Saturday, March 7, 2009

Shout-Outs

First of all, a shout-out to Sydney's most favorite toy in the world, photographed by herself:She honestly hasn't seen The Land Before Time or any of its eight thousand sequels often--a sick day of her own every now and then, a sick day of mine every now and then--but they've really captured her imagination. She pretends about all those little cartoon dinosaurs all the freakin' time, using wooden blocks, or her fingers, putting them into time-out, whatever.

I was really quietly irritated about all of it for a while--I mean, here are two kids who can tell a brachiosaurus from a diplodocus and that a pteranodon and a plesiosaur are NOT dinosaurs, and here they are talking about three-horns and the sharptooth and "I'm not a long-neck, YOU are!"

But you know, I finally figured that Matt and I are certainly big enough fangeeks in our own right--comic books, Buffy, sci-fi TV shows--let the kid own her fandom. So while we certainly don't let Syd watch the shows all the time, I did do some web research and downloaded her a DIY mobile, and some masks, and some coloring pages from the Land Before Time web site, and put some easy-reader Land Before Time books on hold at the library, and even checked out ebay to possibly buy her more of those little plastic critters (not for love nor money, apparently).

So, yep, baby's a fangeek. And now the rest of the shout-outs are all about me.

So Matt came home from work yesterday, and sat me down at the computer first thing, and he's all, "Now, Newsarama and Comic Book Resources are the premiere comic book resources, blah blah blah, but Robot 6 is the most popular blog and blah blah blah, and so I was taking a break at work and thought I would check it out, blah blah, and in this one post I was scrolling down, and I see a link to a tutorial for making gift tags out of comic books, and I know you like that stuff, so I click on it, and what do I see? YOU!!!"

I guess Robot 6 was kind enough to pick up my post on Crafting a Green World about making comic book gift tags, and now I have officially impressed my husband.

In other news, I have warned everyone and warned everyone about how bad I am at interviews (this one time, after I won a spelling bee at my junior high, the five o-clock news interviewed me on television, and... it was not pretty), but nilochlainn was nice enough to risk it anyway and interviewed me for the INCrowd Team blog over at etsy. She asks me a lot of interesting, nice questions and I basically go on and on pedantically. Apparently you do not need to get me started about the concept of traditional "women's work."

And if I can go on about that, remember that my official field of study is actually medieval studies, and think about how much more it is possible for me to go on about a single field of study.

P.S. Check out my ode to Artist Trading Cards over at Crafting a Green World.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Clever: call it fandom and not stress about your child liking something you're not fond of. I should have consulted you for advice! 8>

cake said...

i have no interest in dinosaurs. i wish i did, but i just don't.
my kid hasn't gone there yet, with dinosaurs, thomas the train, spiderman, or anything. yet. i hope i can handle it as gracefully as you, when the time comes.

said...

Fond memories of the Land Before Time series. Although it wasn't really a series when my kids were into them - I think there were maybe two or three out at the time.

julie said...

Just ask me when I'm confronted at Goodwill with a 2T Land before Time Tshirt--letting her hang a Land before Time mobile that we construct ourselves and carry around a little Land Before Time figure are fine and dandy, but will I let her BROADCAST her fandom?

If she gives me the puppy-dog eyes, probably.

Abby said...

My kid is a fan geek. For real. And I've decided, with each obsession I'm going to try and embrace it...i mean come on... I even got into NASCAR with him?! Beyond my wildest dreams did I think I'd ever go there. But, I think it's good to let your kids love something that's their interest, even if it's not yours. Plus, you expose them to so many varied and educational and fantasical things...

It's something she'll always remember, and when she's a mama...she can hand down her three-horn. :)

julie said...

It's the mass media, consumer culture business that I'm not comfortable with. A fandom that relies upon the watching of a TV show just isn't okay with me; I've taught pop culture at IU for way too long to take for granted the thousands of unconscious, insidious ways that pop culture, especially TV culture, works.

I have to do a better job at engaging the imaginative aspects of Syd's love for cartoon dinosaurs--pretend play, drawing pictures, dictating stories, dress-up... Hmm, maybe instead of shopping on ebay for Land Before Time plastic dinos, I could just search through Will's huge dino stash for the right species for Sydney to play with.

I wonder if she'd buy that?