The Magic of Winnie the Pooh.

Before I begin this post I just want to mention that I used to be a power lifting and martial arts champion.

In other words I lifted really heavy things and punched people in the heads for trophies, and sometimes cash prizes.

Those are very, very manly things, I am sure you will agree.

Did you get that manly part?

Okay then, on to Winnie the Pooh.

In those emotionally overwhelming  moments when I first held my newborn daughter, I made a decision.

Well the first thing I thought was that somebody needed to take her and hose her off a little because she was covered in goo and it was making me gag a little, but the second thing that I thought was that I was going to make sure my daughter was exposed to the best things that life had to offer, which included reading to her from the classics of literature. (I actually wrote about that in an earlier post.)

So the very first book that I bought for us to read together was this one.

 

As you can no doubt tell from the tears in the cover and the weathered overall look, this book has been read, and reread, many, many times.

However I was in such a hurry to start reading the "classics" to my new born daughter that I literally purchased this book, which is NOT the watered down Disney version by the way, just days after her birth.

Though I was completely convinced that my daughter would have the IQ of a genius, it did occur to me that the current level of her comprehension might make this unsuitable for bedtime reading for at LEAST a few more weeks.

So to prepare her for the first step on her long literary adventure I bought this:

I know, isn't that adorable?

However in the baby instruction book that I bought, (because for some reason she did not come with one), it said that my daughter's eyes may not be able to focus on the mobile very well for the first few months, so I decided to buy one of these for her to sleep on:

And, of course, one of these:

Only the original Pooh bear would suffice for my daughter.

(You don't think I overdid it do you?)

So long story short, my daughter was raised around Winnie the Pooh, and Winnie the Pooh paraphernalia, and yes, she grew up LOVING the Winnie the Pooh stories. (So yes parents OCCASIONALLY the things you want your children to do they will actually do. Remember, I said occasionally!)

So let's fast forward about twenty three years into the future, to two days ago.

There I was surfing the net, looking for adventure movies full of action, and violence (and hopefully some tasteful nudity), to watch this upcoming weekend, when I happened to notice that this movie was also playing at the local theater.

Have you ever smelled a smell, or heard a sound, and suddenly found yourself transported to a different time and place? A distant, happy, nearly forgotten place which seems to envelope you in warm, soothing memories that quickly dissipate just as you find yourself reaching out to touch them?

Suddenly all thoughts of superheroes, giant transforming robots, and immature scatological comedies completely left my mind and all I wanted was to watch this movie.  This animated, G rated, Saturday matinee friendly movie.

Did I mention I used to be a bouncer at a strip club?  Well I was!

But you know I didn't REALLY want to see this move.........alone.

In fact there was only one way I would actually go through with it and humiliate myself by sitting in a sticky theater with a bunch of over caffeinated preschoolers. And let's face it there was NO WAY my too busy to even text her father back, adult daughter was going to want to watch this movie!

Right?

But I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask, so I did.

"So Honey, I happened to see that there was this new, probably completely screwed up, Winnie the Pooh movie out.  And I was wond..."

"Oh yeah, I was going to ask YOU if you wanted to go to that! I think it looks really good!  Do you remember all of that Winnie the Pooh stuff you bought me?  I kept it and still have all of it in storage! (You do?) So can we go tomorrow?"

"Sure.....I mean....if that is what YOU want? I guess I could find the time."

So it looked like we were going after all.

The only potential obstacle to our plan was that the movie started at 10:15 in the morning, which was the only time I could make it due to work commitments, and my daughter is NOT an early riser. (That kids, is what is known as a HUGE understatement!)

So the next day I decided to start waking my impossible to rouse daughter a whole hour before the movie was supposed to start. (Imagine ripping a giant tree trunk out of the ground, only then imagine that when you turn your back it replants itself and makes you start all over, and you will have SOME idea of what it is like to get my daughter out of bed before noon.)

However right when I had a couple of pots and pans to bang together in my hands, and was walking up to her bedroom door, I noticed that she was already in the bathroom getting ready. (Yeah I admit I had an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" moment there.)

Before I knew it she was ready to go and we were on our way. On our way to see Winnie the Pooh.  The matinee showing.  My twenty four year old daughter and I. Why was I doing this again?

On the way we managed to catch up on all of the things that we are both too busy to discuss while living in the same house and sleeping only TWO DOORS AWAY FROM EACH OTHER! (Did I mention that she  texts me from inside her room when she wants to tell me something, rather than open the damn door and say "Hey Dad, I have something to tell you?" Well I am mentioning it now.)

When we got to the theater I told her she could get anything to eat she wanted, my treat.

So she did.

Thirty five dollars later (When did theaters start serving Filet Mignon?), we were ready to find our seats.

As anticipated the smallish theater was full of sticky little ankle biters that had apparently just broken out of the cotton candy factory, and were so hopped up on sugar I swear I saw their eyeballs vibrating.  But once the movie started they settled down to only intermittent screams of "Stop touching me!" and the occasional maniacal giggle.

The movie was okay, nothing special.  To be honest I liked the old Disney version a little better, but it was relatively entertaining. You know, for a cartoon.

But just as I was about to lean over and whisper my disappointment into my daughter's ear, I heard her laugh.

It swear it sounded different than her usual laugh, yet also...familiar.

So I glanced over.

It was just for a moment.  One bittersweet, precious, magical moment.

But it was enough.

Naked is the Night

¡Hola! Everybody...
Some of the worst, most atrocious examples of writing can be found in the social sciences. I think a large part of the reason is that social scientists try too hard to make their writing sound “scientific.”

Every once in a while, however, you run into some great writers who also happen to be great social scientists. Case in point, Luc Sante’s Low Life, the story of New York's Lower East Side, circa 1840-1920. Sante may not be a “social scientist” in the strict sense of the word, but damn! his insights and how he brings to life the culture of the streets that continues to influence our contemporary popular culture, is a rare and wonderful fusion of art and science. Check this little gem of a paragraph…

* * *

-=[ The Naked Night ]=-

The night is the corridor of history, not the history of famous people, or great events, but that of the marginal, the ignored, the suppressed, the unacknowledged; the history of vice, error, of confusion, of fear, of want; the history of intoxication, of vainglory, of delusion, of dissipation, of delirium. It strips off the city’s veneer of progress and modernity and civilization and reveals the wilderness. In New York City it is an accultured wilderness that contains all the accumulated crime of past nights… and it is not an illusion. It is the daytime that is the chimera, that pretends New York is anyplace, maybe with bigger buildings, but just as workaday, with a population that goes about its business and then goes to sleep, a great machine humming away for the benefit of the world. Night reveals this to be a pantomime. In the streets at night, everything kept hidden comes forth, everyone is subject to the rules of chance, everyone is potentially both murderer and victim, everyone is afraid, just as anyone who sets his or her mind to it can inspire fear in others. At night, everyone is naked.

The Big Sleep

¡Hola! Everybody... The one thing I really enjoy about feeling under the weather is giving myself permission to simply lie in my bed with the covers pulled up and curl up with a good book... It’s cold outside, but I’ll step out the corner, get some soup and some goodies and come right back! LOL

* * *

-=[ The Big Sleep ]=-

“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”

-- Raymond Chandler

Those who know me know how much I love to read. I am a voracious reader -- I will read almost anything. Once, while in solitary confinement, I convinced my jailer to smuggle me a book (Dickens’ Bleak House! LOL!) in exchange for a story I told him. I think he gave me the book because he found it so strange I would want a book under those grim circumstances.

What many people don’t know is that I absolutely love mystery/ suspense novels! I mean, I read a lot of highbrow shite, academic journals, The Classics, esoteric research papers, blah, blah, blah, but I really love a good detective novel. Some of my fave authors are (in no particular order) Walter Mosley (his Easy Rawlins series), Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone is fantastic), Richard Stark (talk about hard-boiled!), Jason Starr (hilarious postmodern tales), and many others. I love noir art, because it deals in the complexities of the various grays of a world most people insist in seeing in black and white.

I think part of the attraction of the modern detective/ mystery/ suspense novel is that their protagonists are fallible human beings. For the most part, these are people who don’t have all the answers or maybe even next months rent. They’re not the greatest human beings, but often, when faced with a moral dilemma, they try to do the best they can with what they have.

And sometimes, as in life, it’s not enough...

The fallible detective is in stark contrast to the earlier detectives, like Sherlock Holmes, who were intellectual giants and solved a mystery through the sheer force of logical reasoning.

Raymond Chandler could be called the father of the modern detective and his The Big Sleep is important in that it represents a departure from the traditional detective genre. The novel reflects changes that reflect the world in which it was written. Chandler’s world is mapped put by corrupt networks -- some criminal, but many others official. Chandler’s protagonist inhabits the gray areas between these networks. In fact, it is these gray areas that are his raison de etre -- his reason for being.

This a claustrophobic urban space that, while set in Southern California, could easily be any major city considering that there are almost no exteriors. Like a series of points with no connections, rooms, cars, and even phone booths are the compartments in which the story develops.

There is no introduction to Phillip Marlowe, the main character; we are thrust straight into the investigation as it gets underway. This is endemic of the nature of the world and the character, a new kind of hero who seems only to come alive when there is a crime to solve. We know nothing of his background and we only see him return to his office, and only then, when a trail has been exhausted. Marlowe combines a tattered infallibility -- a hard drinker who seems to be beaten by men and women alike. Yet, he has an almost uncanny sense of authority, which allows him to float over the twists, and turns of the case -- a participant observer randomly following leads until a solution is finally reached.

That this is so far removed from the Sherlock Holmes School of detective where, where the plot centers around the immense intellectuality of the detective -- is perhaps the most significant and influential factor in the novel’s importance.

The Big Sleep was adapted to film by none other than William Faulkner starring the great Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. Chandler himself would work in Hollywood, something he hated but he needed the money.