L o b a B l a n c a {dot} c o m

What other team would Loba root for?

I can only hope that everyone around my age was lucky enough to experience the shear joy of shmooshing down into a bean bag chair when they were wee ones.

I adored my bean bag chair. It was cream and yellow-striped vinyl and emblazoned with a big graphic of Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I’m not really sure what message my parents were trying to pass along to me at the impressionable age of 3 with that particular choice…do you?

My greatest memory of my Dopey bean bag chair is also perhaps one of the earliest memories that I can still pull up with scary clarity. It’s also the memory of one of my first really stupid moments. See, I was quite the curious pup, always poking around where I shouldn’t have been. My dad always tells me the story of how, not long after I first started walking, I kept going over and opening the drawer to one of the end tables in the living room to poke around. He and my mom would smack my hands away and close the drawer, but not long after I’d be back in that drawer. I was also a quick learner and apparently I had deduced that if I heard my parents coming down the hall, I needed to shut the drawer before they caught me. Too bad I wasn’t clever enough to also deduce that I should move my fingers out of the way before I slammed the drawer shut. D’oh! Glad I don’t remember that moment.

Back to the Dopey bean bag chair. It didn’t take me long to discover the zippers. There was one on the vinyl shell and another on the interior fabric bag that kept all the little Styrofoam beans together. I remember unzipping both and discovering the beans. I also remember then proceeding to gather up some of the beans and stick them into my ear.

Yeah, maybe giving me a Dopey bean bag chair was a prophetic moment on my parents’ part. Or maybe I’ve just been a big dumb ass for a really long time.

The weird thing is that I can remember doing this. I can remember watching my dad, who was standing in my room’s doorway but facing my mom and talking to her, which meant that he only had a peripheral idea of what I was doing. I remember watching his profile as he talked, while I sat busily sticking Styrofoam pellets into my ear.

Too bad I can’t remember exactly why I decided this would be a good idea. Needless to say, when my dad finally did look into my room, he was less than thrilled with what he saw. I also remember my mom holding my head to one side while my dad looked into my ear with a flashlight. I had stuffed so many beans into my ear that I ended up having to go to the doctor to have my ear canal washed out. At least I didn’t stick them in both ears.

My parents let me keep my Dopey bean bag chair. I have a vague memory of silver duct tape being added to the zipper though. I had that chair for years after that, well into my fat phase when I’m sure I smashed all those beans flat. Sadly, however, my final memory of this chair was of it resting on top of the trash cans in our back yard, waiting to be dragged out front for the Monday morning trash pickup.

Ah well. I’m sure somewhere in the extensive slide collection at my parents’ house there is a photo of me sitting in my Dopey chair. Should I ever get around to scanning my parents’ slides, I will be sure to post said photo here. No, the photo won’t be of me with beans stuck in my ear…

She'd get my vote...

Wonder Woman is a lame superhero. She flies around in her invisible jet and her weaponry is a lasso that makes you tell the truth. I just don’t get it.

So said Megan Fox in this interview.

Um. I’m sorry, but aren’t you the one from those giant transforming robot movies? But you don’t “get” Wonder Woman? Maybe if you read up a little bit, you would know more. Things like her lasso of truth was the inspiration of her creator, William Moulton Marston, who also happened to be one of the creators of the polygraph device (I know, that’s probably a really big word for you, and something else you don’t “get”…it’s that magical make-believe machine they use in police movies all the time to determine if someone’s lying).

Wonder Woman sprang from a period in history in which even the idea of a woman being portrayed as a superhero was ridiculously forward thinking. Yes, she started out wearing a pleated skirt and later shifted to Underoos, but she was still inspirational. Enough so that Gloria Steinem placed her on the very first cover of Ms. magazine.

Again, though, even more things that Ms. Fox doesn’t “get.” She claims in this interview that, “…if you want your girls to feel strong and intelligent and be outspoken and fight for what they think is right, then I want to be that type of role model, yeah.” Yet she fails to get how Wonder Woman was all those things and more to several generations of women. But she sure does look perty in cut-off shorts and has mastered the PG-13-approved boob shot.

Know what else I’m glad Ms. Fox is not getting? The role of Wonder Woman.

You make me sick. Your entire havoc-inducing, thieving, whoring generation disgusts me.

Thank you, Principal Himbry, for that rousing diatribe against my beloved Generation X. Yes, this is my generation. And, no, I don’t think we’re an entirely bad generation. In fact, we’ve done some pretty cool things during our time on this planet.

But I come not to praise Gen-X, but to bury it…in my personal seething frustration. And I’m dragging you all down with me. What’s got me all in a frothy lather now? The Travel Channel’s show Man v. Food.

Hey, you've got a little something on your...oh, never mind.

The “Man” in question is Adam Richman. His modus operandi is to travel to different regions of the country, highlighting their culinary delights and downfalls as he goes. Then he accepts whatever ridiculously indulgent “food challenge” that said region has to offer. Past challenges have included attempting to consume in one (sometimes timed) sitting:

• One 72-ounce steak.
• One 7-1/2-pound hamburger.
• Five 24-ounce milkshakes.
• One 7-pound breakfast burrito.
• One meter-long bratwurst.

Now I’m not ever going to be mistaken for a highly religious wolf…but I do believe that gluttony is a sin. Especially when all around the world there are people starving to death who would be happy with a sliver of the food that Richman gorges on during each show. Hell, there are people right in our own freedom fry-loving U.S. of A. who are starving (oh, but don’t even get me on the topic of these waify little glamor girl tumbleweeds starving themselves on purpose and looking so frail that you just want to scream at them to eat a freakin’ pie, but you’re afraid the impact of the scream would snap them in two). Meanwhile, Mr. Richman is paid to regularly glut himself to the point of vomiting.

This show disgusts me in ways that I didn’t think were possible anymore. We’re so fat in this country that they have to make special extra-wide coffins for us. Do we really need shows like this? And is this the only way we can remain competitive with the rest of the world? Yeah, you might be home to more Nobel Prize winners, world-renowned scientists, and brainiac children, but we’ve got this dude who can eat a plateful of food that weighs more than a baby seal! USA! USA!

Give me a break. And people are defending this show, saying things like it’s our right as Americans to eat this way. Yes, for those of you unfamiliar with our Constitution, nestled between our right to trial by jury in civil cases and our right not to be cruelly or unusually punished is clearly stated our right to be obnoxious, fat nationalists. In your face, Queen Lizzy!

Sigh. Will this become another regular feature here at the lair: a semi-regular evisceration of all the things that bring down the overall cool factor of being a member of Gen-X? Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve just been in a particularly snarky mood the past couple of days, for no particular reason. And this post has been stewing for a few days. Feels good to finally get it out of my system. See? Blog of Dorian Gray, Redux!

So, dipping into the Angry Blogger^TM topic files, I still receive e-mails from the GOP at my junk e-mail account. Said e-mails are still addressed to my father. Said e-mails still both amuse and unnerve me (kind of like the GOP in general). The e-mails are punctuated by catty swipes at all the big Donkey names: Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank. They each contain some puerile jab like “Ultraliberal,” “Leftist Radical,” or “Kitten Crusher.” Almost all the messages harp on the national deficit (but strangely fail to mention the name of the president responsible for plunging us into said deficit).

Each message is “signed” by Michael Steele, current RNC chair, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, and eternal douche bag. I love how he is so gung-ho for his party now. Funny how he did everything short of actually switch parties when he ran for the U.S. Senate a few years ago. Funnier how he lost. The messages also always end with a plea for donations to the RNC. Let me get my checkbook now!

To your right you will see a particularly amusing graphic from one of these e-mails. The graphic comes from an e-mail decrying outrage over Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic party. It rebukes Specter for:

[peddling] his services—and his vote—to the leftist Obama Democrats who aim to remake America with their leftist plan.

It then goes to compare Specter’s defection to Benedict Arnold’s defection to the British, and compares the GOP to George Washington. Oh, and it asks my father twice for a donation (because outrage costs money!). Actually, it asks for money three times if you count the fact that this graphic also links to the GOP’s secure donation page.

And we wonder why nothing really substantive ever gets done anymore. It’s because hyperbole and fundraising are more important than anything else. And it’s not just the GOP that is guilty of this. My party does it just as much. I’m just picking on the GOP because…well, hell, if you’re going to e-mail me your crappy messages and think that I’m my father, you’re just begging for a blog skewer every now and again. And truth be told, I don’t receive DNC messages anymore. I got tired of reading all about the hyperbole and fundraising. You want money from me? Do something to earn it.

I keep coming back to what I want this new lair to be. I know that’s strange to say at this point since I’m steadily closing the gap on my first 100 posts, but that’s just the way I am. I can worry a hole into any issue imaginable (or imagined).

I actually do still feel very passionately about things like politics and society, and I suppose most of how I feel is still positively negative. But when I come here to vent, I always get sidetracked by all the pretty, shiny WordPress things like widgets and plug-ins. Case in point: Do you all like the pretty progress meter I snagged for my 50 Book Challenge? It’s originally a meter to chart progress for those who participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but it works in this instance as well.

I suppose I also feel a certain sense of “what’s the point” regarding venting about things over which I have no control and no way of changing. Politics, for example. What’s the point? Our political system is interminably corrupt to the point that we shouldn’t believe a single word that passes from the lips of any of them, Obama included. How many times have we heard him beat the “difference between campaigning and governing” horse? It’s dead, Mr. President. Stop kicking it. Besides, I don’t think there should be a difference between the two. If you don’t think you can carry it through in reality, don’t promise it. I’m tired of ample servings of empty promises. Give me honesty or give me four more years of same shit, different party.

Speaking of parties, I’m so glad to see that my political party is still full of jackasses. Nancy Pelosi, WTF? We’ve already got Joe Biden sticking his foot in his mouth every other sentence; could you maybe STFU? And, yes, I’m going to be incredibly hard on the Democratic party here at the lair, probably even more so than the GOP. Why? Because I expect better from my party (whereas my Republican expectations have always been more than exceeded, which should let you know just exactly what I expect from them).

Here, however, is a recent GOP disappointment. Today’s WaPo has an article about how Republicans are worried about how to approach the task of opposing Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter:

An all-out assault on Sotomayor by Republicans could alienate both Latino and women voters, deepening the GOP’s problems after consecutive electoral setbacks.

As a woman, I take deep offense to this statement. I despise that we have become a society that accepts granting preferential treatment or kid glove treatment based on one’s gender. Guess that’s why I also have a huge problem with affirmative action in action. As a law to level the playing field in the job market, affirmative action was a remarkable ruling. Then they added quotas. Quotas don’t level anything. And I can only speak for myself on this one, but I would rather lose out on potential employment if I lose because my competition is more qualified than receive the job because I happened to be born with “girl boobs.” Just like it’s not cool to knock me out of the competition because I’m a woman, it’s equally unfair to give me bonus points for being a woman. It almost makes me feel like there’s justification to the ridiculous notion that I am inferior because of my gender and that I need bonus points in order to compete. Screw that mindset.

(By the way, that YouTube clip contains the only things that were actually funny in that craptastic TNG episode of Family Guy).

Oh, and screw you, Senator Schumer for saying “[Republicans] oppose her at their peril…. I think this process is going to be more a test of the Republican Party than of Sonia Sotomayor.” Again, right back to my original argument: If the GOP have justifiable reasons for opposing her based on their party’s dictates and standards, then they should do so. And we should not assume that they do so because she is a woman or because she is a minority. I should also like to point out that it was under Republican presidents that the Supreme Court received its first woman justice and its second minority justice…you know, just in case anyone out there is keeping score of things that should come secondary to actual qualifications.

Time again for another Loba-approved poster design! This time, we’re skipping backward in time to 1984, to visit that gem of a movie, Gremlins. Written by a very pre-Harry Potter Chris Columbus and directed by Joe “The ‘burbs” Dante, this is one of my favorite childhood movies. It’s also one of my favorite “teaser” posters.

First thing that I love about this poster is the fact that it’s not a photo, but a photo-realistic drawing/painting. This was quite the popular medium at the time (the Star Wars movie posters all utilized this medium to wonderful effect while Indiana Jones still looks marvelous as a sketched hero). It adds a bit of whimsy to the poster while keeping it realistic enough that you know it’s not going to be all fun and games.

The way the lighting is utilized in this drawing provides a lovely and effective bit of chiaroscuro that draws your eyes immediately to the hands and the shoe box within them. And what are those in the box top? Breathing holes? And those cute, furry little Monchhichi paws…and two glimmering orbs watching you. But nothing more. What on earth could it be?

This poster also has something additional that my first poster pick didn’t have: a tagline. This one is delightful: “Cute. Clever. Mischievous. Intelligent. Dangerous.”

I love the delineation of words from sweet to sinister that lead your eyes once again down to the shoe box and those mysterious eyes watching you, with what? Curiosity? Anger? Malice?

Skip the Spielberg mention and you get your first glimpse of the font that has pretty much become synonymous to my generation as “Gremlins” font, kind of like someone immediately recognizing “Star Trek” or “Back to the Future” font.

I consider this poster to be an early “WIN” poster in my movie-going memory. I remember seeing it as a kid and wanting to know just what the hell was in that friggin’ shoe box. I also remember having a Gremlins coloring book, which I wish I still had…but that’s another time and another place. Now, here is the latest Poster Pick:

Poster Pick Bonus: Gremlins vs. Episode I

I’m not quite sure when this Gremlins poster was released. I don’t think it was for the movie release, but just for the special edition DVD release. This is the image that is on my DVD case, and it’s a design that I really enjoy. It’s also a design that we have seen elsewhere, to similarly spectacular first-blush effect. We saw it with the first teaser poster for George Lucas’s prequel abortion, Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

Aesthetically, I love this concept: good guy casting a bad guy shadow. It’s titillating, it’s taunting, it’s teasing, it’s tasty. With Gremlins, it’s also totally awesome. Gizmo the Mogwai was cute and cuddly and only mildly annoying. Stripe the Gremlin was a surly bastard with punk rock hair and a bad-ass attitude.

It’s a shame the same cannot be said of Episode I. I remember the joy that this teaser poster brought me. It was mysterious and stark, with the presence of a cherished evil. Ain’t no baddy quite like Darth Vader, right? Then I saw the movie, and I learned what true disappointment really feels like.

Anakin Skywalker sucked. I don’t think the blame rests solely on the shoulders of Jake Lloyd, but he didn’t help make the torture that was this movie any less painful. Someone really should have smacked George Lucas with a fully functional light saber at the first utterance of the nickname “Annie” for Darth Vader. Annie? One day he’s going to be the fucking dark overlord of the empire and you want to give him a nickname that evokes images of a frizzy-haired orphan with no pupils? Screw you, Lucas. Screw you with a Jar-Jar Binks action figure.

Here, however, are the two shadowplay posters together. One still makes me smile while the other saddens me to my marrow with the memory of a New Hope that was crushed by “Mesa called Jar-Jar Binks. Mesa your humble servant.”

Mesa gonna pukes now.

I’m going to spoil this book for you with the very first sentence of the novel:

When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.

And thus begins Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon. Why did I ruin this for you? I didn’t really. That’s like saying that I would ruin Sebold’s first novel, The Lovely Bones, by telling you that it starts with the protagonist being assaulted and murdered. With Sebold, the violence is the catalyst from which the true story ignites and sears itself into your brain and your soul.

I think, however, that many people probably had difficulty with this novel because of the fact that this time the protagonist is not the victim, but the perpetrator. This time we are expected to come to the other side of the coin, accept and possibly even sympathize with the one who has committed this story’s prime crime. It’s a hard sell, indeed.

The prose is gorgeous, as Sebold’s writing tends to be. And I suppose if Sebold’s ultimate goal was simply to present this tale as an open-ended account of the initial act, she has succeeded, especially considering the very open-ended way in which the story ends. I won’t give any more away than I already have. I will simply say that I think Sebold only partially succeeded in this story. It drew me in as quickly and wholly as The Lovely Bones did; however, I felt none of the satisfaction or emotion that I felt upon finishing the former novel.

Final score: 4/5 for prose; 3/5 for story. I don’t think I will be adding this book to my collection, but I’m glad that I didn’t let all the negative reviews sway me from reading it.

Book number 15 has already been selected from the library’s New Arrivals shelf: Captivity by Debbie Lee Wesselmann. I’m not really sure what drew me to this one, but I’m hoping that it will be enjoyable.

Dude. I told you today was blue and gray casual uniform day.

So today has been really groovy. It’s beautiful here in Lobalandia, with cerulean skies and lots of sun. Played a little tennis, went hiking around a lake. Not a bad way to spend a Baturday. Oh, and to the gentleman who kept watching me peripherally in the store as I was molesting the bags of brown sugar, no, I’m not in some way impaired. I just like the way brown sugar feels when you shmoosh it. You should try it sometime. You might like it, too.

Welcome to Smurfland

I do believe this won’t be the only visit that our little blue friends make here at Flashback Friday. I was quite the Smurfy child, if I do say so myself. This inaugural appearance, however, is all about 1981′s The Smurfs All Star Show.

As cheesy as this confession is, this was the only record I ever owned. I was a bit of a sheltered little pup and wasn’t allowed much exposure to popular music until I was on the cusp of teendom. So while all my friends were putting together lovely LP collections that featured Michael Jackson, Sheena Easton, Bon Jovi, Joan Jett, and so forth…all I had were the Smurfs. (Of course, this just meant that I never had to replace my LPs with cassettes…no, no, all I had to do was replace my cassettes with CDs, haha!)

I loved this record. I remember wanting it so desperately that I did everything short of drool whenever I saw the television commercial. I also remember seeing it at the local Safeway and watching as my wonderful father—he of the classical music LP collection that could have made Mozart himself weep from jealousy—went against everything that he cherished about music and placed a copy in our cart. He’s always been my hero in so many ways, and this was just one of the earliest hero moments I can remember.

I also remember playing this damned record so many times that I drove him from the house and into his shed on numerous occasions. Seems to me that every day for at least a solid month, I would wander around the house, record in hand, looking for someone to start up the All Star Show for me. I simply had to get my Smurf on.

Now, I’m not a very outgoing person at all, but I was even less outgoing when I was little. I was interminably shy, in fact, hiding behind my parents’ legs whenever someone tried to speak to me. But this record unleashed the secret performer in me. I would dance around the living room, regardless of who was present, singing along to all the songs at the top of my unfortunately off-key voice (yes, the words were indeed included on the LP sleeve, but by the 10th listen I had those lyrics seared into my brain).

My parents now keep watch over my precious All Star Show, with its cover adorned with poorly drawn generic Smurfs (where’s Vanity? Brainy? Hefty? Smurfette, even?!). I’m actually quite stunned that my dad didn’t take a ball-peen hammer to it once I moved out, seeing as I used to traumatize him every now and again well into my teens by cranking a verse or two of “Space Smurfs” or “Smurfing Land Express” at unexpected times.

Here is the commercial that hooked me completely when I was little. And yes, I can still sing along with every single one of the songs featured in this ad. Oh, and really weird thing? If you slow down the record so that the singers sound normal, they’ve all got English accents. Crazy.

Principal Lion-o would like to see you in his office

There’s a public high school in the county in which I live that makes me smile whenever I pass it. My smile is for the geekiest of reasons. It’s because the school’s logo looks so eerily similar to the Thundercats logo that all I can think when I see the school is “Thundercats, ho!”

I wonder if any of the kids currently attending this school realize the similarity. Highly unlikely that it would be mainstream knowledge, considering the fact that even the oldest students at the school wouldn’t have been born until the last year of the original 1985-90 run of the Thundercats cartoon. Damned unappreciative young people.

I bet the school geeks realize it though. SNARF!