Greetings from the post-holiday wasteland!

(I was going to throw in a quote from TS Eliot’s “The Wasteland”, but skimming the poem just blew my mind. I assumed that I had read it before in high school. I was wrong. I am intrigued by it and I will pour over the thing later. But enough about that.)

So here we are at the arse-end of Christmas, sick of indulgent food and tired of our families. That’s not to say that I did not enjoy the holidays. I did, and I’m still enjoying them. But, there is a festive fatigue that settles in during this time of jolly chaos, and I suspect everyone is happy to return to routine.

Christmas day gave me an insight into a gap that lies between my childhood and being a grown up. When we reached noon on Christmas day, all the presents were open and played with, phone calls had been made, and the empty expanse of the afternoon loomed in front of us. When we finally all went stir-crazy, I marshalled the family out of the house for a forced snow march, and I felt a touch of resentment for having to take charge. That made me realize that I only really knew how to interact with Christmas as a child, not as an adult. I was waiting for a parental figure to call the shots, but that figure is supposed to be me.

The breakdown of my family years ago started when I was just about to enter my teens, though you could argue the decay had been evident for years. From the age of 12 on, I had little to no positive interaction with my father, and our family celebrations pretty much collapsed into chaos. My theory is, learning to transition roles of responsibility in holiday situations takes place during your teen years, and since I had no good male role model to pattern on, my development was arrested.  It’s not a big deal, but it is something I need to keep in mind when festivities approach. As much as it would be nice to sit back and passively ride along on the holiday fun train, somebody’s got to be the conductor.

I don’t want to give you the impression that Christmas was full of brooding introspection. I received a pile of wonderful gifts, my little dude was bouncing off the walls with gleeful enjoyment at all of his new toys and books, and the wife liked the things I picked out for her. We topped it off with a wonderful meal at our friend’s place (the lad’s fairy godmother), and cookies galore.

 

Stand down, gentlemen. Your tour of duty is coming to an end.

I love the Wiggles. I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again. Sadly, their time in my life is drawing to a close as Max’s interests turn to other shows. For 3 consecutive days, he has chosen some new upstart show over his once beloved Wiggles. I quietly lobby in their favour each time, but he remains unmoved.

I have already talked about why I think they are great childrens performers, and all of that holds true, but I’ve stumbled upon another reason for my affection :they kept me company. For months now, they have been a source of simulated camaraderie, just a bunch of dads helping me entertain my boy and passing the time with me. It gave me something to research on my tiny iPhone screen. I read their Wikipedia page, and followed up with info on their dancers and other associated folks. Being a fan of the guys gave me something to do, and something to look forward to, and I will miss them when we move on for good. The wife felt the same when Blue’s Clues passed out of favour with the little dude. I guess it;s natural to find a touch of fondness for the shows that your kid watches. It’s either that, or be an obnoxious parent who belly aches about kids TV whenever they get the chance, and  no one likes that guy.

When words get in the way

I am going to complain about Tron:Legacy right now, and there’s bound to be some spoiler-grade information in here, so consider that your warning.

A little background: I am not one of the loyal audience who hold the original TRON movie in a place of reverence in their heart. I don’t even know if  I’ve seen the whole movie, to be honest. My parents took me to very few movies, so most of my childhood exposure to motion pictures was on tv, and I tend to flip channels aggressively as soon as my attention wanders or a commercial comes on. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the aesthetic of the movies. The soundtrack of Legacy is fantastic, crafted by the robotic duo in Daft Punk. It’s a shame that the script gets in the way of the visual and musical presentation.

Oh, the ruinous dialogue. Scraps of sentences swept up from the big pile of terrible action movie clichés, mashed together with awkward exposition and terrible hippie nonsense, to form a continuous string of cringe-inducing mouth noise. If only they had removed the dialogue and double the soundtrack.

The plot is also a mess, cribbing elements from other popular movies but adding nothing new to the interpretation. There is a huge setup for a plot twist involving the self-interested program named Zeus, but that potential is thrown out the window in a big,pointless explosion.

The actors do  the best they can with the awfulness forced upon them, but Jeff Bridges can only do so  much. And the rubbery computer version of young Jeff is stuck firmly in the uncanny valley and is uncomfortable to watch, though this is considerably amplified by the wretched speeches compu-Jeff has to deliver.

As a dad, I have a personal beef with this movie. The main characters father is trapped in a computerland for 12 years. He has not seen him since he was 12. His father has realized during his exile that his son was the best part of his life (“Perfection was right in front of me the whole time”). And yet, at their reunion neither one of them says ‘I love you’. Not once. Not even at the big climax of the movie where the fate of the electro-world is being decided. THEY GO THE WHOLE MOVIE WITHOUT TELLING EACH OTHER ‘I LOVE YOU’. I can tell you that the first thing that comes out of my mouth after I’ve been away from Max for as little as an hour is ‘I love you’. But these two jerks can’t be bothered.

Oh sure, you get the cliché Hollywood man-tear in the corner of their eyes, but that does not cut it. Especially from a father character who is spouting terrible hippie talk throughout the movie. Hippies tell their waiters they love them when the food arrives hot.