My So Called Life

Yum Yum Dim Sum

/ Shane / 2 Comments

The other day we took a trip up to Chinatown to get some dim sum at Triple Crown Restaurant.

Usually when we go to Chinatown we go to regular Chinese restaurants, but we’ve talked about getting dim sum for a long time. First off, the idea of getting many small dishes and trying all of them is awesome for anybody, but it’s especially awesome when you have kids. If they don’t like something, you just move on to the next thing. Second off, we have a copy of Dim Sum for Everyone signed by Grace Lin, one of our favorite author/illustrators. We’ve read it many times, so the kids are sort of familiar with the concept of dim sum, and were excited to try it. (Note that the title of the post refers to a different dim sum book by that name that we’ve read with the kids, so they’re pretty well versed in the concept.)

Well, all for naught, because Evie didn’t want to try anything. She was her usual picky self, and tried a couple of tiny bites that she was pre-disposed to dislike, and therefore wasn’t going to like no matter what. She wouldn’t even eat any of the plain white rice.

Not to worry though, because Ollie *LOVED* it. His love more than made up for Evie’s apathy. The two of them have always been night and day about food. Considering we’ve raised them more or less identically in terms of what kind of food we offer them, etc., I believe Sara’s comment was, “I guess it goes to show you, it doesn’t matter what you do, some kids want to eat and some don’t.”

Anyway, there’s probably nothing Ollie likes more than eating a bunch of different things. Well, there is one thing he likes more, which is eating with chopsticks. Holy smokes did he love that. Don’t even think of trying to take them away from him. He even manged to pick a few things up with them.

The only think Ollie didn’t like is when he burned his face off. Oh, the poor boy, I’ve never felt so sorry for him. He had a sesame ball on his plate, and we assumed, like an adult, he’d take a small bite of it. Instead he quickly crammed the whole thing in his mouth. It was HOT and he lost his poor mind. He obviously thought he could get rid of the burning by trying to swallow it down as fast as he could, rather than spitting it out right away. His face went nuclear and he started shaking like a convulsion. We got him to spit it out and swallow some water, but, I’m not going to lie, it was very frightening. He cried a little bit, and then immediately went back for the sesame balls. Oh, to be a kid again.

Overall, everyone thought it was pretty great, except perhaps Evie. She did, however, enjoy the giant fish/crab/lobster tanks covering one wall, so at least she had something to do.

There was one definite high point of the evening for me. I’m sure what Evie meant to say was, “Yon television program is displaying raccoons.” But what she actually did was point across the room and shout, “I see rats!” There might be worse things to shout in a restaurant, but I don’t know what.

I’m so over Superbowl Commercials

/ Shane / Leave a comment

We’re all done with Superbowl commercials, right?

It seems like every year they just get lamer and lamer. At this point, they’re just primarily regular commercials, the same as we’d see on any regular day. Even the “highlight” commercials really aren’t that fantastic, and they certainly aren’t worth watching, much less rehashing in the morning.

I watch football after the kids have gone to bed, which means I’m usually sacrificing sleep to watch it. I normally fast-forward as much as possible. For the Superbowl, however, I don’t want to fast-forward through any of the commercials, so I’m stuck with the whole 4 hours.

Was it worth it? For what? Aside from seeing a lot of ads, what did I gain? Were any of the commercials worth losing sleep over?

The smart thing to do would be just to watch the rehash of the “best” commercials in the morning. I saw a list of the “best” ones from this year…even the rehash is stupid. There simply wasn’t anything worth watching.

Maybe the commercials got worse, and maybe regular commercials got better, so the “special” ones don’t stand out anymore. Maybe in a post-wardrobe-malfunction world, it’s just too risky for the companies to do anything too crazy, and risk reprisal. Maybe in this economy people can’t afford to be frivolous with their ridiculously expensive air time. Maybe the companies figured out that a regular commercial gets about the same amount of publicity/revenue as a clever one, so it’s not worth the effort. Maybe the tolerance for commercials is lower, now that we generally fast-forward through them.

At least in the past, people would be buzzing about them the next morning. As far as I can tell, nobody is really talking about them anymore.

In retrospect, the whole thing was stupid anyway – were we really that amazed that commercials were entertaining? How did this get started in the first place? The first time I really remember it being a thing was during the dotcom boom. But I wonder if I went back and watched those commercials now, if they would still seem interesting.

Anyway, it’s done now. I’m declaring it over. Next year, feel free to skip them. Once we stop paying attention, the media will stop too.

The Artist

/ Shane / 8 Comments

Since the kids were born, Sara and I see movies in the theater very infrequently. As I said the last time we saw a movie, when you’re only seeing about one movie a year, it’s got to be a good one. You’ve got to make it count. That’s why when we got the opportunity last weekend to see a movie, we quickly turned to the Academy Award Nominations to separate the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

Hugo leads the pack with 11 nominations, however, it wasn’t playing at the theater closest to us. Close behind was The Artist, with 10 nominations, so we took the Academy at their word and checked it out.

I wish we wouldn’t have.

It’s not that The Artist is a terrible film. It’s an okay film at best. I won’t say I wasn’t entertained by the movie, but I will say my entertainment level was below probably half of the movies I’ve seen this year. And for a movie with 10 Academy Award nominations, that’s not really up to snuff, is it?

Sara and I tried to explain to ourselves later how this film garnered so many nominations, and the best guess we have is that Hollywood absolutely loves movies about Hollywood. I was positively shocked when I looked up some of the reviews and read how absolutely glowing they were. Again, it’s not a bad movie, but reading the reviews they made it sound like it was the greatest movie ever made. I have to say, I feel like there is some kind of emperor’s-new-clothes thing going on with this movie. Everybody has been told how good it is and how much they have to like it, that they think they *do* like it, because they don’t want to disagree and say it really wasn’t that good.

The only thing the movie had going for it was a gimmick: it’s a silent film. Now, full disclosure, I did not know this going in, and it’s something you should be prepared for. I knew the subject of the movie was silent films, but I didn’t know that it was actually a silent film. So I could certainly see the argument that it was unique and different, and perhaps if we saw tons and tons of movies we would appreciate it on that front. But the problem was not that it was a silent film, but that it wasn’t a very good film.

The Artist is up for Best Picture this year. Can someone honestly tell me they enjoyed it as much as say The Departed or A Beautiful Mind? Put it in the same class as Schindler’s List or Forrest Gump? Is it as iconic as Rain Man or Silence of the Lambs? Will it be remembered like The Godfather?

The answer is no.

It has an interesting gimmick. Maybe it’s worth seeing, maybe it’s not. But if you’re only going to see one movie a year, it shouldn’t be this one. It can’t be this one. You can not tell me it was the best movie of the entire year.

Maybe I am a curmudgeon who just doesn’t like things. Maybe seeing only one movie a year sets my expectations too high, and I didn’t judge this movie fairly. But let me also say this: the movie put Sara to sleep. 10 potential Academy Awards, and it put Sara to sleep. Even my mom, who said she really enjoyed the movie, said she almost fell asleep.

Is that the mark of the best movie of the entire year, that it lulls you to sleep??

This could have actually happened

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Last night I had a dream that Sara was driving, and I was navigating. We were trying to decide between two routes to take. Ultimately, Sara opted to take the slightly longer route because the asphalt was “made from whole wheat”.

A Eulogy

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My Aunt Sue wrote a eulogy for my Grandma, which was so much better than my own attempt. I felt like it really captured the essence of my Grandma. Anyway, here it is:

Mom was born to Bert & Elizabeth Tow, a twin to William. The twins were separated at an early age and my mother was raised by her fraternal grand-parents. When she was in her teen years she went back to live in Detroit with her parents and brother where she graduated from the Dominican high school. Upon graduating from a Catholic all girls’ school she thought she would go into the convent. Anyone who knows her will chuckle; someone who had 7 children certainly didn’t belong in a convent.

My mom & dad lived in several towns before settling down in Janesville. My mom took on several roles in her life, not only as mother to us but to several other children in the neighborhood. She was the disciplinarian as my dad worked 2 and 3 jobs to support our family. Mom tried to go to work for a little while outside of the home but that didn’t prove to be profitable. With 7 kids, it was hard to find a babysitter for that many children. My mom had to try to salvage some kind of sanity so she volunteered at Mercy Hospital as a (Pink Lady).

My parents were very proud people; they taught us a good work ethic, and how to love one another. They were proud that they never had bad credit, which was a worry my mom had till this day. My mom lived a long good life. She went more places, saw more countries than she had ever imagined. That in part was due to her children being sprinkled around the world at different times.

Talking with the Snyder girls in July and reminiscing about times when we were young and listening to how much my mom touched their lives, it makes one stop and realize how other people were touched by her kindness.

My mom told me one day that she made me into the person I am today and I guess that is a correct statement. For if it wasn’t the hard lessons I was taught, the parenting skills I learned, the kindness and love for my siblings and closeness of family, I would be a different person. We always knew that we were loved. My mom was a good story teller. She should have been a best selling author. Mom had a good sense of humor. Erin from Hospice tells me she was visiting my mom and she told her she had food on her chest, to which my mom replied, “I am saving some for later”. Just recently when it came time for the hospital bed, so it would make her life easier, she flipped flopped on wanting the bed. I asked her why and she said, “Because she didn’t want to die in a hospital bed; she wanted to tide in her own bed”. I told her we didn’t want her to die, so that’s why she was going in the hospital bed. She STUCK OUT HER TONGUE AT ME.  That meant to me that she really knew what was good for her but change was hard for my mom to accept. She hated to ask for help. She hated losing her independence but also was smart enough to realize what was in her best interest.

I am selfish and sad to let her go. But I know my mother was a Christian and a child of God. She will be in heaven and I will see her again when the Lord calls me home.

Let’s celebrate her life and share our memories and stories of BETTY JANE CATHERINE ANN ELIZABETH TOW HALBACH together.

I love you mom,
Susan Mullen