Mickey Mickey Mickey

Good job, Disney World. You've managed to turn my daughter into a bona fide Mickey-phile without her ever having seen a Mickey Mouse before. Some kid at her daycare loves Mickey mouse merchanidse, I'm told. It was another one of those random discoveries where she saw the iconic mouse among a cavalcade of other characters on the back of a Golden Book at home. Much to our surprise, she pointed to him and yelled "MICKEY!" She did a similar thing to a Barney balloon in a party store a few months ago. The stages of grief as parents are: Shock, Realization That She's Watching TV at Daycare, then the Forehead-Slap With Eyes Closed.

We did Disney World for a day, driving there from my sister's house near Tampa. Bob Barker fans take note: Actual retail price for two adults at Disney - $247! That's just to walk in the gate. We opted to get a "hopper" ticket so we could go to multiple parks during the day, thus inflating the price. We had our reasons. Mostly they had to do with a fish named Nemo. We also thought that it being during the school year, we'd walk on rides fairly easily. Not necessarily the case. Apparently free chicken tenders was enough incentive for parents to pull hundreds of kids from their 'rithmetic. Disney was offering a promotion: Stay at a Disney Resort, get Free Food! Get the wheelbarrow, Cletus!

About half way through the day, after she passed out on the Peter Pan ride, we got her a small Mickey and Minnie. She wouldn't put them down for the rest of the day. The Power of Branding.

Some thoughts on Disney World: Animatronic of Jack Sparrow/Johnny Depp on the Pirates ride was eerily lifelike. When you name a section of your park Tomorrow Land, don't sell prehistoric looking turkey legs there. FastPass to avoid lines - great idea, Walt. Walking in and out of air conditioning and 90 degree heat then getting rained on a couple of times will get you sick - plus all the filthy kids running about with and without their leashes. If a thunderstorm is clearly approaching and people are bottle necking for the exit, maybe get that Electric Parade out of the way - there was no escape! When your parking lot is the size of Iceland, maybe install some visible cues marking sections that you can see from afar. Was booking Albert Brooks really too expensive to record a few lines for that Nemo ride? Seeing that animated fish with someone else's voice felt wrong. Thank You for making It's A Small World less annoying. Alina wanted to ride it three times. You don't hear the actual lyrics until the last minute. It used to just play and play and play on a loop until you wanted to drown yourself. Snow White is a really dark and scary ride - dark forests, evil witches, she tries to drop a rock on you. Geez! How 'bout a song, dwarves?? I tried distracting her by making her Mickey & Minnie toys dance. But in the blacklight, their eyes and hands glowed and it just made them look menacing.

Alina sorta kinda liked the people wearing the character costumes. I thought she'd either love them or cry and run in fear. Something in the middle ended up happening. She really wanted to see them, just from 5 feet away. "I can see them just fine from here, thanks" was the vibe she put out. They even tried to get on one knee and spread their arms out for a hug. Ummm, no. However, pictures had to be procured. So we just made sure there was a human between her and the loveable 6 Foot Rat.

We had a great time, though. And we'll most certainly go back when she's a little taller and more used to the idea of animatronics. It turned out to all be about repetition. The first time on any ride she was mostly staring and sucking her thumb. She didn't know what to make of it and it was damn un-photogenic of her. After a few tries though, she'd be dancing and pointing things out. Very cool.

First Haircut

After literally months of debate and continual comments about how Alina looks like a shaggy dog when she wakes up, we finally took her to get her first haircut. And it was the most anti-climactic thing in recent memory. It was one of these places that has little cars for seats, stuffed animals to hold, stickers to stick, and DVD players in front of every chair to ensure complete distraction while the Barbizon graduate wields her tungsten steel around my child's earlobes and eyeballs. The stylist basically took her first row of bangs, cut them to over the eyebrow, and tied the rest back. The End. $15 please. They even saved the trimmings in a little plastic crack vial with a pink top, just for us. But they barely cut enough to see. Not exactly the lock of hair we were expecting. But I paid close attention. Why? Because I'm totally doing this next time. All parents cut their kids hair, mostly badly. But I think Alina is rockin a fairly simple style that can be reproduced with my eyes closed.

Before:



After:



My mother kept my hair fairly long. Dutch boy-esque, even. People thought I was a girl for about 3 years until I got lice and it had to be cut off when I was in first grade. I don't really know if my hair was kept long because of my mother's skill, the fact that it was 1982, or that my mother's fear of kidnappers left her wanting to take me to the ladies room instead of letting me go into the men's room alone. This is my...er...daughter, Athena. I didn't mind the girly moniker. After all, I was given full access to the YMCA women's locker room. You're never too young to learn about the carpet matching the drapes.

Shoot The Freak

We went to Astroland at Coney Island recently, before it goes away to make room for Luxury Condominiums. I shot The Freak. I shot him "in da friggin' head," as I was instructed to do by the wife-beater wearing, crew cut dude with the mic. He's got this relaxed, Brooklyn-ite delivery as he tries to solicit customers: "Shoot the freak...shoot him in da friggin' head. Whaddya gonna do when you come to Coney Island - watch da hot dogs cook at Nathan's? No, you're gonna shoot the freak." It takes place in what appears to be a plot where a building once stood along the boardwalk. You basically pay for the right to be given a loaded paintball gun and shoot at a human target: Some prancing git wearing pads, a helmet, and a shield. I can only assume he made a bad career choice somewhere along the way. It was moderately satisfying. I would've liked him to move around a little more in the interest of difficulty. Fish in a barrel doesn't quite describe it, but it's close. Although it's going away, I somehow doubt Alina will have missed her chance to shoot at people for fun. Something like this will surely crop up again, but it will be called Shoot The Terrorist, Hipster, Evictee, Section 8, or Republican.

And Fuck Luxury Condominiums. Are there even guidelines that stipulate what luxury is? Remember when putting "Lite" on a food label wasn't anything more than hype until the FDA stepped in? I have a feeling it's the same thing. Just a word. I wouldn't call drywall and aluminum studs luxury - you can hear your neighbor fart. But I digress.

There was a lot of Save Astroland people around on its final weekend. And while it's an institution and the idea of it being saved is nice n' all - no one was going. We were there the weekend before it closed and it wasn't crowded at all. It would be good to have some kind of kiddie amusements in the greater NYC area though. But like most seasonal attractions here, they're too expensive to keep up if they're only open a few months out of the year.

There are pockets of real communities in New York, but they're dwindling. We're in a Playground For The Rich, bordered by a Trust Fund Ghetto. They're building luxury condominiums on 118th Street - and branding the neighborhood "SoHa"! Are they kidding? So I guess in a few years we'll all be going to trendy bars in SoBro, er the South Bronx, I mean The Boogie Down...whatever it's called.

No!

Lately, Alina has been saying "No" when she means "Yes". I really hope she straightens this out before she starts dating. For example, we'll ask her if she wants a banana, and she'll say No but take it from our hands anyway. Our running theory is that she is hears No so much more often, its kind of sunk in. We actually caught her giving Elmo a time out. She sat him down against the wall, pointed at him and said No, then walked two steps, turned around and said No again with the same accusatory pointing finger. That finger part is probably my doing. We say no a lot but I make sure to use the finger when I mean it, so she knows the difference between a little no and Big No. In addition to punishment, she has been feeding her stuffed animals food and giving them her bottle. Katrina wanted to buy a little doll baby for her but those things just creep me out - especially when a baby is doing the feeding. It just feels so wrong. I'm contented to watch a stuffed Muppet or farm animal get fed instead. And it's not always edible. Alina took her mother's birthday rose and fed the petals to an open-mouthed toy as well. It was like she was attempting some kind of ironic mummification.