Baby Wardrobe Malfunctions

Last fall, a few weeks after The Civee and I found out we were having a baby, we were walking through the baby section of Target and saw this onesie (and yes, that’s a technical term) that had a dinosaur playing a guitar, exclaiming ‘You Rock.’  We thought that it was cute and decided that boy or girl, our child would look good in it.

Well, Hope has outgrown all her newborn clothes and is now onto the three-month size (even though she’s a little more than six weeks old) so The Civee and I figured now would be a good time to have her wear the very first thing we ever bought for her.  As you can see in the picture, she was quite happy to be wearing it (she smiles all the time and it’s pretty cool).  Some people have commented that the outfit is nice, but because it’s blue and gray, it’s not really girly.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around what that means.  Hope has a lot of pink, red and purple clothes and looks really good in them.  But there’s nothing wrong with her diversifying her color palette. Besides, as she is one of the world’s youngest Yankees fans, I’d much rather have her wear the traditional Yankee colors than one of pink outfits with a pink interlocking NY (even though she has one of those too).

So people think that the blue and grey isn’t girly enough.  But the guitar-playing dinosaur is really cool.  And that’s another thing with most of the girls clothes out there.  Go to any baby clothing aisle and (besides the color) you’ll notice a tremendous difference between the boy’s clothes and the girl’s clothes.  The girl’s shirts often have messages like “I’m So Cute” or “Mommy’s Little Sweetie” or “Future Princess” written on the front.  On the other hand, the boy’s shirts have things like “You Rock” or “Little Fire Chief” or “Future Rocket Scientist.”  Notice anything different here?  While there’s nothing wrong with exclaiming a baby’s cuteness, why should my daughter feel unladylike if her parents wish to proclaim the possibility that one day, she could be a rocket scientist, fire chief or rock star?

And as I mentioned, the dinosaur playing the guitar is really cool.

Goodbye Jack Bauer, A Nation Turns Its Back on You

Back during Season 1 of 24, each episode would start with a voiceover by Jack in which he declared the events of that day to be the longest day of his life.

Nine years (our time, not his) and eight seasons of 24 later, Jack might dispute that assertion (or at least say he had eight really long, bad days).  Despite the changes in presidential administrations, CTU staff and nefarious villains, one constant has remained: Jack Bauer will put himself on the line for what is right.

And here he is today, at the end of his eighth longest (and final) day.  The U.S. government is in turmoil, a foreign government he nearly decapitated will be gunning for him and Jack Bauer is a man without a country.  Hardly the thanks one would get for putting ones life on the line.

But Jack Bauer would have it no other way.

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Lost: One Last Time

Way back when I first started watching Lost, I was drawn to the show because of all the mysteries.  While the characters were somewhat interesting, I watched because I wanted to find out more about the Island.  As the seasons progressed, sure, I liked the characters, but I wanted to learn more about things like the DHARMA Initiative, the smoke monster and the frozen donkey wheel.

Well, tonight was Lost’s final episode.  And not all of my questions have been answered.  But the finale was so emotionally satisfying, especially for the show’s characters that I find myself not caring about the mysteries.

Funny how these things work.

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It Only Ends Once

Twenty-four hours from now, one of my favorite television shows will start its final episode.

While other people have expressed despair about LOST ending, I’m not feeling it.  I know I’ll miss the show once it’s not on the air every week from January through May.  But this is a day that I’ve been waiting for since I watched the first episode on DVD during the summer of aught-five.  Some questions will be answered, but more importantly, the story of Jack, Locke, Desmond, Sawyer, Hurley, Ben and all the rest will be over.  I’m not glad that it’s over, but I’m glad that we’re at the end of the story (if that makes any sense).

To prepare for the final episode, I’m going into a blackout mode.  Since I first got into Lost, I’ve followed other Web sites (like DarkUFO and DocArzt).  But because the end is so soon, and apparently, spoilers are out there, I’m enacting radio silence (or, more accurately, Web invisibility) until after tomorrow’s episode.  I’ve been spoiled for things in the past, but I want to go into tomorrow with a blank slate.

I really don’t have any theories as to how it will all end.  While I’m not as hostile to the Sideways universe as I was at the beginning of Season Six, I hope the story ends on the Island in the universe we’ve been watching these six years.  It would be great to get some more answers to the questions we’ve had along the way, but if they don’t answer everything, I’m cool with that.

I did have one thought the other day- Desmond and Jack first met in a stadium following Jack’s performing surgery on Sarah and had the following exchange:

DESMOND: Ah, a girl, right?

JACK: A patient.

DESMOND: Ah, but a girl patient. What’s her name?

JACK: Her name’s Sarah.

DESMOND: What’d you do to her then?

JACK: Do to her?

DESMOND: You must have done something worthy of this self-flagellation.

JACK: I told her — I made a promise I couldn’t keep — I told her I’d fix her and I couldn’t. I failed.

DESMOND: Well, right. Just one thing — what if you did fix her?

JACK: I didn’t.

DESMOND: But what if you did?

JACK: You don’t know what you’re talking about, man.

DESMOND: I don’t? Why not?

JACK: Because with her situation that would be a miracle, brother.

DESMOND: Oh, and you don’t believe in miracles? Right. Well then, I’m going to give you some advice anyway. You have to lift it up.

JACK: Lift it up?

DESMOND: Your ankle. You’ve got to keep it elevated. It’s been nice chatting.

JACK: Jack.

DESMOND: Jack, I’m Desmond. Good luck, brother. See you in another life, yeah?

You have to lift it up. In the Sideways universe, the Island is at the bottom of the ocean.  What if all Jack has to do is lift it up?  Stupid idea, but I just thought I’d share.

If you’re a Lost fan, I hope you enjoy tomorrow as much as I do.  If you’ve never seen the show, it’s not too late to start watching.  I may not have a post up until much later after the finale, but I’m sure I’ll have some sort of reaction.

See you in another life.

That One With The Ice Planet, The Green Muppet and Lobot

I didn’t realize this earlier (if I had, this entry would have been posted yesterday, instead of today), but yesterday, May 21, 2010 was the 30th anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back.

Now I feel old.

I was born in ’77, the year Star Wars came out.  I don’t have exact memories, but I have flashes of memories of seeing Star Wars in the theaters (and back then, it was in the theaters for years, not weeks like the movies of today) a few different times.  I was hugely into Star Wars as a kid.  But for some reason it took me a while to see Empire.  But unlike with Episode IV, I do remember the first time I saw Empire.

It was actually a few years after it came out- sometime in April or May of ’83, right before Return of the Jedi (which I saw on its opening night in a drive in, but that’s another story).  In that spring of ’83, I was five and after seeing several commercials for Jedi, my father knew that I needed to see Empire before seeing Jedi.

Or else I would have been spoiled big-time.

So King Classic found a theater somewhere in North Jersey that was having a double feature of Star Wars and Empire back to back.  And it was on a Friday.  So my father took me out of kindergarten that day, sat through Star Wars for yet another time with me and then also sat through Empire with me.

As a five-year-old, the movie blew my mind.  And it still continues to do so, probably because I gotten it more as I’ve aged.  I have to say that Star Wars and Empire are tied for first on my favorite movie list (followed closely by UHF), but I do have a better story for the first time I saw Empire.  And maybe because I saw it two years after it came out, I shouldn’t feel so old.

Lost: What They Died For

It wasn’t supposed to be him.

If, way back during Lost Season 1, you were to go through all of the survivors of Oceanic 815 and pick one to be the protector of the Island for all eternity, the smart money would have been on John Locke.  Locke believed in the power of the Island and experienced its benefits first hand.  The actions he took were to explore the Island and learn about its secrets.  Locke’s main rival, Jack Shepard was everything Locke was not.  Rather than believing that the Island was some special place, he was focused on escaping it and getting back to his life.  The protector of the Island was supposed to be John Locke.  Jack Shepard was supposed to leave the Island and save those who needed to be saved off of it.

Yet here we are.  Six seasons later, with What They Died For, the second-to-last episode of Lost.  John Locke as we know him is dead,  A quasi-immortal centuries-old being is using his likeness.  And Jack Shepard, who was willing to go to “war” to get off the Island, experienced hell off it, traveled through space and time to get back and now willingly accepted the mantle of Island protector.

Congratulations Jack Shepard.

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A Month of Hope

The Civee and I can’t believe it: we’ve kept our daughter Hope alive for a month!

The past month has certainly been different for us- having to arrange our schedule around her and paying attention to every single little cry to tell if she needs food, to be changed, or just wants our attention.  But it’s been a lot of fun.  We have this little person who’s developing her own personality.  She can smile (we think), lift her head up and give us some serious eye contact.  She also likes to go out with mom and dad.  The Civee and I have taken her to all sorts of places and not once has she caused a scene (so far).

If I had one complaint, it would be that everyone who says babies sleep 16 hours per day was lying.  Because whenever it’s my time to watch Hope late at night, she’s wide awake.  Of course, it could just be she wants to hang out and watch Sledge Hammer! and Lost with me.  And I’m perfectly fine with that.

The surprising thing (to me) is that I haven’t dropped her or forgotten her anywhere.  There’s still time to do that, but with each day, I get a little better at this parenting thing.

 

Jacob Needs Help and The Candidates Are Way Across The Sea

Mother
Can you keep them in the dark for life?
Can you hide them from the waiting world?
Oh, Mother

Around this time last year, I was all but ready to declare Eloise Hawking the worst mother ever.  But after seeing the third-to-last episode of Lost, Across the Sea, I’m not so sure.

Tonight, we met the mysterious mother of Jacob and fLocke/the Man in Black.  Of course, she wasn’t their real mother.  She killed their real mother and raised them as her own children.  Strike one.  She played mind games with them to the point of denying the existence of life off the Island.  Strike two.  And after the birth mother was unprepared to give a name to her second child, mother let the poor kid live his whole life without giving him a name.  Strike three.

No wonder Smokey is so pissed.

Continue reading “Jacob Needs Help and The Candidates Are Way Across The Sea”

Weezer: The Year of Nothing

The final chapter in my article about Weezer between Pinkerton and the Green Album is up at All Things Weezer, which you can read here.

As frustrating as it is that there was all this material the band worked on that never made it out of the studio, it was enjoyable to work on this article.  I got to dig through some old-school Usenet posts and get some new information from sources close to the band (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase).

Who knows, one day we may get to hear more of what Weezer recorded in ’98.  Then again, that stuff may stay in the vaults forever.