Craig Brownlie

We admit it, all right! Here at Family Valued Central, we have not spent as much on Research & Development as we should have. Instead, we spent time cleaning the bathroom and polishing the fine silver. But no longer! Let loose the dogs of toilet bowl mold! We have rededicated ourselves to research! And in the interest of generally raising the discourse here, we have settled into our La-Z-Boy chairs and popped in a DVD.
Extensive inquiries have provided the following list of movies that children apparently love and yet, they don’t always see. Let’s face it, we worry too much about the latest blockbuster and too little about replacing crap with quality (or at least it’s vague approximation). Some films reference mature subject matter, but the toddlers that went to The Matrix, Spiderman, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Austin Powers probably won’t notice. But they will like these movies.
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955) – most consistently funny of the Abbott and Costello films; Bud and Lou find themselves pursued by an Egyptian cult for a special medallion linked to a walking mummy
The African Queen (1951) – Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn; World War I on a boat on an African river with a missionary and a drunk
The Wizard of Oz (1939) – everyone has not seen it; Dorothy gets caught in a bad storm and finds that she’s not in Kansas anymore
Singin’ in the Rain (1952) – Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor ensure that everyone in the room will try to dance at some point soon; the best movie about movies and it’s a riot
Young Frankenstein (1974) – for anyone who loves Goosebumps and its ilk; Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder recreate the classic tale in the funniest movie ever made
The Princess Bride (1987) – William Goldman adapts his book for an all-star cast; a classic fairy tale with more adventure than any three movies
Bringing Up Baby (1938) – Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant; screwball comedy with a dinosaur skeleton and a panther

February, 2006

We here at the Family Valued monochromatic bathhouse, mobile restaurant, and misinformed press room have randomly selected a ten-year-old from among the one immediately available.

When I was a youth, we had something called Classics Illustrated — comic versions of great literary works.
Yeah. Graphic Classics are these books of really good stories by really good writers and they’re excerpts and they’re cool. I’ve read two of them and I have one here from the library. I had never actually read some of these authors’ stuff, so now I like them. I already liked H.G. Wells because I’ve seen the movie War of the Worlds — the old one. There’s this one where they exorcised this old mummy’s spirit and it’s really cool. The Hound of the Baskervilles had this big dog and it attacked people.

When I was your age, we heard tell that people would read the comic versions instead of the originals of some of these books.
The originals actually have more flavors to them and more feeling. You can imagine them a lot better that way.

But you like the Graphic Classics?
Because they have good stories. Now I like Bram Stoker a lot. For the Lair of the White Worm mostly just because it was so awesome. It was about this worm/snake monster and it ate people.

There seem to be a lot of large monsters consuming people.
Maybe people are just scared of those things. But I like being scared. I’m a big fan of horror and science fiction. I really want to get the other Graphic Classics, like Adventure Classics and Horror Classics and Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson. I really want to get a lot of them.

April, 2006

Say what you will for finances and household chores, but nothing challenges newlyweds quite like holiday celebrations. Traditions have to be meshed. Other people’s feelings need to be considered. Family members whom you did not marry need to be given their due regard. And people never make you talk about it before the wedding, like they will about children and religion and doing the laundry. Sure, it may come up if you’re doing the mixed faith thing, but the sparkle in your eyes is too bright for you to focus on such minutiae. And then you’re blessed with children and matters only get more complicated as you seek ways to pass along your important traditions without running hog-wild over your spouse’s history.

This is what I was thinking about while our family chopped down our Christmas tree.

I was a teen-ager before I visited a cut-your-own farm, at the behest of my brother who had been seeking a way to meld his ideas of the holidays with his wife’s. Somehow I fit into the plan, probably as convenient labor.

Off and on over a decade of living in Rochester we have patronized the same farm out Route 104 where the houses spread out and the industrial buildings sprout like mushrooms. For the first time in a long time, our entire family was in attendance. Maybe it’s not a “tradition,” but I liked watching each of us take our turn at the saw. And I loved tossing the tree into the car, turning, and being engulfed in a different sort of tradition: the family snowball fight.

December, 2005