Kiddie Novelists

 There are now kiddie novelists. Parents who publish their kids book for three grand or whatever POD (print on demand) cost now. And yes there is a publisher specializing in kidpress. Why shouldn't there be? With the advent of helicopter parents and Spockian reward systems (the childs world most important) of course parents will get in the act. Yes you can be a novelist. Yes you can be a rock star. Here I will burn you your CD complete with graphics for your cover. Yes you can be a filmmaker and here is your high definition video to film camera to do it with. Just upload to Youtube and you might get a million hits.

Art for the masses or everybody gets to be a star. Sure. Give little John or Jane their book and as the parents in the New York Times article pointed out ,it is just like sports. Some people give their kids five thousand dollar travel teams and we give ours a book. Right. The problem is that little Johnnie or Janie don't really deserve a book the same way they don't deserve a five thousand dollar travel team complete with major league uniforms. Life and art are not that easy.

Novelists spend years honing their craft. Musicians bust their ass to little notoriety. Film makers agonize over edits and toil mostly in obscurity. People kill themselves in jobs for little money. That is the real world even more so now that the pie is so much smaller. Yes. You are doing your kids a disservice by telling them they are good enough to publish their book. They are not. And it is better they learn that hard work brings the reward, not just being alive. The school of hard knocks will let them know sooner or later.

Better they know it now.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Summer Has Ended

Our kids are going back to school now. They have all collected at their bus stops and marched off leaving their turtles and dogs and cats and chalk and bikes and tricycles and bathing suits and goggles behind. They have left their friendly garages scrawled with stick men and names on the cool cement that smells of gas and bikes and grass. They no longer go barefoot in the yard and listen to the crickets and run after the fireflies and catch bugs in a jar. They are no longer roasting marshmallows and getting chocolate on their hands and tracking in dirt or letting the wet dog in for the hundredth time.

We are no longer lighting charcoal and eating with them on our patios or decks or on that broken picnic table. They are not inside on the hot days watching television for hours. They aren't taking that sweaty bike ride with their parents that ends up at the ice cream store. Their paper plates are no where to be found. Their cups of Kool Aide are empty. They aren't siting around a  table at the Dairy Queen on a warm summer night with ice cream dripping all over their hands. Their rooms are not perpetually a wreck with wet suits and clothes stacked up from the week. They are not coming back from summer camp with mosquito bites and warm brows. Their books and their IPODS and their computers and their dolls and their basketballs, baseballs, footballs, lacrosse sticks, mitts, all lay dormant now.

For summer has ended even though it is still August. They have lined up for their yellow buses and waved goodbye to parents who snapped pictures and waved and shouted and then tried to catch a glimpse of them as they rode away in disel exhaust for eight hours. We return to our homes, our work. It is quiet. We go through our days. We make our money and work out and run through the TO DO lists of our lives. But in the unguarded moment we are heartbroken.

Summer has ended and our children have gone away.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man Kindle The story of a one mans search for the American Dream

Poor Oscar

Could they have just let Bob Hope do the Oscars as a hologram or three D figure? Seriously. He would have been better than the Hathaway Franco combo that set a new low for the most uninteresting Oscar night probably in history. Even the F bomb didn't help the Oscars that seemed like a bad made for TV night of reality show proportions. Was it me or did it all just seem like CG filler? Where was Oscar? Where was the soul?

Even old Kirk Douglas could not resuscitate the moribund production values of filling in with all sorts of backgrounds in the round screen arena. Thankfully the right movie won, but there was something about even the King's Speech that got a little squashed in the amped up twenty something cathedral of beautiful people without talent. I mean Hathaway has talent and maybe Franco does, but that quality called humility was sorely lacking and it seemed the children were running the show and not adults. No surprise they ended the show with kids from Stanton Island singing Somewhere over the Rainbow...a high point at last.

Adults are able to laugh at themselves and don't expect others to laugh because they are just too cute for words. Again where were the individuals? Oscar seemed so stiff  he was in danger of breaking in two. Speeches were carefully devoid of just about anything political or social except for Best Documentary where the filmmaker was able to point out nobody had gone to jail for the great Collapse,but then it was on with the show or on with the faces and CG.

Billy Crystal came in and reminded us that real people entertain us and not computers. Did you hear a computer won Jeopardy? Well that would be an exciting show watching computers try and beat each  other for a prize. The most memorable moment was probably Celine Dion singing over the lost souls of Hollywood and that is probably the bar we were looking for:  a dead show eclipsed by someone singing over the departed.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will blast off April 26th

Seniors Watching Kid Movies

 Come in here watch this...Watch this. Yeah sure. Ok. Here it is...the cat just turned into a dog and is snapping pictures of documents with a spy camera. Isn't that hilarious....funny right? Right? This is a great movie. Ah...no. But that is the way it is with seniors. They dig kid movies. More and more my dad likes to sit down and watch animated movies with my kids. My in laws have been watching Mickey Mouse for years in rapt attention. Like they never saw it before. Totally entertained. Something is up.

I have kids and so I am bombarded with kid movies. Same super loud music dog and cat based animals talking like people we know and doing all sorts of wild CG stunts. The moral imperative thrown in at the end as the rogue penguin is vansihed by the puppy with super dog powers. Pop music. Known actors voices. Usually a smart ass African American who is really street smart. I can snooze through just about any kid movie in perfect synchronicity, waking up as the credits roll.

But my dad. He digs them. You got to see this one? Did you see this one? Ah...no. In laws watching Mickey kick butt for the hundredth time. Fantasia rolling in Dolby sound. No Alzheimer's here. Just a slow dulling of the old critical intelligence until kid movies become once again just fascinating. But maybe that is the cycle here. We all grew up on kid movies with the clear plot lines of good guys and bad guys and animals taking the reins that humans cannot. While the new round of CG kid movies are more innovative, the plot lines remain unchanged. Some human value, honesty, devotion, love, perseverance, triumphs and all the talking animals rejoice and a great theme song kicks in. So maybe that is what we all want at the end. Clear lines. Good guys win. Theme song kicks up. Fade to credits. Scary huh.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man will blast off in April