Portrait Of Daddy

Miranda drew this picture of Daddy over the break. It's really cool to see her talents grow (see Startling Likeness Methinks posted March 11, 2008).
I think she really captured my buff physique - don't you?

Today We Went To The Brooklyn Chidren's Museum

We Brought Harold In For A Landing...

... Planted Green Vegetables...

... Did Some Gardening...

... Played In The Babbling Brook...

... Made Some African Art...

... And Took A Spin On A Scooter

The Kids Enjoy The Warm Weather...

... And Explored Nature (Brooklyn style)

Miranda (right) and her friend Rachel

Swingin'

Zachy and Miranda enjoyed the hammock swing at our friend Chris's house, while we were there for a Christmas visit. They totally dug the cookies too!

Miranda At The Park On Christmas

Zachy At The Park On Christmas

The Tree, Prior To The Onslaught

Reindeer Spotted In Brooklyn

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all peace on Earth.
Lots of love,
The Miller Gang

A Visit From Grandma & Grandpa

The Notorious Miller Gang

Since I do most all of the picture taking, I have very few of me with the kids. This one comes courtesy of Grandma Fredi.

Too Cute To Keep To Myself

Zach At The Dentist's Office

Zachy did a great job of saying "ah" and found lots of interesting things to play with.

Miranda At The Dentist's Office

Miranda said she felt like a movie star.

Panda Ponytail

Taken last Sunday - here Miranda sports a George Washington style ponytail, lovingly crafted by Daddy, as she eats a cheese doodle.

Throwing Snowballs At Daddy

Miranda Walking Home From School

Miranda Being Shy

Zachy - Deep In Thought.

Ultraman

Thanks to a conversation with a coworker, I recently had the chance to climb aboard Mr. Peabody's Way-back Machine and be whisked back to the after school TV viewing of my grade school days. Long before anyone had even heard of "cable," the shows that caused me to run home after school were Speed Racer, Kung Fu, Star Trek and of course Ultraman. Sadly, having compared notes with my contemporaries in the many places I have since called home, it seems that the English dubbed version of this unique production was not widely broadcast here in the U.S., being relegated to the vague syndication practices of the UHF stations of that era. But in this modern era of DVD boxed sets, if you are the type of person (like myself) that digs a good old Godzilla movie, you really owe it to yourself to check out Ultraman.

Let's face it, what is not to like about two guys in rubber monster suits, stomping around on a scale model of Tokyo (complete with the requisite shots of fleeing Japanese peasants with chickens in wire cages, clutched under their trembling arms), generally beating the shit out of each other? The cheesy special effects of tank, artillery, mortar and assorted ray-gun fire just adds to the enjoyment.

The premise of this series goes something like this: Science Patrol member Shin Hayata was flying his plane and a red sphere of light crashes into him, killing him. The sphere turns out to be the transport for a red-and-silver giant being called Ultraman. Feeling remorse for killing the human, he merges his essence with Hayata to revive him. In return, Hayata serves as the human form for this being, and when danger threatens, he raises the Beta Capsule and transforms to Ultraman to save the day.

One of the best and campiest features of the Ultraman series was the use of various monster costumes, known as kaiju in Japan, which were often wildly imaginative almost to (and sometimes well past) the point of the ridiculous. The monsters and other roving meanies were played by famous stunt actor Haruo Nakajima, who played the original Godzilla. His apprentice, Bin Furuya starred as Ultraman. Nakajima had a martial arts background, though from appearances not a very accomplished one, and used it to create a sense of drama in order to be effective in costumes that had little potential to show emotion.

The storyline begins in the near future, as referenced from the mid-1960s. In episode 22, "My Home Is Earth", it is definitively established that the series takes place in the early 1990s, as a plaque shown at the end of the episode displays the current year as being 1993 - now you know. Sinister aliens and giant monsters constantly threaten civilization during this period, much as they do in reality today. The only Earth organization equipped to handle these disasters is the Science Special Search Party (SSSP), a special police force with branches all over the world, and equipped with high-tech weapons and vehicles, as well as extensive scientific and engineering facilities, including hi-tech, room-sized computers with lots of reel-to-reel magnetic tape drives (so f*cking groovy!). The branch of the Science Patrol that is the focus is located in Tokyo, Japan. Led by Captain "Cap" Muramatsu (shortened to "Captain Mura" in the dubbed English-language version), the Science Patrol is always ready to protect the Earth from rampaging monsters, but sometimes finds itself over-matched. When the situation becomes desperate, Hayata, the Patrol's most capable member, holds the key to salvation in the form of a talisman called the "Beta Capsule", which, when ignited, allows him to transform secretly into the amazing, pointy-headed, super-humanoid-powered giant from space—Ultraman.

While active as Ultraman, Hayata's human body goes into a type of deep coma, much like mine does after a heavy holiday dinner with lots of butter and gravy, reviving only after the threat has been neutralized and Ultraman departs. Victory is never assured, however, as Ultraman's powers - his very life force - comes from rapidly depleted, stored solar energy - kind of like the Chevy Volt. At the beginning of each transformation from Hayata-to-Ultraman, the warning light on the giant's chest begins as a steady blue color. Yet as Ultraman exerts himself, the Color Timer changes to red, then blinks - slowly at first, then with increasing rapidity - as his energy reserves get closer to exhaustion. A voice-over narration reminds the viewer—beginning with episode 2 and for each episode thereafter (remember the voice-over in Speed Racer who told us each time the Racer X appeared the he was "really Speed's older brother Rex who ran away from home years ago"? Same dealio.) - if Ultraman ever reaches the point of total energy depletion, he "will never rise again."

Finally, after years of faithful viewing, in episode 39: "Farewell Ultraman," Ultraman fights an enemy called Zetton, who employs a weapon Ultraman had not expected - one which damages his blink-o-meter and disables his ability to measure his power supply. As a result, Ultraman stays in his form too long and collapses into a dormant state. Fortunately despite this loss, the Science Patrol's members are able to defeat Zetton on their own. When Zoffy (nice name, huh?), Ultraman's superior, comes to retrieve the fallen hero, Ultraman pleads for Hayata's life and offers his life completely, so that Hayata may live as a normal man. Zoffy then says he brought two lives and that he will give one to Hayata. He then separates them, giving Hayata new life, but Hayata seems to have no memory between the time he first hit Ultraman's ship and his standing outside Patrol Headquarters as he watches Zoffy take Ultraman home. At the very end, a voice-over states that Ultraman would return and Hayata retained his Beta Capsule as he awaited Ultraman's return.

I'm still waiting.

Behold, I Bring You Tidings Of Great Joy

Look up at the sky Monday night to see a bright cosmic frown. The planets Jupiter and Venus will briefly align to form (nearly upside down) two eyes and a frowning mouth in the southwest.
In what’s called a planetary conjunction, the two planets —the brightest in the night sky — will appear extremely close, separated by only the width of a finger held at arm’s length. They won’t be this close together and well-placed for evening viewing again until May 2013.
In fact, some astronomers think a similar alignment of the planets on June 17 in the year 2 BC is behind biblical accounts of the Star of Bethlehem present during Christ’s birth. The bright planets would have appeared so close together they could have been taken as a single shining star.

Peaceandlove

Zachy Swimming @ Sunday Funday

Yay, Gumballs!

Ever have one of those days?

Total Bummer

I do not watch the news, and I try to stay away from newspapers - as much as I can. I find that the internet allows me to regulate my news intake in a much healthier manner, and in much healthier doses. Besides, as was so rightly pointed out to me some years ago, if anything big is going on in the world, I'll hear about it - too true, too true!

Well, today I was unable to avoid four stories - none of them good news, I'm afraid - but the last hurt in a different way. We need heroes now more than ever, and I will certainly miss Batman. RIP.


Masacre in Mumbai, India

Toys R Us Shooting

Wallmart Trampling

Batman Dies

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving's earliest roots most likely lie in Mihragan, which is one of the most ancient festivals known, dating back at least as far as the earliest Indo-Europeans. It is in all likelihood the survivor of an earlier Aryo-Iranian New Year festival, dating from some prehistoric phase of the Aryo-Iranian [Indo-Iranian] calendar, when the year began at the autumnal equinox. This became a pre-Zoroastrian and old Aryan harvest feast dedicated to the sun god. According to the Hindu tradition, Zoroaster would have lived long before 4000BCE; however, Aristotle wrote that the Persians of his time dated Zoroaster even further back to around 6000BCE. The festival predates this, most likely by some thousands of years. The short version is that the practice of a late Autumn Thanksgiving feast of some kind is old - damn old!

Mihragan was connected with the worship of one of the oldest Aryan deities (Baga-Mithra). According to Zoroastrian angelology, Mithra is the greatest of the angels and is an angel of light, associated with the sun, but distinct from it. He has a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes. Hmmmn - no wings? The feast of Mihragan is still practiced today among Zoroastrians, and is a community celebration in which prayers of thanksgiving and blessings of the community figure prominently in the observances.

Of course here, in the good old US of A, simple thanks and blessings are not nearly enough. Our Thanksgiving celebration would not be complete without a large screen (1080p preferably) viewing of giant, grotesque, inflatable characters being mercilessly dragged down Broadway to West 34th Street, followed by gorging ourselves on cholesterol-laden foods to the point of regurgitation, followed by viewing steroid-enhanced behemoths bashing each other senseless on a 100 yard rectangular lawn, then finally, waking up early the next morning for the obligatory battle with the hordes of cursing, nasty, bargain-seeking consumers all wrestling over that last Nintendo Wii. What would Mithra play? Where would Mithra shop?

I suppose it is fitting, as the sad reality is that our Thanksgiving is actually a celebration of genocide. In 1617, just before the Pilgrims landed, the process started in southern New England. For decades, British and French fishermen had fished off the Massachusetts coast, and after filling their hulls with cod, they would go ashore to lay in firewood and fresh water and perhaps capture a few Indians to sell into slavery in Europe – why not? It is almost certain that these fishermen transmitted illness to the people they met. The plague that ensued made the Black Death pale by comparison. Some historians think the disease was the bubonic plague; others suggest that it was viral hepatitis, smallpox, chicken pox, or influenza – perhaps a witches’ brew of all of them.

Within three years the plague wiped out between 90 percent and 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England. The Indian societies lay devastated. Only "the twentieth person is scarce left alive," wrote Robert Cushman, a British eyewitness, recording a death rate unknown in all previous human experience. Unable to cope with so many corpses, the survivors abandoned their villages and fled, often to a neighboring tribe. Because they carried the infection with them, Indians died who had never encountered a white person. Howard Simpson describes what the Pilgrims saw: "Villages lay in ruins because there was no one to tend them. The ground was strewn with the skulls and the bones of thousands of Indians who had died and none was left to bury them."

During the next fifteen years additional epidemics, most of which we know to have been smallpox, struck repeatedly. European Americans also contracted smallpox and the other maladies, to be sure, but they usually recovered, including, in a later century, the "heavily pockmarked George Washington." Native Americans usually died. The impact of the epidemics on the two cultures was profound. The English Separatists, already seeing their lives as part of a divinely inspired morality play, found it easy to infer that God was on their side. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague "miraculous." In 1634 he wrote to a friend in England: "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection." God the Original Real Estate Agent – hooray for God! Hooray for us!

These epidemics probably constituted the most important geopolitical event of the early seventeenth century. Their net result was that the British, for their first fifty years in New England, would face no real Indian challenge. This is why we refer to the colonists as “settlers” not “conquerors” – there were no people left alive to conquer, just empty villages and nice, cleared land ready for planting. Squanto’s behavior, when seen through this lens takes on a different light entirely. Being virtually alone as a survivor of the plagues, he threw his lot in with the pilgrims out of desperation not benevolence or altruism.

It is amazing to me that in a mere 10,000 years we have moved from simple Neolithic gratitude for the bounty of Earth and the miracle of the ever-renewing seasons, to a celebration of violence, conquest, commercialism, consumerism and over-indulgence. Perhaps this is what people mean when they say to me, “progress, not perfection” – perhaps not. Whatever the case may be, I am "celebrating" this Thanksgiving working on a locked psych-ward at Maimonides Medical Center, in Brooklyn. Zach and Miranda are with their mother and I am far away from my family. Things will quiet down later after the patients get their medication and I will have some quiet time to have my Mihragan - to give sincere and humble thanks for all that is, and all that is not.

Peaceandlove.

The Subway Platform at1am

Go And Figure

So you might have noticed (see: Post) that I got a little creative in the kids' room this past week... but that's not what I've been thinking about, instead I've been kinda laughing at myself - let me explain: I've had the paints, brushes, roller, masking tape, etc. for months now, just waiting for some down-time to give the job the presence it deserves - I wanted to enjoy it for the labor of love that it was. What I lacked, the only thing I lacked, was a drop cloth. Usually, in the past, when I have done these sorts of things I've used the opportunity to replace my furry, moldy shower curtain liners, as they make great drop cloths and only cost a buck or two. In this case, my liners were in almost new, dare I say "mint" condition (I bathe instead of showering) so I decided to use my bed sheets instead.

Before you gasp, please realize that I bought the sheets in question at Kaufmann's with Elaine Tatelman (bet that takes you back a bit, huh?) in 1988 when I was preparing to move to Dayton, and have used them wherever I went (and with whoever I was with), ever since. The math ain't hard folks - that's twenty years worth of mileage! Lately the fitted sheet of the set had worn through and developed a four foot rip in it, about where my feet end up while I sleep. Of course I tried duct taping the tear (who wouldn't?), but you can guess how well that worked out.

Now here's where the stupiditity (made that word up myself!) comes in: in order to use my ripped and thoroughly ratty sheets for the paint job, I had to go out an buy new ones (I only own one set) - something that I desperately needed to do anyway, paint or no paint. The thing was, IT WAS SOOOOO HARD!!! I usually won't think twice about dropping fifteen bucks for a pizza, but spending fifteen whole American Greenbacks on a set of sheets off the bargain rack at Century 21 was sheer torture. It was like parting with the last money I'll ever have - ever!

To real kicker was that the sheets I got were so amazingly cheap (with like a thread count of 10) and fit the mangy, old, stinky, second-hand futon that I sleep on so poorly, that I actually find myself missing the duct-taped old sheets that are now in some landfill or other. They never teach you how to deal with this stuff in school, or perhaps that was on one of those many days I missed - maybe the same day that they taught how to throw out your boxers when all that is left is the rubber waist band with some threads hanging off of it? The point is, some things are fun to buy and I don't mind spending hard-earned loot to buy them. But things like friggin' sheets should grow on shrubs or something!

Maybe they will fit better after I wash them a couple of times and nuke the crap out of them in the industrial-strength dryer downstairs - the one that eats my socks - who knows. All I can think about is how much I would have enjoyed a nice pizza after all that painting - at least the kids loved the paint job - that's worth all the trauma.

Miranda At La-La Land

On Sunday we went to the La La Land - a toy store on 3rd Avenue to buy another jewelry box kit so that Miranda could have one to take to Mommy's house. However, when we got there she decided that she would rather have a Ponyville toy. Daddy capitulated and we spent some time playing in the play-room that they have in the back.

Zachy At La-La Land

Zachy enjoys the Thomas setup that they have at La La Land and can easily spend hours at it... are you listening Santa???

Zachy Swingin'

After breakfast on Sunday, we went to the park to get some exercise. Here Zachy does what he does best - I hardly have to push him anymore!

Miranda At The Playground

Miranda passed on the swings in order to better enjoy the swirly lollipop that she got from the nice Egyptian toy store guy.

Miranda Has Penguin Gloves

We say "pengin" but mean "penguin" - either way, Panda's new gloves are mighty stylish, if a couple of sizes too big.

Miranda At Sunday Funday

Sunday Fun Day is a program at the Bensonhurst JCC - It is really for Zach, but since it was our first time going, the whole crew enjoyed what they had to offer.

Zach At Sunday Funday

Zachy was definitely NOT having fun at first, and cried for the first hour of "Fun" Day. Eventually he settled in and managed to salvage the afternoon. The staff at the JCC seemed to mean well, but were glaringly uninformed about issues regarding autistic kids. Don't worry Bumblebee, I don't think we'll be going on Daddy's weekends anymore.

Miranda At ToysRUs

To make up for the trauma caused by the whole JCC thing - Papa Stephen drove us to Toys R Us and treated the monkeys each to a toy. Here Miranda drives Elmo and Zoe - almost as fun as the toy!

Daddy Goes To Miranda's School

Yesterday (Tuesday) Daddy kept a promise to his little pumpkin and went to school with Miranda. She showed me all the stations and taught me everything I needed to know in order to do preschool right. I even got to watch circle time!