Birthday Party Upgrading

Birthday parties for kids these days range from "little get-together at the house" to "themed excursion at the park with actors showing up to add to theme idea" to "holy hell, what are we supposed to do next?"

Unfortunately, Cass's birthday this year was canceled due to the invasion of the pandemic into our house. But we had planned a baseball-themed day at the park, complete with old baseball card giveaways (thanks to thousands of worthless cards in my possession).

The ante was jus upped again for us parents. 

Cass was invited to a birthday party at a John's Incredible Pizza, specifically the Anaheim location (which is technically Buena Park).

A 'John's Incredible Pizza' is an enormous buffet/arcade/ride-having establishment, much like a Chuck E. Cheese, only this one seemed like a bigger deal. The establishment in Anaheim took over the entire bottom floor of a dying mall. It had rooms to eat and sing songs in; it had a ton of games and ticket-yielding activities as well as the necessary prizes to buy with the tickets; it had a pizza/pasta/salad bar/dessert buffet; and it even sold beer and had a spot to put eyes on sports while you drank that beer.

This depth and distance involved here can be seen in some of these pictures. I'm not sure what the costs were, since each kid was given a card with a magnetic strip with $15 worth of gaming purchases as well as  everyone having access to the buffet.

Corrie rode the ride with Cass and his buddy, but only Cass is visible below in the green shirt:

I tried to take a picture where you could see the mall proper (behind the glass, able to look longingly at the fun being had) above the John's Incredible zone below:

Our engagement was quite early in the day, starting at 10 am. By the time we were leaving, close to 2 pm, the place was a total zoo. The buffet is apparently quite popular.

It was a good time, and while we may not ever go here for the birthday experience, it's nice to have another arrow in the quiver for possibilities.

Notes on Some Paintings

My favorite app on my phone currently is called Daily Art. As the name states, the app delivers a work of art---usually paintings, but occasionally a sculpture, craft, piece of jewelry, or former ceremonial object---with a brief story about either the work or the artist or both.

Most days I look at the piece and exclaim my usual response: "WHOA!", but I am both easily impressed (with art) and have new, more practical, considerations when I approach a new work. Over the last few years of enjoying this app, my understanding of art criticism and art appreciation has grown.

Anyway, sometimes when I see the painting I find myself dumbstruck. Sometimes I find the work so compelling that I struggle to put it into words. Corrie has the same app, and sometimes one of us will say, "Oh, hey, did you see..." and the other usually responds, "Oh my goodness, yes..." It's corny, but so are we.

Sure, art is subjective, but maybe you'll be gripped like I was with some of the paintings I'm sharing today. I'd like to write more about each of them, but I've said that phrase so many times over the years ("I'll come back and write more about these (insert multiple objects of the same media here) later/soon") that...let's just be optimistic.

But JUST LOOK AT THIS:

This is titled "Afterglow" and is a view of New York painted by Swedish painter Jonas Lie. This was one of the more recent "Didja see..." talks between Corrie and me, and likely it speaks to us in ways it may not speak to everyone. The misty glow of lower Manhattan...my skin can feel the air, and it can can do that for all of the possible seasons, since to me this is an indeterminate time of year. Foggy summer evening after a rain? Icy confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers with building steam filing the low sky? It's all good for me...

This next one got me right away, but then also creeped and burrowed itself into my consciousness:

This is called "In the Northland" and was painted by Canadian national treasure Tom Thomson. The color balance, the composition, the difference between how it looks from a distance to what it looks like at the brushstroke level...the naturalistic scene exudes a crisp autumn whiff of beech leaf and lake air. I can't really explain the hold it has on me.

Not everything that really gets me is a play on Impressionism or a natural landscape. Check out the following attempt to induce anxiety:

This is titled "Vertigo" and was painted by Belgian graphic designer and painter Leon Spilliaert. This isn't a horror painting, but it definitely isn't designed to make you calm down. Spilliaert played with this motif repeatedly, the stark alternating color blocks, or blacks and whites, to great effect, speaking to the shared horror that the new modern world was bringing to the masses.

As I spend the occasional block of time trying to make things on canvas out of lifeless goop, I'm building my perspective on works like these; not just the subject matter interests me, but the way in which the composition was settled upon and how the execution was performed are equally important.

Out with the Boys

I have a few drinking buddies. As a parent, the times when I "go out" with the boys, or go out drinking are, eh, few and far between. Date nights for me and Corrie are limited to a few times a year. She goes out with some of her friends more often than I do, but those tend to be lunches and brunches, with the occasional night thrown in.

I joined my boys more often before Cass was born, but whatever. They still call occasionally, and I try to join them for those times. When I do, the realities set in that I often hear but ignore in practice: parents need some adult-only time.

This is always easier said than done. If Corrie and I want to go out ("date-night") babysitters are expensive, busy, hard to find or are stopped by some other situation. Making time for ourselves (on our own) and our pals is dependent on their time as much as our own energy level.

Anyway, I went out with the boys this past weekend, and we each shared our visions for what our lives were like: me, dad of two young kids, gawking at the fact people are out after dark; and my buddies, childless yet weighed down by life and ambitions nonetheless, trying to place themselves in positions of making parental decisions in their imagination.

It was obvious they enjoyed their relative freedoms, their own times to themselves. I'm hoping it was obvious that I enjoy my kids. 

It got me thinking...did these boys ever want kids, beyond their thought experiments while we talked? I know specifically one did, but circumstances conspired against it. When the alternative is that you have relative freedom and sufficient income, no one can be too upset, right?

And I thought about myself, too. Do I miss the long nights at the bars, carousing around, the smoky alleys, the psilocybin-fueled discussions with crashing waves at the beach?

I can't say that I do, entirely, miss it. That life? No. Getting some quiet moments to drink a cup of coffee and read a sports page? Is that such an impossible thing to accomplish? 

I definitely want a better balance. Being an adult out of my house away from my wife and kids but with other adults is something I want more than once a year. I'd like to be out with Corrie---just the two of us---more than four times a year. Making these things happen has been harder for me than I would have expected.

Anyway, I'll always want to go out with the boys when they call, and sometimes I will join them. And maybe one day I'll even arrange it myself.

Costume Season

After last year, I knew Halloween would take more effort. Last year I took Cass to get a costume in the second half of October. The line for the costume store came out the door and wrapped around the corner of its stripmall location. In the same vicinity was a Target, and its costume aisle was thrashed.

We came away with a nice Black Panther outfit. Cass looked rad, but I learned that my lagging won't be cutting it moving forward.

Me being anxious about how much effort I would need to expel expressly ignored the fact that my kid is a human---big for his age, sure---but a tiny human who has ideas and feelings about things. He had an idea he wanted to do for Halloween (wait, I don't need to make a decision? Sweet...), it required minimal effort for me (but plenty for Corrie--d'oh!), and was a group plan.

We were the Scooby-Doo mystery solving team:

Corrie was Daphne, Camille was Velma, I was Fred and Cass was Shaggy. As beautiful as my kids are, Corrie and I rocked the look best. At work, on Day 3 of wearing the Fred costume, I chose a different blue shirt, as this one looked nearly black.

Anyway, at work, was when I saw too ladies dressed as Velma and Daphne, I joined them for pictures. Later on, I saw another pair of ladies dressed as Shaggy and Scooby. I gathered all four of the ladies together, joined them for pictures, and had all of us entered into the costume contest at work.

Which we won. It was the first time I've ever been a winner of a costume contest, team, individual or whatever, so it felt cool. We may have cheated the system, seeing as how we won the group category even though I hadn't coordinated with either pair of ladies and neither pair knew each other.

Winning was cool, though!