The summer doldrums have officially begun. Until Labor Day the only interesting news will consist of Donald Trump being prosecuted, persecuted or whatever the Left wants to call their absurd gestapo action in multiple jurisdictions. So, we’ll have to interest ourselves in “other things” until then.
And that is what I’m scratching my head over. Book reviews, movies, television, plays. Science, music, religion. I’ll have to widen my net to capture things that normal humans interest themselves in. And that’s all to the good.
This weekend we will be hosting some of the Minions. Their parents will pull up to the top of the driveway, toss them out of the vehicle in duffel bags, hit the horn and speed away into the night hoping for the best. Camera Girl has cooked mass quantities of pasta sauce, meatballs and sausage and thereafter imperial tons of spaghetti will be cooked and consumed.
She has procured from various local libraries DVD’s featuring questionable cartoon characters from a selection of eras ranging all the way back to the 1970s. I have begged for a boycott on any further screenings of Scooby Doo and his associates. The answer I received was noncommittal.
The pool will be “opened” this weekend but I expect that for the first week or two the water will be suboptimal. Specifically, it will be opaque and green. I tried to sell Camera Girl on a trip to the regional zoo. She shot this idea down claiming kids don’t like zoos. Hmmm. Maybe she’s right. Maybe we’ll go the reptile zoo instead. I know kids like reptiles.
We’ll probably have a baseball catch one of the days but I’m hoping we can get in some time at the pool table. I think a good sense of geometry and dynamics is useful for any growing boy. Plus, it’s been pretty warm for the last few days and the basement tends to be cooler.
It’s time to find out if the Minions are already slaves to their electronic devices. As far as I know these younger descendants aren’t yet tethered to smartphone entertainment devices. But I’d also like to cut back on the television time too. I’ll make it the long weekend objective to try and bridge the multigenerational gap using non-electronic media. I might even introduce them to the concept of human speech as a means of communication and entertainment. I might even (shudder!) bring down a book from the shelf and read aloud. Hopefully it won’t have the local constabulary at my doorstep demanding equal time for whatever woke PBS kid’s series is currently topical; Gender Fluid Jenny or Fern Affirmed or whoever.
I think I’ll start the weekend with a seminar on geographic and demographic topics in Middle Earth. I’ll skip Beleriand at this time. The Silmarillion is too depressing for the young ones. I’ll highlight various topics with video presentations from Peter Jackson’s motion pictures. I’ll start with the Numenorean kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor and use this as a jumping off point on the branches of the royal family. Of course, there could be extra points for anyone who can specifically identify how many generations separate Elrond and his multi-great nephew Aragorn.
Well, let’s see if I can freehand a map of Middle Earth. As me old gaffer always said, “You’re nowt but a ninnyhammer, photog!”