Leapin' lizards

A few years ago I started doing creative writing workshops for 4th- and 5th-graders. I take them off the teachers' hands for an afternoon or, most recently, an hour each Monday. We write stories, we draw pictures, and I field 30,000 questions about how old I am (usually tailed by squeals of "You're older than MY MOM!"). This weekend I flipped through a pile of stories from various kidlets and stumbled upon my favorite souvenir.

My very first time out, I was doing an afternoon workshop for my friend Nancy's 4th graders. The big finish? I posted a picture of a lizard riding a bike and asked them to write a story about the picture. In return, we got the usual stuff: kids stood to read stories about shopaholic lizards hitting the mall, newts racing older brothers, robbers wearing lizard costumes, canyon-jumping chameleons (I almost made a Fonzie joke to them, but realized I was, oh, 2 decades late), etc. Good stuff. Then this lanky blond kid stood, shot me a grin, explained that he was *this close* to being finished, and cleared his throat to read: "The Race for Grandmother's Soul."

*needle on the record*

His was a tale of a scrappy little lizard who, upon watching this grandma get mowed down by a Schwinn-mounted gang, became consumed by his quest for revenge. I kid you not. I wanted to look at Nancy, perched in the back of the room biting through her lip, but I knew I'd lose my grip. While the students clapped in that stuttered way people do when they're not sure the play's over, he handed me his booklet. Would you believe me if I told you that the illustrations for "The Race for Grandmother's Soul" were a series of frames of the lizard smiling and waving at the reader and then, finally, standing in a pool of red? The way I see it, that young man is going to be famous or infamous. When that happens, remember that you heard it here first.

Little Billy in the Study with the Lead Pipe...

My good friend, Jessye, is a grade-school teacher. She's one of those otherworldly people who's always sweet, even-handed, pro-underdog, and unbelievably calm. If she weren't so incredibly genuine, you'd never buy it. It's a good thing she's such a cool customer, too, for Jessye once faced down one of the world's shortest super-villains...and won.

When she's not sussing out illegal porn-surfing in the grade school computer lab [and managing not to bang her own head against the wall when the perp exclaims in wide-eyed surprise, "How did THAT get there?"], Jess helps run a summer camp. One day, two of her campers started some snack-time scrapping and when she went to break it up, the smaller boy explained, "Billy poisoned me!" Now, knowing that school violence is no laughing matter, Jess decided not to smirk and looked to the accused (in my brain, he's a tiny little thing wearing a propeller beanie and licking a lollipop with a skull and crossbones on it). He copped to it, explaining that he simply offered his pal a cookie...and the minute he sank his teeth in, pointed and cried, "AH-HA! I've poisoned you!"

I don't know what I would've done in this situation. Certainly in the days of Columbine and Virginia Tech, you don't want to be the insensitive jerk who brushes it off, but I fear I wouldn't have shown half of Jess' composure: carefully taking each child aside, talking about why poisoned Oreos aren't comic genius and, then, having the "victim" checked out at the hospital. I mean, I guess I would've done these things but I would've HAD to add another step. Confronting the Lilliputian Lex Luthor and demanding to know WHY he'd decided to joke about poisoning someone. Poison. In the days of automatic weapon-soaked video games, this child chose to make an inappropriate joke about arsenic. Who does he think he is? Snidley Whiplash?!?! When other kids are reading" Worlds of WarCraft" cheat guides, is this kid thumbing through his dog-eared Agatha Christie collection? "I poisoned you?" This kid is old school...any day, now, I expect him to show up at camp in a top hat, twisting his pencil-thin moustache.

Jess, keep us posted...and hire a taster.

Cubs in 2008

I am a Mets fan. Nowadays that's not too shabby, but it wasn't so long ago (oh, like, 1987-last year) when that admission earned a tongue cluck and a shoulder pat from total strangers. But I can't even peek in the windows of the pity party that is being a Cubs fan. Seriously: in 2000 I had a "Bill Bradley for President"decal AND a "Let's Go Mets!" sticker plastered to the back of an '88 Civic with no muffler and mildewed seats and I didn't have the room to complain that Cubbie fans have. Catching a Friday night screening of Chasing October (visit http://www.cubsmovie.com/index/)just drove that point home like a bat to the brain.

This movie--made by the dear friends of a dear friend--was fueled by credit card debt, watered down beer, and despair. And it was magical. Not only is it a funny, nail-biting doc of the infamous (thanks for fielding the ball, Bartman!!!) Cubs 2003 season, it is an example that--yes, sports fans--people you've actually met (kinda, sorta, once or twice) DO make movies. Good movies. Great movies about having your heart trounced once a year every year just because (a) they're your Cubs and (b) it feels so good when you stop. And as a person who lives and breathes movies, nothing tops that. The envy and excitement churning in my stomach while we watched this movie was nearly painful. Why couldn't I work up the gumption (who says "gumption???") to make a real, live movie? Maybe it takes genuine trauma, genuine pain. Maybe it takes being a Cubs fan.

My belly-aching (again, with the weird expressions...is it 1940?) aside: visit the Chasing October website, catch a screening near you, and support these guys. The only thing sweeter than being part of a grass-roots movement to promote a cool project is laughing your ass off at some yahoos enjoying the hell out of themselves on the streets of Chicago. Well, the Mets winning the series this Fall just might be sweeter....and not entirely unlikely. Sorry Cubs fans: maybe next year.

"It has feet like a duck, but it's furry!"

Okay, so I've been way remiss in my blogging. I admit it. My "let's grow some discipline" experiment fell flat on its face. Yes, last week was crazy-busy at work. Yes, I was fresh out of topics. Yes, no one reads this anyway. But, still: I swore I'd flex the ol' writing muscles and I haven't. But, tonight I learned something that's yanked me out of blog-tirement. Something so Earth-shattering, so life-changing, so core-rattling...well, I just had to blog.

Platypus are deadly.

Platypus (platypuses? platypie? more-than-one-platypus?) have poisonous spikes on their wee little platy-toes. A platypus could kill you, if it had half a mind to do so. Your number could be up...and it could be painted on the furry little belly of a platypus.

Now, I know yesterday was Earth Day and I should be in an "oooooooooh, nature" state of mind, but f#@! Poisonous platypus? Not cool. I recycle, I wash my clothes in cold water, I glare sideways at SUVs...but I draw the line at a freakin' poisonous platypus.

I suppose I'm not entirely surprised by the idea of random-death-by-platypus, I just always figured I'd encounter a platypus and would laugh so hard I'd choke on my Drumstik (the ice cream kind, not the chicken kind). Or maybe--more likely--I'd develop a relationship with said platypus and then one day, turn to him and say, "Hey...I thought you were a duck." And he'd freeze his gaze on the horizon and reply stonily, "Nope." Then I'd die of betrayal. But, poison? I totally didn't see that coming. Weird.

Rise of the Machines

I'm afraid I have some shocking news: androids are planning a hostile takeover of Indianapolis. The Crossroads of America is (are?) poised to become the wasteland of the artificially-intelligent. (Currently, said Crossroads are inexplicably overrun with people who like to watch cars drive in circles...that's a different kind of intelligence.)

I was driving under an overpass today--I was underpassing--when I almost wrecked the car. "DROIDS" was scrawled across the cement. I had just seen the same drippy, ominous message on an abandoned building 10 minutes before. And yesterday, while stopped at an intersection, I saw "OBEY DROID" carved into a toppling pile of plastic and metal that I suspect was once a phone booth. Dude. They're coming.

And this is NOT like the time I saw all the people waiting in line in downtown Indy for the Star Wars Convention and warned everyone that we were being taken over by Storm Troopers (before I got in line and went inside to look for Warwick Davis). This is real, man. The only upside will be being able to routinely geek out and say "These aren't the droids we're looking for." Aside from that, this promises to be terrifying.

My body is rebelling from the nose up

Okay, so I'm getting ready for work this morning and make a startling discovery. Still squirming from watching James Carville and Jesse Jackson almost-fight on the Today Show--it's like watching your parents argue--I leaned in to groom the ol' eyebrows. But my pluck turned to "f@#!" when I tweezed (twoze???) a long, silver eyebrow hair. Silver. Nearly white. All bad.

My eyebrows are going silver at 29. Hell, I could have Betty White's hair on my head and I'd never know...I haven't seen my natural hair color since '96. But my EYEBROWS? This is entirely unfair. And this isn't the first sign of aging body rebellion: all the years of making "Ohhhhh, nooooooooooooo!" faces started catching up with me in my early twenties, furrowing my little forehead into crease-a-palooza. That was infuriating enough. Sunscreen and over-priced face creams twice a day for nine years--NINE YEARS--and I have the lower face of a 29-year-old and the brow-area of Sam Waterston? Beauty Myth, indeed.

Okay, so the way I figure it, I have a month until I look like Doc from Back to the Future. Within that same month, Nanette--this brave, cool soul I know--will trek back to Burkina Faso where she's serving in the Peace Corps. This sort of parallel reminds to me to get my priorities in order...but worrying about it is just making my forehead wrinkles worse.

(If some bored, wayward member of a future civilization happens upon this blog, I hope I don't forever sully her image of our people. But I bet I do.)

Bison, Show Choir, Hostages, & Pirates

Who knew that so many (okay, two people...but they're very important people) were so deeply affected by the most famous of all creepy bison-saving-juvenile-delinquent movies: Bless the Beasts and Children. On the heels of my last blog, two brave readers owned up to painful memories of having had to play or sing the love theme to Bless in middle and high school concerts. Now, I did my time in show choir--six years in white character shoes, lightning bolt belts, sequined green dresses, tied-dyed shirts, and poodle skirts (not all at once, but that would've been a solid costume)--and, yet, I was never subjected to this punishment. Having to sing Bless the Beasts and Children? That tops every show choir story I have...a few of which I will share with you now [in the interest of taking up space]:

(1) Singing Proud Mary and doing a soulful choo-choo dance with seven other tone-challenged white Appalachian teenagers.

(2) Learning the Roger Rabbit from my future-optometrist and then-show-choir coach, Mr. French. We did it during our show-stopping Paula Abdul medley ("Co-co-co-cold-hearted! Ooo-Ah-Ah! Co-co-co-cold-hearted...sssssssssssssssssssnake!").

(3) Making a long, loud, death-smelling boa out of garbage bags to swing around during a passable cover of "Hey, Big Spender." (The minute you walked in the joint, I could tell you were thinking "My God, what IS that smell?!?!")

(4) Learning the sign-language for the lyrics to "Let There Be Peace on Earth" and finding out later that we just kept signing "bird, bird, ground, love, eyes, me" over and over again.

But enough of show choir prattle...there are enough other blogs for that. Let's give a little love to Blog Commentator Larry--which is now his official title--or reminding us of two other celluloid gems that HBO showed when they weren't looping Bless the Beasts and Children: Savannah Smiles and The Pirate Movie. When I read Larry's comments...well, the shock of remembrance was like standing up after having your legs crossed for a week straight.

Savannah freaking Smiles?!?!? I can't remember a slumber party between the years of 1983 and 1987 when we didn't watch that movie. And when you break it down to its core plot points, it strikes me as a kind of creepy choice for kiddie viewing. If you've never seen the movie, here's the long & short: a poor-little-rich-girl is kidnapped for ransom. Her captors appear to have been sidelined on their way to join the law enforcement community in Hazzard County and their bumbling ways immediately endear them to their bratty little hostage. We eventually learn that she's better off with and better loved by Smokey and the Bandit or whoever they are. So it's, basically, Stockholm Syndrome for the second-grade set.

As for The Pirate Movie, I don't recall being force fed it at slumber parties. I do, however, remember being dazzled by the daily airings of the swashbuckling love story. I also recall Pirate star Kristy MacNicol lending her sweet pipes to a song about drowning deep-sea divers. Or it might have been a love song. I guess I was never clear on that.

I've lost my sense of direction as to where, exactly, this blog was headed. I think it might be best to end it here. But I don't know how. Wow. [Rocking on heels, hands in pocket] This is awkward. [Whistling Off-Key] Sooooooo...time to end the blog... [Slowly backing out of the room and then turning and breaking into a mad dash]