( I think this man looks like a special. )
Uglies are like us. Pretties are like super models. I think the uglies are better the pretties are just partiers. but in that book all your life you are told you when you turn pretty you turn perfect. but no one can be perfect you know that. but its a great book. from 1 to 10 10 being the best I give it a 9 1/2.
I had a face in mind as an example of scary beauty and I couldn’t recall the actor’s name, although I wanted to show my daughter a picture of him. I did some ineffective cross-referencing in my brain and came up with the name Harvey Keitel. Then I pictured the man and realized he wasn’t Harvey but had acted with Harvey, maybe in Pulp Fiction. I went over the the computer and stared at it. Several pathways lay before me. I could look up the movie database website and see if he was in Pulp Fiction. But it might have been Reservoir Dogs. Still, I remembered this actor…he was on SNL a lot. I could look up frequent SNL hosts. But I remembered something else. A friend had recently sent me a song by Fatboy Slim which I play a lot, and another friend heard it and asked me if I’d seen the video. No, we’re not music video types. Just listeners. So, he uploaded the video on to his iPod and showed me the video, which weirdly enough had this movie actor in it, dancing. I could go to Youtube and search for Fatbloy slim videos and get so distracted that I don’t resurface for two days. In the nick of time, I remember that I emailed the first friend a link to the Youtube video and so I zipped over to my sent box and opened the link. It didn’t help right away,since the title did not display his name, but in the comment fields it said “Way to go, _______ ______!” It was the actors name. I then googled the name in images and came up with dozens of shots of this man who was even more scarily beautiful in his youth. Whew. All in all, it took like 2 minutes to follow that trail, if that. BI(before internet), I would have futzed through my whole day mumbling to myself until my brain unearthed the name which would have occurred at about 2am and then it would be too late to show my daughter what I imagined a special looked like and I would have forgotten the name by sun up.
Can you guess who my special was? Family members who have seen this video with me recently are of course exempt. Links appreciated even more than names.That’d give other people a chance. Is it that obvious already who it is?
Arts and crafts day was so cool. First we did cool crafts like boxes and fake ships and we drew things like portraits and shapes. Then we went to history club and they devoted the whole time to arts and crafts day. We melted crayons and made ATCs and we had a great time doing x-mas decorations. Then we went home and did last minute finishing touches then gave away all of our crafts. We should do arts and crafts day again. Sadly, I didn’t make sock monkeys.
(Some of the spoils of arts and crafts day)
Overall, I’d say arts and crafts day was a blast and a half. We got off to a slow start, having a few errands to do before the big snow storm of 2006. At one point on the road Anoif cracked me up because I mumbled “What on earth are all of these people doing out on the road on a Thursday morning?” and she piped right back “Probably out getting art supplies.”
We returned home and had a few solid hours of popsicle sticks structures, friendship bracelets and artist trading card production. Then we went to history club, which was entirely dedicated to A&C day this week, and one of the moms generously unleashed her basement full of craft supplies on the kids. They made gift boxes, melted crayon art, x-mas ornaments, and gifts for family and friends. Everyone had a great time and seemed very content to bop around and create. I myself got sucked in to making things of course. When Dad came home he did some sketching with Anoif and they talked about art techniques quite a bit. I received a lovely drawing of a ship from my son and 2 jewelry boxes from my daughter.
I hope we do this again next year. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who crafted. If you participated please blog about it or send pics here for us to share.
So far I got the fake voting ballot but she didn’t say who I voted for. I voted for Gwen Stefani as commissioner of music, Oprah Winfrey as secretary of talk, Tom Cruise for mayor, Kimzyn as county treasurer, Walt Disney as commissioner of art etc but it was fun. I think it was a good way to learn how to vote. Next time you vote, ask for a fake voting ballot and give it to your kid and teach them a lesson on how to vote. If you are a kid, ask for one anyway it’s fun.
It has been awhile since we bonded blog-style, Anoif. I know, you are too busy to check your email even. But I remember you wanted to blog about voting, so I’ll start.
Yup, I voted. The day I went off to vote, I remembered that maybe kids wanted to hear a bit about it, so I read the kids a short biography about Susan B. Anthony. You know the lady on our dollar coin. Not Sacajawea, the other one. She was a crusader for women’s rights and a suffragette. That turned out to be interesting and recently at history club we all decided to do a biography study to share and reading about Susan B. led Anoif to another person she is interested in Elizabth Cady Stanton, who I think will be her subject of the study.
I decided to take my camera with me to the poll, because I’d heard about a project where people were doing that just in case their vote got “erased” by them newfangled computers. Of course, our creaky old Knights of Columbus polling place did not have newfangled anything, but I was surprised to hear that cameras were allowed. I guess in my mind, voting is so fraught with secrecy. For some unknown reason my mom made a big deal about voting being not just a right but a private thing when I was a kid. To this day, I hesitate to share any voting thoughts with my closest family, and the idea of taking a photo while there seemed absolutely clandestine. So I tried it. It must have freaked out the election judges too, because as I was snapping away pictures of my ballot, one came running over to me and politely offered up this really cool “sample” ballot so I wouldn’t need to try to keep my real one forever in the form of a picture. I thanked her and took it, mumbling something about the picture being for my blog, which greatly amused Anoif. The sample ballot looked mostly like a giant parking ticket, being orange. But what it said was more amusing than a $50 fine. Basically, a person can practice filling out the highly complex form (connecting 2 sides of an arrow) by voting for people like Carl Sandburg, Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King for Governor. Of course, Anoif felt obliged to vote on the sample form, thus completing our in depth study of the voting process.
It has been rather tricky to get Anoif’s grubby little hands off the book so far, so I haven’t quite finished it yet. I remember when she first got hooked on the SOUE (just because) books. She couldn’t read all that well yet, so I read them aloud at bedtime. I loved the cadence to Lemony’s writing. The cynicism and humor really spoke to me. Every American movie that ends sickly sweet with happy tied up conclusions makes me long for another dose of the Baudelaires. Or at least a French movie that ends mid-sentence so you have no clue what the main character decided to do about that huge conflict.
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Being a Magnetic Fields fan, I soon discovered that Lemony Snicket and the band are connected via accordian. So, I was delighted that we got a sampling of the CD by the Gothic Archies (otherwise known as Magnetic Fields) when purchasing the book the 13th. What I’m trying to say is, it is a rare thing when one’s musical tastes and literary tastes collide and I am very happy for that. Which is why I so wish we could go to this sold out very close to us appearance which can only end badly.
P.S. Anoif, I like how you and your bro were trying to look tragic for that picture. Remember how everyone kept calling him Harry Potter? They must have just thought you were a Victorian child. Then the movie came out and changed the way they looked in the books anyway.
(This is me and my brother dressed up like the Baudelaires a few Halloweens ago)
Are you in the dark about being in the dark? Well this is a fantastically dark book. Peal the pages away like a onion and keep reading. A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of books that is about three kids unfortunate happenings. It’s so good just don’t read it to your 2 year old daughter. But read them in order, you won’t get it if you read The End first. If you already read the book then comment about what you think about it.
Good idea. I’m all for arts and crafts day. Any excuse to stay in my pajamas with construction paper and scissors and glue and pens all around me. I’d like to try sock monkeys as well. I think it’d be a nice way to make holiday gifts too. So, my question for you Anoif is…do you want this to be a low-key at home thing, or do you want to make it a homeschooling group shindig? Either way sounds cool to me but if it is a group thing we should look in to finding a cool space to do it at and spread the word about it. Let me know. If we do it at home, we probably could invite one or two people over in the afternoon.
I made up arts and crafts day so more people would do crafts. Arts and crafts day is a day that you are supposed to do all the arts and crafts you can do in one day. Then you think of which craft you should give which person. The next time you see that person you give it too the person you thought of. Arts and crafts day is on November the 30. Good craft ideas for arts and craft day.
1 Draw a picture of your friend
2 Use a shoe box to make a doll house
3 Collage
4 sock monkeys
Etc… please spread the word by blogs by phone or by mouth.