Annabel has been very into Mary Poppins recently. I am okay with this. We got her started on it about a month ago, in yet another attempt to wean her off the documentary Babies, her previous obsession. I am a fan of Babies; I had no problem with that movie either. I actually found it quite sweet that she would request a simple film about babies over any other cartoon or child-appropriate entertainment at her disposal. If you haven’t seen Babies, you might not understand that it really is a movie about babies. Just…babies. Doing their baby thing all over the world. Apparently, Annabel found those babies completely irresistable.
So, yes, it was cute that she loved the babies that much, but at some point (25th viewing? 33rd viewing? 58th viewing?) I felt like it was time to move her along. Maybe to something with an actual plot, say.
We found a video of Mary Poppins at the library book sale for 25 cents, which was cheap enough to encourage us to dig the old VCR out from its hiding spot and hook it up. Ever since, we’ve been on a Mary Poppins binge, which is also fine and enjoyable, even if I have to listen to butchered, three-year old versions of “Chim Chim Cheree” and “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” at various points in the day.
The best part of this movie for me, forever, is, of course, that word that you say when you don’t know what to say. I’ve got a sort of potpourri of blog topics that I could write about, but they aren’t really particularly interesting on their own but all mashed together they might serve as a post. In the spirit of Mary Poppins, I’m just going to toss them out there and see where it takes me.
Even if the sound of them is something quite atrocious.
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My car has begun making the low, rattly, growling noises of an exhaust leak. I’ve tried pointing it out to Michael several times, but he stubbornly refuses to hear it. I can’t tell if he’s purposefully trying to make me feel insane or if he truly just can’t hear the demon that is humming directly under the gas pedal.
The problem with this sort of thing is that he is the fix-it guy in the household. And so I usually defer to his judgment in such matters.
But, although he is the mechanically inclined one, I am the child of a mechanic. A mechanic who used to give long, detailed, excruciating lectures about certain telltale sounds a car will make when things are not correct. A mechanic who made me spend a lot my of childhood laying on a piece of cardboard under a car, holding the flashlight as various pieces of an exhaust system were banged in or out of place. Therefore, I declare my experience to be superior to his natural-born talent.
Hence, in this matter, I am absolutely correct and he should just get down under there and look.
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This week I was privy to one of the weirder snobbish conversations I’ve ever heard. I’ve spent much of my adult life mocking music snobs. You know, the ones who argue that U2 is the most horribly overpraised band of the twentieth century, especially since everyone knows that crown belongs to Accordanius, the Romanian zydeco band that has been heard by exactly two people in the history of time. I really dislike those music snobs.
I don’t have much more love for movie snobs, who like to point out that Casablanca is really a hack job of an Italian silent film made in 1923 and starring a St. Bernard named Extolio. His performance was so stunning it can’t even spoken of without tears. What, you haven’t heard of it? Hmmm…interesting.
And then there are the literary snobs who believe that any literature read in translation is a mockery of the author’s efforts. Or the internet snobs who have been blogging since 1954. Or art snobs who spend hours flinging bizarre insults at each other (“You are the dirt under Picasso’s nails! Your rendering of a dead fish is both derivative and hopelessly irrelevant!”).
These are all qualifiers for the Crown of Annoying Snobbery.
However, on Tuesday night I spent about half-an-hour listening to three grown men argue about which type of food source/finishing technique/butchery technique will produce the most ethically superior meat that also contains the most marbling.
Food snobs, that conversation was a point for your side.
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Last night was a pretty chilly night in our area. It got down to around 25-30 degrees and there was a pretty significant frost on the cars and nearby fields when we awoke. It was chilly in the house this morning, about 58 degrees, but, much to the chagrin of our Floridian houseguests, I refused to turn on the heat.
Lots of Mainers play this game, where we try to out-tough each other each fall. Once the heat goes on, it’s on until May, so we like to see who can go the longest without giving in. Some refuse to consider it before November 1, but that seems a little late to me, especially with little kids in the house. I personally go with October 15th. Going later than that definitely gives you a higher score towards whatever final prize absolutely no one is offering. I’m not sure how late you go before you win. But turning it on before October 15th means you definitely lose. Of that I am certain.
Sorry, Florida folk.
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I lost my cell phone for four whole days this week. I barely noticed it was missing. When I finally located it Wednesday night at the bottom of the library bag from Saturday, I had only five missed calls (all Michael) and one text message from a poor soul who thinks I actually text.
Smoke signals might better. In case you were wondering. But actually, none of you tried to call me so never mind.
Hey look! It’s ringing now! Oh, it’s Michael again.
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I think that’s all I’ve got.
Unless we want to go down the dociousaliexpiisticfragilcalirupus road.
But that’s going a bit too far, don’t you think?
Onward.
Beyond the Dooryard 
The guy who feeds me, Steve, was just telling his daughter Penni that he saw Mary Poppins at the drive-in theater for the first time. Steve’s grand daughter is butchering the songs too and maybe, just maybe, Steve will let her clean the chimney. Really needs to be done before the stove gets lit (lighted is right, Steve says) I say “shhhhh, dogs just don’t care about grammar”)
I spent one summer babysitting these two kids, the Driscolls. They were easy enough kids to watch. The funny thing about the family is that the kids (one boy, one girl) had the same names as the parents (also one boy, one girl). Anyhow, they must have watched Mary Poppins every single day that summer. It was a bit much, but even so, I don’t hate it. Also they paid very poorly, even for the early 90s.
1. Our heat turned on last week, and it is usually on until July. Truth. It’s mild in Seattle, but mildly unpleasant.
2. i am the exact same way about my phone (and texting) (and food snobs). You should read David Rakoff’s latest book where he makes fun of Amanda Hesser for talking about the superiority of expensive SALTS.
This was the second year in a row that I did not turn my heat on in August…I have also had the air conditioning on in December. I sympathize with your Floridian guests.
I do not have a cell phone. For about 14 months I had a pay-as-you go plan and made TWO calls in that 14 months. When my money expired I went without again.
Hopefully Annabel won’t do what my kid sister did many years ago and follow Julie Andrews from Mary Poppins into The Sound of Music. She loved that movie so much that she saw it at least a dozen times and was always singing EVERY song from that movie all day long in the house … DROVE ME CRAZY!!
A few years later my sister and I approached our parents and told them that we wanted to learn to play the piano. They obliged by purchasing us a used one. We started taking lessons and my sister got pretty good and then she purchased herself a piano music book … The Sound of Music. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! (Here picture Bill from PA running down the halls of his childhood house, screaming, and pulling out his hair, which he had much more of in those days).
When you started talking about snobs, I was all Ugh, music snobs are the worst! Then I kept reading and it progressed to No, *movie* snobs are the worst! Then: Book snobs! They are the absolute worst!! I basically just want to kill anyone who thinks they’re better than anyone else.
I use my cell phone for everything BUT the phone. In fact, I currently have 19 unheard voice mails. (It’s no one important. They know better.) I just want to see if I can get it up to 100. I’m pretty sure you win a prize.
If it is 58 in the house here, someone is getting fussed at and the heater is going ON. That is dead-of-winter temps here. Poor Floridians…brrrrrr.
And I love Babies. And Mary Poppins. I really like that your little girl watched Babies so many times. Oh, that stage when kids watch the same movie over and over and over and over. Good times.
Ah! Extolio! The banalities of modern life had almost extinguished him from my memory.
But now—now! He is recalled in the full majesty and glory that so moved me years ago, back when I first saw the film at an invitation-only screening in the basement of the library at a monastery hidden in Provence, where the celluloid has been preserved for decades by a coven of white-gloved monks devoted to the purest form of Art.
Why, the opening sequence alone—with the moonlight glinting off the desert sands and illuminating Extolio’s rakishly disheveled fur, his limpid eyes gazing over the wreckage of a wood framed airplane—transcendent. And the ending, with its subtle and yet devastating indictment of the alienation of modern society and its prescient commentary on the inherent fallacy of capitalism—all in one perfect frame. How could I have forgotten such beauty?
My life, it has meaning again!
I am usually annoyed with people who assume that because I have a cell phone, I’m just simply sitting here, waiting on their calls. And that call repeatedly over and over again, instead of leaving a message and waiting for ME to return their call at MY convenience.
Also, I occasionally like to escape the house without my cell phone. That’s a lovely change of pace, though I rarely do it in case of breakdown, as payphones seem to be a rare creature nowadays.
Or, my personal fav is that sometimes I don’t hear my phone due to being hearing impaired. And I love it when people take it personal when I don’t hear it ringing or can’t understand them on it.
October 15th? I’m aiming for December 1st before I turned the dreaded furnace on – $3.59 a gallon for oil? Blah!! Of course, we have a wood stove that’s already been used 3 times – Sunday RIver actually made snow on Thursday… brrrr!
We made it to October 1st this year before turning on the heat, and probably only that late because we were in Florida the week before that. I totally use the kids as an excuse. Although now we are back in the upper 70s, which is totally wrong. I went to put the vegetable garden to bed for the winter only to discover that my pepper plants have put out new flowers. Dumb, deluded plants. But I couldn’t pull them!
As cell phones go, I have a “stupid” phone that only makes phone calls (and texts, with much awkwardness). I’m constantly letting the charge run out completely and carrying around a dead phone for a week or so before I notice.
Sorry about the Mary Poppins thing, something about Julie Andrews makes me crazy.