What Happened To Parenting?

I'm proud of my kids. Yep. I admit it. It's a bit stupid of me, really, since a lot of it is genetics, and a whole bunch more is just the kids themselves learning, growing, being people. But I'm a parent, and being proud of the offspring is an occupational hazard.

I was thinking about it the other day, though. The kids get quite a few compliments on their behaviour and their outlook, and that's nice and all. And I'm aware that as often as not, people are trying to find a way to say You're doing something right, Mr Flinthart, but as usual, I'm not so good about taking a compliment.

Can't dodge forever, though, can you? So I suppose this is a good time to say 'thanks' to everyone who's spoken nicely of my unruly spawn - and most especially, to the very many people who've had a hand in their upbringing. Some of you know who you are. Some of you don't.

Every adult who comes through my life makes an impression on my kids. They remember all the mad friends that come through here. They remember peripheral people, who turn up once or twice because they're studying medicine... and then they go off to be doctors somewhere, and we don't see them again. All these people have all had a role in helping me raise my kids.

Seriously: you may think that half-drunk afternoon you spent here, raving about movies and science fiction, knocking off Tasmanian wine and eating sumptuously barbecued salmon and garden-fresh veg was just a lark. But you know what? You behaved like a decent human being, and my kids noticed. And I'm grateful. You silly bastards who read to my daughter in her bed, or climbed into that princess-tent of hers; you mad pricks who wrestled on the trampoline with the boys; you daft tossers who played gin or lost at Zombies! or giggled your way through an incomprehensible game of Robo-Rally -- you've all played a part, and I'm grateful.

All of this occurred to me the other night when I was telling Genghis that he was going to do his bass practice, and I didn't care whether he liked it or not. I was thinking about it, wondering why I was being such a hard-ass, and long after the event, I kept thinking. It's not easy to summarise, but the high points go like this:

Nat's a product of a divorce family. So am I. And that's not actually a bad thing, really. Given the stories I have from both my mother and my father of the "traditional nuclear family" of the 1950s... all I can say is Fuck That Shit.

Mum used to talk about being beaten with a 'switch' - a piece of springy branch, stripped of bark. The worst, she said, was when her dad made her go out and pick the switch herself, and prepare it so it could be used on her. My dad's a little more closed, but I've talked with him, and I've met his family, and that's all I really want to say.

A lot of things got all shook up in the late sixties and the seventies. All that flower-wearing, hair-growing, Vietnam-protesting crap was tied up with a cultural groundswell. The social institutions were, for the first time, open to question, and to attack.

One of those institutions was the Traditional Nuclear Family. And I have to say: good fucking thing, really. My impression of the TNF of old is one of repression, and thinly-restrained violence. Children to be seen and not heard. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Father Knows Best. And so forth.

But to give the TNF its due  it did, at least, provide a blueprint. Sure, you might have been raising miserable, repressed, fucked-up kids who would grow into suit-wearing serial killers... but at least you had guidelines, right?

The Great Cultural Revolt threw those guidelines out. Anybody remember Dr Benjamin Spock and his touchy-feely bullshit? Yeah. Or that idiotic Feminist approach that said boys and girls only acquire masculine and feminine characteristics because of the way we raise them? Oh, shit, how I wish the people behind that crap could have seen my 11 month old son Jake making pistols out of his very first Lego set, and shooting with 'pyew pyew!' noises at  his surprised and mortified mother. Holy crap, there was a lot of shit vomited up about parenting back in those days.

I sympathise strongly with my parents. The old rules - of all kinds! - had been shown to be false. The new rulebooks were pretty much made up on the spot by people who didn't do a very good job of hiding their personal political axe-grinding. So what the fuck were you supposed to do?

Thinking back, I would guess my parents were just trying to avoid making the mistakes they saw from their own parents. My sister and I got a lot of encouragement to be individuals. We also got a lot of other stuff, particularly from my dad, who has long since admitted he really had no idea what the hell he was doing. What we didn't get was a sense of yes, this is how parenting is done.

And I'm guessing that many, many other people of my generation got something similar.

If my kids are doing well... okay, yes. I'll take some credit. But how do you take credit for 'choosing a relatively sane mother'? Because that's important, you understand. Natalie and I have our differences, but we're pretty solid on the whole child-rearing thing, and we support each other there. The kids can't play us off against each other, because we deliberately present a united front. Even where we disagree, we work out the position we're going to take, and we stick to it. No wedge politics from my kids: they know where they stand, and the rest is up to them.

And how do you take credit for 'stubborn bastardry'? I make sure Genghis practices his bass because I have thought it through. He's a kid. He's nine years old. If I leave him to his own devices, he'll play computer games and cause mischief all day long - in between reading ferociously, of course. His whole life to date is just nine years. He has no conception of the long-term value of practice, or of music. He picks up something, shows an interest, futzes around with it... and left to himself, he would put it down and move on to something else. Eventually, he'd wind up at the end of high school with mediocre academic scores, an abiding interest in computer games... and not a whole lot else.

How the hell can I expect someone as young as he is to have real persistence? How can he possibly conceive the lifetime of rewards which comes with learning music, and mastering an instrument? If I don't sit on his head and make him do this, then at best, he'll be like Natalie, and take up an instrument in his mid-twenties, and curse as all the kids around him learn faster and play better than he does. At worst, he'll be like my father - who is always utterly delighted whenever any of us does anything musical around him, because much as he loves music... the making of music is a closed world to him.

So you see, I can think this shit through, and explain why I'm doing it. But is that worthy of some kind of credit? Having more experience than a kid, and being stubborn enough to make sure the kid gets the benefit?

I'm not sure. I do know this. Jake is really starting to enjoy the 'cello, and he writes much better than I did at his age, and if he works with me, he'll have a legit black belt before he's twenty. Genghis hasn't passed the hump with his bass yet, but he's getting there, and it's amazing how fast he picks up Swedish vocabulary. The  Mau-Mau loves showing off her piano chops, and she's handling gymnastics well, and is learning ju-jitsu at a spooky rate.

There have been things they've been permitted to quit, of course. The boys do trampoline now, not gymnastics. Spanish has given way to Swedish. Jake put aside the piano for the 'cello. But overall, they are being not just encouraged, but physically, mentally, and emotionally dragged into learning these things, and more importantly, into the practices and habits of learning and overcoming. It's hard fucking work, and it costs a lot in terms of sanity, but it's happening, and that's all the scoreboard shows.

I do know of others who've taken this kind of approach. Props to John Birmingham, for example: he once mentioned to me how much work he and Jane put into monstering their kids until they learned 'restaurant manners', and could be relied on to go out for dinner without causing disaster. But at the same time, I have a lot of sympathy and understanding for the people who haven't gone down that road. There were a lot of really goddam ugly elements to so-called 'parenting' in the old-school Nuclear Family, and we're better off without those. The art of being more stubborn than your kid, for the right reasons, is on the surface very similar to a lot of the things that got thrown out with good reason.

Look, I'll be honest: times are it feels like hell. It feels like I'm bullying my kids. Take the 'clothing on the bathroom floor' shit, for example. I spent more than a year trying to get the little bastards not to leave their dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, but no amount of cajoling, punishing, example-setting or any other behaviour made a difference. In the end, I figured it out: I gave the kids the right to fine each other 20 cents if they found clothes on the bathroom floor. The kid who'd left the clothes behind not only had to pay the other kid... but they still had to pick up their clothes and put them in the laundry.

The boys learned fast. The Mau-mau... not so much. And she absolutely hated having to pay up her 20 cents. Huge, huge tantrums. Massive crying jags. Screaming blue murder. Hated it.

It took her four months longer than it took the boys, by my estimate. But here's how it is now: they do not leave their clothing on the bathroom floor. They hang their towels up when they're done. They put their dirty clothing in the laundry.

Is that a particularly good thing? I don't know. I do know it extends the life of the clothing, and makes the bathroom safer, as well as tidier. I also know I endured countless hours of heartbreaking rage and sadness from the Mau-mau to achieve this, and that it would have been infinitely easier to give up, and just pick up the clothing for her.

So. Very. Much. Easier.

That's the point of this screed. There was an awful lot of shit associated with the old-school version of parenting, and I'm very damned grateful my parents didn't try to pass it on to me. But along with all that horrible shit, we also lost the good stuff: the rules that worked, the ideas that made sense. Natalie and I are lucky: we're smart, educated, stubborn as fuck, and well situated. We can make decisions on this kind of thing, talk it over with one another, and then put a plan of action into place.

But how's that supposed to work out for a single parent with three kids in a welfare suburb?

I know. You see shitty, nasty little kids every day, and you wonder what the hell is wrong with the parents. Sometimes I feel exactly the same way. But when I stop and think about it...

... I really feel for them. Parents and kids both. Because here's the real secret, the hidden truth:  in the short term, it's heartbreaking to battle your kids, and it's horrible to deny them simple things they want, and it's incredibly draining to force them to act like human beings, But in the long term, you have to live with the little bastards, and you have to deal with what they bring into your life.

I'm playing the long game, and I hope I'm teaching my kids to do likewise.

Weaknesses

I went to a Laser Tag session last night, for one reason and another. The boys were invited too. Everybody had a great time, but I noticed -- once again -- that I'm not shooting as accurately as I did on the one occasion I tried it out back around 1994, at somebody's birthday in Brisbane.

Halfway through the second game last night, I realised what was going on.

Back in 1994, I didn't really give a shit about guns. So I played one session, and by the third game, even though I was playing with some fairly experience folk, I was shooting up a storm. Yeeehaw!

Since then - well, yes, there's age to consider, of course. But the difference is greater than that, and it dawned on me about the twentieth time that somebody came round a corner and shot me before I could bring my laser gun quite into line.

The big difference is that in the intervening period, I went and got a gun license, and now I occasionally use a real gun quite seriously.

Everybody else in that Zone Three place was running around with their lasers pointing straight out in front of them. Me? Whenever I wasn't specifically shooting at someone, the gun was pointed down and away from my feet. And that meant whenever I had a surprise encounter, I had to whip the gun up and bring it to bear, and that made me slow, and inaccurate.

Interesting. I tried to remember to keep it levelled - but every time my concentration wavered, the gun would resolutely swing down again, into the safety zone. Had it been a 'real' evening, I wouldn't have shot anyone at all by accident in the course of the game... and that's great, from a 'being-safe-while-shooting-rabbits' perspective. Just not so good from a 'frag-hell-out-of-the-other-players' viewpoint.

Do I want to change that habit? Can I programme my brain to treat the laser gun - designed and weighted to look and act like a weapon - as a toy, while still keeping my ingrained safety practices with the real thing? Do I want to even take that risk?

I don't know. It's a really interesting question. It's also the main reason I never tried competition fighting back in Brisbane, under Mark Haseman. I trained with plenty of people who fought in competition, and it did look like fun, but at the back of my mind I was always aware that the habits you train into yourself for competition are not the same as the habits you need to keep yourself alive and healthy if things turn bad and you have to fight. There's a young man at my classes at the moment, for example. He has kickboxing behind him, and he likes sparring and competition. He's able, energetic and athletic, and he learns well - but every now and again I mention eye gouging, or biting, or tearing tendons or breaking bones and joints, and he gets kind of quiet and wide-eyed. It's a bit horrible from his viewpoint.

Weaknesses. One thing or another. It's a tough call, sometimes.

Writing, for example. I can be distractable. I need to get into the groove and really start rolling before the words flow. Otherwise I struggle, and things go slowly. I need to be inside the POV, understanding the action and the cadence and the pace. I can't dip in and out. If I get interrupted, things get really difficult.

But I'm a dad, too. And when my wife and my younger son fight like cats and dogs outside the door to my study, I find it impossible to ignore them. I love them both, and I literally cannot hear them squabbling without being pulled out of the place where I'm trying to go.

It's futile trying to write while they're both home at once, at least while they're in earshot.

Do I want to break that habit? Do I want to be able to ignore them while they snipe at each other? Is that right? Can I really call myself a father and a husband if I can learn not to hear the distress that my wife and child are causing each other?

I don't know. I do know I'm not getting this shit done.

I'm going to put my current workfile onto the little notebook machine. Then I'm going up the top shed. The keyboard is cramped, of course, and the shed is cold and dusty. But at least there, I won't be able to hear them.

They can fend for themselves for a while.

Whoa. Thank Cthulhu It's Monday!

Yeah. At least on Monday, all I really have to do is prep the kids for school and get them to the bus, handle laundry, cooking, and my writing and studying... then dash off about 1400 to grab a couple kids from school, drive into Launceston, teach a martial class at a school there, drive home again, prep dinner, get everyone through the evening, etc. Nothing too hairy there.

Weekends, though...

Okay. So Saturday, the stars aligned, and It Was Decided that the Flinthart family (most of it, anyhow) would make it's last sojourn to the unlamented Village Cinema in Launceston. You know the backstory there already: $20 for a ticket, a long drive either way, shitty popcorn, etc. But I'd promised the boys we's see The Avengers at the cinema. Further, we'd agreed to bring the Baggins sisters along for the ride, 'cos they're superhero/comics fans, and their parents aren't.

Of course, stuff like this doesn't go smoothly. First, Editormum mentioned how she'd love to see said film, but would have troubles doing so since her youngest -- Mister Rabies, we'll call him, age 2... not that he's rabid; I just need a nice covername 'cos he's not my kid and I haven't asked to include him by name in this space; and of course, he's as energetic and fierce as any two-year-old -- isn't really ready to sit through a whole film. Now, since Editormum's other two kids -- we'll call them Jack and Jill, for the hell of it -- are very friendly with the Flinthart offspring, and since Editormum herself is marvellously good company, I had a bit of a think.

I figured Natalie wouldn't want to see the film, and I was right. But I'd forgotten that young Jake was doing some scholarship tests that morning in Launceston. Ooh. Never mind. So the way it worked out was: Nat took Jake in early. Meanwhile, I did some shopping and some preparation. Then I loaded up with the other two kids, and young April Baggins (the other Baggins lass had to cancel, as did the friend who was also planning to come along...) and we headed in to the cinema.

Meanwhile, Editormum met with Natalie at the exam zone, and handed over young Mister Rabies, collecting Jake in exchange. Natalie immediately took off for home, because she had to be available for baby-delivering duty, if it became necessary, which wasn't too likely. So she looked after Mister Rabies while the rest of us went to the cinema.

That makes five kids, two adults, and the inbetween Ms Baggins. The Mau-Mau and Jill peeled off and sat together. Genghis and Jack sat in the row ahead of us, while Jake and April held up one end so they could argue comic stuff without annoying anyone else. And poor Editormum and I just kind of directed traffic. (Of which there was a lot. There was much requirement for bad popcorn. And it turns out young Jill has a TEENY TINY bladder, dammit. She climbed over us about four times during the film.)

Still, it was fun. The Avengers isn't quite classic Whedon, since he's working with other folks' properties and has to abide by the rules - but it was close. A Character (note the use of initial capitals) dies meaningfully. Lots of good lines crop up. The action is plentiful, and well-paced. The plot makes as much sense as it needs to, and all the main players get enough time at centre stage to give them a half-decent arc, which is pretty good going for a superhero flick.

So all up: fine, fun movie. Go and see it if you're a Whedon fan, or a fan of the comic-books, or if you're just looking for a lot of explodey superhero goodness onscreen. If I had a complaint, it would only be that yet again we don't get nearly enough of Scarlett Johanssen in the form-fitting Black Widow costume. Somebody, please: spin a movie off for her character, eh? And what the hell: could she have a secret identity who works as a lingerie model? Or am I asking too much, there?

There was one very nice surprise in the film: somebody finally looked comfortable playing 'The Hulk', and the big green guy actually did good stuff on screen. Mark Ruffalo plays Bruce Banner with quiet restraint and real humour, and Joss Whedon knows exactly how to make the most of the angry green smash machine. The  Hulk, and various interactions involving him, provided the standout funny parts of the movie, and gave Captain America the opportunity to deliver what was, for my money, the best line of the film. ("...and you, Hulk -- smash!")

So we left the cinema on a high, and gathered ourselves for the evening.

My plan was simple. I was going to light up the firepit, bring out the steel pizza oven thing, and cook a lot of yummy woodfired pizzas. I had plenty of home-made dough. I had the sauce all made up, with garlic and herbs and tomato paste and a bit of red wine and pepper, yep. It was all going to go to plan, this time.

Well... it turned cold and windy. And we had another visitor -- a Kirghiz doctor that Natalie had invited. That's okay; I was looking forward to chatting with her, yep. But with the wind, I wasn't sure how well the pizza plan would go, cooking over an open fire, more or less. So I turned on the electric oven as well, just to be sure. And that's when things really went left.

The kids were all outside, climbing around the play area in the dark with a couple of electric torches, having the time of their lives. (Made me all nostalgic, actually. I flashed back on all those times in my own childhood that I spent running around outside in the dark of the evening, playing with friends. Nice.) But right at that moment, the lights started dimming, and the oven made weird noises.

Brownout? Weird. I phoned the electrickery mob, and heard there were big outages to the east of us, under emergency repairs. Ooops. That wind: the first big winds of autumn are always tricky down here, what with all the trees growing like bastards over spring and summer.

So: cooking pizza indoors turned out to be no go. The oven just couldn't handle it. We turned off computers and the fridge, but the lights stayed on -- though they were dim -- and oddly, the TV and DVD kept on playing Finding Nemo (three times through!) for Mister Rabies. That was unexpected.

Happily, the plan of cooking on the fire worked out. I kept fetching in yummy pizzas, which Natalie cut up and distributed, and in the end, I think everybody got fed. Probably. It was hard to tell, since I was continually running in and out to the firepit.

Of course, things couldn't keep going that smoothly. Roundabout 2000 or so, the power went out altogether.   Naturally, that provided Genghis with the opportunity to save the day courtesy of his recent forays into candlemaking. It was only a pity that he made most of them scented. Pretty soon, the house was full of the perfume of mint, jasmine, and (apparently) something called Dragons Blood. Yep. Mmm.

At this point, Editormum gathered up her brood and called it a night, and fair enough, too. Somehow, in all the chaos, she gathered up the Mau-Mau as well, and the youngest Flinthart went off to a sleepover with her chum Jill. Not much after that, our Kirghiz friend left ( and I barely had the chance to learn more than one new Russian swear-word from her!). Finally, young Ms Baggins' father showed up to collect her, and we were more or less back to vaguely normal, except without electricity.

But then the power came back -- so Natalie went to bed, and the boys and I stayed up to watch Trollhunter.  Turns out that's a fun little film too: a sort of pseudo-documentary approach to Trolls in Norway. Definitely worth renting at some point.

So, that kind of set the tone for the weekend. And on Sunday, we had to collect the Mau-Mau, meaning another trek to Launceston, but that was cool. We hung out at Birchall's; bought some graphic novels. Genghis picked up a remote control helicopter for which he'd been yearning. Then we completely failed to find wrist-straps for the Wii, and came home so I could barbecue the hell out of a couple of chickens. Yay.

Today? Well, today the kids are off at school, for the moment. But it's cold and grey out there. I'm desperately trying to catch up on stuff, but I'm way behind, and it's troublesome. Much work to be done, yep. But there's the class to teach this afternoon, and then I shall cook nasi goreng.

And in other news? Well. Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the Rodney King riots in L.A - meaning that it was twenty years ago that I spent some very weird nights at a hostel in Venice Beach with a couple of my dearest friends. Strange times; strange too, that so much time has passed.

But that's not all. Nope. Today, as it happens, I have been married for eighteen years.

Frankly, I find that much more difficult to wrap my head around than the riots!

Reasons I Hate Mobile Phones

"Ka-bwinnnnggg!"

I'm at the office of the primary school, filling in the roster of students leaving early. It's 1330, and the Mau-Mau is to come home for Swedish study. In my pocket, my mobile phone has just told me I have a message. Oh goody.

I dig it out. It's Natalie.

- When r u home?

I pause in the act of writing, and work my way through the bullshit menu system until I can text back:

- Two at latest

Note that I wrote 'two', not '2'. There is an algorithm for getting numbers into texts with my little Nokia piece-of-crap, but it's beyond obscure, and I can't recall it. Whatever it is, it's actually faster for my to type single digits in full.

Message sent, I finish filling out the sheet, and I go in pursuit of the Mau-Mau. Five minutes later, she and I are in the car-park, getting ready for the ten minute drive home... and then my pocket cuts loose with Dick Dale and the Delltones "Miserlou". Because that is my ringtone. For phone calls.

Why? Because I like that song. And I hate goddam phone calls. So it's nice to at least enjoy some small part of the process.

Anyway, I kill the car engine so I can hear better, and I say:

"Hello?"

"It's me. (Natalie). Where are you?"

"I'm in the car park at school. Preparing to leave. With the Mau-mau. Is that okay?"

"Did you get my text?"

Now at this point I think but do not say: yes, I got your text. Hence my reply. Was that not obvious? Instead I say:

"Sure. And I replied. You didn't get my reply?"

"Not that text. The other text. The one that said I have to be at work by two."

"No. I didn't get that text. But I'm in the car park right now, with the Mau-mau, ready to come home."

(And I am carefully not saying: you do realise the only reason I'm not several kilometres up the road already is this phone call, right? Because I am not allowed to drive and talk on a mobile at the same time.)

"But I've got to be at work by two."

"Well, I'll leave right now if that's okay."

(And again, I am careful not to say: How is this conversation helping the situation in any way? The only thing keeping me here is this phone call. Did you miss the repetition of 'ready to leave'?)

"Well... no. Um. I've got to be there by two."

"Fine. Yes. I'll see you soon. Or not. Don't worry about me. I'll be home ten minutes after I get done with this call. If you have to leave sooner than that, I'm sure the boys will be safe for a few minutes."

(Which is as close as I have yet come to saying: Hey! Get off the phone so I can drive!)


Nat was about five km out of home when the Mau-Mau and I passed her. I was home ten to two... about ten minutes later, all told, than I would have been if I hadn't had the motherhumping mobile phone in my pocket.

The Internet I dig. Mobile phones are a vicious goddam imposition on the human species. And if you're cybernetically wedded to yours: sorry to hear that, and here's hoping for a swift recovery.

Going To Be An Interesting Day

It's time once again for the yearly Targa Tasmania road race. It's a big noise down here. Millions of dollars worth of cars, lots of drivers, occasional celebrities, and a week of inconvenient road stoppages, plus wall-to-wall news coverage. Bogan much, Tasmania?

Heh. That's a joke, by the way. Actually, I like the Targa. It's cool to watch the cars scream past our place up here on the hill, and we always give the kids the day off school because of the road blockage.

This year, though, they've changed things. Normally the race runs downhill past us, and the road is blocked from about 0730 through to 1300 or so. This time, they've switched directions. They're now going uphill, and the road is blocked from roughly 1200 to 1630 or so.

So: they've switched directions. That will make the course less familiar to frequent participants, which is probably what the race organisers are after. However, I wonder if they have taken into account local conditions.

For some reason, the roads people hereabouts have been resurfacing the highway in the last few days. There's gravel everywhere. It's not as bad as it was three days ago, when driving at more than 60kph was a guaranteed invite to skidding and drifting - but there's still a fair bit of gravel and loose stuff.

On top of that, the centrelines haven't been repainted yet. That should be interesting, no?

Let's add to all that the fact that the weather predictions are for 'drizzle, increasing'. So all up: gravelly, resurfaced road, no linemarking in stretches, light rain to slick everything, and they've reversed the direction of the race for the first time in its twenty year history.

Yep. I figure this one should be interesting.

Movies Again!

And why not?

The Mau-Mau has been taking an increasing interest in Blues music lately. I think the reason is the nifty bass-lines that Genghis is acquiring on his double bass. He loves him some walkin' blues, and the Mau-Mau is even more musical than he -- so she wanted to know if people ever sang blues.

Oh, my. What a fine, leading question.

Well, I poked through the collection. Unearthed some Robert Johnson, a bit of John Lee Hooker, some Howlin' Wolf, and some T-Bone Walker. For shits and giggles, I played her some George Thoroughgood too. And then I found the soundtrack to The Blues Brothers movie, and we put that on, and yeah, that was okay.

The day turned into one of those astonishingly warm and perfect autumn days, with the long golden light, like the longest, laziest afternoon you could imagine. Gorgeous. We decided we'd light up the firepit and scorch some sausages, and then finish up with a movie in the Loft. And of course, it made sense to dig out that old copy of The Blues Brothers.

The boys saw it with me when they were much younger, but it's been a while for all of us, and for the Mau-Mau, it was a first. She was entranced and delighted. And you know... that really is a hell of a good film. Watching it again with a critical eye, while appreciating the music -- sheeeit. That is a hot piece of work.

I suppose the underlying dynamic of the two well-practiced characters played by Aykroyd and Belushi probably made the film a bit of a no-brainer when it came to writing and performing. But still, there's a lot to love in that movie. The music is amazing, of course. And all those performers -- all those absolute legends, brought back to the screen for one more fling! Cab Calloway, John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown... the Mau-Mau got a very fast education there.

The humour is pretty special, too. That random storyline with Carrie Fisher trying to annihilate Jake and Elwood with guns, rocket launchers, flame-throwers... beautiful stuff, and of course Aykroyd and Belushi just dead-pan their way through the whole thing. The encounter with the Illinois Nazis... the Good Ole Boys band... the infamous Chez Paul restaurant sequence... the movie is stuffed with gems.

Great, memorable, quotable lines all over the place:

"How much for the weemin? Your weeemin! Sell them to me!"

"We're on a mission from God."

"Oh, we got both kinds. Country and Western!"

Then there's that lunatic car chase. All of them, actually. The one in the shopping mall near the beginning - that's a beauty. And the grand finale... hell, how many cars did they wipe out in that shot?

The whole thing is done with such gleeful overkill, such fine appreciation of the music and the characters; and all of it so beautifully carried off, from the first to the last. Absolutely a classic.

The kids loved it, yep. Genghis is now working on the bass-line to the Peter Gunn theme, and the Mau-Mau keeps singing "She Caught The Katy".

Gotta love that.

From Forgotten Gems To Polished Turds

And no: it doesn't matter how carefully you polish a turd. It's still a turd.

I got an invite to go out for a bit of a birthday thing with Chris Rattray, one of the Cool Shite team, and a boon buddy. Chris is edging his way up the ladder towards middle age, and I felt that moral support from someone a few rungs ahead of him was in order, so I agreed to go.

Tragically, Chris is a genre cinemophile -- and the only genre-type movie playing on the night of his birthday was Wrath Of The Titans. In 3 fucking D.

I'll digress a moment here, and point out that this is pretty much  the last time I'll actually go to the cinema. Prices had already risen to the point where cinema outings had become a very rare treat for the kids... but last night, I actually forked out $20.50 to see a movie. Yeah, sure... I got a pair of shoddy plastic goddam 3D glasses in that price, but honestly, who the fuck cares? That's more than the price of a sixpack of very drinkable, very decent premium Tasmanian beer, and I can tell you that very, very few movies are more entertaining than a sixpack these days. So yes: the price of a cinema ticket has officially climbed so high that I've pulled the plug. The boys and I will see The Avengers, because I promised them we would -- but that will be the last one.

The simple economics are too obvious, but I'll run through them once more for folks who haven't looked in here on the topic. First, I have to drive about fifty km to Launceston. Round-trip is about a hundred km, therefore. Costs about ten bucks in fuel, takes an over an hour to make the two-way trip because of the winding road. Second: for three kids and myself, the ticket price alone is now something like sixty or seventy dollars if the goddam film is in 3 fucking D, and not a whole lot less if it's shot in simple Sanityvision.  Third: the kids want popcorn... and it costs a fortune, and tastes like shit. Fourth: like as not, the cinema will be full of nimrods with mobile phones. Fifth: there will be at least twenty minutes of bullshit advertising. Sixth: parking will cost me about three bucks. Seventh: when you're in town for two hours for a film, plus another hour or so travel time, you have to expect to feed the kids, and a meal out will cost probably fifty bucks again.

And finally, chances are the movie will be shithouse anyway.

So, you know -- I'm a little saddened, but I've hit the point where I can't find any plausible reason to justify supporting the local cinema any farther. Not when we can wait a few months for the DVD version of the film and watch it in our loft with the dropdown screen and the digital projector and the home-made buttery popcorn and a sixpack of beer -- and still save a buttload of money on the deal, and even better, keep a copy of the film to see again if it's actually worth the effort.

It's tragic, in a way. Movies, cinemas, drive-in theatres - they were a big part of my childhood. They were a special treat, and there was a genuine excitement in going. But the social side of cinema has been dying in the arse since the advent of multiplexes, and frankly, I can't even justify the expense for my kids any more.

Cinema in the sense of going out to a movie centre is dead, folks. Maybe it's still on its feet right now, but that won't last. Diminishing returns and the simple cost of running those multiplexes will kill them off. The only ones that survive will be the ones smart enough to change their business model so they can sell an all-around experience, not just a crappy seat for yet another crappy movie.

I know what I really wish, though. I wish I could take my boys to see rough-and-ready Hong Kong action flicks at the old Chinatown Cinema in Fortitude Valley, like I did with my friends back in the early nineties, before the Fitzgerald Inquiry identified the place as a hotbed of drug dealing and shut it down. The movies were shite, of course, but we'd smuggle in a couple bottles of cheap booze plus mixers, buy a bunch of bizarro Chinese snacks, and then sit in the old upstairs balcony. Christ... there were times we laughed so fucking hard I don't know why nobody choked to death.

But that's what I  mean by an all-around experience, you see? We didn't really go for the movies, though they were a big ball of badly-dubbed furious kung-fun for sure, yeah. We went to sit up there in that decaying balcony, sneaking drinks, cheering for the good guys, booing the bad guys and making snarky comments about the fucking awful Engrish subtitles -- and it was worth every goddam cent we spent.

My kids aren't going to get that experience. Nor will I have the chance to do it again. Such is life -- right, Ned? Well, cinema had its run. It'll be interesting to see what comes next. I hope it's not just sitting alone in the house watching movies off the 'Net, though. We're already isolated enough. All the old social experiences have been commercialised or privatised or brutally organised or even flat out illegalised, and there's fuck-all left for people who want to get together and just kick on, have a good time. I really don't know where my kids are going to find the kind of bonding experiences that I found with my friends at college, and that makes me sad. I'm not prone to idealising the past, but the truth is that I just don't see how the fuck the poor bastards are going to have fun.

Oh, that's right. I was going to say something about Wrath Of The Titans, wasn't I? Well, it doesn't really rate much. Sam Worthington has a fluffy new hairdo. Rafe Fiennes and Liam Neeson are still fucking ridiculous, playing Greek gods. The CGI is groovier than ever. To be fair, I was expecting a dog of a movie, and I got one -- but where the last Titans flick was a scabrous, mangy, dysenteric stray mongrel lying in the gutter after being hit by a car... well, Wrath of the Titans is still a dog. But it's a dog with a home and a collar, at least. Even if that home is a half-wrecked caravan up on blocks in front of a burned-out Housing Commission hovel.

Nevertheless, there's no fucking way it's worth $20.50, and I'd urge any of you who really feel the need to see the sequel to the remake of a campish 80s film best known for Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion work to wait until you can rent it on DVD. Or even download it, if you've got the bandwidth.

But if you do -- invite a few friends, grab some booze, and take the piss out of the damned thing, eh? Because I can imagine few sadder, lonelier, more soul-destroyingly masturbatory acts than watching this fucking dog of a movie at home, by yourself.