Split Open and Melt

So I went to the SCBWI Conference (for Children's Book writers and illustrators) last weekend. It was fantastic! If you guys are interested in more details, feel free to visit my art blog. It was pretty exhausting and so very nice to be back with Edward and Radar. So we've had Radar for a little over a month and he's 15 weeks old. (So cute!) I thought I'd give you all a taste of what we've been living with:

Radar has the squattiest legs ever so it's taken us awhile to figure out his doggy gestures (like when he's doing his business... we pretty much can't see it... which can be a problem when you are potty training). Anyway, here's Radar ready to pounce on Edward.


Radar sometimes just starts speedily chasing himself around the house. It's pretty hilarious. I've been trying really hard to catch it on video but he usually stops when I pull it out. So here's a more mellow version of Radar's hyperactivity.



So apparently Corgi's ears pop up within the first 6 months. Cute little Radar had one ear pop up before the other.



He had his other ear pop up last weekend when I was gone... ok cheesy as it sounds it felt like he took his first steps without me. This is part of the "17 Mile Drive" in Monterey... so beautiful!


Here's one with Radar "smiling".
(I love our family :)

DATELINE: MONTEREY, CA!

Chapter 1: Quid pro quo



Meet Lilly's new cousin RADAR. He's a Pembrooke Welsh Corgi and he's 10 weeks old. Meridth and I have been wanting and wanting a dog for months and months. We found a website for a breeder not too far away and realized that we weren't in the "reasonable financial circumstances" to buy a purebred, champion-sired Corgi. So we haunted the pounds and shelters, looked and looked for bargain-basement puppies but came up nil. In desperation Meridth emailed the breeder and asked if we could arrange for a monthly payment plan. After receiving the email, the breeder (see her website here) clicked onto Meridth's website and fell in love with Meridth's art. So a trade was arranged. We get a handsome young pup and she gets a unique logo to spruce up her website. Win-win!
Note his cute-as-can-be long squatty body and foxy, intelligent head. He is one handsome bloke. Plus we got just about the mellowest dog ever. After just a little tummy-ache on the four-hour drive home, he spent the whole trip cuddling or sleeping. And I still haven't heard him bark. We've got ourselves a wicked good training book and we've already started to work on walking him on a lead. Seriously though, he 's not going to need much training he's so chill. Anyway, with the four-day week-end just warming up, we're going to train him up to be we smartest dog in town. Yep. Best. Puppy. Ever.


Chapter 2: Movie Review -- Hancock

Who remembers 2000's Unbreakable? Setting aside the director's follies of late, (Mer and I have decided against seeing his latest, the vaguely titled The Happening. We'll save that for Netflix.) Unbreakable was a movie that deconstructed the superhero genre and the modern conceptualization of what it means to be a hero. This was the sort of context wanted out of Hancock, the sort of meta-level questions I wanted the film to examine. Plus with Will Smith, I figured I'd get charm and humor for my $8 in the mix. No such luck.

The movie opens pretty much where the trailer does: Will Smith is a jerk superhero who fights crime. Fine. That's what I came for. The film adds Jason Bateman and a miscast Charlize Theron into the mix as the PR guy trying to change Hancock's image and his wife who is strangely interested in Hancock, just like in the trailer. Hancock goes to jail for his destructive heroism where he inserts one inmate's head into the rectum of another (just as advertised) and finally is released after the city realizes how much they need him, while he simultaneously realizes how much he needs them, and foils a high-tech bank robbery, just like the trailer promised us. Maybe I missed it, had a nap or a long blink, but that movie ended and this odd second movie started. I don't wish to reveal over much about this disjointed and goofy second movie, but it kinda poops all over the first movie. Everything that the first movie almost touched on (i.e. the loneliness of power, the expectations of heroes realistic and otherwise, the jealously of the powerless, the cult of celebrity) is tossed to the side. "Oh." I thought while watching the second half "Hancock isn't lonely and self-destructive because he has deep unfulfilled needs vis-a-vis his hero-status, it's because of X." (where X=the near dues ex machina that passes for a 'plot-twist'). In sum, the movie's awesome potential was wrecked by a ridiculously muddled narrative thread and bad bad badbad writing.

Grade: C-

Chapter 3: Everything else.

Things are okay everywhere else. School is tough. Meridth's art improves daily. Monterey is gorgeous.