Sam art update
Sam (6) had his first art opening this week. His class had their “Rauschenberg” show, where the entire class studied Rauschenberg’s combines and then each student made their own. Well, one learns technique by copying masters.
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Here’s Sam’s, with its own hand-made gallery card. “‘Adventure,’ Combine, Sam Alcott, 2007.” The background is a little busy so it’s hard to see the shiny stones and the postcard of Buddha on top.
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If you click on the above, you’ll be able to see the cut-up postcard of the Cedar Waxwing, which Sam included as a tribute to his dad and “those birds you draw on your computer.” (On the other side of the Combine is a postcard from Point Reyes, CA, where his mom spent her childhood.)
Dad peruses the finished product.
Meanwhile, Sam has today whipped up a number of illustrations of key moments in the Star Wars saga. Note that all the drawings are signed “TM Sam” to prevent trademark infringement.
First, it’s the podrace from The Phantom Menace. Featured are the tall mushroom-like rock formations of the racetrack as Sebulba’s podracer careens through a narrow passage. An explosion to the left of Sebulba’s pod-racer (the yellow ball at the base of the center rock formation) is causing the tower to topple over, threatening Sebulba’s pod-racer. The purple arrows and action lines indicate the way the rocks are about to fall.
Later on in The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul slays Qui Gon in that room where that happens. Qui Gon is very surprised by this turn of events — you can tell by the “surprise” lines emanating from his head and the OH NO speech balloon. Darth Maul is merciless however and lets out a triumphal “AH” as poor young Obi-wan watches helplessly from the other side of the red force-field, screaming a bigger-than-life (or at least bigger-than-speech-balloon) — NO! — (he’s shouting so loud his exclamation point needs to go on a separate speech-balloon addendum)
Darth Maul, being an arrogant, short-sighted Sith, does not pay attention to the open pit behind him, the pit that will soon claim his bisected corpse.
The moment of Qui-Gon’s death so impressed Sam that he felt a need to go in for a close-up of Obi-wan’s horrified face as he chants “No No No.” Or perhaps this is a view of Obi-wan’s face from Darth Maul’s point-of-view (note the crossed light-sabers in the foreground), moments before his own death at Obi-wan’s hands.
UPDATE: I have misidentified this image. Sam tells me that this is not a close-up of the horrified Obi-Wan watching Qui-Gon’s death, nor is it Obi-wan’s face from the point-of-view of Darth Maul. The reality is much greater — it is Count Dooku at the moment of his death, from Anakin’s point-of-view. The crossed light-sabers in the foreground are being held by Anakin and are about to remove Count Dooku’s head from his neck. Count Dooku is saying “No, no, don’t do it.” The combination of the close-up and Sam identifying with the remorseless, hate-filled Anakin makes this father proud.
And then, finally, Sam’s favorite scene from Revenge of the Sith, the climactic light-saber duel between Obi-wan and Anakin on the volcano planet. Lava explodes in the background as student and master fight on a rickety bridge over a flowing river of lava. An outraged, heart-broken Obi-wan says, in four separate speech balloons, “I TOLD YOU TO” “BRING” “BALANCE” “TO THE FORCE.”
(Maybe the separate speech balloons indicate pauses in Obi-wan’s speech as he struggles to defeat Anakin. Much more effective than the traditional “I told you to — uh! — bring — unh! — balance — hh! — ” etc.)
This moment is brought to more vivid life in this drawing from a week earlier. Note the use of backlighting and silhouette.
This moment, his favorite in the Star Wars saga, was also featured on his 6th birthday cake:
I resisted the impulse to have Sam’s cake read “Revenge of the Sixth.”
Star Wars Episode VII scene 1
A first try at Star Wars: Episode VII — a test reel, really, written and directed by Sam. The “test” was me showing Sam that we could do a scene between two battle droids when we, in fact, only own one.
Yes, I know it’s out of focus.
Sam and I both cracked up at this, but to be fair to Sam, when I suggested we post this on YouTube he looked skeptical and said “Mmm, let’s make it better first.”
Proof of God’s appearance
I take Sam (5) to see The Last Mimzy. Before the movie, there is a trailer for the upcoming Evan Almighty, starring Steve Carell as Evan and Morgan Freeman as God.
During the trailer, Sam points to Morgan Freeman.
SAM. That’s God?
DAD. Yes.
SAM. I told you he looks like Mace Windu!
Sam’s first love letter
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A dad can’t help but be proud when his son comes home from kindergarden with a note like this.
“Dear Sam” writes his admiratrix “I left you a penny and two dimes I love you because you gave me a stick. Love, _____.” (name omitted so that the young lady in question might one day still become a supreme court justice).
What, ahem, stick, you ask, did my son give her that was worth 21 cents and a love letter? No special stick, insists Sam, just a Y-shaped stick “you know, like for a slingshot,” that he found in the schoolyard and gave to her because she admired it.
Why is her declaration of love crossed out? I wasn’t sure how to dance around this subject with Sam, who has already had his 5-year-old heart broken once by the fickle wiles of the pre-teen female heart. But it turns out there is a perfectly rational explanation, at least in Sam’s mind. “She still loves me,” says Sam, noting that she repeats her declaration at the bottom of the letter, “it’s just that she must have read the letter again and thought ‘I love you because you gave me a stick?’ That doesn’t make any sense, that sounds crazy.”
The last time we were talking about career paths, Sam said that he does not think he would make a very good soldier (good for you, Sam) and that he still plans to become an artist (good for you, Sam), but based on this letter, it seems like he will always have “gigolo” as a fallback position.
Sam hits the nub
Conversation in the car this afternoon with Sam (5):
SAM. Dad?
DAD. Yeah?
S. You know what my favorite food is?
D. What.
S. Lox.
D. I was going to say burritos.
S. I like burritos.
D. How about burritos with lox in them?
S. Eugh! That would be awful!
D. In New York, there used to be a restaurant near our house, they served crabmeat enchiladas. That was my favorite food for a long time.
S. Crabmeat?
D. Yeah, they —
S. Meat? From a crab?
D. Sure, and —
S. How is that fair?
D. What do you mean?
S. You mean they would kill a crab? Just to get it’s meat?
D. Well —
S. That’s not fair! The crab wasn’t hurting anybody!
D. But —
S. I don’t think it’s fair to kill animals just to eat them!
D. O-okay, then —
S. How can people do that, destroy nature, I —
D. But Sam —
S. I don’t like killing animals! It’s not fair and it’s not what nature wants!
D. Okay, sure. Okay. So you think it’s okay to eat fish but not, like, chickens and cows and pigs?
S. No! I don’t think it’s okay to kill animals at all! Nature wants animals to be out in it, to live, and have fun, and make more animals! Nature doesn’t want people to kill all the animals!
D. Um, okay. Okay. (pause) Do you know what lox is?
S. Yeah, it’s salmon.
D. Well, salmon is a fish.
S. Yeah, but those fish are already dead, there’s nothing I can do about that. And, and chicken nuggets, and hamburgers, and bacon, those animals are already dead. What I’m talking about is killing animals.
Sam on Star Wars
My son Sam (5) has now seen Star Wars. (quoth the clerk at my local “collectible toy” boutique: “You’re in trouble now.”)
SAM: You know who my favorite Star Wars guy is?
DAD: Who?
SAM: C-3PO.
DAD: Yeah, I think he was my favorite when I was a kid too.
SAM: You know why?
DAD: Why.
SAM: ‘Cause he’s always, like, saying to R2-D2 “No, I’m not going to follow you, you’re crazy, I’m not going to do that” and then they both end up in the same place anyway.
And it struck me just how thematically dense that first movie is. Somehow it had never occurred to me that, in this series of movies about Destiny and Duty, even the clowns, the Beckettian pseudocouple robots, one the irrepresible id, the other the worrywart superego, play out their little comedy of destiny together. One forges blithely ahead, heedless of danger, the other is very careful to avoid danger altogether, they choose very different paths, and yet they do both end up in the same place. It’s all very Mahabharata or the movie Sandy Bates is making at the beginning of Stardust Memories.
Q: How do you get a 5-year-old boy interested in chess?
A:
Yes, it’s a Justice League chess set, and my son Sam has instantly learned chess.
I’m not the kind of dad who insists that his 5-year-old play chess, but Sam has been playing this Justice League video game, “Halls of Injustice,” in which his heroes move on a grid and make specific actions to defeat their opponents, and it’s about five time more complicated than chess, so I thought I’d give it a shot. No problem at all. He grasps the principles without a second thought. I doubt I have another Mac Pomeranc on my hands — although I would not complain if I did — but it’s a huge leap forward for the boy and, as usual, I have the Justice League to thank for it.
The players, for those curious, are:
White (let’s call them white, even though they’re silver) Superman is King, Wonder Woman is Queen, Flash is Bishop, Batman is (Dark) Knight, and Hawkgirl is Rook. Green Lantern is the Pawn.
Black (gold) are: Shade is King (What? No Lex Luthor? I guess he’s too much of a Superman villain), Star Sapphire is Queen (well, better than Cheetah, I guess) , Solomon Grundy is Bishop (Solomon Grundy? They let him run the diagonal length of the board? Solomon Grundy?) Ultra-Humanite is Knight, Copperhead is Rook (Copperhead, right — guy in a snake suit is going to go up against a flying alien with an indestructible weapon), and an alien robot called a Manhunter (Sam had to remind me which episode they appear in) is the Pawn.
All of this makes sense to me except Hawkgirl, who doesn’t seem to be very rook-like in her attitude. But it was either her or Martian Manhunter, and someone had to get the axe — might as well be the creepy green guy from another planet no one likes.
Martian Manhunter’s mother: “You can change your shape, J’onn, why don’t you change it to look more like that nice Superman boy? I’d bet you’d get your own chess piece then.”
J’onn J’onnz: “Moo-oommm…”
Captured on the sidelines, the Amazon queen steals some time with her Dark Knight. Batman, of course, plays it cool.
John Stewart: “Wait a minute, why is the black guy a pawn? What are you trying to teach kids?”
Superman, for some reason, looks a little put out at having been made King. Little pouty. Like maybe he said “Ooh! I’ll be King!” And then he found out that he can only move one space and everyone wants to kill him.
It’s a little weird to hear things like “Are you sure you want to move your Wonder Woman there? Because my Copperhead could capture her and that would put your Superman in Check. Why don’t you move your Batman there, ’cause that would block my Ultra-Humanite from capturing your Flash,” but one gets used to it quickly.
Avengers Defeat Galactus!
This was the scene early yesterday morning in Sam’s bedroom, where one of the most fearsome titans in the universe was soundly defeated by the Avengers, aided by members of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Ben Grimm stood proudly upon the stomach of the fallen giant and surveyed the scene with a calm wisdom while Iceman, Spider-Man, Logan and Bishop covered the lower half of this seemingly unbeatable foe.
The Hulk stomped out the eyes of the intergalatic plunderer and gave a triumphant roar of “Hulk smash!” while Professor Reed Richards plunged his elastic arm deep within Galactus’s ear to scramble his brains.
Among the fallen was a collection of villains formidable in their own rights, but puny mortals compared to the immense, god-like Galactus. Left to right: Sabretooth, Magneto, Dr. Doom (his gun still clutched in his cold, dead hand), Dr. Octopus and Juggernaut.
Iron Man was unable to participate in the attack on the supervillains, as he was out of scale. He had to be content with providing moral support from the headboard.
Sam’s cosmology
The pantheon. Click for much larger view.
As we see, the Justice League takes up the top shelf, as befitting their status as supreme beings. The order of the seven is taken from Justice League publicity materials, which always order them in this way.
But then, curiously, the Justice Lords (the evil Justice League from an alternate time-stream) are placed on the same shelf, and in the same order (minus Justice Lord Flash [or Reverse Flash], who is not featured as a member of the Justice Lords proper [except for the false Justice Lords generated by the Luthor/Brainiac monster]).
Below the Justice League are the second-tier Leaguers: Plastic Man (a custom job bought on eBay), Vixen (posed below her current boyfriend, Green Lantern) Shining Knight (who should be posed beside Vigilante, who has not yet been acquired), Black Lightning and Isis (two more eBay custom jobs), Robin (Robin? The hell is he doing here?), Atom Smasher (the lone Justice Leaguer who claims Jewishness as part of his identity in this otherwise areligious team), Green Arrow (mysteriously, not posed next to Black Canary), Aquaman (note that the Aquaman posed here is the one without the cape; this is the real Aquaman), Batgirl (partially obscured) (Batgirl?!), Huntress, Atom, Red Tornado, Hawk, Dove, Metamorpho and Zatanna.
(Sam is loath to place one character in front of the other — they are all equal [on their shelves] to each other. It pained him to place Aquaman in front of Batgirl but he was forced to due to space considerations.)
Then, we have the third-stringers, or supporting characters: Supergirl (whom I would have placed in the second tier), Orion, Black Canary (another second-level hero, imho), Starman, Booster Gold (a third-shelfer, even though he has his own episode of JLU, Elongated Man (yes, the official Elongated Man is trumped by a custom Plastic Man, as he should be), Nightwing (Nightwing?) Steel, Wildcat, Waverider, Dr. Light (that’s Dr. Light II, not the rapist of Elongated Man’s wife), Aztek, Dr. Fate, Rocket Red, The Creeper.
I do not know what system Sam uses to rank these figures. Black Lightning is a second-shelfer, even though Sam knows very little about him and has not seen him featured on the show, and while he’s never seen a Plastic Man comic and he is not featured on any of the Justice League shows, Sam somehow understands thathe outranks Elongated Man (comics fans, of course, know that Plastic Man did not begin his life as a DC hero, he was purchased from another publisher; Elongated Man was the pale imitation DC cooked up so they could have their own stretchy guy). Isis has never been featured on the show or even in the tie-in comics; Red Tornado he finds compelling enough to put on the second shelf, even though the character only has the most passing moments on the show. Robin, Nightwing and Batgirl get included, even though they are not part of the League (and are presumably either off with the Teen Titans or guarding Gotham City, dating Bruce Wayne (Batgirl only) (I think) and growing old while waiting for Terry McGuiness to take up the Batman mantle). (And before anyone starts complaining about Robin and Nightwing being featured at the same time, the Robin featured here is Tim Drake, not Dick Grayson.) The Green Lantern Corps (Katma Tui, Kyle Raynor, Arkkis Chummuck, Tomar Re, Kilowog), although they dominate several key episodes, currently reside in a bench on the other side of the room (presumably the bench is the same relative distance from the shelf as Oa is to Earth). Vixen is posed beneath Green Lantern, but Zatanna is not posed beneath Batman, although they have been romantically linked.
The underworld. Click for much larger view.
On the bottom shelf, crammed together, we have the villains, with the most powerful in the center, growing less powerful (or relevant) as we move to the edges. Thus, Lex Luthor, Joker and Brainiac take center stage (with the Very Tall Darkseid, Doomsday and Bane behind), flanked by Poison Ivy, Amazo, Mr. Freeze and the ultra-lame Copperhead to the left, and Catwoman (seated), Sinestro, Two-Face, Bizarro, Harley Quinn (obscured by Bizarro), and the ultra-lame Mirror Master to the right.
Even casual Justice League viewers will note the preponderance of Batman villains here. Strictly speaking, Joker, Bane, Mr. Freeze, Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn shouldn’t be here at all (although some of them put in a brief appearance in a couple of episodes). It is, I’m guessing, their overwhelming importance to the Batman/Gotham City mythos that warrant their inclusion in the Legion of Doom.
I cannot explain Poison Ivy’s outranking of Amazo. The Amazo character in Justice League is one of the key stories of the whole series, second only to the Justice Lords scenario. We even have two other Amazo figures (one gold and one clear, symbolizing different levels of Amazo’s evolution), which have been banished along with the Green Lantern Corps (perhaps for similar thematic reasons — Amazo does, after all, leave Earth when it has nothing more to offer him). Similarly, I cannot explain why Catwoman is seated; Sam is adamant about this point however and has corrected her posture on more than one occasion. The Joker’s distance from Harley can be explained for character reasons (Joker seems to spend half his time distancing himself from Harley) (He’s even gotten Bizarro to hold her off).
Reverse Flash, who until recently lived between Harley Quinn and Mirror Master, now mysteriously resides in a box under the desk.
Sam’s corner
Martian Manhunter, his wife and child, drawn by Sam (5), from looking at his Justice League action figures.
“I’m trying to really look!” he exclaimed in the middle of his work.