Year in Review, 2023

Now we have two kids, BUT none in diapers. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN SEVEN YEARS, WE'RE NOT DEALING WITH DIAPERS. If that's not the best summary for the year, I'm not sure what is.

Here's some stuff I wrote this year:

1. Playing Santa
   
2. Mike's Birthday at Gardena Cinema
   
3. Mom's Letters
   
4. My New Car (In the running, Best of the Year)
5. The Cabin Trip
   
6. The Farm Trip
   
7. Post 1500
   
8. Rules of the Kitchen
   
9. Car Dies on the Bridge (In the running, Best of the Year)

I tried to clear some of the stuff out of my drafts folder, with some of them being pretty cool, or rambling messes (like plenty of other things here):

1. Rumination on Bar Trips and Having Kids
   
2. Rambling Shoe Piece
   

Happy 2023! Happy 2024! 

Flying on Christmas Eve, Ten Years Apart

It was Christmas Eve. Corrie and I were in Santa Monica, eating Auntie Peg's crab feast for dinner. Afterwards, we went to LAX and caught a plane. We flew through the night, landing a dozen-plus hours later, now in the morning on the 26th, in Taipei, having flown over the International Dateline and timewarping. Pretty cool.

It was Christmas Eve. Corrie and I were in Clarendon, with our two kids, driving to Amarillo. We caught a flight to DFW, and then connected to LAX. In the darkness on Christmas Eve, we drove directly from LAX to Auntie Peg's for the crab feast dinner.

The first paragraph was from 2013, ten years ago. Flying from LAX to Asia for our Angkor Wat adventure, we left on Christmas Eve. The second paragraph is from THIS year, 2023. Flying to LAX from the Farm, we arrived on Christmas Eve.

Before, we had the itch, traveling from this continent to Asia. Now we have two kids, still have the itch, but it manifests differently. I realized the juxtaposition the other day...thought I'd mention it here.

Bizarre Releases from Bad Idea Comics

Bad Idea comics produces very few titles. They have been on a kick for Kickstarter items lately, but as a comic producer, their comics are all very off-kilter. Their latest releases, only two since this summer, came out within a few weeks of each other in November, and I captured a picture of the pair just to show off the weirdness:

In the first, "Inebrio Horsefeathers," Inebrio is a platypus (I think, but it isn't ever mentioned) and a mate on a sailing vessel. In order to get rid of some unwanted kraken advancements, he concocts a beverage of rum and turpentine. It eventually ends up in his stomach, which is where the cover image comes from. (The name is based on Horatio Hornblower, if you couldn't figure that out.)

In the second, "The Destroyer," one of Oppenheimer's crewmen in NM has a bit of an accident, gets all weirdly powerful, and, er, visits the center of a atomic explosion.

I wanted to post these two pictures together because they highlight two wildly bonkers stories, totally disparate styles, and fantastic covers.

Our Big-Ass Tree!

The story so far:

2022

2020

2016

Those are links to past posts about our Decemberween tree shenanigans.

Across those links, I may have described about how I grew up in a fake-tree household. We would get wreaths for the smell, but the tree itself was plastic. At first, anyway, as eventually we got a very nice fake tree, the kind that photograph well.

One year we got a real tree, a small, scrawny tree, that today is called a "Charlie Brown Tree" and is both fashionable and expensive. That year we got it because we were leaving town (I think) and wouldn't be around for so long. But most years it was not real. (The scrawny tree year may have been the year in between our two fake trees.)

The first real tree I was a part of while I lived on "my own" (with Corrie instead of the fellas) was when Corrie and I bought a real tree for Tux to wreck. We thought it would be cool for him to destroy it, or to pull it down and smash ur ornaments. Turns out he was terrified of it.

We started getting real trees (again?) when Cass was born. The 2016 link above talks about the bushy-ness, the wide girth, if not having the height of a grand tree.

This year we may have purchased the largest tree we've ever had. The 2022 link above has pictures of both 2022 and 2021, and I was thinking of mocking something like that up here. But check it out, nearly 10 feet with the stand:

I love our big-ass tree!

Who's that kissing Santa?

Both of our kids went to the same daycare, and while it was far across town, it was homey and they did a lot of domestic stuff that we didn't have to do or never would do. Like Easter Egg hunts. We don't celebrate Easter, but to have a egg hunt for kids? That's pretty cool, I guess. Kid experiences make good memories.

Trick or Treating is another thing. We live in a downtown area which makes Trick or Treating challenging under normal circumstances, and the fact that jobs and such make it even more of a nuisance lead us to generally skip the event itself. Plus, our kids just don't really know, but they're getting to the age where they DO know, the Boy at least knows that we're kinda sheisty about it.

Santa visits are another thing. We've never "gone to see Santa," like at a mall or...where else do these Santas do these photo ops? The daycare hosts a Christmas Party and has Santa come in and hand out gifts for all the kids and their siblings who are in attendance. This has been our Santa excursions.

Every year someone else gets to be Santa. Like earlier, when they asked Corrie to be the Easter Bunny, they asked someone else to be Santa, someone who's daughter will age out of their establishment next year, someone who was already a bespectacled, hairy, and jovial dude:

When it was Cass's turn to get his gift, near the end of the bag searches---a fairly long time in which he spent staring at me quizzically---he approached Santa and said, "You remind me of my dad."

"Woh, ho, ho, why do you think that might be, little dude?" I asked in the same cartoony baritone I'd been using the whole time. I enjoyed the moment, and as he left after collecting his new Slinky he leaned in close and said, "Thanks for the Slinky, dad."

One of the gifts said "Mrs. Claus." When I pulled out the box and called out for Mrs. Claus, Corrie came bouncing over, said "Thank you, Santa, darling," and gave me a kiss. 

In the picture above, Camille, our daughter, is the little girl in the blue-topped dress and blond hair in a bun, mystified as to why mom's kissing Santa. She never seemed to realize the gig. She never let on, at least.

For our last daycare Christmas party, it was pretty special and cool.

Thinking About Cartoon Ducks

Because, why not?

I was talking with my kids about some of the side characters in cartoon shows. I'm of an age that means I grew up with both Heathcliff and Garfield television shows. I'm not here to dig into that (yet, anyway), but...do you remember that both the Heathcliff and Garfield and Friends shows had B-stories, full of other characters that had their own little universes that were essentially separate from their titular characters?

Really, this conversation started because of Wade, a cartoon duck in the B-story farm-living characters from Garfield and Friends. These stories were based on Jim Davis's US Acres comic strip, in which Orson, a pig, is the lead character, and his world is rounded out with Roy, a loud mouthed rooster; Wade, a cowardly duck; and Booker and Sheldon, twin chick siblings with Sheldon never exiting his egg.

On the weekends we let our kids get up early, get breakfast themselves (or forage for snacks, as it turns into sometimes), and then watch cartoons. Or movies of their own choice. Occasionally I come out and force them to watch other stuff, and here is where Pluto comes in. Pluto is essentially broadcast television; it is a free app on our TV that streams a ton of channels, and they have commercials (remember when to go get more food? use the can?). But the channels are usually just for shows. We had a good time a few months ago with the I Love Lucy channel, and the Bob Ross channel. Even spent a few minutes with the Unsolved Mysteries channel. But on weekend mornings, if the kids end up on Pluto, it'll be on the Garfield and Friends channel.

So that's why they ever saw US Acres and Wade, and it was because of Wade that Cass ever asked about cartoon ducks.

We chatted about Wade, about how he was definitely not better than Donald Duck. Donald's MO of flying off the handle with rage, while funny, may not the best way to deal with his emotions; but it may still be preferable to the cowardly disposition of Wade. Cass then asked me who my favorite cartoon duck was. 

I answered quickly: eh, Donald. But it got me thinking. While my quick reaction was Donald, how does the chaotic-neutral Daffy fit in? I love the chaos. How about Launchpad McQuack? Or Darkwing Duck? Or Uncle Scrooge?

I decided to examine a few different ducks that I enjoyed from when I was my kid's age, but in order to not have the discourse be about mainly Duck Tales, I decided to limit it to one duck per company...universe...er, schema? So, no Launchpad or Darkwing, because Donald is the Disney choice. No Plucky Duck from Tiny Toons, even though Daffy is the obvious choice. Also: I never watched Baby Huey, so they're not here either.

I included Wade from US Acres, but otherwise here is the quartet, each representing the next step in the development of my sense of humor and my maturity as a dude:

When I answered so quickly about Donald as my favorite animated duck, it was because Donald could be my favorite animated character, full stop. As a kid I liked to make categories in my imagination, and often pitted animation characters against one another...maybe animation houses against one another.

The three main studios for me in my head were, in descending order (for me personally) 1) Disney; 2) Warner Bros.; 3) Hannah-Barbara. Disney had Mickey, Donald, and Goofy; Warners had Bugs, Daffy and Porky; Hanna-Barbera had Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and Snagglepuss. 

While the kid-me saw the quality of the animation dipping from Disney-->WB-->HB, that's not exactly fair to what was happening. The Disney shorts that I grew up with, like the early WB shorts, were all produced for cinema houses. The Hanna-Barbera studios were making both shorts later and for television as well as popular primetime television shows: Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, and the Jetsons. The aim had changed. Also, I'm ignoring Tex Avery and Fleischer's Superman shorts. Droopy Dog and Betty Boop were wildly popular, and Tom and Jerry helped frame the vocabulary for cartoon violence, and they dated back to the studio era.

Um...derailed myself there. Donald vs Daffy for me was about primacy and content. I was already predisposed to Donald, but his rage filled antics made me laugh so naturally. The Daffy I grew up with was more of the petulant, jealous-of-Bugs version, than the unbridled id version where he seemed to exist in the early years. Unbridled id is a classic state of being for an animated character, and I think the scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit between Donald and Daffy is the perfect juxtaposition: unbridled rage vs unbridled id. It's only now, as an adult, that I realize that its disappointing I didn't grow up with the chaotic version of Daffy, rather the jealous foil for Bugs.

When my brother and I watched Garfield, I liked the US Acres scenes, but not as much as the Garfield scenes. I liked Orson and Roy, and Wade filled in the cracks by being the coward/perpetually terrified character. There's a place in group dynamics for the coward---think Shaggy and Scooby---because they often add to either the problem solving element of the group, or for the hilarity factor. I'm not sure I remember what Wade offered to the group in US Acres. The ongoing joke of his inner-tube's duck-head always matching his own expression and direction was amusing.

The last duck in that quartet represents the later years of my childhood, the cynical adult themed Duckman. Based on a comic book from 1990, Duckman aired on the USA Network from '94 to '97. Voiced by and aggrieved Jason Alexander, the titular character was a private investigator in a world where animals and people coexist. His assistant is Cornfed, a pig who sounds very similar to Jack Webb from Dragnet. 

Frank Zappa did the music, Dweezil voiced one of Duckman's kids, his status as a widower adds a dimension that is usually absent in animation. But, this was a primetime animated program aimed at adults. I enjoyed it as my sense of humor matured. I haven't yet shown more than an occasional clip to Cass.

My kids love Donald, and Cass has seen some of the old Daffy shorts, but it's been a while I'm sure. I think they enjoy US Acres, but the impact of Wade, beyond resembling Shaggy, remains a mystery. 

Sometimes all I want is to make pictures of disparate but connected things...

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