New Animation Fare with the Kids

I was once again exploring the library-sponsored streaming service Kanopy (I noticed that several Wiseman documentaries are there) and found some animated movies to watch with the kids.

I'm never really sure how it will all go, kids being silly and all. When we first let Cass watch Aquaman he wasn't interested in the least. He'd rather watch Moana. When I put on Into the Spider-Verse for the first time, he threw a fit, wanting to watch Aquaman. So it goes.

But as time has marched on and his maturity level has increased, he was interested in watching both movies I'd suggested. They were on different days, and both times he was all excitement, "Yeah, dad, let's watch that!" I'm not sure if it's because he didn't want me to put on basketball, or if he was curious about the random animated gems I might find on my dad-tastic streamer...or both...but the results were the same.

The first of the two came out in 2009, was a joint Irish-French-Belgian production called T"he Secret of Kells:"

It's a loose retelling of the making of the Book of Kells, an illuminated text from medieval Ireland. The animation is almost like if Samurai Jack or Dexter's Laboratory was done with the kind of care and precision that Pinocchio was made with. Brendan is the main character, a young orphan boy living in a walled city in Ireland in the age of Viking invasions.

On one of his secret excursions beyond the walls he befriends a magical being, one form of which is the little girl below in white, showing Brendan the ancient oak tree that yields green-pigment-acorns that he needs for the book he's helping create:

The fact that it's a book that motivates the plot is something we appreciated in our house, as it's a very book-heavy household. It was also interesting to me to watch Cass react to Vikings as the antagonists. He's been doing deep dives into the histories of ancient horde-types (Vikings, Spartans, Visigoths, Conquistadors, Samurai...I know they're not all horde-types...) and he'd been fascinated by Vikings for a minute. To see them as the bad guys, as monsters and bringers of death, nightmares come to life...I watched him try to reckon with his own exalted fascination in comparison to the views of the conquered.

We all liked this movie very much. Some of the climactic action sequences were a bit scary for the four-year-old, but overall it was beautiful and fun. And Irish. And about a book...but the religiosity takes a bit of a back seat, I suppose, for as much as a movie about the making of a uniquely Irish Christ-y book could be.

The second animated film came out in 2012, but the English dubbing was released in 2013. It's based on a series of Belgian books and was produced in France, "Ernest and Celestine:"

That poster is a little dramatic. In the world of Ernest and Celestine the surface dwelling folks are bears, and they're mostly terrified of mice (in "you can't ever get rid of mice" and "they eat through everything" kinds of ways). The bears are like people. In the underground exists a complex society of rodents, mostly mice and rats, and the most important job is the dentist, because you only live as long as your incisors exist. They are taught early and often the perils of being in proximity to bears.

The film is about two misfits who are abandoned and then vilified by their respective worlds, and who then find a kind of platonic love for each other. It's about friendship and juxtaposition, and not necessarily about the two worlds becoming one world.

Every frame is a watercolor feast for the eyes:

The dream sequences are both fantastic, and both end with each friend telling the other, "I'm not your nightmare." Near the end, as the bears have Celestine, the Hobbit-sized mouse under arrest and on trial (she won't divulge info on Ernest), and the rodents have Ernest, a giant (to them) grizzly bear under arrest and on trial (he won't divulge info on Celestine), the juxtaposition angle comes full circle.

It's original, wonderful, and is about the power of friendship.

Both of these animated movies were pleasant surprises and I'd recommend them for families and/or animation heads.

From the "Life is Hard" Files

Life can be hard. For a variety of reasons, things don't go the way people want. Combining bad luck and circumstances with a propensity for bad decision-making can yield terrible, life altering results. Sometimes bad decision-making doesn't need to be part of the equation, sometimes all you need is bad luck mixed with circumstances and a lack of close-knit, family-style support.

In this country, the results seem to increasingly yield:

The shanty-towns have increased in the last few years. I see these on my drive to work. Occasionally, but not so recently, during the drive home police will be working to wipe them away, to move people on and toss the belongings of these unhoused folks.

In some "neighborhoods," the people have started to grab wooden pallets and other solid structures to add a sense of permanence that could prove fleeting in the end:

Years ago I planned on a series of posts, or just a single long post, I was going to title "Under the Bridge." I may have written about it in the ensuing years. My idea was to hang out in the tent cities that were situated under the freeway overpasses and interchanges near the LA river in Long Beach.

Then I broke my femur and by the time I was healed, those communities had been dealt with by the authorities, having been wiped away from their unmoored moorings.

Tents do make up many of these dwellings in many of these communities, but often tarps pulled over rectangular solidness produces the same effect:

Civic pride can exist in such an environment, as evidenced by a lady sweeping the entrance area to her spot:

I'm always curious about how long these areas will remain set up. The last time I saw the fuzz taking apart one of them there were multiple groups of authorities: police, dumpster trucks, obvious social workers, and healthcare workers. The number of people they were displacing was maybe a dozen. The tent city was on a major thoroughfare, and it seemed like once they set up shop a few days later around a corner, off the major street, they were mostly left alone. That specific community is seen in both the first picture here and the last, a developed tent-city off a major road, down a side street.

What we can do for these, and the very, very many communities just like them all over American metropolises, remains to be seen. Well, that's not true, right? We know what works and what we can do (put them into houses). LA Mayor Karen Bass is still fighting with working these solutions out.

While we basically know what works, the real question is: Will we ever have the stomach to actually do what works? Are we as "America" really as helpful and altruistic as we tell ourselves we are?

Much evidence points towards NO.

Anyway, I still want to go take a walk in these communities and have a chat with the people who are making the spots home. Ask them their stories. Listen to them. Because who else does? Who unconnected to the social safety net system or public radio has dealings with unhoused Angelinos?

I just want some perspective...

More Map Shenanigans

I'm trying to find the best way to show---or maybe the best way to represent on this laptop---the random and just-learned fact that Eureka, CA and NYC are on basically the same latitude line, and both are a few degrees south of Rome.

Anyway, I read somewhere that Atlanta is closer to Chicago than it is to Miami. I checked it out, and I guess if you go with the northwestern-most suburbs of Atlanta, they'll be closer to the southern-most regions of Chicago than they would be to Miami, so there's truth in that. But really, Atlanta is a good midpoint between Miami and Chicago.

Then I heard that El Paso, TX is closer to San Diego than to Houston. Again, it's close, but mostly true, and then we can see El Paso as the halfway point between SD and Houston:

Then I started looking at the map closer. I'd heard another one of these rando facts that Bristol, TN is closer to Canada than to Memphis. As the crow flies sure, but not by car. Check it out, though, by car, since Tennessee is a very long state, Bristol is basically the midpoint between Memphis and Philly:

I first went with The Wire's own Baltimore, but it was just a little too close. DC might have been perfect.

Then I sat back, zoomed out, and refocused on St. Louis, the old Gateway to the West. Turns out its closer to Minneapolis than to Dallas, but again only barely, making it a good midpoint between Dallas and Minneapolis:

What about St. Loo and the other direction, I thought. Well, how about Albuquerque and Detroit? St. Louis is essentially the midpoint between the American Southwest and the Rust Belt.

Map shenanigans to make me da proud...

To Texas and Back for Terry

Seems like I've done this before. Only that time Corrie and I drove, and this time I flew alone. It wasn't always going to be me flying all by me onesie. We tried to figure out the best times to make the drive---with the kids and the foster kittens but probably not Picasso---and then tried to wrap our head around having Cass and me fly back so we could get top school and work respectively. 

In the end, we went in a different direction.

One of Corrie's family's close friends, a young man who was raised in part by Ron and Carol, a young man whom Corrie calls brother and whom I've written about before, lost his mother very recently. He asked me to be a pall bearer and I accepted, and it was in that moment that I knew I had to go, to at least represent the entire Long Beach contingent.

It turns out that it has been fifteen (15!) years since I traveled alone. Cass wasn't even born yet. The flight there was nice and easy, the flight home was equally peaceful, and cruising around airports without children in tow was interesting, if a little weird. Highlighting how much I'm around the kids: they both sobbed themselves to sleep once they learned I would be gone for a few days. That made me feel good, like I'm doing something right.

I stayed at Joey's, as did Carol, Peter, Mary and her twin daughters. For a few days, after in-town-living Stephanie came by and dropped off her son, Miles (six-months older than the twins), it was me and Carol and the kids, with Pete trying to catch up on sleep. Corrie used to talk about being an Auntie was great---you get to have fun with the kids, then give them back. This was the first time this ever happened for me. It's not like the kids are scared of me in the other moments when we've been chilling, but that there have always been other people around that they're more familiar with. Not this time! They got fun Uncle Pat time, and I got to play with kids, bond, and then hand them off.

Miles

At these ages (2 and 2.5 years old), getting them to giggle and chase after me is easy and fun.

Brooklyn

That's one of the main memories of this trip: getting to play cool Uncle Pat. I got to meet Chris's girlfriend, Beth, and she's great, and got to support Chris and the rest of his family. I got to see Terry, his mother, at peace at the viewing. I got to provide support to the family through humor, cooking, and love...?

I didn't get any pictures with Addison, but she did enjoy being thrown high in the air. 

The air in Austin, or technically Pflugerville, was heavy with humidity, moist and hot. It was frankly miserable. The kind of air that made you squint and grimace even when it was dark out. But the trip was so quick, and now, a few days after returning, it has receded into the memory banks and is close to resembling a dream.

Made the trip because of a death; celebrated a life lived and the youth of the future. It was special.