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[ Unavoidably early, yes. While I'm not going anywhere in the morning, my parents need a ride back from the airport at an unspeakable hours. ]
And in other goings-on: this weekend my niece had her fourth birthday, and a corresponding party. This was held at my sister-in-law's parents' house, at the way far south end of New Jersey, which meant for me getting up earlier than I normally would on the weekend, and also doing all the driving myself as my parents are on vacation. There was a short-lived effort to get all the siblings together to carpool down, but it fell apart when my brother living-in-Massachusetts said he didn't want to add the time driving to and from my/my-parents' house to his already long commute. It turned out this didn't matter anyway, since he bailed out, an hour before the party started, irritating my sister and her husband (who had been planning to drive down with him), and really irritating my sister-in-law who'd got up ridiculously early to bake vegan cupcakes for him and his girlfriend, when she could've just got gluten-free cupcakes for the other people with diet restrictions in the guest set.
Anyway. The net result: I was the first sibling there, and the last one to leave by several hours, and the contretemps about family members not visiting enough, which as far as I know is still going on --- again, I only hear about it second-hand --- is still avoiding me and I'm coming out way ahead on points.
Oh yes, and my niece was thrilled with her birthday. She's at the age where she's been absorbed by the Disney Princesses, which was the theme for the party. But her parents also built a nice cardboard castle for the backyard, and among her gifts included a bunch of Strawberry Shortcake: Friendship Is Magic toys. I gave her that Weird Al Yankovoch book I got autographed to her a few months ago, as well as a Snoopy Sno-Cone Maker. That last I was really happy to give since I remember having that as a kid, when it was (a) delightful and (b) not making enough sno for our needs. But she's got a smaller family. Her favorite gift, though, was a toy cell phone; almost immediately she began making calls to some of the Disney Princesses and clearly imitating my brother in checking in on FourSquare.
The baffling thing --- something many people asked about --- is not that she used the toy phone to take ``pictures'', but that after the photo-snapped sound she took something slid out from it and handed it to us. How the heck does a four-year-old know how Polaroids work?
Trivia: The Babylonian Zodiac sign corresponding to the Latin Virgo was the Furrow. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.
Currently Reading: Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between The World's Greatest Chocolate Makers, Deborah Cadbury.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-01 05:07 am (UTC)Are you avoiding naming the dread ponies so I won't melt down?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-01 10:12 am (UTC)Seriously, I find new show is superior to that old eighties effort, but I suppose you've watched and compared them yourself.
edit for spelling... bronie or brony, whatever :o)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-01 06:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 01:34 am (UTC)I skipped it in the 80s because, well, guy and a little outside the appropriate age group and besides Go-Bots was on.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 09:45 am (UTC)I loved all the 'Golden Age' shows because they were my first exposure to the animated kingdom. As the 60's progressed and animation studios floundered, those first cartoons with fluid movement and original content seemed more dear. It's taken me years to appreciate Hannah-B's efforts, though I still can't watch drivel like Wacky Races without reliving the horror of seeing their crude, choppy style.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 03:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 10:05 pm (UTC)I've somehow managed to keep watching the cartoons made in my youth, even when I really knew better as a kid (Richie Rich and The Robonic Stooges stand out as examples). And there are a few newer ones that I like, but I'm not sure what was the last one I loved.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 10:28 pm (UTC)I seem to remember appreciating early on that, like, the 1960s Popeye cartoons were bad, particularly when Fleischer-era ones were put up against it for comparison, but also that they were imaginatively bad. There are some boring ones in that run, yes, but there are a lot that are just fever-dream weird and I liked that side of it.
I will say that 60s cartoons, especially Hanna-Barbera's, pre-adapted me to appreciate old-time radio and many of the great voice actors who were available then. This isn't to say I'm not thrown by (say) Arthur Q Bryant as the reasonably on-top-of-things police inspector, or Jackson Beck as the heroic crimefighter, but I could appreciate what they do with just the sounds of their voices.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-01 04:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 01:09 am (UTC)I've decided to suffix : Friendship Is Magic to every 1980s half-hour toy-commercial show that's brought back for an often Flash-based new series these days. This probably won't fit too badly for Strawberry Shortcake (I assume there's a new series of it) or Pound Puppies (I did see bits of a new one); it can only be the more hilarious applied to G.I.Joe and Transformers Generation ... What, Like 14 By Now.
But in this case it really and truly was Strawberry Shortcake, no exaggeration or hyperbole. The dolls are strawberry-scented now! (Maybe they were then, too.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 01:33 am (UTC)I have watched a couple of episodes, and the show seems fine, but it's not triggering my fanboy response routines. I just watch with a bit of bewilderment as it takes over everybody else in the world save for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bunny_hugger.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 02:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 05:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 10:10 pm (UTC)I view it more as bewildering, and mostly just hope to make a polite excuse when cornered by people who insist I've got to see this. I would be terrible at handling the zombie apocalypse.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 09:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 10:15 pm (UTC)Now, I have been drifting over to Hub surprisingly often, not for the new cartoons but because they've brought back the Adam West Batman and the 1980s G.I.Joe and Transformers, giving me a nice nostalgic haze when I can find whatever channel it is.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 05:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 10:16 pm (UTC)I never got terribly close to Strawberry Shortcake stuff. I know my sister had some of the dolls when she was young, but she was busy playing with them, and I think the only times I handled them were picking them out of the mud in the yard at which point any natural scent was moot.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-01 05:53 am (UTC)Does she have a favorite Disney princess? I'd have to go with Mulan.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 01:30 am (UTC)You're right; cartoons are a likely suspect. I'm not sure which one would do it, but there must be some cartoons that ... Oh, if she got it from Lilo and Stitch I'll be sooooo happy.
I'm not sure if she has a favorite. I saw more Sleeping Beauty and Little Mermaid stuff, but that might reflect the preferences of people buying stuff, or just going for the color scheme. I don't remember seeing any Mulan stuff, but I don't feel confident saying it's not there.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 05:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 10:20 pm (UTC)Yeah, the dragon was the fun part. There's a lot of beautiful stuff to look at (and apparently Chuck Jones worked on the early stages of it, during the brief closure of the Warner Brothers cartoon studio in the early 50s), but that doesn't really command attention.
Enchanted has a pretty similar conclusion, I don't imagine by coincidence, although it's more charming-for-modern-day-semi-animated-movies rather than something standing on its own as a film.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-01 10:20 am (UTC)I've watched a lot of children's fads over the past eleven years, from a parental position and from a work-related POV, and I'm amazed how Disney was able to successfully re-market their Princesses to make them palatable for today's nouveau moms to want to expose their daughters to. As recently has five years ago I was still hearing the whining that Princess envy was degrading, demeaning, and damaging to a little girl's self-image, but now the clip-on tiara crowd comes smiling up to the circ desk with little armloads of books, cd's, and videos of all-things-princess. Barbie, too, actually... Move over Dora ;o)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 01:26 am (UTC)I have read a bit about the Disney Marketing Plan to push their Princess line on everything (and for that matter remember their setting up a Princess Makeover plaza in Singapore, where at least one boy wanted to be, I think, Ariel).
I don't suppose I'd ever be quite comfortable with such a heavy push of marketing into kids-growing-up, although I guess one thing that doesn't feel quite right is how the modern princesses are the ones with, how you say, personality, but it's the older ones that I have any lingering affection for even if I'm honestly surprised, roughly every four months, to learn that Sleeping Beauty has a more specific name.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 09:20 am (UTC)Childhood is all about mass-marketed toys. You won't see children seeking out home-made dolls or bolo-bats unless there happens to be a kid's show (i.e. campaign) promoting them; Dora is the recent worst, followed maybe by Kai Lan. It's actually frightening how much of PBS children's programming becomes a vehicle for toy sales and movies (promoting videos and more toys).
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-07 10:24 pm (UTC)I'm happy to say I've generally given my niece toys that are, if mass-produced, at least not obnoxiously so, and not tied in to anything particular. Unfortunately she's still not showing an interest in Lincoln Logs or tinker toys, but I'm hoping that her time will come.
Others in her gift-giving sphere have gone in more for Dora, Kai Lan, and Elmo, but a lot of those toys are a little overly noisy to my tastes. You know, a Tickle-Me Elmo barely needs you there to play with it. Of course, she needs a diversity of toys, but I'm glad she likes stuff like the model kitchen and the adorable tiny boxes of mix and cans of icing and all that.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-01 04:22 pm (UTC)I'd imagine she hasn't any awareness of Polaroids. The camera pushed out a picture, and pictures are for showing to people.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-02 01:23 am (UTC)If it were a toy camera, sure, but she had a toy phone with a camera-noise option. And based on my brother's Flickr account and my father's photos she's been photographed by cell phone about infinitely many more times than she's been photographed by a real camera, much less a film camera.