Devil’s Gate:

Ben getting set to pull Miles in the handcart. This didn’t last long; Miles found the cart’s instability rather disconcerting.

They thought it was pretty cool to be pushing/pulling a handcart, though I wasn’t sure what an empty handcart would teach them about the travails of their ancestors.

Then they hit some deep gravel and it was suddenly not very much fun.

We tried pulling the twins, but they were fascinated with the spokes going around and around. Asher tried to grab them, so we thought better of it.

In the end – as usual – Dad wound up pulling the load.

After a very long stay with family, we left early in the morning, stopped at Martin’s Cove, Wyoming, and made it to the Black Hills of South Dakota before nightfall. From there it was a B-line through South Dakota and Minnesota – stopping at a hotel in La Crosse, Wisconsin. We wanted to stop and have breakfast with Margaret, who’s a doc student in Madison, but we had to hurry to meet Lorin’s family at the Lego Discovery Center in Chicago. We slept – again – in Elkhart, Indiana, and lollygagged it back to New York the next day.

Don’t worry, I have blog posts for each of our stops, but here are some random shots and one good story.

Brooke found new ways to keep the twins entertained. Here she’s blowing bubbles.

Our van at the rest stop outside of Blue Earth, Minnesota.

This was the closest we got to seeing Margaret.

Our view of the Second City.

We were stuck in traffic in Chicago when Ben announced that he needed to go potty. We tossed him an empty Powerade bottle. He thought we were joking at first, but as his condition became more urgent, he decided to give it a try. Miles slept through the whole thing.

At the next rest stop – the Knute Rockne Plaza in Rolling Prairie, Indiana – we made Ben throw out the bottle. Of course, Miles was curious, so Ben told him the whole story. You could see the astonishment in Miles’ eyes: You can do that? So, as I carried Miles through the travel plaza’s food court to the restrooms, he screamed,

I don’t wanna’ go to the baffroom! I wanna’ pee in a bottle! I wanna’ pee in a bottle!

It was one of those parenting moments when you feel every eye locked on you, and you just don’t care.

If anyone ever asks me what kind of movie I enjoy, I’m going to tell them Schultze Gets the Blues. This is not a film you can understand with your mind turned off; it’s the very antithesis of American popular cinema. The story is simple and lacks any type of suspense or action, but it is told in a manner that rewards viewers whose attention spans are adequate to appreciate such beauty.

Movies like this are not like going to the multiplex for a fun night out. They’re more like strolling a large art museum: You find things you already knew, things you never thought of, and, somewhere in the middle, you add your experience to create new interpretations.

Brooke fell asleep about forty-five minutes in and I admit I looked at the clock once or twice, but that was because it was late, not because I was bored.

PS – If you watch it on DVD, make sure it’s the widescreen version because the photographer used the entire canvas to paint his story.

Summer officially ends for me tomorrow, but I haven’t even posted everything from our trip. here are some random shots of fun stuff.

The local 5K came down our road this morning.We had ample warning; the organizers stuffed a flier in our mailbox last week warning us and asking us to be courteous and cautious around the runners. Luckily (or not), the flier also said that the runners would vote on the most supportive neighborhood…

Yeah, you know Brooke. She was up with Miles at the crack of dawn writing “ALLEZ!” in sidewalk chalk and digging our cowbells out of storage.

My kids loved the first Night at the Museum, which we did see in the theater (a rarity for us, I know). We thought about seeing the second one in the theater, but it came out when we were busy with the twins. Having seen finally seen the movie, I’m glad we didn’t bother.

I just don’t get it. The first and second films shared the same writers and directors and most of the cast, yet the two could hardly be more different. The first was an interesting story supported by good actors in great parts. The second was a series of shtick scenes – hardly tied to any coherent plot – and cameos by Office comedians. I counted five; I expected Dwigtht Schrute to appear at any moment.

We watched this at an outdoor event for our town – which was really cool – but I’m glad we didn’t pay to see this movie.

1. Who directed The Empire Strikes Back?
   1. George Lucas
   2. Stephen Spielberg
   3. Richard Marquand
   4. Irvin Kershner
       
       
2. Who wrote the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back?
   1. George Lucas
   2. Leigh Brackett & Lawrence Kasdan
   3. Mark Hamill
   4. Peter Mayhew
       
       
3. Who produced The Empire Strikes Back?
   1. George Lucas
   2. Gary Kurtz
   3. David Prowse
   4. Anthony Daniel
       
       
4. One of the most memorable lines in The Empire Strikes Back was the “I love you,” “I know,” exchange between Leia and Han. Who wrote those lines?
   1. George Lucas
   2. Carrie Fisher
   3. Harrison Ford
   4. Frank Oz
       
       

If you answered “A” to any of these questions, you had too much of the prequel kool-aid.

I liked Star Wars as a kid, and I was really excited (though, not dress-like-a-character excited) when the prequels were announced. The Phantom Menace – I can say without a doubt – was the beginning of the end of my appreciation for popular cinema. Though I enjoyed it at the time, it got me thinking – re-evaluating – whether the originals had been equally as bad.

I saw Attack of the Clones once – I took my nine-year-old nephew – and that was it for me. Since 2002 I hadn’t watched any Star Wars movies and I steered my kids away from them as well. This didn’t stop Ben and Miles from becoming familiar with the series – especially through friends and Legos sets.

Still, when my dad screened the original Star Wars in his home theater for the kids, Ben was surprised to find that it was not a cartoon. I didn’t watch it with them, but I did watch The Empire Strikes Back, which they brought home from the library yesterday.

Empire is really the best of all the movies, and there is a reason: It represents the work of many talented people, with George Lucas providing a distant oversight. He wrote “the story,” but not the screenplay, and he was largely absent from the filming. He wasn’t scared about trusting others; in fact he wanted Spielberg to direct Empire, but his ongoing dispute with the directors guild prohibited it.

According to an interview with Sound & Vision Magazine, Ivrin Kershner (who had taught some of Lucas’ classes at USC) enjoyed directing for Lucas.

I really enjoyed working on it. I had a ball. A lot of that is because George is such a great producer. He left me alone. All he’d say is, “What do you want?” and “How do you see it?”

I do not know what changed; I’m mystified that Lucas only trusted himself to complete the prequels. But the difference shows. The witty dialog is gone, the acting is stone cold, and the action – which Kershner specifically said would not make a better movie – is amped up to the point of desensitization.

So, while the prequels stunk, it was nice to watch Empire and ponder what could have been for this franchise.

First, I have to say that 3D has never worked for me. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s that IT DOESN’T WORK. You see, modern 3D theaters project two images on the screen through polarized lenses that force the light to travel a certain way. You, the viewer, wear glasses that have two polarized lenses, each of which filters out one of the images. The result is that each eye perceives one of the images and not the other.

I guess I have eye problems that keep my brain from properly reassembling the image. I have the same problem with swim goggles: I can see just fine with them until I put my head under water, then my eyes cross and I can’t see straight.

I remember the IMAX theater at the Great America amusement park in California had a 3D movie called The Last Buffalo. While everyone else was oo-ing and ah-ing, I was adjusting my glasses, winking one eye then the other, until I just took the glasses off and watched the fuzzy images.

Luckily, UP and other new 3D movies use a circular polarization that’s supposed to be better. While I had fewer problems this time, I still found my eyes didn’t track sudden changes in depth. The fixed focus of every object on the screen was also very annoying: When your eyes watch a car drive by, they don’t just adjust parallax (which is how we perceive 3D), the lens in each eye also adjusts to keep a sharp focus on the car. In a 3D movie your eyes parallax changes, but the focus is at the fixed distance of the screen. And this was uncomfortable for me.

So forgive me when I’m incredulous to James Cameron’s claims that his 3D Dances-with-Wolves-in-Space movie “could change the face of cinema forever.”

As for UP, I thought it was a great movie – one that didn’t need hokey 3D to be appreciated. Though it was not as good as WALL-E, it kept with the Pixar tradition of exploriSQUIRREL!!!

  

 

 

 

 

 

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exploring new avenues in storytelling, emotion, and character depth. As a bonus, UP has produced the all-time fewest number of toy spin-offs for a Pixar flick.

I guess it’s about time since just about every blogger, MySpacer, and Facebooker has posted theirs. The boys love Rock Band and couldn’t get enough of it. The twins, on the other hand, both fell asleep to Bon Jovi’s Livin’ on a Prayer… Maybe we’ll use that as a lullaby in the future.

During our trip we made certain to visit the graves of our two grandpas who passed away in the last year or so. We didn’t get a picture of the boys by my grandpa’s headstone, but this is my great-grandparents’ (who are buried a few feet away).

When we visited Brooke’s grandfather’s the sprinklers were on. Seriously, who waters a cemetery in the middle of the day… let alone on a SUNDAY afternoon? At first, only Ben ventured out of the van with his grandpa and great-grandma to put some flowers on the grave. After watching them dodge the sprays Miles said, “I want to go play too!”

Not the reverent experience for which we had hoped, but memorable at least.