BC (beloved child the elder) – Page 10

Category: BC (beloved child the elder)

this party sucks

Posted on July 21, 2008 by wrekehavoc

okay, i really wanted to entitle this why six flags america sucks, but as i like to keep my titles thematically consistent (hey, you hadn’t noticed by now that in 2008, they’re all song titles?) AND, well, any excuse to mention the slickee boys…

anyway, for the past few years, we’ve bought annual passes to six flags. going once pretty much pays for it, and going more than once makes it more cost-effective… cost-effective until you buy items at the park, like food, water, and anything else. but that’s life in amusement park land, of course. i don’t mind when it’s a special day; and every summer, i take one day and take BC to the park alone, and i take jools to the park alone on another. we only go either on weekends early or late in the season or weekdays in the summer; this helps to combat massive crowds. this year, i have already taken both kids to the park, and i am more than underwhelmed. in fact, i can safely state that the park has gone to hell in a handcart. here’s why, in no particular order:

1. all those signs that tell people to keep it clean because employees’ families attend the park, too? how about some employees respecting MY family once in awhile? like not saying the word shit in front of my five year old? okay, so i’m a potty mouth, albeit a judicious one; i just don’t expect that sort of thing in regular conversation by a service employee who is in uniform and on the job.

2. gum. on my shoe. every time.

3. wave pool doesn’t open on time. ever. something to do with training lifeguards. hello? the pool is supposed to open at 11. it gives you a couple of hours to train them prior to park opening. oh, you mean it’s too cold to swim before then? you’re a lifeguard; get over yourself.

4. wave pool closes for 15 minutes every hour.

5. way too many unsupervised kids in wave pool, kids who don’t seem to care about whether they ride over someone on a raft. why do they even allow rafts in the wave pool?

6. way too many unsupervised kids in crocodile cal’s beach house. lifeguards circle the area, but i finally had to step in when my five year old was getting continually mowed down by other kids while waiting his turn for slides.

7. ditto for the baby pool area. there is an EXTREMELY thin yet high staircase to the top of the big slide there. it is covered in netting, which my son was able to move to a dangerous degree. and once on top, he was actually pushed around by boys and girls who were about 12. at least.

8. sylvester’s bounce and pounce? not open in the morning.

9. kiddy bumper cars? not open in the morning.

10. flume ride? not open at opening.

11. renegade rapids? not open til noon.

12. there’s one coaster that has never been open in the four or five years i have had season passes. looks like it would be fun, but i’ll never know.

13. why is the train only available to picnicking business groups? do you have any earthly idea how many little kids want to ride the choo choo?

14. 30 minutes to get two slices of cheese pizza. 30. minutes. with. a. hungry. five. year. old. boy. oh, and this wasn’t at peak time: this was at 2 pm on a monday afternoon.

15. witnessed female employee (princess was her name; and if she moved any slower, she would be moving backwards. the other lady, karouselle, lived up to her name, moving in circles) at papa johns (aforementioned pizza experience) actually give away another person’s whole pizza.

16. no manager present to discuss pizza situation.

17. at register, mentioned the issue to cashier. sorry, he said, we’re short-staffed. ultimately, he gave me a 20% discount on my two slices for my trouble. thus apparently, 30 minutes of my-special-day-with-my-boy-sucked-up-into-a-papajohns-vortex-of-doom = $2.60. whee.

18. no more pesky service staff at locker center near the front. sadly, when the computerized locker failed to work, there were no more pesky service staff to help us. nine year old daughter actually had to flag down passing employee, who radioed for help. help came 15 minutes later when daughter recognized the computer logo on a man passing by. daughter snagged said man and brought him over. (note to self: who needs assertiveness training classes for BC? send her to six flags and let her loose to find any employee who might actually help her in a situation.)

19. $1 off skill games coupon in six flags season pass coupon book apparently not applicable for the water-gun game this week. funny, it was applicable two weeks ago when BC played at the same booth, but now, water squirting is apparently no longer a skill, unlike what six flags itself says on its website:

Games

Ready for a little friendly competition? Come out to the park and show us what you’ve got. Step right up for long-range basketball, skee-ball, water gun races��-real games of skill. Team up with your group or go head-to-head. You might just win a prize for someone special.

shooting basketballs and skeeball apparently is. who knew?

20. as BS pointed out, if the water gun race is not a game of skill, then it is a game of chance, which is illegal, if i am not mistaken, in prince georges county.

21. two people must play in order for someone to win a prize in aforementioned non-game-of-skill. thus, you are paying $6 for a stuffed item made in china.

22. aforementioned stuffed item made in china has a GAPING hole in it, much like the gaping hole in identical item BC won a few weeks ago. wondering whether there was a child laborer stowed away in item. hope he or she was able to find freedom here.

23. on summer weekdays, it appears that every elementary through high school aged child in the county is present without any parents, in full bling and pushing past other kids who might actually be in front of them in line for anything.

24. have the balls in the looney toons prop warehouse ever been cleaned? has the looney toons prop warehouse ever been cleaned? i had the pleasure of sitting next to an opened bottle of orange soda today, spillage and all, and we were among the first people in the place.

and, finally,

25. the bathrooms? i’ll refrain from TMI, but in a word, EWWW.

i’m not entirely sure whether this is the case in all six flags. i had thought about taking the kids to six flags great adventure next week, but after our experiences so far this year, i am wondering whether the entire corporation is going kerflooey. there are so many amusement parks that do things well — disney, of course, and hersheypark, for two — so i have to wonder whether six flags simply cannot handle things.

i think this may be our last year for season passes.

stuck in the middle with you

Posted on July 18, 2008June 27, 2019 by wrekehavoc

after our magical day on wednesday, i granted BC a day off from cheerleading camp for good behavior. we ran errands, we chatted, we laughed, we took a grownup friend (of both of ours!) out to lunch, and generally had a lovely day. i know there’s a school of thought that would say that BC needed to get back on the horse that threw her — and i often do make her do just that — but i felt strongly that girlfriend needed to see that i was in her corner. no matter what.

PHOTO REMOVED BECAUSE OF CREEPS ON THE INTERNET. YOU SUCK, PERVS.

how could anyone be mean to this face?

so this morning, we started our drive to camp, both of us feeling pretty sunny. today is the last day of cheerleader camp. i knew i would call the camp office later and explain girlfriend’s situation so that when she starts another camp there in two weeks, girlfriend already has peeps looking out for her. my beloved mentor/former boss/second dad down here in DC taught me a lesson back in the day which i’ve never forgotten — don’t stress about bad stuff — DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT — then move on. (i love that Cool Pops guy.) so i knew i would feel better later after i did what i could do for Dog, Country, and Beloved Child.

but back to the ride in. as usual, i have my mp3 player blaring, which usually prompts BC, AKA my grandmother reincarnated, to tell me to turn it down!!!! (how’s that for role reversal?) my mp3 player, as noted in other places, is somewhat eclectic. but one of my favorite guilty pleasures came on, and suddenly, little miss backseat driver yells, turn it up!

we begin to sing:

clowns to the left of me,

jokers to the right.

here i am, stuck in the middle with you.

i look at my rearview mirror at little girl bopping to the music. this is pretty much our song, isn’t it? i asked.

uh huh, she replied, grinning.

girls talk

Posted on July 16, 2008 by wrekehavoc

there are some things you can’t cover up with lipstick and powder. – elvis costello

the shoe has officially dropped. ladies and gentlemen, welcome to puberty.

tonight, i am dealing with a teary, dreary young lady. she has been enduring cheerleading camp for nearly two weeks, and while at first it looked promising, i think it will knock any remaining desire to be a cheerleader out of her. not only do they make you do all sorts of exercises, but the young teen counselors have actually been rewarding girls who win different training competitions. rewarding them with pop rocks and other assorted candies, apparently.

BC has not won once.

all those years of experiences where everyone gets rewarded just for trying crashes down on your head at this age. i always wondered when that would happen, and here we are, odd girl out. its difficult to watch — girlfriend is just not terribly competitive – she really just wants to have fun. and the counselors are pitting the girls against each other.

sometimes, with disastrous results.

remember earlier in the week when BC said that one girl couldn’t be a flyer? well, BC is pretty much out of the flyer running, too. the girls can’t lift her now. one girl dropped the bomb to end all bombs: you’re really heavy, she proclaimed to my girl. you’re really heavy.

i could go fucking postal.

while i would never condone any sort of idiotic and lethal interactions, i can almost put myself into the shoes of that murderous TX cheerleader mother and see the sort of anger that could build up over time. no, i don’t give a shit whether my kid is EVER a cheerleader (i’m not a cheerleading fan, remember?) but hell yeah, i care whether my daughter starts to develop an obscenely-skewed view of herself because of what some pipsqueak twat said to her.

i know. it happened to me. not in cheerleading, but in gym class. i, too, had a curvy figure at a youngish age. most of the girls were blonde twigs with nearly non-existent boobage. if a stiff wind had blown, they would all have required nose jobs from the impact their faces would have made with the gym floor. somehow, the future stepford wives of america were accepted as the norm, and athletic, muscular me, was regarded as some sort of freak.

now, i look at pictures of myself from back then and think what the hell was this poor girl thinking? she’s gorgeous. sure, she’s not a twig. but she’s just right for who she is. she’s smart. she’s kind. she’s got a good heart. she’s even kinda cute. why did she try weight watchers when she was 9? why is she spending some days eating just fruit? why is she spending some days simply drinking water and nothing else? why is she running around the block all the time?

i spent time in college with someone very close to me who was bulimic. i wanted so very much to tell her parents, but i swore i wouldn’t. i did the very best i could at age 21: i took her to a weight management class that my college offered and tried to be her buddy, her support, her one-person builder-upper. i don’t know whether it helped her much, but eventually, it spurred her on to get professional help. (i’m glad to say that many years later, she is healthy and has conquered those devils.)

but i see the future. and that’s EXACTLY what’s afoot in this here household. mama, i’m FAT! she announced. the girls can’t lift me.

i said it before, and i’ll say it again: those girls need to get out, lift weights, and start doing something more athletic than twisting ribbons for their hair.

when i had a little girl, i vowed i would raise her without exposing her to my weight issues. in this house, i talk about exercise and eating right and striving to be healthy. not nicole richie-thin. not barbie-perfect. just be the best you and the best me that we can be, inside and out. it has been hard work, and i’m sure there are times i have not been perfect about it. but i must say that this has always been one of my parental lines in the sand: i disciplined my mouth and my behavior so as to not utter those immortal words in front of my child: do these jeans make my butt look big?

and all that hard work, all that painstaking process, is being undone by one snot-nosed little girl, a girl who has probably also gotten some weird message about herself and about bodies. where does it all end?

i was in tears, which is admittedly not a great place to be when you’re a mom and you’re trying to comfort your child as she hits a hard, brick wall of reality. honey, i pleaded, you ARE beautiful. you’re also kind, intelligent, and incredibly emotionally astute. you have no earthly idea how wonderful, how special you are. every parent i have ever encountered can’t say enough wonderful things about what a great kid you are. your brother worships you. and your father and i love you and are so very proud of the person you are.

please, please tell me you know how special you are!

blink, blink. a pause.

mommy, all those girls in high school with glasses, who are smart, they end up as dorks.

whoa, girlfriend. you’re getting personal now.

deep breath. sometimes as a parent, you have to pull strength from sources that come from seemingly out of nowhere. i called upon two: my oldest brother the doctor (BTD) and eleanor roosevelt.

honey, i said, when i went to camp, all the boys liked my friend. they didn’t like me like that; they thought i was too smart for them. it made me cry. that summer, uncle BTD had shingles, and he had to stay in bed most of the summer. i would come home from camp, and i would sit and talk with him. BTD, i cried one day after camp, i think i need to start acting dumb. none of the boys like me like they like [name deleted] because i’m too smart. they want dumb girls.

my brother, demonstrating amazing grace under probably annoying sibling pressure, looked my way. don’t you EVER start acting dumb to get liked. there will be boys one day who will appreciate you just as you are.

BC, i continued, you know i hate to admit it when either of your uncles is right, but in this case, i have to tell you: uncle BTD was right. what he said was that you shouldn’t change yourself to make someone like you, advice which has stood me in good stead even to this day. who wants to be liked by someone who doesn’t like the special things you have to offer?

she looked at me. and just cos i was smart doesn’t make me a dork, sister. she smiled, i think.

i continued, on my own personal mission. the quote i like to live by was said by eleanor roosevelt — you know, that lady who was married to a president we talked about that time? eleanor said something so wise, it still is something i think about as a grownup. her words:

no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

do you know what that means, BC?

she piped up: that no one can make you feel bad?

i augmented her thought: yes, that no one can make you feel bad about yourself unless you let them. don’t you let them, my girl. she calmed down enough to sleep.

i wonder what the morning will bring. eleanor, don’t fail me now.

i ran

Posted on July 10, 2008 by wrekehavoc

today’s lesson in parenthood: you’ll never know the fun you’ll have discussing middle eastern issues with a nine year old.

BC and i were driving to camp this morning. i didn’t have my mp3 player hooked up in the car, so we were at the mercy of the radio. i couldn’t bear to hear the mattress discounters commercial one more time, so i put on NPR. you never know what you’ll get on NPR, one of the reasons i like it so much. and lately, BC is interested in the stories she hears, so i turn it on every now and again.

of course, today, the big news is that iran continues to test more missiles. what’s iran? BC asked after hearing the scary tale.

once again, i was thrilled to be the parent who gets the good questions, not like BS, who gets questions like: daddy, why can’t i have candy in the morning? and: daddy, is it dessert night? nope, i have already (poorly) tackled evangelicals and abortion, homosexuality, and menstruation. why not middle eastern politics? it’s definitely a different tack than the other conversation we seem to be having this week: whether or not BC is chubby or too heavy, as the other little girls have a harder time picking her up at cheerleading.

of course, you know what i told her about that: those girls need to start lifting weights! (as if.) i also seriously told her about how its difficult when you’re a curvy and muscular tween girl. a lot of other girls haven’t started developing yet, and you feel bulky and cumbersome. i still remember thinking how huge i was in comparison to the other girls when i was her age. it was, essentially, muscular me versus the twig girls.

i worked myself into some borderline eating disorder moments because of it, and i’ll be damned if girlfriend goes down that path, too.

but back to iran, the topic most mothers and daughters are chatting about these days. well, i started out in a ::cough cough:: reaganesque tone, iran is a country in the middle east. for awhile, they were led by a US-backed ruler called a shah; i suspect he wasn’t nice to all of the people. then, some religious people kicked the shah out of the country. they took american hostages out of the US enbassy there. i still remember as a girl watching the news. as the announcer would tell you how many days the hostages were in captivity.

the president at that time, jimmy carter, tried to rescue them, but the attempt was a disaster. the day that ronald reagan became president, they released the hostages, which was great for them and obnoxious for president carter. i guess the people who took the hostages might have thought that reagan would have done something scarier to get the hostages out, so they released them.

anyway, there are a lot of very religious people there now who don’t like people who don’t follow their ways. (yes, i was very, very close to my separation of church-state speech here, but i hadn’t had coffee yet. i spared the child.) so right now, people are concerned about iran having missiles like these because if they have them, they can hit a lot more targets.

like us? she asked.

well, not us, i continued, but israel. they don’t recognize israel and don’t like israel, so people are afraid they might send those things toward israel. israel is surrounded by a lot of other countries that don’t like it, so israel would probably act pretty tough in return if iran sent missiles over.

well, that would start World War III, girlfriend said.

sometimes, i marvel at her ability to grasp things. yes, it could, i replied. but there are a lot of people who don’t want that to happen, and so people are keeping an eye on the situation.

where do they test them? she continued.

i don’t really know, honey, i replied. maybe the desert, maybe the ocean. i don’t know.

does it cause big waves in the ocean? does it hurt the fish?

there are so many questions you wish you could answer as a parent. and then of course, there are questions you have that are also sadly unanswerable.

with apologies to sting, i hope the iranians love their children, too.

one, two, tell me who are you? THE BEARS!

Posted on July 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

girlfriend is attending cheerleader camp at a tony private school. i balked for a few years, sending her to the YMCA until i was completely fed up with the lack of supervision, the lack of a program, and the lack of working transportation. (when she and her fellow campers were stuck on the fairfax county parkway one of the many days that the Y’s bus broke down, i pretty much had had it.) i have come to the conclusion that the private school’s camp isn’t that much more expensive than the Y (they feed them lunch and snacks! they actually do what they say they will do! (i.e., counselors actually teaching them cheers! supervises them! keeps them from killing each other!)), and considering it is a bit of a higher quality program, i am okay with that. (note that girlfriend is not attending camp all summer, which helps in balancing costs around here.)

the best part, of course, is that BC’s best friend in the whole entire universe is also attending with her. she will also attend girl scout sleepaway camp with her later this month. this is incredibly cool, as these girls live in separate towns and don’t actually see each other much each year.

so yesterday, i dropped my girl off, sunscreen and all, to cheering camp. i should point out that i was one of the girls who threw items at the cheerleaders. i sneered in their general direction. in short, i was not a cheering fan, in spite of the fact that my dad was on the pep squad when he was a young man about town. [insert vision of will ferrell here.]

when i picked her up at day’s end, she was a little annoyed. all of the girls, save for her buddy, knew each other already. some attended the private school during the school year. and they were… wait for it…stuck up.

no? cheerleaders at a private school…stuck up? no way.

[snerk]

i gave her the talk. you all know the one: don’t worry about any of the other girls. do what you went there to do: learn to cheer. have fun doing that. if the girls continue to be jerks, ignore them unless they’re hurting you (in which case, involve the counselors.) etc. the same self-talk i did when those men weren’t too happy about my presence in the weight room. she was still a little nervous about going today.

fast forward to pickup time today. how was your day, i asked, nervous about the answer.

mama, she said: i was a FLYER!

come again?

for those of us who spent little time with those popular, pert ladies in our high schools, a flyer is the person who gets thrown in the air.

i was a little scared because if someone dropped me, well, that would have hurt. but they didn’t! and there was one girl who is so big, the counselors couldn’t hardly throw her, but not me!

i guess that means today was a better day, huh?

it don't come easy

Posted on June 28, 2008 by wrekehavoc

today, i share the tale of the Easy Bake Oven. it will be a tale much like another famous tale, though it involves no curtains. mercifully.

it’s starts with a little girl. let’s call her BC, shall we, as we always do around here. when BC was about three years old, she went to a chanukah party at her uncle BTD’s house. there were many children there, as her uncle has five kids, and her uncle’s wife’s family has a lot of children and cousins. at this party, everyone had presents to exchange; everyone, except the uncle, who had presents for all of the other children but no present for his beloved (and at the time only) niece, BC. probably a little oversight on the busy present shopper’s part.

in any event, bless BTD’s heart: this is conjecture, of course, but it appeared that after BC’s beloved uncle scrambled upstairs, and then downstairs, he presented BC with a gift he had plucked from an upstairs closet from thin air: a brand-new Easy Bake Oven. BC loved this oven; only, too bad for her. EBOs are for children age eight and up. no matter how mature madame was at this age, she was not ready for an EBO. carefully, her grandmother whisked the present away to toys r us, where she exchanged it for something a little safer for a spunky three year old.

fast forward to our hero, the now-eight-year-old BC. that same grandmother, remembering how much her granddaughter wanted that EBO, got it for her for chanukah. her other uncle, the lovable, right-wing nutball larry, supplied a whole bunch of EBO mixes to keep her own personal glycemic index at about 1000. happy days are here again, right?

not quite.

for our hero, who had not yet fully developed her ability to read fine print, took the giant long cattle prod pushing tool and shoved it into the oven, lodging it permanently inside the oven, even before she had any chance at baking anything. oh woe, she cried. her mom, desperate to dislodge the long plastic thingy, called up hasbro for guidance. unfortunately for all, hasbro and our friends at the cpsc had just announced a recall of the EBO. apparently, other things were getting entrapped in the ovens. (things called fingers.) dutifully, BC’s mom and dad packed it up and returned it, as they had been instructed. the mixes lingered, but the oven was gone with the wind postal service.

months went by, months when hasbro said they might rebuild it; or then again, maybe not. eventually, they issued a $25 gift certificate for any item on hasbro.com. considering the shipping, it wasn’t the best offer in the world. (BC’s mom promptly lost the offer, so in truth, she’s just rationalizing because she felt so guilty.) in time, BC’s evil mom, fearing that the mixes were going to be nastier than nasty, chucked them as well.

fast forward once again to this very date, a date which shall be remembered for so many things. for one thing, BC’s brother jools celebrated a whole week of dry nights; he was to be gifted, as promised, with a shark slip and slide. (after weeks of obsessing about this item, he decided to choose two other items instead as his reward.) for another, BC achieved straight As on her report card. and, remembering that a child had been denied her EBO for so many years, BC’s parents caved bought her her very own EBO.

hurray!

but woe to BC: her mixes are gone. BC’s mother, being cheap industrious, located DIY EBO recipes on the internet, as she knew the three included mixes would last about two minutes. and after BC’s dad returned from the store with a lightbulb (the secret to those crispy crusts delicate cakes heated plastic oven walls), we set forth on our baking adventure.

#1: yellow cake (one packet) with chocolate frosting (one packet), baked especially for the man who bought the lightbulb.

#2 and #3: chocolate peanut butter fudge, one serving shared by wreke and jools, this serving was affectionately dubbed gloop for it’s consistency. imagine the fine taste of confectioners sugar with a slight brownish tinge. the second attempt, eaten by BC after a stint in the fridge, fared a little better.

BC had a great time, though her mother, wreke, was left with the realization that the same woman who would not buy wreke an EBO was willing to do so for her grandchild. no, instead, wreke realized that her own mother, aka the grandmother, was willing instead to let wreke use the real oven instead.

in retrospect, it was probably safer.

what's the frequency, kenneth

Posted on June 24, 2008 by wrekehavoc

this week, one of BC’s best pals is hanging out with us. because their names rhyme we decided they’d go by codenames. don’t ask how we got there, but BC’s pal is now going by moose and BC is going by the moniker of squirrel. (somewhere, jay ward is laughing. i know i am.) the plan is that every morning, we do something (or nothing), then every afternoon, the girls go over to the ice skating rink for skating camp. BC’s pal is one of the nicest kids around; they have been friends since they were about five or so, and having her around is a pleasure.

yesterday, things didn’t go completely to plan, though. jools had to stay home, as i needed to take him to the pediatrician’s to get his friday TB test checked. (happily, he is TB-free.) so i had two young ladies of around nine and one little newly-minted five year old. jools only wanted to play with the girls, and the girls preferred playing without his presence. there was much whining and gnashing of teeth. i took them to one of our great sprinkler parks, hoping that there would be something for everyone. and there was, for a time, until jools was too chilly and moose needed a knee repair after getting a bit of a scrape.

re-enter the whining. i don’t think i have ever seen jools so whiny. it was frustrating. hours and hours of never-ending whining. they took my scooter! they won’t let me in BC’s room! they don’t want me around! as the youngest child in my family, i knew all-too-well the joys of this scenario, as i experienced in many times over. i talked to him about it, too. but as he was over-the-top in his mood, i was beginning to wonder whether he was actually not well.

we dropped the girls off at camp. i encountered an obnoxious parking deck checkout woman who looked at her nails while my free 15 minutes in the parking deck turned into 16 minutes and a $1 fee. we hit the doctor’s office — no TB, remember? and then, we went for a swim, just mr. whiny-pants and me. and d’ya know something? the dude was happy. he was swimming to me, diving after his spiderman dive stick, and playing with his little girlfriend, jo-jo. in fact, when he gave his dive stick to jo-jo to borrow and some young cad of about their age came by and took it from her, you had to see mr. man inflate himself and yank it back. i thought they were going to come to blows, so i ambled over, only to watch jools get out of the pool and put the dive stick back into my beach bag. he then returned and just continued to swim with jo, who was not bothered by the loss of the stick (and who then got whacked in the head by a volleyball gone wrong. poor kid.)

all in all, a most pleasant afternoon.

we picked up the girls. moose is a more skilled skater than is squirrel, and apparently, the powers that be at the rink noticed this and wanted to place her in a different camp. no, moose told them, my father signed me up for this camp and this is where i want to be. what a loyal, sweet girl! i dropped off moose, and the fighting continued.

ah, sibling rivalry. is there no one it can’t unhinge?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fxfDRYGtjw&hl=en

guilty pleasure monday: to sir with love (lulu)

Posted on June 23, 2008 by wrekehavoc

as the school year closes (at least around here — most of the rest of the nation has been out of school probably for six months by this point, but not OUR schools, which stay open practically until the next millenium), i am inspired to revisit an old chestnut from the teacher-who-tames-the-unruly-and-impossible-class genre. it’s another one of my 4:30 movie favorites, to sir with love, starring brilliant actor sidney poitier and a host of other mostly-english actors you’ve probably never heard of.

in typical hollywood fashion, the movie completely bowdlerizes the novel, down to the fact that when the girls burn something in poitier’s classroom, no one ever tells what’s causing that smell. (it’s a sanitary napkin. used. yech.) not to mention the fact that london’s east end in the mid-1960s was a very rough place, thanks to kray-zee guys like these. (i, of course, follow the east end of london closely, the current bowdlerized version anyhow, via eastenders. so i should know. of course.)

but i rabbit on digress. and this is about guilty pleasure songs, not films. apparently, the american idol folks had lulu on in the not-too-distant past, reviving this old chestnut. i’m sorry i missed it but am glad i can still see it, for while i avoid AI like the plague, i do like seeing old singers trotting out their hits. and it is a lovely song, much better than the crap lulu ended up singing for eurovision a few years after.

too bad for her, though: she can no longer feel parts of her lovely face. no more botox for you, lulu!

so is there a point to all of this? let’s see:

1) the east end of london is not a groovy disneyland;

2) you ought not set fire to your kotex under any circumstances;

3) love your teachers and sing to them often;

and

4) botox — or buttocks, as BC mistakenly calls it — is probably not a good option.

pictures of you

Posted on June 19, 2008 by wrekehavoc

props to onthecurb for stealing this groovy idea. and i’m stealing her verbage, in case kids want to try this at home:

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s Flickr Toys: mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? right now?
3. What high school did you attend?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

1. Sheryl Crow -Vancouver, 2. Peanut Butter Cup Heart, 3. Toms River High School North Marching Mariners, 4. eccentric beauty, 5. you really don’t have a blog?, 6. Fishin’ Remuz, 7. Arched people, 8. Spicy Mini Chocolate Lava Cakes, 9. We are fuckin Rock Stars, 10. wildwood crest – windblown, 11. colorful world12. Not available13. Not available14. Not available15. Not available16. Not available

twisting by the pool

Posted on June 8, 2008 by wrekehavoc

we belong to our community pool. it’s hard to believe, in fact, how much it costs to be a member of said pool, and yet, we do it. there are not many options where we live; we can’t actually put one into our backyard (besides the overwhelming expense, our back yard is a bit of a luge run), and it’s close to the house. yes, we are lemmings.

anyway, in years past, we have not known anyone at our pool, save for another family from our synagogue. i have actually tried making friends, but apparently, there is a huge sign on my forehead that says: avoid! avoid! she has a strange sense of humor, and her hair is bad! but this year, as BC goes to school with a lot of the kids from our neighborhood, i figure we will meet plenty of the people who swim.

today, we went to the pool. luckily, our new neighbors were there. wow. who knew that the pool experience is so much more fun when people actually talk to you! BC played with our neighbor’s two kids, while jools hung mostly with BS and i. and lo, and behold: the dude, whose feet touch the 3 foot bottom on tiptoe, actually hit some milestones, all in one day.

swim without waterwings: check.

swim with head underwater from mom to dad: check.

jump in pool and recover himself enough to swim to appointed adult: check.

so very proud i am. truly.

it would have been a completely perfect day had the boys BC knew from school not come around and started calling jools stupid! these are third grade boys going off on a five year old. i wasn’t there — BS witnessed it. and while BC was outraged for her brother (yes, the same brother she thinks has psychological problems and, in her professional opinion, needs speech therapy), BS told her to ignore the boys. why should she care what they think?

clearly, i need to let BS know that this is not the way bombastic me would have handled this. see, i take no prisoners and wear my mom badge proudly. and i have no problem with taking a boy by the hand and marching him to his mother, asking her whether she approves of her son taking on another child nearly 5 years younger than him, unprovoked, and calling him denegrating names.

and you wonder why other people avoid me at the pool.