GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • Charlie Parker Played Bebop, Chris Raschka, 1992

    The girl is reading now, and we recently read Chris Raschka’s Charlie Parker Played Bebop together. The book is a brilliant play on word, image, sound, and absurdity.

    Never leave your cat alone.

    If you read it silently, it doesn’t seem like much, but read it with a preschooler and ham it up and the silly logic of the book opens up after several readings. I’m not a jazz expert, but it captures the feel and energy of bebop.

    On a semi related note, the girl just read to me Cindy Ward and Tomie dePaola’s Cookie’s Week. Don’t leave that cat alone either.

  • Unsquare Dance, Dave Brubeck, 1961

    My wife and daughter when to listen to a jazz saxophonist at a free library concert but it was so popular they couldn’t get in.

    After they got back home, I pulled up some jazz on youtube so it wouldn’t be a complete loss and came across Unsquare Dance by Dave Brubeck.

    I’ve heard the song before, maybe even danced in a performance to it. Or maybe it it was someone else’s performance in the same show. I can’t remember, but still it was good to be reintroduced to it.

    It wasn’t the Sunday afternoon we planned, but it worked out well enough. And damn those are some killer tambourines in this performance.

  • Fox Hill Park

    We watched the fireworks at Fox Hill Park last year and this year for July 4th. It’s a bit far from the action but you have a panorama of the city.

    There were a bit more folks this year around, presumably because it more people know about it, so there was a nice energy in the park.

    Adding to the festivities, the local Las Vegas Tribe decided to have their drum circle on a knoll by the parking lot.

    Next to us was a family that tried to have a birthday party at the park, but the day was so hot, apparently nobody came.

    I feel for the parents and the kid, but they did seem to appreciate the cosmic compensation of being invaded by a bunch of hippie hand drummers.

    Friends are hard to come by in this world, but friendly accidents abound around us.

  • 50 cent piece, 1964-present

    We were shopping in Ikea and after a coupon, we ended up owing only 28 cents.

    I pulled out a dollar and handled it in cash.

    In return, I was given a few nickels, pennies, and a fifty cent piece.

    Pretty cool, the girl got really excited!

    If it isn’t a gimmick, well then it should be one.

  • A piano in the dark

    About eight months ago, a woman broke into our house while we stayed with our in-laws.

    She got to live out of the cold for about a week before I found her sleeping on some sofa cushions in the living room.

    Aside from breaking into the back door, she did no damage to the place, and was quite good at making sure the neighbors on both sides had no idea she was there.

    However, she did take the risk to hook up our little casio keyboard and presumably played it a little.

    I can’t say I’m fond of the incident, but it’s odd what your memory will latch onto months after an event. I hope she will get a handle on whatever demons are keeping her on the streets.

    We all should have a little music in our lives.

  • Disney on the Cheap

    While our girl still prefers to go to Disneyland, I’ve noticed that she and her brother seem to get quite a bit of joy playing around the house or in our small excursions around town.

    If my eyes aren’t lying to me, rolling around the backyard in a plastic wagon garnered as many laughs and giggles as hanging around the magic kingdom.

    Going to a neighborhood park is not an all encompassing “total experience” like going to an amusement park, but in the moment, I don’t think it’s that much of a dropoff for the kids.

    Not that I plan on shortchanging the kiddos on resort experiences that we can afford, but I don’t think the marginal ROI is nearly as much as the marketing hype would like us to believe.

  • Sorting out our library

    After half a decade of buying cheap books at the friends of the library store, we now have enough volumes to fill up six slots of the Ikea Kallax shelves. So the girl and I sorted out our own private library this weekend.

    The first division we made was fiction and non-fiction, which were then sorted the rest out by author’s last name. Apart from confusing the illustrators and authors, and a child’s tendency to get distracted it went really smoothly. Some highlights from the exercise included:

    • She immediately decided talking animals were unreal and they all went into the fiction pile.
    • Human slice of life books generally ended up in the non-fiction pile.
    • ABC books ended up in the non-fiction pile, except for one which had talking animals. I guess she takes linguistics pretty seriously.
    • Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen also ended up in the non-fiction pile. Even though most of the contents are quite fantastical, my daughter pointed out the book is a dream sequence, thus for real. Somehow, Where the Wild Things Are did not get the same treatment and went into fiction.
    • A book on Noah’s Ark ended up in the non-fiction pile. I thought about discussing the myth of Gilgamesh but thought better of it.
    • An illustrated copy of the Night Before Christmas also ended up in non-fiction. I pointed out the drawing of flying reindeer, but she responded that they must have flown in the past. We have never pushed the Santa myth (all our Christmas presents come from humans) but I decided this was not the time to do a hard debunk of old Saint Nick.

    In all, it was a fun exercise. It was quite interesting to go through all the books we’ve collected over the past few years, and even better to plumb the depths of a five year old mind.

  • HEMA Youtube

    For the past week, I’ve gotten sucked into a corner of educational youtube that is focused on european medieval arms and martial arts, also called HEMA (historical european martial arts).

    The channels are all quite fun to watch, some favorites being scholagladiatoria, Modern History TV, Lindybeige, Skallagrim, Shadiversity, and Tod’s Workshop.

    But then, I just realized that I haven’t practiced my tai chi for the past week. I’ve traded real life for the much easier (and amusing) point and click universe of internet television.

    In a world before children, I had the free time to have it all. Now, life really is zero sum game. If I’m living vicariously, that means I’m not living in reality.

  • Suddenly

    Our daughter caught a cold and was exiled to the guest bedroom for a couple night.

    She went from barely filling out a cradle to comfortably fitting out a twin sized bed.

    Life moves fast.

    Or maybe it’s just the change in context that makes you aware of what done happened.

  • Summer Wars, Mamoru Hosoda, 2009

    Last night, my wife and I snuck off to watch a movie after the kids fell asleep.

    Summer Wars had won the 2010 Japan Academy Award for animated film. It is indeed a very nicely done film, but was ultimately just a fun fluffy popcorn flick with lots of action.

    It’s a little unfair to come away slightly disappointed, since I find a lot of Disney and Pixar fare just that as well. But still, I guess all these years of watching Studio Ghibli films has made me expect just a little more in its core.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s worth a watch, but unless I’m missing something, it is just what it says it is.