The Shapiro Files

It's True: I'm Returning to the Stage

2011-11-15T00:15:00.000-08:00

For the first time in seven years, I'm returning to the stage to act in a play, a romantic comedy from the 80s called Crossing Delancey. It was later adapted into a movie staring Amy Irving, so it's very possible many of you might know it. I play Sam, the owner of a pickle shop and prototypical "nice guy" who has his eyes on Izzy, the play's protagonist. Izzy, however, is more interested in Tyler, the self-absorbed author that frequently visits the bookstore where she works. So does Izzy end up with nice-guy Sam or schmucky Tyler? You'll have to come see it to find out.

While all of the above sounds like your typical romantic comedy, what makes this play stand out from standard rom-com fare is its New York Lower-East Side setting and characters, which allows for a deeper exploration into ethnic identity, tradition, and the old-world vs. new-world generational divide. But most of all, it's very funny and very romantic. The perfect play for a date night or for a night out with friends!

The show runs January 27 through Feburary 19. You can get more details and ticket information at Tabard Theatre's website.

New Columns: "Parental Math" and "On the Road Again"

2011-09-07T21:57:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" columns:

Parental Math
An attempt to describe what it's like to deal with my crazy kids in purely quantitative terms.

On the Road Again
A revisit of the topic that got me the "Father Knows Best?" gig in the first place.

Coming next month: Dietary Dilemmas in which I talk about the challenges of getting my kids to eat food with actual nutritional substance.

Getting Healthy, Losing Weight (Mostly on Purpose)

2011-09-04T02:10:00.000-07:00

Since so many people have been asking, I'm going to come clean and admit that I've lost just over 35 pounds over the past five months. Yes, it was intentional--well, mostly intentional. But I'll get to the "mostly" part in a little bit. First, I'll start at the beginning.

As I entered my 30s, I experienced an all-too-common slowing down of my once overcharged metabolism due in no small part to a more sedentary life of working full-time in a high tech setting. Things got even worse when I became a parent six years ago. When you have kids, it's not unusual to allow your health to take a backseat to the parenting concerns that tend to monopolize all your waking hours. Life had become more stressful than ever, I was overeating, and I certainly wasn't about to take any of my rare free time to go to the gym. As a consequence of all this, I found myself about 15 pounds above the normal weight range for my height. Even worse, I felt sluggish and not pleased with the way I was looking.

I finally woke up one morning in March and decided that after years of Marcie regularly nudging me to start exercising, I would finally heed her advice. The first thing I did was ignore fad diets and programs promoted by fitness gurus. I've always liked doing things in my own way. That's just the way I'm wired. Instead, I did my own research and came up with a very balanced workout/dietary plan that I hoped to be sustainable and healthy. As it turns out, this plan proved to be so effective that I found myself losing weight far quicker than I would have ever expected. I originally figured that I might lose a pound or two a week and reach my goal of losing 20 pounds within about three months. I ended up doing it in under two. And no, I didn't starve myself--quiet the opposite, actually.

Five months later, I'm now more than 35 pounds less than where I started and have more energy than I've had in years. That's the good news. But if that number 35 looks a little troubling, that's because I did experience a bit of a detour along the way, which as already promised, I'll get to shortly. But first, since so many people have been asking me how exactly I managed to lose the weight and improve my overall health, I thought I'd share my whole regimen here. Of course, what worked for me may not necessarily work for others. Still, maybe something from my experiences could be helpful to someone interested in such things.

Exercise + Diet = The Magical (Albeit Obvious) Combination

My whole routine has been predicated on the most basic of fitness tenants: Sustainable weight loss can only be achieved by a combination of healthier eating and exercise. It's that simple. Fad diets only get you temporary results. Once your metabolism catches up with whatever tricks you're playing on it, you'll stop losing pounds and will likely start gaining them right back. The key is you absolutely have to exercise as well. In fact, in the balance between diet and exercise, I'd say exercise is, by far, the more important of the two. It's also the most difficult and time consuming.

And let me tell you, I hate exercising. I hate the sweating, I hate the heavy breathing, and I hate the rapidly pounding heartbeat. I also find it incredibly tedious. But that's where discipline comes in. Being a grown-up is all about doing things I don't like doing and so this is just one of those things. Plus it at least has a very tangible impact on my well being.

The other consideration is how much time is takes up. The fact is, I would have never been able to achieve my fitness goals without Marcie's selfless support. In particular, she has had to go solo with the kids even more than usual in order to give me the time I need for going to the gym. I know it's not easy. In fact, if I had to add one other variable to the Exercise + Diet equation, it would have to be the support of a loved one. I'm indeed more fortunate than I can say that I have this in spades.

The Fitness Plan

I go to the gym three times a week--two days immediately after work and one weekend day. I always start off with aerobic exercise, spending around 40 minutes on a treadmill. I do a five-minute warmup, at least 30 minutes at full speed with gradually increasing incline, and 5-10 minutes cool down. I always have something loaded up on my iPod to listen to, as the time on the treadmill would otherwise feel interminable. By the end of the session, I'm usually red-faced and drenched in perspiration and wishing I don't run into people who know me. I'm not a pretty sight.

I next go to the weight training area where I do chest presses, shoulder presses, dumbbell curls, and a bunch of other things whose names I don't know. I'm always trying to gradually increase the weights each few weeks to help build up more strength. I do all this not only for strength and flexibility, but because more muscle mass equals higher metabolic rate, which is helpful for sustained weight loss.

Finally, I do about 10 minutes of mat work, which includes several different types of crunches, sit-ups, pushups, and stretches.

The Diet

I take a very common sense approach to my diet. I'm not into large-scale eliminations, tracking dietary ratios, or even counting calories. Instead, it's all about moderation and logical choices. Here are its main components:

A minimum of sweets and anything with refined sugar
A minimum of white starches (white rice, regular pasta, etc.)
Lots of fruit and vegetables
Low fat, but not no fat
Controlled portions at breakfast, lunch, and dinner
Healthy snacks in between meals to keep metabolism running high

Power Breakfast

Of all my meals, the one most optimized for maximum energy/metabolism boosting and all around good health is breakfast. On most mornings I eat a cup or so of non-fat plain organic Greek yogurt mixed with about a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, blueberries (sometimes strawberries and/or sliced banana) topped with plain (unsweetened) toasted oats. Every item performs a specific function and the result is something that's pretty yummy (unless you can't stand fat free yogurt) and gets me through the first couple hours of the day. Every so often, I'll eat something more conventional for the sake of variety, like a bowl of Product 19 cereal with non-fat milk and either blueberries, strawberries, or sliced banana. Also, about every other Saturday, I make whole wheat pancakes for the kids and will take a few for myself (without syrup, of course).

Super Salad

Every lunch and dinner starts with what I've come to call my "Super Shapiro Salad":

Romaine lettuce
Baby spinach
Carrot slices
Chopped celery
Tomatoes
Cucumber slices
Very lightly steamed broccoli
Very lightly steamed cauliflower
Avocado
A tiny amount (maybe a teaspoon, but I've never actually measured) of olive oil balsamic vinaigrette

I eat fairly large portions of this salad with both lunch and dinner so I have to spend a few nights a week making up new batches. Sometimes I feel like there's no end to the produce to wash, slice and dice, and steam every week. I should also add that since I eat so much produce now, I only use organic ingredients. Let's just say that Whole Foods Market has become one of my favorite destinations.

Lunch and Dinner Main Course

My main course for lunch is usually whatever leftover I have from the night before. I use our Tupperware collection for portion control by using the small (maybe pint size?) containers for this part of the meal. This is roughly half the amount of what I used to eat, but with the addition of the super salad, I'm fairly satisfied after meals. As for what exactly I eat, it can be just about anything, just as long as it falls within the general guidelines of my overall diet plan. Here are just some of the meals I regularly make:

Whole wheat pasta with organic ground turkey red sauce (made from scratch)
Brown rice noodle pad tai with chicken, carrots, and broccoli
Sliced organic chicken apple sausage mixed with zucchini, squash, tomato and spinach/tomato pasta
Breaded and baked skinless/boneless chicken tenders served with brown rice and/or veggies
Chicken curry and veggies with brown rice
Tofu and veggies stir fry

I usually make these meals for the whole family, but it's not unusual for the kids to only eat certain components of each meal. They're especially resistant to sauces. Kids are weird that way.

The In-Betweeners

To keep hunger at bay and my energy/metabolism high, I eat healthy snacks throughout the day. Usually at 10:30, I'll have a salt-free brown rice cake topped with just a tiny amount of organic wildflower honey. Later, between lunch and dinner (usually around 3:30), I'll have some seedless red grapes. I also always keep a bag of unsweetened almonds on my desk and grab a few whenever hunger pangs strike. Less frequently, I'll snack on celery or carrots with humus or a handful of edamame. Sometimes I'll even treat myself to an afternoon cup of green tea. It's supposedly high in antioxidants, plus it gives me a slight energy boost during those late afternoons when I'm especially tired from a lack of sleep (often due to late night salad preparations).

I also discovered early on is that I can't have a good workout unless I eat something right before heading off to the gym. The thing I've found the most effective is a flat Oroweat whole-wheat "sandwich thin" roll with plain almond butter and a touch of honey. This always gives me the boost I need to get through the workout without crashing.

The Dark Side of Good Health

As mentioned earlier, the road to better health took a surprising turn a few months in. I had quickly hit my 20 pound weight loss goal and started working toward my stretch goal of 30 pounds, when I started experiencing some very troubling stomach pain that often came about 45 minutes after eating. The first time it happened I thought that perhaps I had some minor food poisoning. But after a few episodes, I realized this was a different type of pain. I wasn't nauseated and wasn't--well--having to do those things you'd normally do when experiencing food poisoning or the stomach flu. Instead, I was feeling a very sharp pain that was clearly centralized in my upper abdomen. It was almost like someone was constantly jabbing me in the stomach with a knife--sometimes more aggressively than other times--and these attacks became increasingly more frequent. It made my work days tough, it completely soured my mood (leaving me with zero patience for my kids' usual shenanigans), and disturbed my sleep. Obviously, the time had come for medical intervention.

Over the course of several weeks, I ended up seeing two internal medicine physicians and a GI specialist, getting an ultrasound, and having to go through a very unpleasant upper endoscopy wherein a small camera was threaded down my throat into my stomach. At the end of all this, the medical conclusion was that I either had acute gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining) and/or gallstones. The former is somewhat treatable--albeit very slowly--via a bland diet and medication. The latter is still an open question, as they only found something that could possibly be gallstones, but could also be something else.

Consequently, for the better part of the past few months, I've been especially careful about eating anything that could case pain. There was even a week or two in there that I was eating nothing but bland foods like rice, plain tofu, and applesauce. But finally, after so much careful eating, I'm starting to feel like myself again and have slowly begun reintroducing a regular varied diet. Unfortunately, somewhere in the middle of all this, I ended up losing additional weight beyond what I was intending (at least five pounds beyond my stretch goal). The good news is that I'm still within the range of healthy weight--albeit on the bottom end.

But how exactly did this whole thing happen in the first place? My conclusion is that my nearly overnight change in eating habits in April was clearly the reason. This couldn't have been a coincidence and I've identified two highly probable dietary culprits:

1) Eating loads of unwashed quinoa
2) Eliminating too much fat

First, let's talk about the quinoa. Quinoa has tons of wonderful health benefits and is especially high in protein. Early on in my new regimen, I started eating loads of the stuff. I used it in stir fries, with curries, and in lieu of pasta. However, what I didn't know at the time was that you are supposed to thoroughly wash quinoa before cooking it. The reason this is important is because quinoa is naturally coated with saponins, which is a toxic chemical compound that serves as nature's way of keeping birds from poaching seeds and grains. While saponins in small doses probably doesn't have too much of an effect on humans, I was eating significant quantities of it. Oops. I was at least a little comforted to find through my Internet research that I'm not the only one who had a reaction to quinoa/saponins. In fact, I found one person's story almost identical to mine--right down to the ultrasound and endoscopy.

Oddly, after sharing all this with the GI, I expected her to support my conclusion that excessive quinoa/saponins consumption was the source of my ills. But she was more interested in treating the symptoms than discussing root cause and looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned saponins, a word she had never heard before. Ah, specialists.

As for the lack of fat in my diet, I also learned that making a dramatic decrease in fat consumption (especially accompanied by fairly rapid weight loss) can cause gallstones. This would actually be the most logical explanation for my issues had they actual found any obvious gallstones. The best they were able to do was find what they thought were tiny (and supposedly common) benign cysts in the gallstone region. This is somewhat troubling to say the least. Hopefully all will become clearer in January when I'm scheduled for a follow-up ultrasound. This is expected to result in one of at least four possible scenarios/conclusions:

If they find the same sized things in the same place, then what they found previously probably really are just tiny benign cysts.

If they find the same sized things in a different place, then they're small gallstones.

If they've disappeared altogether, then they actually were small gallstones and I was fortunate enough to pass them.

If they find the same things in the same place, only they're somewhat larger, then I might potentially have something worse than gallstones.

I'll take option 1 or 3. But option 2 means possibly having to get the gallbladder removed. Ouch. As for option 4, well, I'd rather not think about that.

Either way, until more clarity comes in January, I've supplemented my diet with more good fats--especially avocado, nuts, and olive oil and completely cut out quinoa. I've also been taking Protonix, a proton-pump inhibitor prescribed by my GI to reduce stomach acid in order to facilitate healing of the abdominal lining. I haven't had a severe episode in a month so hopefully these things really are helping (knock on wood).

Final Thoughts

In all, I'm glad to be exiting my 30s in a much healthier state than I entered them. I haven't been at this weight and waist size since college and I'm pleased that I'm doing something that'll hopefully help keep me around longer for Marcie and the kids. To that end, I had a comprehensive physical (including a fitness evaluation, treadmill/EKG heart test, and full chemistry panel) a couple of months ago, just before the stomach issues, and got a really good snapshot of the effectiveness of my routine. I won't bore you with the actual numbers, but let's just say that were shockingly good. After so much hard work, I was thrilled to get some concrete proof that my efforts were resulting in something beyond outward thinness.

Fingers crossed that the stomach issues will be a thing of the past and I can laugh at my mistakes. Until then, I hope this extended posting was helpful. Feel free to leave me a comment with your thoughts and questions. I'd love to hear them!

Altered Reality: Kids and Hard Truths

2011-07-27T22:35:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" column in which I engage in a heady discussion about cognitive dissonance. It's funnier than it sounds.

Coming next month: Parental Math in which I try to convey what it's like to deal with my crazy kids in mathematical terms.

Playing the Game: In Dread of Sports

2011-07-07T22:35:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" column in which I admit that I'm bored to tears by sports but accept the fact one or both of my kids might feel otherwise.

Coming next month: Altered Reality in which I engage in a heady discussion about cognitive dissonance.

Always a Laughing Matter: A Mother's Day Tribute

2011-05-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" column in which I pay a Mother's Day tribute to my beautiful wife Marcie and her wonderful sense of humor.

Coming next month: Playing the Game in which I admit to finding fewer things in life less interesting than sports.

Problematic Perfectionism

2011-04-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" column in which I call my older daughter anal retentive and my younger daughter a control freak--all a result of inheriting their parents' genes, of course.

Coming next month: Always a Laughing Matter in which I celebrate Mother's Day with a tribute to my wife and her wonderful sense of humor.

Grandstanding for the Arts

2011-03-12T23:17:00.000-08:00

Check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" column in which I break from my usual format to grandstand for the performing arts and give a plug for the fine folks at Artsopolis.

Coming next month: Problematic Perfectionism or The One in Which I Call One Daughter a Perfectionist and the Other a Control Freak

"Father Knows Best?" December-February Columns

2011-03-06T23:03:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've shared some of my Parenting on the Peninsula "Father Knows Best?" columns. So here are the last few that went to press since my last post:

December 2010: Seasons Screeching
In our family, the holidays are loud. So very loud.

January 2011: Auld Lang Syne
A reflection of New Year's Eve before and after kids. Needless to say, there's a world of difference between the two.

February 2011: Getting Real
In which I call all parents liars and then describe the day my wife got doused in our younger daughter's vomit. Good times.

Coming soon: My March column in which I break format to do some grandstanding for the performing arts.

As always, I love getting feedback and comments on these columns. So feel free to drop me a line to let me know your thoughts!

'Tis the Season for Tim Rivers

2010-12-04T20:34:00.000-08:00

Every year during the holiday season, I like to pay tribute to Tim Rivers, a very dear friend who left us far too early. For those you who never knew this incredibly talented and generous person, I hope you'll take the time to read the tribute I posted to my blog a few years ago.

I also strongly encourage you to check out A Tim Rivers Collection, a compilation of Tim's very impressive holiday recordings and a few other goodies. My tribute has the whole history of those recordings and how I was fortunate enough to produce a couple of them myself. The recordings feature Tim singing four-part a-cappella arrangements achieved through magic of multi-track recording technology. Even more impressive was that all the recordings were from the ‘80s/early ‘90s, meaning there was no pitch correction available and I don’t believe he even a used a click track to keep time (he certainly didn’t for our recordings).

Again, I hope you'll take a listen. You can download anything you like for free. Lots of great options for adding to your holiday music playlists! As I said when I first made his music available several years ago, I felt making these recordings available to as many people as possible was the least I could do to pay tribute to someone who had such a big impact on my life and on countless others.

Family Portraits - Altered Reality for the Holiday Season

2010-11-06T23:44:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" column in which I discuss the impossibility of getting a decent family photo and reveal that my byline photo is a lie.

Coming next month: Seasons Screeching or Mayhem for the Holidays

Spooky Sweets - A Halloween Reflection

2010-10-07T00:04:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" column in which I reflect on the challenges of Halloween candy in the presence of kids. It's spoooooooky!

By the way, the final line of the piece was Marcie's suggestion. It's definitely the best line in whole thing. Thanks, Marcie!

The Latest Columns

2010-09-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

I've been remiss in sharing my latest Parenting on the Peninsula "Father Knows Best?" columns. So without further ado, here they are:

June 2010: Too Much Gravity
A column that pretty perfectly summarizes the state of things on the homefront.

July 2010: High Drama
A reworking of an older piece that first appeared at this blog. Mostly written in dramatic form.

September 2010: Under the Influence
As a parent, you put up with a lot of unpleasantness. So you might as well take advantage of what you can. In my case, it's exposing my kids to great music and movies.

I love getting feedback and comments on these columns. So feel free to drop me a line to let me know your thoughts!

Acting Cuckoo on Yahoo!

2010-06-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

What is it about the Web that turns decent people into disrespectful schmucks angrily bickering with strangers? No matter what the topic, if there's a "Comments" section to a page, you can almost guarantee that a virtual fight will break out before long.

One of the types of debate that invariably breaks out it of a political nature. This seems especially true of just about every news story posted by way of Yahoo!'s homepage. Whether the story is about healthy eating, car reviews, or entertainment industry news, it's almost impossible to find a single comments thread that doesn't quickly turn into petty partisan debate.

With this in mind, I thought I'd do an incredibly unscientific experiment to see how long it takes on average for most Yahoo! article comments to devolve into angry political rhetoric.

My first choice was a topic that I knew would very likely generate lots of political debate:

'Furious' Obama heading to Gulf for spill update

Not surprising, the comments turned angry from the very first posting

"Obama heading to Louisiana for oil spill update..... to see how BP is handling his responsibility."

The second comment took this a little further:

"Oilgate Obamas Katrina. No, this is what he wanted a reason to shut down and take over the oil industry. (NEVER LET A GOOD CRISIS GO TO WASTE).

And things just got worse from there.

Next, I thought I'd try something that neither involves the president nor any specific political party:

In DC, even the Spelling Bee draws protesters

Though not about politics, the story does take place in Washington D.C. So I thought the comments might still get partisan pretty quickly. And yes, only three comments in, someone posted this:

"Next we'll need to teach all us english speaking idiots how to translate ebonomics into spanish,so the minorities in this country can understand us ! I'm writing this comment and I'm a liberal, but I approve this message !"

But things didn't get truly ugly until comment #11:

"If your HEART is filled with HATE, if you Hate all people of color, if you hate immigrants, if you hate a Democratically elected President, if you hate the spelling bee, YOU MUST BE A TEA PARTY, I MEAN GOP SUPPORTER!!!"

Moving away from the president and/or Washington D.C., I thought I'd try an article that I thought might be even more politically agnostic:

4-day school weeks gain popularity across US

This story is about school districts trying out a new cost-cutting measure that happens to also improve test scores. Now here's an interesting topic, whether you're on the left or right--or so I thought. It only took until comment #4 for this to get political:

"The four-day school week must be a favorite idea of the conservatives. Save money, the poor rich boys are starving and cannot pay their taxes. We have enough dumb Americans, Palin, Limbaugh and Beck are good examples."

Okay, I admit that education is still a pretty hot political topic, even though that particular story wasn't really of any particular political ideology. But, I figured I better move off of news and get to something more frivolous:

Take a tour of Cher’s gorgeous new Buddhist-inspired home

The comments began with plenty of negative remarks about Cher's taste and it only took a few postings before people starting digging into matters of religion. But even in this extremely fluffy topic, at comment 35, it turned partisan:

"Poor Cher. Living under President G W Bush "almost killed her", or so she said. Glad she's doing better now. (Too bad the rest of us aren't!)"

Fine, so maybe Cher is a divisive figure. Who knew? I next tried to find something really innocuous:

Cleaning tricks to make appliances last

Left or right, everyone would like their appliances to last longer, don't they? When it comes to home maintenance, we can all get along, right? Well, apparently not. It only took until comment #9 to see this:

"How long before some ignorant lib cries racism because they're showing a black women, suggesting that blacks are maids or servants to white folks? Don't laugh, you know some jack a z z will do it."

I'm guessing this comment refers to an accompanying photo that I'm not seeing when I load the page. All I see is a photo of a dishwashing machine; but maybe it's a replacement for a previous image. Either way, whether or not a previous image was problematic, the tone of this comment is practically begging to turn the comments into yet another petty debate full of knee-jerk pronouncements and recriminations.

Finally, just when I was about to lose hope that there couldn't be at least one Yahoo! posting that doesn't turn political, I came across this:

New 'Transformers 3' Star: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

I've never seen either of the Michael Bay Transformers movies (or any Transformers movies/cartoons for that matter), but still expected this story to only attract the attention of 12 year old boys and thus avoid the murky waters of political discourse. Turns out I was right. At last, my faith in humanity has been restored . The comments stick to the fully nonpartisan topic of the relative attractiveness of a young starlet. Take this insightful little quip from "Arnoldo" (comment #6):

"this %@!*# is UGLY to %@!*#ing sick and looks like she suffering from hunger"

Or this clever commentary from "tatu" (comment #10):

"aaaaaaaaagggggggggrrrrrrrrrr she looks like she got in a fight her face is all swollen! megan y! dam u couldnt just shut ur mouth! But nnnooo miss diva thinks shes all that and a bag of chips! stupid! o well fhuket it is wht it is huh! dum ass!"

I guess all is well with the world after all. That much said, as of this writing, there are 3,133 comments on this article. After reading 20, I had to put my fingers in my ears out of fear that my brain would try to make an escape. So it's always possible that the comments get combatively political further down the line. But given the intelligent and thoughtful commentary thus far, I'd like to believe human nature is better than that.

Beatles in Stereo or Mono?

2010-05-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

After treading the "music geek" waters with my recent Paul McCartney posting, I figured I might as well take the plunge and take on a full-out Beatles-related topic.

Over the years, I've occasionally read pieces from rock critics and music historians who claim that the only "real" way to hear the Beatles is in mono. The usual explanation for this preference is that unlike many of their contemporaries, The Beatles actually did entirely different mixes for mono and stereo releases. The more common process was simply doing a stereo mix, then combining it into a single channel to create a mono version. The Beatles, on the other hand, produced completely separate "from-scratch" mixes for each format. As a result, there are countless differences between the two mixes--many are fairly subtle, some quite substantial.

Also, since mono was still the more common format through most of the 60s, The Beatles were mainly only interested in the mono versions of their releases. Thus, the band members tended to be there only for mono mixing sessions. They'd then let George Martin and his engineers deal with the stereo mixes later without attending any of those subsequent sessions. This meant that a great deal more time and attention was spent on the mono mixes, which also implies that they are the true "Beatles-approved" mixes.

Even though I've been long aware of this history, I only had limited exposure to Beatles mono mixes until recently. Their first four albums were released in mono when first put out on CD in the 80s, but the rest of the CD releases were in stereo only. Years earlier, when my brother and I first became Beatles fanatics (I was probably in fifth or sixth grade at the time), we managed to get a few mono pressings of their albums on vinyl LP at a used record store. But I wasn't then a critical enough listener to really make an assessment of their merit relative to their stereo counterparts. But at long last, thanks to the re-release of the entire Beatles catalog on CD in both stereo and mono late last year, I have finally had the opportunity see if all the mono-hype was warranted.

Please Please Me (1962) and With the Beatles (1963)

Mono or Stereo? Mono

I'm lumping these two albums together since they are both two sides of the same aural coin. Both were very quickly recorded, mostly live-in-the-studio with limited overdubs, using two-track tape. Given the limitations of working with only two tracks, George Martin never intended for these albums to be released in anything but mono. Rather, he used the two tracks to help him balance the instruments on one track and the vocals on the other. He then combined the two into a single mono mix. However, unbeknownst to him, the company big-wigs got their hands on the two-track tapes and put out stereo pressings of these albums. The result were albums where all of the instruments come out of one speaker and all the vocals out of the other. While it's kind of cool to be able to hear only the instruments or just the voices by turning the balance knob on your stereo, aesthetically a mix of this sort is just, well, wrong. As a result, the mono releases really are the true way to hear these albums. The instrument/vocal balance is perfect and the obvious energy behind the performances come through in a way that get lost when everything is so dramatically split apart left/right in stereo.

A Hard Days Night (1963)

Mono or Stereo? Both

If there was one major point of contention I had with the initial Beatles CD releases in the 80s, it was that George Martin, in his understandable anxiousness to release the groups' first two albums in only mono for their first appearance on CD, somehow managed to lump the next two albums in with the same mono-only request. This had boggled my mind then and continues to do so today. After Please Please Me and With the Beatles, the band started recording on four-track tape. The result was that they were able to do proper stereo mixes (vocals in the center, instruments spread out to both left and right channels) for the first time. The resultant mixes were still a little bit on the primitive side, but the overall balance was very good and the stereo panning allowed for more detail to come through. I had loved my stereo vinyl LPs of these albums and was bitterly disappointed when I could only enjoy them in mono after I transitioned to CD. But after over 20 years, this major mistake was finally rectified when both mixes were released last year.

The funny thing is despite missing the stereo mixes for so long, I actually found both the mono and stereo mixes to be equal for Hard Days Night. The mono mix is probably a little better balanced, with tighter drums and bass, but the stereo mix is nice and full as well. It even has a funny little mixing mistake, with the wrong McCartney harmony vocal mixed into the last section of "If I Fell" where his voice cracks at the end of the phrase "was in vain." In fact, it was errors like these that demonstrate how much less attention went in to the stereo mixes at that point. But it's a fun mistake that always makes me smile when I hear it.

Beatles for Sale (1964)

Mono or Stereo: Stereo

With each album the band put out, they added increasingly more overdubs and layers of harmonies. As a result, I've always found the mono mix of this album to be too cluttered. The stereo mix, on the other hand, really opens up the soundscape (the whole point of stereo, naturally) and it's much easier to pick out individual instruments and voices. After so many years of waiting, I am thrilled to finally have this album in stereo on CD.

Help! (1965)

Mono or Stereo: Stereo

The mono mix of this great album definitely has its charms and I especially like that John's vocals on the title track are a little different than the stereo mix. But overall, this albums just sounds better in stereo. The guitars are crisper and the vocals clearer. A great stereo highlight of many is "I've Just Seen a Face" with its immersive acoustic guitars spread across the channels.

Rubber Soul (1965)

Mono or Stereo: Mono

After extolling the virtues of the previous two albums in stereo, it might seem strange that I give the nod to Rubber Soul's mono mix. However, by this point in their career, the Beatles' albums were getting increasingly richer and complex--all of which required more tracks. Although they were still working with four-track recorders, they were able to add more tracks through a process called bouncing. The downside of this process was that even more instruments and/or vocals had to be squeezed onto shared tracks. The result was that the original 1966 stereo mix of Rubber Soul had a fair amount of the instruments-on-one-side and vocals-on-the-other-side quality of their first two albums' stereo mixes. After releasing three proper stereo mixes, this was an unfortunate return to a more rudimentary approach to stereo. Thus it's for this reason that the mono mix of this album is much better balanced with the overall sound much punchier and powerful. I should note that George Martin even went through the trouble of doing a new stereo mix of this album in 1987 for its first CD release to try to correct the original mix. It could have potentially been an improvement over the original 1965 stereo mix, but was marred by the type of compressed, tinny sound that was very common in the 80s when digital recording and mixing was still relatively new and bitrates were low.

Revolver (1966)

Mono or Stereo: Both

This was the album that marked the arrival of sound engineer Geoff Emerick to the Beatles' story. It's hard to overstate his enormous contribution to the band through what is arguably their most creative period. He was young and eager to please and did things with microphone placement and effects processors that no one had done before. As a result, Revolver sounds great in both mono and stereo. The usual four-track limitations still resulted in some too-wide stereo panning, but at least the vocals were mostly back in the center and the overall balance is consistently good. There's also a fun little stereo mixing mistake on "Eleanor Rigby" that I've noticed for years but only recently learned exactly what caused it. At the beginning of the first verse, Paul's voice on the first couple of syllables of the word "Eleanor" is in both speakers and then abruptly shifts to just one side for the remainder of the verse. As it turns out, this happens because the ADT (Automatic Double Tracking) effect used on the opening "Ah, look at all the lonely people" refrain was accidentally kept on for those couple of syllables before it was turned off for the rest of the verse. It's just one of those random accidents that again demonstrates how less attention was paid to stereo mixes.

The mono mix probably has more powerful drums and bass and the brass on "Got to Get You Into My Life" is especially powerful. But overall I enjoy both mixes equally.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Mono or Stereo: Mono

I was absolutely shocked to discover that everything I've heard over the years about the mono mix of Sgt. Pepper was true. This album truly does rock harder in mono. The level balance and equalization of all the instruments is just perfect. Everything is exactly right in mono. The stereo mix definitely tries to be more psychedelically trippy in stereo with all its panning effects, but the overall album is less punchy and aurally uneven. You can tell that mistakes were made along the way with various instrument levels not always in balance or things like there not being enough phaser/flanger effect applied to John's voice in "Lucy in the Sky." There is even a pretty dramatic difference in the speed of "She's Leaving Home," which is faster in mono. The only song that arguably works better in stereo is "A Day in the Life" because of all the aforementioned stereo panning effects. If there was ever song that would benefit from sounds frequently moving left-to-right, this would definitely be the one. But unless you're listening to the album with headphones on, the mono mix really is better. Believe me, I'm as surprised as anyone.

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

Mono or Stereo: Both

Much like Sgt. Pepper, the balance is generally better in mono. Songs like "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Hello Goodbye" are particularly powerful in their mono incarnations. On the other hand, songs like "Strawberry Fields" and "I Am the Walrus" are more immersive in stereo. So I call it a draw. I like both mixes equally.

The Beatles [a.k.a. The White Album] (1968)

Mono or Stereo: Stereo

The Beatles' famous self-titled double-album was the first one in which George Martin and team were able to get their hands on eight-track recording equipment. Although it wasn't used for all the tracks on the album, you can definitely hear the difference in general. The stereo panning is still fairly wide at times, but somehow less harsh. I'm guessing at this point, stereo was getting so common that the recording professionals across the industry were simply getting more adept at creating solid, well-balanced stereo mixes. And again, they had the luxury of more tracks in several cases. Plus, a baroque album like The White Album simply benefits from the expanded sound field that stereo affords. Whether it's the honkey-tonk piano jumping out of one channel in "Rocky Racoon" or the beautifully-recorded orchestra and choir in "Good Night" encompassing both channels, stereo just suits this album so well. That's not to say that there aren't pleasures to be had in the mono mix (I especially like the extra emphasis the pig sound effects in "Piggies" get in mono), but the stereo mix is less cluttered and full of surprises. Plus, the experimental sound collage "Revolution 9" makes no sense in mono. In fact, "Revolution 9" is one of the few times when the group actually did was most of the industry did, which was mix only in stereo, then bounce down to a single track for mono release.

Non-Album Singles

Through their entire recording career, The Beatles released countless non-album singles, including all their biggest hits such as "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Hey Jude." Since I've gone on long enough, I'll only say that "Paperback Writer" rocks harder and has a much more effective echo effect in the mono mix. It's flip-side, "Rain," also benefits from a much better balance and sharper equalization in the mono mix. Many of the group's other singles have similar differences.

Other than the Yellow Submarine film soundtrack in 1968, which was never released with mono-specific mixes (although the recent CD release include a few first-time mono releases from the album), the group's post-White Album albums were released in stereo only. So this is where my comparisons end.

In just a small handful of years, The Beatles went from recording in a world where mono ruled to a world in which stereo was now the new standard. As a result of this transition, for the past 40 years, most people have only been familiar with the band's stereo releases. But as I hope is clear from this commentary, the mono mixes are frequently the better mixes. So as all those Beatles purists have been saying for years, you really haven't heard the Beatles until you've heard them in mono. Who knew?

In Defense of Sir Paul

2010-05-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

As a lifelong Beatles fan, I frequently obsess over random questions related to the Fab Four. My latest obsession is around Paul McCartney's oft-maligned solo career and how he got such a negative reputation from both critics and many serious rock fans. After all, he's an undisputed virtuoso on the bass--an incredible talent he never seems to get enough credit for. Then on top of that, he's written a wealth of great songs over the past 40 years of his post-Beatles career.

But then I realize the answer is obvious: Songwriting has always come so easy to McCartney that he's never been much of a self-editor. For every "Band on the Run" there's a "Girlfriend" or "Average Person." Plus there were the light-rock radio staples of the 70s and 80s that were more often as not perceived as unadventurous and shallow--although I'd argue that such an interpretation wasn't always fair. Take a song like "My Love." It's undeniably cheesy--especially lyrically. But it was a huge hit for a reason: Its song-craft is impeccable. The arrangement, musicianship, and melodic content all work together in a way as to make the song nearly irresistible. Say what you will about corny McCartney ballads, but you can't deny that the guy knew how to craft together a recording in a way that made it all seem so effortless. So it's no surprise that songs like "My Love" became such big hits. Unfortunately, this success came with consequences--namely that such songs tended to overshadow other facets of McCartney's work. For many people, a song like "My Love" began representing the totality of what McCartney was capable of. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. It's is a good song, but far from his best.

It's well-documented that McCartney never took particularly well to constructive feedback from anyone other than John Lennon and sometimes Beatles producer George Martin. Thus when freed from that type of input, he didn't always have the impetus to push himself beyond the things that came most naturally. It's probably for that reason that his early solo career got off to a particularly rough start. After so many ornate, brilliantly-produced Beatles albums, McCartney's self-titled debut solo album must have been something of a shock to fans and critics alike. It was entirely self-performed--mainly via a home-studio four-track machine (albeit later treated to recording studio overdubs and other touch-ups) with a deliberately "homemade" feel. It was McCartney's way of starting over with a "back to basics" approach. It's an understandable move and even admirable. But so much of the resultant album feels very "throw-away" with its random instrumentals and simplistic lyrics a la "That Would Be Something" or "The Lovely Linda." Yet buried near the end of that album is "Maybe I'm Amazed," one of McCartney's best songs he's ever written. With some proper guidance and nudging, perhaps the album could have a few more "Maybe I'm Amazed"s and fewer "Valentine Day"s.

The McCartney album was followed by Ram, which was McCartney's attempt to return to a properly produced recording. The problem was that the quality of the songwriting varied too widely. The Grammy-award winning "Uncle Albert" was indeed in the same universe as some of his more creative Beatles-era songs, but songs like "Too Many People" or "Smile Away" are both charming, but surprisingly crude. Making matters worse was that the album was amateurishly engineered and mixed. Which is a shame because I've always thought it was perhaps his most underrated album. He's undoubtedly a bit unhinged and could have done with the type of external guidance a George Martin could have provided, but he's definitely adventurous enough. "Back Seat in My Car" is an especially strong song that's only marred by a terrible audio mix and poor recording techniques. It's a shame because with the right production, that song could have easily reached the same heights of some of the best moments on Abbey Road.

After Ram, McCartney formed Wings and the remainder of the 70s consisted of the band's eventual rise to worldwide success (despite numerous personnel changes) and a string of hit singles. During those years, McCartney took the band from being a rough-and-tumble group playing college campuses to a slick and polished professional outfit capable of filling arenas. Throughout it all, McCartney continued to write catchy tunes and produce impeccably crafted recordings. I have no doubt it was all lots of work despite how effortless it all seemed. But it was that effortlessness that was probably the most damaging to McCartney's credibility. Songs like "With a Little Luck" or "Let 'em In" are so breezy and go down so smoothly that it's hard to imagine that either took any labor to create. But it actually takes a relentless pursuit of excellence--no doubt burning out many a Wings member along the way--to create somewhat that sounds so easy.

The 80s proved to be an interesting decade for McCartney, as it both produced his highly-regarded and Grammy-nominated Tug of War album (due in no small part to the fact that it was produced by George Martin and engineered by Geoff Emerick) and the box-office flop Give My Regards to Broad Street. At least the decade ended off very strong with his excellent Flowers in the Dirt, which marked the beginning of his long road towards some degree of critical acceptance. The last two decades since have been especially strong, with his two most recent studio albums among his very best.

So in the spirit of redeeming Sir Paul, I thought it would be fun to take a look through his entire post-Beatles discography and make a list of the very best tracks from his long career. You probably won't see too many of his bigger hits here, which is probably a good thing. It should probably also go without saying that this is very much a personal list. Talk to another McCartney fan and you'd probably get an entirely different list. But hey, this is my blog, so I get to do whatever I want here.

Classic McCartney

"Maybe I'm Amazed" from McCartney (1970) and Wings Across America (1976)
As classic McCartney as it gets. A beautiful melody, great piano and guitar work (all played by Paul) that would have been very much at home on Abbey Road or The White Album. The 1976 live version is a little slower and has an extended coda, and might be even better than the original studio recording.

"Another Day" (1971 single)
A very Beatles-esque song that tells a nice quiet story of a woman leading a solitary life. A very understated, but no less expertly crafted recording.

"Back Seat of My Car" from Ram (1971)
I love this song, especially the descending chord progression of the "Oh we believe that we can't go wrong" refrain. I just wish it weren't so horribly horribly recorded and mixed. Oh Paul, why didn't you invite Geoff Emerick to engineer this one?

"Little Lamb Dragonfly" from Red Rose Speedway (1973)
Even devout McCartney fans might think I'm crazy for including this one. But I think it's a beautiful song with a perfect melody and arrangement.

"Band on the Run" from Band on the Run (1973)
An obvious choice, but no less an excellent song. Trivia: The drums on this recording are played by Paul himself. The only thing that's always been weird to me in the out-of-tune bass. Given what a famously excellent bass player Paul was, it's hard to imagine how that happened. Still, a great tune.

"Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five" from Band on the Run (1973)
A great piano-based rock song that builds to a perfect crescendo.

"Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People" from Venus and Mars (1975)
For anyone who only knows "Listen to What the Man Said" from the Venus and Mars album probably doesn't know that this song represents the second half of that song, as the instrumental interlude that closes that song leads directly to this one. The melancholic turn the melody takes in the "Lonely Old People" section really makes this song a standout for me.

"The Broadcast" from Back to the Egg (1979)
This is a particularly odd track from an album that is better than the reviews make it out to be. "The Broadcast" is an instrumental track played under excerpts from "The Sport of Kings" by Ian Hay and "The Little Man" by John Galsworthy. It's a short and surprisingly moving piece. It's also fairly rare for McCartney to do an instrumental of this nature, as he tends to go all-out classical in his instrumental work. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'd love to hear him try a more contemporary piano-based instrumental full-length composition as well.

"The Pound Is Sinking" from Tug of War (1982)
This is a type of exploratory composition that McCartney has written many times throughout his career. But this time he had George Martin to tastefully shape it into a mini-suite and Geoff Emerick to make it sound lush and full (by 1982 standards at least).

"My Brave Face" from Flowers in the Dirt (1989)
A collaboration with Elvis Costello resulted in this perfect pop confection. Not much else to say other than it's endless listenable and catchy as almost any early Beatles song.

"We Got Married" from Flowers in the Dirt (1989)
The darkest tribute to marriage that I can think of. I think it's a positive lyric, but the music is so heavy that it creates a wonderful dissonance between theme and execution. I love Dave Gilmore's great guitar work on this track.

"Beautiful Night" from Flaming Pie (1997)
A great highlight from an album full of highlights. Classic McCartney piano ballad, plus Ringo on the drums and a George Martin orchestra arrangement. A real return to form.

"No Other Baby" from Run Devil Run (1999)
An almost shockingly cathartic moment of raw expression delivered via an oldie from McCartney's youth. Run Devil Run was McCartney's first album release after Linda's passing and the whole album feels like a soul-scorching expression of angst under the guise of a seemingly jubilant album of rock and roll covers. There's something so stark about McCartney's vocals on this track that it might very well be the most emotionally honest thing he has every released commercially.

"She's Given Up Talking" from Driving Rain (2001)
For anyone who knows Driving Rain, this is probably a surprising choice from an album that also has both the excellent "Your Loving Flame" and Beatles-esque "Heather." But there's something so arresting about this song's minimal lyric and creative production that makes this a standout track for me.

"English Tea" from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)
The whole Chaos and Creation album is among McCartney's very best releases, so you can pretty much pick out any track on the album as representing the strength of the entire thing. But as a lifelong Beatles fan, I can't resist this throwback to "For No One" from nearly 40 years earlier.

"The End of the End" from Memory Almost Full (2007)
McCartney has never been one to lay his soul bare in his work like his former collaborator John Lennon did. Rather, he liked hiding behind "silly love songs," bucolic topics, and light social commentary. So this song is particularly striking in its directness about his life and mortality. I guess it shouldn't be too surprising given some of the huge personal blows he endured over the years with the passing of Lennon, George Harrison, and his beloved wife Linda. These events have turned the charmingly elusive McCartney of the past into a more introspective songwriter. As as a result, "The End of the End" has a poignancy that's rare for McCartney and which makes it one of his best compositions yet.

Also-Rans

Here are a bunch of other favorites that almost made the list:

"Junk" and "Every Night" from McCartney (1970)
"Dear Boy" and "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" from Ram (1971)
"Tomorrow" and "Dear Friend" from Wild Life (1971)
"Picasso's Last Words (Drink to Me) from Band on the Run (1973)
"Call Me Back Again" from Venus and Mars (1975)
"Let 'Em In" and "Beware My Love" from Wings at the Speed of Sound (1976)
"London Town" and With a Little Luck" from London Town (1978)
"Getting Closer" and "Arrow Through Me" from Back to the Egg (1979)
"Coming Up" (Live) from McCartney II (1980) [as an "bonus" 45RPM single in the original LP and now a CD bonus track]
"Tug of War" and "Take it Away" from Tug of War (1982)
"The Other Me" and "Keep Under Cover" from Pipes of Peace (1983)
"Stranglehold" and "Only Love Remains" from Press to Play (1986)
Every song on Flowers in the Dirt (1989)
"Summertime" from CHOBA B CCCP (released 1991, recorded in 1987)
"Winedark Open Sea" and "C'mon People" from Off the Ground (1993)
"The Song We Were Singing," "Somedays," "Calico Skies," Flaming Pie," and "Little Willow" from Flaming Pie (1997)
"Lonely Road," "From a Lover to a Friend," "Heather," and "Your Loving Flame" from Driving Rain (2001)
Every song on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005)
Every song on Memory Almost Full (2007)

A Mother's Day "Father Knows Best?" and More

2010-05-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

In honor of Mother's Day, check out my latest "Father Knows Best?" column, which is essentially a Mother's Day card to Marcie. The basic theme: Dads get too much praise and Moms never get enough.

Also, check out last month's column, which is my favorite one yet.

Coming next month: my first published use of the word accouterment and praise for an indispensable object of childcare paraphernalia called a Boo-Boo Bunny.

Congress Versus Mother's Day: A True Story

2010-04-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

While working on a new "Father Knows Best?" column, I needed to do a quick Google search on Mother's Day to fill in a gap in the piece. Well, that simple search took me down a very weird detour involving our ever-so-beloved Congress that I just had to share.

Did you know that in May 2008 the House of Representatives passed a resolution to honor mothers and Mother's Day? Until today, I didn't either. But that's not the crazy part. I'll get to that in just a moment.

First some background. The official resolution number and title is H.RES.1113 - Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day. It was fun little resolution that Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb, sponsored in honor of the 100th anniversary of the first Mother's Day. You can read all the nitty-gritty details of the resolution and congressional proceedings at the Library of Congress website, but to save you some time, here are the highlights:

April 16, 2008: Fortenberry introduced the resolution in the House and it was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (whatever that is)
May 1: The committee met to consider the resolution (what was there to consider?)
May 5: The House debated the resolution for 40 minutes. Yes, 40 minutes!
After the debate, a procedural question came up concerning a lack of a quorum (don't ask)
The Speaker of the House concluded that an exception to rules would be allowable and everyone could proceed with voting on the resolution
After all was said and done, the resolution passed unanimously. Now that's something you don't see every day in Congress.

But this is where things get strange.

As soon as the resolution passed, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., rose and said this: "Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote."

Keep in mind that this guy just voted for the resolution.

So, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., did what any reasonable person would do and recommend that Tiahrt's objection gets tabled (i.e. officially and permanently ignored).

Of course, the decision on whether or not Tiahrt's objection could get tabled required yet another vote.

Now, at this point you'd think that everyone but Tiahrt would vote in favor of tabling the objection. But that's probably because you're a reasonable human being.

Nope. Instead, the vote was split almost entirely down party lines. The vast majority of Republicans (including Fortenberry, the resolution's sponsor) voted against tabling the objection and all Democrats voted in favor of tabling the objection. But since the Democrats were the majority party by this time, the vote passed and Tiahrt's objection was official tabled.

Hurray. Praising mommies is A-OK after all.

But of course, this leads to several questions:

Why in the world did Tiahrt object to the resolution in the first place?
Why did he vote in favor of the resolution if he was going to object afterwards?
Why did most Republicans suddenly change their tune over the course of a few minutes and vote against tabling Tiahrt's objection? They had to know that this would effectively imply that they were, in fact, against honoring mothers/Mother's Day after all?

Here's what Dana Milbank of the Washington Post had to say (see the full article here):

It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it.

Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using procedural tactics such as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on the mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked Thursday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: "Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother's Day.

By voting against it?

Wow, is there anything Congress can't turn into party politics? Not even a little appreciation for Moms?

Two New "Father Knows Best?" Columns

2010-03-17T18:25:00.000-07:00

Time certainly flies. Parenting on the Peninsula has published two more of my "Father Knows Best?" columns since my last post here in January. If you're in the mood for a little parenting-related schtick and pathos, check them out:

February 2010: These Magic Moments
The closest I'll get to a doing a "Very Special Episode of" touchy-feely type of column.

March 2010: The Impossibility of Punctuality
A return to jokes and esoteric references.

Coming next month is a reflection on how Marcie and I have lost control over the aesthetics of our home. No Shakespearean references this time, but hopefully still worth a few giggles.

It's Official: I'm Now a Regular Columnist for POP

2010-01-12T18:57:00.000-08:00

Last month I shared the news that Parenting on the Peninsula (POP) published an article I wrote about our ill-fated family vacation to Disneyland. At the time, I thought my time as a professional columnist was just a one-shot deal. But I'm pleased to announce that I have since been asked to take over POP's popular "Father Knows Best?" column beginning this month.

As the column's title suggests, every month, I'll be taking a tongue-in-cheek look at parenting from a father's perspective. My first column is a look back at Melody's disastrous third-year birthday party called "Falling Fruit and Freezing Friends." Yes, I'll admit that I can never resist the allure of an alliterative title. The piece was just published last week and you can read it here.

Stay tuned for more schtick and silliness in the months to come.

By the way, if you live the Bay Area, you can find physical copies of POP at countless cafes, libraries, and shopping centers. But whether local or not, you can download the entire January issue in PDF format. Note: it's a big file (11MB).

My New Gig: Columnist for a Parenting Journal

2009-12-03T22:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, a professional publication is actually having me write for them.

Readers of this blog may recall a blog entry I posted in August about our somewhat disastrous family trip to Disneyland. Well, through a series of events that I won't go into here, I was asked if I would be interested in adopting that entry into a column for Parenting on the Peninsula, a monthly journal dedicated to exactly what its title implies.

Shortly after submitting my repurposed "vacation disaster" article, I was asked if I'd be interested in taking over one of POP's regular feature columns beginning next month. For the purposes of suspense, I'll going to wait to share the details about what that encompasses until then. But just know that I hope to add a healthy dose of schtick to the Bay Area parenting community on a monthly basis.

As for this month, my debut column has just been published. You can now see it on page 18 of the December issue. If you don't want to download the whole thing (it's a pretty big download), you can also download just the one page with my column here.

Happy reading!

'Tis the Season for Tim Rivers

2009-12-02T19:19:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I posted this tribute to Tim Rivers, a very dear friend who left us far too early. I hope anyone who didn’t have a chance to read that post will take a few minutes to do so and learn more about this incredibly talented and generous person.

To continue celebrating Tim's life and music, every year I post a new entry to this blog with a link to his very impressive holiday recordings. My original post has the whole history of those recordings and how I was fortunate enough to produce a couple of them myself. In them, Tim created very rich four-part a-cappella vocal performances, singing all the parts himself through the magic of multi-track recording technology. Even more impressive was that all the recordings were from the ‘80s/early ‘90s, meaning there was no pitch correction available and I don’t believe he even a used a click track to keep time (he certainly didn’t for our recordings).

So for some great holiday music, I encourage you to check out A Tim Rivers Collection, available for free. As I said in my original post, I felt making these recordings available to as many people as possible was the least I could do to pay tribute to someone who had such a big impact on my life and on countless others.

Why I'm Aging Prematurely: Two Dialogues

2009-11-23T21:22:00.000-08:00

Dialogue One

CHARACTERS: Julianne (age two-and-a-half) and a classmate
SETTING: Julianne's preschool classroom at 9:00 a.m.

CLASSMATE: What's up, Julianne?

JULIANNE: 'Sup.

CLASSMATE: Having a good morning?

JULIANNE: Yeah, pretty good. Just spent the morning screaming at the top of my lungs and crying uncontrollably for about 20 minutes.

CLASSMATE: Awesome. Any particular reason?

JULIANNE: What do you mean?

CLASSMATE: Well, why did you scream and cry for so long?

JULIANNE: I don't follow.

CLASSMATE: Never mind. So what else?

JULIANNE: My banana was flawed.

CLASSMATE: Huh?

JULIANNE: The banana I had with breakfast had a little stringy thingie on it.

CLASSMATE: It did? I hate those stringy banana thingies! So what did you do?

JULIANNE: Screamed and cried.

CLASSMATE: Naturally. That's what I would have done.

JULIANNE: After breakfast, I brushed my teeth with my Daddy but I wanted to put the toothbrush under the faucet, not him.

CLASSMATE: Did he let you?

JULIANNE: Yeah, but he already started doing it before I told him I wanted to do it.

CLASSMATE: Criminal. So what did you do?

JULIANNE: Screamed and cried uncontrollably.

Dialogue Two

CHARACTERS: Melody (age four) and a classmate
SETTING: Melody's preschool classroom at 9:05 a.m.

CLASSMATE: Hey, Melody! How's your morning been going?

MELODY: Pretty good. Julianne woke up a few minutes before me and beat me to the door.

CLASSMATE: Oh?

MELODY: Yeah, I like opening the door first.

CLASSMATE: I see. So what did you do?

MELODY: Screamed and cried.

CLASSMATE: Cool.

MELODY: Then I went to the bathroom, but decided I wanted someone to help me today.

CLASSMATE: But haven't you been going all by yourself for a couple months now?

MELODY: Of course. So what's your point?

CLASSMATE: Gotcha. So what did you do?

MELODY: Screamed and cried.

CLASSMATE: Who wouldn't?

MELODY: Then when I was done, before I washed my hands, I decided that I had to have my backpack.

CLASSMATE: Of course. Makes perfect sense. So did you get it?

MELODY: Not before I washed my hands.

CLASSMATE: So what did you do?

MELODY: Screamed and cried.

CLASSMATE: That's what I would have done too. Sounds like you had quite a day so far.

MELODY: Just your average morning.

Spelling Pet Peeve of the Day

2009-10-30T01:09:00.000-07:00

The culprit: Spelling an exclamation of glee as "Yeah!" when it should be spelled as "Yay!"

I understand why people frequently make this mistake since the word "yay" just sort of looks wrong. But it's not. Really.

Just keep in mind that the word "Yeah" is an informal form of "Yes"--you know, as in the Beatles song "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah!"

"Yay," on the other hand, is a variant of "hooray" and shares the same vowel sound as the second syllable of that word. So when you want to express this exclamation in writing, think "Hooray!" and you'll remember it's spelled "Yay!"

By the way, I'm glad to know that this isn't just my pet peeve. Random House has got my back.

More Photos

2009-10-13T22:22:00.000-07:00

I've once again managed to work through our photo backlog and am pleased to share our latest online photo album:

Melody & Julianne: July - September 2009

Photos include Julianne's first day of preschool, Melody's return to dance class, and a seemingly endless run of events celebrating Melody's fourth birthday. Enjoy!

New Photos Aplenty

2009-10-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

Always running behind by several months, I've finally managed to make a healthy dent in my monstrous backlog of photos. Check out the newest two photo albums posted to my website:

Melody & Julianne: April - June 2009
Disneyland Adventure: August 2009

Photos include Melody's first dance recital, a visit from my mother and my brother's family for Passover, and the kids' first visit to The Happiest Place on Earth. Enjoy!

Disney Vacation: A Cautionary Tale

2009-08-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

There comes a time when every parent must make a pilgrimage to the mecca of all things family entertainment. Yes, I'm talking about Disneyland.

When I began sharing with friends, family, and coworkers that Marcie and I were planning on taking Melody (age 3 and half) and Julianne (age 2) on this journey, we received no shortage of advice. Much of it had to do with taking regular trips back to the hotel, drinking lots of water, bringing snacks, renting strollers, and other such tactical recommendations. Much of this advice was heeded and indeed helpful.

But if a parent planning on taking two very young kids 18 months apart to Disneyland came to me today and asked for advice, here's what I'd probably say: Don't.

OK, I'm kidding (mostly) and overstating my point for dramatic effect as usual. The fact is for the most part, the two days at the Disneyland park itself were largely successful--albeit exhausting for us parents (a.k.a. "the mules"). Furthermore, the long drives to/from Southern California actually went surprisingly well, as did the visits to my mother's house that bookended our time down south.

The real nightmarish days were those immediately before and after the days spent at Disneyland.

Let's start with the day before.

Upon arriving at the hotel, I learned we arrived too early to check in (darn, should have called first) but Julianne had already spotted the pool--a pool only accessible with a key that could only be obtained after checking in. Without going into great detail, let's just say that by the time we finally got a room, the kids were beyond impatient and simultaneously over-excited from being in a new place and the highly anticipated arrival of their cousin Sarah. And yet, we still needed to schlep all the bags up to the room, unpack all the necessary swimming gear, apply sunblock to both kids, get Melody to use the restroom, change Julianne's diaper, and get all four of us changed into bathing suits--all before we could even get out the door. Needless to say, the kids rapidly melted down in a quick one-two procession. It was a huge explosion of whining, crying, and screaming--a performance my brother, who was kindly helping me with the bags, had the privilege to witness firsthand.

Next came dinner. We were all hungry and yet far from the comfort of our kitchen. So we really had no choice but to to let the kids have snacks, which subsequently made for an appetite-free Julianne upon finally arriving at Buca di Beppo for dinner. She wasn't interested in food and regrettably, the crayons provided by the waiter did little to hold her attention. I knew my window of opportunity to escape unscathed was limited, but being tired and hungry myself, I waited too long to extricate her from the situation before she had a classic two-year-old public tantrum.

The result was what I call the "Daddy Walk of Shame," If you haven't taken this walk yourself, I'm sure you've seen it. There I was, holding a flailing, screaming child in my arms (no easy task) and just trying to get out of the restaurant as quickly as possible. Of course, everyone is in the way and I'm steadfastly marching through what feels like and endless tunnel of impatient people waiting for a table, entirely without any sympathy for my plight, and all staring at me with that "You must be a terrible parent" look in their eyes.

Admit it: You've probably made that look yourself when annoyed at a screaming child getting in the way of your otherwise pleasant night out. I know I have. Boy, do I regret that now.

I knew that once I got Julianne out of there, I'd have no problem getting her to calm down and be herself again. I was correct. We had a pleasant time hanging out in the car and talking. But it was just such a humiliatingly endless march to get outside and away from public scorn. Yuck.

That night at the hotel was no great shakes either (least of which because the room with a promised "kids suite" offered no real privacy between the kids' sleeping area and that of the parents) but I won't go into that here. I'll just skip to the end of the second Disneyland day.

The plan was to spend a day or two in San Diego with my brother, sister-in-law and their daughter. It was a relatively short drive and the kids love playing with their cousin, so it made sense to add this to our agenda. Unfortunately, after two long days at Disneyland, the kids really just needed to go home, catch up on sleep, and get back to their routine. So this little detour proved to be a major disaster. We headed for San Diego after dinner and Melody fell asleep almost immediately in her car seat. Unfortunately, due to the logistics of getting their room set up (not to mention all the usual baggage schlepping), it was impossible to transport her without waking her. Fellow parents probably already know what that means. Waking a sleeping child in deep sleep means your sleeping angel gets dramatically replaced with its evil Doppelgänger. Yes, at a drop of a hat, our sweet little Melody, no doubt dreaming of her recent time with Mickey Mouse and his friends, transformed into Schmelody, the Villainous Witch of San Diego. Not much else really needs to be said on this topic.

And the next day was even better.

I won't describe in excruciating details all the whining, screaming, tantruming that went on that day. But I will say that it all came to a head when Julianne and Melody were in their cousin's bath (complete with said cousin's bath toys) and Julianne performed an act she hadn't done since she was a newborn: she pooped in the tub. With her sister in it. The result was an hour of screaming and general bedlam. I also ended up having to do a very thorough cleaning/decontaminating of that tub with no small amount of bleach. And to add to our guilt, my sister-in-law Kim rightfully opted to throw away all the bath toys. On the plus side, at least the bathtub was so clean you could probably do surgery in it.

Things finally settled down when not only Julianne and Sarah, but also Marcie and Kim all went down for naps. So I used that time to take Melody to Target with me to buy a replacement bath pad and a new Cinderella bath toy set for Sarah. Melody has always been a great shopping companion so that little trip finally turned things around and the rest of the day was relatively uneventful. However, despite being in beautiful San Diego all day, other than that little shopping errand, we never left the house.

The trip ended well with a short return visit to my mother's house and a fairly pleasant drive back home. But boy, did those days surrounding Disneyland really color my memories of that vacation.

So in the end, I suppose my less dramatically overstated advice on taking kids to Disneyland are these:

Renting strollers truly is highly recommended (ours even napped in them)
Plan nothing other than the time at Disneyland
Bring lots of snacks and plenty of water
Don't rush and expect to see a lot less of the park than you did in your pre-parenting days

The fact is that the kids really did have a great time and are already asking to go back. We'll try to hold off for at least 2-3 years, which I think is when the kids will be less prone to uncontrollable emotional explosions. Any sooner would be playing with fire. I don't think I could handle another Daddy Walk of Shame.

Moviemaker Melody Strikes Again

2009-07-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to present Melody's follow-up to The Princess and The Wizard. This new movie was a much less ambitious effort than that previous one and it took us all of about 15 minutes to shoot the basic footage. However, it took me at least 10 times as long to edit it.

I have to give Melody credit for giving her sister the starring role this time around. At only two years old, younger sister Julianne has proven to be quite the ham.

By the way, the house shown in the various exterior shots throughout this little movie is not ours. I thought it would be fun to use a house much nicer than the one we actually live in. One can dream.

Facebook readers, please note that this version corrects a rather embarrassing typo in the subtitles that regrettably will have to live on in perpetuity on the Facebook version.

Hope you enjoy Melody's latest effort!

Here's a direct link to the video on YouTube, where you can see it at a larger size and even in near-HD if your Internet connection and computing speed supports it.

Melody Makes a Movie!

2009-05-31T22:10:00.000-07:00

My 3-year-old daughter Melody has become very used to the sight of her mother in our home office working on video projects for her business Life Visions Productions. So it shouldn't have surprised that one day seemingly out of the blue she said to me, "I want to make a movie like Mommy." My response: "Sure, we could do that." Over the course of the day following that exchange, Melody began to outline the story of a young princess kidnapped by a grumpy wizard.

With the certainty you can only find in little kids (well, I suppose politicians as well), Melody declared that Julianne (our 2-year-old) would play the princess in peril, Marcie would play the Mommy Fairy, I would play the Grumpy Wizard ("because only boys can be grumpy wizards" she explained), and she would be the heroine, Fairy Melody.

We shot the little movie in short bursts of fast and furious activity over a couple of days. You have to work very fast with kids as young as mine because they lose interest quickly. In fact, even at that frantic pace, we lost Julianne after just one scene. Once we completed the forest sequence that opens the movie, she didn't want to have anything more to do with the project. So I did the best I could to edit around her absence. After my final edit was done, it still wasn't good enough for Melody and we ended up doing some re-shoots a week later. It turns out she's already a better filmmaker than me because the new ending is much better!

And now, without further ado, here it is:

Here's a direct link to the video on YouTube, where you can see it at a larger size and even in near-HD if your Internet connection and computing speed supports it.

By the way, be sure to keep watching after the closing credits. I put together a montage of silly dancing and funny outtakes in the spirit of closing title sequences in movies like Something About Mary and Cannonball Run.

Oh, and on a final note, we showed a rough cut of the movie to Marcie's local cousins last week. They enjoyed it so much that my two oldest nieces, Jianna and Kaylie, asked me to help them make a movie of their own with a plot that's pretty much exactly the same as Melody's. So if that all comes together, you can look forward to another video addition to The Shapiro Files.

New Photo Albums Now Online

2009-05-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce that our latest collection of photo albums are now posted to my website:

Melody & Julianne: October - December 2008
Shapiro Family Holiday Visit: December 2008
Melody & Julianne: January - March 2009

These albums cover all the autumn/winter holidays, Julianne's 2nd birthday, Melody's activities at school (including my very brief return to stage acting), and a whole lot more.

Plus, don't forget to check out my photo album collection page to view all of the albums I've posted over the past number of years (including some pre-kids theater albums).

January 2009: The kids showing off their matching winter couture

Live Theater, Real-Time Disasters

2009-05-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

A theater friend of mine recently posted a fun blog entry about how mistakes during a live performance can actually enhance the experience of seeing a show. It reminds the audience that something real is happening right in front of them, something that everyone is participating in--audience and cast alike.

While I've experienced my share of mishaps on stage, my time as a music director and pit musician was especially full of such unexpected challenges that could only happen in live theater. For example, there was the time when the nearly 50-pound digital piano I was playing slipped off its stand and ended up in my lap while I was simultaneously playing and conducting. The audience that night got to enjoy a rather surprising "cluster chord" noise coming out of the pit and a momentarily missing 1st trumpet, who left his station to rescue me.

Then there was the time I was conducting Secret Garden in Boston and during one of the quietest, most emotional moments, my second keyboardist accidentally hit the wrong button on his control panel and a Techno beat came blaring out of his amp. I could barely make it through the rest of the act due to my uncontrollable (albeit pit-appropriate-quiet) laughing.

Another favorite memory was when I doing a performance of JC Superstar in Davis and the music director/drummer/producer (ya gotta love community theater) had to deal with a mid-show technical issue and wasn't able to make it back to the pit before the next number, which happened to be in the rather unusual 7/8 time signature. Just as we were about to start the song sans-drums, much to my surprise, one of the actors suddenly appeared behind the drum kit and played the whole song in 4/4.

And finally, I should probably share at least one acting-related story. During a performance of Last Night of Ballyhoo, I was in the dressing room when fellow cast member Anne burst in with a look of panic on her face and declared, "They're ad-libbing!" She was referring to the actors on stage who had resorted to making up lines because someone was late on their entrance. I told Anne that I thought perhaps she was the one who was late. After a beat, she bolted out of the dressing room.

Moments like these remind me why there's nothing quite like live theater.

Another Sign of the End of Times

2009-04-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

Has there been a more misguided and tonally wrong ad campaign than this?

While I do give Starbucks credit for helping to raise the level of sophistication of the average American coffee drinker, its fatal flaw has never been the price of its coffee: it's the poor quality of that coffee! Because Starbucks' bean selection and brewing process has never been even close to real coffee houses like Peets, they've effectively trained their customers to chose more caloric and sugar-filled items on their menu--drinks that indeed are more pricey than plain coffee. But in these tough economic times, such drinks are perceived as luxury items, meaning customers are likely to revert to plain old coffee. However, Starbuck's lousy coffee leaves these customers no other alternative in their stores and the result is a loss of business. Thus, I find it more than just a little ironic that the main argument (a defensive one at that) of the new campaign is that their presumed superior coffee is worth paying a little extra for.

So just how off the mark is this new campaign? Look no further than this video of Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz speaking to a group of painfully stilted employees acting as though there are actually people who have never heard of a Starbucks before.

Ghost of School Days Past

2009-04-03T19:09:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've recently been on quite the nostalgia trip as a result of many Facebook reunions with grade school friends. For about a week, I felt I was living in two realities: the world of an eight-year-old and my present "grown up" existence.

It's been quite a trip.

As part of this virtual reunion, a number of us have been scanning/posting old photos from our collections and the subsequent exchange of comments have been so much fun to participate in--not to mention downright addictive. At least a few of us have stayed up way too late reading/posting at the expense of our regular daytime capabilities. One of the photos that's caused a particularly spirited exchange was of our fifth grade class photo. Fifth grade was, by far, my least favorite elementary school year for two key reasons: one, my best friend Todd had moved away the previous summer and two, Mrs. Ferguson.

Mrs. Ferguson stands out in my memory as easily the worst teacher I've ever had. Entirely out of touch with the needs and sensibility of her students, her approach to her pupils was comparable to a germaphobe at a leper colony. Her every utterance and every gesture conveyed her undisguised disgust with us. And we weren't particularly bad kids. She just made us feel that way. The result: we became what she assumed we were.

This sort of self-fulfilling prophesy was a common topic among the materials I studied years later while pursuing my teaching credential at UC Davis. I especially remember a research study in which a teacher was told that one of her classes was an honors/gifted class and the other, a standard-level class. But in reality, they were both the same "average" class. Guess which class ended up achieving higher test results at the year's end? You guessed it: the class the teacher thought was the honors class.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Ferguson's expectation was that her students would consistently miss the mark. Naturally, that's exactly what we started to do. A perfect illustration of this comes by way of long-time friend Tammie:

"I believe Mrs. Ferguson was responsible for giving me low self esteem. I had never gotten a bad grade until her class. She really made me feel dumb. After that my grades in middle school were awful. It wasn't until my senior year in high school that my grades improved. I realized at some point that there was some hope for me and completed college with honors. She was a horrible teacher who knew nothing about children. I will never understand how or why she choose to become a teacher. She should have been a prison guard."

Tammie is lucky that she was able to ultimately repair the damage that Mrs. Ferguson did and succeed later in her school career.

Here's a similar tale as told by grade school friend Stephanie:

"I remember one incident in particular when she threatened me and then chased me around the classroom. So as I ran by a chair I pulled it out in back of me to stop her from catching me and she told Mr. Anderson, our Principal, that I threw a chair at her!"

I was there when this happened and I still remember it. It was all pretty shocking. Stephanie was definitely not anyone's definition of a bad student and always a very nice person (still is!) and the fact that she was in that situation was really just hard to believe. And of course, Mrs. Ferguson's embellishment of the facts makes this whole situation downright Kafka-eque.

There are lots more stories like this, but I thought I'd share one of my own. This really isn't as bad as either of the above, but I still feel a sense of injustice when I think about it.

In addition to music, I used to love to write stories and draw pictures. So it's not surprising that I thought I'd combine those two interests and compose what today people might call a graphic novel (a comic book/novel hybrid). I don't remember much about what it was about, but it I know it was a space opera of sorts and was probably a major Star Wars rip-off.

Because we had a combined grade class (grades five and six), we had lots of gaps in each day's activities when Mrs. Fergusen would be teaching the other students and we'd simply have to do some busy work. As a result, I had lots of free time during the day to work on my story. One day, I had my story-in-progress on my desk and I had to get up to sharpen my pencil. When I got back to my desk, my story was gone. I asked the classmate who sat next to me if he knew what happened to it and he explained that Mrs. Fergusen took the entire stack of papers (it had grown to a respectable volume by that time) and threw it all away.

Despite the embarrassment of having to dig inside a trash can in front of my peers, I retrieved the papers and stormed up to Mrs. Fergusen and asked why she did that. Her reply was something to the effect of, "Because you were using school supplies." She further went on to explain that doing something like this was inappropriate and not something to be done in the classroom.

Being so young and fairly inarticulate in such situations, I really couldn't bring myself to generate a meaningful reply. However, I was absolutely shocked that a teacher, someone who should value positive creative expression, would actually discourage me from engaging from such pursuits--especially since it didn't have any negative impact on my schoolwork. Even at that age, I knew this was a horribly misguided value system from a person who clearly should have nothing to do with young people. But even if I give her the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge the gray area of using school supplies for personal creative pursuits, the fact that the handled this by throwing away my work with nary a word of explanation is completely unforgivable.

Years later as I trained to be a teacher myself, I kept thinking back to that incident with Mrs. Fergusen and how incredibly damaging such an act was. She was essentially telling me that creativity and artistic expression has no place in school. What I wouldn't have given for more students who had such creative impulses in my classes! This is exactly the type of thing a good teacher is supposed to encourage and foster in their students. Why would she discourage this? So I could instead goof around with my classmates while waiting for our next lesson?

Absolutely incredible. 30 years later, this still gets my ire up. Great teachers can make an amazing positive impact on the lives of their pupils. But opposite is also true: bad teachers can cause irreparable harm.

As for me, the whole incident made me so upset that I abandoned my graphic novel project and eventually threw the whole thing away myself in disgust. I've never attempted a project like that again, but at least never gave up writing. Like Tammie, I'm lucky that I was able to pull myself out of that self-defeating hole Mrs. Fergusen buried me in. But I bet that all of us in that class still carry at least a little piece of that emotional damage in our collective psyche to this day. After all, the fact I'm writing about this now after so many years must say something in and of itself.

Who knew nostalgia would have such a dark side.

Catching Up with Old Friends

2009-03-26T23:26:00.000-07:00

Through the magic of Facebook, I've been getting in touch with people going all the way back to my elementary school days. It's been such a nostalgia trip.

With all this reconnecting, I realized some people might be finding their way to this blog for the first time. So to those of you new here, welcome!

For those of you seeing these postings republished as "Notes" on my Facebook page, here's a direct link to the actual blog. I usually post a new entry once or twice a week. So I hope you'll keep coming back!

And for those of you curious what I've been doing these past 30 years, this tongue-in-cheek encapsulation of my life will help you get caught up. For anyone interested in my theatrical endeavors, you might enjoy this page. And finally, I have hundreds of photos from the past several years posted here.

Please leave comments, send messages, or post to my Facebook wall to keep in touch. It has been so much fun hearing from all of you!

Mysterious Noise (Me and My Imagination)

2009-03-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

For several months--possibly years--there has been an engine revving noise disrupting my otherwise very quiet neighborhood on a regular basis. Marcie and I usually notice the sound in the early evening around 7pm and then again later in the night around 10-11pm. Each occurrence typically lasts between 5 and 10 minutes.

Like so many random outdoor noises in our post-industrial world (airplanes, sirens, robot rebellions ....OK, maybe not that one...yet), the sound of a revving engine isn't something I'd necessarily pay much attention to. However, the loudness and regularity of the noise has resulted in it becoming impossible to ignore. And once you become consciously aware of an annoyance like this, it's hard not to let it get to you after a while.

Still, we've had absolutely no idea where the sound was coming from and what was causing it. With nothing to go on, I decided to let my imagination run wild.

One of my more elaborate postulations was that there was some sort of domestic drama being played out in my neighborhood. This invented scenario involved a teenage girl being raise by ultra-strict parents that forbid her to date. But despite her parents' best intentions, she meets and falls in love with a James Dean rebel type who skips class, frequently drops the "f-bomb" in mixed company, and rides a motorcycle. Each night around 7pm, the girl sneaks out of her bedroom window to meet up with her rough-around-the-edges beau. In contrast to her furtive exit from her home, he stridently sits atop his running motorcycle right in front of the house, revving his engine in reckless abandon (thus the noise). But as is often the case in these tales, looks can be deceiving. The boyfriend is really just a sensitive and misunderstood guy who has had some tough breaks growing up. He's surprisingly thoughtful and is always mindful to bring the girl home by 11 each night (thus the second round of engine noise) so she can get enough sleep for school the next day. Ah, young love.

OK so maybe that one is a little over the top.

Another scenario I invented involved a disgruntled auto mechanic who was stealing customers away from his employer and secretly servicing their cars in his garage at night. But perhaps he had some reason to stick to the strictest of schedules--so much so, that he would only do engine work for 10 minutes at a time, once at 7pm and once again between 10 and 11.

But alas, neither of these scenarios proved to be the real reason for the noise. Rather, as is often the case, reality is simultaneously more prosaic and weirder than imagination.

A few nights ago around 7pm, Marcie and I were in the kids' room getting them ready for bedtime when once again, that pesky revving engine noise starting doing its thing. I looked outside the window and noticed someone parallel parking a small white car. I didn't think much of it and returned to the family. After all, a car that small couldn't possibly make that much noise, could it? Still, the noise lingered and I kept breaking away from our kiddie nighttime ritual to peak out the window to see if I could find the source of that sound. But again, all I saw was that little white car parallel parking. All at once, the noise stopped and I noticed that the taillights of the car turned off moments later. A coincidence?

I re-engaged with the kiddies, but the noise started up once again shortly thereafter. Returning once more to the window, I noticed that the white car's driver had resumed parallel parking. It was at this point that I began thinking that perhaps it really was that small car making that sound. But how? Maybe the muffler fell off? Perhaps its owner souped up the engine to be more like a race car? I couldn't quite figure this out, but then something more obvious hit me: Holy moly, this person has been parallel parking their car in the same spot for at least 5 minutes! How long does it take for someone to park a car?

The noise ceased yet again and the car's taillights turned off. Ah ha! It really is that little white car. But what a strange combination of things: an innocuous compact car with a big engine noise, plus a driver who needs a minimum of 5 minutes to park!

At last the driver emerged. She walked to the back of her car, looked at the rear tires and at the car parked behind her, and then...gets back in the car to resume parallel parking!

It seems that we have someone on our street who has some sort of abnormally loud car engine and some serious OCD (either that, or she's just impossibly bad at parking). Either way, it's all pretty odd.

I kept watching (can you blame me?) and saw that the driver finally was satisfied with her parking. She then walked up the street and opened the door of a different car and got in. She quickly started it up and drove away.

Very mysterious.

I'm guessing that the person has some sort of arrangement where she drives one car at a certain time of day and then drops it off and picks up a different car around 7pm. Perhaps she has a car sharing arrangement with a friend or her husband/ex-husband? Or maybe she drives one car during the day and then another car for a night job that ends around 11pm? Hmmm.... The possibilities are endless.

By the way, her little white car was still parked on the curb the following morning. So I had a chance to look at it up close and learned that it's an older VW Jetta (one of those mid-to-late 80s box-like models). Not exactly a car you'd want to turn into a race car. So maybe I was right about the muffler?

So many questions, so little answers.

On Filmstrips and Inherited Personality

2009-03-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

Anyone my age will recall that before DVDs, Powerpoint presentations, and even VCR players, teachers had two multimedia options for classroom usage: movie projectors and filmstrips. If your grade school experiences were anything like mine, movie viewing was a very rare event that usually involved a beleaguered teacher schlepping a classroom of giddy children to the cafeteria/auditorium hybrid affectionately known as the cafetorium to be treated to aging scratch-filled short films on topics as diverse as the Gray Whale and the Dewey Decimal System.

But if a teacher wanted to stay within the four walls of their own classroom, their only option was using a filmstrip-based audio/projector system. If you're younger than me and have no idea what I'm talking about, the following excerpts from this Wikipedia entry should get you up to speed:

The filmstrip was a spooled strip of 35 mm positive film with approximately 30-50 images arranged sequentially. Typically a filmstrip's running time was between 10 and 20 minutes. Depending on how they were narrated or produced, filmstrips (which often came with an Instructor's Guide) were flexible enough to be used in both self-paced learning formats or in a full classroom.

The instructor would turn on a film projector that would show the first frame (image) of the filmstrip. The instructor then turned on a 33 RPM record or cassette tape containing the audio material for the filmstrip, which included narration. At the appropriate point, a tone would sound, signaling the instructor (or a student volunteer) to turn a knob, advancing to the next frame.

So why this sudden burst of nostalgia for yet another technical marvel that has been lost to the ravages of time? Well, it just occurred to me that there's a connection between my filmstrip memories and my daughter Melody's unique personality characteristics.

Let me explain.

From the day Melody was born, I have always felt that there is something something unmistakably familiar about her--more than just the fact that she has taken on some of my physical traits. In fact, the very first thought I had when I saw her for the first time was, "I know her."

As Melody transitioned from baby to a full-fledged human being, I've come to realized that her personality has come to eerily resemble mine as a child. I was always a little out of step with my peers, had a tendency toward self-reflexivity at an unusually early age, and was even frequently melancholy. I had an excellent attention span and could focus on a single book or activity for extended periods of time. I wasn't always all that verbally articulate, but was an active listener and understood more than people (adults especially) probably realized. At the same time, I adored silly things that made me laugh--especially made-up words and funny songs.

I see all these things in Melody. She definitely marches to her own drum. It just happens to be a drum that's remarkably similar to one of my childhood.

I also had one other distinct quirk that is also very prominent in Melody: I was extremely particular (read: anal) and regrettably, still am. Everything had to be "just so." For example, we had a routine in my Kindergarten class in which every child had to provide one pack of cookies as a part of a school-sanctioned cookie snacktime activity (this was the 70s after all). When you brought in your contribution, the teacher would place it at the bottom of a large stack of cookie packages. She would then draw each day's selections from the top of the stack so we'd go through the cookie packs in the order in which they came. Just the fact that I still remember this exact cookie dissemination system probably says something about the kind of kid I was.

For each cookie time activity, the teacher would select three packages and everyone in the class would get one cookie from each pack. I was very methodical about how I ate my cookies. I spent a fair amount of time assessing the characteristics of each cookie and determining a ranking of the three cookies--from least desirable to most.

You see, I noticed that most of my classmates immediately attacked their favorite cookie and then had to trudge through the remaining cookies with less enthusiasm. So I always made a point of eating my cookies in the reverse order--saving the best one for last. I actually remember getting grief from my classmates for eating the "yucky" cookie first. This always bothered me because I felt they weren't comprehending that I had a nobler, more long-term goal in mind--namely, by the time they had reached their third and most decidedly "yucky" cookie, I was very slowly savoring the most desirable cookie. Why my classmates never admitted the superiority of my approach is beyond me. But what's even more important here is that I had a very clear plan of attack when it came to cookie time. I followed it to letter every time and I never deviated from it--even when it subjected me to the ridicule of others.

I was just as particular during my filmstrip viewing experiences.

The teachers I had almost never controlled the filmstrip machine themselves, instead electing to select a student volunteer to do the honors. I always raised my hand when they asked for volunteers but was only selected once in all those years. Go figure.

So instead of being given the opportunity to provide the class with a professional, seamless filmstrip experience, I had to deal with some lame classmate who inevitably missed a cue even though the filmstrip-advancing tone on the audio tape was clear as can be! This drove me absolutely crazy. I could not stand my filmstrip being out of sync with the narration. Without exception, I was always dissatisfied by those who operated the filmstrip machine and vowed that I would be the most perfect filmstrip operator known to humankind...if only the teacher would have the wisdom to select me for once!

It still makes my blood boil.

So this is what I think about when I think about filmstrips. Not their quaintness or they're education/entertainment value. Nope, I think about the incompetence of those who couldn't performing the simple task of turning a knob every time you hear a beep. I mean, how is that difficult? Beep, turn. Beep, turn. Grrrr...

In all events, this leads back to Melody. Like me as a child, she can be quite angst-ridden at times. Just the simplest things make her crazy. If she's lining up toys in a very particular way and accidentally bumps one piece out of place, or--horror of horrors--Julianne comes by and takes a piece away, we know we're in for a firestorm.

Or if we're sitting on the couch, she has to be to the left of Julianne, not to the right. She's usually agreeable to my sitting between the two of them, but if I sit to her left and thus cause her to effectively be in the middle, she won't have it.

We see the same behaviors when it comes to her washing her hands, putting on clothes, how high the zipper can go on her jackets, and on and on.

Naturally, being your typically involved parents, Marcie and I frequently worry that there's something of a disturbingly problematic nature behind this excessive anal and anxious behavior. It's only natural.

But then, I think about all the years of frustration filmstrips in school cased me and I realize that more than anything else, Melody's anxiety is most likely the result of an unfortunate collection of genes she has inherited. The types of things that drive her to such extremes of unhappiness seem far too familiar to me to be a coincidence. Oh, and did I mention that Marcie was a decidedly "Type A" child herself? You put us together and you get one very particular, anxiety-ridden child.

Don't get me wrong. I still think that Melody and Julianne are the two greatest human beings in the history of the universe. But I also suspect that for better or worse, Melody is in for years of quizzical looks and misunderstanding by others, hyper-self-awareness and unexplainable sentimentality, and most of all, frustration with the shortcomings of her peers. But at least she has something I never had: someone (me) who knows exactly where she's coming from. She might be wired up a little differently than others, but at least it's a schema I share and even understand.

Netflix Wrap-Up #20

2009-03-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

Previous installments: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19

As promised in my previous Netflix wrap-up, here's part two of my Netflix DVD review backlog. Here we go...

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) - An incredible true story of Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who experiences an entirely debilitating stroke and has to learn to communicate through the only part of his body with which he still has control: his eyelid. Thus, the story that unfolds is one he managed to tell solely through blinking. It's a very moving story of dedication and humility from someone who wasn't necessarily the nicest guy prior to his accident. In fact, what I really admire about this film is that Bauby can still be a bit of a jerk even in his mostly helpless state. That's more honesty than you'd normal ever get in a film like this and probably why it could have only come from someplace outside of Hollywood. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

English Promises (2007) - Another great David Cronenberg genre film that transcends the genre's usual trappings. I love the ambiguity of these characters and the fun way the plot tends to twist and turn along the way. In other hands, this probably would have been just a merely entertaining thriller, but in the hands of Cronenberg, the great Viggo Mortensen, and always-excellent Naomi Watts, the result is something that is both gripping and not without some psychological depth. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

The Orphanage (2007) - I love horror movies and will always seek out those films that people declare genuinely horrifying. This was one of those movies that I've heard repeatedly would keep me up at night. So with so much build up, I suppose I couldn't have been anything but a little dissapointed. While there was one genuinely creepy sequence involving a "One, two, three, who's knocking?" child's game, I was surprised at how predictable and tame the rest of the film was. Still, I can recommend this film to fans of the genre. I'm just not going to make any promises on its degree of scariness. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Clerks 2 (2006) - Is it just me, or does nothing live up to its promise? The Orphanage promised to be terrifying and it wasn't. The Science of Sleep promised to be a deeply involving artistic exploration and it was merely skin deep. And now with Clerks 2, I was expecting a film that would cause debilitating laughter. Instead I found myself merely chuckling. For the record, I love the original Clerks. I revel in its crude-but-clever dialogue and do-it-yourself low-budget aesthetic. But Clerks 2 is largely a recycling of what made the original film so special. There are certainly a number of funny set pieces (especially the Lord of the Rings versus Star Wars debate), but it's all a little empty. Most problematic was a third act attempt at pathos that comes across as forced. I'm not panning this film, as I'll take Kevin Smith dialogue almost any day over that of most other filmmakers. I still think Smith has lots to offer as a filmmaker and it's very possible that his best work is yet to come. I was simply disappointed with this one. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

There Will Be Blood (2007) - You have to give director P.T. Andersen credit for his ambition. It takes a very special filmmaker to take something like Boogie Nights, a film about the adult film industry in the 70s and 80s, and raise it up to the level of a Shakespearian tragedy while remaining consistently entertaining and endlessly re-watchable. I have similar love for Magnolia, a film that wasn't as much of a critical slam-dunk as Boogie Nights, but which I think is no less impressive and captivating. So I'm not surprised that I was similarly impressed with There Will Be Blood--if not nearly as moved--as with Andersen's previous films. This story of an oil tycoon is really the story of America, with all its greed, ambition, and ugliness. It's a huge subject to tackle and I think Andersen mostly succeeds. My biggest complaints about the film are Daniel Day-Lewis's over-the-top performance (a more nuanced performance would have done wonders to this material) and a disastrous final scene. Still, another otherwise very impressive effort by a great filmmaker. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Thank You for Smoking (2005) - A mildly interesting look at the life of a tobacco industry lobbyist. There's not much insight here and I'm a little disturbed by it's Libertarian (bordering on Reactionary) undertones. But for anyone curious about how such people can live with themselves in such perceivably evil roles, it might be worth checking out. It has its moments. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

The Prestige (2006) - Ever since I was a little kid, I've always loved the art of illusion. I even had a toy magic set that provided me with hours of entertainment. So I'm always drawn to movies about magic and magicians. Last year, Marcie and I rented a similar themed film called The Illusionist, that I found greatly disappointing and predictable. So I was hoping the second time's the charm for this one. While The Prestige was a step up from The Illusionist, it was similarly predictable (the key secret was so obvious that I even paused the DVD and pointed it out to Marcie). Plus, the third-act incorporation of supernatural elements took the film from being a somewhat enjoyable story of two competing magicians to something a whole lot sillier. That much said, this is a beautifully shot and well acted little period piece and frequently entertaining. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

The Fog of War (2003) - A wonderfully ambiguous documentary about Robert McNamara, one of the key figures behind the Vietnam War under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Is he sympathetic? Evil? Both? Hard to say, and that's why this is such a fascinating film. My only complaint about the film was some of the more gimmicky dramatic inserts--especially the repetition of falling dominoes. I thought moments like that put a little too fine a point on some of this material and really wasn't necessary. But otherwise, a highly recommended film. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Inside Man (2006) - Spike Lee is an extremely gifted filmmaker who has largely worked outside of the Hollywood system. So it's interesting to see him work in the context of a big budget Hollywood genre film in which he's mostly focused on telling a simple story as entertainingly as he can. On that basis he mostly succeeds. This movie is a ball--sort of like Dog Day Afternoon meets The Italian Job. It's a heist movie, plain and simple, but with great performances and the types of visual flourishes you'd expect from Lee. He even manages to insert some commentary about race--particularly prejudice against people of Middle Eastern decent. So it was nice to see a little "old school Spike Lee" thrown in. That much said, this isn't a film you want to think about too much after you've seen it, as it doesn't hold up to much intellectual scrutiny. But if you want to have a fun couple of hours in the hands of one our best directors, Inside Man certainly fits the bill. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Enchanted (2007) - As the father of two girls, I've certainly seen my share of Disney cartoons this past year, which made watching Enchanted all that more fun. This movie was so charming and Amy Adams so insanely adorable, it's hard not to have a wonderful time with it. Sure, there were certainly plenty of clunky slapstick moments and the film's climax was just like most Disney climaxes: over the top and brainless. But I probably haven't smiled this much during any other movie this year. So unless you have a heart made out of stone, it's pretty much impossible not to enjoy this movie. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

A Scanner Darkly (2006) - I really admire Richard Linklater's approach to his career. Similar to Steven Soderbergh (another director I admire), he'll do the occasional big Hollywood movie (School of Rock, Bad News Bears, etc.) to help sustain his career so he can then focus on more artistic fare, which is obviously where his heart lies. A Scanner Darkly is his second foray into rotoscoped animation after his fascinating Waking Life. But unlike the former film, this one follows a relatively linear plot (though some viewers might still find it a little hard to follow) and is based on non-original source material (specifically, a Philip K. Dick novel). I think the animation technique works particularly well for this type of surreal/futuristic story while not taking anything away from the cast's strong performances. While this film may not be everyone's cup of tea, it was much more accessible than I expected a whole lot funnier to boot. Robert Downey Jr.'s hilariously bizarre performance in particular makes this film worth a try. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Man on Wire (2008) - A thrilling and moving portrait of Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. It's both a celebration of art for art's sake and a celebration of the Twin Towers. One of the most remarkable things about this film is that the events of September 11 are never mentioned, not once, and yet that tragic story is as much a part of this film as anything. After so many images of seeing those towers going down, it was really moving to see them going up. I've also heard this movie referred to as a great heist film, and I think that applies too. How Petit and his associates managed to sneak up to the top of the towers and execute on this feat (not to mention that shear marvel at watching Petit almost floating in air between the two towers) is absolutely amazing. My only problems with the film are an overly dramatic visual motif used when introducing characters and some unnecessary reenactments. Still, it's an incredible story and worthy of its recent Oscar win. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Four Year Blogiversary

2009-03-03T00:01:00.000-08:00

I launched this blog on a whim on March 3, 2005. Four years (and two kids) later, I'm still at it. Time sure flies.

So in honor of today's blogiversary, I thought I'd highlight some of my favorite posts from the past four years. Yes, the famous Marcie/knife entry is included. Enjoy!

March 14, 2005
Of Dionne Warwick and Unintentional Semi-Plagiarism

April 27, 2005
Of Ice Cube, Marcel Proust, and Social Personality

July 11, 2005
The Art of the Mix Tape

September 13, 2005
Melody Shapiro has Arrived!

February 2, 2006
Of Groundhog Day and Time-Looping Films

February 3, 2006
A Tribute to Grandma Sophie

March 23, 2006
Ten Years Ago Today (and Two Days Ago)

April 16, 2006
Time Revisited

July 18, 2006
Cereal Killer

August 8, 2006
Cuts Like a Knife

November 5, 2006
Marcie Posts!

December 11, 2006
The Perfect Cup

December 24, 2006
A Tribute to Tim Rivers

March 7, 2007
It's a Girl!

July 13, 2007
In Praise of Totoro

December 31, 2007
12 Years!

January 23, 2008
This Magic Moment

November 25, 2008
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

February 12, 2009
Neologism of the Week

The Greatest Meme Ever

2009-02-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

Keith Phipps from the always-entertaining A.V. Club recently posted this blog posting featuring a very cool meme (via BuzzFeed) that involves harnessing the powers of complete Internet randomness to create a very convincing rock band name and album cover. I'll let Peggy Wang from BuzzFeed explain the rules:

Go to "Wikipedia." Hit "random" and the first article you get is the name of your band. Then go to "Random Quotations" and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. Then, go to Flickr and click on "Explore the Last Seven Days" and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

I couldn't resist the allure of such randomness, so I thought I'd give it a shot. The result was even better than I expected. Check this out:

Click to see a larger image.

There's something very D&D-meets-The-Cure about the band name and album title. I'm guessing it would be full of songs of dark brooding. But what really takes this exercise in silliness to an entirely new level is the cover art. I love the ironic juxtaposition of the "Too Much Support Hurts" title and the flower-filled photography. Absolutely perfect.

In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, here are all the sources that resulted in the above creation:

Wikipedia article: Necromancer Games

Quotation: "Ever heard Victoria's REAL secret? Too much support hurts."
R. Stevens, Diesel Sweeties, 03-17-08

Album art: White Wednesday

Anyone else up to the challenge? Post your results on your blog and/or on Facebook and leave me a comment so I know to check it out.

Netflix Wrap-Up #19

2009-02-24T20:54:00.000-08:00

Previous installments: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18

I can't believe it's been well over a year since my last Netflix wrap-up. With life getting in the way of entertainment more often than not, I must have been assuming all this time that when I'd eventually get around to doing my next wrap-up, the extended delay wouldn't be all that big of a deal since I wouldn't have many movies to comment on anyway. But much to my shock when I looked at our Netflix rental history last night, Marcie and I actually have managed to squeeze in a pretty sizable number of DVDs over past year. So I had to split up the backlog into two parts. I'll post the second part next week. But for now, here's part one...

Wordplay (2006) - A documentary about crossword puzzles. Sounds boring, right? Surprisingly, this is a genuinely entertaining and even sometimes thrilling film about people who take their crosswords very seriously. In fact, the final sequence covering a national crossword tournament is a true nail-biter. The film also makes the smart choice of incorporating interviews with famous people who also happen to be crossword addicts (Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, and many others) to broaden the film's appeal all that much more. Recommended for fellow word nerds and the "lingua-curious" alike. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Superbad (2007) - Exactly what it purports to be: a raunchy comedy with lots of genuinely hilarious moments. This is not smart comedy, but it does have lots of heart. Not every sequence works and you have to have a high tolerance for base humor. But it was certainly funny enough to be worth a spin ("McLovin'" is definitely destined for comedy milestone status). My Netflix rating: 3 stars

The Science of Sleep (2005) - I expected great things from this film by written and directed by Michel Gondry (best known for helming Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). As I expected, the film is visually stunning with an endless parade of playful sequences and the clever blurring of fantasy and reality. The problem is the script. There is absolutely nothing interesting about the man-child protagonist, played ably by the talented Gael Garcia Bernal). In fact, I wanted to hit him over the head with a hammer by the film's end. The rest of the film's characters, story, and circumstances were similarly banal and/or annoying. Clearly, Gondry was more interested in playing with pretty pictures than in telling a story. My Netflix rating: 2 stars

Reign Over Me (2007) - Adam Sandler gives a passible performance in his usual child-with-a-bad-temper mode and Don Cheadle, a wonderful actor, can only do so much with mediocre dialogue. And could Liv Tyler's psychologist character been any more of a cardboard cutout "type" that exists solely to fulfill a plot-device need? Not awful, just painfully mediocre. My Netflix rating: 2 stars

This Film is Not Yet Rated (2006) - I was really looking forward to this documentary that attempts to expose the highly suspect way in which the MPAA Ratings Board operates. While I wasn't entirely disappointed, I merely wished this film went deeper. Some of the examination of the board's role in effectively censoring films was quite illuminating. But then it wastes way too much time following the travails of hired detectives (a shockingly amateurish duo) trying to track down the identities of the Rating Board's members. Still, I'll recommend it to anyone interested in a sometimes thoughtful examination of the tension between art, commercial interests, and implicit censorship. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

No Country for Old Men (2007) - While just over 2 hours, this movie zips right by. It's a thrilling cat and mouse game that hits all the right notes. But what impressed me the most was the abrupt narrative turn it takes in the third act--thus turning the chase formula on its ear. Great performances and terrific filmmaking. One of the few times an Oscar winner actually deserved the award. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Michael Clayton (2007) - A surprisingly entertaining take on an otherwise tired formula. Not the deepest movie in the world, but it doesn't need to be. It's merely a fun popcorn thriller with great performances and at least some intelligence behind it. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Gone Baby Gone (2007) - Another formula movie that manages to succeed through good writing, strong direction, and decent acting. Although the ending is a bit too tidy and Casey Affleck may confuse mumbling for naturalism at times, I still found myself fully absorbed in the story--a pretty dark one at that. I think Ben Affleck has a promising career ahead of him as a filmmaker. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Atonement (2007) - Absolutely gorgeous to look at and highly entertaining in its epic scale. This is real old-school Hollywood stuff, but with a healthy does of virtuosic filmmaking (the single-take tracking shot that's at the center of the film must have been insanely difficult to pull off). But where the film falls flat is the wooden performance by Keira Knightley and Hallmark Card sentiments--especially the closing moments of the film. If it weren't for the extremely impressive technical elements of the film, I wouldn't have much to recommend. But otherwise.... My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Princess Mononoke (1997) - Is director Hayao Miyazaki capable of making anything other than masterpieces? It's hard to image how he maintains this level of vision in film after film. What's particularly notable about this one is how it manages to be fairly overt in its environmentalist message without being didactic. But most of all, it's just a wonder to look at. Please note: this film might be animated, but I would not recommend it for young children due to it's violent content (decapitations in particular). Oh, and I know I sound like a broken record, but anyone interested in checking out any of Miyazaki's films should never watch it with anything but the original Japanese language soundtrack. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

The Big Lebowski (1998) - For years, people have been telling me I had to see this film. Well, I'm glad to say that everyone was right: this really was a funny, clever, and entertaining ride. With the Coen brothers at the helm, I should have expected as much. The dialogue and wacky performances make the film worth watching on its own. But the bizarre dream sequence turning the accoutrements of a bowling alley into unambiguously overt Freudian symbols takes the movie to an even higher comic level. I also love the final scene's fourth-wall-breaking closing monologue. I suppose you can argue that the film is more of a stylish exercise in cleverness for the sake of cleverness. But what's wrong with that if it's fun to watch? My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Into the Wild (2007) - An admirably quiet true story from actor/director Sean Penn about a spoiled rich kid, Christopher McCandless, who escapes to the wilderness in a personal quest for authenticity. I appreciate how Penn attempts to keep us feeling somewhat undecided on McCandless (Is he a dreamer to be admired? A selfish schmuck? A fool?)--although the nature of film can't help to skew the audience towards sympathy. It's a bit rambling at times and drags around the middle. But overall, it's a very well-acted and refreshingly subtle movie that gets under your skin. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Michael Pease Music Online

2009-02-19T20:09:00.000-08:00

I'd like to share some good news for fellow music fans. My good friend and singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire (not to mention one-time Shapiro Files guest blogger), Michael Pease, has entered the world of MySpace music sharing. After what I'm guessing was many laborious weeks (months?) of hard work on some very complicated multitrack recordings, Michael created a new MySpace page with three new recordings and one classic from his back catalog that I invite everyone to check out.

You'll definitely hear lots of his influences in the recordings (most notably Queen, Jellyfish, and Styx) and I hope everyone can appreciate how much work it must have taken to lay down all those many vocal and instrument tracks. Every sound you'll hear is all Michael. Every vocal harmony, every keyboard part, every guitar lick--it's all Mister Pease. Those of you who have done their own recording will likely appreciate all the effort it must have taken to put together these recordings. As for everyone else, just know that doing this type of stuff ain't easy!

So I invite you to check out his page and enjoy the recordings. If you do, please leave him some comments on the page to let him know you were there!

By the way, Michael's efforts have inspired me to start thinking about resuming work on my own recordings. But first, I need to decide which direction I should take. I have two different options:

Option #1 is going the more focused/targeted route by expanding on the piano-based instrumental work I've done for Marcie's company last year and release a CD of just these types of songs (sort of my own George Winston/Windham Hill type of thing). This would definitely be a lot easier to market--particularly to people looking for mellow/sentimental piano-based instrumentals for wedding videos and similar uses.

Option #2 would be finally making a dedicated effort at re-recording some of my more interesting songs from the past 20 years using our current digital home studio technology. This would be a considerably more ambitious effort, but with potentially much less "marketability"--not that such a thing is really the point of any of this. But, to be honest, I know my strength is my piano playing and instrumental arranging. Whereas, my octave-lower Barry Mannilow-meets-Neil Diamond vocal stylings aren't going to be for everyone. Plus my musical inclinations tend to go two ways at once (both long-form progressive and unabashedly mainstream mid-tempo). So, to re-purpose a classic line from comedian Andy Kindler: My audience might solely consist of people, my age, who are me.

Either project is going to take a while. So I wouldn't count on any CD release announcements any time in the immediate future!

Neologism of the Week

2009-02-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

From the time I started taking piano lessons at age 6 to the present, I've rarely gone a day without playing at least a little piano or keyboard. Now that I'm a parent, this practice has largely evolved into serving as my kids' music monkey, attempting to play their song requests (usually Disney tunes) while one or both of them is hanging on to me or otherwise blocking me from accessing all 88 keys.

So while the circumstances of my playing have changed, my piano playing is still a very common occurrence in our house. Which is why it surprised me the other night when Melody came up to me while I was improvising something at the keyboard and asked, "Daddy, what are you doing?"

I wasn't sure she asked this because I was playing an unfamiliar tune or she was just being funny. But either way, I playfully responded, "What do you I think I'm doing?"

Her reply: "Pianoing."

I thought this was a brilliant response. After all these years behind the keyboard, I never thought of turning "piano" into a verb. My daughter is a genius.

After all, we live in a text- and instant-messaging world in which concise language rules. I say we finally throw out the unwieldy "playing piano" and go with the much more efficient "pianoing"--as in "I pianoed yesterday," "I will piano tomorrow," and "He pianoed that piano at just the right amount of piano."

So how about it? Shall we petition Merriam-Webster to help us start a new age of lexicographic brevity? Maybe we can call it dictionarying. Who's with me?

25 Things

2009-01-28T20:38:00.000-08:00

There has recently been a flutter of activity among my Facebook friends around a meme entitled “25 Things.” The object of this particular meme is very simple: List 25 things about yourself that people may not necessarily know and tag other Facebook friends to do the same.

I very rarely participate in these types of things, but heck, I’m always looking for fun blog topics. So I figured I can post my list here and then share the link with those who’ve tagged me. And if anyone feels compelled to do the same on their blog with a link back to me, even better!

So without further ado, here we go:

I can’t stand raisins. Just the thought of them gives me the heebie-jeebies. And yet, I like grapes. Grape juice too. But raisins are pure evil.

One of my more recent obsessions (about 2 years now) is Sudoku. I love that it’s a game of pure logic. It’s all about finding the one “inevitable possibility” — something that’s a perfect fit for how I process the world around me.

I’ve watched all but one film in the AFI Top 100. The one outstanding title is The African Queen because it’s not available on DVD.

My favorite author is John Barth. Lost in the Funhouse is a masterpiece. So are Chimera, Giles Goat-Boy, and Letters.

My favorite dessert is anything with chocolate. But when it comes to ice cream (and only ice cream), I actually prefer vanilla.

I’ve lost count of all the weddings at which I’ve played piano or keyboard.

In high school, I used to love drawing cartoon monsters and giving them away to friends.

I once served as Editor in Chief of Pacific Review, a San Diego-based literary magazine. The highlight of my time in the role was when highly esteemed postmodern author Raymond Federman sent me an angry letter (replete with profanity) asking what happened to his stories. It all worked out fine in the end (it was just a funding delay) and he even signed my copy of the issue in which I published his fine contributions.

My favorite paper I wrote in graduate school was a 20+ page New Historical critical analysis of the television program I Love Lucy.

I worked my way through college and remained employed with the same on-campus organization all throughout my undergraduate and graduate years. But sometimes that wasn’t enough to make ends meet. One second job I took was working weekends as a costume character, Sunny the Seal, for Sunny 103.7 FM in San Diego. I also did a stint at Eagle 105.3 KCBQ (now defunct) working promotions. This included driving vintage 1950s Ford Mustangs to the Earthquake Cafe (now closed) where they used to do live broadcasts Saturday nights.

As if going to school full time and holding multiple jobs wasn’t enough during my college years, I also found time to participate in the SDSU Concert Choir, SDSU Chamber Singers, the San Diego Master Chorale, San Diego Theater Sports, and a 1950s classic rock and roll band called The Silvertones. I even played piano (plus occasional guitar) and did rhythm section arrangements for a group called The Great Day. They even let take the virtual podium as conductor a couple times. Very nice people.

Of all the places I’ve done theater, my favorite was Boston. The actors, musicians, directors, producers, and tech crews were so genuinely kind and wonderful to work with. West Coast readers, please don’t dispair: I’ve also worked with some very lovely people in all the other places I’ve done theater too. I’m lucky that way.

My favorite season: Autumn.

My favorite holiday: Thanksgiving. Passover runs a close second.

I collected Dynamite Magazine as a kid, but had a hard time getting my hands on issues 1-10 (#1 was truly impossible). As an adult, I got lucky on Ebay and managed to secure the first 20 issues of the magazine (#1 included). By that point, I was about 25 years beyond being interested in the actual content of the magazines. It was purely the fulfillment of a childhood dream.

I’ve never understood the appeal of the band R.E.M.

As a M.A. in English and life-long avid reader, I used to consider myself fairly well-read. But I recently perused the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list and discovered I’ve only read 18 of the books on their “Board’s List.” Even on their more commercial-leaning “Reader’s List,” I’ve only read 24 of the titles. Ouch. I think I have a whole lot more reading to do.

I’m a Beatles freak and have been accused of being a walking encyclopedia of useless Beatles trivia.

I’m the only person I know who has a bread maker and actually uses it. Regularly. For 15+ years and running.

The first professional synthesizer I ever owned was a Moog Opus 3. Bulky, heavy, and very retro-cool. But pretty limited usage-wise.

My first theatrical performance (at least, that I can remember), was as a Native American for a 1976 Bicentennial celebration play at our local park. I only had one task: follow a bunch of similarly attired children out of one door, run the course of a small semi-circle, and enter another door. I missed my cue and ended up trailing the other children by a very noticeable margin. The result was my first onstage laugh.

I had numerous obsessions as a child. Just some of these included coloring books, board games, puppets, and Star Wars action figures and playsets (Degobah was my favorite).

I studied Samuel Beckett as an undergraduate and genuinely enjoyed it.

I produced a song/sound collage and video, both called 2+2, as a final project for an upper-division college course in Postmodernism. In graduate school, I recorded a sequel for a class in Avant Pop taught by the same professor. The name of the sequel? You guessed it: 2+2+2.

I prefer social interactions where all participants are seated. It’s hard to have a meaningful conversation while standing.

Guilty Displeasures

2009-01-23T21:40:00.000-08:00

I was just reading the always-entertaining A.V. Club website and stumbled upon a new entry in their ongoing “AVQ&A” series in which several A.V. Club staff writers each addresses the same reader-submitted question. This week’s question concerned “guilty displeasures” — that is, art that is generally critically lauded, but which staff writers have never quite been able to truly enjoy themselves.

For example, perhaps Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane has never done anything for you — despite the fact it tops just about ever “greatest films of all time” list published over the past decade. Of maybe you’ve never understood all the ballyhoo about Mozart, Shakespeare, or Picasso. Understandably, you might actually feel a little embarrased about your tastes when it comes to such otherwise praised and canonized artists.

So in that spirit, I thought it might be fun to come clean on a couple of musical artists that I’ve never quite been able to embrace despite the fact that so many others do.

The first — and this is a tough one — is Bruce Springsteen.

I know, I know. I should probably quickly clarify that I don’t necessary dislike any of his music. I just can’t bring myself to love it or even like with any degree of enthusiasm. I do admire Springsteen’s integrity and also agree with the general consensus that he’s a very dynamic performer in a live setting. It’s just that I don’t find his melodies/chord progressions particularly engaging. He’s a very talented lyricist without doubt. But unless you’re, say, Bob Dylan, whose lyrical prowess transcends the pop/rock idiom, I need a little more.

I hate to admit this because I really do want to love his music. I’ve purchased The River, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and Nebraska (all considered high points in his career), and listened to them numerous times hoping they’d grow on me. But no amount of repeated listening has made the songs any more musically compelling. I should add that I also borrowed Born to Run from a friend years ago and similarly sat through repeated listenings in the effort to generate some enthusiasm that never came.

Go figure.

So there you have it. I don’t love Bruce Springsteen’s music and I’m relieved that I no longer have to hide it.

Who knows, maybe some day I’ll come around. I don’t think I’ll ever close myself off to that possibility. But either way, at least his music doesn’t irritate me or motivate me to change the station when it gets played on the radio.

No, that particular dishonor goes to my next guilty displeasure.

From the 80s to today, I’ve never been able to bring myself to enjoy the music of U2. And believe me, I really wanted to. The first time I tried in ernest was in the mid-80s. I was sitting in the back of a friend’s car while he expatiated upon the brilliance of the then-new band. I had no preconceived notions about U2 and no reason to doubt my friend’s recommendation. However, once he began playing their tape on the car radio, I was greatly dissapointed. My initial reaction was that all the songs sounded the same and that the musicianship of the performers wasn’t particularly good (bordering on amateurish).

25 years later, I still pretty much feel the same way.

While the band’s playing has improved somewhat after so many years of regular touring, I still don’t find much variety in their music. And even for all the praise bestoyed on The Edge for his unique sound, he still can’t play a guitar solo to save his life. Sure, he’s been quite innovative in his use of flanger and chorus effect pedals, but all he plays are chords or simple rhythmic patterns. The result is a rock band without a lead guitarist. That’s like a sandwich without anything between the slices of bread.

All this said, I recognize that U2 has received a considerable amount of critical and commercial acclaim over the years and appreciate their efforts to leverage their popularity in the service of charitable causes. But despite all this, I just don’t find their music interesting. In fact, their stuff mostly bores me to tears.

Whew. I’m glad I got all that off my chest. Now bring on the hate mail.

Easy Access to History

2009-01-18T23:24:00.000-08:00

Hats

2009-01-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Last year I posted this entry about writing our first holiday newsletter. I talked about agonizing over the first paragraph, as I had to trim a fair amount of out of it to get the whole newsletter to fit on one side of one page. As a result of the edit, I felt that the irony of a deliberately wordy introductory paragraph to what was otherwise an highly-succinct annual summary was lost.

This year I had another expository challenge with no less vexing results. In one of the newsletter bullet points summarizing some of the highlights of our year, I talked about doing several music recordings for Marcie’s business, Life Visions Productions. I closed the bullet with a pop cultural joke stating that my next musical endeavor would be recording a medley of songs by the band who recorded “The Safety Dance” in the 80s (you know: “You can dance if you want to/You can leave your friends behind/And if your friends don’t dance if they don’t dance/Well they’re no friends of mine”). I knew this was a pretty esoteric reference so I decided to do a second version of the reference where I state that my next project is a medley of Liberace hits. I actually agonized over this alternate version because I wasn’t sure if people would even get that reference. I had even toyed with making the reference to Barry Manilow, but thought there was a chance that some people would think I was being serious (not there’s anything wrong with doing a medley of Manilow hits!).

As a result of having two versions of the newsletter, I had to carefully go through our entire mailing list (150+ addressees this year) to determine who would get the “Safety Dance” reference (mostly people who came of age in the 80s like myself) and who should otherwise get the Liberace version of the newsletter. This was an extra burden to an already complicated mailing.

But here’s the ironic part. In my absolute confidence in the hipness of my pop cultural reference, I named the “Safety Dance” band as “Men in Hats.” However, it wasn’t until all the newsletters were printed and mailed that I learned (courtesy of my much hipper sister-in-law Kim) that the band is actually named Men Without Hats. So not only did I create far too much work for myself than necessary by maintaining two separate mailings, but even those who received the “Hats” version of the newsletter and would have otherwise gotten the reference were probably baffled by the odd mention of something called “Men in Hats.”

Oh well. There’s always next year.

By the way, for anyone who hasn’t seen this year’s full newsletter, you can get it in PDF form here. Yes, it’s the Liberace version.

And for anyone who’s interested in getting on the official annual mailing, just drop me a line. You know where to find me.

Only 5 Degrees Away from Kevin Bacon!

2008-12-18T22:15:00.000-08:00

After turning into quite the pop cultural phenomenon several years ago, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game is probably at least vaguely familiar to anyone with cable TV and/or an Internet connection. Well I’m glad to report that due to my appearance in Nightmare on Film Street and my subsequent listing on IMDB, I was able to use a nifty CGI-based web service called The Oracle of Bacon to discover I was a mere five steps away from the omnipresent actor.

Heck, we’re so close we can be brothers. Maybe he’ll invite me over for the holidays.

'Tis the Season for Tim Rivers

2008-12-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, I posted this tribute to Tim Rivers, a very dear friend who left us far too early. I hope anyone who didn’t have a chance to read that post will take a few minutes to do so to learn more about this incredibly talented and generous person.

To continue celebrating his life and music, I’m officially launching a yearly post with a link to his very impressive holiday recordings. My original post has the whole history of those recordings and how I was fortunate enough to produce a couple of them myself. But the long and short of it is that Tim managed to create very rich four-part a-cappella vocal performances, singing all the parts himself, through the magic of multi-track recording technology. Even more impressive was that all the recordings were from the predominantly pre-digital ‘80s/early ‘90s, meaning there was no pitch correction available and I don’t believe he even a used a click track (he certainly didn’t for our recordings).

So for some great holiday music, I encourage you to check out A Tim Rivers Collection, available for free. As I said in my original post, I felt making these recordings available to as many people as possible was the least I could do to pay tribute to someone who had such a big impact on my life and on countless others.

Photos, Photos, and More Photos

2008-11-30T01:33:00.000-08:00

It wasn’t easy, but I am finally all caught up on going through the hundreds (thousands?) of kids’ photos from the past year. In addition to the new albums I announced in my November 25 post, I have just posted two even newer albums:

Melody & Julianne: July - September 2008
Melody & Julianne: October - December 2008

Since there’s still a full month left to the year, I’ll continue to add to the second album above as the month progresses. So if you check back regularly, you’ll see new pictures periodically showing up at the end of that album.

As always, you can access all my online albums via my photo album index page, which goes all the way back to 2004 and includes several theater-related albums from my pre-Daddy days.

Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2008-11-25T22:18:00.000-08:00

No, I’m not talking about Thanksgiving or the Chanukah / Christmas / Kwanza / Festivus winter holidays. I’m talking about Mallomars.

That’s right: Mallomars. The greatest commercially-produced cookie in the history of the universe.

East Coast readers will know what I’m talking about. For everyone else, let me just say that Mallomars are a seasonally produced product by Nabisco. Their composition is simple: graham crackers toped by marshmallow and all enrobed in dark chocolate. That’s pretty much all there is to it. But a great cookie is more than a collection of ingredients. It’s that certain extra undefinable something that creates cookie goodness.

I’ll always remember the time from my childhood when I visited my father at his workplace and accidentally discovered that he kept a stash of Mallomars in his desk drawer — a true life-changing event. From then on, no visit to my father’s workplace was complete without sneaking a cookie or two out of their hiding place when he stepped out of his office. Ah, memories.

Every year, Nabisco waits until the weather is cool enough to allow Mallomars to be shipped to stores — mostly in and around New York, but also to the West Coast for a particularly limited time. The chocolate melts easily, so I guess it’s important to ensure the cookies ship only when the weather is likely to stay cool. Because of this, I never know when the cookies are going to show up at any of my local markets. And when they do, they’re almost always gone as soon as they arrive. I usually start looking for them in Sepetember and if I don't see them by late October, I all but resign myself to the devastating possibility that I’ve managed to miss them for the year. Fortunately for the past few years, I’ve lucked out and managed to be at the right market at the right time.

And so it was that Lady Luck visited me again this year. This past weekend I was shopping at PW Market with Melody and Julianne, distracted in my dual task of selecting the items we need and entertaining the kiddies with Daddy-ish conversation, when the delightfully familiar and oh-so wonderful yellow of the Mallomar box caught my eye. I greedily snatched up four boxes (mustering up the self-control it takes to keep from completely emptying the shelf takes all the will power I have) and knew that the true holiday season of Mallomar goodness has begun.

For more about Mallomars and what all the fuss is about, check out this page. Extra credit to anyone who understands what I mean by saying I fall into the “dorsal method” camp.

New Photo Albums!

2008-11-18T01:48:00.000-08:00

After countless delays, I’m finally working my way through all the kids’ photos from the past year. I'm about halfway through, having just made my way through June, and thought this would be a good time to post links to the newest albums. So without further ado, here they are:

Melody: From 24 Months to 27 Months
Melody & Julianne: December 2007 - March 2008
Julianne’s First Birthday Party (March 2008)
Melody & Julianne: April - June 2008

You'll see that I’ve gradually transitioned from creating separate albums for Melody and Julianne to simply doing combined albums. Now that Julianne is older and walking, the kids are pretty much always together now, so it didn’t make sense to do separate albums when they mostly overlapped anyway. I’m also aiming at doing these quarterly now. So the next album will cover July through September and the one after that, naturally, will cover October through December.

By the way, don’t forget to visit my photo album collection page to view all of the albums I’ve posted over the past number of years (including some pre-kids theater albums).

My goal is to be fully caught up by the end of the year (hopefully sooner). But in the interim, here are a few recent Halloween-related shots I thought pretty well represents what the kids have been up to most recently.

Lessons in Parenting

2008-02-20T21:17:00.000-08:00

Here’s a little something that recently brightened my day.

It was just another regular morning around the Shapiro household. We had all just finished breakfast and were enjoying a few minutes of downtime in the living room. Melody and Julianne were sitting together on their Dora the Explorer character kiddie-couch like the two proverbial peas in a pod they often are, while Marcie and I were similarly situated on a love seat.

Never one to miss a happy domestic moment, I took the opportunity to give Marcie a prolonged hug. While in mid-embrace, I began to sense that little eyes were pointed in our direction. I looked down to see that Melody and Julianne were indeed watching us with great interest. Then with a big smile, Melody gave Julianne a loving hug, imitating her Mommy and Daddy perfectly.

Not only was I completely charmed by this unexpected gesture of sibling affection, but I also had one of those “ah ha” moments. It occurred to me that this is a perfect illustration of how children truly do learn by example. If they grow up in a household where their parents are affectionate, then they tend to be more affectionate. Of course, such learning by example also applies to the negative end of the spectrum when children grow up in less than ideal household circumstances.

So it should be a great reminder to all parents to always treat their spouses with the same love, courtesy, and respect we’d want our children to exhibit in their interpersonal interactions. It’s not enough to be on our best behavior only when interacting directly with our children; it’s how they see us interact with others that’s just as important.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

2008-02-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

In the days leading up to so-called “Super Tuesday” this week, there was plenty of talk around the house about the candidates — obviously with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama coming up most frequently. Not really having a terribly strong opinion about either (both have their relative strengths and weaknesses), I often playfully asked Melody whom she prefers. Her response was usually something to the effect of “I like Bama” — probably because “Obama” (or “Bama” in her case) is simply more fun to say.

Our designated polling location was in the garage of a house just up the street and I swung by on the way home from work to cast my vote. Marcie hadn’t had a chance to go earlier in the day and decided to go after dinner. But when Melody got wind of this plan, she insisted in joining along. At first, we just thought she wanted to go with Marcie just for the sake of going on an outing with her mother. But Marcie soon learned why Melody was so keen to go on this particular outing. When they arrived at the polling location, Melody exclaimed, “Bama’s house!” Apparently, with all the talk of elections and voting, Melody somehow associated a polling location with the candidates themselves and thought she was going to “their house.” Naturally Marcie tried to clarify the nature of their errand, but Melody remained convinced she was going to see “Bama.”

Interestingly enough, Melody turned out not to be particularly disappointed that there was no “Bama” present amongst the ballet boxes. This may have possibly been because the poll workers gave her a whopping four “I voted” stickers — a real treasure trove when you’re two.

Netflix Wrap-Up #18

2008-02-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

Previous installments: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17

Yes folks, it’s time for a new Netflix DVD film review wrap-up. Marcie and I haven’t watched a whole bunch of movies since my last wrap-up in November, but the list has finally grown long enough to warrant a new one. So without further ado, here we go...

Idiocracy (2006) - This follow-up to the cult classic Office Space by writer/director Mike Judge received theatrical distribution for all of about five minutes, which is a shame because this film actually has a lot going for it. The premise is very clever (a future in which intelligence is extinct) and the film has more than its share of funny moments and quotable lines. I think if the studios gave this film half a chance, it would have found an audience. But at least it’s on DVD now. So if you’re looking for something that’s decidedly low-brow, but actually very smart under the surface, this is worth checking out. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Fast Food Nation (2006) - Director Richard Linklater’s fictionalized adaptation of the non-fiction book of the same name. It’s a pretty dark portrait of the fast food industry (particularly the conditions of meat packing plants) and one I have no doubt is pretty accurate. It’s a little clumsy in its plotting, but that’s more than made up for in its solid dialogue and performances. As a warning, please note that if you choose to see this movie, you may not want to eat a hamburger for a looooong time. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

The Last King of Scotland (2006) - I’ve never really known much about the dictatorship of Idi Amin or Ugandan history in general, so I found this to be a compelling look at a place and time all but unknown to me. Yes, Forest Whitaker is very powerful in his role and deserving of his Oscar; but it’s worth noting that the movie’s main focus is on Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, played quite ably by James McAvoy. Thus, this outsider’s look is a little off-putting and keeps Amin at a considerable distance. Still the plot keeps things fairly brisk and the characters remain compelling throughout. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Grizzly Man (2005) - Master filmmaker Werner Herzog has aimed to prove in film after film that nature can be mindlessly cruel and deadly. In this fine documentary, he found in Timothy Treadwell the perfect embodiment of this thesis. Treadwell’s footage is absolutely stunning in both its beauty and recklessness. And of course, Treadwell’s ultimate demise by the very subjects he so dearly loved remains the chief validation of Herzog’s view of nature. To that end, I wished that Herzog didn’t inject himself in the film as much as he did, as the footage speaks for itself. But still a very compelling piece of work. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) - A gorgeous and surprisingly dark fairy tale that no child should watch. I was reminded a little of Last King of Scotland in that I once again found myself learning about a time and place about which I knew close to nothing. As such, the film ably serves as a cautionary tale about the horrors of Fascism — not that any of us need a film to teach us of this. But it’s the juxtaposition of such evil in the face of pure childhood innocence (beautifully portrayed by Ivana Baquero) that gives this film its power. Highly recommended (but please only watch it with its original Spanish language soundtrack). My Netflix rating: 5 stars

For Your Consideration (2006) - The first Christopher Guest film in years that’s not presented in a faux-documentary style, but otherwise still built upon a series of improvisations by his usual ensemble of comedic actors. For some reason this slightly different approach doesn’t work quite as well as some of his previous films — partially because the broad comic style much of his cast adopts is a little too “big” for a more traditional film narrative style. Far too many of Guest’s actors are going for the joke instead of playing their scenes straight and allowing surrounding circumstances to create the comedy. But that much said, there’s still a whole lot that’s funny in the film (especially Ricky Gervais and Fred Willard) and it’s quite on the mark when it comes to its depiction of Hollywood politics and players. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Talk to Me (2007) - Take a little bit of Hustle and Flow, a sprinkling of Rocky, and a dash of Howard Stern’s autobiographical film Private Parts, and you pretty much have Talk to Me. It’s a mostly by-the-book look at what is actually a very interesting story about Ralph “Petey” Greene, a very popular and influential Washington D.C. DJ during the civil rights era of the 1960s. Don Cheadle gives yet another wonderful performance and his chemistry with Chiwetel Ejiofor makes for an entertaining, if not especially deep, film. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Evening (2007) - Another nostalgic flash-back narrative along the lines of The Notebook and Bridges of Madison County. It’s about as formulaic and forced as it’s poorly cast (with the lone exception of a predictably fine performance by Meryl Streep). In a word: dreck. My Netflix rating: 1 star

Accepted (2006) - I suspected that this was not going to be a particularly good film, but hoped it would at least be funny. And I was right. There are enough funny (and quotable) moments with Lewis Black alone to make this an entertaining experience. Plus Justin Long and supporting cast are able to eke out a few additional chuckles. So I guess there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. My Netflix rating: 2 stars

Once (2006) - A wonderful find. Marcie and I absolutely loved this tiny, ultra low-budget Irish film about musicians and the creative process. The action of the movie only takes place over a handful of days and there aren’t any grand sweeping plot arcs you’d expect in a film with this subject matter. Nope, you won’t get the moment when the “unknown musician” gets discovered by the wily talent scout and becomes an overnight sensation. You won’t get the predictable love story (guy finds girl, guy neglects girl in pursuit of his dreams, guy regains girl....oh and becomes a superstar to boot). You won’t even get the moment when the artist and friends are driving in a car, turn on the radio, and hear the artist’s song on the radio for the first time — an event that results in everyone hooting it up in joyful celebration. Nope, nothing like that. It’s just a simple story of musicians getting together and, well, making music. And what music it is! Marcie and I really loved the songs in the film (composed and performed by the extremely talented Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who play the film’s lead roles). Very highly recommended. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

This Magic Moment

2008-01-23T01:34:00.000-08:00

Julianne’s and Melody’s bedtime is always a big production around our house. After baths, brushing teeth, and getting pajamas on, Melody “helps” me turn out the lights in her room and then gets into bed on her own. After we get her all tucked in and ensure she has all her “lovies” (stuffed animals/sleep buddies), Marcie and I sing the song “Goodnight” (a charming lullaby written by John Lennon and recorded by The Beatles in 1968). After the song, there are lots of kisses and we say our goodnights. Next, Julianne gets a repeat performance of the song as we get her bundled up in her sleep sack and place her in her crib with her lovies.

The kids are always so sweet as we go through these nightly rituals and there’s something about seeing them all snuggled up and cozy in their beds that gives me so much joy. I suspect most parents feel that way during such times.

Well as enjoyable as our nightly routine already is, something truly magically happened during tonight’s activities.

Normally, after the lullaby and goodnight kisses, Melody is pretty quiet as we leave the room. Some nights she might hum or sing a little after we leave the room (I think she finds singing to be calming), but generally goes to sleep shortly thereafter. But tonight, she very atypically kept talking as Marcie and I closed the door. She then started repeating “Daddy” — not in a sad or panicked way but in a purely playful manner. So from the other side of the door, I started saying things in between each repeated “Daddy” such as “See you in the morning” and “Have a great sleep.” It was a very playful exchange and it was something that hadn’t been part of our bedtime ritual before. This little game only lasted a few moments and when it seemed like Melody was probably headed off to Slumber Land, I started heading away down the hall toward Julianne’s room.

And then it happened. I heard Melody calling out to me these words from behind her closed door:

“I love you Daddy.”

While Marcie and I have occasionally encouraged Melody to say “I love you” to the other or to Julianne, this was the first time she has every said this without gentle goading from one of us. It was a purely unsolicited statement.

Have you ever been so moved by something or so enraptured with someone that your heart feels like it’s going to burst? Well, take that sensation and intensify it about a hundred times over and you start to get close to the impact those four simple words have had on me.

Eustation Frustration

2008-01-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

If a person can’t kvetch on their blog, then where can they?

At the end of last year, Marcie, Melody, Julianne, and I drove down to Southern California to spend time with my mother. Overall, it was a very nice trip and the kids had a great time. A day hasn’t gone by when Melody has told me that she wants to visit Grandma again!

The only unfortunate thing about the visit was that we managed to contaminate the rest of our family with illness. At it turns out, Melody was harboring some pretty nasty little buggies (caught from school? her cousins?) and at the end our trip, she came down with both roseola and croup. As you can imagine, the return eight-hour drive was extremely challenging. A two-year-old in full health can get pretty testy sitting in one place for so long. But a cranky, unhealthy two-year-old is a whole other story.

As a result of our visit, my mother got an unpleasant cold and my niece Sarah subsequently got so ill that she needed antibiotics. Julianne also came down with croup and is only now starting to get back to normal. Similarly, Marcie got very ill and contributed quite significantly to our tissue-based refuse.

Needless to say, seeing how much devastation Melody left in her path, I knew my turn was next. And boy was it a doozy. I seemed to get everything and the kitchen sink. I was in such bad shape that upon returning to work after our vacation, I had to go back home after the first half of the day and then take the rest of the week off on sick leave. As it turns out, all that schmutz I collected from the rest of the family evolved into a sinus infection. That’s been unpleasant enough, but then I lost most of the hearing in my left ear and knew that could only mean more bad news. Such calamitous news came in the form of my ENT informing me that I now have an ear infection on top of the sinus infection. Yuck.

I’ve now been taking horse-pill sized antibiotics for three days (seven more days to go) and am only beginning to feel closer to my normal self again. Up until now, my usual high-energy interaction with the kids has been impossible, work extremely difficult, and sleeping full of unpleasant fever-induced dreams. Poor Marcie, herself only recently on the mend, had to pick up even more slack than usual. I really don’t know how she’s done it.

So what have I learned from all this? Well, that:

Road trips with sick children are tough
Taking care of sick children is very tough
Taking care of children while you’re sick is extremely tough
Taking care of sick children while you’re sick is exceedingly tough

Oh, and I guess I’ve also learned that my head must be quite the bacterial hotspot. I can almost hear the pulsating beat from their little all-night discotheque in my eustation tubes. I just wish they’d keep it down over there. Some of us are trying to get some rest.

12 Years!

2007-12-31T21:03:00.000-08:00

So long 2007. Hello 2008.

While today is significant enough for most people as being New Year’s Eve, December 31 is especially significant for Marcie and I because it’s the day we met back in 1995. Yes, 12 years ago marked the date I arrived at the home of our mutual friend, Dan, and I encountered the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. I was soon introduced to Marcie, the owner of that stunning smile and my life as been full of happiness ever since! (The full story of how we met and what happened thereafter can be found here.)

But even more important than marking the beginning of two people’s lives together, December 31, 1995 set in motion the events that allowed this to happen:

Happy New Year, everyone!

Belated Chanukah Comedy

2007-12-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

Enjoy!

Thanks to my brother Dan for yet another great find!

Holiday Letter: The Director's Cut

2007-12-18T20:42:00.000-08:00

This year marked the first time that Marcie and I endeavored to put together a holiday letter to mail out to friends and family. After years of receiving so many of these types of letters from others, I guess I was feeling a little bit like a deadbeat for not returning the gesture. Plus, since I did write for a living until fairly recently, there was considerable expectation from my work colleagues that I would come up with some form of an annual missive. So as the old adage goes, ya gotta give the people what they want.

That much said, I realize that not everyone enjoys the written word quite as much as I. So I decided to take the less-is-more approach and limit our letter to exactly one side of one page. To accomplish this, I decided to deliver the requisite year-in-review summary as a series of tongue-in-cheek bullets. However, I did allow myself the luxury of a proper introduction paragraph and a couple of other more formally written items at the bottom of the page. But to amuse myself, I wrote the opening paragraph in a deliberately (and ironic) long-winded, formal style to create a stark contrast to the bullets that followed. Call me crazy, but there’s always been something about ironically awkward formally constructed complex sentences that always gives me the giggles.

As it turned out, some of what I initially wrote had to be edited out due to space restrictions. The result was that the ironic tone of the opening paragraph lost some of its punch. For anyone that’s curious, you can download our final letter here (PDF format). But for my own peace of mind, here’s what that opening paragraph was originally intended to be:

Yes, we’ve decided it was time to join the bandwagon and add a letter to our annual holiday card mailing — and by “annual” we mean for the second year in a row (OK, so it took us several years after getting married to get our act together enough to at least do a family portrait card...but hey, sometimes it’s good to set the bar low...and speaking of setting a low bar, this first holiday letter sure does seem to be bit on the rambling side right out of the gate...perhaps it speaks more to Steve’s love of parenthetical ellipses-strewn asides than his fondness for low bars, but then again...um...wait, what were we talking about?...).

But here’s the thing: We know that with each new holiday letter added to your annual collection, you have less time to luxuriously revel in the insights and literary prowess of each of these fine letters’ composers. So to help mitigate such potential enjoyment detraction (post-graduates in the hiz-ouse!), we’re going to deliver our “Year in Review” via everyone’s favorite information delivery mechanism: bullets! Here we go...

So there you have it.

New Melody Photo Albums Now Online!

2007-11-20T14:21:00.001-08:00

For the first time in over a year, I’m finally all caught up on my online photo albums! Of course, that will be short-lived, as Julianne’s next album (9 months) is slated for next month. But until then, enjoy the latest and greatest Melody photos encompassing months 18 through 24:

Melody: From 18 Months to 21 Months
Melody: From 21 Months to 24 Months

And don’t forget about my iPhone Photo Gallery. New photos are being uploaded all the time. See this entry for more information.

Netflix Wrap-Up #17

2007-11-06T21:32:00.000-08:00

Previous installments: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16

Since Julianne’s arrival in March, there really hasn’t been a heck of a lot of time for Marcie and I to keep up on our regular Netflix DVD viewing — let alone post a wrap-up here at The Shapiro Files. And yet, over the past 9 months since my last set of reviews, we’ve actually managed to squeeze in enough movies to warrant a new wrap-up. I guess we’ve managed to have some degree of grown-up time after all! So without futher ado, here we go:

35 Up (1991) - Please see my past Netflix wrap-ups for all the details on the groundbreaking “Up” series. We’ve now seen the participants go through childhood, adolescence, and the beginning of adulthood. By 35, their lives are finally a bit more stable (albeit with the occasional few surprises). What’s remarkable is how the majority of the participants have managed to find comfortable, happy lives and even their class differences don’t feel quite as pronounced by this time. Another fascinating installment of an incredible film series. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

42 Up (1998) - If 35 Up was defined by stability, this installment is an interesting look at middle age and a look ahead to the “golden years” of later adult life. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

49 Up (2005) - For the first time in the series, the participants are becoming more overtly mindful of mortality and making something of the time they have. A slightly more melancholy installment this time around. Incidentally, Marcie and I have been watching these “Up” films for the better part of a year now and it was quite remarkable to see these people go from children to middle-aged adults in such a short time. It’s been quite a ride and now it’s too bad we now have to wait until 2012 to see the next one. I won’t be any “spring chicken” myself by then! My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Babel (2006) - Like Crash and many other self-important message films, Babel’s performances, photography, and compelling circumstances have a hypnotizing effect, which can lead you to think you’re watching something really powerful. But once the film is over and you start to reflect upon it, the film falls apart. What formerly seemed deep and meaningful becomes the gross simplification of complex themes, arbitrary circumstances, and shameless manipulation. I can’t completely pan this film because of the fine acting and artful cinematography, but that’s all that remains after you strip away everything else. My Netflix rating: 2 stars

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) - Because of Melody’s (and my) love of Tonari no Totoro, I thought I’d try another Miyazaki film aimed toward kids. Turns out that Melody loves this one almost as much as Totoro. It’s a charming coming-of-age story of a young witch who leaves home to establish herself in a new city and use her flying ability as a useful service for her community. Like Totoro, it’s beautifully animated and very gentle in spirit. However, there is a one surprisingly intense (but not especially scary) sequence later in the film that’s just as thrilling for adults as for children. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Castle in the Sky (1986) - I thought this might have been yet another possibility for Melody, but I quickly realized that this early Miyazaki film is aimed toward adults and teens. It’s an action-packed, impeccably animated adventure about a couple of teenagers in an aircraft-based world trying to stand in the face of evil and corruption. Like many Miyazaki films, the plot is fairly difficult to summarize, as so much of the action is wrapped up in an alternative universe he creates so effectively. Suffice it to say, it’s a great ride. By the way, the DVD release includes both the original Japanese soundtrack and a new English dub that features an all-new orchestral re-recording of the musical score. This new score is certainly big and powerful, but I prefer the quaint, if somewhat dated, synthesizer score of the original. Plus, as always, the Japanese voice talent is phenomenally better than the American equivalent. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Borat (2006) - I’m sure I’m in the vast minority here, but I really found Borat to be flat, mean-spirited, forced (just how long did that naked fighting sequence have to go on?), and just not especially funny. I have a great deal of admiration for Sacha Baron Cohen’s brave (reckless?) commitment to his character and yes, there were a couple of decent jokes (the “Running of the Jew” ceremony that opened the film was the high point). But overall, I just didn’t really think there was much actual comedy to be found here. My Netflix rating: 2 stars

Stranger than Fiction (2006) - I really enjoyed Will Farrel’s nicely subdued performance and thought the overall metafictional conceit of the story was fun. However, the script didn’t trust the premise enough to carry it through all the way to the end and as a result, the movie fizzled out by the third act. I think in the hands of more adventurous filmmakers, this could have been a great film. Instead, it was just mildly enjoyable and ultimately a little forgettable. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) - A very ernest story with very earnest performances. Sure it tugs at the heartstrings and leaves you with that whole “In America, you can be anything you want” feeling of hope. But there’s also so much shameless manipulation (and what’s with that impossibly clean New York subway station public restroom?) — not to mention the subtle racial overtones that could be fairly disturbing if you think about it too much. In fact, critic Walter Chaw from Film Freak Central did just that. I can’t be as tough on the film as Chaw since it did work for me at times. But this Oscar-bait was still too formulaic and heavy-handed to do more than that. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Dreamgirls (2006) - I love Diana Ross and the Supremes and really enjoyed the none-too-subtle comparison between the Dreamgirls and their real-life counterparts. Quite a bit of the music was fun too. Yet even with all the flashy editing and high-energy performances, quite a great deal of this film fell flat. And for all the acclaim bestowed on Jennifer Hudson for her “You’re Gonna Love Me” performance, holy moly was that sequence over the top and overly-edited. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Shortbus (2006) - John Cameron Mitchell’s follows up his very enjoyable Hedwig and the Angry Inch with a surprisingly sweet and funny film that I can’t safely recommend to anyone. Even though it’s been well-reviewed and I found it quite charming, this is very much an adults-only type of film where all of the — um — depicted activities were — er — very literally and honestly portrayed. I don’t really want to go into any more detail as I’ve committed to maintaining a family friendly blog here! So let me just say it’s a good film and a worthy follow up to Hedwig. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Little Children (2006) - You can argue that this film skirts the line between sincere and the type of shameless manipulation I’ve talked about above with Babel and Pursuit of Happyness. Fortunately, it just barely stays on the acceptable side of that line. Plus the performances are uniformly excellent and the story fairly moving. Ya gotta love suburban malaise. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

SherryBaby (2006) - This definitely follows a tried and true formula of young single mother who’s a drug addict, can’t get her life together, makes bad choices, and can’t be trusted with raising her own child. The good news is that Maggie Gyllenhall gives a great, very honest performance and I was especially impressed with how natural the scenes were between her character and her daughter. Most child actors have an affected quality to the way they deliver lines (think Dakota Fanning), but young Ryan Simpkins was very believable with her mumbling and distracted delivery. It makes me wonder if there was some improvisation in those scenes. Not an especially original movie, but a sad and effective one. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Some Friday Comedy

2007-10-19T20:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a little something that made me laugh myself silly today...

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Thanks to my brother, Dan, for the heads up on this great video.

New Julianne Photo Albums Now Online!

2007-10-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

I’m pleased to announce that I have finally uploaded two new online albums of Julianne photos:

Julianne: From Two Weeks to Three Months
Julianne: From Three Months to Six Months

And don’t forget about my new iPhone Photo Gallery. New photos are being uploaded all the time. See my previous posting for more information.

Coming soon: Melody’s 21-month and two-year albums. Keep checking back.

Introducing My iPhone Photo Gallery!

2007-09-28T00:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, I’m still working on getting new photo albums posted for both Julianne and Melody. They’re coming....they really are! But it also occurred to me that I have some of the greatest technology in the world (a beautiful little iPhone) in my pocket at all times and I could leverage that power to get photos posted to the web in near-real time.

Besides being a touch-screen iPod, an ultra-portable Internet/email device, a PDA-replacement, ...oh, and a phone of course, the iPhone also includes an impossibly tiny camera that takes surprisingly decent photos. Over the past couple of months, I’ve enjoyed the convenience of always having a camera on me when I’m out and about with the kids. The photo quality isn’t the same as the Canon Rebel camera I usually use, but there’s a uniquely funky Cinéma Vérité-like quality to many of the iPhone photos that appeals to me.

But coolest of all is that the moment I take a photo, I can instantly have that photo uploaded to my online photo gallery at a touch of a button. So pretty much no matter where I am in the world, I can get a photo online in a matter of seconds. Ya gotta love technology.

And now, without further ado...

Check out my iPhone Photo Gallery!

I encourage everyone to check out all the viewing options on the page (pay particular attention to the bottom-left of the page). My favorite viewing mode is called Carousel. There’s also an image download button, an RSS subscription button, and a photo resizing slider — among many other bells and whistles.

And please keep checking back regularly. Photos can — and will — be added (in reverse chronological order) at any time!

A Look Back

2007-09-26T21:42:00.000-07:00

Julianne is now sixth months old and Melody has just hit the huge milestone of turning two. I can’t believe how much time has already passed since both of their arrivals. It doesn’t feel like over two years has passed since Marcie and I were living a fairly quiet life of seeing lots of movies, frequently going out to favorite local restaurants, and, in general, having quite a lot of time to ourselves.

Melody’s arrival in September 2005 certainly brought with it some considerable change to our lives — not the least of which was what felt like an increase in how fast time began marching on. It quickly became rare to have any moments where we had the luxury of taking a step back from the relentless engine of work and life and simply being instead of constantly doing.

However, I did get a long-needed respite by way of a full month-long paternity leave from work when Julianne arrived in March. So I thought as a means of commemorating our little girls’ latest milestones I’d take a little look back at that wonderful month of refuge from the chaos of emails, meeting proposals, action items, and all the rest.

The first few days of my paternity leave time began at the hospital, where Marcie had to stay for the few days following Julianne’s arrival. That time in the hospital wasn’t exactly a great thrill. The room was small and stuffy and staff members never stopped coming at all hours of the day and night. But once we got home, things were much more relaxing. We were so happy to have both Melody and Julianne together at home, with all our stuff, space, and privacy. Over the course of the weeks that followed, we mostly followed a divide-and-conquer strategy with me mainly focusing on Melody and Marcie mostly focusing on Julianne. Since I wasn’t going to be much help in the nursing department and Marcie had quite a bit of recovering to do (lifting Melody was out of the question for her), this seemed like a pretty good plan.

So for the better part of four weeks, Melody and I were together for almost every single moment of her waking hours. I’d take her on errands, to the park, on walks. During all this time, I can honestly say that not a day went by that she didn’t do something that both delighted and surprised me.

Meanwhile, Marcie tended to Julianne while trying to recuperate to the extent it was possible given the sleep deprivation that accompanies a newborn. I also tried to help out with Julianne whenever it made sense to do so. But it was really by attending to Melody that I was able to help out the most. Although we both felt some parental guilt that we couldn’t spend as much time with the other child as the one we were focused on, we both enjoyed getting so much quality time with our beautiful munchkins.

During this time, I mostly avoided looking at email and anything else work-related. As such, I felt such a calm and peace with our life — even with the chaos a new baby can bring to a household. I also was very aware that that such concentrated time with Melody was such a rare and precious thing. So I made sure to fully immerse myself into our activities in order to get the most of our time together. By the end of that month, I felt we had a stronger bond than ever and I was very emotional about that time coming to an end and my having to return to work. It wasn’t that I had any issues with my job; I just was sad knowing that I may never again (at least not until I retire) have such a wealth of time to spend exclusively with my family. Sure you get weekends and the occasional vacation, but how often do you get a full month to do nothing but spend as much time as possible with the people you love the most?

The bittersweet part of all this is that Melody was just a little too young to likely form any permanent memories of our precious time together. But at least in the years to come, I can hopefully share with her stories of that very special month — what may very well be the greatest month of my life.

Lest I get too maudlin here (if I haven’t already), the good news is that my company (not to mention the state in which I live) allows for a pretty generous paternity leave program and I actually still have three unused weeks left. So I’ll be taking a week off in October and will probably take the other two weeks at the beginning of next year — one week each for January and February. Single weeks aren’t quite the same as a month-long break, but I’ll take what I can get. And this time Marcie and I should be able to achieve a better balance with the time we spend with both of our little girls. I can’t wait.

Baby Steps. Literally.

2007-08-06T22:22:00.000-07:00

It finally happened! Melody is walking!

She actually began taking a few independent steps a few weeks ago, but I wanted to wait until her walking was beyond the two-or-three-steps-then-fall-on-the-ground phase before “going public” with the news. Well, I’m glad to say that she’s now walking up a storm!

Check out this series of photos I took this evening of Melody bringing me the book she wanted me to read for her bedtime story:

Click for a larger image

Melody has also made the transition from crib to toddler bed and has completely retired from her high chair (she has a children’s table at which she now eats all her meals). In other words, our little girl is growing up. Little by little, she’s shedding all vestiges of “babyhood.” It’s a very exciting time with just a tad of wistful sadness thrown in. Our little baby isn’t so much a baby any more.

And speaking of babyhood, Julianne has been absolutely wonderful. She’s been such a sweet, cuddly, and very happy little munchkin. She’s now mostly sleeping through the night, which is a huge milestone. She has also rolled over a couple of times (stomach to back), but hasn’t done it with any consistency just yet. I’m sure that’ll come soon. Until then, you still have to admire her impressive “baby push ups”:

Click for a larger image

By the way, tomorrow is Julianne’s five-month birthday and Melody’s two-year birthday is just a month away. As for the latter, you know what that means...

Hmmm... We should probably start thinking of what we’d like to get Melody for her birthday. Any suggestions for a newly mobile and not-at-all-terrible (above cartoon notwithstanding) two-year-old?

In Praise of Totoro

2007-07-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

Back in 1994, I was lucky enough to spend a summer in Yokohama, Japan as part of a business internship with Yokohama Ginko (Bank of Yokohama). My homestay family for the first half of my internship was with the Ishiguro family, who were absolutely wonderful. They are among the kindest, most admirable family I’ve ever known. And if that weren’t enough to be forever grateful for knowing them, they were also how I came to know the greatest family film of all time: Tonari no Totoro (American title: My Neighbor Totoro).

The Ishiguros usually played jazz or classical albums in the evenings (yet another reason they were such a great family) so we didn’t watch much television. However, one night they broke routine and had the television on for an animated film that I knew nothing about but which they told me was quite famous in Japan. Despite having limited Japanese language skills, I was able to follow the story well enough and for the first 15 minutes or so thought it was a pleasant enough children’s movie. But as I continued to watch, the movie charmed me in a way that very few films ever have. By the time it was over, I knew that if I were lucky enough to have kids one day, I would just have to show this movie to them.

Before I go any further, those of you unfamiliar with the film (which I’m guessing is most readers) are probably wondering what it’s about and why it’s so great. Well, I don’t think I could improve upon what film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his excellent essay about the film as part of his “Great Movies” series. Check it out.

Now back to my story. For the next 15 years, I struggled to get a good copy of the film on video in the original language — the U.S. domestic release was poorly dubbed and cropped into standard television aspect ratio. But the best I was able to do was obtain an umpteenth generation dub of the Japanese VHS release.

Meanwhile, Totoro’s masterful director, Hayao Miyazaki, began gaining international attention and critical acclaim during the 1990’s for his amazing animated films (titles such as Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle might sound familiar to some of you). This eventually led Disney to pursue an agreement with Miyazaki to release his films in the U.S. So after years of waiting, I was thrilled to learn last year that Tonari no Totoro was going to be released on a great 2-disc set with its proper widescreen aspect ratio preserved and the original Japanese language soundtrack included as an option.

I ordered a copy the day it was available for pre-order and was so excited to pop it into my DVD player when it arrived. Even better, Melody was now in my life and it was my chance to share this wonderful film with her. Although she was only around six months old and had never seen a feature-length narrative film at that point, I figured I’d put it on for her (in the original Japanese language no less) and see what she thought. As it turned out, she was completely transfixed from the second it started playing. Not even Baby Einstein videos caught her attention in the same way. Over the course of several weeks, I replayed the movie (usually in no more than 20 to 30 minute segments to keep her from watching too much TV at any one time) and she gradually started responding to it with gestures and sounds that clearly indicated she was engaged directly with what she was seeing. In the months that followed, she started saying “Toto” (not quite able to get that third syllable out) and pointing at the TV as a way of asking to see the movie. To ensure she wasn’t just interested in TV in general, I tried showing her other movies (especially some Disney films) but she always grew bored and distracted.

And now, over a year later, Melody continues to ask for “Toto” pretty much every day and is more participatory than ever while watching the film. I’ve since purchased the film’s excellent musical soundtrack on CD (she loves it) and even found a great Totoro stuffed animal that she likes to cuddle with when watching the movie. We still watch the movie in Japanese (she’s probably picked up on some Japanese vocabulary by now) and she still gets incredibly excited when she comes across the DVD case around the house. And amazingly enough, even after now seeing the film myself dozens (hundreds?) of times, I still am just as charmed and moved by it as I ever was.

For anyone interested in checking out the film, I strongly advise you to avoid the old Fox Studio DVD release at all costs. The only audio option is English and it’s a poor translation/dub to boot. So be sure you’re getting the new Disney DVD release.

Additionally, I strongly encourage you to only watch the film in its original Japanese language. The original voice acting is excellent and the American dub featuring Dakota Fanning and her younger sister just isn’t anywhere near the same quality. Now, for those of you with kids, I realize that showing them a movie in a foreign language might seem like a strange thing to do. But I guarantee they’ll find that they can still follow along (Melody always has). Plus you can turn on the English subtitles and simply explain things to your child as you go along.

I should probably also let you know that the first 15 minutes or so will almost scream “kid’s movie” and the opening sequence in particular has a juvenile quality to it. But stick with it and you’ll be rewarded for your patience. Take it from me and Melody: Where there’s Totoro, there’s magic.

Milestones

2007-07-04T00:04:00.000-07:00

I’m back. What few readers I have left are probably pretty tired of that Cows posting by now!

The semi-short story is that upon returning to work in April after my month-long paternity leave, I was promoted to a management position. I generally don’t like to talk about my job here at The Shapiro Files (nor will I ever include the company’s name in order to avoid getting indexed by Google and other search engines) because the company I work for happens to have a very enthusiastic (more like fanatical) fan base. As such, I wouldn’t want anyone to ever think they can get the “inside scoop” on my company’s activities here — something I would never provide in a million years. So I’ll just say that things have been incredibly action-packed at work for quite some time now and it all culminated in a major activity on Friday. I’ve had to work many late nights and weekends and what remaining free time I had was always spent with Marcie and our wonderful little girls. Somewhere in there, I needed to find some time for sleep. Blogging unfortunately had to be put on hold for a while.

And now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, let’s get to the important stuff — namely how Melody and Julianne are doing. Both have reached several milestones, so here’s the quick update:

Melody

Melody finally started crawling in March.
Beginning around April, she started pulling up to furniture and cruising.
She has gradually been able to stand independently for increasingly longer periods of time.
Most recently, Melody has gotten extremely good at walking with the assistance of a toy walker (this one, to be exact).
She pretty much can do all the expected gross-motor activities except walk entirely unassisted. It’s bound to happen any time now!
Other milestones include now eating at a children’s table (no more highchair for her!) and drawing with crayons and all manner of other writing devices.
Oh, and how can I forget: she loves to sing! She even improvises her own melodies (appropriately enough) when I’m improvising chord progressions at the piano or on my guitar. Talk about nachas!

Julianne

Began smiling at around 2 months and now smiles all the time (and very beautifully, I might add!).
Does lots of fun vocalizing (probably trying to catch up with big sister Melody).
Still not sleeping through the night (sleep cycles can occasionally be as long as 5 hours, but most are closer to 3-4 hours), but like many exclusively nursed babies, is expected to improve sleep-wise in the near future once her diet gets supplemented by other nutrition.
On the verge of being able to roll over (at least we think she is).
Still has blue eyes, which means they now have the potential of being permanant. Who would have thought we’d have a blue-eyed child?!

As far as how the two interact together, Julianne is still a little too young for Melody to be able to do much with her. But they clearly like each other very much. Julianne always smiles when Melody goes up to her and says “Hi baby” or “Hi Jules.” And Melody is always looking for her sister around the house and gets very excited when she sees her. They both also seem to enjoy watching Sesame Street together! Actually, I really enjoy watching it too (it’s been over 30 years since I last watched regularly)!

As for Marcie, she recently returned to work on a very flexible work-from-home schedule. But even with the flexibility, she is really exhausted from all the things she has to do each day. At the moment, we have a babysitter watch Melody most weekday mornings and Marcie tries to get some work done during that time while also attending to Julianne as needed. Then when the kids take their afternoon nap, she gets a little more work done then. Finally, once both kids are sleeping in the evening, Marcie works until quite late to ensure she completes all job tasks. In between, she’s running around taking Melody and Julianne on walks or errands and making sure they’re both fed. Talk about a tough day!

In terms of my parental activities during the week, I always get Melody up, dressed, fed, and her teeth brushed in the morning. In the evenings, I usually help feed Melody dinner and then give her a bath or some other pre-bedtime activity. Additionally, during dinner and frequently after Melody goes to bed, I’ll hold and walk around with Julianne to calm her. I also feed her her Mommy’s pumped milk via bottle every 2-3 nights to ensure she’ll always be able to take a bottle (very important for allowing us the ability have a babysitter look after Julianne).

I wish I could do even more during the work week, but with my new management position, I don’t have the same flexibility that I used to have. Weekends are a little better in terms of our sharing Melody/Julianne duties. But I’m still not able to help out with those middle of the night feedings, given my biological inability to participate in the nursing duties!

In late August, Melody will be starting at a great preschool (the same one that Marcie and her Palo Alto cousins all went to) three mornings a week, with the option of expanding to five if she loves it as much as we think she will. When Melody is in school, our babysitter will continue coming, but will attend to Julianne instead. This will allow Marcie the ability to focus 100% on working (even coming in to the office for meetings if necessary) for the first half of the day. The remainder of the work will continue to be done during afternoon nap time and after evening bed time. It’s still going to be a tough schedule, but hopefully a little less stressful.

Marcie has been absolutely amazing balancing everything while getting very little sleep and being constantly dehydrated (nursing will do that). It’s a true Herculean load she has to carry each day and most people would crumble under the pressure. She deserves all the respect and admiration in the world for everything she does.

In the weeks/months ahead here at The Shapiro Files, I hope to get back in the groove of posting on a regular basis again. Planned future topics include Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), a look back to Julianne’s first month, and a new Netflix DVD review recap. Plus, I’m overdue for Julianne’s 3-month photo album (I have hundreds of pictures to choose from), so hopefully I’ll get that put together before too long. Stay tuned.

Cows!

2007-04-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

Sandra Boynton is evil.

I recently purchased for Melody and Julianne a combo CD/book of songs written by well-known greeting card designer and children’s book writer/illustrator Sandra Boynton. Called Philadelphia Chickens, the collection is a whimsical pseudo-musical review of songs about various animals and other silly topics performed by Boynton’s very talented musical collaborators and a bunch of celebrities such as Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. The music is catchy and can be enjoyed by both adults and children alike.

So why is Boynton evil? The answer: a song called “Cows.”

“Cows” is the opening track of the album and is very much in the style of “One” from A Chorus Line. It’s exactly the kind of silly song that I might be inclined to write if I had to make cows its topic. I certainly thought it was amusing enough when I first played it and was hoping Melody might enjoy it as well. As it turns out, she didn’t just enjoy the song; she became absolutely obsessed with it.

At first, I thought it was absolutely adorable when Melody would point at our music player and say “Cows!” Then I thought it was pretty cute that she’d keep asking me to repeat the song when it was finished. But after the umpteenth time playing the song (and eventually setting iTunes to loop it after that), things started getting a little less charming.

Now, I’m the first to admit that any song with lyrics such as “Cows! We’re remarkable cows/And where we go it’s quite a show/Yes you know we are cows” and “If you thought that all we could do is go moo/Then you ought to come and see what we do” should be endlessly giggle-worthy. But I challenge you to read the above words one hundred times (not ten, not twenty, but one hundred!) and see if you’re still giggling.

Cows indeed. Curse you Boynton!

Melody: From Twelve Months to Eighteen Months

2007-04-06T01:20:00.000-07:00

At long last, Melody’s eighteen month album is now posted! Included are photos from Halloween, the winter holidays, and the arrival of Melody’s new little sister Julianne. Check it out.

And don’t forget I’ve just posted Julianne’s very first online album covering her first two weeks (see my previous post). Take a look.

By the way, you can access all of our online albums (including all of Melody’s albums, several theater-related collections, photos from my trip to Tokyo in 2005, and lots of other stuff) at The Shapiro Files: Photo Albums page.

Finally, as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve also updated Melody’s Shutterfly collection and created a new Shutterfly album for Julianne.

Julianne's First Online Photo Album Now Posted!

2007-04-05T02:08:00.000-07:00

I’m proud to announce that I’ve finally had a chance to create a new photo album featuring Julianne’s first two weeks in the world! Check it out.

But wait, there’s more! Just as I did with Melody, I’ve also created a Shutterfly album for Julianne for quick posting of new unedited photos before they make their way into the official albums. There are several photos posted there that didn’t make their way into Julianne’s above-announced two-week album. So if the official album left you craving more, then I hope you’ll take a look at the Shutterfly album.

But wait, there’s still more! I’ve made some very good progress with Melody’s long-promised 18 month album and am hoping to have that posted in the very near future. In the meantime, tons of new unedited photos are already available for your viewing pleasure at Melody’s Shutterfly page.

Enjoy!

Melody Crawls!

2007-03-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

Just a mere few days after posting about Melody’s delay with crawling, our little girl hit that all-important milestone.

Naturally, it happened while we were elsewhere.

Melody was staying with Grandma and Grandpa Lewis (Nana and Papa) while Marcie, Julianne, and I were at the hospital for Marcie’s post-C-section recuperation time. I guess Melody figured her grandparents’ house was a good place to start moving around in a more traditional manner (not that her scooting around wasn’t surprisingly effective). We got the news from her proud grandma over the hospital room phone the next day — something to the effect of “Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that Melody started crawling yesterday.” To which I responded, “Whaaaa?”

I got a chance to see Melody perform the feat shortly thereafter, but also learned that scooting is still her preferred method of mobility — after all, she’s certainly had lots of practice! Still, she’ll crawl if we ask her (a big advantage of her excellent verbal recognition skills) and that’s good enough. The important thing is that she can crawl and will crawl if asked or otherwise just feels like it.

And now with this milestone behind us, just around the corner will be cruising (walking sidewise while using an object such as a couch or coffee table for support). We’re really going to have to take a second look at our house baby-proofing-wise in the near future!

This great news notwithstanding, I’m sure many of you are especially interested in hearing about how things are going with new baby Julianne. So here’s the quick summary:

Julianne is very sweet, enjoys sleeping, and is just plain adorable!
Melody loves having a little baby around the house and always wants to be near her (she says “baby” and points at Julianne constantly!)
Julianne is a great eater (nursing is going dramatically better than it went with Melody) and is gaining weight at a very impressive rate
We’re sleepy (naturally), but very happy and truly considered ourselves blessed to have two wonderful little girls!

I’m hoping to have a two-week album up in the near future (and I still hope to get a new Melody album up as well...hey, I’m only six months behind), so please keep checking back for more news from “Baby Land” (thanks to Cousin Jody for the name) very soon!

Our first family portrait, taken at the hospital less than 12 hours after Julianne’s arrival

It's a Girl!

2007-03-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

We are thrilled to announce a new addition to the Shapiro Family Variety Show cast! Julianne Sophie Shapiro entered the world on March 7 at 8:20a.m. at El Camino Hospital. Weighing in at 7 pounds, 6 ounces and measuring 19 inches, Julianne is proud to be taking on her new co-starring role with older sister Melody.

In response to the exciting news, Melody had this to say: “Ga!” Mommy Marcie is recovering very well and Daddy Steve is doing likewise!

Below are a couple of photos from Julianne’s first photo shoot. Stay tuned to The Shapiro Files for updates and plenty more photos in the near future!

Click for a larger image

Click for a larger image

Melody Update

2007-03-05T20:57:00.000-08:00

Baby Shapiro 2 will be here in less than two days! I will be sure to post photos and details as soon as possible after his/her arrival. But until then. I thought I should take some time out to give an update on Melody. It occurred to me that I never posted anything about our adventures involving her gross motor delay (a term that sounds much worse than it is) and thought it might be helpful to other parents who are going through the same thing if I shared a little bit about what’s been going on.

First and foremost, Melody has been a wonderful baby. She’s sweet as can be, social, and very bright. The term “gross motor delay” simply means that she’s late to crawling and walking. Her fine motor skills (i.e. picking things up and manipulating small objects) are perfectly normal and her verbal/mental skills are especially strong (more on this in a little bit).

I should note that Melody does get around on her own, but her method of transporting herself is by sitting upright on the ground (with her legs mostly stretched out in front of her) and scooting from place to place, pushing with her arms in an almost skiing-style motion. It’s as funny as it sounds and she has so much fun doing it! She particularly loves scooting up and down the hallway and around the kitchen. And after several months of getting around this way, she’s gotten extremely proficient at getting wherever she wants to go.

So overall, the gross motor delay is a pretty minor issue in the larger scheme of things and one that’s pretty easily addressed. But just why has she been delayed in crawling/walking? Well, there are three prevailing opinions:

1. Increasingly more kids have been delayed in crawling over the past decade because just about all children sleep on their backs nowadays as a result of SIDS-related concerns. So if parents aren’t highly proactive about implementing “tummy time” on a regular basis, their kids don’t always get sufficiently comfortable with lying face down (pretty much a prerequisite for crawling).
2. Melody happens to have an incredibly easy-going temperament (family friend Alice calls her “Mellow Melody”). While many kids take to crawling in order to get to something out of reach, Melody has always been content with hanging out and entertaining herself with just those things within reach.
3. We’re first-time parents and as is often the case with new parents, are extremely attentive to each and every one of Melody’s wishes. So without realizing it, we help Melody to get the things she wants without making her work for it. This is why you’ll very rarely see a gross motor delay in second (or later) children.

It’s most likely a combination of all three of these that has resulted in Melody’s delay. To address this, we’ve been taking her to pediatric physical therapy since December and she’s been making very good progress. Over the past few months, she’s gotten very good at rolling over from back-to-front and then pushing herself up to a sitting position. She is also able to stand unsupported for very long periods of time when bracing herself against objects such as our coffee table, couch, or her crib railing. She’s even able to walk with our assistance (keeping her upright by holding her arms in front of her). She definitely seems on the verge of performing all the main gross motor actions on her own (pulling to a stand, crawling on all fours, cruising, and walking) and no one — certainly not her physical therapist — seems particularly worried about her getting to where she needs to be. In fact, I’m always surprised how many other parents tell us that their kids have had a similar delay, with several not walking until they were 2 or even a little older. So while Melody’s tardiness to crawling/walking is outside the average range, it’s not incredibly rare either.

On a final note, Melody’s pediatrician recommended that Melody have a full evaluation at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford just to be on the safe side. I’m happy to report that she completely blew us away during the cognitive/language testing. She did great on all the tests and is even at a 2-year level with language recognition and organizational skills. We were worried that she might be a little uncomfortable in the unfamiliar surroundings and would freeze up. But she had a great time and loved all the “games” they had her play. Her physical evaluation also seemed to pretty definitely conclude that she doesn’t have any sort of neurological issue. In the end, the recommendation was simply that she just needs more physical therapy. As bright as we know she is, it was wonderful to get that validated from the professional community!

So that’s the saga. I hope hearing our story will be helpful to other parents whose children are also late to gross motor activities. Feel free to click the “comments” link below to share your stories. We’d love to hear them!

This Week in Coffee

2007-02-15T21:14:00.000-08:00

Film director David Lynch recently announced the launch of his own “Signature Cup” brand of organic fairly-traded coffee. As a huge Twin Peaks fan (coffee figures heavily throughout the series), I enthusiastically placed an order for a package of Organic House Roast in whole bean form via Lynch’s predictably surreal website. Arriving in a very cool black container imprinted with the director’s signature and a grainy ultra-close-up image of his face, I couldn’t wait to — well — wake up and smell the coffee.

My verdict: Surprisingly flavorful. Very good stuff.

I was expecting something a bit darker (especially given Special Agent Dale Cooper’s proclivity for strong black coffee), but was very impressed with its combination of complementary flavors that made for a most enjoyable and well-balanced cup of joe. If you don’t mind the slightly steep price tag, it’s definitely worth a try.

Netflix Wrap-Up #16

2007-02-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

Previous installments: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15

It’s time for a new recap of movies we’ve rented from Netflix since the last wrap-up. So without further ado, here we go:

Cars (2006) - After so many stellar releases, this is the first Pixar movie that’s merely just OK (predictably stunning animation notwithstanding). The characters are bland, the story formulaic, the length longer than necessary, and most surprising of all, the pathos forced. I can’t say it’s not without its entertainment value (the robust audio mix alone is demo material for our home system), but it just lacks that extra specialness that we’ve come to expect from Pixar. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006) - Exactly what you’d expect: hilarious performances from Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly and a handful of quotable lines. The premise gets a little tired after an hour, yet I guess there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. Great art this isn’t, but recommended for Ferrell fans. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

A Prairie Home Companion (2006) - Robert Altman doing what Robert Altman does. As you’d expect, the performances are uniformly excellent. But slightly less expected is a refreshing sweetness that you don’t always find in other Altman projects. This may not be everyone’s cup of tea — especially if you’re looking for something with a strong narrative thread to hang on to. But as an occasional listener of the Garrison Keillor program on which the film is very loosely based, I felt much of the same charm as the radio show and found myself frequently smiling. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

A Devil Wears Prada (2006) - This film had the potential to be a wonderfully scathing look at bad bosses and/or possibly the fashion industry itself. However, it does neither. Yes, Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci were great (aren’t they always?), but third act developments felt false and only helped to remind me of what this movie could have been in the hands of more fearless filmmakers. Oh, and don’t get me started on those terribly written supporting characters (boyfriend, best friend, etc.) surrounding the Anne Hathaway character. Talk about arbitrary character actions motivated on nothing more than plot requirements. My Netflix rating: 2 stars

The Last Kiss (2006) - Based on some of the DVD supplementary materials, I have can all but guarantee that the original Italian film (L’ Ultimo bacio) on which this American production was based is a better movie. In particular, screenwriter Paul Haggis tacked on a new ending that subverted the Italian film’s intriguingly dark ending into a Hollywood “Do what it takes to get the girl” cliché sequence that really soured the whole movie for me. But up to that point, at least, I have to give this film some credit for trying to go for something beyond the 20-somethings-in-transition light comedy vibe that you’d otherwise expect. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

21 Up (1977) - The third installment of the acclaimed “Up Series” (see my previous Netflix wrap-up for details on the series). This time around, the 14 featured individuals are on the precipice of full-fledged adulthood. Some are nearing college graduation, while others are recently married and/or have already entered the job force. While most of the subjects continue to prove the validity of William Wordsworth’s famous line “The Child is Father to the Man,” a couple of others prove that life, if anything, is unpredictable. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka) (1988) - A gorgeously animated film from director Isao Takahata about post-World War II Japan that proves that animation can be just as powerful as any live action film. In fact, this is simply the most heartbreakingly devastating film I’ve ever seen. There are a handful of films that have left me in tears, but this is the only one that I can say left me sobbing uncontrollably by the end. Even weeks later, I can’t stop thinking about this movie and continue to get choked up when I do. This is absolutely not a film for children and it’s even hard to recommend to adults because of its painful subject matter. Still, if you think you’re up for it, only watch it in the original Japanese language with English subtitles. Under no circumstances ever watch it with the English dub. I can’t imagine seeing this film with anything but the original soundtrack. And if possible, unplug the phone and do whatever you can to not be interrupted while watching (you’ll thank me later). A true masterpiece. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Nacho Libre (2006) - From the sublime (above) to the absurd, Nacho Libre is little more than one joke (Jack Black talking with a funny accent) stretched out to 90 minutes. But if you like Jack Black’s style of comedy, this film certainly has its funny moments. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

28 Up (1985) - The Up series participants are now closer to their 30s than to their teens. Most have settled down by now, while others are still in a state of instability. I don’t really want to say much more out of fear of spoiling any surprises for anyone also new to these films. So I’ll just say it’s another wonderful installment in a terrific documentary series. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Yucky Week

2007-02-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

Last week, Melody, Marcie and I were all hit with a pretty massive case of Viral Gastroenteritis (commonly called “stomach flu”). Melody came down with it first, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning between the 27th and 28th. I won’t go into the unpleasant details, but suffice it to say that it was very sad to see Melody go through it. In fact, it wasn’t until today that she finally got back her normal appetite for food. We’re lucky that she’s been mostly cooperative taking fluids, but it looks like she lost a little weight over the past week from the lack of solids — perhaps something that as grown-ups we wouldn’t mind too much if it happened to ourselves, but not exactly something you want to see happen in a toddler.

Marcie and I both got hit with the virus a few days after Melody’s symptoms revealed themselves and it was exactly the type of nightmarishly horrible experience we all know and love when thinking about the stomach flu. And as bad as Melody and I had it, Marcie had it the worst. I feel incredibly bad about what she had to go through for several days.

I guess the only upside to any of this is that anytime you go through an illness as bad as that, you tend to be in an especially good mood afterwards. It’s great to feel like yourself again. Along these lines, we hosted a Super Bowl get-together at our house today for the family (yes, I disinfected everything to eliminate potential exposure to our now-departing viral visitor). All but one of Melody’s Gladfelter/Blaustein cousins came over and it was quite an activity-filled afternoon/evening. Melody was thrilled to have everyone over. It was a great way to celebrate our return to the “living.”

Unfortunately, I failed to take photos. This was a huge oversight, as Melody had on an adorable baby-size 49ers cheerleader outfit and Marcie and I wore 49ers jerseys (a gift from Papa Shapiro). That probably would have made for a funny family portrait. Oh well. And yes, we know San Francisco, wasn’t in the game! But heck, why not support the “home team” anyway? There’s always next year...

Houston, We Have a Date

2007-01-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

Due to the medical necessity of a scheduled C-section, we’re actually able to provide a probable birthdate for Baby Shapiro #2 (a.k.a. Schmelody Schmallison). Unless he/she decides to make an early appearance, Melody’s baby brother/sister is expected to arrive on March 7, 2007 at around 7:30-8:00am. That’s two lucky number 7s (day and year) on Baby 2’s birthday!

Whats in a Name?

2007-01-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

It’s hard to name people. After all, they’re pretty much stuck with that name forever...well, unless they hate their name so much that they actually go through the trouble of legally changing it.

And now with Baby Shapiro #2 on the way, coming up with a name is even more difficult than last time because we don’t know if we’ve having a boy or a girl this time around (check out this previous posting if you missed the story), meaning we have to come up with two sets of names in preparation. Fortunately, we’re finally pretty close to a decision on boy names, but are still mostly undecided on girl names. Some people think we should go with another music-related name, but I don’t think we’re going to do that (I mean, “Melody” was borderline pretentious and/or self-indulgent enough!). But musical or not, the name should somehow complement Melody’s name when spoken next to it (as in “These are my daughters Melody and...”).

And then it came to me. About halfway through the 8 hour drive back from visiting my family in Southern California last week, I turned to Marcie and said, “I have the perfect solution. It’s a name that fully complements Melody’s name.”

The name:

Shmelody

I told Marcie that when we’re introducing are daughters, we can say, “This is Melody and Shmelody.”

I went on to say that we can even apply this concept to her middle name too: “I’d like you to meet my girls Melody Allison and Shmelody Shmallison.” In fact, the name even works with our last name: Shmelody Shmallison Shapiro.

And what was Marcie’s response to all this?

“Poor Shmelody.”

Netflix Wrap-Up #15

2007-01-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

Previous installments: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14

Happy New Year everyone!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a recap of our latest Netflix rentals, so to start the year anew with no more DVD review backlog, here’s everything that has taken a spin in our living room DVD player since my last wrap-up:

American Dreamz (2006) - A parody of both the television program American Idol (and shows of its ilk) and the Bush administration. For the first half of the film, the jokes are enjoyable enough, if not pretty obvious (i.e. the Simon Cowell character is an egomaniac and the Bush character is a simpleton). But the third act takes a turn for the worse and brings down the entire movie in the process. I guess the problem is that the film never goes deep enough to create the scathing satire it would like to be. Instead, it goes for easy targets and runs out of steam by the end. My Netflix rating: 2 stars

Caché (2005) - A very well-made thriller by acclaimed French director Michael Haneke. If you’re used to the faster plots with neatly resolved endings that you typically get from Hollywood, you may not necessarily appreciate this film’s methodically plotted (read: slow) pace. But otherwise, it’s a gripping and engaging piece of work (and even a little reminiscent of David Lynch’s underrated Lost Highway). My Netflix rating: 4 stars

The New World (2005) - If you’ve been reading my Netflix reviews for a while here at The Shapiro Files, you probably know by now that I have a very high tolerance for slow-moving films. In fact, I usually prefer them. So it’s no surprise that I very much enjoyed Terrence Mallick’s The New World. It’s a beautifully photographed and well-acted telling of the very well known Pocahontas/John Smith story. I suppose I found some of the romantic exchanges to border dangerously on the sappy side (though it never quite crossed over, thankfully), but I otherwise admired this leisurely look at early America. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

The Secret of Roan Inish (1993) - Writer/director John Sayles (best known for Lone Star) takes on a classic Irish children’s fable and succeeds in every way. It’s a gorgeous piece of filmmaking and as charming as anything that both children and adults can enjoy together. Please be warned that the Irish accents are very heavy, so you might want to turn on the English subtitles to ensure you don’t miss anything. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) - It’s hard to review this movie as a movie since it’s largely just a very well-filmed staging of Al Gore’s engaging presentation about global warming. From a content point of view, it’s a very effective piece of work and something everyone should see. It’s absurd that this type of information has become a hot-button political issue and that there’s a perception that taking the time to learn more about climate change suddenly makes you a somehow less of a “conservative” (if you happen to swing that way). So please don’t dismiss this recommendation as some sort of “elite liberal” claptrap. Attention to environmental considerations is a human concern, not a political one. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

The Groomsmen (2006) - Marcie and I have been big fans of writer/director Ed Burns’ little independent films ever since we stumbled upon No Looking Back on IFC several years ago. Very much in the tradition of his first film, The Brothers McMullen, The Groomsmen is a very enjoyable character study about a group of guys who grew up together and who are now dealing with change in one form or another. He probably ties up the lose ends a little too neatly by the film’s conclusion, but otherwise this funny and touching film is another fine addition to Burns’ fine cannon. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Where the Truth Lies (2005) - A thriller about a famous 1950’s comedy duo (loosely based on Lewis and Martin) by talented director Atom Egoyan. While I loved Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter and also admired the impressive technical aspects of his film Exotica, I found this one to be a major disappointment. Despite some beautiful photography and lots of creative editing, the script is very poor, the casting was just plain wrong (Kevin Bacon is a excellent actor but simply doesn’t work as a Jerry Lewis type of character), and the lead actress Alison Lohman was shockingly bad (perhaps the script had a lot to do with this). My Netflix rating: 2 stars

The Break-Up (2006) - The guys at Filmspotting both said this film didn’t get a fair shake by the critics, explaining that it’s less of a comedy and more of a sincere look at what happens when a relationship dissolves. I mostly agree that movie wasn’t marketed right (it most certainly is not a feel-good date film), but I’m also guessing that much of the negative reaction came from the film’s inconsistent tone. I really don’t think the filmmakers ultimately knew what type of film they were making. It’s not a broad comedy, although there’s several very broadly comic scenes. It’s not a drama, although there were some surprisingly touching dramatic moments. It’s not a Nora Ephron-esque breezy relationship study, although there was plenty of that too. So in the end, the movie never fully gelled. There are lots of enjoyable and interesting moments throughout and for that, I give it a slight recommendation. I also give lots of credit to Vince Vaughn for his verbal gymnastics (much of which was improvised, as I learned from looking at the DVD extra features). So with that... My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) - This was very much the independent film “darling” of the year and for the most part, I can see why. The writing was solid, the performances were uniformly excellent (I love Alan Arkin in just about everything he does), and there are lots of very funny moments. However, I absolutely hated the “Super Freak” sequence near the end of the film. I understand what the filmmakers where going for, but it completely ruined the movie for me. Still, the rest of the movie was enjoyable enough to warrant a recommendation. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Double Indemnity (1944) - One of only a few films on the AFI Top 100 list that I hadn’t seen because it was out of print on DVD until only recently. For anyone that’s a fan of Film Noir, this is very much the quintessential Noir experience. For everyone else, be advised that we are talking about a film from 1944 with some very stylized writing, presentational acting, and its fair share of plot contrivances. But it’s among the first and most influential of the genre and incredibly entertaining to boot. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Seven Up/7 Plus Seven (1964/1971) - The “Up Series” as it has come to be called is a true landmark in film. In 1964, the BBC produced a 30 minute television documentary featuring at a group of 7-year-olds from a variety of social classes to examine how class makes a profound impact on how people’s lives will turn out. In 1971, director Michael Apted produced a follow-up special in which he tracked down 14 of the original children (now aged 14) and demonstrated that, indeed, the kids really haven’t changed much — especially in terms of their future prospects/ambitions. The positive reception of these two films has led Apted to produced a new “Up” movie every 7 years ever since, with the most recent being 49 Up, which just came out last year. I’ve been hearing about these movies for years (critic Rober Ebert repeatedly sings their praises and has the series on his top-10 list of all-time great films) and decided it was time for Marcie and I to check them out. The first disc contained the first two documentaries. Even just watching these kids go from age 7 to 14 was quite fascinating and I can’t wait to see the next one (21 Up) for what happens to these kids as they enter adulthood. Highly recommended. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

A Tribute to Tim Rivers

2006-12-24T01:22:00.000-08:00

If we’re lucky, in our lives there are people we meet who make a huge positive impact on who we are and what we become. My friend, Tim Rivers, was one of those people. We met in late 1990 when I was singing with the SDSU Concert Choir. Tim was a guy with talent to burn. He had a beautiful baritone voice, was a skilled graphic artist, was an excellent writer/poet, and he even played piano quite well. And if that weren’t enough, prior to moving to San Diego to pursue a degree in music, he had a very successful (and highly influential) career as a DJ in the San Francisco club scene in the 70’s and 80’s. In fact, he won an award from Billboard Magazine for his artistry behind the turntables. For more about Tim’s DJ-related career, check out this interesting site I found in preparation for this posting.

Tim and I quickly became very good friends and it wasn’t long before we started making some music (more about this in a little while). He also became my biggest supporter, encouraging me to do more with my own singing (I had zero confidence in my singing ability when we met) and this led to my making it into SDSU’s advanced vocal group, The Camber Singers and later, to San Diego’s premiere choral group, San Diego Master Chorale. It was with the latter that I had the opportunity to sing on a real CD project (a recording of selections from Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette and Les Troyens a Carthage ) for the Naxos classical music label (check it out on iTunes to hear samples).

But more than encouraging just me to expand my musical horizons, Tim was an inspiration to anyone he came in contact with. He was very spiritual in his outlook on life and always believed in the goodness in people. His enthusiasm for living (not to mention his very distinct laugh) was contagious to everyone around him. Such joy was even obvious to people who didn’t know him but who just happened to catch him walking around the SDSU campus, as he frequently hummed or sang without self-consciousness as he made his way from class to class.

Yet with such a positive spirit, Tim would sometimes speak of carrying a dark cloud along with him wherever he went. And indeed, that proverbial dark cloud was as dark as it could possibly be. By the time we met, he had already known for several years that he was HIV-positive. Keep in mind that this was the early 90’s, when living for any length of years with the virus was extremely rare — a fact that was never far from his mind. While I could probably describe in length some of the physical and medical impact the virus had on Tim while I knew him, it somehow doesn’t seem appropriate to go into that level of detail when talking about someone so full of life. I will say, though, that with each adjustment he had to make to his life, he was always very upbeat and frequently made jokes about whatever new device or treatment he had to take on. It was a pretty remarkable quality.

If I have my dates right, I believe Tim received his B.A. in Music from SDSU in the summer of 1993 and followed through on his long-since established plan to return to San Francisco after completing his studies. It was weird saying goodbye, since something just didn’t feel right about it. In retrospect, I suppose that strange feeling was likely the sense that we might not see each other again. And indeed, that was sadly the case.

After he returned up north, we talked on the phone a couple of times, but as is often the case when people move away, you tend to lose touch. Then in the summer of 1994, I was accepted into a 7-week business internship program in Yokohama, Japan. My trip to Japan was immediately followed by a tour to Canada with a choir for which I was serving as instrumental music director and accompanist. Somewhere in all that activity, I changed phone numbers and addresses a couple of times. So I can only imagine that if Tim tried to contact me, he probably had no idea where I was. Thus, it was through my own carelessness and self-involvement that I allowed my friendship with Tim to fade away.

It wasn’t a until several years later that I received the terrible news from a mutual friend that Tim passed away in 1995. And it wasn’t until very recently that I learned that a memorial service was held on a boat in the middle of San Francisco Bay. A fellow friend of Tim’s from San Diego, Greg, very kindly described the service in an email exchange we had just last month: “Timmy’s ashes were released on a beautiful sunny day. I will never forget the way they reflected all the colors of the rainbow. Someone had a tape of him singing as we said goodbye. It is one of the most memorable days of my life.”

So after all these years, I really felt the need for making at least some amends by honoring Tim in the only way I know how. This brings me to the music archive project I mentioned a couple of posts ago. A couple of years before we met, Tim recorded an entire Christmas tape for his friends and family of himself singing a-cappella choral arrangements of traditional and modern holiday selections in four-part harmony by way of multi-track recording. Called Yule Tide Greetings, the tape was recorded and engineered by his friend Adam Gieger (who tragically passed away in 1991) and was a very impressive production that continues to be treasured by his friends today. In 1992 when I got my little entry-level Tascam four-track tape recorder, I asked Tim if he wanted to record some “sequels” to his Christmas tape recordings just for fun. He loved the idea and we ended up recording two new selections. We also had a couple of “jam sessions” that year and recorded a handful of tongue-in-cheek recordings of pop standards with me playing my Korg M1 keyboard behind Tim’s always-excellent vocals — all recorded live via a cheap Radio Shack mixer directly to my home stereo cassette player. I love all the recordings, but I have to admit that it’s his amazing spot-on lounge-lizard interpretation of “New York, New York” that always cracks me up every time I hear it.

So over the past couple of weeks, I took every recording I had of Tim (both my copy of Yule Tide Greetings and all the various recordings we did together) and transfered them all to the digital realm in order to create a comprehensive CD compilation. Audio tapes don’t always stand up well to the test of time, so the project took quite a number of late nights (I can only work on such projects after Melody goes to bed) to digitally equalize the recordings so they’d sound sufficiently bright and clear. I even designed a CD cover using the artwork Tim created for his Yule Tide Greetings tape by scanning it into Photoshop and making just a few tweaks with the text elements.

To any of Tim’s friends who find their way to this entry by way of a Web search, feel free to let me know if you’d like a CD (Greg should have already received his copy) and I’d be happy to send one along. It’s the least I can do.

Additionally, I’ve posted the entire CD on my website so everyone in cyberspace can enjoy the artistry of my friend, Tim Rivers.

Melody: From Nine Months to Twelve Months

2006-12-20T18:15:00.000-08:00

Better late, than never! At long last (three months, to be exact), Melody's twelve month album is now posted! Included are photos from my very first Father's Day, cousin Sarah's most recent visit, and a funny sequence of shots of Melody's first time eating a cupcake (as part of her birthday celebration). Check it out.

Happy Chanooookah!

2006-12-18T22:03:00.000-08:00

Today is the third day of Chanukah and I've already eaten more latkes than I thought humanly possible.

Delicious fried potato pancakes notwithstanding, here are a couple of fun Chanukah-themed cartoons I thought I'd share. Enjoy!

Dreck the Halls (Free Shapiro Music Download!)

2006-12-15T01:01:00.000-08:00

I recently started working on a special project that’s very near and dear to me and I’ll be writing about it here in the near future when I have more to show for my efforts. What I can say at this point is that it involves digging through my collection of master audio tapes of recordings I made nearly 15 years ago. Not surprisingly, lots of the recordings are either badly recorded or just plan bad. However, I just came across one that actually hasn’t suffered too terribly in the decade-plus that’s passed by. Even better, it’s perfect for the holiday season!

Back in 1992, I had finally saved up enough (after paying for tuition, books, rent, and food) to buy a Tascam four-track cassette recorder. Even back then, it was pretty basic stuff and of course, compared to what’s available to the home studio musician today, it’s downright primitive. Nonetheless, I had this strange idea of recording an entire tongue-in-cheek holiday album that would mix both Christmas and Chanukah music. The first song I recorded was a hard rock/disco/funk version of “Deck the Halls.” Keep in mind this is before the days of looping and sampling (at least for the mere mortal with a limited budget), so every drum beat, bass line, etc. was fully worked out and performed pretty much all the way through (well I might have done a tiny amount of copy and pasting on the MIDI-based tracks), layering one track on top of another. I also overdubbed two electric guitars for good measure. And for you musicians out there, I even went so far as to truncate phrase endings to create 3/4 measures in an otherwise 4/4 song (just something I did to amuse myself).

So after almost 15 years in the archives, that little tape recording (drop-outs and all) has finally entered the digital realm and I have made it available as a download for anyone that might enjoy a little holiday cheer. Yes, it’s loud and silly and the technology I used is pretty archaic, but here it is!

Deck the Halls (4.3 MB)

For most web browsers, you can simply click on the above link and the song will play directly in your browser. Otherwise, to download the file to your computer, right-click (Windows) or control-click (Mac) on the link and select the option to save/download the file. Enjoy!

The Perfect Cup

2006-12-11T22:23:00.000-08:00

Sometimes remarkable things happen at the most ordinary moments.

Over the past number of years, I’ve become quite the coffee drinker. I guess it goes back to college when I started drinking the stuff to help me get through my aggressive course/study/work load. But as I’ve entered post-college life, I’ve grown to enjoy the beverage as a beverage — although the caffeinating effects are still important in giving me a jump start on my work day.

More recently, I’ve grown to appreciate the nuances of different types of beans (dark versus medium versus flavored etc.) and even treated myself to a burr grinder last year to allow for the best quality grinding (the second most important part of making a good cup next to the beans themselves) we could manage without investing in professional-level equipment (absurdly expensive). From that point on, I’ve experimented with various grinding settings, grounds-to-water ratios, and brewing methods.

And then, on a ordinary Saturday morning while hanging with Melody in the kitchen, it happened: I made the perfect cup of joe.

While such events are inherently ephemeral, I thought I’d at least try to detail as best as I can the steps I took in making the cup for both my own reference and for anyone else who enjoys a good hot beverage!

Tools:

Krupps coffee bean burr grinder
Crate & Barrel three-cup French Press brewer
Millstone French Roast beans

The process:

On grinder, set quantity to 3 cups and set coarseness just a couple of notches below full coarseness (fully coarse grounds are recommended for French Press brewers, but I like just the faintest hint of bitterness)
Boil water in tea kettle and activate the grinder only moments before water comes to a boil
Dump coffee grounds into the French press, forming a little mound, and pour out just a little of the boiled water on the grounds to start a strong expresso base
After about a minute, pour a little more water to about an inch above the coffee grounds
After another minute, add enough water to fill slightly more than half of the French press and mix with a plastic mixing spoon (a metal spoon might add unwanted metal flavor)
Wait a couple of more minutes for the coffee to be sufficiently brewed and press the French Press “plunger” filter down
Serve and enjoy
Voilà!

Melodys Shutterfly Photo Collection Updated

2006-12-06T00:20:00.000-08:00

Still running about three months behind with Melody’s online photo albums, I’m just getting around to compiling Melody’s 1-year album (she turned 1 on September 12). For a sneak preview of the unedited/un-Photoshopped photos (plus tons more that didn’t make the final cut), check out Melody’s Shutterfly photo collection. Then stay tuned for an announcement of the official online album in the very near future.

By the way, don’t forget that you can always access all of Melody’s previous albums (plus other fun photo collections) on my website’s photo album index page.

Baby Verdict (of sorts)

2006-11-28T23:36:00.000-08:00

After yet another hectic period at work over the past month followed by Thanksgiving-related activities, I’ve once again been quite remiss in my blogging duties. But I’m now back and think that what I’ll do to catch up is to post about events in the order in which they happened over the past few weeks. The first of these is the highly anticipated verdict on Baby Shapiro 2.0’s boy/girl question.

And?...

Well, we finally had our second (and last) ultrasound and wouldn’t you just know it?...The little munchkin-to-be was shy once again! She/he was turned the wrong way and had no desire to readjust his/her position. So it looks like this is going to remain unanswered until Baby 2’s arrival in March. Just one more exciting thing to look forward to on the big day! I suppose the only downside will be having to do all this “boy/girl” typography here at The Shapiro Files in the months to come. Oh well, that little slash symbol never gets used enough anyway!

Netflix Wrap-Up #14

2006-11-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

Previous installments: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13

With moving, a very crazy workload at the office for the past couple months, and the general nuttiness of life, Marcie and I haven’t had a heck of a lot of time for our usual weekend Netflix movie nights. Yet we did somehow manage to squeeze in the odd movie viewing every now and then over the past few months to help us unwind amidst the chaos. So without further ado, here’s a quick summary/review of what has taken a spin in our DVD player since my last Netflix wrap-up in July:

The Weather Man (2005) - Good performances from Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine and some nice character moments sprinkled throughout. Otherwise a somewhat unmemorable film with unnecessary narration (quite the trend in 2005). My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Shopgirl (2005) - I read Steve Martin’s novella from which he based his screenplay for this film. I found it to be merely a passible read with a surprisingly smug tone. The film is actually a little better, although it employs unnecessary narration (see my comments for Weather Man above), which I’m guessing was an attempt to capture the spirit of the novella. The Claire Danes character is likable enough and Jason Schwarztman does a nice job at being both schmucky and sweet at the same time. Overall, moderately enjoyable but nothing special. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

The Ice Harvest (2005) - This should have been much better than it is. Helmed by Harold Ramis (of SCTV fame and director of Groundhog Day) and starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton, I was expecting a quirky and fresh take on the caper comedy. But quite surprisingly, I found the direction to be very generic and the pacing to be oddly lackadaisical — all making for a mostly by-the-book crime caper movie with a very predictable “twist” ending. It wasn’t even particularly funny. My Netflix rating: 2 stars

Waiting... (2005) - I knew going into it that this wasn’t going to be a great piece of filmmaking. But having worked in customer service for years (through much of high school and all of college) and having read Anthony Bourdain’s very entertaining restaurant industry tell-all book Kitchen Confidential a couple of years ago, I thought this film might produce a few laughs. And it did. It’s not high-comedy to say the least, but it does capture what it’s like to work with customers (almost always awful, by the way) and what life is like behind the scenes at a popular chain restaurant (and probably any restaurant). Not recommended for everyone, but if you’ve ever worked in customer service and don’t mind crude humor, this could be a fun rental. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

The Thing About My Folks (2005) - I love Peter Falk and am a sucker for dialogue-heavy Jewish family movies (if I can be so bold to label a genre of sorts), so I figured I’d give this Paul Reiser-penned film a try. As expected, the scenes in which Reiser and Falk just sit around and talk are sweet and often funny, but the rest of the film can be quite schmalzy (particularly the the third act) that it took away from the overall film. But ya still gotta love Peter Falk. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

Syriana (2005) - Yes, it’s complicated and potentially hard to follow if you’re not giving this film 110% of your attention. But I think that’s the idea. It’s simply not possible to talk about anything regarding the Middle East without immediately getting complicated. Powerful and very well-acted. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

Brick (2005) - A retro-noir thriller that features high school age characters in some very dark situations. The dialogue and acting are highly stylized and it’s an experiment that could easily fail. But amazingly, first-time writer/director Rian Johnson manages to make it work. I think it could be argued that the film is a little gimmicky for its own good, but it’s still a very impressive piece of filmmaking. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

My Date with Drew (2003) - A super-low-budget documentary about a charismatic regular guy named Brian Herzlinger trying to get a date with actress Drew Barrymore. Sure, it’s a very frivolous project, but the film manages to be funny, uplifting, and even moving. A real charmer. My Netflix rating: 4 stars

The Producers (2005) - The film adaptation of the stage adaptation of Mel Brooke’s classic 1968 film. You have to like Mel Brooks’ unique brand of broad comedy and politically incorrect humor to enjoy this film. And if you fall into that camp, there’s certainly much entertainment to be had in this film. But despite the impressive production values and hummable tunes, it doesn’t quite live up to the original. And as much as I really like Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, it’s impossible to top the brilliant Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel in the ‘68 film. My Netflix rating: 3 stars

The Office Special (2001) - A year after the brilliant BBC program The Office finished its run, the creators went back and produced a special two-part reunion special that managed to be just as brilliant as the original show. A wonderful conclusion to a fantastic show. My Netflix rating: 5 stars

Marcie Posts!

2006-11-05T23:41:00.000-08:00

Back in August, I posted a tongue-in-cheek entry about an unspoken standoff between Marcie and me over an unwashed Henckels paring knife. A little over two months later, Marcie finally came across the entry and posted her very first comments on this blog! Check out the entry here and scroll down to the bottom of the page to see Marcie's great comments.

Trick or Treat (A Pictorial)

2006-10-31T23:03:00.000-08:00

I love Halloween. Of course, who doesn't? When you're a kid, what can be better than dressing up in a costume and getting free candy from your neighbors? But even as an adult, there are costume parties, lots of people at work leaving piles of candy outside their cubes or offices for coworkers, and plenty of scary movies on TV. And now that I'm a parent, I get to reexperience what Halloween is like as a child all over again. Since Melody was only one-month-old last Halloween, this is the first time we've really been able to make an event of it. A couple of weeks ago, we took Melody to a nearby pumpkin patch and picked out several pumpkins for decorating and even found a tiny pumpkin she could call her own:

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As it turns out, Melody was immediately enamored by that little gourd and wouldn't put it down for nearly two days:

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As we closer to the big day, I carved a jack-o-lantern for the first time in several years:

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Finally, October 31 came and Melody was ready to show the world her costume:

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Prior to joining her cousins Kaylie and Jared in collecting candy around our neighborhood, our little bumblebee visited her Daddy at work:

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It's now the final hour of the day, Melody is fast asleep, and I'm already looking forward to celebrating next year's Halloween with two children. But until then, here's one last look at the sweet bee (posing with our beautiful flower):

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Modest Fetus

2006-10-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

Monday was the big level II ultrasound appointment. While the most important reason for the appointment was to be sure the little dude/dudette was doing OK, it was also supposed to be when we'd find out if Baby Shapiro #2 was going to be a girl or a boy. Well, the good news is that everything is looking fine and, of course, there's absolutely nothing more important than that.

However, as for the girl/boy question, it seems that our little munchkin-to-be chose that particular appointment to exhibit excessive modesty and kept his/her little legs pressed very closely together. As a result, the doctor couldn't tell us conclusively if Melody was going to gain a sister or a brother. He said that if he had to take a guess, he'd pick a girl, but only gave the odds at 60%. So ladies and gentleman, you'll all have to wait until next month when we have our next appointment. With any luck, little baby-in-the-making will be a little less shy!

Oh, and in the "Credit Where Credit is Due" department, Marcie reminds me that when cousin Brad announced his baby-to-be, he included a tongue-in-cheek FAQ at the end. So I guess I must have subconsciously channeled his cute idea into my previous post announcing baby #2. Sorry for the unintentional thievery, Brad! I guess a good idea just begs to be stolen by others!

Big News!

2006-10-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, the rumors are true: We’re expecting yet another new addition to our family! Baby Shapiro #2 (”v2.0” to our Silicon Valley friends) is due in mid-March.

And now, here’s a quick FAQ to address some questions this announcement may generate:

Q: Boy or Girl?
A: We’re hoping to find out later this month (if Baby S. cooperates of course)

Q: Didn’t you just have a baby?
Time certainly does fly by when you’re having fun! But actually, Melody already turned 1 last month (September 12). She and her new sibling will be 18 months apart.

Q: Um, I don’t know how to ask this delicately, but...
A: Yes, this was intentional! We were hoping that Melody would have a sibling close in age and that such chronological closeness would also lead to a close relationship.

Q: Where is baby #2 going to sleep?
A: Although our new house is a little smaller than our last, Melody’s room is actually considerably larger than her previous one. So after the initial bassinet/sleeping-in-our-room phase, Baby Shapiro #2 will be sharing a room with his/her older sister. Additionally, our long-term goal is to expand our house and add a new room. So the kids will also have the option of getting their own rooms at that time if they desire it.

I’ll have more updates (including boy or girl news) soon. Keep checking back!

You Say It's Your Birthday? It's My Birthday Too, Yeah

2006-10-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

Cousin Brad and I share the same birthday (October 4). So I invite everyone to take a trip to Brad’s blog and surprise him with some birthday greetings. Oh and while you’re there, check out the latest adorable photos of his and Jody’s beautiful new son Samuel!

Tough Week

2006-10-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

Prior to posting this entry, I had composed a couple of random rants (one about my AT&T DSL headaches and another about audience rudeness on “American Idol” clone shows), but then something truly bad happened that pretty much made those two topics pretty darn insignificant in comparison. I received a call last week from Chris, my father’s girlfriend (shouldn’t there be a better word when talking about such relationships among people older than 18?) that my father had suffered a “heart event” and that he was in the hospital. Now before I go any further, let me cut to the chase: He’s OK now. The bottom line is that he suffered a minor heart attack, with two blockages in the same artery for which he’d undergone angioplasty over a decade ago. He had two stents (amazing technological development since his last surgery) inserted in that troublesome artery and he seems to be essentially on the road to recovery now.

As anyone can imagine, it’s a terrible thing to receive such a phone call about a parent. Unfortunately, it’s also one that I can’t say any of us in our family were terribly surprised to receive. My father would be the first to admit that he doesn’t live an active lifestyle and he has struggled with weight-related issues for pretty much his entire life. Over the last 10-15 years, he’s seen both of his knees give out and his weight escalate higher than it had ever been before. This combined with a very high-stress work situation and less-than-ideal eating habits certainly doesn’t make for the most positive prognosis.

All these years now, we’ve all be encouraging him to be more careful with his diet and try to be more active. But he’s pretty set in his ways. However, this latest event seems to have shaken him up a bit. So maybe it’ll be a mixed blessing and encourage him to take steps toward improving his general health.

But in all events, we’re certainly all relieved that what could have been a truly horrific event ended up with about as positive a conclusion as such awful things can have. I’m also glad to say that my father never lost his sense of humor during this whole ordeal. For those of you who don’t know him, despite considerable embarrassment it created for my brother and I growing up (and now our younger brother Kenneth), my father’s humor tends to run considerably on the scatological side of things. So in his honor, if any of you feel like passing on any “blue” or otherwise flatulence-related humor that I can forward to him, I’m sure he’d enjoy it. Of course, since I do like to run a family-friendly site here, let’s try not to go too overboard!

Moving Update (A Prolonged Kvetch)

2006-09-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

As incredibly horrible as I always know it’s going to be, moving always ends up being even more hideous than anticipated.

After a very grueling week of near all-nighters, eating very little (and very unhealthily at that!), and continuous physical labor, all our stuff is now moved into our new house. Of course, the “moving in” process has just begun. Almost nothing is unpacked and our garage has turned into an enormous and nearly impenetrable fortress of boxes and furniture pieces. The inside of the house is just as bad. The only room that’s half-way decent is Melody’s room, as it was top priority to get her crib set up and have some floor space for her to play.

In addition to all the moving stuff, we had to deal with telephone issues (I was actually able to rewire one of our phone jacks myself to get it to work), cable issues (two visits and well over an hour worth of calls), and now, DSL problems (no signal is being received and so far, no correction has been made by AT&T).

Marcie and I are tired, cranky and sore. My 2-3 hours of sleep at night isn’t very healthy and I’m now having very hard time walking due to extremely sore muscles. The only thing keeping me going is lots of coffee and raw adrenaline.

Once we finally do get unpacked and our house is more-or-less functional, our work is actually still not done. I didn’t mention this in my previous post about the move, but the reason we moved was not because of the house itself. We moved to get into a better neighborhood (with great schools) that’s very close to Marcie’s parents and all of Melody’s cousins, aunts, and uncles on her mommy’s side of the family. She’ll even be going to the same schools as her cousins Jianna, Kaylie, Jared, and Justin. However, the compromise was that in order to get into a neighborhood like this, we had to go with a slightly smaller house and one that needs a fair amount of work. So over the years to come, we’ll be gradually renovating/modernizing the house and even hope to expand some time down the line. It’s going to be a very long haul, but perhaps in about 10 years we’ll have the home we’ve always wanted. As the the old adage goes, real estate is all about location location location. We finally have that. The next thing is the house itself.

As we work through each remodeling project, I’ll try to post before/after photos to this blog for those interested in home renovation projects. Until then, keep your fingers crossed that AT&T might actually get our DSL working. Once (if?) that happens, I can finally get back to regular (and hopefully more upbeat) blogging!

One!

2006-09-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

Melody’s first birthday was yesterday. Wow, did that year go fast!

In light of this huge milestone, I stayed up to the wee hours of the night trying to make headway in getting some of the latest photos online. The good news is that I finally have the long awaited (three months overdue) nine-month album online. The bad news is that I’ll need at least a few more weeks to get the one-year album up.

Well, one out of two ain’t bad. Enjoy the latest album.

Quick Update

2006-08-28T01:27:00.000-07:00

Marcie and I made an 11th hour decision to buy a new house (well, new to us that is) and have been neck deep in home buying/selling stuff ever since--thus the dearth of recent updates here at The Shapiro Files. Between working full time, raising Melody, and now all this house insanity (including just finishing two days of open house madness with possibly more to come), things have been stressful and very exhausting.

Hopefully, things will setting down soon and I can get back to my random ramblings (plus long-awaited Melody photos) in the very near future. Keep checking back; there's plenty more to come!

Meeting Randy Newman

2006-08-11T01:50:00.000-07:00

It’s not every day you get to meet one of your heroes.

Marcie and I went to see music legend Randy Newman in concert at Redwood City’s Fox Theater earlier this evening. Not only was this exciting enough, but through my association with a very cool group of fellow Randy-philes called Little Criminals (LCs), Marcie and I were able to get our names on Randy’s backstage guest list. So not only did we get to see an excellent concert by one of the greatest singer-songwriters/film composers of all time, but we were actually able to meet him afterwards!

While I don’t like to think of myself as the star-stuck type, I couldn’t help but to be nervous to meet someone whose music I’ve loved for so many years. But he was as nice as you can imagine and we spent a few minutes chatting about a number of random topics. Marcie told him that I love playing his music on the piano and that Melody has had almost continuous exposure to his music since day one. Throughout it all, I tried not to drift off into rambling incoherence, but he was always very kind and genuine.

Before we left, I asked if he would mind posing for a photo and he didn’t hesitate to put his arms around us and strike a pose. Although the resultant photo (below) catches him with his eyes closed, I’m still thrilled beyond words to have it. And as Marcie reminds me, Randy typically sings with his eyes closed, so his “peaceful” pose is perfectly appropriate.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to LC Susan for helping to coordinate the backstage guest list and Randy’s manager Cathy for actually making the list happen. And of course, I’d like to thank Randy most of all for being so open and welcoming to his fans.

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Cuts Like a Knife

2006-08-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I caught an episode of the television series Everybody Loves Raymond that I felt epitomized what it is to be married (fans of the show might argue that every episode did this). The episode concerns a suitcase left on the staircase (I missed the beginning so I don’t know the events leading up to its being placed there) and for the rest of the episode, Ray and his wife Debra passive-agressively wait for the other to remove the misplaced item. Each grows increasingly frustrated with the other (both avoid explicitly saying anything to the other out of stubborn pride) and Ray even raises the stakes by placing some rotting cheese in the suitcase hoping the offending smell would motivate Debra to cave and put the thing away. And so the episode continues in this vein until the inevitable funny (but surprisingly insightful) yelling-match conclusion.

Well, it looks like Marcie and I are now caught in a similar standoff over a Henckels paring knife.

For the entire time that we’ve been married, we’ve been pretty equal in terms of dishwashing duties. The general rule is that whoever cooks, the other person cleans. But there’s one very strange exception to this: knives. For reasons I’ll probably never understand, Marcie avoids cleaning knives like Mel Gibson avoids sobriety. However, she certainly likes to use knives well enough. Such is the case with a nice set of Henckels knives we received as a wedding gift back in 2000. In particular, she loves using the set’s little paring knife for just about everything that requires cutting.

Unlike Marcie, I typically avoid using the Henckels knives because they require hand-washing (life’s short enough) and I find that our everyday machine-washable knives work just fine for most uses (slicing bananas, cutting up small pieces of food for Melody, etc.). But I realize that cutlery preferences are a personal thing and I have no qualms about Marcie’s paring knife inclinations.

However, once she uses that little guy, it ends up on the counter or in the sink where it seems to me that it remains untouched until I end up having to clean it. Now, in her defense, Marcie insists that she indeed does, in fact, wash knives. But I have a feeling that in the case of the paring knife, it’s either the exception to the rule or she only washes it before using it instead of after (the difference is subtle yet significant).

So after seeing that little paring knife make yet another appearance in our sink this weekend, I vowed to not wash it and just see how long it’ll remain in the sink. Well, today is Tuesday and it’s still there. Will it continue holding its position until tomorrow? Next week? Next millennium? Stay tuned.

UPDATE (8/11/06): The knife is no longer in the sink. Clean at last, it sits happily in its hardwood block home with all its Henckels neighbors. Minus the few days Marcie was feeling under the weather this week (poor Marcie!), I'd say the knife remained unwashed for maybe a total of 3 or 4 days. Not quite the comic results I was hoping for, but I guess life can't always imitate art!

Something Phishy

2006-08-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to my previous post about my recent trials and tribulations with online identity theft (vis-à-vis Ebay), I’d like to encourage everyone to take this brief phishing IQ test brought to my attention by Joe C. (thanks, Joe, for the link!). Take it, learn it, be it.

The Shapiro Files

It's True: I'm Returning to the Stage

New Columns: "Parental Math" and "On the Road Again"

Getting Healthy, Losing Weight (Mostly on Purpose)

Altered Reality: Kids and Hard Truths

Playing the Game: In Dread of Sports

Always a Laughing Matter: A Mother's Day Tribute

Problematic Perfectionism

Grandstanding for the Arts

"Father Knows Best?" December-February Columns

'Tis the Season for Tim Rivers

Family Portraits - Altered Reality for the Holiday Season

Spooky Sweets - A Halloween Reflection

The Latest Columns

Acting Cuckoo on Yahoo!

Beatles in Stereo or Mono?

Please Please Me (1962) and With the Beatles (1963)

A Hard Days Night (1963)

Beatles for Sale (1964)

Help! (1965)

Rubber Soul (1965)

Revolver (1966)

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

The Beatles [a.k.a. The White Album] (1968)

Non-Album Singles

In Defense of Sir Paul

Classic McCartney

Also-Rans

A Mother's Day "Father Knows Best?" and More

Congress Versus Mother's Day: A True Story

Two New "Father Knows Best?" Columns

It's Official: I'm Now a Regular Columnist for POP

My New Gig: Columnist for a Parenting Journal

'Tis the Season for Tim Rivers

Why I'm Aging Prematurely: Two Dialogues

Spelling Pet Peeve of the Day

More Photos

New Photos Aplenty

Disney Vacation: A Cautionary Tale

Moviemaker Melody Strikes Again

Melody Makes a Movie!

New Photo Albums Now Online

Live Theater, Real-Time Disasters

Another Sign of the End of Times

Ghost of School Days Past

Catching Up with Old Friends

Mysterious Noise (Me and My Imagination)

On Filmstrips and Inherited Personality

Netflix Wrap-Up #20

Four Year Blogiversary

The Greatest Meme Ever

Netflix Wrap-Up #19

Michael Pease Music Online

Neologism of the Week

25 Things

Guilty Displeasures

Easy Access to History

Hats

Only 5 Degrees Away from Kevin Bacon!

'Tis the Season for Tim Rivers

Photos, Photos, and More Photos

Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

New Photo Albums!

Lessons in Parenting

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Netflix Wrap-Up #18

This Magic Moment

Eustation Frustration

12 Years!

Belated Chanukah Comedy

Holiday Letter: The Director's Cut

New Melody Photo Albums Now Online!

Netflix Wrap-Up #17

Some Friday Comedy

New Julianne Photo Albums Now Online!

Introducing My iPhone Photo Gallery!

A Look Back

Baby Steps. Literally.

In Praise of Totoro

Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Whats in a Name?

Melodys Shutterfly Photo Collection Updated