Wordless Wednesday – Our Little Antiquer
Exit, Stage Right
Before our son was born, my wife and I were very active in community theatre.
Heck, that’s even how we met, both cast in the same show many, many moons ago. We were both, whether separately or together, in usually two shows a year, but devoting a lot of our time to the theatre where we met in other ways – working on sets for other shows, helping directors with auditions, clean-up days. We both even served on the theatre board in different capacities over the course of several years as well.
I have seen that place in so many ways – as a refuge for those in need of a place to fit in, a historical heritage carried on by one successive generation after the next, a source of frustration (mostly during some of my time on the theatre board, which at times felt like a second job with the amount of time spent there), and as a social hub.
Most of all, though, it was a tradition, a sense of history. The particular theatre where my wife and I met was formed in the 1920s and has continuously put on multiple shows a year ever since. To walk through its rooms, hand-made posters dating back almost a century hanging on its walls, you can’t help but feel a sense of history as you stand there. When I would see a poster from a show Meg and I were in I’d think, ‘we’re a part of that history now.’ It’s a pretty darn neat thing.
We were actually in rehearsals for a show the night Meg found out she was pregnant. I came home to find her unique method of letting the cat out of the bag (notes with clues, tied to the collars of our actual cats) and we didn’t have much time before having to race out of the house to rehearsals for Arsenic and Old Lace, this completely new world of impending parenthood freshly dropped into our brains.
We had spent the better part of our lives on stage in some role or another, be it at that theatre or elsewhere. Soon after we found out we were expecting, though, we realized, this was not going to work as-is. So, as much as we loved it, we decided it was time to dim the lights on our theatre participation, at least until the little guy is old enough to come with us, or heck, possibly join us on stage if he wants.
It wasn’t easy. When something has been such a large part of your life, it’s hard to suddenly not have a show to be rehearsing for or not go to those monthly meetings and see everyone. At first it was weird, now it’s become even weirder to think about trying to get back into it at some point.
A lot of people will ask us “are you doing any theatre?” or “are you coming back to the theatre anytime soon?”
The real answer is, we don’t know. I’m sure we’d have fun. It’s in our blood. Heck, it seems to be in our little guy’s blood even at the age of one. Who knows, maybe we’ll get him up on stage one day and we’ll be a family of performers.
It’s one of those things, though, that I think only time will tell. I mean, come on, all theatre people, deep in their hearts, no matter how much they say they’re done, are just waiting for that right script or show for the “comeback performance.”
In the meantime, my stock answer for people is always “well, he’s our big production at the moment.”
Take a look, it’s in a book
We all want to know what’s going on inside the minds of our little ones, I’m sure.
Lately, though, I have been especially curious when it comes to the look on our little guy’s face as he flips through books. I know I write a lot about (perhaps ad nauseam) how important our nightly routine of story time is, but I think it must have had some kind of effect, because now the little one year old monkey will spend time during the day, just pulling books off the shelf in his room, or out of his play basket in the living room.
Sometimes he sits and flips through the pages himself (much better than the ripping of pages we found early on), or other times he will launch his arm out, as straight as can be, literature in hand, insisting that I or Meg read it to him (character voices and all).
When he is sitting there on his own, though, I can’t help but be fascinated by what is going on throughout his face. As he turns each page, his eyes moving about the imagery, from left to write, sometimes with a high-pitched ‘ooo!‘ it just makes me so full of joy to see him engaged and entertained. I cold stare at him all day doing that – if he were willing to sit there and do that all day, which just is not in his energetic nature at this stage.
What an experience, though, to see the thought process unfold in his eyes, as you see his mind working upon every page, every picture. It’s a sight to behold and is one of those things that many of us do every day and have long since taken for granted. In this little developing mind, though, each page, each book is just another new intake, a new adventure in his early journey of life.
Man, what a ball I’m having being along for the ride.
(Turn and Face the Stranger), Ch-Ch-Changes…
A lot has been going on lately and life has been a bit in flux.
Last Friday, after more than seven years in the journalism business, most of those in broadcasting but print before that, I left the news business. As of this week, I am jumping into a brand new career in the realm of public relations.
It’s a move that I am incredibly excited about after years of just ‘feeding the beast’ to get news programs on the air with whatever content was possible amid shrinking staffs and constantly-breaking, outdated machinery (our TV station is one of the few in the country that is still editing on videotape and has yet go non-linear).
At first I was a bit scared of making a leap into another career. This was the longest I had been in any job and it was all I had known for awhile. What about all those familiar faces that I would no longer see day in and day out?
Then I realized that I was doing what we often do when we look back on something – idealizing. I wasn’t taking a look around me, but rather trying to make all that I had dealt with, put up with, and been frustrated by in my business and turn it into a footnote, while putting the good times at the front of my mind.
A very bad idea.
Sometimes, we lose ourselves in what we do. For me, it became very easy. Between the long days, often taking texts or phone calls at home, or doing work online in the evenings after I left work or on the weekends, I got caught up in it. When it’s the medium of television, that goes even further, because you’re not only taking on the identity of your work for yourself, but to the public as well. So many people would stop us in the grocery store and want to talk about who they didn’t like at the station, or why they didn’t like a particular story. It didn’t matter if the person they were complaining about was a friend or colleague, or if I had anything to do with the story they didn’t like. I worked there, thus, I was their chance to vent.
One of the biggest reasons I left was that I was just plain burnt-out on news. In the position I had, I was looked to for many problems for many shows. So, although I walked in at 8 to start getting things together for the noon news, by 10:30 or 11, the evening producer would be looking for what people were doing for the 5. There were many times we were still scrambling to get the Noon on the air and I was running around, frustrated, trying to figure out the 5, the 6, then soon after, the 10 and the 11, etc. It was a never ending cycle. In many jobs, when you finish something, you can take a sigh of relief. “Phew. I finished.” In news, there’s no such thing. You run yourself into the ground for one show and then you better be ready to do it all over again for another show in just a few short hours.
It may have been exciting and new in my twenties, but now, with years gone by and the little guy growing like a weed, it just wasn’t for me anymore.
I was coming home with chest pains, going to work each day, anxiety-ridden about what was coming and I knew that I was coming home as a person I didn’t want my son growing up with. I knew, deep down, that if I stayed on the path I was on, I would be dead before age 50, keeled over my desk. I wasn’t what I wanted my little guy seeing as an example of how to be, or how life should be.
Yes, you can say ‘well, it’s a job’ but you can rationalize and glorify anything when you want to. There is an allure for many to be ‘in the TV business’ or to have people know who you are. In the end, though, what matters is how you balance that, and what you trade off for your own happiness.
So I started looking outward, and when this opportunity in public affairs at a college campus presented itself, looking for someone with a background in journalism, I couldn’t leap fast enough. A new set of challenges, an exciting new start, great hours, holidays off, more time for my family. Time on the weekends and nights to spend with them or work on my passions, be it this blog, my comic series, or get back into some fiction writing. How could I say no?
I know a lot of people these days measure success in different ways. I’m not one to measure it by how many people know me, how much time my face was on television, or how many Facebook friends or followers I had. For me, it’s about the quality of the life you choose to lead. Moving to a job that may not have the ‘glamour’ of my previous job may seem like a downward step to some, especially those who don’t know me. For me, though, it’s the chance to have my own life again, to carve out a future with my family and spend time with the passions that fuel me but have had to be put on the back burner for years as work became more and more consuming.
It was a bittersweet goodbye. I got choked up thinking of the people who I like at work who I’ll miss seeing everyday. Then, I think of the folks who made it miserable to work there, be they certain colleagues or management.
I could have left on a bitter note, given the challenges placed before me by corporate higher-ups during my transition. However, I decided I was going to leave the better person and just finish out the time, a full six weeks. I gave too much of myself over the years to have it all end badly. Besides, I was allowed the opportunity to say my proper goodbyes to the audience and my friends and colleagues, a day which I will remember fondly.
I’ll miss many of the people, but I honestly won’t miss the stressful drudgery or the lack of compassion or common sense that ran rampant there.
The day that I left my news job, Meg found this cartoon online. While not the exact same situation, it pretty much summed up everything about how I was feeling as of late when it comes to having the life drained out of you by work and not living your life:
365 days later…
Where in the world does the time go?
Like a flash of light, our little boy’s birthday was upon us in the blink of an eye. It seems like only yesterday we were welcoming him back home to the cats, a slew of visitors, and introducing him to this thing called life for the very first time. Now, we’ve wrapped up celebrating his first year on earth.
It was a good, handmade event, due in most, if not all part, to Meg. And if you’d like to read HER take on all of this, you can do so over at her blog. She spent months building up to this day, planning out everything from his smash-cake (made from all kinds of tasty, yet healthy things he likes, such as apple sauce and yogurt, versus mostly sugar and corn syrup), to the paper decorations that lined the backyard. She made streamers, she made tissue paper ‘poofs’ that hung from above, and she made a crown out of felt, that the little guy wore letting everyone know he was king of the party.
The menu was made up of many of the monkey’s favorite foods, or at least those he’s tasted in tiny, broken-off portions. There was pizza from our favorite pizza parlor, homemade sandwiches on a freshly baked bread, fruit salad, cheese, crackers, and more.
It can sometimes be a little bit of a risk when you bring both family and friends together as you never know how anyone is going to blend or interact with each other. In our case, it all went off great. He did need a little urging to stick his hands in the smash-cake, not wanting to make a mess (which is kind of surprising considering how messy he gets with, say, pasta for dinner). When it came to open his gifts, his attention was more focused on the wrapping paper or the people around him than on what he was actually receiving, but boy were our friends and family good to him.
Whether it was some new Mo Willems books for our collection, or some of the Fisher Price Retro-toys (a milk truck?! a portable radio?! how neat is this line of toys?!), Little People on a Farm or a Little People version of the Justice League, he made out like a bandit. Although, that little red tricycle from an old friend will have to wait a few years until he’s old enough to ride. 😉
The weather held out as we gathered and had a great, if not tiring time by day’s end. He only needed one nap toward the end of his party, although mommy and daddy wanted about seven naps by the time things were over – no such luck on our end.
As I say, the kudos for the day being as creative and as much of a throwback to backyard parties of yore goes to Meg, who put her all into making this first birthday one to be remembered. And, of course, having our loved ones around us helped seal that memory in.
If I could only figure out how he so quickly went from that little, wrapped up baby in our arms a year ago, to the little man standing on his own, making noises, and playing with toys today. As much as I don’t want them to, I know the years ahead will go by just as fast, if not faster. I can’t stop that, as the past 365 days have proven.
What I can do, though, is make sure that I enjoy every single moment we do have – the good, the bad, and everything in between, because they won’t be here forever.
Wordless Wednesday – Superbaby
As of now we’re HERE…………………………………before you know it, we’ll be HERE
Riddle Me This…
There are some things that you just never part with.
Although I am admittedly a huge fan of purging and ridding the house of things that take up unnecessary space or has just accumulated over the years, there are still a few things that I know I will just always hold on to. Case in point, a particular piece of comic book art hanging in our home office that my son loves to stare at, reach for, and make noises at.
It’s been hanging on my walls in one residence or another, ever since I was 13.
It’s an image of Batman, as depicted in the never-to-be-surpassed Batman: The Animated Series of the 1990s. In it, he’s holding up a confused Riddler by the scruff, ready to cart him off to prison once again.
This isn’t an eBay or comic convention find. No, this was, and still remains, a large memory of my childhood. I won it, you see, in a letter writing contest in 1993. Yes, back in the day when letter columns were still a regular feature in all comic books. The Batman Adventures comic book would hold a contest each month, where the editor would pick two published letters in that month’s column and award the writers of those letters a piece of one of a kind comic art. It was an amazing concept for a young comic fan.
Well, one of those months, a letter of mine had been printed and chosen, and the result was this one of a kind piece, penciled by the late, great Mike Parobeck and inked by a wonderful artist in his own right, Rick Burchett.
Parobeck, a brilliant artistic talent, whether it be from his work on Batman, or my favorite modern-day run of the Justice Society, sadly died in 1996 from diabetic issues.
The work of Rick Burchett has gone on to have graced many a comic page, including a later Batman animated comic series, Batman: The Brave and the Bold and a slew of other DC Comics over the years. His art is graceful and beautiful stuff.
This powerhouse combination of artistic talents wowed me as a kid when I read their comics, and sent me over the moon when this piece of art arrived in the mail. I’m glad to know that their talents continue to be appreciated by my little guy, and hopefully many others in his generation and generations to come.
Superheroes Playing Baseball
It’s this kind of ridiculous fun that makes me love old 1950s/1960s comic books (and the current cartoons based upon them):
The video stalls in the first 7 seconds, but bear with it. It’s the only version I could find online.
Wordless Wednesday – Buckethead
Not so risky business
Since the little guy was born, our movie viewing has taken a nosedive. The last movie we saw in an actual theatre was Toy Story 3.
To be honest, if it weren’t for Netflix and our own DVD collection, we probably wouldn’t see anything.
But, with Meg and the monkey off at camp this week and me working, it was sort of like being a quasi-bachelor for a bit. Meg told me while they were away I should re-enact Risky Business. (Although she apparently meant dancing in the living room and not so much the Rebecca DeMornay-prostitute part. Who knew?)
My evenings have been spent not so much in that Tom Cruise/Old Time Rock and Roll mode, but more in a ‘take a deep breath, crash on the couch and veg out watching movies’ mode.
So, a few of the movies that I just don’t feel comfortable watching with the little guy around, and I figure Meg probably doesn’t want to see anyway, have all been on the menu this week. From Captain America to the Avengers, I’ve been having a geek-out film fest with me and the cats.
And I have loved them all. I admit that for being the comic book nerd that I am, my knowledge of the Marvel Comics universe is limited. I was a DC guy growing up. Despite that, I have no qualms saying that Marvel is so far ahead of the game when it comes to their live-action movie franchises than DC is right now.
Take Captain America for instance. Set against the backdrop of a propaganda, ‘ra-ra-America! Keep em’ Flying!’ backdrop of World War II, I enjoyed every single moment. I suspended disbelief completely and just sat back and had a terrific trip back in time to fictional 1940s America. I love the explanation of the Captain America persona and outfit as a propaganda piece for the war effort, until alter ego Steve Rogers takes it upon himself to be a real hero. And with a villain as improbable as the Red Skull as the main antagonist (I mean, come on, his head is just that – a red skull), there’s a lot that could have gone wrong. With Hugo Weaving in the villainous role, though, it just fired on all cylinders for me. I should’ve popped up a big bowl of popcorn for it, as it would have been appropriate for this big, explosive, fun piece of comic nostalgia.
As I say, I don’t have a vast knowledge of Cap or many Marvel properties, but I do know how popular he was throughout the war years, with plenty of adventures against the Nazis and the Red Skull. So, I thought it was handled wonderfully in the film when, instead of one adventure/brawl with the skull and that’s it, we instead, through montages, actually see adventure upon adventure of Cap as he takes on the Skull at various points in the war. It never slowed the film down, yet still gave you that sense that Cap was fighting well through the bulk of the war years, just like he did in the comics. And, they even kept things true to the comic history by having him frozen in ice so that he could re-appear in the modern super hero world, just like when creators wanted to bring Captain America back decades after his original run ended in the war years.
I’m so glad I watched Cap before The Avengers, too, as it was the perfect setup for the superhero team extravaganza. I haven’t yet watched Thor, but figured I could get the gist of The Avengers without it. Director Joss Whedon (whose creations of Buffy and Angel, yes, I used to watch week to week when they were on the air) had a pretty monumental task in front of him, as trying to put all these characters (Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hulk, Thor and Hawkeye) into one movie just, by any account, does not make sense. There is no logical way for it to work, but Whedon makes it work, again just going for pure fun that lets you leave all cynicism at the door because you’re having such a great time watching it.
I knew I’d love Robert Downey Jr’s performance as Tony Stark/Iron Man, as I had already seen the first Iron Man movie and fell in love with it purely on his performance.
As I say, Chris Evans surprised me as a wonderfully charming and inspiring Captain America in both films, but another pleasant surprise was Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk. Wow, what a performance. His suppressive, introverted, socially awkward performance really made you feel for him as a man hiding a monster and trying his best to keep it in check. The man took what could easily be a one-dimensional comic character and made him real and interesting. Bravo, Mr. Ruffalo.
I enjoyed them both so much that now I can’t wait for the sequels…although I’m sure I’ll be waiting a lot longer for them to turn around on Netflix. 🙂 But when they do, I’ll be ready with a big bowl of popcorn and dorky superhero delight.
The Dorky Daddy 