What do you let your child/ren see and buy?

The main problem I have is finding decent movies for children. Let me also say I don’t have children of my own yet. But, I was a child once and I remember a chunk of the movies I watched as a child, and I think I have a pretty good grasp on what children of certain maturity levels should see in their media in-take.

There are a shit-ton of films for kids. There’s always the Disney stand-by, but many more film companies have made it an industry, too, so picking out the good from the bad is quite a task, as any parent-of-worth is aware.

Last week, for example, one of the movies up for possible viewing was Osmosis Jones (2001). It was picked by the majority, which is the voting system our classroom utilizes, unless overruled by the dictators (i.e., teacher[s]). I can wholeheartedly say that even though Bill Murray is one of the main characters, it is a Piece of Utter and Total Fucking Shit. And I’ve seen some shit movies in my time. This ranks up there with the teevee version of Titanic, which features a flippin’ rape scene in-between the singing, just so you can get perspective on how it rates on the Piece of Utter and Total Shit Meter.

A rough synopsis: Murray’s character is a low-life slob/single father eating his way to a heart attack, all while trying to impress and win the heart and trust of his daughter, a totally self-conscious adolescent (i.e., not yet even a teenager). He eats so shittily that his body, displayed in animation/cartoon, revolts (i.e., gets sick). The bulk of the film thus portrays the internal workings, according to the anatomical and medicinal education of the film company et al, from germs rising up and a virus threatening to take over and kill the host, to a white blood cell (ironically, the voice of Chris Rock) and a super-pill (what a beefcake of a man) coming in to save the day.

My best parts of the film:

• Murray’s character is sick and a friend of his comes over to hang. His friend brings a six-pack of beer and reminds Murray to “drink your fluids.” Murray asks if beer counts–you bet it does!
• Murray’s daughter is on the bus to school. Friends in the seat behind her present to her fake eyelashes they bought for her. She puts them on, self-consciously asks if they’re alright. Friends say, Are you kidding?! “YOU LOOK GOOD WITH FALSIES.”

WHAT THE FUCK.

Only Hollywood could make this shit up and call it appropriate for kids. Only a jaded/corrupted ratings board could rate it “PG for bodily humor”. Positive associations with beer don’t count, eh? Telling girls “falsies” are okay doesn’t count, either? WTF.

The Partner suggests I bring in old 1950s films from archive.org to show. I’d LOVE for my students to watch (and understand) films on proper hygiene, good manners, social behavior, and working hard in school, but my kids have the attention spans equating to attention span? Look, I’ve got toes here on my feet!

Today’s movie was Funky Monkey? Let me look it up.

Yes, Funky fucking Monkey (2004).

Ugh. Total and Utter Shit, again. At least there was only live-action, and no cartoon representations this time. Although, I think using a chimpanzee performing karate moves (and a gang of Asians(?) called “The Chows” [!!!]) cancels out those points. OMFG the CHOWS!

In short, I’m looking for films that:

• Show loving, caring relationships between children, children and adults, children and other animals, adults and other animals, etc.
• Have positive portrayals of all kinds of peoples (i.e., Blacks, African Americans are not the animals, bad guys; Whites are not the All-Saving Knights in Shinning Armor; and women are not helpless, self-absorbed, body-conscious bimbos and/or sluts in need of saving)
• Have no drug/alcohol references
• Don’t show unrealistic portrayals of humans and other animals
• Don’t encourage fantasy living
• Don’t encourage consumption/consumerism
• No preference for/mention of religion/particular religion
• Yet teach valuable lessons of self- and community-betterment

So far, it seems impossible. Please, prove me wrong.

One film I remember from childhood, Pete’s Dragon (1977), which I think I’ll bring in for next week (its merits openly debatable, so please do):

To many knitters Elizabeth Zimmermann is our greatest Knitting Godmother—akin to, I submit, a knitting goddess, who gave to us discernible knitting lessons, decipherable patterns, and the license to knit as we please. EZ lived such a wonderful life, as she tells us in her Knitting Around, and made it her task to teach other knitters that knit and purl weren’t such hard things and look! It’s so much easier if you knit around because then you don’t have to purl AT ALL!

My first introduction to EZ was through her book Knitting Without Tears. Although I wasn’t in tears at the time, I was still a beginning knitter who didn’t know much except how to knit scarves. (And really, a person only needs so many damn scarves that at some point, you HAVE to at least start on mittens.) EZ employed a conversational manner of teaching which I fell in love with, showing us it is best to laugh and knit at the same time, for if you drop a stitch you don’t much fret.

My EZ collection was made complete this morning, when my mail carrier put into my hot little hands a package containing not just another set of Options needles, but Knitting Around, The Opinionated Knitter, and Knitting Workshop. If there is ever a fire these five books will be the first things I save, in addition to Maggie Rigghetti’s Knitting In Plain English. Okay, second things I save, the first being the cats and dog.

Three designs I have been enamored with are her Bog Jacket, Seamless Hybrid Sweater, and the Adult Surprise Jacket. I shall knit these before I die.

1. Seamless Hybrid

   Appears to be a rarity amongst women-wearers, although that may just be my impression due to the lack of online documentation by women knitters. It does look great on guys, though, and I’m thinking with a few well-placed short rows and a bit of waist shaping (and maybe a couple bust darts) I can churn out an awesome sweater.

2. Adult Surprise Jacket (ASJ)

   I have my hesitations with this design. Firstly, I’ve only ever come across pictures of the Baby version, which often means folks have knit it with super-crazy color combos. I’m more of a 4-color-limit-per-garment gal and seeing picture after picture of jackets with 80 different colors scares me. But the image to the right is not quite so crazy and lets me know a toned-down color scheme is possible and may even look great. Secondly, I’m not sure how to work in shaping as the construction of the jacket is a bit strange (it ends up a wobbly rectangle and is seamed together at key spots). It could just turn out boxy, and that’s never good.

3. Bog Jacket

   Holy shit is this cute. The gal on the right added a double-ended zipper and I think I’ll do the same. I’ve started this one, last week, and decided upon a dark gray (slate gray? coal gray?) body with pink edging. I’ve incorporated short rows on both the back and the sides and waist shaping so that all my curves are taken into account. I’m using Cascade 220, which is 100% wool so it will be perfect through our Indiana winters. It’s mindless knitting, all garter stitch, which means I can watch a movie or read websites and knit at the same time. BUT, it’s garter stitch, rows and rows and rows of garter stitch. Over a thousand yards of garter stitch. The shaping provides some relief and a bit of excitement, if only because I’m not quite sure I’m doing it right.

Yum.

I don’t think I can even finish the series now.

Throwing a psychic into the mix does not make the movie X-File-y. Why was it so disjointed? Why were they living together? All was forgiven?? And why was it so religious??

What the fuck.

Was I doing…

1. Housework — because there is no such thing as ‘too clean’
2. Writing my memoir — you should read all I’ve experienced at the age of twenty-seven!
3. Lounging about — it’s been so hot lately
4. Designing websites — there’s a lull in work and then all of a sudden WHAM! you’ve got clients
5. Embroidering greeting cards — combining my love of embroidery with my love of office supplies? DANGER!
6. Cutting my hair — on my own
7. Learning the true meaning of CrackBerry — QWERTY how I love thee
8. Knitting — those three storage containers of yarn ain’t gonna knit and purl themselves
9. Reviewing and editing photos from our vacation — and all the other events since
10. Hob-knobbing with local bigwigs — I am getting CONNECTED!

Consider this a quiz.

Late last year I knit a blanket for friends and this blanket was to be similar. That was my goal. The middle starting point didn’t appear to be the same, but I kept knitting on.

First blanket:

This blanket:

Anybody else notice that pinwheel-esque swirl?

Yeah. I obviously was yarn-overing at the wrong time, even though I was using stitch markers.

Live, knit, and learn, I suppose. It may have been more squared if I had had time to block it; I finished it the morning of the shower. Then again, there may have been no hope of giving it straight edges and pointy corners even with blocking. I received a lot of compliments on it, though, so right on.

• Revolt of the Second Sex by Julie Ellis (1970)

You can find this book in some libraries and for sale online, but descriptions and summaries are hard to find. The first page copy reads:

THE NEO-FEMINISTS—
SEVENTIES STYLE
They come in all sizes and shapes. From micro-skirted teeny-boppers to successful lady lawyers to matronly grandmothers bored with the garden club. Freedom, equality, acceptance—they all want the same things. The ways they plan to get them are different—they run the gamut from ladylike persuasion to riotous overthrow. This book describes the ladies, how they feel and what they’re planning to do—today and tomorrow!
REVOLT OF THE SECOND SEX
THE FIRST AND ONLY FULL-
LENGTH REPORT ON TODAY’S WOMEN
AND THEIR FREE-SWINGING LIFE STYLES.

Chapters range from “Female Liberation Movement”, detailing women’s liberation groups, to “Our Archaic Abortion Laws” which discusses the then-current status of abortion law and practice.

• Teaching As a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner (1972 Penguin edition)

I have the Delta edition, which was probably printed in the 1990s. I like having early editions, and multiple editions, of books. I’m weird that way.

• On Becoming a Person by Carl R. Rogers (1961 Sentry edition)

I’m not sure if I heard about this book through Jensen, but I’ve heard of it somewhere and thought I’d pick it up. Pay no attention to the pre-existent pile of books in front of the full bookcases.

• Unlearning the Lie: Sexism in School by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1973)

Another book with little online information. From what I read on the book cover: The author got together with other parents to form a “Sex-roles Committee” at “Woodward School, a private, interracial, nonsectarian, parent-teacher cooperative in Brooklyn” “to explore the ways in which Woodward might be perpetuating ‘mind- and spirit-debilitating stereotypical sex roles’.”

• Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class and Race in Literature and Culture edited by Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt (1985)

This is an anthology of 12 scholarly essays. Back cover reads:

This lively and controversial collection of essays sets out to theorize and to practice a ‘materialist-feminist’ criticism of literature and culture. [...]

The essays in the first part of the book examine race, ideology and the literary canon and explore the ways in which other current critical discourses, such as those of deconstruction and French feminism, might be useful to a feminist and materialist criticism. The second part of the book contains examples of such criticism in practice, with studies of individual works, writers and ideas.

• Horace’s Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School by Theodore R. Sizer (1985)

I also have the 2004 edition of this book. And, I still have yet to read it.

• The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner (1986)

This find made my day. This is volume one of Lerner’s Women and History series. I’m still on the look-out for volume two, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-seventy.

• Ourselves, Growing Older: Women Aging with Knowledge and Power (1987) by Paula Brown Doress and Diana Laskin Siegal and The Midlife and Older Women Book Project in cooperation with the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective

There is a “newer” (1994) edition currently available, but I figured I would check this out. Not that I’m their target audience as far as age goes—but I enjoy their Our Bodies, Ourselves and this text should be just as informative.

I love book sales.

I have three years of negatives I wouldn’t mind digitally archiving, and I’ll no longer have to take a picture of a piece of paper and hope it turns out well.

Small pleasures.

The Partner and I decided at the last minute to eschew buying our loved ones more shit they don’t need, so we got creative and handmade them things. In turn, The Partner’s family made things as well (although some things [some very kickass things] were still bought).

Realizing I had less than TWO WEEKS to make stuff for a bunch of people put me into a panic, I will admit. Next year will be much, much better planned, as two, er, FIVE beloved friends have yet to receive their gifts, because I’m still making them. The way I figure it, January is pretty boring after the 1st, so getting gifts mid-month will help make it brighter.

Seeing as how my holiday time was going to be spent with family, I focused on their gifts.

One of my handknits was finished during the week of the 10th, a scarf for one of my aunts:

And then I (amazingly) churned out THREE hats the next week. I do not recommend doing this, it was insane.

This was for my mother-not-in-law, who had worn one of my hats a few weeks prior while visiting and said she liked the fit of it, so I gave to her A Multicolored Hat Much Like the Black One:

For my two sisters-not-in-law, I knit up two very cute hats, which thankfully fit (I was knitting blind regarding size) and they both liked:

A devil hat:

And a kitty hat, which truly was finished at the last minute, and is modeled by my sister-not-in-law, N:

The tails of this one are sort-of rounded circles (which you can’t see in the photo), because I hate pompoms.

From my mother-not-in-law I received a handmade corn bag, which you pop in the microwave for an instant warmer or, as will be happening this coming summer, in the freezer for an instant cool:

I love my bag of corn

For his gift, my father-not-in-law cooked us all a delicious dinner which included beef (still connected to the bones! and parts cooked longer just for me because I don’t do bloody meat!) and yummy twice-baked potatoes.

The most shocking gift was purchased by N for her mom:

Which made her mother cry:

My sister-not-in-law, A, made some TRULY AWESOME gifts:

For N she made this sculpture thing, of some anime/manga/I don’t know character I’m not familiar with:

For her parents she drew a family portrait, characteristically representing all of us:

Note The Partner trying to tickle me, and me motioning to “Fucking quit it”.

But the most awesomest gifts of all were received by The Partner and I from A: Paintings of us!

These are so fucking awesome.

I must say I rather like this Buy Nothing* for Christlessmas.

*Although, I will confess: I did purchase an ukulele with some cash I received, and am impatiently awaiting its delivery from Hawaii.

I hope your holiday was equally as awesome.