Magic

(This may sound a bit...preachy.  But whatever.  It's important.  My space, my rules.)

Seeing the little girl beaming as she stepped towards Santa at the mall today made me happy.  I noticed others watching as well, smiling and whispering to each other.  Maybe they whispered at the girl's joy, or how their children acted when they met him for the first time, and maybe they watched it all through a thin film of their own Christmas memories.  Or perhaps they whispered of magic, and how it felt to believe in it again...if only through this child's rapture.

This is not a new request.  Not by any means.  Yet, I still feel compelled to ask you all to have the courage to believe in magic.  Suspend your disbelief when your mind urges logic, examination, and open your heart to the possibilities of that which cannot be possible.  And by magic, I mean it in any and all forms we've been exposed to: Santa Claus, dragons, David Blaine, Harry Houdini, superheroes, vampires, werewolves, fairies, God, the existence of a piece of cheescake that can make your entire being shatter it tastes so good, the Tooth Fairy, Love...it's all out there, waiting for us to accept it completely.

Believe in the impossible.

"The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.  Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn?  Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there.  Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world."

-Francis Pharcellus Church, "Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus"

Thanks and No Thanks

The Thanksgivings of my youth were not atypical.  There were usually swarms of family and naturally we couldn't all fit at one table, so many of the diminutive folk were shooed to the rickety blue folding table.  The goddamned Kid's Table.  They always tried to make it sound special and unique and fun, dress it up like the other tables, but the rickety-ness was never corrected, and we were never out of eye or earshot of the Others.  And damn if they didn't try to cram as many of us into the square thing, thereby resulting in something spilled or broken, hurt feelings, and glares from the Other Table.

Though we were banished, two small consolations had been implicitly granted by the governing Others.  We could put whatever we wanted on our plates, and we could play Raise Your Hand If.  Therefore, my plate usually looked like this:
-rolls
-whatever Jell-O concoction was present
-some shreds of turkey, but not so much as to take up valuable roll space
-mashed potatoes with a small pond of gravy in the middle
-more Jell-O
-rolls

We all learned to whisper our questions, lest we become too noisy and attract unwanted attention.  "Raise your hand if you like the cranberry thing."  "Raise your hand if you like John Elway."  "Raise your hand if you want to go outside and build a fort after we're done."  "Raise your hand if you think the kid's table is stupid."  Strangely though, there was usually one adult who sat with us.  At first I assumed that they had broken some sacred pact with the Other Table and were thereby reduced to our pitiful status.  It was only a few years ago that I learned the truth of the adult-at-the-kid-table phenomenon.

The adult table is lame.

They just...eat.  And pass and clink things.  We actually got to eat what we wanted without getting weird looks, and playing Raise Your Hand If is just incredible.  So, here's to the Kid's Table this Thanksgiving...all you at the Other Table can just mind your own business, thank you very much. 

Some additional items for which I am thankful this year, and some I'm rather not thankful for...
Thanks:
-Dinner rolls
-Fried turkey, so long as a house is not burned down in the process
-Nice Thanksgiving weather that allows us to play football, whiffle ball, or climb the sleeping trees
-My family and friends, of course
-Maintaining the mashed potato wall so the gravy doesn't spill out and get on everything else and ruin my entire damned plate
-Hope
-Generosity
-The Macy's Parade
-The magical, seemingly instantaneous arrival of the trees in the Christmas Tree lots
-Someone who is loved more than they will ever know
-Non-stop Christmas music on the radio for the next four weeks
-Hopefully seeing people fight and slap each other for something trivial on Black Friday
-Dinner rolls

No Thanks:
-Deviled eggs that ruin the otherwise beautiful assortment of food
-Any potato salad that ruins the otherwise beautiful assortment of food
-Pointless football games that involve the Lions that I still feel compelled to watch
-Surly family members who need a slap in the teeth
-Glaring at the Kid's Table
-Black Friday sales that begin any earlier than 6am
-That mad rush of people to form the food line when it's time to eat
-The chocolate French Silk pie
-The pie with the meringue that slides off like a snot when you touch it with a fork

Best Things (continued)

Comics:
I placed three single issues above just about everything else this year.  There are some wonderful continuing series that I'm attached to, but I wanted to keep this section from rambling too much.  And yes, they're all from DC because I enjoy their product better.

-Northlanders #20: Sven the Immortal
One of my favorite characters defending his family and his legacy.  This also happens to be one of the best continuing series out there.
-Green Lantern #43: 'Blackest Night' prologue
Rare is the issue that genuinely creeps me out.  Writing, art, pace...everything here is perfect and disturbing.

Grand Prize Winner Due Mostly To A Single Page:
-Superman: Secret Origin #1
Another re-working of an icon's beginnings that works wonderfully.  Scene:  Clark runs through the Kent's cornfields sobbing and terrifed when he learns of his true home and family on Krypton.  Jonathan and Clark find one another and embrace on a page that was done so incredibly as to make me catch my breath.

Best Top Secret Information...
...is to be shared sometime after Thanksgiving.

Best Legacy Moment:
Comcast On-Demand is a magical thing.  A random search resulted in my oldest boy falling in love with a group of heroes which makes me intensely proud:

Yeah.  He sings the intro, acts it out with his Sword of Omens, uses Tygra's bolo whip, and even makes the 'shew-shew' sounds of magic bursting through the air.  His coolness reached a new peak this year.

Yet Another Subjective Best Stuff List

There are countless sites putting together vast, shiny, well-documented and well discussed "Best of 2009" and "Best of The Decade" lists right now.  Some of the better ones have several contributors to the lists in order to more accurately view the landscape that has passed, and others are simply compiled by one, well-known and respected author.

Regrettably, this is neither.

The lists or choices that follow are simply my own, subject to massive disagreement and vitriol, and are not necessarily contained to 2009 or the decade.  More simply put, what follows is the best stuff that I encountered this year, regardless if it was new or not.  I'll most likely add to this as the year moves closer to an end because I won't remember everything.

Books:
This category gets more complicated because I don't read bad books.  If I happen to slog through half of a book that is objectively terrible, I have no need to seek completion to a chore begun; I stop and move on to something else.  Some of the more wonderful books consumed this year:

-Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
-The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
-Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
-Luckiest Man by Jonathan Eig
-Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
-Beyond the Black River by Robert E. Howard
-All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

As good, or even majestic (as is the case with anything Robert E. Howard wrote) as some of those may be, there was one that surpassed the others, and I urge anyone who hasn't picked it up to do so quickly:

Best Day of 2009:
The easiest decision of the bunch.  On May 15th, my exceptionally happy son Jack Arthur made his grand entrance.

TV:
Strangely enough, television can be quite a polarizing subject.  Those people who are above such a mundane exercise as the watching of TV have a tendency to make the rest of us feel like terrible, soulless, unimaginative slobs who are hopelessly chained to the downfall of simple, honest, clean living.  I do my best to ignore such folk.  They're creeps.  And they usually have some irritating scent floating about them that makes actual conversation a bother.  Some of the most watched or enjoyed television of the year:

-The Office
-The Biggest Loser
-Scrubs (reruns or new episodes)
-Hell's Kitchen
-Rockies baseball
-Cash Cab
-Sunday or Monday Night Football When The Game Actually Mattered
-Man vs. Wild
-Baseball's Golden Age

I've never had HBO, thus the omission of whatever goodness they have going on there.  Nor am I a watcher of the massively successful Mad Men...though I don't know why.  However, I am proud to say that I am part of the greatest show that has ever been created!  And shame on all of you who disagree with me:

More 'Best of' nonsense to come later...

That Time of Year...

I saw the decorations in Wal-Mart the day before Halloween, snuggled back between the flimsy costumes, party favors, and orange exterior lights.  There, lined up in tight rows like a shipment of sarcophagi were the pre-lit, pretend Christmas trees.  The following afternoon, my television told me that Christmas cheer is available with Glade candles, and the new animated version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was being released on November 6th.  Naturally, that question we all hear so frequently danced in my head:

Good heavens.  Isn't it a bit too early to begin the Christmas fanfare?

The answer:  Hell no.

I'd actually prefer to have a perpetual, year-long celebration of Christmas.  You all know the moment that exists at the edge of the Christmas morning magic, as much as we all try to battle its arrival each and every year:  That we'll eventually have to move our presents into our rooms and put them away.  That effectively ends the whole damn thing.  The food starts to look a bit off, the tree is now a nuisance, and someone has to get the ladder out and take the damn lights down.  Arguably, the only thing remaining is the egg-nog.  It still looks good.  It always looks good.

No more of this "Twelve Days of Christmas" nonsense.  Let's commit and make it the "Twelve Months of Christmas."  A year of making others smile and hopeful, being cheerful and generous, eating good food, listening to the 24-hour Christmas Carol radio station, being with your family, the smiles, the lights...it's a damn good time if you ask me.  The Christmas decorations, commercials, and music can never start soon enough.  If we could only get our grocery stores to stock egg-nog year round, all would be right with the world. 

Additionally, the Twelve Months of Christmas would make it much easier to identify the truly cranky people sulking about out there.  Should you encounter any of them in your Christmas adventures...smile big at them, wish them an extra-happy Christmas, and give them a big hug if you're brave enough.

They hate that.

In Rockville: The Old Woman

He returned to Rockville some years ago with his mother and sister to see what fragments of his memories yet remained, and his family followed.  We knew the trip was his, and we were to be curious bystanders as he walked down the storefronts, wondering which memories would persist after the trip.

The town was hollow and frail.  Pale walls sagged, patched roofs crumbled, and weeds clutched the broken cement and splintered wood, pulling it all further into the cold ground.  The air was still and heavy, and there was no sound anywhere.  All that remained of this place, it seemed, were the grain silos and the family that lay claim to them.  Yet even there, behind and around the silos, there was no sound, no motion.  Nothing was happening.

The man said little as he moved down main street, looking up at the empty facades of the stores there: The billiards hall, the hardware store, the East Side Grocery, all of them ghosts.  The town jail was a pile of gray stone in the grass.  Doors were missing, dangling from the top hinge, nailed shut, or warped and tapping against the weathered frame.  The man stopped as a cat, raggedy orange and wary, hopped from his path on the heaving sidewalk to commune with three others in a copse of grass across the street.

Our eyes followed the tabby across the street, and the man turned to us and said, "Jesus.  Look out there.  They're everywhere."  They bounded with one another in the grass, howled and spat in the road, and spilled out of a darkened store ahead.  It was impossible to count the feral host, for they twined and moved and pulsed over everything, and scattered as we moved along the sidewalk towards the front door of the residence.

There was no door, jagged pieces of glass perched in the gaping windowframes, and the afternoon sunlight splayed along the floor and sliced through the black of the building.  Dust motes and mosquitos and fleas danced in the warm yellow light.  Cats padded out of the room and moved between our legs, while some sat within and stared at the intruders.  Some danced to a darkened corner to lay beneath what looked to be the ruined front door, resting on cinderblocks.

It was only when we looked atop the door-and-cinderblock bed that we saw the ashen, tattered woman sleeping there.

The man turned to his mother.  "I don't remember this.  Who's place is this?"

She reached up and patted his shoulder.  "She didn't always live here.  She used to live around the corner.  She didn't use to have as many cats..."  At that, she tightened her lips and shook her head in frustration at the ancient soul within, and called to it.  "Dony.  Come out, hun.  You know me."  The figure on the wood turned its head slowly and stared out at us, unblinking.  The skeletal hands scraped against the wood as she rose and shuffled out to meet us.  The feral horde moved as one with her.

She wore a threadbare pink nightgown, her white hair was cut very short and curled about her ears.  Her nails were yellowed, and she had no teeth.  She raised one sharp arm to shield her eyes from the glare of the light and peered at the man, his sister and his mother, who now stood resolutely in front of us all.  The words creaked and crawled from her mouth, and her eyes widened with familiarity.  "Well, my goodness.  That pretty face is a lovely sight!  If I knew'd you'd be comin' I'd a put on somethin' nicer that mah gown."  She looked down at the fading fabric and shook her head sadly.

The man's mother smiled and stepped forward.  "It's okay Dony, hun.  We're just passing by to see things again.  You remember my son and daughter, don't you?"  She crept out of the store to stand on the sidewalk to look over those faces from her past and in the full light looked very small and very alone.  Dony gave each of them a hug, and the group stood for some time talking.  She would wave her arm at a part of town, point with her curled, arthritic finger into the past at different places, and everyone's gaze followed.  She smiled, chuckled, and once stooped to run her hands along the back of a dirty gray cat that passed her way.  It smiled.

Soon , they were saying their goodbyes.  "Sure was kind of ya to stop and see me."  Her eyes glistened a bit as the tears began to creep in.  "I'm feelin' a bit tired, I'm afraid...I need to go lay down for a bit."  The man and his mother and sister rejoined us as the old woman turned and moved back to her bed in the darkness with the cats.

We moved through the town for another ten minutes, and no one spoke.

(Photo borrowed from www.raccoonvalley.com)

The Dream Child Adventure

A Nightmare on Elm Street V: The Dream Child  was released in 1989, and I had to see it.  Nevermind how cumbersome the title was.  The poster looked beautiful and terrible and exhilarating.  I was nine, and I knew that my only realistic chance of going was to convince to my brother to take me.  He had to.  He was reliable.  In the previous years, I had sobbed and pleaded for him to take me to two other epics of widespread critical acclaim:  The Wraith in 1986, followed by The Garbage Pail Kids Movie in 1987.

The Wraith was some sci-fi mess about a kid who was murdered by a gang of ruthless bikers and returned from the grave as a mysterious, black-clad racer with an invicible car with a glowing ghost engine.  Or something like that.  And there my brother sat, shaking his head throughout the experience, muttering "This is ridiuclous."  But come on, brother!  That car's engine is glowing!  And it's invincible I think!  An IMDB search turns up some character names.  With bad guys the likes of Packard, Skank, Gutterboy and Rughead, how can you go wrong?  The next movie I would scream and throw a fit about was only a year away, and by then, I'd be so much wiser in my choice.

Alas, my mind was none the sharper, and the TV Guide review summed it up quite well:

"A stunningly inept and totally reprehensible film...Haphazard scripting and editing give the movie a jumbled, confused feel.  Apparently the public concurred about the film's repulsiveness, for outraged parents forced the distributor to pull television commercials for The Garbage Pail Kids Movie off the air, and the film died an incredibly quick death at the box office."

I remember being utterly confused at what was going on, and now feeling slightly bad for forcing my brother into this farce.  However, a mere year and a half later, the pleas, tears, and convulsing would redouble when Freddy Kreuger made his triumphant return.


Yes, I was allowed to go to an R-rated horror movie when I was nine.  I was familiar with the series from the VHS library of a neighbor, and we watched the third installment, The Dream Warriors, once a week.  It was funny, horrifying, and clever, and Freddy always got the piss beat out of him in the final showdown.  The following days in school, those who didn't know about Freddy during our lunchtime rounds of 'Raise Your Hand If' were a pitiful lot who had no idea how many astounding things they were missing.

My parents always warned that if these movies gave me nightmares, and came shrieking to them afterward, I wouldn't be allowed to watch them anymore.  Needless to say, I suffered in silence.  Freddy terrifed me.  But, when talk of Part Five of the Greatest Movie Series Ever began, I informed my friends that I was going to see it.  So there.


In retrospect, my brother must have been getting paid for this.  I can't imagine he would agree to my nonsense a third time of his own volition.  It was a weekend afternooon, and we entered the Cooper Five theatre as the previews were coming to a close, and everything was already dark.  We found our seats in the oddly sparse side theatre ("Why aren't there more people here?  They're all missing the best thing ever!").  The music started, some credits rolled, Robert Englund, Wes Craven, etc., etc.

Come on.  Who needs exposition and conversation?  Let's do this thing.  Blood and claws now, please.


It couldn't have been more than ten minutes into the film when Random Jerk Athlete was on his motorcycle, and the bike comes to life.  Hoses spring out of it and start burrowing into his skin, sharp things start grasping and stabbing at him, and he's fused with the speeding machine, covered in blood.  And that was it for me, thank you very much.  I started screaming and sobbing, and my brother (smiling, of course), ushers me out of the theatre to the bathrooms to wash my face.  He patted me on the back as we walked up the ramp, consoling me as we passed the three other viewers.  He really was a good guy.  He was on my side, despite another failed venture to the movies.


I splashed water on my face and stood shuddering over the bathroom sink.  He went into a stall.  I was drying my hands, and it happened.  My brother exacted his revenge on his pitiful, quivering sibling with poor taste in film.


"Uhh...Josh?"  It was a nervous whisper.


I turned.  His head poked around the corner of the stall.

"Did you hear--"

A hand burst from behind, coiled around his neck and ripped him back into the stall and he was screaming like a madman.  Tears and snot exploded anew, and I was rooted in place, screaming for my brother's life, screaming at Freddy to stop.  The were a scrabbling, and a chuckle, and my brother strolled out of the stall unharmed.  Smiling.  I was an utter mess, and he was quite pleased with himself.


This was all Freddy's fault.  What a dick.