The two year-old is now speaking more than the six year-old. Timmy is chatting away these days and is actually conversing. And it all happened this week, it seems. Tim walks around the house, picks up boks and toys and asks, "What is this?" Yesterday he said "Give me cracker." Nice.
Matthew is making nice progress and we see more and more from him each week. Matthew will still do anything not to speak one word so that he may get what he wants. Getting him to say "cookie, please" and "I want snack/milk/movie" is an uphill battle with a stubborn boy who has figured out his world and where he fits inside it. He is still a wonder to watch. The autistic mind is something to behold. Matthew gets things and yet in other ways it's almost as if he is refusing to engage with the world. It's not a mean-spirited refusal -- his brain simply works a touch differently than yours and mine.
Nora is having a good year and is coming into her own. She is doing nicely with her math and her script is better than her plain block letters. Unlike last year, she has a good teacher and we are seing results for the chattiest and sweetest thing in our lives. Go, Nora!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
The Barak Bandwagon
Borak Obama has hinted rather strongly that he will run in 2008 and the press have their first true superstar for the coming election. Hillary Clinton, Rudy Guiliani and John McCain are old hands these days and the media clearly wants to write about someone new, refreshing, (clearly) inspirational and more than a little unknown.
For all of his strengths, Obama has a damned light resume. The media sniffed at then-Gov. George W. Bush's light record but he looks like Winston Churchill next to Obama. The Illinois Congressman couldn't win his congressional seat and he won his senate seat thanks to an 'independent ' investigation into his opponent's bitter divorce. Fast forward and he found himself running against Alan Keyes. Come on, people.
But Obama, despite the funny name and the feather-lite resume, is damned attractive. He represents hope and unlike Bill Clinton, his sunny optimism doesn't have the very real and depressing taint of scumbagginess. Clinton was a rogue, and even if Obama has a mild bimbo problem, it won't be as destructuve as the days of Bubba.
Hillary, stay in the Senate. Trust me.
For all of his strengths, Obama has a damned light resume. The media sniffed at then-Gov. George W. Bush's light record but he looks like Winston Churchill next to Obama. The Illinois Congressman couldn't win his congressional seat and he won his senate seat thanks to an 'independent ' investigation into his opponent's bitter divorce. Fast forward and he found himself running against Alan Keyes. Come on, people.
But Obama, despite the funny name and the feather-lite resume, is damned attractive. He represents hope and unlike Bill Clinton, his sunny optimism doesn't have the very real and depressing taint of scumbagginess. Clinton was a rogue, and even if Obama has a mild bimbo problem, it won't be as destructuve as the days of Bubba.
Hillary, stay in the Senate. Trust me.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Torture, cinema style
If you need one hour and 47 minutes of sheer, unrelenting torture, then by all means move The Break-Up to the top of your Netflix queue. It is utter torture, a purely unpleasant cinematic experience with two of the most likeable stars from TV and films wasted in a bickering and senseless feud. Who wouldn't want to see the celluloid dating antics of Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn, but for some reason, the filmmakers pit the duo against each other after 10 minutes into the film. We watch them break up and maintain a seething time-out as the couple sell their stellar Chicago condo. For such a large and roomy dwelling, this is a spectacularly clammy and claustrophobic experience.
Aniston looks terrific if Vaughn looks like he might need an intervention from his fratboy days as a binge-drinker and party regular. Some weeks at a spa might be good for the bloated character actor.
I did like one aspect of the movie: Aniston walks naked past Vaughn who was deep in the throes of a video game. Here is a king dork -- seen shouting smack at a 12 year-old over John Madden Football - who witnesses what he is stubbornly allowing to slip through his fingers. She glides back to her room -- no body double -- and we hope onto a better movie career.
Aniston looks terrific if Vaughn looks like he might need an intervention from his fratboy days as a binge-drinker and party regular. Some weeks at a spa might be good for the bloated character actor.
I did like one aspect of the movie: Aniston walks naked past Vaughn who was deep in the throes of a video game. Here is a king dork -- seen shouting smack at a 12 year-old over John Madden Football - who witnesses what he is stubbornly allowing to slip through his fingers. She glides back to her room -- no body double -- and we hope onto a better movie career.
Just enough to lose
Is it me or does 21,500 additional troops in Iraq sound like there will be any impact? Four or five brigades sounds impressive to a non-military guy like me but will those numbers mean anything to the insurgents? The proposal not only feels like the last ditch effort for the US's plan in Iraq, it feels like just enough to lose. Those are Mickey Kaus' formulation and he makes sense. Also, do any hard core Neocon truly believe that 21K soliders and Marines will make a dent in the chaos of Iraq?
John Derbyshire of National Review also thinks that with the latest speech, Syria and Iran have absolutely nothing to fear from us at all. Why are we now only securing the Iran and Syria border after a bloody three-year war. And that makes perfect and depressing sense.
Want more insight in how we got here? Check out Fiasco by Thomas Ricks. It seems like every bad decision we could made was pursued vigorously by the present administration. Their incompetence was truly stellar and prescient.
John Derbyshire of National Review also thinks that with the latest speech, Syria and Iran have absolutely nothing to fear from us at all. Why are we now only securing the Iran and Syria border after a bloody three-year war. And that makes perfect and depressing sense.
Want more insight in how we got here? Check out Fiasco by Thomas Ricks. It seems like every bad decision we could made was pursued vigorously by the present administration. Their incompetence was truly stellar and prescient.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
The Urge to Surge
President Bush is expected to propose a surge of US troops for the next 18 months in Iraq. The only question is the number of troops the President is finally willing to bring to the failed state. Will it be 20,000 troops, as most media reports hint at, or will it be the 100,000 troops that some extreme Neocons and anti-war critics have been saying? Tomorrow night will be a true numbers game.
So, if it is 20K or 100K, the question remains: will it work? Frankly, I have my doubts.
Iraq seems to be a hopeless cesspool and I doubt more bodies from the Army and Marines will make a dent in the ciivil war and insurgency. Who exactly are we supposed to surge against? The men who walk through the streets of Iraq and wave at our soldiers, and then at night they don masks and plant roadside bombs. How can 20K new troops make sense of this utter and confounding state of nonsense?
And there is one more question. Where do these troops come from? Our Army and Marine force are stretch thin and one must wonder where the Pentagon is hiding these troops. And one ultimate question remains: who do we shoot? Where do we point our rifiles? I doubt we will even find targets. But that's just me.
So, if it is 20K or 100K, the question remains: will it work? Frankly, I have my doubts.
Iraq seems to be a hopeless cesspool and I doubt more bodies from the Army and Marines will make a dent in the ciivil war and insurgency. Who exactly are we supposed to surge against? The men who walk through the streets of Iraq and wave at our soldiers, and then at night they don masks and plant roadside bombs. How can 20K new troops make sense of this utter and confounding state of nonsense?
And there is one more question. Where do these troops come from? Our Army and Marine force are stretch thin and one must wonder where the Pentagon is hiding these troops. And one ultimate question remains: who do we shoot? Where do we point our rifiles? I doubt we will even find targets. But that's just me.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Domino, in real time
It's the first day of the new year, the kids are inside after we took a walk around he pond across the street, I've poured a drink and fired up HBO On Demand. I am now live-blogging Tony Scott's Domino, the Kira Knightly bounty hunter pic. Ron Rosenbaum of the NY Observer loved this pic even though it hails from the brutalism school of cinema.
hey, I think I coined this term when I reviewd Man on Fire, Tony Scott's revenge epic starring denzel Washington. More on that later.
We're 10 minutes in and we see a bloody Kira Knightly holding a shotgun that is taller than she is and weighs just as much.
The edits are quick, the lighting is sickly flourescent, and the pacing feels like a caffeine jag. Kira looks sexy as hell and gives good jaw. She is paying the real-life bounty hunter who was the daughter of a famous British actor. Laurence Harvey? Wow, that's Jacqueline Bisset as her mother. Man, she was meant to be in movirs. Where has she been?
More later
hey, I think I coined this term when I reviewd Man on Fire, Tony Scott's revenge epic starring denzel Washington. More on that later.
We're 10 minutes in and we see a bloody Kira Knightly holding a shotgun that is taller than she is and weighs just as much.
The edits are quick, the lighting is sickly flourescent, and the pacing feels like a caffeine jag. Kira looks sexy as hell and gives good jaw. She is paying the real-life bounty hunter who was the daughter of a famous British actor. Laurence Harvey? Wow, that's Jacqueline Bisset as her mother. Man, she was meant to be in movirs. Where has she been?
More later
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