Subdivided We Stand Meets Marathon Man

Is That a Word?

We have this neat little family card game that we got for the boys for Christmas.  It's called Quiddler and it doesn't take long to play and it's fun for killing time in the hour between dinner and "Jack-related gunplay" (AKA 24) when we have a chance to sit down together as a family and safely embrace the not-always-apparent upsides of torturing people.  (Heck, there's a moral lesson in there for the kids.  The ticking time bomb theory of moral ethics dictates that if you've got to do it, you've got to do it. Besides, anybody can see it PAINS Jack to have to torture somebody (everybody) to get information. He rarely enjoys it.)

Quiddler involves making words out of letter cards.  Some letters are worth more than others (like Q and X and J).  You add up the points after somebody spells a word, and you keep escalating the word lengths until you reach 8 letters.  Then game over.  Simple and fun.

But we didn't recognize how potentially sensitive and pornographic it could get until one of our boys, while examing his four cards, asked:

"Is CLIT a word?"

Stunned silence for three seconds before Rebecca and I said in unison: "NO!"

After a few more seconds, and unable to hold my smile back, I said to my boy: "Hold on.  Spell it for me."

"C-L-I-T."

I fake pondered for a moment, and then said, "Nope.  Not a word. Is it honey?"

Rebecca replied, without looking up from her cards: "Definitely not."

Another few moments go by and I'm flashing forward to the future when my boy hears the word and recalls that years before he asked if that word was actually a word and his trustworthy parents insisted that it wasn't a word, and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down.  "They LIED to me?"  I couldn't hold back any longer and burst out laughing.  Rebecca did, too, which is one of my most treasured sights to behold.

"Yes!  Yes!  My God, yes. It is a word. Clit IS a word. In the top five dirtiest words in the entire language.  And you've spelled it!"

The boys remarked that they never saw me laugh so hard in their lives.

Sadly, that's it for Quiddler.  We can't have our boys spelling other wanton words like:  C*** or W**** or M**.  (Though of course they are eager to play it again and stumble upon other illicit combinations of letters.) We're going to have to do something else between dinner and family-hour Jack-related gunplay from now on.

Maybe I'll read Henry Miller books aloud to them.

It's Hard/This is Easy

I recall with great clarity the time when Marshall Crenshaw and his bandmates appeared at my college during the spring semester of my senior year.  Not sure the rest of the crowd there that day would remember, though. 

Every year my school hosted something called Dandelion Day, a day filled with BBQ, outdoor fun and games, music, and mushrooms.  The hallucinogenic variety, not the sauteed kind.  It was a time-honored tradition that a conglomerate of students would score sacks of mushrooms that were doled out in a kind of Eastern bloc distribution method to the grey sky'd, still-chilly campus.  I didn't indulge, but I enjoyed observing with my girlfriend at the time (the rebound girl after the big college girlfriend break-up) the whole scene of uptight pre-med and engineering students tripping out in silly splendor one last time before embarking on their uptight silly careers.

"People, Marshall is not going to play any more," the Brit-sounding concert impresario shouted into the mike, "Until that bloke gets down off of that scaffolding!"  The crowd roared and continued to encourage the tripped out dude who had climbed up on top of the stage overhang.  I'm not sure it mattered to me, or to anybody else whether Marshall continued.  He'd already played the songs I knew at the time, Someday, Someway primarily, and it was honestly more fun to watch the whole disaster waiting to happen scene with the promoter screaming, the roadies climbing up to get that guy who wouldn't come down, and the whole crowd in a delirious mess.  It was 1985, it was a mere five years since his first album came out, and it already seemed like Marshall was winding down and was on the oldies tour.

It was later that year when I was on my own, away from home, starting to find myself after college, that I finally picked up that first Marshall Crenshaw album and then soon his album of the time Downtown, and I was gone.  I was broken up with those college girls, still bitter, still moping, and every song coming out of my speaker box was a simple rock song about...well...about me:

I'll be stronger when she's off my mind
I hope she finds what she's been tryin' to find
And as life goes on and time goes by
Will her heart ever be satisfied
There she goes again with another guy.

I'd play them over and over and over.  In my room, in my car.  Every song about losing a love, heartbreak, going out there alone. (Is there a single song in his catalog that involves actually being happy with a current love?  They are all about yearning for a lost love or an unattained love.  Maybe Whenever You're On My Mind.  But that girl might be imaginary, too!)  Little Wild One, Blues Is King, Distance Between Me and You.  He played on every song of the soundtrack of that year, that lonely year between the time I left college and then found Rebecca.  My cynical girl.

Well I'll know right away by the look in her eye
She harbors no illusions and she's worldly-wise
And I'll know when I give her a listen that she
She's what I've been missin'
What I've been missin'. 

We've been listening to a lot of Marshall Crenshaw lately with our boys.  He's an uncomplicated, smart, rocking American Elvis. (Costello variety).  They really dig his late '80s song Calling Out For Love At Crying Time, his hooks, his ringing guitar, his sweet, melodic voice.  Simple, straight-forward rock music.  It's actually tough to do, and nobody seems to do it anymore.  Marshall Crenshaw didn't follow any new fad or craze.  Didn't get pinned to any musical style like rockabilly or cow punk or new wave or next wave.  He wrote and performed rock songs, the 2-3 minute pop song (stretched it out to 4 as time went by, but then so did the Beatles).  Commercially flawed but musically true.  Oh, and he's still doing it.

Okay.  If all that's true.  Then why did we decide as a group that we'll see The Who concert on the same night that Marshall Crenshaw is playing at Jammin' Java?

Really, really tough choice.  Impossible choice.  For us.  It came down to these factors:

1.  We'll get a chance to see Marshall Crenshaw again.  He'll come back, he always does, with the big cult following he enjoys in the DC area.  Who knows...maybe even this year?

2.  We might not get that same chance with The 2 Who.  (Though I recall a Rolling Stone concert tour that brought them to Rich Stadium in Buffalo and people were saying this could be it, the last time they'd tour, better see them now.  That was 1981 in support of Tattoo You.)  It's getting fairly late for The Who, though, don't you think?

3.  I don't get plenty of agreement on this one in my family, but I considered that Endless Wire has some very good songs that I'd love to see them perform, including Mike Post Theme, despite its wacky TV show title.  It's one for The Who pantheon.  Best since You Better You Bet (I know that's not saying much.)

4.  The Who songs obviously mean more to us.  There's no question.  To prove that point, the boys and I gave ourselves one minute on the clock to list as many Who songs as we'd like to hear them perform.  We gave a minute to Marshall Crenshaw, too.  No contest.  We could rattle off more than twice as many Who songs we'd love to hear.  We ran out of time with The Who.  We exhausted our Marshall Crenshaw list in half a minute.  That settled it.  I went to Ticketmaster and paid the relatively enormous freight.

It'll be fun.  I have little doubt.  It's not on their tour setlist but we'll be shouting out for Substitute.  Perhaps too much to ask for them to play A Quick One.  I agree with Bob that's it's not really The Who without Moon and the Ox.  Nothing we can do about that.  Pete's okay with me.  He writes adult-sized rock songs, like Costello and Ray Davies do, too.  Given the chance to see somebody so vital to the background music of our lives, I figure we have to do it, and join the crowd.

But there will always be a little bit of doubt in there.  Maybe.  Maybe we should've opted to get in a little closer, a little tighter, with a drink in my hand and my arm around Rebecca.  And make up for that time when I paid less attention to the music and more attention to the guy up on the scaffolding. Someday, someway. Won't get fooled again?

In Which I Sink to a New Low

Nobody can ever accuse the P-G of not taking advantage of the multimedia benefits that the Web offers over the dead-tree edition.

Specifically, enjoy the sound of leaking natural gas from this story about a gas line break at The Point.  Or, if you would prefer, I can transcribe for you, as follows:

SssssssssSSSSSSsssssSSSSSSS!

Not to be outdone, we here at SWSMMM have managed to score from live audio -- once again, of leaking natural gas -- that was loosed during this meeting between Governor Rendell, Lt. Governor Charles Noll, and Tom Murphy.  Enjoy!

(Picture stolen with impunity from the delightful PittGirl.  We mention PittGirl here in the hopes that if we mention PittGirl enough times, PittGirl will not be overly upset that we have stolen a picture from PittGirl.)

(P.S. -- PittGirl.)

Favorite Waste of Time

Now that I've got a teenager in the house and another teenager in waiting coming up and I've trained them thoroughly to embrace the rock music of my younger days as the music of their days I've got plenty of reasons to go out to hear live concerts these days.  The trouble is, of course, the rock acts of my day don't generally appear in concert anymore.  If they are still alive, and many of them aren't, they are often old, retired, infirm, or plain no good anymore.  If they are still alive and still performing and still famous they tend to perform in large impersonal arenas.  What about the small Cavern Club experience we crave?  I want more of the Pretenders at the 9:30 club experience like last summer!

Yet, here's a sample of the upcoming lineup at the 9:30 club.  It may impress some.  It probably impresses many judging by the sold out performance dates.  But the list leaves me: a) perplexed; b) old; c) largely disinterested.

• Anberlin (Sold Out)
• Middle Distance Runner
• Cute is What We Aim For (Sold Out)
• Jack's Mannequin (Sold Out)
• Guster (Sold Out)
• Killswitch Engage (Sold Out)
• Scissor Sisters (Sold Out)
• Bright Eyes (Sold Out)
• Badly Drawn Boy
• Pepper
• Three Days Grace (Sold Out)
• Steel Pulse

I know Scissor Sisters and I have previously reported that I liked them during their SNL appearance.  I admit that I recently read something about Bright Eyes and sampled one of their/his tunes.  I have heard of Badly Drawn Boy but I can't say where or why or how.  No clue about the rest. Update: I just got back from Borders and happed to see the new Anberlin CD on display, so, curious, I listened to a few sample cuts.  The younger me, around 16, would've dug them I think.

This is, realize, no harsh judgment on the acts themselves or on the club or the youth of today or new music.  Many of these shows might be very appealing.  And perhaps my kids ought to be more engaged in the new rather than the old, and go their own way instead of mine.  This is true.  This is just to say that at the moment when we'd actually love to go out and catch a rock show together we aren't finding what we're hoping to find.

Then along comes March 8.

On that upcoming Thursday evening two rock acts from different stages of my younger days will be appearing in our town, both acts we'd pay money to go see, and they are both playing at different venues at the exact same time!  What rotten luck.

It has led to an interesting dilemma for me and for my boys:

Should we see The Who in the big arena?

Or Marshall Crenshaw at the small coffee house/bar?

Some might say...neither!  But we want to see and hear both.  And we can't.  So we have to choose.  They aren't equally important to us, no.  But we have to weigh the value of the experience (big event vs. smaller event).  Also...um...the price.  That's not irrelevant.  One of the acts commands about 5 times the price of the other. And I've seen one of them already in my college days, in a funny story that I'll tell you about later.

Considering their music, considering where they are today, considering that they are completely different acts, considering the different experiences you might expect given the completely different venues, which would you choose, if you wanted to choose?   And who do you think we picked?

I've Been Scolded

Bob says:

My last-minute appearance at Blogfest Numero Neuf last night only served to remind me that I've left about 47 different topics dangling over the past year or so.

Next week, after (hopefully) Julie gets back a little closer to normal, I resolve to resolve the following issues:

• What the heck is The Bronstein Award, and why did you win it?
• Are you ever going to finish the Leviticus series?
• What ever happened to the dogs?
• Did you ever purchase the music that was suggested to you by your readers?
• Is there any movement on a new name for this blog, now that you and Marathon Man have combined forces?  (Short answer -- no.  Suggestions are welcomed.)
• How willing are you to be a total whore in return for media attention?  (Short answer -- very.)

So tune in next week, when these questions and more will be answered.  I hope.

Tonsil Hockey

Bob says:

Casa di Subdivided is in a bit of a tizzy at the moment -- Julie had her tonsils out last Friday.  It's been a miserable experience for her so far.  Even popsicles, sorbet, and delicious, delicious Jello Pudding Pops have failed to make it even close to tolerable.

More on that later.

Also, if you sneak a peek up there into the upper right corner, you'll get a preview of what I consider to be my proudest moment as a blogger.  More on the coveted Bronstein later, as well.

Nic's Top Ten Films of 2006

With the Oscars a week away I've asked my son Nic, who is a great film historian, the heir to Roger Ebert, and a filmmaker to boot, and a sometime contributer to the comments section, to give us his take on the best movies of 2006.

10. The Heart of the Game

The makers of The Heart of the Game probably couldn’t have imagined the events that happened while they were shooting.  The basketball team in this movie went through so many hardships that you’d swear it was one of those sports movies that come out every year and you can’t tell the difference between them.  But this is a documentary.  The events in the film actually took place and we are actually seeing them.  Like Hoop Dreams, what happens in this movie is more incredible than any sports movie.

9. For Your Consideration

Christopher Guest’s latest film is a funny and accurate depiction of Hollywood and the whole Oscar process.  Personally, I can’t see how a film called Home for Purim could get made much less generate any Oscar buzz, but, in this film, it does.  Fred Willard and Jane Lynch as the T.V. show hosts are hilarious.  It may not be Christopher Guest’s best, but in an age where Norbit passes for entertainment, I’ll take For Your Consideration.

8. Flags of Our Fathers

A great director usually makes one great film in a year.  If a director makes two great films in a year, that is an achievement.  Clint Eastwood made two very powerful films in 2006.  The one flaw of Flags of Our Fathers was that when it tried to be emotional at the end, it wasn’t as emotional as it could have been.  However, the story of how these men were used as symbols makes this one of the best films of the year.  The battle scenes are disturbing, but a more disturbing scene is when they are preparing to reenact the flag raising at Soldier Field and somebody tells them to just pretend the other three men are there.  The film isn’t flawless, but it is a powerful movie that connects very well to today.

7. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

6. Stranger Than Fiction

Two great movies starring Will Ferrell came out this year and they are both a break in his usual routine.  The first was Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.  Now, I know what this looks like.  This looks like a kid putting some crazy movie on his top ten.  But, seriously.  When I saw the trailers for this, I thought it was going to be another one of those Will Ferrell movies, like Anchorman and Old School: movies that have one or two funny moments, but are crap for most of it.  This one was different.  It is completely accurate to life in the South.  It could be used as a historical document of the South.  There are two things I love about this movie.  One is John C. Reilly as Cal Naughton, Jr.  The way he says, “I’m Cal Naughton, Jr.” gets me every time.  Number two is Ricky Bobby’s kids: Walker and Texas Ranger.  I knew kids in South Carolina just like that.

The second movie this year with Will Ferrell was Stranger Than Fiction.  It’s so rare for a movie to be this thoughtful, but this film succeeds at that.  Will Ferrell’s performance is amazing and so is Maggie Gyllenhaal.  I loved the scene where they’re eating cookies together and she explains why she makes cookies.  Now, who doesn’t think you could make the world better with cookies? 

5. A Prairie Home Companion

Robert Altman’s final masterpiece is touchingly brilliant.  So it doesn’t have a plot, but who ever said that movies had to have a plot?  Whenever I think back on my English classes where they tell you everything has to have a plot structure and everything has to be just like this, I think about how wrong they all are.  No film is exactly the same as another film and no film should ever have to fall into the guidelines of an English class.  A Prairie Home Companion is a moving elegy for all things that have gone.

4. The Prestige

Christopher Nolan once again surprises us by turning what could be a dull movie into an intriguing and exciting experience.  Like Batman Begins he makes a great movie out of what has been done before, but not so well.  There were two magician period pieces in 2006 and this is the better one.  The twists and turns of the plot actually work.  You know what, forget what I said earlier about plot.  This movie is all about movies.  The three acts of a magic trick- the pledge, the turn, and the prestige- are the three acts of a movie.  Okay, so maybe movies can fit into the whole plot structure thing.  I can only say that, after this, I am really looking forward to The Dark Knight.

3. Pan’s Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative masterpiece is dark, disturbing, and heartbreaking.  It is certainly not for the squeamish.  But it is an amazing and beautiful film experience.  This film reminds us why we go to the movies.

2. United 93

Paul Greengrass brings a documentary style realism to this gut wrenching dramatization of September 11, 2001.  It’s shocking and disturbing, but that’s the way it should be.  It’s not what you’d call great entertainment, but a story about that day shouldn’t be.  When I saw this, the entire theater was silent after the film ended.  The only sound was someone crying in the first row.  I’ve been to movies where the entire theater erupts into applause, but never a theater that was completely silent.

1. Letters From Iwo Jima

Clint Eastwood’s extremely powerful and emotionally connecting companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers is the best film of the year.  It’s amazing how a movie about death and destruction can be extraordinarily beautiful at the same time.  The relationship between the Ken Watanabe character and the regular soldier seems right out of a Kurosawa film: the fool meets the king theme.  The tank commander who was an Equestrian was a great character.  The character who is supposed to be a spy from the Japanese government has a great flashback scene where he is ordered to kill a dog.

Watanabe’s character is the kind of role that would have been played by Toshiro Mifune.  The Equestrian could have been played by Takashi Shimura, the samurai leader in Seven Samurai.  And, of course, it’s the kind of movie that would have been directed by Akira Kurosawa.  It feels like a Kurosawa movie.  There is simply not enough that can be said about this movie.  It’s a perfect movie and it is virtually impossible to make a perfect movie.  This is a film that every American needs to see because it rips away all preconceptions anyone has about World War II.  This film, I think, solidifies Eastwood’s position as the best living American director.

You Can't See Me

Three members of the Subdivided Family behaved themselves very well when posing for this photo back in December, and are therefore being rewarded by having it posted here.

And one member of the Family Subdivided was a naughty little monkey while posing for this photo -- and is being punished by having this posted here.

Meanwhile, my buddy Chris points out that Dr. Jeff was giving Mary the John Cena "You Can't See Me" gesture on Sunday. 

While I'm sure he'd also like to give her the F.U., I think it's far more likely that he'll have to resort to the Five-Knuckle Shuffle.

The preceding likely only made sense to Mary Worth readers who are also wrestling fans, which is a pretty select company, right there.

Raising Her Sons for War

There's a hidden treasure in a smallish Croatian church in Millvale -- a series of murals painted by Maximilain Vanka.

While many of the murals reflect familiar Christian themes, several are also meant to reflect the Croatian experience in America.  Two in particular stand out:

The Croatian Mother Raises Her Sons for War:

and The Immigrant Mother Raises Her Sons for Industry:

I thought of these murals after reading this story -- another local mother grieving yet another local son, sacrified to a war manufactured only to benefit industry.

Sgt. Kurtz's mother finds solace in that her son felt he had placed his life in God's hands.  Bless her for that, and I hope that her faith, and her knowledge of her son's faith, provides comfort to her in what I'm sure will be a lifetime of grieving.

If the shoe were on my foot, I can't say that I'd be so forgiving.  Rather than look to God's guiding hand, I'd be looking directly at the hand that put my son in harm's way for no goddamn good reason other than to enrich himself and his friends.  "Outrage" isn't a strong enough word. 

"Fury" is the only thing I can think of that comes close.

For Those About to Tweak -- We Salute You

That's right, Mary...gently caress the good Doctor's nipples...you know he loves it.  Oh, yes.  YES!

In other news, it appears that the combination of OxyContin and illegally-obtained Viagra has finally eaten away whatever was left of Rush Limbaugh's brain.

Because, you know -- the media just falls all over itself in its love of that noted African-American qb Peyton Manning.  Stinking liberal media.