Great Babas in History

Regarding my relationship with Daisy and Heidi, I am frequently asked a variety of questions - is she your daughter, are the mom and you together, why do you call her Daisy if that is not really her name - but most often of all, I think, is: Why 'Baba'?

'Baba' is a traditional honorific from both Hindi and Urdu that can mean father, grandfather or just 'older man'. It is also a Chinese word for father, and, most appropriately I think, a Slavic word for Grandmother. Heidi spent some time in India years ago and shared with me a story of a young Indian boy who would refer to her friend B.Z. as 'Baba' while attempting to sell him rugs.

It took a while for the three of us to determine what my role in Daisy's life was going to be, whether I was going to continue living with them or move out, be a father or just a friend, so it was difficult to decide what this little baby (who was learning to speak so very, very quickly) should call me. I'd been 'Silly Man' for the early days, but I knew that wasn't going to stick. The more I thought of ideas, the more Baba just seemed to feel comfortable and right.

And to show how appropriate the name really is, please allow me to present some of the finest Babas in history (present company excluded.)

• Baba Yaga: Baba Yaga is perhaps the most terrifying witch in history, and this is including Morgan Le Fay and those bearded broads from MacBeth. She has iron teeth, a rapacious appetite (sometimes for human flesh), and travels around in a giant flying mortar (pestle serves as propulsion.) Instead of a gingerbread house or a castle or anything traditional like that, Baba Yaga lives in a cottage (surrounded by a fence made of bones and skulls) deep in the forest that has two gigantic chicken legs and can walk itself around from place to place. She has various servants, including three horsemen, White, Black, and Red, and may or may not have two older sisters (who are, Foremannishly, also named Baba Yaga.) Baba Yaga is a character of Russian folklore, which means she is what Stalin's parents used to scare him into behaving. Let that be a lesson to you.

• Ali Baba: Ali Baba was the son of a wealthy Persian merchant whose brother screwed him out of his inheritance. One day while out collecting firewood to sell, he overhears a group of forty thieves discussing the secret of a magic cave full of treasure. Needless to say, wackiness ensues, and the scheming brother is murdered by the thieves, all forty of the thieves are killed by a slave girl named Morgiana, and in the end, Ali Baba gets the treasure, his inheritance, and the undoubtedly smoking hot (if moderately homicidal) slave girl Morgiana as his bride. So, you know, he did all right.

• Baba Ganoush: A dip made of roasted eggplant. But we can't all be winners.
  

Why I Love Steve Martin.

Google grew it.

If you have a few moments to spare, you should read Mr Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store by Robin Sloan, a charming little fantasy/science fiction piece about the legacy that can only be achieved through print.

Or, if you don't like your own internal narrative voice, download the podcast from Escape Pod.

Either way, enjoy!

Dedicated to My One True Love: The Ladies

Oh Windy City Rollers, how do I love thee?

Attended my second ever WCR bout this evening and this time I think something stuck. I may just be a roller derby junkie for life now. I don't know if it's the strategy, the talent, the athleticism or the puns that make me love it so, but something about the total package just works for me.

I went tonight to see the WRC All-Star Team take on the Portland Wheels Of Justice (and emerge victorious, no doubt due to my inspirational cheering.) Good friend Heather joined me for an all-in-all terrific evening. I am head over heels in love with at least half of the roster, and am devastated that my darling rule-breaking blocker extraordinaire Megan Formor is finished with competition in Chicago. As Heather said, it is rare to see "so many women of different body types all exuding so much pure sexuality" as can be found on the roller derby rink. The next event is not until January, but if you like roller skating, competition, or women, I highly recommend you put it on your calendar.

Talk derby to me, indeed.




One note of disappointment - though I whole-heartedly support the move to embrace a younger audience (having a future derby fan at home myself), I have to say, Ludacris's "Move Bitch" doesn't have the same motivating sense of urgency, much less the recontexted gender empowerment, once it has been censored. I suggest a search for a new opening rally theme commence before next season.

The Fellowship is broken!

Well I made it to the end of The Fellowship and am taking a breather before diving into Two Towers. As place filler, I've started Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin and also hope to finish The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, my copy of which was stolen from the reading room at work. I also had my copy of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver swiped, which actually kind of blew my mind - who steals a 900 page novel set largely in Baroque era Europe? I've now taken to hiding my books, no matter how dry and unappealing I assume the subject matter to be.

In other news, I got a haircut, a flu shot, and I've put myself on a diet, which has been progressing very nicely. So far I've lost eight pounds. Mostly I've just been paying attention to what I eat, and how frequently - for a while there I was eating four or five times a day ... a little Hobbit-like actually, with breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, dinner at home, dessert, etc. I've also picked up my friend Jeremy's habit of drinking a large glass of water before eating. Of course, for me that translates into quite a few glasses of water during the day. Much like when I quit smoking, I'm finding that what works is replacing one bad behavior (smoking, eating) with an innocuous one (chewing gum, drinking a glass of water.) The major downside of this diet is that I drink so much water I find myself running to the bathroom every hour or so. And of course, as I write this, I'm starting to need to go right now. *sigh* The cost of beauty ...

Almost forgot the other thing that's making this diet not unpleasant (other than the satisfaction that comes from stepping on the scale every morning): Edamame. I think that steamed, shelled and salted edamame might be the best snack ever. High in protein, potassium and fiber, low in calories, delicious and filling. When I own my own bar, this will be the signature bar snack.

You're a Wonder!

Halloween approaches and today we started the festivities early by carving pumpkins and acquiring a new costume for the Little Baby. She already has an elaborate fancy Cinderella dress but we have added to the repertoire my personal favorite princess ...

Wonder Woman!

I am, of course, very pleased that Diana of Themyscira has entered the pantheon of princesses role played at our house. We were already fans of the theme song ("Fighting for your rights / In your satin tights ...") and now All Hallow's Eve shall be kept safe for truth, justice and equality. I was briefly very excited when I found out there was a recent direct-to-DVD animated Wonder Woman movie. Unfortunately, though it may present a strong female role model and inspiration, it includes entirely too many scenes of decapitation (which is to say 'one') to watch with a four-year-old. But better that Wonder Woman be an empty page upon which to project anyway.

I couldn't resist watching some clips from the old show with her though - and she's already got the spin down pat!

Tom Bombadil!

Some time in the past year I had a terribly guilt-inducing realization: I am thirty-one-years-old and I have not read The Lord Of The Rings. I am completely uncertain as to how this happened. My entire life I have loved fantasy - dragons, sword play, wizardry, the whole lot of it. I read The Hobbit as a boy and enjoyed it thoroughly. I read the entire Chronicles of Narnia, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series, Madeline L'Engle, and even plowed through about fifteen of Piers Anthony's Xanth novels. And yet somehow I was never compelled to sit down and read the undisputed masterpiece of the genre.

So now the time has come to correct this egregious oversight. I am currently on page 290 of book one, The Fellowship of The Ring and absolutely loving it.

I have hit some blocks here and there, primarily I am disappointed in my own imagination. So much of what I am attempting to visualize as I read has been tainted by the films. It is very hard to shake the faces of actors, even when I find a great deal of evidence against keeping that particular cast for the version playing out in my particular corner of the astral plane as I read. For instance, Elijah Wood's face was so prominent in the films (not to mention the DVD case I've been looking at the past six years) but the character who sets forth in the novel is a plump little Hobbit of age fifty. For Bilbo Baggins I've managed to replace both Ian Holm and the animated Bilbo of The Hobbit cartoon (a Daisy favorite) with a slightly diminished, furrier version of Prof. David Bevington, renowned Shakespearean scholar and charming neighbor. And the Aragorn of my mind is forever flickering back and forth from Viggo Mortensen to Barack Obama (I'm not 100% sure why.)

But what has been wonderful are all the new discoveries. My chief delight has been the expansion of the Tolkien world. The environment of Middle Earth has become a character in its own right. In addition, all the characters are so much more developed - for the first time I see Gandalf as a person who actually feels at risk on the adventure and who endures its hardships (cold, wet feet, uncomfortable bedding, grumpiness when deprived of smoking) as opposed to the plot propellant/deus ex machina he is essentially reduced to in the film version (though I do love me some Sir Ian.)

And then of course, there's Tom Bombadil. I had long been told about this character as being the single largest, yet most understandable, omission from the Peter Jackson films. In fact, it seemed whenever I mentioned that I had begun reading Fellowship, anyone who had read the book before inevitably asked, "Have you gotten to Tom Bombadil yet?" No one could explain why this character was so fascinating, nor could anyone summarize exactly what he does in the book, but now that I have read it, I must say ... actually, I don't think I can explain him. But when you read it, be prepared for that for which you cannot prepare. And enjoy.

Ps. I'm very much looking forward to Treebeard now.