The Muppets redux, with Charlotte

They're back! The new Muppet Movie, co-written by and starring Jason  Segel,
shown above with Amy Adams and the gang.

The holidays have always gone hand in hand with the movies in my family.

Not so much in my family of origin: my mother never goes to the movies, yet watches the Academy Awards every year and complains that she didn't see any of these films, so why is she watching this dumb show? My dad used to go to the movies as an outing.

My dad would say: "Do you want to go to the movies?" My mom would ask what was playing. He'd say, "Who cares; do you want to go to the movies or not?" The last film I saw with my dad was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I thought he'd like to see how far special effects have come. It turns out you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to hate Episode I. Who knew?

But in the family I raised, we went to the movies as often as we could afford it, as soon as the kids were old enough. Man, I saw a lot of crap with them. Some craptastic standouts were Mousehunt, about a rodent outsmarting Nathan Lane; Airborne, about a California teenage surfer forced to live with relatives in Cincinnati (in winter!), starring Seth Green; and Center Stage, about young, good-looking hopefuls trying to get into the American Ballet Academy in New York.

It seemed that we ended up at the movies every Thanksgiving and Christmas day, usually after we'd taken relatives' checks to the ATM so we could afford it. It was our family's time together after dealing with our extended family, which was sometimes contentious and stressful.

Charlotte with her kid's pack of movie treats
and a Mickey Mouse lollipop she came in with.
Megan Hernandez photo

I know lots of other people go to the movies on holiday weekends, so I was apprehensive about getting a seat for The Muppet Movie on Saturday, our first theater visit with Charlotte. I made my husband leave the house about 40 minutes early, only to encounter a nearly empty parking lot. I felt a little foolish.

We were the first people in the theater, but eventually enough people showed up to make it a communal experience.

Charlotte has been to the "moobies" before, to see Tangled, Winnie the Pooh and Puss in Boots, but we had never been with her. My daughter posted on Facebook that she had Christmas shopped for Charlotte in the Disney Store right under her nose because the two-year-old was entranced with the huge screen, and we saw a little of that in action.

It's like she is in a spell with a screen in front of her. They arrived after we had sat down, and the whole time my daughter is taking off Charlotte's coat and putting her in the booster seat, the tot never took her eyes off the screen playing commercials. It's rather disturbing.

I knew that my daughters were going to be big movie fans early on. When I put on a VHS of Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks one day, my older daughter saw Robert Stevenson's name on the credits, and said, "Oh, he directed Mary Poppins." She was about 7. We watched a lot of Turner Classic Movies in our house, but when colorized ones came on, we adjusted the set to watch them in black and white.

My son-in-law is a video editor, with a degree in film from San Francisco State; I guess it was kismet that he and my daughter would find each other. He has his heart set on Charlotte going to USC, so maybe it will be USC Film School. Chris is the big Muppet fan in the family, by the way. He owns complete seasons of the Muppet television show on DVD.

If you ask Charlotte what her daddy does, from the time she could talk she would say, "Daddy go work; press buttons." When he has to work on weekends, sometimes he'll take his little family with him, and let Charlotte sit on his lap and press buttons. That might be why she has no problem working anything mechanical at my house.

Jason Segel, the Muppet fan who helped bring the new
Muppet Movie to life, with Kermit and Miss Piggy. The fans
 are saying that the film was made by "the right people,"
who love the original and wanted to see it done right.

The film is adorable, heartfelt,  and laugh-out-loud funny. The Muppets' biggest fan Walter (who apparently hasn't looked in the mirror and discovered that he is a Muppet), overhears a evil oil baron saying he is going to tear down the Muppets' old studio to drill for oil.

That's not an inconceivable notion, there's a oil rig in the middle of Beverly Hill High School.

So, the gang has to get together and put on a telethon to raise 10 million dollars in three days to keep the property. Walter and his human friends Jason Segel and Amy Adams seek out Kermit, and the four of them hunt down the rest of the gang.

Every show biz cliche is here, and played for huge laughs. Fozzie Bear is found playing Reno with a backing band made up of what looks like escaped convicts, including a very hairy boar in drag standing in for Miss Piggy. Meanwhile, Miss Piggy is channeling Anna Wintour as the head of Paris Vogue, and is so successful, she is reluctant to return to her former life.

Some of it is so amazingly clever, I'm still laughing, like the chickens clucking a version of Cee Lo Green's hit single "Forget You," which started out as a song with lyrics so objectionable it had to be rewritten to be played on the radio.

The film was wonderful, full of song and dance numbers, written by one of the guys from Flight of the Conchords (the other one directed the movie). They shut down Hollywood Boulevard for two days filming in front of the El Capitan for the finale, which had me in tears.

Charlotte loved it, but I did get on her People-I'm-Not-Talking-To list because I shushed her once. She says very funny things, but sometimes forgets to whisper. She was very good, although she ended up spilling lemonade all over her shirt, unlike the baby crying intermittenly through the whole film. Just when I would get fed up enough to get an usher, the thing quit screaming.

I can't wait for something else to come out so I can go with Charlotte again. She doesn't know it yet, but she's getting a kid's camera for Christmas that also takes video, so soon she may be making her own films. I'm betting they'll be about bunnies.

Setting sail with Noah

Inside the ark at the Skirball Cutural Center's interactive children's exhibit.

The Skirball Cultual Center has taken the "interactive" concept to new heights.

Usually, a museum considers an exhibit interactive if you have to pull out a drawer to see an answer, or open a cupboard for a different view, maybe listen in on a phone conversation. But in the wildly popular Noah's Ark exhibit, kids can create the entire story for themselves.

Charlotte and Auntie Lynn create lightning
 in a tube. Next to it they can flood a tank
to see the ark rise and float.

First, they can create the storm: turn a handle fast enough to make leaves fly, make it rain, puff up gales of wind, and coax lightning to show itself in a tube.

 In what looks like an giant ant farm, there is a mountain range that visitors can flood enough to float the ark lodged between two hills.

Children are encouraged to help build the ark. Slats of wood can be fitted between the ribs of the ship to finish the boat. Then you can load the animals; simply fit the foam creatures into a conveyor belt. 

Two by two, or all alone, turn a big wheel and the animals climb up the side of the ship, then tumble down the other side into a basket to wait for the next lucky person to play.

Pass by the wooden camels sitting sentry on the gangplank, and enter the ark. Here there are tables and chairs to sit on, rubber poop to clean up with child-sized mops and brooms, and scads of animal puppets to play with.

Charlotte sends animals to the ark on a conveyor belt.

As you might expect, animals are everywhere: snakes are draped over rafters, languidly drooping; a lion sits majestically (or as regally as he can with a raffia mane); a mountain sheep peers down on visitors.

 Every so often, a museum worker comes by with an animal marionette: a huge raptor with moveable wings, or a shy fox that gradually becomes bold enough to interact with the kids.

My granddaughter Charlotte decided the fox looked sleepy, and brought him some straw for a bed. Maybe he wanted a nap, I don't know. I certainly could have used one.

There is a hanging swing in a corner for weary parents, but alas, we were not alone in thinking, "oh my God, I've got to sit down right now."

A zebra and an elephant make of recycled
materials guard the entrance to the exhibit.

The thesis of the exhibit, demonstrated quite clearly in the introduction by a hyperactive docent, is that everyone has to work together to survive the storm. Since this is a Jewish cultural center, it is easy to see that rain, wind and flooding might not be the only storm they have in mind.

The concepts that everyone has a job to do, and that we have to live in harmony with animals and nature are all over the exhibit. Wherever possible, the animals are made of recyclable material. A life-size zebra near the entrance has a musical keyboard for a mane, and roof-top heat extractors for haunches.

In fact, for adults, recognizing all the disparate parts of the menagerie might be the biggest joy in all this. Kids just see the beast depicted, we can see the fly-swatter wings and rubber floor-mats used as elephant ears.

An alligator made of a violin case, a violin neck, and an old tire.
A leather glove holding a glass eye forms the  creature's head.

My favorite was the alligator made of a a violin case, with the violin's neck forming the tongue, an old tire making the body, and a black leather glove holding an eye to create the head. It was ingenious.

All around the second floor inside the ark, runs a platform that kids can climb up to on a rope ladder. Charlotte is too small to climb up there, so she didn't get to go. We sat on a packing crate and watched the "little savages," as my friend Lynn calls them.

A mother and daughter have a tea party
on the ark, while other kids runs round upstairs.

Lynn and I have sat side by side a few times and watched the weird dance of socialization that children do, the Lord of the Flies hierarchy that takes no time to develop. My daughter Megan looked around the floor and said, "There's not as much poop on the floor as there usually is. The big boys on the top floor are hoarding it."

Shy retiring kids get toys taken from them, and those at an awkward age, like Lotte, unsuccessfully try to fit in with groups of older or younger children.

Don't be disappointed if that daughter or granddaughter you hope will be the first female president of the United States grabs a broom or mop. Turns out that kids just like to be helpful, just not at home.

Who knew the domestic arts could hold such endless fascination?

A word to the wise: unless you are deaf or don't mind the din of scores of children, book the earliest entry time you can. They start letting people in at noon, and add more each half-hour. Your entry time allows you two hours in the ark, so you do the math.

Yes, that is Lotte, who we hope will be the first PhD in
 the family, cleaning up poop in the ark.
Better they learn humility at an early age.
Behind her is the rope ladder to the top floor.

By one o'clock, more children had arrived than had left, and the noise level rose alarmingly. About the time six boys, ages 6 to 11, came pounding into the exhibit, I was looking for an exit.

Another tip, bring a change of clothes for your kids. Outside is the "Rainbow Fountain" which is basically misters making a rainbow over a stretch of sidewalk. Kids love to run back and forth through it until they get soaked, and it could be a long, wet ride back home.

Tickets are $10 for adults; $5 for those age 2-12; $7 for seniors (65+) and full-time students, and you need to book them in advance to get a reservation for Noah's Ark. There are a limited number of walk-up reservations, but that could mean arriving at noon and having to wait until 2:30 or 3p.m. to get into the ark.

Thursdays are free for every one, but you can't make reservations, so arrive early.

The current show is Masters of Illusion: Jewish Magicians of the Golden Age, and the ongoing Visions and Values: Jewish Life from Antiquity to America, which has some quite nice interactive displays for children.

Summer has been good for geeks

A screen capture of the Jackson Browne page on Spotify.com, the new free music player.

I'm not the world's biggest computer geek. I don't write code, can't read or write html, and I really could use a class in Microsoft Word. I know Word does all kinds of cool stuff I don't even know about. But I do like to keep up with the times.

My family's first computer, the Apple IIe. It didn't do much,
especially since we didn't write code.

For those of us who love the latest tech thing, it has been a good summer. My friend Ed sent me an invitation to Google +, OS Lion came out, and www.spotify went online.

Google + is a new social network that may just have the answer to handling your Aunt Helen's  wanting to be your friend on Facebook. You don't want to offend the dear old thing and you might like to share your children's Disneyland photos, but you don't want her to see pics of you and the hubby doing tequila body shots in Cancun.

With Google +, you designate people in your life to different circles, like family, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, even church friends, I suppose.

Then, each time you upload a photo, make a comment or share a link, the program asks which circle you want to share it with. So, as long as you pay attention when you post, people sitting next to you in the pew on Sunday won't see your drunken party pics.

I upgraded to OS 10 Lion the other day, which makes the trackpad on my MacBook operate like the touchscreen on a iPad (which I can't afford, but would love). To scroll up and down, you just use two fingers; and to switch between open programs, you just swipe in a sideways motion. You pinch to make things smaller, and reverse to increase the size. I've yet to master it all, but it has made my laptop way less attractive to my husband.

Charlotte Quinn, who "reads" Dr. Seuss
books on my smartphone.

An aside: my daughter told me how disturbed she was when my two-year-old granddaughter Charlotte was handed a stack of snapshots and swiped her fingers from one side to the other trying to make the photo change, like she does on her daddy's smartphone. We are becoming technology dependent at younger and younger ages now.

But the Lion upgrade only cost $29.99, so it was a whole lot of fun for not much money. And seriously, Apple, haven't you exhausted the whole big-cat naming thing? Tiger, Panther, Leopard, Snow Leopard, now Lion. Aren't lions the kings of the jungle? What tops them?

What tops inexpensive software is free software, and Spotify is just a music-lover's dream. It is free now for unlimited streaming, but after six months, the free version will only give you a certain amount of hours before you have to pay the $5 a month charge or the premium $10, which allows you to play the songs on your iPod or smartphone.

It isn't so great for discovering new music; Pandora is still better at that. Pandora lets you pick a song or a band, then creates playlists with music that complements it using the Music Genome Project. Then it plays the list like a radio station, and you can click your "like" or "dislike" or each song and it adjusts itself by eliminating that type of song from your playlist. The pay version eliminates the ads.

With Spotify, you can pull up an artist and see practically their whole catalog and play it. It integrates your iTunes and Facebook, so you can see what your friends are listening to and send them messages and links to songs you like.

For Baby Boomers, the best part of Spotify is being able to listen to artists you loved as a teenager without having to buy yet another greatest hits CD or download. For some reason last week, I was longing to hear Jackson Browne, my favorite artist in my moody teen and early 20 years. I bought a greatest hits from iTunes and burned it so I could hear it in my car.

Before long, I realized why I haven't listened to Jackson in years: Holy Cow, is he depressing! And those songs I loved? He's singing about the apocalypse! No wonder I was unhappy all the time. If I had Spotify then, I could have gotten my nostalgia fit out of my system without spending money.

Also, I have been finding old stuff, like the Martin Denny lounge records my dad used to have. It brings the early 1960s right back. No wonder the 1990s lounge revival picked up on him. But some of it is just bad: "Hawaiian War Chant" was used in way too many Bugs Bunny cartoons to be taken seriously.

I love "Chinatown" like jazz with heavy saxophones, and was told that the Jackie Gleason Orchestra was just the ticket. I found it on Spotify, and they were right. And now I can test out old Charlie Parker and Mile Davis songs to find out what I like before I pay good money for it.

I kept testing Spotify to find old things, and I wasn't disappointed. Yes, they have "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" by the Small Faces, and Moby Grape's first album, so go nuts. They don't have the Beatles, but don't we all own all those in multiple formats anyway?

I keep running into people who say they miss my column and didn't realize I have taken it online. And some people who say they forget to read the blog since it isn't on their breakfast table on Sunday morning. I have a wonderful suggestion: Google Reader.

If you have Google Reader, it will aggregate all the websites, blogs, newspaper sites, etc. that you read all in one place. If you stay logged into it, anytime you are on a site and see the RSS bug, merely click it and it will add it to your Reader. You can make Google News Alerts, and they will be there too.

For instance, I have one for Richard Branson, because he interests me and he does fascinating things. So every time he is mentioned on the web, the news alert finds it and emails me a list once a week. I also read Heather Armstrong's blog, and it appears in my email program under "RSS feeds."

I made a minutes-long screen capture video with Jing for a distance learning class that explains it all, so if you are interested in how to set up Google Reader, you can watch it here.

If you set up Google Reader, you should be able to subscribe on my blog site and the link will show up in your email program every Sunday as well as on your Reader page. If you go to a lot of different sites daily, it might save you some time.

Steampunk deluxe!

The first wedding on the BLVD! We kiss in front of Vijay Patel's 41 Pontiac the night of the wedding. Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

I plopped the filthy wedding dress on the counter of the dry cleaners and smiled sheepishly.

"I hope you can get this out," I said sweetly, pointing out the hem. "It's motor oil."

The look on her face was priceless. She stared at me incredulously and sighed in a disgusted manner. I shrugged, saying "I got married in a parking lot."

Which was the truth in a sense, but how could I explain to her the wonderland that the Lemon Leaf Lot became the night of my wedding?

I found the magical transformation difficult to believe myself.

A few days before the wedding I was getting mysterious phone calls from my friend Maria Elena, the owner of the Lemon Leaf, where she would enthuse about how awesome my wedding was going to be. She never provided any details; she would just gush and say, "I can't wait until Saturday!"

Little did I know that she was watching my friends Barbara Letson and Dan Venturoli creating the elements of a steampunk wonderland in the Leaf Room, next to the parking lot.

A detail of the amazing decorations at the wedding. The wedding couple's initials and a candelabra are wrapped with wire and a variety of gears in steampunk fashion.Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

There were brass lanterns atop vines twinkling with tiny lights in the middle of each table. Everything was swathed in chocolate brown taffeta, gold sparkly tulle, ivory linens, brown tulle, and lit with a profusion of candles. Each place had a tiny wooden steamer trunk filled with dark-chocolate covered expresso beans.

All the steampunk iconography was there: huge clocks, gears, brass, and copper. Everything but the goggles. Our friend Tim Kirk brought his, just in case we'd like to have the officiant wear them. Tim and his wife Linda Lee added to the ambience by bringing in a case of wine they had relabeled with a custom "Steampunk Merlot" label which featured a caricature of Jim and me.

A detail from the wine label done by artist and friend Tim Kirk. He and his wife Linda pasted the labels on a case of wine and transformed it into Steampunk Merlot with our caricatures on it.

The napkin rings were lengths of wire wrapped around the napkins, and hung with tiny gears. Guests were turning them into bracelets and wearing them.

The ceremony itself was drama-free. I hesitated dropping my gown's train onto the cement of the lot, but it had to be done, so I tried to not think about what was becoming of it. That taffeta confection cost more than my hand-me-down Saturn is worth; I hated dragging it around.

The flower girls made it down the aisle under their own steam, presumably. I couldn't see them. Poor flower girl Tori — she had practiced strewing silk autumn leaves in my path, then was told to hold Charlotte's hand instead.

So, ultimately, no one threw leaves; the flower girls held hands on one side, and carried their baskets in the other hand. By all accounts, Charlotte clambered up on the stage all by herself. She made up for her good behavior by refusing to pose for photos on the girl's side of the stage, because she wanted her daddy.

I was rather glad I had bought her dress, when I say the state of it the next day. Charlotte took more than one face plant that night, and the front of the gown was filthy.

Valerie Estrada, of Little Blue World Photography was our wedding photographer and she grabbed Jim and me and took us out on the BLVD to pose for pictures. She had spotted Vijay Patel's 1941 Pontiac at the curb, and thought it would make a great backdrop, and it did.

My crazy sister thought we had hired Vijay's car for the evening, and sometime during the reception started filling the back seat with balloons. Eventually, she figured it out, and instead tied balloons to the luggage rack of the MG, and wired an empty can of Mike's Hard Lemonade underneath.

That was a particularly cruel joke to play on the owner of a classic car. When Jim and I made our getaway, I heard that god-awful noise and thought I was dragging my muffler. Again.

Crap is always falling off that car; who knew?

I'm still piecing the details of wedding, Rashomon-like, now that a week has passed. But so far it looks like everyone had a good time. My friend Ed Harbour did an amazing job as a DJ, and he kept the floor filled by playing 1980s New Wave.

Jim and I got to show off our hours of ballroom dancing practice, even though the tango was a little difficult with that much dress between us.

I will show more photos when I get them, but now I have to pack for my honeymoon to New York City, and I'm falling asleep. Sorry, there are no Charlotte photos. You'll have to wait until next week.

Those dance lessons with Iris really paid off. The groom is treading on my gown, but how could he not? There's so much of it. Photo by www.littleblueworldphoto.com

A new beginning!

So, I'm not sure why the paper dropped my column, but I did hear rumblings that they thought I wrote about my upcoming wedding too much (three times in nine weeks!), and that Charlotte appears too much.

Frankly, everywhere I go, people in the community tell me how much they love to hear about my granddaughter (OK, maybe they are grannies themselves, I don't know), and the best part is that here on the internet, you can see the most maddening child in the world for yourself. Like the photo above. See the ornery expression? That's Charlotte.

Last weekend we went to Napa to celebrate my youngest daughter's engagement. She's marrying an assistant winemaker who, despite the fact that he works at Cade, a beautiful winery in the mecca of California wine country, took a job with a winery on Long Island. Did YOU know they made wine in New York? Yeah, me neither.

So my daughter is moving 3,000 miles away, immediately after my wedding, and I'm kinda heartbroken. The happy couple points out that I only see her half a dozen times a year anyway, and she can fly from N.Y. just as easily as she can from San Francisco, but I point out that it's not as cheap from there.

So we all flew up to the Bay Area and had a party in a vineyard where my future son-in-law lives. His landlord is a retired doctor who lives in S.F. during the week and comes home on weekends to his little spot of heaven, where the rows of grapevines come right up to the patio.

If I were a wine-lover, it would have been even more amazing, because fellow vintners came to the party bearing bottles of reserve and estate wines from their own bottlings, and everyone seemed to be very happy. Me, I was drinking gin and tonic.

You can get wine everywhere in Napa; it's insane. We went to a hamburger joint that's obviously very popular, judging by the lines. You order at a Dairy Queen-like window, then take your food to picnic tables out back. And they have a wine list that would put many Antelope Valley restaurants to shame.

The next day, we toured Cade, and it is a marvel of design. They built the wine cave themselves, and it's difficult to believe that a hole in the side of a hill could be so stylish. My photos don't do it justice.

My daughter's fiance tapped a cask of wine that goes for about $200 a bottle. I gave mine to my kid. It was wasted on me. I can't tell the difference between the good stuff and Two-Buck Chuck. I can tell fine wine from Ripple or Annie Green Springs, but that's about it.

So we got to meet the prospective in-laws, who are lovely people, and my daughter's friends, who are sad to see her go.

Charlotte's mother, brave soul that she is, undertook this journey sans husband, and her blog about it is here. Charlotte liked the winery fine, although, like me, she never drinks wine. And she got to stay up at the party so long she had to put on her PJs.

I'm still getting the hang of this blogging stuff: I had to call the mommy-blogger for advice, but let me know how you like the new space. See you next week....