May 2008 Archives
We had despaired of our stick bugs' ever having babies. My older son, whose science teacher had given him the three stick bugs that I described in an earlier post, had told me that one of his friend's stick bugs had had babies very soon after they were brought home from school -- and that the parent bugs proceeded to eat all their babies!
I'd read that the insects produce eggs after a certain number of moltings, but I figured that we were well past that number by now. I was also beginning to think that my son's science teacher was correct: that they didn't reproduced parthenogenically, there were male and female insects, and that we'd somehow managed to get three of the same sex.
After eight months, the stick insects had grown quite big and were now indistinguishable from one another. Then about six weeks ago, one of them went toes up, leaving us with only two. I think my wife was looking forward to being stick bug-free in the not too distant future.
And then yesterday, when I was adding a bit of lettuce to the cage, I noticed something on one of the bugs' legs: a miniature bug! Look, I shouted to my wife, the stick bugs have bred! And then, looking more closely at the cage, I began to see little stick bugs everywhere and tiny stick bug casings lying in the soil. (I'm hoping it's because the little fellas have already molted. The alternative would be that the parents have sucked the juice out of the little carcasses.) I ended up pulling about ten from the cage, luring them onto chopsticks, and putting them in our original cage, safe from the clutches of their parents.
So much for the stick bug-free future! Meanwhile, I haven't been able to convince anyone else in my household that we should take the two big ones out of the cage and let them roam around a bit, maybe race down the hallway -- a little fling before they go the way of all things.
What do you suppose would be on a stick bug's bucket list?
The crystal skull that serves as the MacGuffin in the new Indiana Jones film is a "highly magnetized object" that attracts all kinds of metal.
This morning, I discovered that The Crystal Skull has similar properties. Leaving my building, I had every intention of turning right and heading to the gym. But, like the film's Professor Oxley (played by John Hurt), I could hear the Skull beckoning: "Return!" I found myself turning left and heading to the 11:30 showing at the AMC Loew's 19th Street, returning there a mere nine hours after I'd left. (This is the quickest I've ever been back to see a movie a second time.)
Was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull worth watching a second time? For me, the answer was an emphatic, Yes! Indeed, I found myself fonder of the movie after the second time through.
In the recently released volume The Complete Making of Indiana Jones by Laurent Bouzereau and J. W. Rinzler (Ballantine Books), Steven Spielberg is quoted as saying: "I want people to come to this movie and say, 'Oh, my old friends are back. And one of their friends will be the style in which we shot the previous films. I want audiences to come to this movie and make new friends, but rediscover that their old friends haven't changed all that much."
That's exactly how I feel about this movie.
I've just returned from a 12:01 a.m. showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I wanted to make sure that I saw it before I had a chance to read any of the reviews.
I'll admit I spent most of the day worried that the movie was going to be a disappointment, because I couldn't avoid hearing about some pre-release negative commentary on the internet and a lukewarm response when the film was shown on Sunday at Cannes.
I wasn't disappointed.
Like the other Indiana Jones films, it's a rollercoaster ride, though it's a rollercoaster whose twists and turns we've been taught to anticipate by the previous three Indy rides. The film doesn't have the wonder of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the over-the-top kineticism of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, or the wonderful character development of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And it doesn't need to. It's like a reunion, in which old friends get together to remember good times and have a few new adventures that are fun even if they don't quite match the thrills of yesteryear.
Where the three previous films paid homage to 1930s-style serials, the Crystal Skull pays homage to the sci-fi films of the 1950s -- and to the three films that preceded it. Indy's older now, a little thicker around the middle, as is his old flame, Marion Ravenwood, but it's still great to see them back in action. Especially Karen Allen as Marion. (I had the same crush on her back in the day that David A. Kaplan describes in this column from Newsweek.) Part of the pleasure of the film is the way in which it refers back to moments from the earlier films (and to moments in Steven Spielberg's pre-Indiana Jones films). The earlier sequels had some of the same referentiality (remember Indy and the two swordsmen in Temple of Doom), but the new film is chock full of them. Some made find it a little too nostalgic, but it reminded me of the way in which I felt back in 1981 when I first saw Raiders. It didn't produce the same feeling, but the reminder was enough.
The plot is silly in a kind of 1950s sci-fi film way and not nearly as muddled as the critics are suggesting. Sure there's a Maguffin that ostensibly drives the plot like the ark, the Sankara stone, and the Holy Grail in the earlier film, but like it's predecesors the film is really about something ese. Let's just say that like Raiders it's about rediscovering old feelings; like the Last Crusade it's about sons getting to know fathers.
Of all the reviews that I've sped through before I sat down to write this post, this one from Salon comes the closest to capturing what I felt about the film.
Oddly enough, I managed to marry a woman who has never seen an Indiana Jones film, but she knows how much I love them and has agreed to watch them with me. I think I'll show her Raiders and Last Crusade and take her to Crystal Skull. They make a nice trilogy.
