Another Literary Contemplation

So my wife took the munchkins to the Library today, and among the books they brought back was Dr. Seuss's early classic Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose. I read this book to the girls tonight just before bedtime.

So, tell me: do any of you out there see Ayn Rand-esque philosophy underlying the story, or am I the only one?

I decided to ask Google, and it appears I'm not the only one....

My Beef With Social Studies

Another Update: Ever read your own writing after the fact, and think to yourself, "Who writes this stuff? I could do it so much better!" Well, I decided that a few edits were necessary to clarify and emphasize my main point, which previously was getting lost in all the caveats.

Update: fixed an embarrassing misspelling. They are known as the Elgin marbles, not the Eglin marbles. Sheesh.




All right, time to poke the hornet's nest again and see what comes out. :-)

Here's a thought experiment.

Let's say that an educational reformer somewhere decides that our kids aren't learning enough about "Culture," and designs a curriculum to remedy this fact.

The general idea behind the Culture curriculum, is that all all aspects relating to culture will be folded into this one subject area, which can then be taught in a systematic way, instead of being taught in a scattershot manner as a collection of unrelated subjects. So for instance, Literature classes will be folded into the new Culture curriculum, because Literature is one of the major ways that a culture expresses itself.

So along this vein, all the following subjects--which can be seen as expressions of the Cultures of the societies that manifest them--get folded into the new Culture curriculum:

• Literature
• Music appreciation and music performance
• Art appreciation and practice
• Civics/Political Science
• Philosophy
• Religion
• P.E. (After all, sports are a form of cultural expression!)
• Foreign Language

And of course, in the interest of providing insight into other cultures, at least as much time is given to Literature, Music, Art, etc... of these cultures, especially non-Western ones.

Now, let's say this whole idea catches on, and schools across the whole land start replacing their relevant existing courses with Culture classes. And because this subject is clearly of monumental importance, school districts everywhere start making Culture a course required of all secondary school students, who must take an hour a day for the entire four years they are in high school.

So, tell me: under this arrangement, how much Literature are they actually going to learn? How much Foreign Language? How much Philosophy? How much exercise will they actually get?

My guess is, this would be a disaster. Simply stated, the above list of subjects is simply too big to be covered in a one-hour class each day, even over the course of four years. In my own high school career, I had four years of choir , four years of English/Literature/Philosophy, three years of Foreign Language, one year of AP American Government, and two years of P.E. If I add all that up, it averages three and a half hours' classroom time each day for four years, and that doesn't even cover all the topics on the above list. (And I still didn't learn my German very well. Of course, that was more an artifact of my own lousy study habits than the fact that I only had an hour a day for three years....)

The Culture course that supplants all these subjects only gives one hour a day. By aggregating all these subjects together and making it all fit between period bells, the result is to cut down drastically on the amount of time spent on each of these subjects, and thus cut down drastically on the depth of knowledge actually passed on to the pupils.

Well, consider everything that went into the course called "Social Studies" when I was in high school (some of which may actually be off the list by now, which is a good thing):

• World History
• American History
• Anthropology
• Geography
• Archaeology (to the extent that we covered it)
• Civics/American Government/Political Science
• Philosophy (although, to be fair, I got more of this in my Literature classes than in Social Studies)
• Economics
• Health--including First Aid, Drug Education, and Sex Ed (with a rather bracing unit on STDs)
• Drivers' Training

And clearly, since this is such an important topic, we'll assign all students to one hour every school day for all four years of their High School career.

So, tell me: under this arrangement, how much World History are they actually going to learn? How much Economics? How much American History or American Government or Political Science or Political Philosophy? How much Geography?

Do you start to see what my beef with the idea of "Social Studies" is? As my wife puts it, Social Studies courses were just another side dish in the educational buffet our schools put up. It was also something of a dumping ground for all kinds of short courses that the schools were required to teach, when there wasn't a better place to put them. After all: Drivers' Training for crying out loud! What's that got to do with the Articles of Confederation?

The course matter that goes into what we call "Social Studies" should be more than just another side dish: it's the main course. The subjects that go into social studies tell us, in no small part, who we are; who else is out there; how we relate to them; how we're all organized; how we got to be where we are; how our government is organized, and what our rights and responsibilities are; how other societies and governments are organized; what works and what doesn't in each system; and so on. It's a big chunk of the core curriculum that we're trying to pass on to our children.

So we throw all our history, archaeology, anthropology, geography, economics, government, political philosophy, and a host of other stuff together into one class; give it one class period a day; and then expect our students to come away with an in-depth understanding of the way all this stuff works? Color me highly, highly skeptical.

Now, I need to insert a few caveats here. First, I'm not in the least opposed to the idea of "aggregating" subjects. Some subjects are taught together very well: history and geography, history and archaeology, history and philosophy, history and literature, literature and philosopy, US History and American Government, physics and mathematics... the list goes on. I like the approach used at some universities (or at least, used to be used at some universities before being declared politically incorrect) of having a Western Civ course of study--which covered history, literature, philosophy, geography, economics, and religion together as one massive subject--which constituted the core of each student's education for the first two years or so of their university experience. So I'm all for aggregating subjects as appropriate--so long as we recognize just how big the aggregated course is, and give it enough time and energy to make sure it gets taught and learned properly.

Second, I'm fully aware that some students are simply not made for some subjects. I have a brother-in-law who's great with computers, but never got into great literature or history, being more of a science fiction kind of guy. Frankly, for someone like this, his time is better spent brushing up on his technical skills and on knowledge of trends in his industry than it would be reading about eight-hundred-year-old battles (although I think he'd most appreciate the ones that involved massive siege engines--we're kindred spirits that way). So some allowance clearly has to be made for students whose talents primarily lie in other fields.

Third, I realize that there are only so many hours in the day. The amount of knowledge out there worth knowing is huge; no one gets out of high school knowing more than a fraction of that which would be useful and/or edifying. So much of planning a curriculum is deciding what one will not be covering, simply because there isn't time. What can we afford to let slip through the cracks, and what can't we?

But with all these caveats granted, I've been thinking for some time about the kind of education I want to provide for my children. We will not be treating "Social Studies" as one topic, requiring one hour a day instruction time. The topics that make up "Social Studies", along with the topics that make up my hypothetical "Culture" curriculum, will in fact make up the core of our children's education, and will most likely require most of the educational day, at least by the time the children enter high school.

Now, we do intend to teach these topics in as integrated a fashion as possible. It just seems reasonable to read Greek myths as we study the history of the ancient Greeks, while we're learning the geography of the Mediterranean basin, while we're learning about Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and Euclid, while we're studying pictures of the Elgin Marbles and the Parthenon. But we intend to keep in mind the fact that this aggregated subject is the core of their curriculum, and give it the weight and energy needed to do justice to the fact.

Oh, and one other thing--we aren't the first homeschooling family to think along these lines. These ideas show up a lot in Charlotte Mason's writings; they show up in books on Classical Homeschooling theory (such as The Well Trained Mind, which we're using); and they show up a lot among those who use a Unit-Study approach. So, while we're as crochety, ill-tempered, and independent-minded as any homeschoolers out there, it's still nice to know that we aren't actually alone in thinking this way. :-)

(And one more thing, before anyone else complains: no, we're not neglecting math and science. I may talk about these later, depending on what the muses have to say...)

100th Carnival of Homeschooling is up!

It's over at Mom is Teaching. There are a lot of really good, thought-provoking articles this week (although, alas, none from me).

As the daddy of two daughters, I was particularly affected by this post. It deals with the rather unrealistic standards of beauty that our society tries to cram down the throats of our young women. It contains two very thought-provoking short videos that illustrate clearly what our daughters are up against. The first one shows the process by which a model, who's actually a normal-looking young lady, gets turned into an unobtainable goddess through make-up and digital enhancement, illustrating how our daughters really are up against an unattainable standard of beauty, since not even the models can reach it without Photoshop. The second video, which is more than just a little disturbing, shows a rapid-fire montage of beauty-product advertising that directly assaults a woman's sense of her own attractiveness.

Anyway, there's a lot of good stuff there this week. Check it out!

All I Want For Christmas Is....

Unfortunately, they're out of stock, for now. But I suspect that among a certain percentage of the population, this is this year's equivalent of Tickle-Me-Elmo; When they finally get it back in stock, they'll make a zillion bucks.

Only a hundred bucks! Santa, if you're listening, I'll need their size "Large".

Oh, and from the same site, I like these too.

A Civics Test!

I was surfing around on some Homeschooling websites today, and came across this Civics Test. I couldn't resist. I did pretty well, missing three out of 60, for a score of 95%. My wife did rather well, too, getting 88.33%--as she missed 7 out of 60. She did well on the history questions, but was tripped up on several of the economics and political philosophy questions.

Apparently, four-year college grads score just under 55% on average. The average among on-line test-takers is 70%.

On one of the questions I got wrong, it was because I misread the name of the president in the question: I read Andrew Jackson for Andrew Johnson, and so completely misidentified the major political issue of his day. And the one on suffrage, I could have gotten if I just paid more attention to the Schoolhouse Rock video we show our kids from time to time.

All in all, I enjoyed the quiz. If you take it, let me know in the comments how you did!

Hat tip to Why Homeschool? on this one.

Story With an Unexpected Ending

Well, I know I should actually put in the time to write another "meaty" post, but somehow my IQ tends to take a precipitious dip over the course of long holiday weekends. It's probably Carbohydrate Poisoning or something like that.

So instead, I thought I'd let my firstborn daughter regale you with another of her stories. I personally think the plot has a few loose ends that need tying up (like, what happened to the boy?), but I like the unexpected twist at the end.

Here we go:


(Note: I suppose this is pretty, in a Sinead O'Connor sort of way. I'm trying to figure out how she's keeping that bow in place without any hair. Spirit Gum, maybe?)


(That's the Yo-Yo from Fantasia 2000. It seems my daughter thinks that flamingos do nothing all day but throw Yo-Yos around and get into trouble with each other. She should know better: we've been to the Sacramento Zoo, and we know from personal experience that all Flamingos really do all day is chase each other into the bushes and try to mate.)


(I had to ask for a little help with this one. The Pillowfight Fairy says these are the rocks that she's throwing into the pond.)

There it is: the unexpected ending. I can genuinely say I didn't expect that, and I probably let out a goodly-sized snort when I first read it.

Wow. Just, wow. So there really is a light at the end of the tunnel! And we only have to wait 23 more years to get there. ;-)

I'm still curious about what happened to the boy. I shall try to remember to ask the Pillowfight Fairy, so I can give you an update sometime soon.

Day of Rest

If you can stand a little more meta-blogging, this is a post to say that I don't have a whole lot to say. We're still digesting yesterday's meal.

It's been a while since we've had a true day of rest. For the last several months, every time we've had a day off, I've used it to work on the Never-Ending Backyard Project. Well, since we finally have all the stones in place, I decided not to try to go on to the next phase yet, and just spend the day loafing. (Ok, I did mow the lawn--but I actually find mowing to be a relaxing experience. And Tonya went to the mall--on this, the most fearsome shopping day of the year--but she actually found it a relaxing experience too, because all the kids were at home with Daddy, and she could actually find something like solitude (ironically, in the middle of really, really big crowds. But at least they were adult crowds. O.K., there were plenty of kids, but they weren't hers).

Turns out the guy who came to fix our 'fridge really did save our bacon, literally; so we fried it up for lunch today. The kids had somehow gotten the unusual notion into their heads that they needed pancakes for lunch. Well, it was a quiet, relaxing morning, so I thought: why not? So I made up a bunch of pancakes, and then fried up the bacon, which was still good. Oh, it was so, so, so, good....

Sometimes it's worthwhile to spend a day doing a whole lot of nothing.


P.S. I have to make a correction to an earlier post. I said in my post on Beowulf that the Old English word ða eventually became the Modern English word the. Turns out, this isn't correct. The word ða eventually became the modern word though; but it actually meant either then or when, depending on the order of the words that followed it. Just thought you might need to know that. :-)

'Twas The Day Before Thanksgiving

...and all through the house, everything stopped working at the same time, including my left knee.


...


When I woke this morning and started to get ready for work, I noticed our pitcher of fruit juice was nearly empty, so I went to the freezer to get more concentrate...

...and the freezer was completely defrosted. In fact, it was nearly room temperature in the freezer. We would have done better to leave all our food on our rooftop; at least it was cold outside last night.

The freakin' ice cream had separated into about two inches of water-based liquid at the bottom of the tub, and a fatty white-creamy substance floating on top of it. We've all seen ice cream melt, but I suspect that few of us have ever seen ice cream go that far, before.

We had to throw out most of what was in the freezer, and a good portion of what was in the refrigerator; and we don't yet know that we've dumped everything we need to.

Well. Among the things in our freezer were all the pomegranate seeds that we've been preparing to use to make jelly. We figured that they were probably fine; they don't go bad all that quickly under normal circumstances. Besides, we're making jelly with them; the high temperatures kill off any bacteria present. So long as we can get the jelly made fairly soon, we'll be just fine. So we decided that Tonya would juice the seeds today. Then we'd be prepared to make several batches of jelly before the weekend.

So, I got a call from Tonya at work today.

The blender died too.

It was one that we've had since we got married, over seven years ago, and we've gotten a lot of good use out of it. But it was rather an inconvenient time to have it go, no? So anyway, Tonya figured that instead of juicing the seeds in a blender, she would do it the old-fashioned way: put them in a sealed plastic bag, and smoosh them. Works like a champ, especially given that the seeds were already defrosted. (Although when she was straining them later, she would occasionally come upon an un-smooshed seed, which she would then squish with a spoon to get the juice out. This, of course, put a large number of lovely red-purple spots all over the wall near the stove.)

Well, work wasn't very productive today, what with half the people already off on their vacation, so I talked my boss into letting me take a half-day off so I could go home and help deal with crises. Dad to the rescue! Right? Um...

Well, sometime between 10 and 11 this morning, my left knee started to hurt. No obvious reason, no obvious cause; it just started aching. Then it started aching worse. Then, by One O'clock or so, it became excruciating to put any weight on it. I managed to get home--driving a stick-shift, no less--then had to put on a knee brace we had lying around, and took a few Tylenol. My wife made me lie down and rest (although it didn't take much coaxing, actually. After writing that huge post about Beowulf last night, I was sleep-deprived and needed the nap).

Ultimately we got through the day. The Sears repair-dude showed up at about 5:00 (turns out, Thanksgiving Eve is one of their busiest days of the year! Go figure), and the refrigerator fix was a fairly simple one: an electric switch that regulates the starting of the compressor had shorted and needed to be replaced. It's a common repair, and he had the necessary part in the truck. As for the blender, we've decided to give it the Extreme Unction and send it off; they're fairly cheap, actually. And my knee is feeling better, though the kids kept trying to climb up on it (ow...) and I had to drive to a local Chinese restaurant for takeout (ow...) and work the parking brake with my left foot (Ow!Ow!Ow!Ow!Ow!oooooh....) I might be limping around a little at my extended family's Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow.

I've got a few more chores tonight, but hopefully I'll be safely in bed before anything else goes wrong today. ;-)


Postscript: It occurs to me that the first sentence of this post would make a halfway decent entry in the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest, in which the contestants compose just the first lines of the worst novels never written. Imagine a novel that begins with the line:

'Twas the day before Thanksgiving, and all through the house, everything stopped working at the same time, including my left knee.

Methinks it has possibilities!

First People, Now Sheep

Regular readers of this blog know that my eldest daughter has developed a fascination with the concept and design of People-Launchers and other assorted siege engines. See, for instance, this post, this post, and this post.

Well! Her little engineer's mind is constantly seeking to apply existing solutions to new and various problems. So today, I came across this proposal she had written:

Having already developed the Mark 1 People-Flinger, she decided to adapt this technology to new and different problems, by introducing a new Conception of Operations (CONOPS).

The new idea is that this system can be used to pilfer sheep.


Here's the new CONOPS, as illustrated: the user grabs the big rubber band which is stretched between two trees; then, he/she stretches the rubber band over to the nearest sheep pen, in the lower right side of the above diagram; then he/she grabs the first sheep that happens to wander within reach; then the sheep is inserted in the rubber band, and off it goes. With a little luck (and some really dumb livestock), one can get one's own Black Sheep Squadron going.

(Note that I used the term "he/she" in the above paragraph. If we were dealing with adults, I would have just used the term "he", as most women I know wouldn't have thought to do this. However, considering that this whole scheme was dreamed up by a female, I figured I needed to inlcude the possibility in my choice of pronouns.)

I asked the Fairy what the purpose of this contraption was. She said something about making "sheep stew".

Although, the way the Fairy described it to her little sister, the rubber band is supposed to launch both the sheep and the sheep rustler at the same time. The rustler stands in the rubber band holding on to the sheep as the rubber band is released, and they both go flying. Intriguing concept, no? Perhaps the purpose of the sheep is to provide some nice wooly cushioning upon landing. Or maybe it's just an ingenious getaway device, of the sort that Wile E. Coyote might have used to abscond with his quarry from that big sheepdog.

Ingenious....

Except for the obvious fact that the Pillowfight Fairy hasn't given all that much thought to the landing part. Which, come to think of it, was Wile E. Coyote's problem, too. These super-geniuses all seem to think alike.

So They Made Another Beowulf Movie....

Well! Now that I've beaten the subject of Valkyries to death, it's time to move on to another topic. So now I get to beat Beowulf to death, too.

For all you pedants out there (like my wife): No, I didn't actually beat Beowulf to death. He's already been dead a really long time.

About a year ago, I read somewhere that film director Robert Zemeckis--who did the recent Polar Express movie, and (more well-known to my generation) Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, was putting together a version of Beowulf. I was very intrigued.

Now, it's not that Beowulf hasn't been done before. There are at least two previous adaptations to the big screen that I know of (although I haven't seen any of them). The problem is, neither of these adaptations actually try to tell the story straight. The first of these films, released in 1999, set the activity in a post-technological future-fantasy setting, and was roundly panned by critics. The second of these was an Icelandic production from 2005, and did everything in its power to "humanize" Grendel by giving him a tragic back-story, and to turn Beowulf into a reluctant hero, who sympathizes more with Grendel than with the violent, barbaric Danes. This one fared marginally better with the critics, although it was still described by at least one reviewer as having dialogue that puts the viewer in mind of a bad Monty Python sketch.

...

Now, my first introduction to Beowulf was in an excerpt that showed up in one of my English textbooks in Junior High. It was a re-written and dumbed-down account of the battle between Beowulf and Grendel, that started about the point where Grendel entered the hall to eat the people he found there, and ended just after Beowulf pulled off Grendel's arm, and Grendel fled away to die. Sad to say, there really wasn't anything compelling in this rendition, other than the draw that blood and guts has for your typical Junior-High-School boy, to make us more interested in the story or its literary background. I mean, we'd already learned a lot about Greek myths and legends, and a little about the Norse; but Beowulf? Where did that fit in? It had no context. I knew nothing about the work, or the culture it came from, or who wrote it. It was just a weird story.

Fast forward to the mid-nineties, when I was out of college and commuting to work every day by train, forty-five minutes each way. I decided that my knowledge of Western Civ needed a little beefing up, so I started working my way through various classical works. I figured that I needed to read Beowulf and find out what all the fuss was about. After all, even though I'd had no context for my earlier reading, even then I could tell that the story was considered a classic of the English Language (though I'd had no way of understanding why, at that point). So I picked up a copy of this edition.

It's a good edition. The core of the book is of course the epic poem itself; but it's presented with the Old English text on the left page, and a poetic translation on the right page, so one can compare. The preface contains a textual synopsis and criticism, explaining what modern scholars believe the themes are that play out in the poem; there's also a "Guide to Reading Aloud" for those who wish to attempt to tackle the Old English. After the poem, the book contains a section describing the historical and cultural context in which the poem was written, followed by a running commentary on the entire poem, and a brief glossary of Old English terms.

I fell in love with the poem.

I can't explain it, but it was while I reading and studying Beowulf, from this volume, that I gained an entirely new appreciation for Epic Poetry.

I found myself fascinated by Anglo-Saxon culture: what was a thane? How did bonds of loyalty and obligation work? How did kings in the Anglo-Saxon world maintain their authority?

I found myself fascinated by the theological background of the poem, which took place in a time when Christianity was still very new in the land, and the theology was still strongly influenced by the older pagan sources. I think about the view expressed in the book of God being stern, but benevolent; but the pagans in the poem, though depicted as very noble, lived in a harsh, unforgiving world, and were obviously pitied by the author for their unfortunate, hopeless state. And I'm intrigued by the concept of the "Curse of Cain", who (in the poem) is described as the progenitor of all the monsters, the demons, the wicked things that torment Man--including Grendel himself.

I found myself fascinated by the Old English Language itself:

Hwæt!

We Gar-Dena in gear-dagum
þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!

Part of this, of course, comes from the idea that this language--seemingly so alien to our own--is, in fact, really early English. This was before the Norman Invasion, so we hadn't had the influx of French words and grammar into our language yet. So Old English actually resembles the Old Saxon dialect of German. But still, if one looks closely enough, one sees words that are destined to become Modern English: cwen will eventually become queen, ða will eventually become the; the German König becomes the Old English cyninc (which is pronounced almost the same), which eventually becomes king.

And, of course, there all all those funny little letters that we don't have anymore, but should: þ (thorn) and ð (eth), both of which are eventually supplanted in Modern English by the th digraph. Learning to read these things, makes one feel like one is reading ancient runes. Hey, look at me! I'm a lore-master! ;-)

And then there's the story itself, which (now that we've been fortified with knowledge of the world in which the poem was written) is a ripping good yarn. Not only that, but it contains occasional insights on the human condition which are really quite profound. Here's one that caught my attention when I read the book. After Beowulf has dispatched both Grendel and his Mother, and has returned from the land of the Danes to his own king, he gives an account of the Danes. It seems the Danes have attempted to secure peace, through the use of an alliance through marriage. Beowulf comments that he doesn't think this arrangement will work out, and he gives this little bit of reasoning:

The Scylding king has brought this about,
the guard of his kingdom, accepts the opinion
that with the young woman he'll settle his share
of the killings and feud. But seldom anywhere,
after a slaying, will the death-spear rest,
even for a while, though the bride be good.
The lord of the Heathobards may well be displeased,
and each of his thanes, his nation's retainers,
when the Danish attendant walks in their hall
beside his lady, is honorably received.
On Danish belts swing shining heirlooms,
sharp as of old, the Heathobards' ring-treasures
for as long as they could wield those weapons,
till they finally led into that shield-play
their beloved companions and their own lives.
Then at the beer-feast an old fighter speaks,
who sees that ring-hilt, remembers it all,
the spear-death of men--has a fierce heart--
begins in cold sorrow to search out a youngster
in the depths of his heart, to test his resolve,
strike blade-spark in kin, and he says these words:
'Can you, my comrade, now recognize the sword
which your father bore in the final battle,
under grim war-mask for the last time,
that precious iron, when the Danes killed him,
controlled the field, when Withergyld fell
in our heroes' crash at Scylding hands?
Now some son or other of your father's killers
walks in this hall, here, in his pride;
exults in his finery, boasts of his slayings,
carries that treasure that is rightfully yours.'
He continually whets the young man's mind
with cruel words, until a day comes
when the lady's retainer, for his father's killings,
sleeps bloody-bearded, hacked by a sword,
his life forfeited. The slayer will escape,
get away with his life, he knows the country.
Then, on both sides, broken like swords
the nobles' oath-swearing, once deadly hate
wells up in Ingeld; in that hot passion
his love for the peace-weaver, his wife, will cool.
So I count it little, the Heathobards' loyalty,
friendship so firm, peace-sharing with the Danes,
think it less than the truth.

...and when I read this, I thought: some Anglo-Saxon writer, probably over a thousand years ago, has managed to diagnose the central issue of the entire problem in the Middle East today.

...

So what of the latest movie?

A word of warning: while I have not seen the movie, I have read everything I can about it online, and so I need to deliver a...

SPOILER WARNING

Go no further if you want to see the movie, before a semi-coherent bloviator blows the plot for you.

Well, I was intrigued when I heard how Zemeckis was planning on filming the thing. He figured that the art of computer animation is advanced enough, that the entire film can be done in motion capture. This is an intriguing idea; it means that you don't need sets, you don't need makeup, you don't need lights, you don't film while filming; all you need to do is capture the sound of the characters' voices and some realistic-looking motions, and then set the animators to work on it. Basically, every character is animated the same way that Gollum/Smeagol was in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

And this method of film making has several potential advantages over traditional filming. For instance, they were able to age the character of Beowulf 50 years between the second and third acts of the movie, and have it look more realistic than if it was a standard make-up aging. This sort of thing saves a whole lot of time; you can get a whole lot more filming done in any given day if you're just doing motion capture, and not having to have your main character sit in the make-up chair for six hours a day.

Of course, this opens up other possibilities, as well. For one thing, you can take a screen vixen, such as Angelina Jolie--who was three months pregnant at the time of "filming"--and give her a nude scene without her even realizing it.

What!? I don't remember that in the epic poem. Maybe I need to go read the thing again....

No, seriously. This is where the thing starts to go off the rails, actually. In this new telling of Beowulf, they do a fair amount of reading between the lines. After all, there isn't any sex in the original poem, but our society is obsessed with sex, so no sword-and-sorcery flick can be considered complete without it. Basically, the producers decided to make a couple of leaps with the original story:

• Both Grendel and his mother are depicted as being of the monstrous race of Cain--but nothing is ever said about Grendel's father. Who would mate with such a hag to produce this spawn? Well....
• The text is apparently unclear about whether Grendel's mother was actually a hag. The term aglæc-wif has traditionally been rendered "monster-woman"; but the aglæc- prefix in other contexts simply means "hero" or "warrior", and is apparently used to refer to Beowulf himself on occasion. So it's not completely out of the range of possibility that Grendel's mother was not an ugly hag. So, let's go with the idea that she's a beautiful, seductive, she-devil-type creature....
• Who is obviously trying to mate with Men of Mighty Stature, such as... let's see... How about King Hrothgar? Yes, that'll work. So she's mated with Hrothgar, and so Grendel is actually Hrothgar's son.
• Now, when Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel, the mum needs another man with whom to produce another offspring. Any other eligible Men of Mighty Stature around that would fit the bill? Hmmm...
• Yup, you guessed it. That's why she drags Wulfie down to her cave under the swamp.
• Now, the poem says that Beowulf cuts off her head. But how do we know that for sure? After all, the only two people in that cave were Beowulf and the mum. So anything that happened in that cave, we only have Beowulf's word to go on. What if he lied about it? After all, people lie about sex all the time....
• ...which ultimately gives us the origin of the Dragon that shows up fifty years later, at the end of the poem. Yup, it's another of mum's offspring, sired by our favorite Man of Mighty Stature.

So anyway, Angelina Jolie apparently didn't realize that she was going to look like that until she saw herself vamping around onscreen at the premier. She described herself as feeling rather, um... exposed, and felt the need to call home to her family about it.

Sigh...

So, how's the movie doing? Apparently it was #1 at the box office last weekend, so it's not doing too badly. The reviews are mixed about it--some good, some bad. I read this review by someone else who loves the poem, and it pretty well realized my fears about the movie. Though to be fair, by all accounts it's better than those first two stinkers I linked to above.

I'm still curious to see it, though. However, as a parent of three kids ages five and under, I don't get to go out to the movies much--especially not the kinds of movies where giant ogres get their limbs pulled off. I think Tonya and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of movies we've seen since the Pillowfight Fairy came along five years ago. If I expressed a desire to see this one, I would have to explain to my wife exactly what reason I could possibly have for wanting to seeing a naked, demonic Angelina Jolie.

I mean, what good reason I could possibly have....