Saturday, January 19

Two articles about parents over-invested in their children. Don't know if this was planned or not, but they're both from the same issue of the Wall Street Journal: The first is on sports parents,, and the second is about academic aspirations, parental pressure, and children's misery.

Why do we do this? Why have we evolved into a culture that expects nothing from children in terms of character and moral responsibility, yet lays the heavy hand of pressure on them to perform for us on playing fields, on tests, and in recital halls?

Shocked. That's exactly what I was by the film Orange County. What prompted us to go was a review in our local free weekly by the manager/president/tsarina of the local art film theater. (No, it wasn't playing there, but she has a weekly review column). She liked. I mean, she liked it quite a bit.

My take? It was pretty okay. How's that? No, it wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible by any means, it had some funny bits, and - this is the shocking part - had hardly any "offensive" content (okay - there's a buncha drug use by the older brother, but it's not exactly presented as model behavior). It was a little loopy, got kind of dragged down by plot in the last third (as these kinds of movies always do), but it had a nice, intelligent undercurrent about writing and the writer's relationship to the life he's been given running through it. The hapless, hopeful protagonist is played by Tom Hanks' son, and IMHO, the kid's a much better actor than his one-note father.

We'll try do be classier today in our movie choice - either In the Bedroom or The Royal Tannenbaums. We need to hurry. Films like that usually don't stick around Fort Wayne very long...