Category: quickies

Poor Iago

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Remember at the end of Aladdin?

Jafar finally gets the lamp and stuff goes downhill real quick. He goes from super-creepy dude with a mild hypnotic power to being a sultan to being a sorceror to being an all-powerful genie in the space of, I dunno, five minutes of movie time? And it’s like, quickly apparent to everybody that he’s overstepped, got in over his head in his race and rage for power, and just like that, it’s over?

I keep thinking about that moment lately.

Not because of Jafar, in particular — although Jafar is interesting enough as a comparison to *ahem* certain figures in current events. (Lies a lot, power-hungry, more than a little skeevy, more focused on having power than actually wielding it.)

No, I keep thinking about Iago.

Iago (Parrot) - Mrs. Root's Music Room

Jafar’s accomplice, Iago. His parrot. You know, voiced — annoyingly, yet somehow, iconically — by Gilbert Gottfried? (Yes, obviously, I’m talking about the animated version, but honestly, this little detour works just as well in the live-action remake.)

Jafar gets sucked into the lamp at the end — rightfully so, as anybody in the audience would conclude — and out of, what? Spite? Rage? An unwillingness to go down alone? He drags Iago into the lamp with him.

Poor Iago.

I’m not arguing Iago did no wrong. He did. He was Jafar’s accomplice throughout the whole thing; he even — if I’m remembering rightly (though it’s been a while) — helps to sabotage Aladdin and Jasmine at a few points. And he is certainly happy to avail himself of Jafar’s status and power along the way.

But Iago is not, in and of himself, evil. And certainly not as evil as Jafar. And certainly certainly not doomed to a practical eternity in a lamp with the now power-mad and raging Jafar evil.

Iago was a patsy. A henchman. He was the tool of Jafar, not because he wanted to do evil himself, but by dint of being slave to an evil master.

Had Iago belonged to another master, he would almost certainly have turned out differently. Iago didn’t choose his evil, he was driven to it, and would as easily be driven to good, had things gone differently for him.

So Iago being dragged into the lamp to suffer for millenia just because Jafar is a sore loser?

Doesn’t quite sit right.

But Jafar is who he is, and he can’t stomach losing alone, so he’s determined to drag somebody — anybody — down with him.

So, obviously, the parallel I’m making here is between Jafar — who is beaten and he knows it, and drags down his loyal henchman into the abyss with him — and a certain somebody in American politics — who is beaten and he knows it, and is stubbornly allowing his henchmen to self-immolate in the national media on his behalf, because he can’t stand the truth.

The difference, of course, is that Iago tries to flee in the end — he just can’t escape Jafar’s grasp.

The Iagos of the current day do not seem to be fleeing all that hard.

We Got Some ‘Splainin To Do

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I just got done speaking to a couple of students.

Things are a little … tumultuous right now; in this country, in our school, shoot… in *life generally*. They hung around after the bell just to talk, to ask some questions, to vent… and I’m happy to be that for them. They obviously needed to talk to somebody. Heck, *I* needed to talk to somebody.

I came away from that conversation shaking my head. The older generation has so much to answer for with these kids. They have been robbed of so much, and yet they’re weathering the storm with so much more resolve and level-headedness than so many of the adults in their lives.

I often joke with them about how I’m glad I’m not a kid like them in the world we’re living in (even though it’s not actually a joke).

But the truth is, many of them don’t even get to be kids anymore. They got yanked out of that and plopped straight into adult problems, starting a few years ago, but especially here in 2020.

And even adults don’t know how to deal with 2020.

These kids have it worse.

A Good Excuse

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I am finally realizing the secret to why I’m so cyclical with working out.

I go back and forth on this. I’ve done it for years. I get into a good habit — waking up early, getting after it before work — then I slack off and fall off the wagon. Then I get mad at myself and climb back on the wagon. And a few months later I’m off again.

It struck me the other morning why this happens. (Or at least, why I’m going to allow myself to believe it happens.)

The days are getting shorter right now. There’s less daylight out there to go around. Therefore by the time I’m going to bed, the night hasn’t been upon us for very long and when the morning comes, daylight is still a long way off.

There’s something in here, too, about the fact that when we’re deprived of the natural day/night cycle, our body naturally calibrates itself to a 25-hour day, not 24. So, y’know. That’s a thing. And it’s relevant somehow, I’m sure of it. (It’s also heckin’ bananas. Evolution finely tunes organisms to exist in a certain environment under certain circumstances, so how the heck is our natural clock off by an entire hour every day?)

This is not, in other words, a me-versus-my-alarm-clock thing. It’s a me-versus-my-evolution-given-circadian-rhythm thing. It’s the adjustment from long days and short nights to the other way ’round that gets me crossed up; not staying up late to watch Cobra Kai and Jessica Jones.

Or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself this week.

Of course, I’m still able to drag myself out for runs, somehow.

I’ll solve that one later.

Anyway, maybe I’ll work out tomorrow.

Why are Shoelaces on Kids’ Shoes Even a Thing?

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For the longest time, I’ve put off teaching my kids to tie their shoelaces.

What age is the right age?

And is it even necessary, I mean, really? We live in an age of technological wonders. Velcro has been around for decades. (By the way, in the last xxxx years I learned that “Velcro” is a brand-name — if you’re not dealing with the name brand, you’re actually talking about “hook-and-loop strips”. The more you know!) When is the first “smart shoe” going to be invented? (It ties itself, then reads you your notifications while cooking your dinner!)

I think I’m going to continue to put it off for as long as I can find shoes in their size that close up with Velcro.

It’s just such a pain to teach kids anything that deals with fine motor skills, and lace-tying is among the finest skills you’re going to ask of a kid. Think of all the things you have to do! Cross over, make a loop, loop another string around the stem of the loop, make ANOTHER loop, pull that loop through the gap created by looping your second string around the first loop… I’ve just typed that out after untying and retying my own shoes and it still makes my head hurt.

And that’s if you use the bunny-ears method you learned in grade school.

A few years ago I learned a (far superior!) method for shoe-tying that gets the job done in about half the time. Why? Because the information is there to be learned, that’s why. It’s called the Fieggen knot and if you invest the five minutes necessary to learn the method, it will change your shoe-tying life, to the bemusement of friends and family. (“Look at this,” you’ll say. “I can tie my shoes really fast!” And you’ll do it. And they’ll shrug and say, “that’s neat, I guess.” You, too, can create this sense of underwhelmed wonder!) But forget trying to teach this intricate little movement of the fingers to a grade-school kid.

I don’t even tie my own shoes that often. I leave them loose enough to slip on and off, so I can go for weeks without re-tying my laces. But if you do that with a kid, they’ll be throwing shoes all over the room because they run everywhere and they run with the grace of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz.

But both of the kids play sports, which means laced cleats, which means shoes are gonna come untied a lot — and they have to be tied a bit tighter than slip-on status. So I guess I’m gonna have to bite the bullet and teach them, lest I be that parent constantly jogging onto the pitch at a dead ball to tie their kid’s shoes.

You don’t wanna be that guy.

De-Synced

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Weekends just aren’t recharging my batteries like they used to.

Is that 40, or is that COVID?

I guess there’s no reason it can’t be both.

I just feel so tired.

And it’s only Tuesday.

I did run this morning, so there’s that.

And I wrote more on the play as well, so there’s that too.

But man. Weariness in the bones.

I know I’m not the only one, but it feels that way sometimes. The world is so determined to be back to normal even though it clearly isn’t normal again yet, not by any stretch.

I worked the early morning shift for a few years, starting my shift at 4 and 5 in the morning, and the oddest thing about that job was the way it made me feel out of phase with the rest of the world. I’d go to sleep at 7 or 8 PM to wake up by 3, arriving at work in the dead of night, leaving to go home just when the rest of the world was hitting its stride before lunchtime.

(Among other things, this job taught me the skill that all Dads learn somewhere along the line — the ability to fall asleep at almost any time or any place when the situation allows for it. Yes, napping is a skill. No, it cannot be taught, only honed through necessity and sheer force of will.)

This — these COVID times — feels like that, only instead of being out of sync chronologically with everybody else, I feel out of sync emotionally, or maybe psychologically. But just like being de-synced chronologically, it has me tired all the time.

And man, I try to be upbeat and think about solutions to problems when I write here but … the solutions just aren’t coming for this one.

Oh well. Another sip of tea, a few more words on the page, a few more miles to run in the morning.

So it goes.