Category: pop culture

I’ve got a bad feeling about this

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A few years, Thing 1, our 10-year-old began asking me about Star Wars. She didn’t know much about it except what she’d heard at school, and what she heard at school was mostly about the prequels.

Sweetie and I … OK, Sweetie doesn’t really care.

I — pretty much by myself — have worked hard to make sure our children grow up in a Jar Jar-free home.

When our daughter just a baby, I decided that, when the time was right, I’d let her watch the original Star Wars, then The Empire Strikes Back and finally Return of the Jedi, and then, and only then, would I expose her to The Phantom Menace and the other prequels, because, no matter what George Lucas says, that’s the natural order of things.

I worried sometimes that I’d waited too late to talk to her about Star Wars, so I was relieved when we were watching Empire — this was a couple years ago — and Vader says, “Luke, I am your father,” Thing 1 sat bolt upright and said, “Whoa!”

Despite everything she’d heard on the playground, despite the scene in Toy Story 2 where Zurg tells Buzz Lightyear that he’s Buzz’s father, she didn’t know. The moment still surprised her.

I had done my job.

Our youngest, Thing 2, the 4-year-old, has begun asking questions about Star Wars.

I think he’s still too young to watch the movies,I think they might be too scary, but I don’t want him to hear about this stuff on the playground. I want him to hear it from me. I don’t want him to grow up thinking Jar Jar Binks is funny or that Greedo shot first. I want him to know the truth.

I think that’s why this new public service announcement hit so close to home:

 

The 5 stages of trick-or-treaters

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Jack-o-latern
Image: Toby Ord, Wikipedia

Halloween falls on Sunday, which, of course, is church night, so some communities are having trick-or-treat tonight, Saturday, although I wouldn’t be surprised to get trick-or-treaters both nights, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some trick-or-treaters double dip.

When I was a kid in eastern Kentucky, we had 5 distinct stages of trick-or-treaters:

  1. The demons we knew. These were the kids of friends of the family. Mom would make special goodie bags for them — caramel popcorn balls and full-sized candy bars.
  2. The demons we kind of knew. These were random kids in the neighborhood. They got miniature Hershey bars. The kids in our neighborhood generally wore decent costumes (or at least a mask). They always said “Trick or treat!” and usually said, “Thank you!”
  3. The demons we didn’t know. We lived in a subdivision out in the country, so these little monsters were random kids from out in the country. They didn’t live in a neighborhood, so they’d hit several subdivisions and maybe go into town. They generally didn’t wear costumes, as such. They’d wear old clothes and smear lipstick or something on their faces. They looked like psychotic clowns. They usually came in groups, and at least some of them would say, “Trick or treat,” like that. Flat, with no enthusiasm. They might or might not say, “Thank you.”
  4. The demons we suspected were collecting candy for their obese moms waiting in the car. The fourth wave of kids would come near the end of trick-or-treat. If trick-or-treat was supposed to end at 8, they’d come at a quarter of. They usually didn’t wear costumes and rarely spoke. They didn’t have a special Halloween candy bag. They’d carry pillow cases, and when you opened the door, they’d just hold it out, joylessly. This wasn’t fun for them. This was a job.
  5. Teenagers. Some might wear masks, but most didn’t. They giggled like Beavis and Butt-head, like we were stupid, like we didn’t know they were too old to trick-or-treat. After the first group of teenagers, Dad would snuff out the candle in the jack-o-lantern and turn off the porch light — the international signal for saying, “We’re not playing anymore” — but we’d still get four or five more groups of teenagers. It was around this time of night that someone would put an M-80 or a cherry bomb in our jack-o-lantern and blow it up.

Things are different where we live now. The kids all wear costumes. They’re all polite. We get some double-dippers, but not many, although near quitting time, we still get a few teenagers. That’s when we turn out the light and call it a night.

I still bring in the pumpkin, though, just in case.

You gotta love old amusement parks

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Every summer, when we visit my parents in eastern Kentucky, we take the kids to Camden Park.

Camden Park’s a neat old amusement park in Huntington, West Virginia,  a few miles from the Kentucky line and across the river from Ohio.

It started as a trolley park over 100 years ago, a picnic area along the Camden Interstate Railway. Some of its rides have been around since the Eisenhower administration and look it, too, but that’s part of what makes it great.

Out of habit, my wife calls it a theme park (we used to live in Orlando), but there’s a big difference between a theme park and a place like Camden Park.

For starters, there’s no theme, nothing tying the place together, no attempt at storytelling.

Camden Park’s roller coaster is just a coaster. It isn’t a rocket ship or a fighter jet.

Camden Park’s coaster, the Big Dipper, is made of wood, not steel, and it’s scary enough without a back story — not because it’s especially fast (because it isn’t), but because it opened in 1958 and looks like it could collapse at any moment.

Of course, that’s how it looked when I was a kid, and it’s still standing. It’s a lot sturdier than it looks.

You don’t have to stand in long lines to ride the rides at Camden Park, either.

Lord knows how long you’d have to wait to ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey at Islands of Adventure, but you’ll wait 5, maybe 10 minutes to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl at Camden Park. The line would be even shorter if the operator didn’t give everyone a good, long ride.

Something else I love about old amusement parks is that the rides are simple.

Disney’s Haunted Mansion is this elaborate special effects show, but Camden Park’s Haunted House is a twisty little ride powered by gravity, black lights and what could be props from the Halloween store in the old strip mall.

Everything about Camden Park’s Haunted House is low tech, including the brakes. When the ride’s over and you turn that final corner and come outside, your car, which probably weighs 500, 600 pounds, is stopped by hand.