Holy, Schmoly, Poly

Another essential part of Christmastime, aside from sickness, is the obnoxious lighting arrangements people put up on and around their houses. Just about everybody loves Christmas lights in some form. Some go for the minimal approach. Some go for the maximal approach. And those who go for the maximal approach, do so in a delightful range of expense, effort and sheer tastelessness.


Since my childhood the tacky light tour has been a family ritual, where all (or most--in later years Mom bowed out) of us would pile into a car, pick a neighborhood or two, and go in search of shining tackiness. Some neighborhoods, like our own, for instance, were too restrained to be any fun. Almost all white lights--maybe the occasional few windows with yellow or orange candles--and multicolored trees gleaming through the windows. Some neighborhoods were quite elegant, with large, red-bowed wreathes hung on a gable or on the windows, cleverly placed floodlights, and a few accenting white lights in windows or trees.



Other neighborhoods veered toward tack, with the multicolored strings tracing the house outline or a door, and perhaps a lit Santa or manger scene, and the appearance of blue candles in the windows.

Blue candles. That's one thing I've never understood about some folks' decorations. Why did they want Bunsen burners in the windows? What was the blue supposed to signify? What does Christmas have to do with natural gas? Perhaps in Louisiana or Texas I could possibly understand such a thing, but not New England. Hell, as a kid, I loved blinking lights. I wanted a whole tree full of blinkers. I thought steadily shining lights were useless and boring. Whenever Mom and Dad went to a holiday party, it was a given that they'd come home to a house with newly-installed blinking colored lights in the windows (except in Lisa and Julie's rooms, who didn't let me change them).

As the years went on, I noticed that we seemed to have fewer and fewer blinkers, until they were all gone. At some point I asked Mom about it and she said, "Yes, your Dad and I never replaced them when they burnt out. We don't have any more."


I was too old to be very disappointed, but I do remember feeling somewhat violated.


So anyway, looking for the most ridiculous, disproportionate, mismatched, overcrowded, garish and even creepy Christmas light job was a family sport. We found trailer parks and crowded semi-urban neighborhoods (crowded suburb-style neighborhoods do occur in central New Hampshire, and did even in the 80's) the best hunting grounds. There were some real decorative heroes there, including one trailer outlined entirely in blue light strings. And the blue strings had darkened bulbs moving along their length with regular timing, so that the trailer, with the blue lights strung along top, bottom and both sides, resembled a kind of tractor tread. This accompanied, of course, plenty of reindeer, at least a few Santas, and a couple of lit-up trees in the yard. This was the kind of masterpiece we could look forward to in rural New Hampshire. (And of course, we wondered what it did to the people's electricity bill--but that was obviously their problem.)

So here in Rhode Island, there's plenty of Christmas spirit to go around too. There area few streets and neighborhoods which I've noticed over the years have great holiday displays, and so last year, when Katie and I were still just dating (haven't gotten that far with the Pup & Ben series yet, but I will eventually...) Katie and I started down here in North Kingstown and then worked our way up to East Greenwich, where I'd lived for several years before moving into the condo. And we were pretty disappointed. Even those neighborhoods I'd known to be spectacular, were kind of half-assed this time around. Why? The horrible economy? Possibly...we saw some very classy homes in East Greenwich, of course, but not the smorgasbord of multicolored tastelessness we'd been expecting.


And then, after Christmas, up in New Hampshire for New Year's....we visited the same neighborhoods my family had gone to in my childhood, and had an even bigger letdown. Just like North Kingstown and East Greenwich...a very weak display. Were fewer people able to afford lights, or electricity, or even in the homes at all? It was hard to know...but like the lessened snow of recent years, the scarcity of Christmas lights seemed like a dimming of the entire holiday.

So just tonight, Kate and I went on this year's tacky lights tour, and we decided to try an area we'd never seen before. So we headed up to Warwick and Cranston, cities we drive past and through regularly, but almost never explore. (We saw a bit of Warwick last summer when we visited the Gaspee Days festival--and it was a great little area--but that's almost it.)


We drove up to that general area--too dark, and we too unfamiliar, to find the same little neighborhood again--and started following side streets where promising light displays led us. And there were a few winners. Blow-up snowmen, Santas and reindeer, wire-framed lit reindeer, polar bears and trees, lit "Merry Christmas" signs, chicken wire-type grids studded with lights and hung from the shrubs, and of course, strings and strings of light along windows, doors, gables, gutters, and sometimes tossed pretty strangely on trees.


We only took a few photos, but over the course of an hour and a half (which left us both shamefully tired) we wandered through enough blocks and side streets that we saw some quality chintz. No one street filled with competitive neighbors trying to outdo the rest, and the most overdone home we did find, the owner came out and asked if we were going to post our photos.

On principle, I'd rather not, but the layout was pretty sweet. Besides, the guy who was looking for some sort of publicity has no idea who I am or where I'm actually posting these photographs--so I'll be content with anonymity.

So! Enjoy the images of our Christmas light gawking...

Holiday Ailments

We're approaching Christmas, and of course, there's plenty going on. Not least of which, we've been visited with the holiday illnesses while carrying on with everything else. Annoying, slightly-more-than-mild cold, holiday doldrums, and for me, just like last year, an episode of what Kate and I have come to refer to as "the crap".

"The crap" is basically ceullitis in my lower legs--a microbial infection causing painful swelling of my skin layers, leading to pink, tender raised patches. When in the ankle area, it feels exactly like a minor sprain, so when I'm not alert for it, I'm easily tricked into thinking that I have some minor orthopedic issue until I see the telltale red and pink splotches, and then I know the truth. I don't want to go into a full history of this somewhat loathsome condition, except to say that I first came down with it working on the foullest scow I've ever set foot on, a decrepit old 90-foot catamaran called the Atlantic Twin, that I worked on during the summer of 2007 doing offshore sediment coring. That sixties-era bathtub should've been left on the bottom of the harbor when it sank several years ago, but the owners are too cheap to replace it (they don't believe in reinvestment in their own business, apparently). One gross detail before I move on, even though a doctor said this probably wasn't the cause (wrong type of microorganism involved, E. coli versus Staph aureus): you don't put toilet paper in the toilets aboard the Twin. The septic system can't handle paper, so you put the toilet paper in...the waste baskets.

That's how business is done there. That's a big part of why I quit that job, and I don't mind posting it publicly.

Anyway, since that summer I've been blessed with the crap. Every so often it flares up, I get blotches and soreness in one ankle or another, I glob some antimicrobial cream on it, and it goes away. That's how it normally goes. Sometimes an outbreak is the result of an impact or some kind of trauma, like knocking my shin hard against an object or even wearing a very tightly laced pair of shoes (gave myself a case once by lacing my basketball shoes too hard). And my cowboy boots have led to an outbreak or two.

My cowboy boots. I love those boots. I have about five pairs: three dark brown, one light brown, one white. They're sharp, they make me look 6'2", when they have leather soles they make great dancing shoes and, the reason I got my first pair at all, they're fantastically comfortable. When I first moved out of my parents' house in 1993, I was living in South Boston with my cousin Drew. A good college friend of mine, Blaine Connor, came to visit one weekend. We went on the obligatory big bad bender, but he also showed me his cowboy boots. I was kind of incredulous at first that he even owned any. Blaine, my introverted, slightly awkward, intellectual college buddy, wearing one of the most visible symbols of Texas-style outsized ignorant ego.

"They're the most comfortable shoes you'll ever wear," he told me. "We have the same size feet. Try them on."

I did, and was immediately convinced I wanted a pair. I had little money, so I had to wait a few years, but I got 'em, at a little western apparel store on swanky Charles Street in Boston (same place where I got my first Snowy River hat--and I like Australian hats (Akubra brand in particular), because the cylinder on the Australian hats is lower, not as tall and ostentatious as the Stetsons or Resistols. But anyway). I learned quickly that flat leather-soled boots are a bad idea in a New England winter, especially when you're trying to walk up Beacon Hill. So soon I had to add a pair of lug-soled hiking boots to my wardrobe as well.

Anyhow, I've loved cowboy boots for almost twenty years now, and found them excellent footwear for walking, work and dance--all work, that is, except in a smooth-floored fluid dynamics laboratory with tanks of water around and occasional spills--worse than Beacon Hill in winter, you might say. So I reverted to sneakers as my default, and so it is to this day. The cowboy boots have been largely retired. They sit, piled up, neglected and increasingly dusty, in a few odd closet corners.

Except for when I roust a pair out now & then to wear for something somewhat dressy, like Friday's Christmas concert in Boston, at the Old South Church.

Another tangent here. In the mid-90's--actually, around the time I finally bought my first pair of cowboy boots--I worked as an administrative assistant--basically, a secretary--at Harvard University. Decent pay, okay benefits (but the real benefits to me were four things: unlimited access to Harvard's gyms, libraries, music practice rooms, and free tuition to one extension class per semester. It was a bastardized way of being enrolled, as far as I was concerned). One of my friends there was a woman named Manya, a librarian, and fellow lover of the arts. One of those years she introduced me to a holiday concert by the group Chorus Pro Musica, in which a friend of hers sang (and still sings). The show featured a mix of holiday music new and old and, my favorite part, a sing-along caroling part in the second half. I've loved singing for as long as I can remember, so this concert has remained a favorite of mine. I've been to almost every one since.

This year was no different, particularly since Kate and I weren't going to be blowing the dough on high-priced Nutcracker tix or anything. So we teamed up with Gordon, a family friend who lives in the area, had dinner (at his place, and he's an effortlessly graceful host), met Manya at the church, and settled in for the concert. (And my music-snob comment on the show: very good as usual, but I was disappointed in this year's sing-along portion. The new music director of the Chorus Pro Musica plainly doesn't believe in sing-alongs, as this year it was reduced to an "echo-the-refrain" bit for one tune, and only one other sing-along carol. We didn't even get to join in on Silent Night.

I mean, come on!

Even so, the musicianship was sound and even though Kate found the Old South Church to be somewhat plainly and tastelessly painted inside, I adore high-thrown church spaces, even when they're a bit cavelike. The whole imitation-of-heaven concept definitely works a little magic on my brain.

The best thing about the evening, aside from meeting up with our friends: bringing Eva along. Both Kate and I want to expose her to a lot of music, and raise a music lover in her. We've learned of a school for babies and young children run by the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, and one way or another, we want to save up for Eva to take classes there. Aside from raising a child who's confident, honest and alert, I have a few goals for Eva's education (aside from things she'll do in school, which will be mostly up to her): she's going to learn how to dance. By the time she's twelve, she'll be able to waltz, swing and salsa, at the very least. (And that means, salsa with hip motion. My mother once caught me as a kid, and being a kid I had no idea what I was doing, waggling my hips while I was doing a little dance at home, and she practically spat at me to stop immediately. "Don't move your hips like that," she hissed, "it's immoral.")

Not in my book it ain't. If you got it, use it. Learn how to handle it. Don't live in willful ignorance of it.

Anyhow, Eva will know how to dance. She'll know how to throw. None of this girly, throw-half-your-body-while-awkwardly-shotputting-the-ball-five-feet nonsense. She'll learn to step, snap the hips and let the arm follow through, keeping her eye on the target all the while. My mother was an athlete. She struck out half the Moultonboro fire department in the softball game at one of their annual picnics. From that year on, they never let her pitch again. So Eva will learn some athletic skills.

And she'll know some things about music. Maybe Kate and I will have her learn an instrument. Maybe we'll institute family music hour (or two or three hours) on Sundays. In addition to whatever other little devices we find...but this girl will grow up with an appreciation for rhythm, melody and harmony.

She already seems to be receptive. My fail-safe method to settle her down, unless she's just starving, is to hold her in my arms, and sing or hum (usually hum, since I've forgotten many of the words) old Christmas carols to her (I love the old English carols...especially the Coventry carol). Eva's eyes widen, her mouth drops a little open, she falls into silence and she just stares at me while I make a tune for her. (Sometimes she starts to cry again after I switch songs, and I start to wonder if she's developing favorites, but it's probably more that I stop for a few seconds before making up my mind what to start up with next.)

Besides, there's the whole we-named-her-for-an-impeccably-beautiful-singer thing, and all. We'd kind of like her to be into music.

Beyond that, Eva does seem to quiet down when I put something soothing on the stereo (my old carols do the trick), and she genuinely seems to enjoy this cute little Baby Mozart DVD Kate picked up a week or two ago, mixing some of Mozart's lighter and shorter pieces with simple, colorful images. Though Eva only likes it once a day. I'd go as far as to guess she either loses the ability to concentrate after a while, or else she even gets bored. But when limited to every few days, she's absorbed.

So we brought her to the concert. Eva's shown the ability to focus for up to an hour at a time without getting squidgy, so we guessed we could get two separate stretches out of her that Friday night: first half, then a quick feeding and change, and then (hopefully) second half.

We were half right.

She was almost perfect during the first half, and was even looking forward and up when Kate held her (she likes to sit up, even though she needs help right now). The clapping alarmed the little baby just a bit--and I was careful to show her my hands clapping, but also to keep them very quiet--but she seemed to be hearing the music.

The second half was a bit different. The brass quintet starting off the set seemed to scare her quite a bit, and she never quite recovered. Kate and I took turns walking her back and forth in the lobby to keep her quiet, but she never quite settled down.

And that was just the baby. See, I'd made the mistake of wearing my cowboy boots. I'd forgotten about the crap.

Not long after we'd arrived at Gordon's for dinner, my right Achilles started feeling sore, so that I couldn't walk quite normally. I began limping a bit, and assumed I'd gone too hard at the calf raises at the Y the night before. (Just like, the first time I ever got it, while working on Chincoteague Island off the Virginia coast in 2007, I assumed I'd wracked my ankle up jogging for the first time in two months.) The tendon grew progressively more sore through dinner, so that I was having trouble walking when we set out for the church (fortunately only five blocks away). I was stumping along like a brave old invalid by the time we reached Old South Church, and it was a relief to sit down. Once we did I began stretching the tendon, thinking that, being an orthopedic thing, I could relax it and reduce the pain. So I stretched that damn ankle for the whole first half of the concert, and nothing. It hurt more than ever after intermission.

Then Eva got squidgy, and I took her out for a few lobby laps, and then Kate came out to take over. By then I was in even more pain and I thought that she might have been right at dinner, when she suggested right away that the crap was back. I pulled off (with some difficulty) my right boot, pulled down the sock, and whaddayaknow. This bright pink swollen patch covering my entire Achilles tendon area, both sides.

I was kind of up the creek now. No med cream, wearing the worst possible shoes, and probably three hours from being able to put my feet up and medicate them. So one thing to do: bear with it and enjoy the concert as well as I could, and hope that Eva would settle down enough that we could bring her back into the sanctuary (which Kate did once the "sing-along" portion began.

The sing-along came and went, we wished Gordon and Manya goodbye and merry Christmas, and I hobbled off in pursuit of Kate and Eva as they headed back to the car. I drove home, since Kate doesn't like driving in cities, and I found that it didn't really hurt to drive--only to get in and out of the car, and walk.

So we made it home, I staggered inside (while Kate hauled the baby), and after a horrible ten-minute struggle to pull off my boots (since my ankle really didn't want to bend at all at this point), saw the full extent of the damage. Both feet and lower legs, covered in splotches. By far the worst outbreak I'd ever had.

Not trying to gross everyone out with too much information here, but it went from annoying to somewhat alarming to see that. Of course I used my drugs, and went straight to bed, but just rolling over, to say nothing of walking (more crawling) to the bathroom was excruciating. Suffice it to say, it was a lousy night.

The next day we had to prepare for the Bash--a small turnout this year, on account of the blizzard and all (and probably not nearly enough effort on my part to rally friends). We had about 8 people, which was good for Eva, since she wasn't overwhelmed by noise and faces, and we had about four hours with neighbors and a few singing friends. But we had about five times as much food as we needed (still working on it, and we will all week).

But getting ready wasn't easy. I slathered more anti-crap cream on my legs, and given that I think I might be allergic to Advil (not a tangent worth going on), I asked for one of the Aleve pills Kate swears by. And about an hour later, hey, I could almost walk!

So we got our chores done, got the condo ready, and had our party--though by the end, around 11, I was hobbling again. And I limped to bed in, not quite as bad shape as the night before, but not tons better.

Sunday I moped all day. Nearly dragged Kate down to my level too, until she rather forcefully (though in a nice way) suggested we get out. She was hoping to score some free Dave's coffee (another mommy run), but both nearby Dave's were closed due to the storm. So we decided to--gasp--pay for our coffee, and go to Starbucks. And so we did.

It was an impromptu date, and we sat in the cafe, with little Eva quiet in her carseat looking at us as we chatted. For three bucks and three cents (not counting gasoline) Kate and I restored the better part of our peace of mind that evening.

And today I woke up, with the crap receding quickly. I can walk more or less normally again. Tomorrow we may even go to the gym!...

It being Christmas, the next illness can't be far away, though.

It's Eva, not Ava!

If I hear ONE more person tell me their child, grandchild, niece or whatever's name is Ava I just might have a conniption! Good Lord, I mean just how many unoriginal people are there in this world?!

Every time someone asks what my little girl's name is I brace myself for the, "ooooh funny, my ______ name is Ava, that's a pretty popular name right now huh?!" I struggle to contort my grimace into a smile, and explain following the trend was far from our intent in choosing the name Eva for our daughter.

If any of you don't know why Michael and I chose that name let me fill you in. While living in Boston 12 years ago, Michael was first enchanted by the angelic voice of Eva Marie Cassidy singing, "Married Girl Blues" on the local folk radio station. Although the rough lyrics of this particular tune didn't set well with him on the first listen, Eva's voice struck a chord in him unlike any other vocalist. Over the years Mike built up a collection of her brilliant interpretations and was quick to share them with me not long after we met!

In her sort career Eva never recorded any of her original songs, but rather tackled

 the challenge of taking already popular songs and making them her own. She brought a certain passion, depth, and beauty to these often over played songs that made you feel as if they had been her own creations all along and the others were the copy cats, that could never compare to her version. She truly FELT the music and the lyrics and in doing so provided a much more personal insight to her listeners!

My personal favorite of hers is Sting's, "Fields of Gold". I'll never forget the first time I heard Sting's version, it was played at my brother Scott's wedding for the bride and groom's first dance as a couple. I was only 9 at best and the lyrics of this tune already brought to tears to my eyes. I always dreamed that this would also be the song played at my wedding, but at the same time did not want the SAME song as my brother. I wanted, as in everything I do, to be unique, original ... Now in hearing Miss Cassidy's rendition, not only did the tears begin to flow as they had so many years before, but my heart melted and images of a life with Michael began forming in my mind as Eva's tender voice drew out the sweet notes even more softly than a mother kisses her child. Suddenly this song was no longer just a love song, it was OUR song. Our story of love and companionship woven together by the delicate, power of a single woman's voice.

In discovering that I was pregnant Michael and I quickly started discussing names for the child to be. We settled within minutes on a boys name, but continued to throw ideas around for a girls name for the next day or so ... nothing seem to be quite right. Then it hit me, why not Eva?! It just made perfect sense, that we name our daughter after the singer that we both adore! The middle names then were easy ... we wanted family names, and it just so happened both our mother's middle names were Jean. And in honor of Michael's mother Laurie, we added that in to make the forth name ... also important since we both have four names and neither of us had ever met anyone else with such!

Result ... Eva Jean Laurie Sutherland! Flowing, beautiful, and unique ... or so we thought. Then comes along all these baby girl Ava's and everyone we meet thinks we've named our daughter Eva to tag along with the trend. *BARF!* No waaay would I ever intentionally follow a tend. Having something in common with 90% of people you meet is boring ... and the things you have "in common" are so common then they become not so exciting to find that someone else has the same. 

So even though Mike still has to calm me down after every time we meet someone with an Ava, I've decided NOT to go to the court house and change her name, but encourage our daughter to also find ways to be unique, and that if anyone ever mistakes her name, to proudly correct them with the knowledge that she was named after an extraordinary woman, unlike all the rest!

To find out more on Eva Cassidy visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Cassidy

http://www.evacassidy.com/main.htm

Disgust

This post will be about one thing: my ambivalent but mostly negative reaction to the film based on the favorite book of my childhood: Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. After all these years, with screen adaptations of various quality from various books coming out, one of the best children's fantasy stories ever penned made it to theaters.

(Pardon me if this sounds like a review column...in some ways it is, but it'll be getting down to some pretty basic principles of mine too.)

The reviews I saw over the past several weeks made me even more enthusiastic about it: universal raves for the quality of the animation (with more than a few up-yours-Pixar! thrusts, which struck me as odd), the quality of the voicing (particularly George Clooney as Mr. Fox), and the clever adaptation of the plot.

I'll say that the first two counts are right as rain. The animation--stop-motion dolls, and even the individual strands of fur are manipulated expressively--is impeccably good. One of the tenets of animation is that everything is slightly ridiculous. There can be beauty and majesty in a scene, but there needs to be corresponding awkwardness and sloppiness and missing detail--deliberately.

Any Calvin & Hobbes fans will be with me on this, though you might not realize it. Go through one of Watterson's old books, and find one of those really impressive tableaus he was so well known for, like a Jurassic jungle, or a desert landscape, or simply some trees. The landscape is gorgeous, drawn and colored with precision. But then look carefully at Calvin and his tiger within the scene: the colors cross the lines, Hobbes' stripes don't stay within the boundaries of his own body, and Calvin has three fingers on each hand. Even within the characters, the mouth and eyes are drawn with superb expressiveness, sometimes in huge contrast with the sloppiness of the clothes, hands or tail. Obviously it's not because Watterson can't draw well enough, that the characters are so sloppy. It's to keep them as cartoons, intentionally silly and unrealistic. Too much accurate detail in his comic protagonists would diminish their comic value.

So in Fantastic Mr. Fox, when Mrs. Fox comes walking in an abnormally fast, strangely upright, and pretty unnatural posture across the hills to her husband in the opening scene, it helps establish the unreality of it all, and confirms that these are really cartoons we're looking at, and are supposed to be strange and funny. And every scene thereafter, where the animation looks blocky and awkward, confirms and deepens the comic cartoonish unreality. On top of that, the level of detail is captivating, where even the air swishing Kristofferson's fur as he dives from the tree branch into the water, is funny and unreal. I was amazed at how many facial close-ups there were of various characters, but especially the Foxes. And they worked. Especially the foxes--whose fur appeared wind-tossed, and expressively so, even inside small closed caverns--were both touching and funny. I can't praise the animation highly enough. Every different animation style, whether styles of drawing, or computer animation, or models, like these--represents, you might say, a different theory on how to portray figures and the world.

Going a bit farther afield here, but in the (now old, I guess) Cartoon Network show Ed, Edd & Eddie (which annoyed me but I still watched occasionally), every single line, every object including the sun, the ground and the houses, seemed to have nervous, shifting, jittery outlines which were never entirely steady. And these jiggling outlines fit the nervous, indecisive, hesitant nature of the comic trio at the heart of the show. There are tons more examples, but that's as far as I need to take that tangent. But when the animation suits the characters and the story, then so much more artful is it. (And that's one legitimate criticism of computer animation: it's often so precise, and motions are so discrete and perfectly defined, that much warmth and comic value is irretrievably lost...but I'm still digressing.)

And I'll add a bit more praise for the animation: some of the sequences are captivating and just plain hilarious, especially along with the music. The face-on shot of Fox and Hedgehog setting out on their first burglary of the Master Plan is as perfect as animation can get. And the side-on shot of all the animals digging as they escape the steam shovels and then tunnel to food are just as good--unreal, but just cartoonishly real enough to be funny. (I mean, does the dirt just disappear when they set paw to it? No...though you might think that in this film. But that little suspension-of-disbelief works.)

Next up for Mr. Fox, the voicing. I'm not really a big Clooney fan: no lingering jealousy issues here, no sour-grapes-I'm-salt-n-pepper-too fear of my own mortality, no snarky he-can't-act nonsense. I just haven't been a huge fan of his stuff. I avoided ER with as wide a berth as possible--55 minutes of doctors screwing in closets, and 3 minutes of preposterous untrue medicine crammed in at the end--and he's seemed sort of like a male Sandra Bullock. (Even Brother Where Art Thou struck me as pretty flaky.) If Brad Pitt has been a tabloid hound for over a decade, at least he has real charisma and range--though I think he's better at comedy than drama. But Clooney's voice for this film is dripping gold. It's marvelous. He strikes a perfect blend of conversational tone and high tension for pretty much the entire film. Clooney's voice and the animation are reasons enough to watch.

Dahl's underlying story is excellent too--of course, you know very well by now that I think that.

But what those producers did to the story makes my stomach turn--and the more I think about it, the more my stomach turns. Somehow they drained the original story of its entire intent, of all its warmth and joy. Sure, ostensibly it's still there, with the animals celebrating a seemingly inexhaustible food supply along with their unassailable underground position, at the end of the story: but the food supply is a megastore-type supermarket, and their home is the sewer.

I understand stories need to be updated. Fantastic Mr. Fox was published in 1970 (the year I was born, yeah!), so in order to bring this one into the world of 21st-century kids, things like cell phones and TV and omnipresent media can be brought in. I don't object to that. And short children's books, in order to be made into feature-length movies, need major plot additions, just to make then long and complex enough to be worth an hour or more. I understand that too. But so many of the movie's warmest, most intimate moments come when things are folksiest, that when things veer completely away from that, the movie loses much of its dramatic muscle, and bleeds away. At the beginning, scenes are introduced with silent chapter-head style lettering, such as "GRAND PLAN PART A", and, of course, later on, "THE SHOOTING". Since most adults will, like me, know the book almost by heart, these are quaint and reassuring devices. But after the dynamite blast (the first major departure from the book), no more. The second half of the movie is decidedly gray, dreary, and industrial in look and tone.

Where such a significant portion of the plot--really, the character crisis for Mr. Fox--centers on the animals' characters as wild animals, following their instincts like we humans follow ours, then what to make of the end? The animals aren't living in holes of their own digging, in the woods. The animals are in an urban setting, shopping at a supermarket. And that's an improvement over the beginning of the movie, how exactly? By following their wild instincts, the animals become sewer pests? We're supposed to admire Mr. Fox for bringing this about?

As for their big escape plan...so the badgers are demolition experts. Okay...I guess I can accept that. Seems they have enough TNT to blow up most of a city block. Why not...use it to blow out one of the sewer walls and just get away some other route? Why go public in such a destructive manner, setting an entire city block aflame? (And this is too big a circumstance, unlike the unreal digging, to let go of. Dahl was a writer, a really good writer, and good writers know that a plot has to withstand some pretty severe logical questioning, so that said plot doesn't have holes as big as a sewer main running through it. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't've signed off on the idiotically violent urban-escape plot. Wild forest animals. Tend to do things on the sly. Massed frontal assault isn't really their style, as Foxy himself attests. So why base the plot on it?

Then the farmers. They're appropriately mean and comical, much of the time--until the movie reaches the end of the book. See, the book's plot is followed more or less faithfully, but there's an extra wrinkle: after the foxes and badgers and moles dig their beautiful holes and raid the farmers' warehouses from below...the animals take absolutely everything. Not enough to survive, not enough to be comfortable...they utterly clean the farmers out. So of course, there must be a reprisal, as becomes quickly evident, because the movie's tone becomes even darker, more vicious, and more baleful.

Bean, the cider maker who's the cleverest of the three, throws an ugly tantrum and trashes their trailer headquarters--nothing remotely funny about the scene. Just moments before that, in one of the most gratuitously cruel and inane moments of the film, Bean has cursed out one of his employees. They're on stakeout duty, trying to starve out the foxes, and it has just become clear that the foxes outsmarted them. Pete, the worker, is playing a banjo along with a pick-up band of other employees around a fire, and they're rattling out some fine backwoods-style folksy music, with Pete himself jibber-jabbering nonsense lyrics, like "Bee-bop-a-dohh-a-mee-lee-loo..." Bean stalks over, asks what he's singing, and when Pete answers, "Nothing...I'm just making it up as I go along, I guess," Bean hits him hard and yells, "Thats a bad song! You wrote a bad song, Pete!" and marches off. And Pete just sits there stunned, doesn't resume playing, but the whole scene is still for several seconds before we move to some other action.

Now...what is the point of that? We already knew Bean is mean. That music was one of the most fun parts of the film, echoes of the folksy stuff at the beginning...it's as if the producers wanted to intentionally kill the folksy aspect of the story, and signal in a very graphic way that the plot was assuming a new, crueler, emptier character.

Mrs. Fox gets in on the action. The farmers' response to the animals' underground city is to flood it with cider--a plot development not unworthy of Dahl. The animals are washed into the sewer, and then trapped there when Bean covers up every manhole with a vehicle. The animals, first trapped, then saved, now trapped even more miserably, turn on Mr. Fox a second time. And so does his wife.

They have another quiet conversation in a side chamber, away from the others, where Fox does a bit of psychoanalysis on himself (another 21st-century update: characters dejectedly deconstructing themselves and others) and admits that he's craved adulation--wanted to be known as Fantastic--his whole life. And it seems that's enough for reconciliation. He and Mrs. Fox approach each other. "I love you," he says.

"I love you too," she says, "but I shouldn't've married you."

What?

I mean, seriously...what? What on earth was that about?

That moment passes even Bean's tirade at the musician and subsequent savaging of his office, for sheer viciousness. It's hard to imagine anything crueler she could possibly have told her husband. It's almost unforgivably cruel.

Why this cruelty and meanness? It becomes the overriding theme of the film. Forget supposed wild instincts and individual skills each of the species possesses. This film is about individuals hurting one another. The animals aren't out to survive. They decide to insult and humiliate their opponents. That's a more human than animal instinct, and it's the opposite of Dahl's story.

The destruction of Dahl's book, the replacement of a kind and loving spirit with its opposite, was intnentional. There are too many horrible things in this film to overlook. Even the apparently innocent use of the word "cuss", which never feels graceful or adequate...it starts out as a "you cussin' me!?" kind of challenge, but quickly becomes a thin-as-paper veil for an F-bomb. I just don't care that kids are growing up much more quickly now than they did decades ago--that kids under 10 are subjected to highly sexualized imagery (ubiquitous in advertising). Do kids in a film really need to hear that things are becoming a "cluster-cuss"? That's not even funny. Fox says it to his wife as they lie in their underground chamber, having escaped the dynamite but before they've cleaned out the farmers.

Oh, and the farmers again. Or, rather, their farms: less like farms and more like concentration camps, with high masonry walls, razor wire, searchlights, moats, patrol vehicles and elaborate security systems. Bean even carries a Glock. You might almost expect to see a gas chamber somewhere.

Again--what does this add to a children's movie? Do the producers think they're talking so effectively over the kids' heads to the adults, that they can sacrifice almost everything childish about the movie except for the animation?

Let's talk about some cruelty again--this time, on Fox's part toward his own child, Ash. One of the new movie wrinkles was that the Foxes have only one pup, and the other pup arrives as a loaner from Fox's brother, who's very sick. So there's Ash, Fox's son, and the other, highly accomplished and athletic youngster, Kristofferson. Fox has already somewhat marginalized Ash within his three-fox family for being runty and uncoordinated--unlike his dashing and splendidly talented self--but the graceful and stylish Kristofferson completes the job quickly.

That wrinkle, by itself, I'm not upset at. But there are some chilling aspects to it. First, even though Kate didn't hear it, and it doesn't show up in the movie's summaries, I could've sworn I heard Fox call his son "Ashley" at least once--and Ashley is a name that can be used more easily for a girl than a boy. If you look carefully at Ash's eyes, they're ringed with black, like thick, Amy Winehouse-type eyeliner, making Ash look even more feminine. And in the final scene--that odious dance in the supermarket--Ash has been drinking punch from a straw, and has what can only be described as pink lipstick. The lips look like a woman's full set, with the double bulge and middle seam on top, and the single bulge on the bottom: they're female lips.

Again, the same question: what is the point of an adult theme like this in a children's movie? Why emphasize Ash's inadequacy issues by making him androgynous, or even feminine? It's not that I fear it: I don't intend to shield Eva from things like that, though it doesn't mean I'll be shoving gay, lesbian and transgendered living in front of her every day. That's not my life, so I don't feel the need. But what she sees for herself, when she asks, I'll give honest answers about what people do, and I won't hide from it. But, this film...what is the objective? Simply to blur gender roles in a way that kids couldn't miss, at least on some level? And since the androgynous signs were things that the little fox had no control over (his native fur coloring) or likely awareness of (every kid stains his face with punch)...the message seems to be that Ash is more feminine than masculine, without his even knowing it. Now that qualifies as subversion.

I'm not trying to play Chicken Little here. After all, it's just a movie, and what comes between breaks in most children's shows can be far worse, in aggregate. So what if all these touches of heartlessness, viciousness and cruelty, not to mention transgendering a young boy, are merely jokes on the part of the producers, something we're meant to see as dark humor? I say this: humor contains empathy. Between the warriors in Kill Bill, there is some acknowledgement of each other's worth. And even when Beatrix kills Bill at the end, the second-to-last shot is of her curled up in her hotel bathroom, laughing and crying by turns, whispering "Thank you...thank you...thank you..."

Whom, do you think, she is thanking? And why?

That is why great films are so great: things come full circle, find a resolution. There is some connection possible to every character. Everyone has some loveable trait or foible. Even in Dahl's book, the farmers are just bumbling enough that you kind of smile at their idiotic vindictiveness. But Bean in the film runs an army by walkie-talkie, struts around like an icy general, and is without a sympathetic quality.

Like the rat. Ohhh, I almost forgot about the rat. He's voiced by Willem Dafoe, one of my favorite actors (along with Benicio Del Toro). In the book, the rat is a mean-spirited but oafish drunk, who tries to stop Fox but has no real chance of doing so.

In the movie...he's kind of terrifying. He's as big as Fox, wiry, black, and Dafoe uses a voice that has perhaps a southern twinge, but to me vaugely suggests something hispanic. The rat moves around with a sidelong, Vinnie-and-the-Jets swagger, sports a switchblade, and is even more evil than Bean. He goes so far as to suggest that Mrs. Fox slept around, and was the forest skank, before meeting Mr. Fox.

Again, more resoundingly than ever...why in a children's film?

Besides, that's a pernicious little element, aside from sexualizing her and putting in an entire subtext that just doesn't belong in the film--the rat is coming on to her later on as she tries to defend her child from him, and she comes off looking like some two-bit dominatrix--Mrs. Fox' supposed former nature.

See, the whole film's premise is how Mr. Fox can't deny his former, real nature, as a wild animal who steals and kills things to live. So, in that light...what to make of the insinuations that Mrs. Fox got around in days past? Is that something she, likewise, can't be expected to control?

So awkward and marginally athletic boys are secretly effeminate, and women are nothing more than their libidos. That's the subtext I pick up from this "joke", if it's really supposed to be that.

And what kind of resolution is there for our heros, for Mr. Fox and his family? After his wife directly, in the meanest way possible, rejects him, she sheepishly raises her hand and says she'll go along with his plan to escape the sewer. That's their reconciliation. And Ash saves the day by dashing through machine-gun fire to release a rabid dog on the farmers and their gangs. Fox admits his son has some talent after all, and rewards him with a bona-fide black bandit's mask. And that's all Ash gets for reconciliation too.

Not so much as a hug, or a kiss, or any real warmth at all.

Wrap it all up with a line dance in a supermarket aisle and you've got Fantastic Mr. Fox, the movie. I'm glad I saw it, but there's not much chance I'll be watching it again. And I think I want to re-read the book to drive the film from my mind.

Like last night...I forced Kate to watch the end of Con Air (we had no idea what was happening), just so I could cleanse my mind, so to speak, like having cheese after a particularly bad wine. At least a ridiculously bad movie, strictly on its own merits, is better than one that perverts, shreds and torches one of my favorite books.