10 Minute Rule

Everyone has different christmas traditions. I found a cool one on the NPR website which is basically the classic Gingerbread house gone scientific. What are you supposed to do for Christmas?

I generally don’t subscribe to the birth of Christ purpose of xmas. The ritual of xmas predates the death of Christ (meaning it predates the celebration of his birthdate.) In so far as I know, Christ wasn’t born on that date anyhow. Of course, I could be wrong. I’m not wrong about the overarching media idea of xmas. The holiday has become about goodwill to all and buying a lot of stuff. I want to develop traditions that cover both aspects.

In terms of gift giving we are moving towards the adopt a family model, and perhaps will even start baking things for persons in need. The giving spirit feels like a foreign body to my kids, but their young and have room to grow. I think that connecting the buying to goodwill is an excellent way to cloak them in the spirit of xmas.

Two movies in two days is a good thing, especially when you’ve been anticipating one and are pleasantly surprised by the other.

Frozen is an animated tale starring Kristen Bell that took me completely unawares. I loved it enough to want to pay money to see it in the theater again. The film more than exceeded expectations, because I had none. More than a cute winter tale, the film is a solid departure from the usual, often boring, kid flare. The story itself received no press. All the commercials I saw merely said it would be a fun xmas movie. It was, and it was a great musical with a solid storyline that invoked ideas of love, romance, and family.

The Desolation of Smaug is another matter entirely. The highly anticipated follow up to the first film in the Hobbit trilogy was a bleak disappointment. Sections of the film and the storyline were wonderful, but when you put it all together the story felt fragmented, stunted in spots, and worst of all, incomplete. I don’t like having to wait another year to see how it ends. Perhaps I won’t. Heck, who am I kidding. If a 9 yr old can wait for it, why can’t I?

Some Thoughts:

1. This is one of those days when I sit back and think about how good life can be. I sat outside in the sun and stared through the sliding glass door at the Giants game and watched my team win before taking my eldest out for an evening with dad. Yeah, life is good sometimes.
2. That being said, I did have to roll out Krampus on the 4 yr old. He is now terrified of being a naughty boy. Mean? perhaps. Righteous? Absolutely. The middle kid is still a mystery to me. I’m not sure what makes him tick or what makes him explode when the ticking runs out.
3. The ticking ran out on my fantasy football season. Everything was set for me to have a solid 3rd place finish, but I made some bonehead starts and cost myself winnings in the process.

Krampus time in the Talislegger household. December 20th was officially Krampusnacht, because it is the day the children are released from school and marks that last fleeting hours they’ll act right. By the 21st they are wired, stuffed with candy, bereft of scheduled activities, and generally a pain in the ass. The transition from being my children to becoming wildlings in the George R.R. Martin tradition is rather swift. By 10 AM the littlest ‘legger was actually begging for me to take a swing at him. He figured if I started wrestling with him the others would jump me and they’d make a game of it.

I didn’t take the bait.

I am the kind of parent who wrestles and plays with his kids. I’m also a lot older than them and wear out faster–especially since I’ve had less than 24 hrs of actual alone-time vacation (which, it turns out, is all I’m going to get before I go back to work on the 3rd). I was tired, cranky and not about to put up with a trio of bored kids looking to stab buttons until something horrible happens. I separated for as long as I could and then I took them to see Frozen. The film was incredible. I’m gushing, but it deserves the gush. I’ll probably write a review tomorrow between lamenting the Giants and Jets respective butt whippings.

I expected the film to mellow them out and make them a hint more greatful. I even dropped the wifey off at home and took the (presently terrible) trio to Walmart to buy cookie dough and supplies for a Hot Dog Bar. That trip was disastrous . At one point the 4 yr old charged an elderly man riding a shopping scooter, forcing the man to swerve into a stack of boxed goods. At another point the 6 yr old disappeared entirely. I considered panicking  for a full 3 minutes and then decided that two is a reasonable number of children to have, at which point he magically reappeared. By the time I made it home I discovered they’d snuck about $20 of stuff I never approved into the cart and jumped up my bill to ridiculous. I noticed the problem at the store, but so stressed was I to get out of there that I paid the tab and just left.

This happens every break. Call it the transition from light to dark or life without structure, but once school lets out the kids get maniacally bored. The excitement of a coming xmas isn’t helping, nor is the threat of Santa. I think it may be time to roll out the Krampus myth and find a way to scare em straight.

On the other hand, I could just give them something to do…

“Mommy, are you going to look at your faceybook again?” Said the 4yr old to his mother. She smiled, her face lit by the glow of a laptop screen. Without once looking in his direction she nodded and continued to type.

This scenario is common place in our household. Sometimes it is the wifey at the keyboard, but generally it is me either writing, surfing the web, or, occasionally, playing Pokemon online (do I get to keep my street cred after saying that?). Now the kids are into the act. They’ll snatch a laptop and hide somewhere to skim netflix or play online games on kizi or yepi. I’m long past wondering if it is a good or bad thing. I believe the key is to strike a balance. I thought about that balance a lot when picking out gifts for the kids. My wife decided to go with a theme of motion, which I picked up on and, at first, complimented with video games. I realized that the balance is also about the kind of toys they play with. I decided to get my 4 yr old some hands on toys so he wouldn’t disappear into the digital world nearly as often.

Again, computer use is normal and inevitable, but it can be alienating. Social networking is no substitute for holding a friend’s hand. Striking the perfect balance to me means being able to be comfortable in both worlds and comfortable enough to exist without one of them.

Some Thoughts:

1. Un-boxing videos are straight up weird. Here’s an example if you’ve never seen one. At the end he asks people to subscribe. This makes it weirder.

It is tough to believe the solo portion of my vacation is basically over. The kids are released from captivity (read: school) tomorrow. I’ll enjoy spending the time with family. This is our first xmas without any relatives in town, so it will be a unique and insulated situation. I’m excited about it. I am less excited about the fact that i’m back to work shortly after. This schedular (yep, made that up) twist is seemingly the result of trying to align with university schedules. I’m okay with it though. I think I’ve hit a plateau and it is time to enjoy where I am at before I make the next climb towards self-actualization.

Some Thoughts:

1. Really not all that much to say tonight. I have a great deal swirling around in here, but the energy is being directed towards a new writing project. The key in such things is to hit the ground running. When you wait around for due dates, they seem to always show up a lot sooner than if you were prepared.

I am not prepared to say my childhood was good. Such terms are relative to the people you end up spending your life around. At the same time I am not going to say my childhood was bad. I see situations in writings and on the news that suggest it could’ve been much worse. I feel the only way to know the value of your own childhood is through experiencing that of another child–walking a mile in their shoes or even just watching from the sidelines. I did that tonight. After an incredibly long and rewarding evening of coaching football, I slumped against the bathroom wall to monitor my 4 yr old as he played in the tub. It took me back to I time when I did just that, and the memories warmed me.

I lived three distinctly different childhoods. The early years were defined by my stepdad. I went everywhere and did everything with him. He passed when I was 12, a devastating moment that ushered in the second phase of childhood. A year after his passing I was dumped on my birth father’s doorstep in Long Island (somehow I’d become unmanageable in that time). This began the second, and terribly short-lived, phase of my childhood. The last cut a scar across the high school years when the major questions like ‘who are you dating’ were replaced by, ‘where are you living tonight? tomorrow? next month?’ I spent time staying with my mom when she let me, my grandma, friends, and two terrifying nights in a shelter.

Looking at my little guy now, I can see he is well into that first memorable phase of life. He’s lucky to have a mom that thinks the world of him, and a dad that wants to be around him to cuddle him and make him feel loved. With xmas closing in I am still scrambling to find gifts for my boys. Deep down inside I hope they recognize that the gifts don’t matter as much as being there does. In a few years they’ll be pre-teens and I don’t know what that phase of life is going to look like. I have no expectations of dying, but I’m not the one who picks such things. I know what it was like to age without a true father. I don’t feel I was enough of a pain to justify the hell I went through as a teen, but I could see any single mom saddled with 3 boys losing her mind and taking that hurt and rage out on her boys the way it happened to me. I was an only child and look how that situation turned out.

I also can’t spend to many moments worrying about tomorrow, because today is happening right now. He’s still there, steps away, playing with his Thomas the Train and making believe the train can also be a boat. He’s taking hold of his imagination and letting magical worlds unfurl themselves. He is doing exactly what he should be doing right now, so I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

A close friend pointed out to me that I may have missed a significant part of the story in regards to Playboy Founder Hugh Hefner. I felt challenged to learn more. In fact, Hefner does see himself as a feminist, and notable criticism of his life seems to agree. He seems to think that a lot of people miss the point of the Playboy lifestyle, even going so far as to suggest, “Playboy insisted women had desire, indeed a right to desire, just as society assumed men did.” So what is the truth of the Playboy lifestyle? Somewhere along the way did we fail to realize that Hugh Hefner is a champion of feminine liberation?

I must admit that I agree with some of what the man says. In truth, “The notion that Playboy turns women into sex objects is ridiculous. Women are sex objects. If women weren’t sex objects, there wouldn’t be another generation. It’s the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go ’round. That’s why women wear lipstick and short skirts.” Men are sex objects as well, but in a patriarchal society gender roles allow women to be more readily viewed in that role. Men are therefore viewed less as sex objects than as protectors and providers, which is why the young woman-old man dynamic exists. Older men are traditionally seen as more financially secure and able to provide for women. What is also left unspoken in that dynamic is that the man (a gender that already naturally dies much faster than women) is going to pass on faster than the female, leaving her young, wealthy, and single, and quite possibly with kids. Following this trajectory she is then more likely to become the ‘cougar’ who goes after her physical prize, and thus the vicious cycle begins anew.

Despite the truth of Hefner’s words, I’m forced to question his deeper motives. Hef once said, “Gloria Steinem said that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. And now she’s married to a wealthy guy. So what does that say to you?” There are always moments like this that shine through the subterfuge and point to a deeper enmity from the so-called feminist. On the one hand he created an empire that glorifies women and allows them to feel beautiful. On the other hand, he shapes a very specific image of beauty and through that justifies an entire body transformation/enhancement industry. He makes it so fat women can hardly been seen as beautiful. He allows soft light and touchups to project an unrealistic standard of beauty that every single girl must strive for from the moment their prospective teenage boyfriend swipes a playboy from the corner QuickTrip. Now, is that feminism?

It is female liberation in a limited sense. It is an opportunity for some women to feel like they can show their bodies and not be ashamed of that. Playboy is sexual liberation at its finest, and I must respect him for that. I smiled and said, “That’s what’s up” when he wrote, “Women were the major beneficiary of the sexual revolution. It permitted them to be natural sexual beings, as men are. That’s where feminism should have been all along. Unfortunately, within feminism, there has been a puritan, prohibitionist element that is antisexual.” So, maybe he isn’t what I perceive as a feminist or even all that good for women in general, but I’ll admit that he is the Godfather of sex positivism in the modern age. That’s a pretty wonderful thing to be accountable for in my book.

I am fascinated by Hugh Hefner. The 87 year old magazine entrepreneur is still worth upwards of $43 million dollars from an empire built on showing pictures of naked women. I’m being glib. The Playboy Empire is about status and even moreso about the controlling the concept of what is and, perhaps more importantly, who has access to desirable beauty. I’m of the concept that young, sexy women generally are not attracted to geriatric dudes, but there it is on display, and as a man I’m expected to smile and say, “that’s whats up.” But that’s not whats up. These women who sell themselves into a glorified form of sexual slavery are as much victims as perpetrators of a false perception. Age is glorified in men whereas it is shunned in women. Hef reminds us that with a few bucks we can have a house full of gorgeous girlfriends ready to drop trough at a moments notice. Moreover, he reminds us that bras unstrap at the sound of money.

In other words, Hefner’s legacy is the belief that men need to be pimps to be powerful.

I don’t want to think that the only way to gain mainstream status is to be accepted as a man who has a large following of females who, despite my advanced age and physical deterioration, are still ‘in to me’. I want to believe it is okay to age gracefully and that as I mature, so will my tastes. Most of all, I don’t want to feel like women are for sale to the highest bidder. Maybe this is still a significant part of our gender relations schema, but we don’t need it anymore. Its time for a change.

The more things change the more they remain the same. But why? Lately I’ve been thinking about the idea of change and wondering why people are so terribly resistant to change–especially change that is good for them. Change often leads to discomfort. I’m a person used to my daily rituals and routines. Anything that upsets the delicate balance I call my life is going to make me upset, at least until I can find new balance, but what about the really big changes? Those seem to be untenable to most people.

The example I like to use the most is the story of the two little girls raised in a family of white supremacists. They were raised to sing pride songs and hate anyone not like themselves. What if one day they decided to like people who were different? The cost of that would be drastic. They’d lose everything. So it becomes a simpler choice to stay haters and live the lifestyle. Change is tough, so we don’t do it.

When change hits us in the mouth we fight back, no matter the change. Its on public display every election. I see it in the smallest changes and in the largest. Unless we invite change into our homes (and sometimes even then) we’ll push back and act as though the change isn’t good for us.

Some Thoughts:

1. I wanted to say more on this topic, but I’m bummed about the Giants. Perhaps thats the change I’m resisting. I am used to having faith that my team will ultimately be successful, but I need to realize that the Giants aren’t going to be good until they get through this nascent rebuilding phase and that rebuilding needs to begin with several linemen in this draft.