One for the Plus Column

Where to begin?

We recently sped off for a jaunty little overnighter at the Great Smokey Mountain National Park...

Photographic Evidence.

...No no no. Can't start there...

We'll try again. >Ahem< Meridth and I have been to a National Park or two...

Photographic Evidence

...it's not out first rodeo, y'know? And the thing that I have quite recently discovered to be idiosyncratic about National Parks is this: the area around the park is entirely dependent on the regional character of the surrounding area.

Too wordy? Check this: the town right outside of Zion National Park in Utah is called Springdale. It has a population of 457 people. You can buy a sandwich there. Maybe a bowl of soup. If I recall, there might be postcards. Outside of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park there is a two-headed hydra of an eyesore called Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. I've been scouring the interwebs all week looking for photographic evidence of this abominable temple to the excesses of our baser impulses but, by gum, the local Chamber of Commerce must have a PR firm on retainer. I wish I'd stopped and drunk it all in (Metaphorically. With my camera.) so that I could Make. You. Understand. It.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Why is Pigeon Forge, TN home of the "largest permanent Titanic museum in the world?" (Secondary question: why are there impermanent or traveling Titanic museums that are larger?) It's so very far from anything relevant to the great sea disaster of 1912. The museum lurches into view like the bloated corpse of a beached whale, the last thing you'd expect to see amongst the verdant Appalachians.

Reminds me of nothing so much as Toon Town from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

This was one of literally dozens of establishments providing the weary traveller a taste of that hill-folk charm. (Is that the PC term? Is it "Sons of the Soil," maybe?) But honestly, no one comes out of this looking good.

Quite literally, I'm afraid.

I'm a bit insulted that someone thought I'd like to witness this gastric train-wreck, that is, until I remember that this is the face that these people want to present to the world. Really, I feel bad that they'd sell their identities for the rupees of monied Indian tourists so...cheaply.

To whom these shows are catering is a mystery to me. Anyone with a shed of dignity (or anyone from the States and not looking for an 'ironic' evening) would sooner eat at...even a Shoney's. Those who might take a shine to this brand of humor, however, are probably on vacation from (or more probably with) relatives not at all unlike the colorful characters portrayed on stage, in which case they'd just as likely choose the Shoney's too because...let's face it, the dinner show comes with them.

There goes the neighborhood.

Then there is this:

Behold the spectacle

For my dial-up using readers, whose clanging, steam-driven modems are busily shuffling through the requisite punch cards to load this miraculous image, pictured above is a building which has been humorously constructed so as to appear as if it has somehow tumbled on its axis and alighted on it's surprisingly sturdy roof. Lo! It is EVEN still safe to ENTER! (for a small fee)

This one gets to the heart of the cheap chintz that is Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg. Alright, it's an upside-down building. Maybe there's a wax museum inside. Maybe a maze of mirrors (we saw four on the main drag). The only people who really want to find out, who are even willing to pay for the privilege, are under ten-years old OR vacationing with children under ten AND ignorant totally of how to relate to them in any meaningful way. This is the ultimate non-vacation.

As you drive through 14 miles of this, outlet malls, museums dedicated to torture devices, shops selling "As Seen on TV" merch, two separate amusement parks, miles of go-cart tracks, shops selling racks upon racks of photorealistic airsoft guns (gotta wonder what the Indians think of that), souvenir shops the size of airplane hangers, hotels advertising creek-side rooms, fast-food restaurants, haberdashers, and a gosh darn space needle, you forget why you came here in the first place. The park...

Behold the spectacle

There's a smallness to GSMNP that you won't find in Zion or Arches, and I don't mean that as an insult. The lush forests, turning in the autumn afternoon, offered an intimacy that can be absent from the craggy vistas of the awe-inspiring Rockies. Furthermore, nestled in the park there are a number of plain wooden churches, some built in the 1880's, which speak to a time when these lands were the home of the progenitors of those now manning the booths and culturally-insensitive stage shows. So little remains from that America that I'm grateful that these human steeples can peek out humbly above the trees, a part of the landscape.

Submitted without snarky comment

Now I understand that everybody's gotta make a living and the tourist trade has clearly allowed these towns to support a population roughly 20 times the size of Springdale, UT, but at what cost? When I see the cheap goods, prices marked way high, the airsoft guns, the replica weapons from popular video games, the "hand-crafted" dolls and discount Indian jewelry, it's evidence to me that people aren't sure why they came. A family will arrive, traffic will move at a snail's pace up this Stars-and-Bars version of the Las Vegas strip (of which I am also no fan), their children will get hungry, have to pee and soon they'll find themselves abandoning their coveted spot in the line of cars, getting out to "stretch the legs" and "take a leak," Timmy will clamor for a replica Legend of Zelda shield and an airsoft Kalashnikov, dad will relent because he's tired of hearing the boy whinge, and they'll all wander about a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" Museum of Hollywood Cars pretending that they're a family.

This is a true story, I swear on my life. The traffic just cleared up right before the entrance of the park, like everyone just got caught by all the things to do right there at the doorstep of one of America's great National Parks.

Uschi + hiking

Now the park's mojo isn't perfect. First, it's free. There's a provision in the state law that says that the road that cuts through the major pass here has to remain toll free, and that sounds like a good thing, but it's not. I'm not going to say that...wait. Strike that, reverse it. I AM going to say that it keeps the riff-raff out, but I'll explain what I mean. I have no intrinsic problem with casual enjoyers of nature. But the free entrance to the park has encouraged a lot of motor-hiking in GSMNP. What I mean is there are a number of roads that just circumnavigate the park. On a busy weekend, it's like being stuck in LA traffic with a pretty back drop. I'm not saying that every National Park should be inaccessible by anything less hardcore than a pack mule, but what happened to encouraging people to get out of their cars and walk more than 20 feet to meet and greet with Ma Nature? We got babies and we found a few easier trails. There was a particularly nasty snarl of traffic, it took us the better part of 30 minutes to go the half-mile to where we could see what was holding things up. A black bear was snatching a snack from a high tree branch 150 meters away and every Mother's Son pulled over their minivans so they could get out and get a snap of a blurry black smudge in a tree. What made it all the more sad is that not ten minutes after pulling off onto what was literally a "road less travelled," we snapped these out the windows of the HHR:

The little son of a gun crossed right in front of us.

Why am I mentioning all of this? Not just the bear, but the whole thing? Where does it all meet back to connect with the issues of the day? Here it is folks, the next time you hear someone shoot their mouth off about how 'Big Government' is the bane of existence for all America-loving patriots, think about this: if there was no National Park, if the Federal Government of the United States didn't mark a line in the sand, how far up the Blue Ridge Mountains would this glut of cheap crap go?

I'm truly grateful for the wise conservationists and politicians who gave us the National Parks system, but I'm gonna go that next metaphorical step. We used to have a pretty good system set up in America. Managers and owners would provide jobs. Workers would fill them. Everyone knew the rules of the road and everyone stood to gain. The last thirty years of deregulation in this country has proverbially pushed that line up over those mountain peaks, and temporarily we all got richer. You can't blame the individual t-shirt shop owner, he was just trying to get his share, hustling to get ahead, keeping up with his neighbor. Nobody looked up from their cut to see that we were destroying the very thing that made the US so attractive in the first place. I don't know why the GOP debaters keep bringing up illegal immigration. It's slowed significantly since the recession started. And they keep saying that regulations kill jobs? Well a lack of regulation in our food industry is killing people. Long story short, I'm sick to death of politicians running to fill positions in a government they seem to despise. I'm sick of people's stark refusal to recognize the important role of government in facilitating business, both domestically and internationally (Whose Navy keeps the shipping lanes clear? Bank of America's?) And I'm 'bout sick up to here of people saying they love America but hate the US government. To me, it's just south of treason, and it's gotta stop.

Alright, said my peace. It was an excellent trip. It's late and I still haven't regaled you with the dandy yarn of how I almost destroyed the HHR. ("The guidebook said the road was perfectly safe for cars!") I guess it's just desserts for all the griping I did about motor-hiking.

The road in question. Looks tame now...

Felix: Just About Funned-Out

Cheers!

END TRANSMISSION

A Season of Sequels: Part II - The Babying

By now many of you may have heard the vicious rumor that we birthed some strange goblinoid; a half-reptilian, half-cephalopodic man-beast from beyond the rings of Saturn. Not so. Observe the well-appointed stature of the above specimen. I think you will all find, or can be reasonably expected to be convinced, that this man-child is well within the parameters for a normal pupa-stage human, yes?



And before you ask, no, that orifice perched atop his jaw is not a lamprey-like, tooth-lined feeding tube, used to burrow through the chests of his victims, (see below)...
...nor is it to be used, as in the case of the Mynock, to attach the body to the plasteel cockpit of starships in order to frighten Wookies and droids alike, (again, see below)...
...it is, however, utilized in the neigh-constant quest for nourishment. In fact, the pictured subject was observed to feed from its host successfully quite soon after this picture was taken.



In truth, the birthing process this time round was such a 180 degree difference from the birth of Felix' sister that it bears telling, though the biological nature of the details are best left to less public venues. Suffice it to say Meridth was inside the doors of the hospital a mere 15 minutes before the baby's birth, maybe 20 including the zombie-shuffle down that seemingly endless hall from the entrance to the maternity ward, and that my 1996 Subaru was five minutes shy of a proper Catholic baptism.



Beyond that, I'll let Meridth fill in what details she'd like in a later post. Speaking of the mum...



...doesn't she look superb? She burst several blood vessels and was absolutely convinced that she looked a wreck, but I'm still only pretending to be able to see them, just so she doesn't think I'm short-shrifting her pain. And me?



I'm not letting this one get in the way of my leisure reading.

We brought Uschi in today to meet Felix and the results were not unexpected.

"Buttons? I LOVE buttons."

"Hey Ed, Meridth! Did you guys see this? There's BUTTONS on this bed!"

"Look, I'm showing you a BED with BUTTONS, get it? I mean it looks like any other bed out there, but...y'know...buttons. Never seen anything like it. Bed. Buttons. Meridth, don't you get it?"

"Little brother? Yeah, whatever Ed, that's fine, but get a LOOK at this BED!

As long as we can take that bed home, they'll be thick as thieves.

Thanks for all the good wishes, yous guys. We can feel 'em floating in the ether. And since I neglected to mention the details that everyone always ask for:

We proudly announce the birth of EDWARD FELIX GIMBEL at 9:32pm central on the 12th of January 2011. The baby was measured at 8lbs. 4oz. and 22.5 inches long. Mother and son are in good health and great spirits. Father and sister are missing them both. They'll be home tomorrow morning and any visitors and well-wishers are welcome via telephone, text, email, tweet, Facebook wall posting and even in person.

DVD Review: "Zombieland"

I'm sure some of you are belaboring under the delusion that I am a 'big fan' of the zombie subgenera. While I am genuinely appreciative of the various gifts and brik-a-brak that some of you may or may not have given me because you think I love zombies, the truth is that I'm incredibly picky about which zombie movies I love, particularly since we are suffering through a glut of zombie-related media. It seems you can't throw a rock and not hit one of these shambling menaces. To tell the truth, I only 'love' two zombie films - the original 1968 'Night of the Living Dead' and 2004's unrelentingly perfect 'Shaun of the Dead,' if anyone is keeping track - although I have a certain appreciation for sundry other examples in the subgenera - the original 1978 'Dawn of the Dead' comes to mind. I know I shouldn't love you; you insult my intelligence and belittle my taste, and yet...

So I guess it goes without saying that I came into last year's 'Zombieland' with some skepticism. I mean as far as zombie-related comedies go, 'Shaun of the Dead' was certainly the exception that proved the rule. It took the combined talent of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and (not pictured) Edgar Wright to pull of the unprecedented mix of hilarity, poignancy and violence. If it took the combined Voltron-esque talent of that calibre to produce a zombie-comedy, what chance did shoe-gazer Jesse Eisenberg have? I saw the unfortunately-similarly-titled movie 'Adventureland' and hated it. And frankly, I was more than a little concerned that 'Zombieland' would quickly devolve into an example of the death-of-narrative-cinema, just showing clever kill after clever kill. What I didn't realize is that Woody Harrelson was swinging for the fences with this one. His manic 'Tallahassee' is like a previously-unknown loony-toon packing more heat than Yosamite Sam by a long shot. And it's not a stretch to say that Woody digs deep in this role with an emotional twinge that holds that note just long enough and then tosses out a fine 'Titanic' joke. Well-played, sir!Mr. Harrelson swinging for the aforementioned fences.

I was not displeased with the two female leads and, although the basic conception of their characters was refreshing, they were given surprisingly little to do, and in the end suffer from an unfortunate case of damsel-in-distress syndrome. Oh well.

Now the film deploys a number of tactical gambits which I imperfectly but not inaccurately will describe as 'gimmicks.' (They aren't 'gimmicky' per se but they are certainly not seamlessly integrated.) One is the appearance on-screen of the written text of a number of rules for surviving the zombie plague. The character of Jesse Eisenberg will relate these rules via a voice-over and the text will appear on screen. It's ironic, because my wife and I have been catching up on the JJ Abrams tv show 'Fringe' and one of the only real problems we have with the show is the appearance of 3D words hovering over the establishing shots describing the location. It's almost the same typeface used by 'Zombieland' and yet, I found it amusing in the movie. It was a small sign or indicator of the tone of 'Zombieland.' And I suppose that's the best I could say for this movie: don't over-think it. It's droll, a bit random, and good. Genuinely entertaining.

As for the other noticeable gimmick, the less you hear about it the better, suffice it to say it's an unexpected cameo. And it's comedy gold. "Whoa there, hold on. Is that hombre giving out spoilers to OUR movie?!?"

So there you go. It's a solid movie, well worth your time. Does it have much gore? No, not more than your average action movie. There is a bit of questionable content in the opening credits that nets the film it's 'R' rating (along with its proclivity for profanity) but it's an isolated incident and you ought not let it change your mind. Unless you like lady-zombies, in which case your mind oughta be changed, weirdo.

But if you're looking for a zombie drama, just as a last aside with regard to zombie media I do lovelovelove, I can't recommend Max Brooks' 'World War Z' highly enough. It's available in paperback and a smashing full-cast audiobook edition (featuring the talents of Mark Hamill and Henry Rollins. Together at last!) and, rumor has it Brad Pitt's production company has acquired the film rights, so get on-board now and tell your friends you read it first.Don't know why I should shill for amazon.com but click here to order the paperback. Best ten bucks you're gonna spend today.

Can't Not Post It

If you're sick of me gushing about my daughters extreme aptitude for cute, avert yer gaze.

DVD Review: "Moon"

Bored yet of supercute babies eating semi-solids? Me too. So in an attempt to engage with those readers who may have no interest at all in the eating habits of our spawn and may actually want more of the hard-hitting coverage that has come to characterize this blog-product, we offer you a taste of what's been streaming into our skull via that sole source of at-home entertainments, the DVD player, fed a steady flow of media-disks from Netflix. Ho yeah!

Let's talk about Duncan Jones' first feature-length movie, "Moon." But first let's talk about Duncan Jones.


Here's a picture of your father that I've plucked out of the mists of the internets.


And here's a picture of Duncan Jones' father.

Based solely on genetics, which of you is better equipped to make a trippy yet thoughtful, seventies-inflected sci-fi film seeped in otological angst and possibly sinister technology? The child of Mister Whitebread over there? Or Ziggy Frickin' Stardust? I mean David Bowie is a one-man macro-culture with all the identities he's got floating round. Talk about existential. The guys got to commit ethnic cleansing just to choose a deli sandwich.

To tell the truth, the less said about Duncan Jones' awesome dad the better. While it's impossible not to think of the doomed Major Tom as the film's protagonist takes his "protein pills and puts [his] helmut on" the film would be fantastic regardless of the directors genetic background. Seriously, did you see that poster? It's unique and I knew I had to see any movie whose poster had such great design.

So what happens in the movie? Yeah the setting...it's on the moon. Connect the dots, man. Yeah. There's apparently an extremely lucrative source of neigh limitless clean energy to be harvested from the dark side of the moon. The process however necessitates a human operator to monitor the mostly-automated process. Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) is one such observer at the tail end of a three year contract with Lunar Industries. Throughout the lonely tour-of-duty, Sam's only had the company of GERTY, a centralized AI for the lunar base with only a crude animated face to express emotion (voiced brilliantly by Kevin Spacey)


Communication between the lunar base and Earth is a dicey affair so most communications are pre-recorded messages from his wife and infant daughter. To reveal much more beyond that would be disingenuous frankly, but watching Sam Bell slowly come to grips with his situation is really amazing. Rockwell was robbed awards-wise this year. The word tour-de-force has been bandied about a lot vis-a-vis this film and for once I don't think it's hyperbolic. Rockwell carries this movie start-to-finish and its success (and believe me, the film is successful) is a testament to Rockwell's ability to make this utterly fantastical situation feel oh-so relevant. It's almost Kafka-esque with Bell as a reluctant Gregor Samsa. (Was that pretentious or what? Boy-o!) But honestly, Rockwell made me believe in the relationship between Bell and GERTY, and as the third act played out, I found myself caring more for GERTY, with his clumsy 8-bit face, than I ever did for WALL-E, and believe me, I liked the Pixar flick a lot!



The design of this movie is a great feather in its cap. Some independent films can't hang in regards to design, but "Moon" is punching well above its weight and I'd happily set its design (if not its somewhat lacking, if sparse, CG effects) against the designs of Sam Rockwell's other sci-fi film of 2009, a small little movie you might have heard of called "Avatar."* And I mean that. I mean, just look at that poster! It is somehow utterly unique while simultaneously remaining totally iconic of the kind of 1970's sci-fi that clearly inspired director Duncan Jones. And on top of that it works as an advertisement. It hits all the tonal points and communicates that this isn't sci-fi action or a space opera. It's paranoid and isolating, thoughtful.

Honestly though, if my Kafka reference and continual use of the word 'thoughtful' are making you hesitant, thinking that this is somehow 'Art Haus' fare or that you need a BA in comparative literature to enjoy it, hold on! It's actually pretty thrilling too. There's intrigue, distrust, an imposed time limit that rolls the pace of the movie right along. And in case you've surmised from my ambiguity regarding the plot, there is what might loosely be defined as a >ahem< "plot-twist" though I wouldn't be inclined to use that word. I think the plot is in of itself pretty twisty, and in that Twilight Zone-ish fashion the plot would certainly 'work' independent of the ontological undertones.

And Meridth loved it too.
"GERTY! I told you, you don't eat my Corn Pops! My name is right on the box! Buy your own dude!"

* As pointed out by my beloved friend Alex, Sam Rockwell is not, in fact, in 'Avatar.' No, I know! What was I thinking?
They don't even look remotely like each other! Wow. That's egg on my face. But now that I'm thinking about it, what would Sam Rockwell have done with 'Avatar' in the place of Sam Worthington? Would it have improved the movie?

Australia, Christmas and so on and so forth!

Yawn, no updates since oh-nine? Preposterous!



^That's Australia. Neat, eh?



^I guess they took a 14-hour drive to Queensland. Uschi tolerated it alright I hear, but boredom was inevitable.



^Of course she was thrilled to see her father again after three weeks.



^And Christmas with Grandpa Ed and Grandma Claudia was pretty great too. Observe Grandpa's festive antlers.



^We stopped briefly while driving down to the LA area post-Christmas in Santa Barbara just to prove to Uschi when she's a landlocked toddler next year that she was once in California. Not that she was all that happy about it...

And yeah, that's about all for now. Update complete...

Uschi Day + 3!

I'm turning into one of those new parents who posts every single picture ever taken of their child. Yuk! But since a lot of people have asked about the grim and gritty details of the labor and all that, I thought I'd chime in to correct any of the inaccuracies Meridth has perpetrated in phone conversation. It's not that Meridth is dishonest, just forgetful. The story is correct in broad strokes but I think I can improve on the sequence of events.



So on Tuesday night I had to conduct at the local cub scout pack meeting. It was a good time and I brought Meridth along because of her advanced state of pregnancy. Meridth had been feeling random contractions throughout the day and we thought that it might happen that day. We did go in Sunday night because Meridth was leaking some fluid that we thought might be amniotic in nature, so we wanted to be cautious. After the scout meeting on the way home I bought Meridth a frozen delectable from the 31 Flavors (which she ended up throwing up two hours later) and we started writing down the contraction times. 8:17, 8:22, 8:27, 8:31 they were getting to be exactly five minutes apart. By 9pm we called the Birthing Center at the hospital and they asked Meridth about her birth plan. Meridth was non-ideologically interested in having a natural birth (just to see what that was all about) so they told us it would be best to wait until she couldn't stand it anymore before coming in.

It was exactly at 10:54 that Meridth decided she couldn't stand it anymore. I called the Birthing Center and grabbed the last bits and bobs we needed and by 11:06 we were on our way. Now I wasn't entirely sure we were going to have Uschi that night because we were still about two weeks out from the due date so I called my work and let the know I probably wouldn't be in the next day.



At the hospital we were taken to one of the birthing rooms and Meridth sat on the bed and had everything checked. And I put Tim Burton's Beetlejuice in the DVD player. Tuesday morning Meridth had seen the doc and he had said she was only dilated to a 1.5 so she still had some distance left to go before 10. Since Meridth had been suffering since 8pm, we figured she'd be up to at least a four. No dice, the nurse said she was only dilated to a two. Boo to that. Fortunately Dr. Walker was coming by for another patient at about half-past eleven so he peeked his head in, noticed Meridth's very regular contractions (like you could set your watch by them) and said we probably shouldn't go back home tonight. Just to speed things along he also decided to break Meridth's water.

And speed things along it did. We had 8cm to go until 10 dilation was reached and the doctor estimated that would take until 8am Wednesday morning, about a centimeter an hour. In fact, Meridth was fully dilated by 4am! But to go along with that speed, Meridth had to endure pretty intense contractions. By maybe 12:35 she asked for her first 'hit' and the nurses gave her a med designed to relax the mother and treat the anxiety more holistically. This was not even close to enough. By one in the morning, Meridth graduated to local injected anesthesia but only a single contraction went by before Meridth said "Y'know? I'm ready for an epidural." That wife of mine doesn't mess about.



So the anesthesiologist rolls in and we sign the forms saying that it's okay if Meridth dies from it and Meridth is sitting up and I'm in front of her and all I can think about is how much I want to see this huge needly-thing injected into my wife's spine, but I don't want to get in the way. I'm very interested in the dirty details of medical procedures, but in this case I had to settle with the salad-plate sized blood stain when the doc was finished taping all the kit down onto Meridth's back.

Anyway the epidural made my wife as happy as a clam who suffers from uncomfortable numbness and manageable pain (the sort of clam with a decent HMO) and she was able to doze for about an hour before the pushing started. Me and Meridth were ready and refreshed for round two. 5am! Fully dilated! Ready to push! We went at it for a half-hour then the nurse gave us permission to rest again. And by 5:45 the Dr. Walker showed up for the main event. Pushing pushing pushing pushing pushing pushing pushing! Curl up toward the fetus! Push were my fingers are! PUSH!

And just like that I started seeing a tennis-ball sized hairy lump appear from points unknown. Hmmmmm... I thought to myself, that's a real small head for a full-term baby. And suddenly Ka-boom! There was her head! I'd only seen the point of her little cone-head, so it looked smaller coming out that way. It was pretty out-there.

So the shoulders. And the rest. And the placenta. And there it all was.



When the doc was stitching up Meridth she started saying, "Uhhh...should I be feeling that?" Turns out that the tip of the epidural had worked itself out despite all the tape and what-not. So the doc tore it off and left it on the floor and treated the stitchy-region locally. Dr. Walker's pretty sure that it came out before the major pushing started so you could say that Uschi was born naturally. If you were so inclined.

Now you might be wondering why Uschi was in the hospital for two whole nights. I guess she had a poo on her way out that morning and had swallowed some of it, which wasn't good for her digestion. So throughout that first Wednesday she was burping up black bile. Late that night she had her innards suctioned out and the next day we just checked her diapers for the right colored poo. Friday at about noon the stars aligned and the poo-colors were spot on and we went home.



RADAR has been so good with the baby, it's pretty amazing. He's been mellow but curious about his new sister and has gained an undisclosed amount of weight while he was hanging out with the neighbors. What a great dog!

And that is that great friends! Thanks for all the millions of metric tons of support you have given us in the last ten months and we wouldn't dare have a baby in a world without people like you. Pat yerselves on the back!