NEW RELEASES
We Represent the Lollypop Guild…
Sassy and The Bandit “helped” me wrap Christmas presents. Sassy shamed me into it. Much of the experience sounded like this:
“Wait. Wait! WAIT! Please don’t waste all that paper. WAIT. Just be patient, for a second, alright? DAMMIT. I SAID WAIT! No, once you put the tape on the paper it has to stay there. See, I said wait. Now it’s torn.” Deep sigh. “Alright, we’re done wrapping.”
We got two presents wrapped. But, we sacrificed 73.4 feet of wrapping paper, 97 sheets of tissue and 2 rolls of Scotch Tape. 1 Desk chair was broken, the table was knocked over, and 1 mother is now drunk.
Some of you will ask me tomorrow after you read the above list if it’s really true. All of it except the drunk part. I wish I was drunk but I don’t have the energy to go uncork a bottle of wine.
While we wrapped, we watched the Wizard of Oz on television. My mom will testify in court how well I know the Wizard of Oz. I love this movie and can recite whole sections of it from memory. I know the words to all the songs and even impressed my daughter by knowing the steps to the dance they do down the Yellow Brick Road. My mom once called me up in the middle of the night in order to figure out a trivia question: What was Dorothy’s last name? I knew it of course – even mostly asleep.
I was a film major in college – absurd but true. I am a walking encyclopedia of classic movie knowledge – both on screen and the lives of the classic movie stars off screen. And by association, I am pretty fluent on the literature of the 20s – 50s. I wanted to name The Bandit Dashiell after Dashiell Hammett the brilliant creator of the “hard boiled detective” Sam Spade (as so brilliantly played by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon) but My Honey soundly vetoed it. That is why I quickly vetoed all of his famous musician names when he offered them up for consideration. (It took me a minute to figure out why I would refuse James Marshall, but then it came to me. I am not naming my child after Jimi Hendrix – even though he was completely brilliant. It’s just the way it is. No Dashiell – No Jimi.)
This evening Sassy said to me, “You know this movie is actually pretty good.”
Deep sigh. And Gone With the Wind is just a movie about the Civil War and Casablanca is just a so-so love story about World War II.
She is absolutely correct about knowing all the words and songs to Wizard of Oz, Gone with The Wind, and many, many, many other movies. I too know the words and songs to the Wizard of Oz by heart and never miss it when it comes on. She is also a wizard at Trivial Pursuit as well.
I recall a funny story about that. We were playing another masochistic game of Trivial Pursuit which no one ever wins except Amylynn. I am not joking, you cannot beat her. Anyway, she kept getting incredibly easy questions like, “Who played Dorothy on Wizard of Oz? or What was the name of the plantation of GWTW? or Who played the male lead in that movie.” Get the picture? She knew every answer without batting an eye.
I on the other hand, got every conceivably hard question that there was, like: Who was the person that posed for the original Big Boy restraunts? or what city did Michaelanglo live in as a boy? or what native first saw Mt. Everest? Terribly hard questions.
She had all the pieces in her little thingy and I did not have a single one, as usual. Now I am actually a smart women but not in this game. All memory leaves my brain immediately when she brings the board out. So, it was my turn again and the question she asked me was this: “HOW DO YOU SAY, THE SUN ALSO RISES IN GREEK?” I kid you not.
I immediately flipped the board up and all the pieces went flying and I vowed I would never plan this stupid game ever again.
She was laughing hysterically, and said to me, “I was only kidding you.”
She deserves whatever her sweet, angelic, darling, well-behaved children can dish out, believe me. She has earned hellacious children.