Here are some pictures from Benny's 8th birthday party -- only a month late! He had his friends Noe and Fritz over for cake and ice cream and they went to the Randall Museum, which is this awesome natural history museum only a few blocks away.
He's still rocking the whole football thing, so he and his friends dressed in jerseys and helmets and he got a football cake too. (Benny was my expert consultant on this cake and carefully placed the candles so they were players with the football between them.)
I just finished writing my first new play since I left Michigan in 2007. The need to write another play must have been growing in me for some time, since it took only a few days into my new, reduced work schedule to churn it out.
I've been working on the play for some time, organizing and preparing my thoughts, writing outlines, setting up a Scrivener template for it. Then today I sat down and started a new Scrivener document and just started writing it. Four hours later — with only a short break — I finished it. It's 17 pages long.
I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if it's worth working further on. I don't know if it will ever be worth submitting. But it's been growing in me since December and it just burst out somehow.
It's a play about a chess game, called "White Queen's Pawn." I got the idea when I started taking chess up again in December. I bought a book at a used bookstore called "Chess Basics" and started working through the lessons on Benny's new chessboard. Then I bought another book called "Great Short Games of the Chess Masters" and started working through those.
I am definitely not a natural at chess. Most of the time I don't understand the games I'm acting out. But there's something satisfying about re-enacting a chess game played in Ostend in 1906 or Vienna in 1872 or Riga in 1937.
I was particularly struck by the second game in the book, which introduced a game played in Kaschau in 1893. In this game, the White King's Pawn advanced across the entire chessboard and was a key actor in the amazing finish. The game was so dramatic I played it several times, then showed it to Benny, who nodded politely and went back to his Madden Playstation game.
I couldn't stop thinking about the game, however, and found myself wondering what it would be like to see this game from the little pawn's point of view, the same little pawn who miraculously made it across the board through so many perils and was present at the dramatic finish. I played the game once more and took notes as if I were the pawn: who I was threatening, who was threatening me, what pieces were around me, who was protecting me, who I was protecting.
But it wasn't until I sat down today that I felt ready to actually do it. I approached the script in a very systematic way, letting the natural drama of the game be my plot. Suddenly the characters appeared: the brave little pawn, the brooding king, the sweet queen, the pious bishop and glory-seeking knight, the cunning enemy pawns. The little pawn was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, advancing bravely into the dark forest following her own brick road to fulfill her wish. I tried to create a narrative trajectory that began a naive little pawn starting her first game and ending ... well ending in a very different place.
I don't know what I'm trying to say with this play -- I've put it away and I can't bear to look at it right now -- but I think the script talks about courage and persistence and ultimately, forgiveness. The Bishop, who started out as a smug strawman for the other pieces to make fun of, turned out to be a vital figure, providing some moral heft to the play.
Perhaps, in the end, this play was about choice: both the chess players and the pieces. For in this play, the chess pieces can influence the game, there's a special, invisible connection between the player and the pieces. A piece can force the player to move impulsively before the player has a chance to think it through, or it can refuse to move, forcing the player to change his or her mind and find another way, possibly to the ruin of all.
For each step the Pawn takes, she must decide to take it. Sometimes she moves from a dangerous square to a protected one. But sometimes she must leave a protected square and forge ahead all alone. At one point she moves from a safe square to a very dangerous one, but she chooses to do it for the good of her comrades, to find that the square was safe after all.
Pawns, by their very definition, are not supposed to have a choice. Their purpose is to be used and sacrificed. But in my play, the pawn has turned the tables and her choices determined the fate of the game.
I took Benny to the U.S. Figure Skating Championships last night in San Jose. His comment: "Mommy, this is a lot better than I thought it would be!" Here are some blurry photos (those skaters move fast).
Sometimes I get these ideas, and there's no way of knowing how they'll turn out. Fortunately my family is very tolerant and falls in with many of my crazy schemes. Last November I was walking home from work, trying to think of a little trip we could take over the New Year. Someplace warm, someplace new, someplace Benny would like ...
Our coworkers often talk of Tahoe and Hawaii and Disneyland and Legoland and Napa wine-tasting, but I was thinking of something a little more ... Midwest.
Then, 10 feet from our apartment building, it hit me: The Rose Bowl Parade! That would be SO COOL!
On nearly every New Year's morning in my entire life, I've switched the TV to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, most recently over the protests of Ron and Benny. I decided 2012 was the year we would go.
But at 4:40 a.m. on Jan. 2, I was having second thoughts. You see, the parade starts at 8 a.m., and the closest hotel I could find was in Palmdale, a bleak, nearly deserted commercial strip an hour's drive away. We left in pitch darkness, padded stadium seats tucked in the trunk of our little Fit.
We ignored Greta, our new GPS Garmin system, who wanted to take us through the twisting Angeles Forest in pitch darkness, and kept to the main highways, entering Pasedena north of the parade route.
Which was a problem, because our reserved parking space and grandstand seats were south of the parade route along Colorado Street. There was no way to cross Colorado, everything was blocked off. So Ron slid the Fit into a miniscule parking spot on a residential street and we trotted off to the nearest checkpoint, Ron carrying a big white bundle holding the stadium seats.
Of course, we were hell and gone from our grandstand, and the white-suited volunteer at the checkpoint wouldn't let us pass. He recommended a circuitous northern route which might allow us to see the parade's final floats. Ron didn't think much of that, so we just moved away, then snuck back when Mr. White Suit's back was turned. A security guy barely glanced at our tickets, searched our bags, waved us through, then shouted: "That's the last one! The parade's starting! This checkpoint is closed!" Ron, Benny and I bolted for Colorado Street, keeping our heads down as Mr. White Suit watched us with disapproval. A stealth bomber flew overhead -- they were on to us.
Now we had to cross the parade route. We infiltrated the lines of cops in camo-print riot gear and came to a halt at the big Main Grandstand as the second float sailed past. "All right, there's a break!" an official said, and we dashed across after the float, skirting the car carrying the Grand Marshal and ducking into a tunnel to Green Street. Then it was a sprint along Green, parallel to the parade route, Benny leading the way, Ron taking rear guard.
But we couldn't get to the grandstand! Hordes of onlookers were packed in front of the fence dividing ticket-holders and the rabble. Ron was ready to watch the parade where we were, but I noticed some people tugging a bit of fence away from the wall, leaving a little gap.
"You think we can get through that?" I asked the saboteurs. Two people slipped through the fence while I hesitated, so I sent Benny through. I shoved my way through the tiny gap, then someone held Ron's stadium seats while he pushed through, popping out like a cork.
Then it was only a matter of going to the wrong grandstand, going to the wrong side of the right grandstand and finally finding our seats. "You haven't missed much," said the nice lady sitting beside me.
We had a great view — the Wisconsin float and band went by. I took a few pictures, then dropped my camera about 20 feet into the weeds below the bandstand. Oh well.
The parade was very exciting to watch in person. The floats were big, the bands were loud and the crowd cheered wildly. One woman was sitting on the edge of the street in a furry Wisconsin Badger hat, and half the Wisconsin band suddenly broke out and circled her, trumpets blaring.
The theme of the parade, as you can tell by the title, was "Just Imagine," and a more vague, amorphous theme would be difficult to find. The best application was by U.S. Bank's "Idea Factory,"which had some mechanical assembly line turning ideas into real-life objects. We missed the Royal Court (which was fine with me), but here's the flagrantly patriotic "Imagine in America" float, the only float picture I shot before I dropped my camera.
We cheered the Wisconsin and Oregon people, and then came Paramount's Hollywood float with the huge Starship Enterprise on top. (The rest of these pictures and videos were taken with Ron's iPhone.)
Benny loved the tiny ponies pulling costumed people in carts and the China Airline's huge dragon with the smoke puffing out of its nostrils. He also liked the cowboys performing rope tricks on horseback.
After all the horses came sweepers in white jumpsuits, who had to work fast to keep from being run over by a fast-moving float. The City of Alhambra's train float was appropriately named "Bearing Down the Track," because it was gaining threateningly on the Cowgirl's horse sweepers. They barely got out the way.
Ron liked the bands the best. The biggest band came from Texas and seemed miles long. My favorite favorite band featured these amazing musicians from Kyoto Tachibana High School:
Here are some other floats:
Most people in reserved parking had to clear out right after the parade, but since we'd parked on a residential street, we could hang around. First I hunted down a Sharp Seating employee, and he took me under the grandstand and hunted around the weeds with me until we found my digital camera.
Then Ron, Benny and I had lunch at a cafe and wandered down Colorado Street buying souveniers. One pedestrian walking behind us, obviously from the Midwest, had a little trouble crossing streets. First the lady and her friends wandered vaguely out into the intersection against the light, then when that was prevented by the cars, milled around on the corner. The light turned, and Ron, Benny and I crossed. "Look!" the lady cried. "They're crossing diagonally! You can do that? I've never seen that before!"
We drove back to Palmdale, and Ron and Benny played in the outdoor pool. After dinner, we sat on the bed and watched the parts of the parade we missed. And sure enough, on local station 5, we saw Ron scuttling across the parade route, carrying a big white bundle of stadium seats, behind Bayer's "Garden of Imagination" float. And there I was on the corner for an instant in a pink shirt, holding Benny's hand, before crossing.
Benny said: "I want to go to the Parade every year!" And I'm thinking, the city lets you reserve RV parking spaces along the parade route, so we could rent an RV next year and load it with people and watch the Rose Bowl Parade from our RV. That would be SO COOL!
