Avatar is kind of annoying. It's such a behemoth and there is such a swirl of claptrap spewn hither and yon about it, that it is hardly worth mentioning on a blog that three people read. Nevertheless the question has been asked by greater minds than mine: is Avatar racist? The answer is, of course, yes it is, in the same uncomfortable, naive way that movies from the early-to-mid twentieth century tend to be.

Look, if you think the natives are either obstacles to be removed (racism circa 1500-1990) or simple folk who would never harm the earth b/c they're so in tune with the f-ing planet (racism 1990-?) then you need, as we said in college, a "paradigm shift". Both extremes deny the basic humanity of the "natives." Now, you'll say that the Na'vi are not human, so who gives a crap  -- it's true, Avatar works on the "big blue alien" level -- yet the movie is still clearly trying to send a message that once again glorifies pre-columbian native-ness as some sort of ignorant, Edenic paradise. The easy acceptance of this message without comment is annoying as hell.

(1990, btw, is when "Dances with Wolves" was released.)


(Human beings sitting in a circle and drinking mud.)
 
As a thought experiment -- what if Europeans had not come to the Americas but every other technological advance had occurred as it did in history? Would the resulting culture drive no automobiles? Eat no fast food? Destroy no forests? Watch no reality television? Murder, rape, pillage, war... are these European constructs? Would you deny the essential humanity of the "natives" -- both the good and the bad, as some sort of guilt-ridden wish fulfillment? If only Europeans hadn't brought their germ-ridden blankets, we'd all be thinking in circles and worshiping Gaia instead of destroying the environment and cheering on the end-times. (Oh rapture!!) Yeah, right.


(Traditional dancing on Pohnpei.)

Speaking of humanity, if you want to cleanse your soul after Avatar, a good wash with Masaki Kobayashi's "The Human Condition" will do the trick. It's a nine-hour, B/W, Japanese (and Chinese) language movie circa 1960. Therefore, it's never going to be shown on IMAX and make a billion dollars. But what it will do is give you some f-ing faith in humanity. Strange, since it's about how the humanity is crushed out of our hero (the spectacular Tatsuya Nakadai) during WWII. Where Avatar's notion of love is facile; Human Condition's is complex. Where Avatar glorifies the "natives"; Human Condition never denies the basic humanity of the conquered Chinese, although it shows how easily this humanity can be ignored by the conquering Japanese. Where Avatar blithely throws the Earth into the dustbin without a second thought; The Human Condition (for all of its brutal honesty, its stark depiction of human depravity) shows humans on a grand scale, capable of complex emotions, not simply good/bad, reacting to a fascist war machine (like Avatar's) with real humanity... While being nothing like War and Peace, it's a faithful an adaptation of that novel's themes as there is ever likely to be. Who makes epic movies about humans any more?

I made my 2nd 2nd annual trek to SchniztelTown in Daley Plaza. The 1st 2nd annual trek was derailed by massive crowds. The lunch crowd today was not so bad -- so I made my way through some sweet cheese fritters, bratwurst, applesauce, and cheese/apple strudel.

A fake German village, populated by real German artisans / pastry chefs, is erected beneath the Picasso every year.




What better to wash down your German repast than some Coke Zero. This Coke Zero give-away was taking place in front of the Thompson Center where the communist party was protesting the anti--abortion-provisos being wedged into health-care reform. (Illinois also just passed some strict laws, which have yet to be enforced.) Yes, the communist party. They have a bookstore nearby.




Here are the protesters in front of "Monument with Standing Beast" by Jean Debuffet. Meanwhile: Bible Zombies?!?!? What's that? A zombie that contradicts itself? A zombie that only eats transubstantiated brains?

Today was an abortion-heavy day -- four students, all of them late, turned in papers on abortion (not the given topic, but a possible topic (except that I ban that topic, along with marijuana (not because those aren't valid topics but because you can't really say much worthwhile in a couple of pages (and anyway, in my opinion, people are too entrenched in their various camps for them to have an interesting argument about these topics)))). Is the "abortion debate" so ingrained that any old 18-year-old can pull an argument or two out of their rear on short notice?




So I was trying all day to come up with a great pro-choice / coke zero slogan. Here's my best shot: "Say goodbye to unwanted pregnancies -- and calories!"

Or instead of "Obey your thirst!" .... "Abort Your Thirst!"

And from there I only have inappropriate thoughts that shouldn't be committed to blog.

On the road between Versailles (Ver-sails) Kentucky and London (Luhhhn-dun) Kentucky we find ourselves confronted with signs for some kind of bluegrass / country music hall-of-fame / old-fashioned good-timey fun. Naturally, we digress from our destination (Cumberland Falls) to check out what fun can be had:

An old barn -and a new barn!?!?! What!?!?! That's cra-za-zee!




The grocery-store merry-go-round is rusted, the rumps of children just a misty memory. The country music themed tchotchke (that's how I spell it godammit!) stores are silent. Sometime you build it and they -don't- come.




Candy canes, empty walkways, and denuded trees. It's a happy place!




Even the crickets have left the country-themed, old-timey streets and therefore can't lend their voices to the chorus of desolation that is this forsaken spot between Versailles and London.




A bronze hillbilly stands behind an aspiring hillbilly.




If you put your head in this hole, you can pretend there are other people here!

We visited the country music store and bought a CD (out of pity). We got a Faron Young CD (I had never heard of him) mostly because there is a song on the CD called "Unmitigated Gall" which seemed like an awesome title for a song. (Though my gall is mostly mitigated.) Faron is pretty twangy and likes to switch from a deep bass to an Orbison-like falsetto. Here's a YouTube video of him in 1961. The other cool thing about him is that he continued to sing even after injuring his tongue in an auto accident. (True story, it came from the liner notes.) I didn't love the whole CD, but my hat's off to Mel Tillis who wrote "Unmitigated Gall". (Really, "unmitigated" is such a difficult word to put in a song -- it's a remarkable feat that it works so well.) Here's the first verse:

"Well, how can you have the unmitigated gall
To come back now, expecting me to fall?
Right down on my knees and kiss your feet? Yeah, feet.
Feet that one day went a-walking out on me
With a fast talking slob, you hardly new his name.
Your mind is de-arranged."

(yes, de-arranged!)

Knocking around the zoo on a Saturday afternoon in a zoo-style trick or treat extravaganza we happened upon the same Praying Mantis we encountered months before in downtown Louisville.

Roaming Kentucky-based praying mantis courtesy of Squallis Puppeteers -- supplying creatively ugly puppets for such functions as the Louisville Zoo trick-or-treat night and the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. Because what says reproductive freedom better than a ten-foot-tall praying mantis?




Here is the very rarely seen "gummy Dorothy" from the "Wizard of Floss".






We carved our pumpkins -- mine is the self-portrait on the right.




Tammy-Faye-o-Lantern!




We also returned to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge on the way back home.





This is the same tree that attacked her in the Spring.




That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

I am a poor person. I don't own a car. In fact, I am one of the millions of Americans who are "un-vehicled." When I need to get somewhere, I use the public option. The public option I prefer, the train, demands a small co-pay, is slightly inconvenient, but nevertheless gets me to work just the same as a Mercedes, a Hummer, or a private helicopter. Somehow the country has not turned socialist because of this public option.

If there is a public option for the un-vehicled, why not for the uninsured?

Publically funded and accessible to everyone for a co-pay of about $3-- the CTA Green Line!

Left out of the debate re:healthcare are the various states that do provide some sort of "public option" even now. My daughter receives socialized medicine via Illinois' AllKids program. This saves me, a fellow well-below the poverty line, about a grand per year. Beyond that, it saves me the nightmare of going into major debt because of a health issue. Basically, if you're a kid then Illinois is Canada.

The "other side" of the debate (the pro-sick children side) questions the government's largesse, as if providing health care for citizens were some kind of crazy splurge (if so, then every other developed nation on the planet needs to learn to withhold basic services as well as the US). For example, this blogger doesn't like getting $75. He's free to give his stimulus back, of course.

AllKids was apparently created by our previous governor, a famous nutcase and crook. But, hey, people are complex beings -- perhaps he did one or two good things between hair appointments and pay-to-play schemes.

Just look at the amount of money that is saved by this public option:

a) Personally, it saves me (a poor person) at least $1000 in health care since I don't have to add my child to my health care.

b) If I did add my child to my health care, the service would be less convenient and cost more. So, again personally, I save mental strain there. My emotional state comes at a small price, let's say 50 cents.

So far, we've saved $1000.50.

c) When my child gets sick I don't have to take her to the emergency room for a routine illness. I'm not saddled with a ridiculous bill and the taxpayers/ hospitals are not paying insane amounts of $$ because my uninsured daughter got the flu. (For the slow people out there: getting the flu is not a moral issue. Good people get the flu too. Everyone deserves treatment for their flu.) The average emergency room visit was $1881 (in Florida in 2006, anyway).

Now we've saved $2881.50.

d) Because I have access to health care, my daughter gets preventative medicine. This saves untold $$$ to everyone. How could we even estimate it? Think of all of the emergency room visits and illnesses prevented simply because people in Illinois can take their kids to the doctor. I'm going to be conservative and say we save, maybe, an average of $10,000 per child.

Now we've saved $12,881.50.

e) As mentioned before, all healthcare insurance costs go down. There's more -- not less -- competition with a public option. So by simply having this option available, everyone saves a little bit. If everyone in Illinois saves just $1 a year then that's $12,901,563.

Now we've saved $12,914,444.50.

f) Would you rather live and work in a state that offered a public option or one that didn't? Do you prefer to live in a place that takes care of children or one that doesn't? Would you be more likely to move your business and family to a place with a public option? Let's put people's happiness at $.50. Another incalculable: how many taxpayers move to Illinois in part because of this tiny safety net?

Now we've saved $12,914,445

e) I forgot! I save my place of employment money as well. Think of the savings to those always-mentioned "small businesses" when their workers don't need to add their children to their health care.

So this is what socialized medicine gets you: a more competitive marketplace and less money spent.

I'm not saying AllKids is perfect -- I'm sure it isn't. This is Illinois after all. But from my perspective, AllKids has been great. It makes the standard of care here at least as good, if not a little better, than it was in the Federated States of Micronesia. When my daughter was sick, I took her to the clinic, payed $10, got some anti-biotics, and she was fine in two days. Imagine the hassle at an emergency room!

So, yes, we need a public option. A real one. Will we get one? Probably not. (You really should read this article!)

Here's how our $75 dollar hating blogger ends his blog-thing:

"It doesn’t really matter if you subscribe to the Obama apologist thought process that government can take care of everything without being intrusive and even if it is intrusive, it intrudes more on the evil bastards that work for a living than on the innocent victims that welcome its assistance."

I love this run-on sentence, from linguistics standpoint. One could parse it so many ways. Let me try to paraphrase: "I doesn't matter if you agree with Obama that government can take care of everything without intruding*. Further it doesn't matter if you think that if government is intrusive, it intrudes upon evil working people more than innocent victims who receive government assistance."

So basically, um... actually I'm not sure what Mr. Blogger dude means. He, and other pro-sick children folks seem to not believe in even the most basic social contract. The people give power to the government, agree to abide by its rules and government in return should do nothing whatsoever to provide basic protection to its citizens in the form of healthcare. Taking care of your citizens is a non-zero-sum game -- everyone wins!



* I doubt Obama really thinks this. But how could I know?

Kiddieland in Melrose Park is set to close after 81 years. The reasons have to do with the price of real-estate and a family feud -- a year round Costco will make more for the landlords than a seasonal amusement park. A lot of people are making a last pilgrimage to the site. Like others, Kiddieland has been a childhood mecca for three generations of my family. The photos below were taken with my cell-phone camera. Sorry for the shoddy quality.




The Tilt-A-Whirl used to test my intestinal fortitude as a child. The blue half-spheres still swing young and old alike upon their rusty grooves.

This is my daughter's fourth or fifth time at Kiddieland. We go once every summer. It's hard to quantify "fun" but the kids seem to have their $23 dollars a ticket (for the whole day and all the rides) worth of fun. With shorter lines, I wonder if the fun-quotient isn't the same or better than the thousands you'd pay for Disneyland or hundreds you'd pay for Great America. My daughter and her friend liked the water-tube-slide thingy so much, they went on it ten times -- not something that would be likely to happen at Disneyland where there might be an hour wait for a ride.




The "Little Dipper" -- an ancient wooden roller coaster -- is the stuff of nightmares if you are under six. For anyone else, only the general ricketyness is of concern.




This is currently the stuff of my nightmares. This hot dog is wrapped in the American flag and showering itself with ketchup and mustard in an effort to pretty itself up and make you want to eat it -- a very self-defeating act for a hot dog. I cut off the bottom part of the wiener because, well, this is a family blog and some things are just too disgusting.

Kiddieland is full of retro detail like the hot dog above -- must have been the cool thing in condiments at some point. Or was there a point in time in the last eighty-one years that people didn't know to put ketchup on their hot dogs and needed that self-same hot dog to point the way to fully condimented bliss? Were their periods, say during WWII, when patrons would only trust an American hot dog as opposed to a German frankfurter?

Another retro detail (sorry, no picture): a large tin thermometer that is also a vintage advertisement for Mail Pouch chewing tobacco that greets you as you begin the log ride. (See also.)







Enjoying the Scrambler as it scrambles. Sadly my favorite ride, The Polyp, was closed. That's right, they aren't just for Ronald Reagan's colon -- Who wouldn't want to ride a polyp? If only they could stay in business, Kiddieland could invite children to ride the "Malignant Melanoma" or "Weeping Staph Infection."





Dig the Buck Rogers style space pod with attached guns that make old-style "wooga-wooga" noises. This area of the park (which really only has two areas) has a number of retro-futurist "spin your child" rides.

The only thing I can think of that has the same non-corporate, home-made, and purely "for the heck of it" vibe as Kiddieland is Circus Bruno. I don't know if Circus Bruno still exists.

Or perhaps Kiddieland just seems more charming now because it's closing?




We stayed their seven hours and the kids would have stayed longer. I have never tested my daughter's staying power at Kiddieland -- I always give up first.




As a kid I wanted nothing more than to ride in the mini-trolley car on the right. I would run out of the gate and zoom right for it -- disappointed if the front seat was taken. The trolley or new-fangled "moto-bikes" would then spin benignly at a speed of 5mph while all the kids made clanging/beeping noises. It's a bit hard to see the allure.

Yet, there is a whole aesthetic that I was introduced to as a child at Kiddieland -- something to do with the flashing lights on the bumper cars, the shined chrome on the fins of the merry-go-round convertibles, the sleek Zephyr-like lines of the mini-railroad that travels through the parking lot -- something about that old-time amusement park aesthetic is something truly magical, home-grown, and as American as ketchup on hot-dogs. There's a lot about Kiddieland I don't like as a parent, namely the fact that I have to be there all day, but I also can't deny that something of Kiddieland is stuck in me. So when they finally take down the multi-colored mini Ferris wheel that is made up of five kid-sized cages there will be the ghost of at least one little boy who was stuck at the top, all of fifteen feet in the air, and thought: "ohhhh gosh, I"m flying!"