars on an expanse of blank wall space to the kids’ delight. I can’t say if it was meant to be humanitarian relief for a group of hostages, soft propaganda to win over sheltered, indoctrinated young minds, or what, but it was apparently successful as the scene jumped to a few of us sitting in a dimly lit parlor with a woman who might have been the late Madeleine Albright offering congratulations on a job well done.

Past of Future Days

I can’t say enough about Tomorrowland — but I’m wary of saying too much, so delightful are the surprises within.



The film’s charming. It champions optimism and creativity. My heart swelled; my
eyes moistened. If there are flaws, and of course there are, they’re easily reconciled with the larger piece. It’s an inspiring thrill ride full of wonder with just enough schmaltz and grown-up danger, made for the whole family.

Harold Ramis 1944-2014

Ghostbusters screencap © 1984 Columbia Pictures.

The year is 1989. I’m a day-camp counselor for kids 5 to 6 years old. At that age
boys have their favorite whatevers on their lunch boxes, their shirts, their underwear. Ghostbusters was big in our bunk — mostly, I assume, from the animated TV series based on the 1984 movie (Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters) rather than the movie itself. So I chaperone a few boys into the restroom. Two of them stand at the same urinal, pants down, focused on doing what you do. One suddenly exclaims “Don’t cross the streams!” and they crack up so hard it’s a miracle that no mopping was required.

I think Harold Ramis, who died this past Monday at 69, would’ve been proud. Godspeed, ghosts, gophers, and groundhogs be with him.

The ’Works

At times like this I’m glad that I don’t believe in Hell, ’cause I’d probably send myself there purely by virtue (or actually, vice) of being snarky to the kids in my family.

We’d just started to watch the 4th of July display earlier tonight when I told my cousin’s 9-year-old daughter L that fireworks were made by catching fairies, strapping them to small rockets, and shooting them into the sky.

“Do the fairies get hurt?” (L said this with a sly smile, playing along. She’s a smart cookie — loves reading, has a high BS meter.)

“That’s why we clap so hard during the finale,” I replied. “We have to bring them back, like with Tinkerbell in Peter Pan.”

Ghosts in the Machine

Whether you’re fortunate enough to still be in touch with your sense of wonder or
have lost it and thought it never to be regained, I beseech you: See Hugo.



Directed by Martin Scorsese from John Logan’s screenplay, based on Brian Selznick’s acclaimed book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Hugo runs 126 minutes. About 120 of those minutes are pure cinematic nirvana. I’m almost mad, yet also strangely relieved, that no matter how many films I see as this stacked season progresses — and no matter that it’s difficult to compare movies of wildly different styles, aims, and approaches — I’ve clearly seen the most fascinating, most captivating movie of the year... unless, almost ironically given their subject matter, The Artist ends up matching it.

A Walk in the Park

My family is full of special kids — funny, smart, good-looking. I’d expect nothing less from the Saner gene pool, really, but a small part of me figured that statistically there’d have to be one dud in the bunch, if only by comparison to the rest. So far, though, from the youngest up through the eldest, born my senior year in college and now a sophomore herself, the next generation is pretty universally awesome.

Ravi, however, is special in a particularly special way. That’s in part due to his being on the autism spectrum, yes, but also because — to take the aphorism from Job out of context and turn it on its head — while the Lord taketh away, the Lord also giveth.

A year ago at a family dinner, I had a chat with Ravi to figure out a good book to get him for his impending 6th birthday, asking if he preferred history or fantasy (or liked both).

Ravi: “I prefer history and non-fiction to fiction.”

Me: “Do you have a favorite period of history?”

Ravi: “About 4.6 billion years ago is the limit of my interest in history.”

Me: “...”

Ravi: “That’s approximately when Earth and the solar system were created.”

Connections

I figured some levity was in order after the mishegas regarding my computer, and so too the blog, lately.



The above is from the Joy of Tech strip that runs on the Geek Culture website. (I’ve
long since learned that being a tech-head is no guarantee of a clean, well-organized, easily navigable website that won’t assault you with ads or a host of clashing typefaces ’n’ stuff, but I’m still amazed when tech-head artists’ websites turn up that way.)

I before Zzzzz

Last night my nephew Ishmael, so named for the sake of public sharing, arrived
with his mother and sisters for their annual summer visit.

Mom-Mom: “Are you ready to get in your PJs?”

Ishmael, who turned four last week: “No!”

Uncle Brian: “I just heard Mommy tell your sisters to put on their pajamas. She’ll probably be in here in a minute.”

Ishmael: “Yeah... We’re gonna have to hide.”


Related: I ♥ Elephants • An M and E Post • What I Said

An M and E Post

When my niece E was quite little, she was fascinated with a book at my mother’s
house on Louis Pasteur that Mom’s husband had from his days as a teacher. It referred to germs as “the invisible enemies” but E kept calling them “the invisible anemones” — not realizing, of course, either her mistake or the fact that there were actually such things as anemones.

E and her younger sister M are older now, eight and six respectively, yet still delighted by books and still coming out with terribly funny things.

“Let’s pretend we are in the olden days,” my sister J overheard E saying to M recently. “Pretend it is 1980!” (“And no,” J added, “she did not mean 1880; I asked.”)

E Mail

Here’s a story that my sister sent along last year about her daughter E, who is now
eight but was seven at the time.

E was having one of those days — woke up on the wrong side of the bed, just mad at
the world. At some point she went to her room only to come back downstairs with her hair tied in a low, tight ponytail, dressed all in black, and proclaim, “My new favorite color is black. My new favorite place to go is nowhere.”

Then E said that she wanted to call Mom-Mom, because her job is to help people
with their feelings, so all was not lost.


Related: What I Said • An M and E Post • I before Zzzzz

What I Said

I’ve been remiss in sharing stories about the kids in my family, even though my sister
J has sent along a passel of awesome anecdotes with her permission to post them.

As visitors here may recall, I only refer to my nieces by the initials E and M for privacy’s sake — but I call my nephew Ishmael because his initial happens to be the same as a personal pronoun that I have now used three times in this sentence alone. Me talking about “I” could be confusing.

Zooming towards four years old, Ishmael’s likes include Buzz Lightyear, superheroes, his mommy’s lap, building things, and knocking things down. His dislikes include being told what to do.

Braids of Glory

My niece E and her cousin L, both 8 years old, each received a copy of Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword for Chanukah — but not before Uncle Brian read it... twice.

Kids Meet

News came on Friday that comics giants DC and Archie will release their very first actual crossover in October when the Little Archie gang meets the cast of Tiny Titans.



I don’t usually blog about press releases or topical stuff, but this announcement is
way cool. The 3-issue project is the work of Tiny Titans regulars Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani, whose consistently delightful efforts have won the title an Eisner Award in the category Best Publication for Kids.

I ♥ Elephants

My sister just gave the OK for me to share this story. I hope it translates.

Her son, whom as before for the purposes of privacy I will refer to as Ishmael, has become enamored of stuffed animals. Some months ago he started asking for an elephant. Our mother was able to get him one — a pink one, though, as gray stuffed toy elephants are apparently hard to find. Now, at 2½ years old, I don’t think that a pink elephant is in any way either an indicator of nor an influence on his destiny; even if it were, I’m all in on loving him no matter what. But I understand why my sister was still looking for a regular gray elephant.

And Uncle Brian found a gray elephant.

Bedtimes and Broomsticks

What’s even better than hearing that my niece can’t come to the phone because she’s engrossed in reading Magic Trixie?



I was recently made aware that E and her sister M — that’s for privacy purposes, not because my family names its children after club drugs and Fritz Lang movies — lent their book to a friend and were eagerly awaiting the sequel, Magic Trixie Sleeps Over. Sharing is great! And they need wait no longer. I’d already bought it, and I mailed it out after hearing this rather than hold onto it for the girls’ upcoming visit. HarperCollins was smart to advertise the next installment in each book, price them low ($7.99 each), and of course snap up this series from the brilliant Jill Thompson to begin with.

Scary Good

Panel from Scary Godmother: The Mystery Date ©
1999 and characters TM creator Jill Thompson.

This post is currently down for maintenance.

DK Delight

If you have young Batman fans in your family, or are one yourself at heart, the Viking/Penguin Young Readers Group release Batman: The Story of the Dark Knight is a perfect gift.



At $15.99 it’s rather a slight read for the price — the length of a single issue at the cost
of a graphic novel in comics terms — but that’s par for the course in the wider market of children’s books. I think you’ll find it worth the splurge whether you want to display it as a handsome collectible or read it over and over to your kids.

A Curious Case of Bedrooms and Buttons

Friday the 13th — a fitting day to talk about Coraline.

The movie, directed and written for the screen by Henry Selick, is an infectious romp with some truly spectacular set pieces. Depending on how audiences react to the darker aspects, it’s sure to become either a cult or mass favorite. But very early on came that familiar twinge of kinda wishing I hadn’t read the book.

Written by Neil Gaiman, and the winner of a Hugo among other awards given to science-fiction, horror, or fantasy works, Coraline the book was good. The problem is that, as prose fiction will do, it calls heavily upon the reader’s imagination to illustrate Coraline’s worlds, aided by Dave McKean’s cover and occasional black-&-white interior art. Gaiman and McKean broke into the American comics market together over 20 years ago with Black Orchid for DC, and McKean produced covers for Gaiman’s landmark series The Sandman.