My vaccination appointment is today. For once, I am benefitting from having the kind of body that inspires people to bring up vegetables like they're copies of The Watchtower. Fuzzy scored his shot on Thursday, qualifying for his job. I'm relieved and hopeful. As I encouraged my financial advisor to do, go to myturn.ca and register for a notification when it's time for your appointment. I received a text at 2:55 on Wednesday, as did Fuzzy, and we were registered and ready to go by 3:00. If you're not in California, see if your state has something similar. It's an easy way to make the whole affair less stressful.
I've been showing Kiddo various kid-friendly grown-up movies lately, mostly to widen her horizons beyond a fifteenth viewing of Disney Channel kid sitcom reruns. There's a style of acting in all of those shows that sets my teeth on edge, so she watches a lot of it on her own. We're always on the lookout for things to watch together, though.
Fuzzy has been trying to make all the movies he loved as a kid happen, with varying degrees of success. Kiddo loves Jackie Chan and superheroes and Star Wars and The Goonies, but some of the other stuff has been just a bit too intense. It also irks her to no end how few real female roles there are--she wants to see more women with agency in these things. I figure we're only about a year or two away from introducing her to Buffy. Kiddo wandered in when I was watching Practical Magic the other day, and I thought that it was fine, until I remembered what the rest of the plot was. Luckily, she felt the movie was too intense when Sally wouldn't get out of bed after her husband died, so I didn't have to explain abusive partners or black magic.
Fuzzy and I have been debating showing Kiddo some more Golden Age musicals to broaden her cultural horizons, since we have a lot of them on DVD. He was all for Oklahoma! at first, but I'm reticent due to the murder in Act II. Once we actually started discussing titles, we realized how much death there really is in those old musicals--South Pacific, Carousel, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods all have body counts, after all. I might see if I can get her into My Fair Lady--it should win, due to the female heroine, lavish costumes, and good songs. We shall see, I guess.
The movie of the day on Thursday was 13 Going on 30. It wasn't what she expected, as the title is also a lyric of Catherine Howard's song in Six. The movie came first by a decade, so the lyric is a reference to the movie, but Kiddo met the show first. It's a phenomenon we are going to meet a lot more nowadays, since we now have a generation with more immediate access to pop culture of multiple eras. The concept of waiting more than a week to resolve a cliffhanger has been a bitter pill for Kiddo to swallow.
Back to the movie. Three-quarters of the way through, Jenna is going through a rough time in a sequence set to Billy Joel's "Vienna." Can we talk about the wonder that is this song? I first met this song in 2001, when I discovered it on the fourth disc of the box set I bought from Columbia House (I can talk about Columbia House, because unlike just about everyone else from my generation, I don't owe them any money.). The fourth disc includes some of the discussions from his Q and A concerts, followed by live versions of the songs discussed. His discussion of "Vienna" is wonderful. He was inspired by his trip to find his father, who had originally left Europe during the reign of Hitler, and his realization that he didn't have to fear ageing. I fell hard for this song, and it's one of my musical security blankets.
I really appreciate that they chose to have the whole song in the movie. It wouldn't withstand cuts or alterations well, and it was ideal. Now, I'm on a Billy Joel kick, only two weeks after my Elton John kick. I know Billy Joel is sometimes middle-aged Dad rock, but there are days that can only be improved by "Only the Good Die Young," "Uptown Girl," and "For the Longest Time." Plus, introducing the kid to "We Didn't Start the Fire" was wonderful. She hasn't started asking about the events, but she likes the song. It's a start. It's also startling to remember that he wrote the song as an exercise to wrap his head around turning forty. I first heard him say that when I was twenty. Forty seemed to be a million years away. I'm forty now, and I feel so behind.
I guess I need to remember that Vienna waits for me.
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