Cliff Notes to my Holiday Break 2002

I wanted to post during holiday break 2002 but nothing cuts into family time. I was reminded of the primacy of family while rewatching Godfather's I and II on DVD with Mike in the first few days of 2003. Mike was a lucky first-time viewer. So I'll just be lazy and throw together a bullet-point list of crib notes culled from my increasingly suspect memory. This is more for my benefit than for you readers because someday I'll wonder what happened on holiday break 2002.

It was actually one of the happiest holiday breaks I've ever had because it was long and because I got to see almost everyone in the family (I'm counting Jeff here, who I saw doing his Superman-flying impression streamed over a videocam on the web).

Before we start, here's an cast of characters:

• Me: the hero and protagonist
• Joannie: my younger sister, the middle child.
• Mike: Joannie's husband, my brother-in-law.
• Karen: my youngest sister, the baby of the family.
• Alan: my older stepbrother and good friend ever since I met him at the end of freshman year at Stanford.
• James: Alan's younger brother, and my younger stepbrother
• Sharon: Alan's wife, my friend since we were in the same dorm our freshman year at Stanford, and now my step-sister-in-law. Sharon's pregnant and due any day now.
• Angela: James' girlfriend of several years.
• Jeff: Sharon's younger brother who had to stay in NYC for Xmas. The really good-looking one who models.

By the way, this will read a ton better if you put the Bee Gees How Deep Is Your Love on in the background as you read and picture scenes from my break played out in slow motion. James e-mailed me an MP3 of this song just after break, and though I have no idea why he did so, it is an appropriate soundtrack. Why someone hasn't taken all the Bee Gees songs and turned them into a musical as they did with Abba's music in Mamma Mia remains a mystery and also my top investment suggestion for 2003. Maurice Gibb, wherever you are, this one goes out to you. Okay, here goes...I know your eyes in the morning sun...

• Movies I saw in theaters or on DVD during break include:
  Les Enfants du Paradis (haven't finished this yet) Adaptation ***
  The Two Towers ***1/2
  The Gangs of New York ***
  Spellbound ***
  Broadcast News ****
  Safe ***
  Some Like It Hot ****
  Catch Me If You Can ***
  Notting Hill ***
  Enigma ***
  Godfather I ****
  Godfather II ****
  It didn't feel like I watched a lot of movies, but spread these across the number of days I was on vacation and it comes out to about one movie for every bathroom break. The list of movies I still wanted to see in theaters at the end of break was about as long as this one.
• Speaking of movies, two of James gifts from everyone were the DVDs of Notting Hill and Vanilla Sky (Pretty Woman was the backup). Angela outted James on his love of romantic comedies, specifically these (okay, so Vanilla Sky isn't exactly a romantic comedy, but it's not a testosteroni either). James' expression of simultaneous guilt and feigned indifference when opening the gifts was awesome. Well, don't take my word for it--watch yourself (Quicktime Movie).
• James is our family's version of Will Ferrell. Just when you think he's going to be serious...he's taking the humor to another level. This is a compliment, by the way. You'd know that if you realized that for an hour in St. Louis we all crowded around James' laptop, watching downloaded video clips of Will Ferrell skits from SNL, laughing our heads off. That was a good use of free time.
• I danced the polka with a stout Polish gal on New Year’s Eve, when I played the role of designated drunk. Only I wasn't drunk, Joannie, and I don't care what you say.
• Having stepbrothers to give me a new view on my sisters has helped me to realize that the two of them are hilarious and goofy. Joannie's favorite schtick was to act out her favorite commercial, some U.S. Cellular ad in which a poor bloke with few cell phone minutes dials friends and family and blurts "Happy holidays from the Harrisons!" before quickly hanging up and looking at his watch. I regret not having taped it for everyone's public consumption here, because it's actually quite funny with Joannie's exagerrated facial expressions.
• Everyone got a good laugh from Joannie and Karen's shouts of "Euge!" everytime I did something to embarrass or exasperate them. It's their equivalent of rolling their eyes and happened about once every 15 minutes over break. Kudos to James for observing and documenting this particular verbal tic.
• When all else failed, good times were had by all by laughing about (1) all the guys who chase after Karen and (2) how good looking brother Jeff is. My default assumption now is that every guy friend Karen has ever had has a crush on her. Joannie believes it's because Karen is pretty laid back, while I think her non-chalance at all the male attention is a very good thing. Men are evil, Karen. I don't think we've ever had Jeff around when we talk about how good looking he is, and that should happen. Maybe next Xmas. In the meanwhile, we have pictures of all his ad work lying around to fawn over.
• I have memorized The Two Towers. Seeing it 3 times in the span of 6 days will do that to you. At one point I was like the Phil Harvey character from SNL who can't stop acting out his characters and just be himself when his mother comes to visit the set. All I could do was quote lines from the movie. It's a sign of the movie's greatness that there's a line from that movie for every situation. The best one is "What do you know about it Sam? Nothing!" I used that one about 34 times.
• After watching Catch Me If You Can in St. Louis, Mike did this strange little sprint out of the theater and shouted "Catch me if you can!" We all laughed at the sheer absurdity of it. As you can tell, there are lots of moments here which qualify as "you had to be there."
• While playing Texas Hold'Em one night in St. Louis, suddenly we started making puns out of everyone's names. Most last names were a cinch. Help me out James: what were our terrible puns? Wei is an easy one, as are Ho and Yoo. Hsiao's not too hard. Cziernawski is the one exception, though at least we all learned to pronounce it properly over break. Sherman, Eugene, Sharon--it all played like some completely ingenious improv routine gone bad.
• One morning James and I didn't use stuff in our hair after showering and we both looked like Q-Tips.
• Ted Drewes custard. It's something of an institution in St. Louis. Didn't matter that it was about 20 degrees out in the dead of winter. There was a huge line of folks standing outside awaiting ice-cold frozen custard. I'm not even sure what custard is, but it's tasty to all except Alan who needs to get out of St. Louis more than any man I know.
• James other two gifts were Splinter Cell and NBA Live 2003, both videogames for the XBox which we busted out when we got to St. Louis. The boys shared many hours of good fun when the girls let us play.
• Another moment I wish I had taped was Alan pumping up the air mattress. It looked like his arm was having a seizure. Comfy air mattress, though.
• Listening to Mike and Joannie's humorous dating stories.
  Good: Mike walking into class and inadvertently turning off the lights, then turning then back on and announcing, with a flourish, "I'm here."
  Better: Mike and Joannie flirting, and Joannie says, "Stop playing with my hair" or something like that even though Mike's on another couch.
  Best: Joannie's friend Keila is supposed to rush over after class to get a peek at Mike at the bike racks where Joannie and Mike always flirt after class. Keila shows up late and Mike has already taken off on his bike. Joannie gestures frantically and Keila gets a look at Mike just as he rides by, her head turning in slow motion. Keila and Joannie celebrate by dancing up and down like lunatics.
• Sharon's huge belly. We all took turns rubbing or touching Sharon's belly, hoping for a kick or stretch from the as-yet-to-be-named baby boy. All worship the belly.
• A naked man lies in the desert next to a broken straw.
• At the St. Louis Zoo, we see a male macaque monkey, umm, pleasuring himself. Another reason why the monkey cage is the best part of every zoo.
• A heated boys versus girls game of Cranium which we pick up over the holidays. On our first pass at the game, both sides get every question right. Hmm, is the game just too easy? A second go at it proves that there are some tricky questions after all. By the way, the boys kick butt both times, nailing such tricky questions as acting out Zsa Zsa Gabor in charades and creating DNA with play-dough. James also mangles the James' Bond theme song, but despite his incoherent humming we figured it out.
• After Eugene pulls out a tight victory against a master-ranked player in online Scrabble, James hops on the keyboard and types some trash talk: "How's that for good game?" Eugene learns that oe and suq are acceptable words in Scrabble.
• One night, driving back from Krispy Kreme, James, Angela, and I heard a Ja Rule song on the radio. It was some duet with one of those young ladies, Ashanti or Beyonce or someone like that. James pointed out that Ja Rule has a ridiculously bad voice. He sounds like some raspy old dude who's smoked about eight thousand packs of cigarettes. I don't listen to much hip-hop since they don't really play it much here in Seattle, but just an hour of listening to B96 in Chicago is enough to realize that it's true, Ja Rule does indeed have a terrible voice.
• Dork has won out as the term of endearment most used by my sisters and me to address each other. It's also a legitimate word for use in Scrabble. Concerned over rumors that the definition of the word was a horse penis, I looked it up and was relieved to find that it simply means a silly person.
• For eleven and a half months out of the year, I don't think about magic tricks, and then I run into James and suddenly we're all practicing and performing magic tricks. We spent a few hours on Penguin Magic and in the end invested in learning Blizzard, the Pen Through the Dollar, and amazing self-healing coke can tricks. James is trying to master the Ambitious Card Routine; I think that may be beyond me.
• On the way back from St. Louis, I got a speeding ticket for doing 89 in a 65. The cop asked me to head back and join him in his vehicle. I was tempted to drop Blizzard on him to see if I could dazzle him out of my ticket, but he was nothin' but stern and taciturn. In my disgust, I imagined him to be a simple country bumpkin, bored silly for living in the middle of nowhere in southern Illinois, in the midst of a life crisis after realizing that his uniform really conveys very little importance to his dull and meaningless existence, secretly in love with the town belle, a wild flirt who ignores him and runs instead with the crazy former high school football captain who cruises around in an old Chevy convertible. This all made me feel better until just recently, when I had to write a check out to Montgomery County Courthouse.
• You'd think the story of how Sharon inadvertently left Alan sitting out on the curb while they were dating in college would get old, but it really doesn't. Picture Alan, glorious in all his rage, looking up in disbelief as Sharon's red Toyota cruises away. I do, and then I have to laugh at the depth of human misunderstanding.
• Alan explained why Colin's hiccup cure works. For those who missed that entry, Colin's hiccup cure involves covering your ears, pinching your nose, and swallowing (it usually requires some assistance). The cure works because you swallow an air bubble. As for why we get hiccups, that's still an unsolved medical mystery whose solution will win no one a Nobel Prize.
• Karen bought this new jacket from Urban Outfitters (through Amazon's apparel store) for the holidays. Pretty cool, and she wears it well.
• At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Mike and I saw Chris Burden’s The Other Vietnam Memorial. It was a response to Maya Lin's more famous memorial. Burden's version consists of a couple copper tablets containing the name of 3 million Vietnamese names, randomly generated by a computer program using first names and surnames from 4 Vietnamese phone books. They represent the 3 million forgotten Vietnamese killed in the Vietnam war.
• Another piece I enjoyed there was a picture of a postcard blown up to billboard size. It was supposed to represent the limitations of memory, because the actual scene, represented on a smaller scale in the postcard, has now been blown up to ludicrous proportion as a billboard, but since we're viewing just a picture of the whole thing we're several times removed from the actual scene.
• Need to make a movie about the people who go to contemporary art museums. Are they stern, bitter, impassive? All of the above?
• Why do people go to bars to date and meet others? It’s a terrible way to meet others, and innovations like speed and online dating will expose its flaws. This occurred to me as I viewed this exhibit at the museum which showed simultaneous videos of several different bars on one weekend night in England.
• At the airport, I watch on TNT on a TV at the gate as Michael Jordan receives a several minute standing ovation at Chicago’s United Center. Touching.
• In search of the board game Scene It, I visited 4 different Nordstroms and was transferred ten times in one call by various folks at the Old Orchard Nordstrom.
• Alan said that you can train yourself to be lactose tolerant again, confirming a story my dad told me about how in high school he was taught a regimen in which you gradually increase your intake of dairy every day for several months to nurse your digestive system into lactose tolerance.