BECAUSE WHEN YOU LEARN YOU'LL KNOW WHAT MAKES THE WORLD TURN
How
do I turn the baby into a reader as he grows up? I know the obvious
answers: read to him, read books in front of him, always have books
around. But there are plenty of households where this is totally
the situation and the kid winds up being totally indifferent about
reading. Add to it the fact that Gray has barely cracked a book
in his life, and definitely not ever since college ended. We have
these occasional conversations where I go, "Man, that book
I just read was really good," and he goes, "(Grunt)",
and I say, "Do you ever feel like reading?" and he goes,
"Why?" How do you explain to someone how good a book can
be? There was an article over the weekend or maybe yesterday in
the SF Chronicle about how the internet is diminishing the few book-readers
there were before it, and how not reading is making us stupid. I
totally believe this and hope there are a bunch of social psychologists
studying the internet phenomenon and how it's changing us, because
I bet it's going to be a crazy rapidfire metamorphosis from an evolutionary
standpoint. But I guess I'll just keep reading him books. I probably
won't forcefeed him Silas Marner like my mother did me in fourth
grade, though.
===
Top
things on brain:
1.
Burbank has one better thing than this town, which is cheap parks
and rec classes. The baby music class we took in Burbank cost $35
with a $5 materials fee. Here it's $78 with a $30 materials fee.
The thing that cracks me up about up here is that you can usually
totally tell where people come from regionally: fancy clothes, San
Francisco. REI shorts and sunglasses and Tevas, the peninsula. Long
hair and flowy skirts, Santa Cruz. The new music teacher is totally
from Santa Cruz.
2.
I am slowly making acquaintence-friends, but it seems totally impossible
that I will ever have friend-friends here.
3.
I have been ignoring Beans's ear problem and now I think he might
be deaf. The dogs have been semi-forgotten lately and I feel really
bad about it.
4.
The baby had an accident yesterday (he's fine) and I didn't tell
Gray about it to spare a) him over-worrying as he likes to do and
b) a thousand questions. I know this is wrong, but I'm not telling
him anyway. And it's eating at me. I would be a terrible adulterer
because I could never live with the guilt.
5.
I saw Wall-E last night and it was great. I had zero desire to see
it until Gray saw it and said how fantastic it was, which was really
hard to believe after seeing those terrible trailers. But it's a
film that deserves studying. The main character doesn't talk for
a solid half-hour, but we understand him 100% and identify with
him and are completely rooting for him. And he's a robot. Pixar
writers really know what they're doing.
===
We
had a good fourth of July here. First there was a small town Main
Street parade that was like some crazy 50s throwback, then we went
to a party and rode a motorcycle for the first time through some
fields by the ocean, and drank beer out of a keg, and had tri-tip
and homemade icecream. Then the next day we ate hot dogs and hamburgers
and margaritas and went berry picking down the coast again, and
the next day I didn't weigh myself. It was all pretty fun.
I
saw Yaz(oo) the other night in Oakland and that was pretty great.
Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke played together for the first time
since like 1982, and some of the second album stuff was never even
played live because they didn't tour for it. The crowd was 100%
devoted - no talkers or texters - and everybody seemed to know all
the words. Highlights: State Farm and Only You. Only You live. Can
you believe it?
On
the trail where the baby and I go, there's a horse business where
they take vacationers out riding, and yesterday there was a family
trotting next to us and in the middle of the pack was a teenage
girl, riding her horse, texting. Awesome.
Now
I'm going in search of some special coffee down Highway 1 that everybody
keeps raving about.
