Big Mac's First Birthday

For Malcolm's first birthday we decided to have a small gathering of immediate family. This would consist of Malcolm (of course), Tash & I (also of course), four grandparents, two pairings of Aunts & Uncles (one from each side), two cousins (from Tash's side) and a great-grandfather (from my side). Of course, not everyone could make it. Tash's brother & his family live in Burbank, CA and have already made a trip out here this year and it was also their 10th Anniversary, so plans had already been made. My brother's wife had to work late. And Hoppy (my grandfather, Malcolm's great-grandfather) wasn't feeling well.

So it'd be a bit smaller than we hoped, but still nice.

Tash decided the menu: make your own pizzas, a salad and carrot cake for dessert. We asked the photographer who's been chronicling Malcolm's first year to be there so we didn't have to think about taking pictures (more on that later).

We spent the day prepping things. While my father-in-law and I put the finishing touches on the playset (the picture is of us using Malcolm to level the swing...you can get an idea of why the thing took us 5 days aside from rain issues)
Tash spent the time finishing up a matching bib and table cloth for the party as well as putting the finishing touches on the carrot cake (it's an Alton Brown recipe). When we were done with the playset, I showered and cut up vegetables for pizza toppings.

When Lori (the photographer) arrived at 6pm, everyone else who was coming was there...so we started dinner. Unfortunately, Mac was already getting sleepy and he barely made it through dinner (He rubbed pizza sauce in his eyes he was so tired).






With him so tired, we decided it was time to move onto the cake.







We lit the candle and brought it out. Malcolm knew something exciting was happening, but was too tired to really enjoy it. We quickly sang happy birthday and demonstrated how to blow out a candle (something Tash was hoping to practise with him a few times before). Unfortunately, just as the candle went out, Mac reached for the wick and hurt his fingers.
Tash quickly cut a piece of cake (as in true Fenster tradition let's make the mistake of using food for comfort at such an early age), but he just kind of looked at it.












He then proceeded to use the frosting to soothe his sore fingers he burnt on the just extinguished wick.











What's this? Yummy!





Yes...the kid likes cake (well...at least carrot cake)...so much so that when Tash cut a piece for someone and accidentally passed the plate over Mac, he grabbed it and started eating it as well. It then took mommy and both grandmothers to clean him off he made such a mess...and then was up for quite some time because of all the sugar.

So now Malcolm is one year old. He's just over 24 pounds and about 32 inches long (he's gonna be tall). He got some cool presents in addition to the playset that Granny & Grandpa bought him. The one that he wanted to like, but had a hard time with is the talking Elmo doll that Tash & I got him. It can be programmed to say his name and know when his birthday is (though for some reason, even though I programmed it right, the doll thought Malcolm was 2). He wanted to smile and laugh at it, but everytime it spoke he ran away (at least he wasn't running away screaming like he does when I pull out my remote control Daleks).

You can catch more of the birthday photos at http://www.seemegrow.net/gallery/fenster. The new photos should be up in a day or so.

I'll be back in a day or so with other new stuff.

Be seeing you.

You'll Believe A Man Can Fly Again

I was nine years old when Superman arrived on the silver screen. When someone asks me what my favorite film is, Superman is one of a dozen that I use as part of my stock "I don't have ONE favorite film" response. I love this movie so much that I've actually sat and just watched the opening credits because they get my blood pumping and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Between John Williams amazing march (his best piece EVER) and those streaking blue titles flying through the cosmos towards Krypton, I get jazzed watching this wonderfully lyrical film.

Needless to say, I was excited, intrigued and a bit nervous when I heard that Bryan Singer had finally gotten a new movie into production and that it would use the 1978 Richard Donner directed classic as a base for re-energizing the franchise. With a lot of pressure riding on this film, how does it stack up to the original as well as all the comic book adaptations of the last few years. Pretty well if you ask me. It's not perfect, it's not great like the original film, but it is damn good and should easily pave the way for at least a sequel or two.

Putting the events of Superman into a vague past (with room for parts of Superman II and the potential existance or non-existance of Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace), Superman Returns starts exactly as I would have wanted it to...with John Williams march blaring as we see a full opening credits sequence (how often do you see that in any movie these days) of blue titles streaking towards us against the cosmos. That's enough to get things off on the best foot. Then we quickly discover that Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has done a stint in prison, is bitter about it and has gotten on with his life by marrying a dying old woman (to inherit her money...which he does right off the bat) and hatching his latest land grab scheme (which is a weak link in the film if you look at it too closely) which involves stealing the crystals from Superman's Fortress of Solitude and using them to create a new continent off the USA's East Coast, destroying much of North America in the process.

Meanwhile, Martha Kent (Eva Marie Saint in what amounts to an extended cameo) is all alone until her son, who has been away for five years, comes hurtling back to Earth. Clark (Brandon Routh) quickly inserts himself back into his old life at The Daily Planet (which is a bit odd that his job is conveniently available as someone else has just died leaving a vacancy). Unfortunately, everyone else...particularly Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has moved on. She's living with RIchard White (James Marsden) and has a five year old son.

The film plays not just as a "sequel" of sorts, but also as a "remake" of sorts. Luthor's plan is almost exactly the same as it was the first time around (only on a bigger scale). We even have a ditzy girlfriend whom he tends to treat badly in Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey...who isn't bad here, but the character doesn't hold a candle to Valerine Perrine's Miss Tessmacher). Heck, we even get whole lines of dialog lifted verbatim ("When I was six years old, my father said to me..."). Superman saves an airplane (in a spectacular sequence that seems to follow laws of physics better than most films as the wing rips off when he tries to grab it, the nose crumples when he stops it, etc) and then goes on a spree of stopping crimes in a montage.

There are also plenty of "neat" nods to the original. If you look closely at the pictures on the mantle in the Kent farm house, you'll see Glenn Ford among them. The meteorite that Luthor steals from the museum is labelled as being from "Addis Ababa, 1978". Superman makes a few clothes changes that are very similar in shot and intent...he even says "swell" at one point (prompting a great reaction from Richard White).

The film is a lot of fun, remains as lyrical as the original and has a lot of heart behind it. Brandon Routh steps into the dual roles of Superman & Clark Kent without doing a Christopher Reeve impression, but maintaining that essence Reeve brought to both. Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane is very different from Margot Kidder's, but she works very well as a character and has great chemistry with Routh. Spacey's Luthor is an oddity to me. He's got some of Gene Hackman's qualities, but at the same time I think I've grown so used to the more recent interpretations in other media that it's hard for me to see this as a great continuation. Rather than his new land grab deal, I'd have rather seen that as an excuse for dealing with Superman (which it is to an extent as Lex's new continent is laced with Kryptonite). I guess I was hoping for more in this area.

Which brings us to the most potentially troubling aspect of the film...and you can stop reading now if you don't want spoilers or don't know how to read numbers...and that's Lois' kid Jason. The hints are there from the start that the kid is really Superman's and once we find out the truth it opens up a whole other can of worms. Thankfully, this film doesn't have the kid flying about and saving the day (he's just five) and the one real instance of him displaying any sort of power makes sense in the context of the film. But what do you do with the character in a sequel? It's almost as if the franchise has "jumped the shark" before it even got started again. It's not a horrible aspect in and of itself, just a bit troubling for the future.

This film needs, no deserves, to be seen on the big screen. Superman has always been larger than life and while this film may not be quite Superman, it is as good as Batman Begins and Spider-Man 2. Superman Returns is a good restart to something that could be great.

Meanwhile, on the animated Superman front we get what is a terrible end to something that had been great. The recent animated series (which has been completely released on DVD) is, in my book, the definitive word on Superman as it mixes and matches, almost to perfection, decades and decades of mythology. So, it was natural that with a new movie on the big screen a no-brainer would be a direct to video movie based on this prior success.

So we've got Superman: Brainiac Attacks.

Apparently, no-brains was the operative word. It's not so much that the voices of Luthor and Brainiac have changed from Clancy Brown and Corey Burton to Powers Booth and Lance Henrikson respectively, it's that the characters have been changed so drastically in persoanlity. Luthor is a ruthless businessman who also has loads of scientific accumen. Brainiac is an emotionless recepticle of stolen knowledge. Here, Luthor is like a bad clone of the Joker from the 1960's Batman TV show and Brainiac has more emotion than an after school special.

There are a few positives as Tim Daly and Dana Delany return to voice Superman & Lois and the design of the animation remains top notch, but the negatives outweigh all this. The "movie" is a travesty to the memory of the animated series and flags should have gone up once we saw that Bruce Timm (the master mind behind the recent animated Batman, Superman and Justice League) wasn't involved. Let's hope they do another direct to video movie just to redeem the characters from this one.

Tomorrow...a recap of Malcolm's first birthday.

Be seeing you.

So We Live On A Hill...

A while ago my mom told us that she wanted to buy Malcolm a swingset for his birthday. Not being sure what a one year old needs a playset for, but knowing full well how my mom operates, we started researching these things to find something we would want in our backyard that would suit our needs.

Many factors went into making this decision. Play value was important because we wanted Mac, future siblings and potential friends of theirs to have fun on the structure. Flexibility was important because we wanted to be able to add things or change things over the years as the kids got older. Lack of maintenence was important because I didn't feel like having to constant ly clean or sand, stain or weatherproof anything. And most important were safety issues in two areas: I wanted to feel safe that kids wouldn't get splinters (assuming we went with wood) or injured easily and I wanted to know that I (being the big person that I am) would feel safe and comfortable on the structure (meaning would it hold my weight without feeling like it would collapse).

We looked at everything out there from plastic to metal to different wood materials...from cheap to expensive. And at the end of the day found a company called Cedarworks that intriuged us. Their set was going to be a bit more expensive than we had anticipated but it looked like the benefits would be worth it. Unfortunately, they only sell direct from their headquarters in Rockport, Maine and we wanted to see a set in person. Now, while they do have a program where they'll call up costumers who own one of their sets and ask them if they'd be willing to let potential new customers see one closer to home, we decided it would be fun to take Malcolm on a road trip for a few days.

I won't bore you with the details of our three day trip to Rockport. It was fun and exhausting and Mac did very well in the car and in the hotels we stayed at. But the results of the trip were that we bought a playset from Cedarworks after spending a while at their offices looking at sets and then designing something from scratch that would fit our needs, concerns and more importantly, our backyard (of course, while we were there all Malcolm wanted to do was eat the small stones on the ground around the models they had set up).

By the time we were headed to Rockport, I had become convinced that this soon-to-be one year old would get some major use out of this playset as he's constantly on the move and loves climbing things (and has enjoyed being in swings when we put him in them). So now all we had to do was sit back and wait for delivery. We did decide to forgo the installation fee because I'm pretty good atfollowing instructions when they're detailed enough to tell you the right tools and all the materials are provided and also because my father-in-law, who has been building things for quite some time in his spare time, was on his way.

We had discussed with Cedarworks that we have a steep driveway and that there would be a large motor home in our steep driveway when the set was delivered. They said they would request a small truck from the shipping company they use so that the truck could get up the driveway. The day before delivery, when the shipping company called to cofirm, Natasha again explained the situation and requested a small truck. Of course, when the giant 18 wheeler pulled into our cul-de-sac on Thursday June 22 I knew it was going to be the start of a long process.

The truck driver, Natasha and myself proceeded to walk the 21 boxes up from the bottom of our driveway and store them in the garage (we had just gotten our cars back in the garage not more than a month ago once all the stuff we had been storing from construction had been put back where it belonged). The plan was to assemble small pieces in the garage and then move them to the backyard which is up another steep hill (our house is located smack in the middle of a giant hill that is laden with many rocks...in fact, the middle of our backyard is a giant sloping rock...luckily there is a relatively flat area at the top of the hill which was where the set would be located when done).

Friday June 23 was overcast and threatening rain, but my father (who was also on hand to help, despite still recovering from shoulder surgery), my father-in-law and myself decided to start and get as far as we could. Five and a half hours later (and many trips up and down the hill from the garage to the flat part of the backyard) we were exhausted and had almost reached my goal of finishing the main support structure (what Cedarworks refers to as a gazebo...it's a two level playdeck with a canvas covering). All that was left was to put on the canvas top and the flag, but we stopped for the day as it finally started to rain.

Saturday, June 24, it rained. And it rained. And it rained. After being cooper up all day, and during a brief stop in the deluge, my father-in-law and I put on the canvas top and flag. It then started pouring again, so we quit while we were ahead having finished my initial goal.

Sunday June 25, it was overcast and threatening rain again. And of course, the ground was saturated. But I was determined to get this thing done, come hell or high water (both of which seemed just around the corner) before Malcolm's birthday on Tuesday June 27. So we started back on work with the installation of the swing section (consisting of an overhead ladder the swings hang from and a slanted ladder that supports the side not connected to the play structure). Luckily, just as we had gotten to the step where we had to raise the two structures into place, a job which would take more than two people (in spite of my thinking it wouldn't based on the instructional video that came with the set where two small and skinny people got this monstrosity into place) my dad and a couple of his friends arrived. Now while this was great timing on their part, it was rather headcahe inducing as now instead of it being me with my instuction manual and my father-in-law with his ideas on doing things a bit different, we now had a contractor and another guy who builds things (thankfully my dad, who normally has his own opinions on how things should be done, kept his mouth shut). So after much debate (okay...arguing) and my insisting that we at least look at the instructions, the five of us got the damn thing in place. And then we quit for a while (plus it started raining again).

My father-in-law and I did go back later to anchor the whole structure. Of course, this being New England and us having a giant rock in the middle of our backyard, we did hit rock a few times trying to drive the stakes through the support bars. After doing a test swing (with me as the subject) we needed to anchor it a bit better, so Tash and her father went and bought some rebar to drive through and into the ground. Tash & I are satisfied that the structure is stable enough for kids (as now only the far corner of the slant ladder's stabilizer bar moves ever so slightly when either of us are swinging...so adults be warned...don't swing too high).

On Monday June 26, under threat of more rain, we started to assemble the lower play deck that would connect to the larger gazebo. Unfortunately, here is where we discovered our location was not exactly as level as we thought. The smaller deck is angled a bit into the larger one. It's not a big deal, just looked a bit odd as we were assembling things. Completion was called off on account of exhaustion. If I never have to go up that hill again, it'll be too soon.

Tuesday June 27 is Malcolm's first birthday and I am DETERMINED to finish. Thankfully, the sun came out for a bit. I worked feverishly alone for a bit, then with Tash and then again with my father-in-law. We finished the lower deck, put on the entrance ramp, the booster step from the lower deck to the upper deck, added the slide, hung the swings and put up the extra safety fences.

During Mac's party, we took him up the hill (my ten thousandth trip in five days) and put him on the swing and slide. He didn't seem to enjoy it much. We're hoping that if he sees other kids having fun on it, he'll get a bit more excited about it (he seems to perk up about things when he's around older kids as he loves trying to keep up with them).

So we'll see...maybe a one-year-old doesn't need a playset like this, but at least its something he'll eventually get some use out of. And it was a great bonding experience for me and my father-in-law. And I definitely got plenty of exercise. At the end of the day, I can say with confidence and pride that I built something. Of course, a Lego set would have been cheaper and would not have been as tiring.

I'll be back next time with my Superman review...

Be seeing you.

Wrestling The Octopus

What a strange, crazy, fun, long, short, fast, tiring, amazing year it has been.

Malcolm is turning one today. It feels like barely yesterday when we were calling the nurse in to show us how to change a diaper properly after opening it up and discovering this black, tar-like substance...or I could hold Malcolm completely resting on my forearm...or he couldn't even roll over on his own...

Now he walks (like a drunken sailor most of the time), he talks (pretty much the same way, but with even less understanding) and he gets into everything (especially the cabinets we've been too lazy to figure out what to do with...we've labelled these "The Forbidden Cabinets of Doom" and usually just scoot him away with a terse "No" that rarely works).

He's proud of the one word he knows and can say with confidence, even when he's somewhat wrong. The word is fan and he knows it's the thing on the ceiling that creates wind...but you can also blow in his face to get him to say the word or show him the lights and he'll also say it (we're working hard on explaining the difference).

Its also amazing watching his reactions to both new and old foods. He hates broccoli. When he was smaller and still being spoon fed, we'd give it to him mashed up and he ate it no problem. Now we give him a floret and it immediately becomes part of the floor. We've even tried wrapping it in turkey. He just unwraps it, shoves the turkey in his mouth and tosses the offending green on the floor.

It seems like just yesterday he and I would wake up early Saturday mornings (well...he'd wake me up early) and we'd go down and watch the previous night's Battlestar Galactica while mommy slept late after a long night of feedings. Now, he has pretty much nothing to do with "adult" TV. If we're watching something and he's in the room, he'll pretty much ignore the TV and play by himself. He does like his TV shows, however.

It kind of amazes me how children's TV programming has changed since I was a kid watching the first episode of Sesame Street all those years ago. Even that show has changed. It's become a bit more regimented as you know the show's format doesn't really change from day to day (Elmo's World is always on 45 minutes in). And while I may get sick of seeing the same segments over and over (I'm constantly having to remove the Journey To Ernie theme from my head on a daily basis...that is if I'm not singing it to calm Mac during a crying session), I do learn new things on occassion (did you know that Cookie Monster's real name may have been Sid...he mentioned it in a song about the time when he was a baby before he ever ate Cookies).

Other shows he enjoys are Between The Lions (a great show about reading), Go Baby (an innocuous and short show about a baby that's rather appropriate for Mac's age), Little Einsteins (a weird Disney Channel show that is rather enjoyable), Higgleytown Heroes (a weird show I don't get at all...what's with the squirrel on the kid's head all the time) and The Wiggles (who seem to dress as if they're the official band of Starfleet...I keep expecting the guy in the red shirt to be vaporized by a rock monster any minute).


We are doing our best to keep his TV viewing to a minimum (heck...we don't really need another me in the house), but sometimes when you're exhausted from being awake earlier than you want, or having to chase him away from Forbidden Cabinets of Doom, or from trying to change the poopiest diaper EVER while all he wants to do is flip over and stand up and toss clothes on the floor (or put his hands in the diaper as you're trying to reomve it), the TV becomes an easy crutch to keep him occupied...of course knowing this is half the battle of controlling it better.

Anyway...it's been an amazing and wonderful and exhausting year. Sometimes I miss my "old" life (where we could easily go see friends in shows or go to see whatever movie we wanted whenever we wanted), but I wouldn't want it back if I had to trade him in to get it. Being a parent is awesome...even though at this stage you've got to wrestle an octopus just to get a clean diaper on him (or to give him his first haircut...which was off because once his hair was short we thought Malcolm had been switched with another baby he looked so different....of course as soon as he started babbling about that non-existant fan on the ceiling we knew he was still ours).

If you want to see how Malcolm's grown over the last year check out:

http://www.seemegrow.net/gallery/fenster

You can even see how tired we are at times...but we're happy.

How could we not be?

Next....Superman Returns...

Be seeing you.

A Mess O' Mutants & Other Movies

I've found a posted my reviews for the first two X-Men movies in anticipation of reviewing the latest entry in the series X-Men: The Last Stand. This third film is not horrible, but it doesn't live up to the first two for a variety of reasons.

I think it's rather obvious that the folks at Fox were a bit miffed that director Bryan Singer jumped the X ship to commandeer Warner's Superman Returns. If they were that attached to Singer, they would have waited (and probably should have) for him to be free. Instead they seem to have raced into production in an effort to not only beat the man of steel to the silver screen, but to throw in almost everything that Singer has talked about using from the comics and not having gotten around to yet.

The third film starts off with a flashback to when Professor X and Magneto first encountered a young Jean Grey. Through the use of CGI, we are shown that Patrick Stewart is not too old to play Captain Picard again. Then the "plot" starts. We see Wolverine and Storm training with the younger members (Iceman, Colossus, Rogue and Kitty Pryde) in the Danger Room (a holographic simulator...and take that Singer...you couldn't work it in to the first two films, but here it is...ever so briefly) against a Sentinel (a giant mutant hunting robot...another thing Singer talked about using...take that again...of course, we barely see it...only a severed head and glowing lights are really seen...after all, it's not really in the budget). And then we move on...

A depressed Cyclops is still mourning Jean's death. But he hears her voice and runs off to Alkalai Lake where she died to discover that she's still alive (Ahhh...the whole Resurrection of Phoenix storyline from the comics...minus all the aliens and such...another slap at Singer). But she's unstable and evil now, so she kills Cyclops before Storm and Wolverine arrive to take her home (where she can do more damage).

Meanwhile, a cure has been found for the X gene that cuases mutations. Multi-billionaire Warren Worthington II has been trying to "fix" his son ever since he grew wings (hey...it's Angel...yet another slap at Singer). This pisses off Magneto who gathers up other mutants who don't like the idea of being "cured" (including Jean Grey after she disintegrates Professor X) and then a giant battle ensues and the movie ends (but not before a scene at the end of the final credits which was so obvious in its set up earlier in the film it's not even funny...guess which character who "died" is still "alive" but can now be played by someone else).

The film is workman-like at best as it tackles way too many things. The look of the film is a mess. The script is all over the place. The only thing holding the film together is the acting (it's like watching a Cliff Notes version of 40 years of X-Men stories as acted by The Royal Shakespeare Company). Worth seeing once, but the repeat value that the first two films had is nowhere to be seen.

Capote is a gripping and fascinating film that deserves all the accolades it got. Don't have much more to say beyond that it would have made the top 5 of last year had I seen it in time.

Date Movie claims to be from two of the six writers of Scary Movie. If it is, its from the two that know nothing about comedy. There's an art to doing parody films. The good ones take the plot of a real film and then hang other pop culture refernces and funny jokes off of it. The bad ones turn out like this waste of time. Really...I've seen a lot of bad movies...and I rarely place movies onto my "Worst of All Time" List...but this one rises to the top of that list. It's badly written, badly executed and just plain bad. I always thought Alyson Hannigan could be a great comedic lead. If one were judging by this film alone, you'd think she could barely breathe let alone act or do comedy.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith turns out to be a fun film. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play a marriec ouple who don't really know much about each other. Turns out that they're both paid assassins and now they've essentially been pitted (pun intended) against each other. The leads have great chemistry and the action is just over the top enough to keep everything moving at a nice pace.

Debbie Does Dallas: Uncovered is a documentary that at first glance is like Inside Deep Throat, but turns out to be more like an episode of A Current Affair. The earlier, and better, film tackled the making of a classic porn film in relation to First Amendment issues. This one starts off in attempt to document how the film (and the pron industry) changed the lives of those involved. The problem is that the lead disappeared in the mid 80s (rumor has it she died, but many of the participants involved feel she just changed her life around and doesn't want to be found) and most of the other female leads have moved on and refused to be interviewed. So we're left watching middle aged men talk about porn. I used to own a video store where I could watch that on an almost daily basis. Luckily at 48 minutes it's little more than a blip on the radar.

The Ringer is an odd comedy starring the usually obnoxious Johnny Knoxville as a man who tries to rig the Special Olympics. This should be an odious concept (like when Cartman did it on South Park), but since Knoxville's character is doing this under duress and the friend he makes are so likeable, the film comes off rather sweet until the unrealistic ending (he still gets the girl even after a big "reveal" scene that should have had ended with him being lynched by a mob).

The Squid and the Whale is a well acted, well written small story about a family coping with divorce and change. Worth watching.

That's all for today...it was mostly catch up/clean out (there'll be a few more of these over the next couple of days). The next big (and up-to-date) piece will be published on June 27 (all about one year as a father) and another on June 28 (Superman Returns).

Be seeing you.