Believe!

Brought to you by Austin Walsh Photography. And, because I can't say it better, here's Jetpacks' tidy take:

Dolls with messed up eyes are the stuff of nightmares, but obsessed old men from the suburbs of KC who believe in Santa Claus are the stuff of Disney. And it's nice to see a studio/collective/agency just telling a story instead of putting antlers on the office dog and acting cute.

I guess I'm into this because for me a great story has both the dark and the beautiful mixed in. That's the kind of stuff that captivates you as a kid, long before your head's all washed out with industrial sized Fight Club-looking soap. Isn't that basically the business we're in? To captivate, to make that inner kid feel at ease poking his head out again?

Well, maybe not for nose clippers or Chia pets.

On Cleaning

I'm basically just posting this to kill time because I've devoted today to putting "certain" elements of the apartment in order, including the bedroom.

I have a secret jealousy of people whose things all have a dedicated place, even the telephone and internet cords. Everything is neat and perfect, and there is never even any dust. I keep thinking that someday I'll morph into that person if only I can find a "dedicated space" for this pile of business cards I recently accumulated, for example.

But it's complicated. I'm staring at the business cards now, that great grand pile of "things that are potentially important," and there doesn't seem to be an immediate solution. The probability is high I will never look at that pile again. But what if one day I need a name in there? I'll hate that I cast it aside like so much junk mail.

I can extend the time frame of how long I can contemplate this quagmire by taking little pieces of paper to the trashcan, one scrap at a time, which is technically still productive.

(Also, I am Spotlighting things on my computer to stick in the bin. I love emptying the Mac bin.)

On days like this there's a vague memory that replays in my mind. It is so resonant that it's managed to survive in my recollectable archives, but so old that I realised today I can think about it without knowing I'm thinking about it. It has lived with me too long, like a dull ache you forget to be unhappy about.

Humor me ››

And Now for Some Acid-Triptastic Relief.

This ain't classic Alice in Wonderland, but it does make me miss the esoteric and lovely humour of Alice: from its hand-drawn animation to the '50s-faithful conservative flirtation with whimsy.

I look forward to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland as much as the next nostalgia-obsessed Gen-Y ingrate but there is something precious about the way Disney used to do things. These old films were crafted in a way that doesn't exist now and will never exist again.

And really, at what other point in time can you find a hookah-smoking caterpillar in a kid's cartoon?

Please Maintain a 100-Ft Distance Between Your Skank Pen and My Childhood.

You can honor a throwback in ways that are clever and amusing to watch, and then there's a way to mutilate every good thing we love about a standby from the past.

Here is where you explain to me how Rainbow Brite goes from this:

Humor me ››

On Time Management

I had a streak of bad progress reports as a kid. It's not that I was stupid; I just didn't take school very seriously. At first the grades fell because I hadn't studied long enough - that is, I didn't take the time to finish the work I'd begun. In a few months' time, I stopped doing my homework altogether.

My mom confronted me about my falling grades and asked me what was wrong. Was the homework hard? Did I not understand the teacher? Did I have chatty friends in class?

Without raising my eyes from my latest edition of Disney Adventures -- and I can't even recall why I thought I could get away with this -- I replied, "I don't have time for homework."

Worst. Answer. EVER.

Mom stared at me for a few seconds. And then she smited upon me a punishment I'll never forget. "Put the magazine down," she said quietly, "and follow me."

We went to the kitchen. She said sit on the floor and wait. Then she went back to my bedroom.

She returned with two boxes under each arm. One contained a pile of school books. The other contained copies of The Baby-Sitter's Club, some Disney movies, playing cards, and -- at the very top -- my Disney Adventures magazine.

"Get on your knees," mom said. I obeyed. She leaned over, straightened my back and tilted each of my arms upward, palms up and even with my shoulders.

"This is a lesson about time management," she said. "This" -- lifting up the box of videos, novels and magazines -- "is play." The box was positioned carefully on my right hand.

"This" -- lifting up the box of school books -- "is work." Plop, onto my left.

Not a terrible load.

"You have fifteen minutes," she said. "If either of those arms falls below your shoulders, you start again." Then she walked away.

That was probably the most agonizing fifteen minutes I ever spent with books. It took FOREVER. My hands shook, my knees threatened to buckle and sweat formed on my brow. I tried to be brave and imagined I was She-Ra, or possibly He-Man. I squeezed my eyes shut and avoided looking at the oven clock, which mocked me with its sluggish green numbers.

Mom didn't even reappear when time was up. I dropped both boxes on the floor and collapsed, my cheek hot against the checkered floor. Then I scrambled up -- a little like my ass was on fire -- and did a week's worth of homework.

I recalled this delightful instance of childhood trauma today because somebody called to nag about something and I caught myself in the middle of saying, "Sorry, I just haven't had the time." For obvious reasons, it's not a sentence I can utter lightly. I only received the "time management" lesson once in my life, but everytime I start making excuses I'm forced to ask myself--

Is it really that I don't have enough time, or am I failing to distribute sufficient time to my priorities? It's usually the latter.

I remember the shaky limbs, and that godforsaken copy of Disney Adventures (which, by the way, I couldn't bring myself to make her buy me again), and I make an effort to do things when I say I will. My track record's not perfect, but hell; it's way better than it might have been.