Dim Sum Mum - Tess' Little Pieces

no laughtrack? that's sad

you arrested my development.

i rented it on a whim. i saw jason bateman's face and said, "you've got to be kidding." saw the words "dysfunctional family" and thought, "let me be the judge of that!" went home and haven't stopped laughing.

i hadn't been so addicted to a show since cold feet. 22 minutes about a family. michael batemen is the good boy and the newest ceo of the financially strapped family company. he rides a 10 speed. dad is in jail and the mother doesn't want to get him out. liza minelli guest stars. one brother is such a mother's boy, "he left finger scratches down the edge of the womb" and the other is a professional magician. michael, the bike rider, is the only responsible one, and his 14 year old boy, george michael no less, in love with his cousin. it's that sort of a show.

oh so dysfunctional and divine. this sit com is so clever that everyone finds something different to laugh at. while mc is laughing at magician GOB's curse at the mother, i am snorting at the way she salutes her empty glass. and i mean really, henry winkler as the family lawyer?

arrested development, a fantastic show. it isn't an "inside" show, you don't need to know a particular city, era, or party...you just have to have a family. interestingly, i laugh louder at this show that magnificent does, because the bluth's family of dysfunction is closer to the lyons style than the caldwell. this is not to say that papa frugal blake is in jail...but the insulting, and laughing, and sarcasm that pours out of AD could very well be picked off the floor of the lyons den. those bluth's go for the jugular, and are very funny in the process.

immediately i notice there is no laugh track. what a huge risk. no prompting the viewers to let them know they should be finding this funny. no bolstering their intellect ... "hey did you get this one", the laugh track takes up too much precious air time that the bluth family could be using to insult each other. time is precious to the bluth's, just as daddio, who, as of season one, is still in the clink. (and recently made a yarmulke out of the sole of his shoe...he is nothing if not enterprising). each episode ends with a teaser stating, "on the next arrested development"...and features scenes that never occur, but which wrap up episodes nicely and save so much time, allowing the bluths more opportunity to insult and let each other down in the subsequent episode.

wondering how this show could be kept so well under wraps, i do a google search on it. and learn it was cancelled. how could that be? critics seemed to love it. it won awards. it is better and more clever than most things on television. why did it get pulled?

i am certain the absent laugh track had a lot to do with it. viewers don't have the self confidence to watch a show that doesn't have a laugh track. with a show as cleverly written as arrested development they couldn't tell if it was supposed to be funny. with insults flying as acerbically (and under the breath and behind the back...just like with your own family), they aren't always clearly audible and timed perfectly for audience reaction.

i'm stunned. i am still on season one and i am mourning the bluth's already.

no laugh track, fewer laugh lines for tess. 

i want a new drug

for the past month or so i have been playing around with cocktails.

manhattans, cosmo's...how unutterably 2003. we're talking drug cocktails, anticonvulsant ones at that.

it really was time, and so i started one called lamactal. it seemed to work rather well, with the exception of the double vision. however, i justified the double vision with: it's not like a drive, and wtih four kids, seeing eight didn't seem like such a stretch.

the blinking red light with lamactal was a red rash on the neck and face. if it appeared, cautioned my neurologist, whom i know wants this to work, stop immediately. but if nothing happened after four weeks, chances were very good that nothing would.

i wrote about the early days of the drug, when all was pretty good, and after four weeks and c ontiually upping the medication while lowering the epilim, i was thinking i had found a long term cocktail and was pretty content. that next day, i noticed a rash on my lower chin. thought it was the new face cream and ignored it. it spread upwards. was itchy.

reluctantly i dialed the dr who said STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP.

so i did.

i am now on topamax, which sounds like a denture cream. it's been two weeks and today mc and i were flipping through the "WELCOME TO TOPOMAX" guidebook and evaluating the sideeffects.

i am extremely tired and have no energy. we thought that was the clinical sideeffect of children, but apparently in the anticonvulsant world, we call it asthenia. i definitely have that. and also, my fingers go numb at odd times, but if i lived through a caesarean section and feeling numb for a year around the incision site, what's an hour or so on my tingly finger? my concentration seems to be okay, and there seems to be no slurring of speech that either mcharles or i have noticed, which took us to mood swings.

well i guess we're okay there, i said and shut the book

what do you mean okay there? asked magnificent

well i don't seem to be suffering from those, i said, and then caught sight of his face, oh crap.

that's one of the things i dislike. everyone knowing but me. "have i?"

he shrugged and smiled and tried not to make me feel worse but of course did because in becoming even a better long suffering victim spouse i was the cruel mood swinging on a vine like tarzan on speed tess taking advantage and psychologically cowing my entire family.

"think over the past couple of weeks, tess, and you tell me" suggested mc, who lets his wife draw her own conclusions...less painful and confrontational that way.

i thought about the past 10 days or so, remembered certain incidents and my reactions. but still...it wasn't making sense.

"huh" i shrugged. "i thought that was just you guys."

it is a little ironic that unruly typhoons can be so meticulously tracked. i never have to worry about a typhoon springing up, i have my smart and up to date sister pam and knobody to tell me about meterological happenings soon to occur in hong kong.

but flash rain.

today was another grey day in hong kong. i woke up, opened one eyeball and nodded at the sky, and decided it was wet enough not to go for a walk. we all got ready and the youngest three and i headed out to ppa. it started to rain on the way there and did not stop. thank goodness the ppa is covered! we had just finished snack and were tidying away when the instructor came up to us and said, "it is rain storm red warning."

red storm rain warning means if you have kindergarten age children you must go pick them up immediately. i pushed goldfish into each child's clammy paws and we headed for the door, where de was waiting to drive us to the kindergarten. it was raining all right, but if it was raining like this in north america, you would just say, "wow that's a rain. yikes that's really coming down." what makes a rain "RED?" closes kindergartens?

the colour of the sky has a lot to do with it in my prediction. dusky isn't the right word, deep dark grey might be more accurate to describe the low skies and swirling wispy clouds that gathered around the trees.

hong kong is a hilly place. during a rainstorm, unless you are standing on the top of a mountain, if you are outside, you are likely to have water splashing against your ankles, arms and person in some way or another. you can be on a straight street, but the water runs down the hills and finds you. the roads were getting treacherous. street lights were on.

finally, finally we got to the kindergarten. de offered to get sebastian, and i said, "Forget it." i jumped out of the car and sprinted for the entrance to the kindy. of course i lost one of my flip flops in the process and had to run back and collect it.

i burst into the kindergarten and the principal was on the phone, which is unusual, but she smiled and said, "just go on up and collect sebastian." i went into the classroom where and sebastian saw me, interrupted reading time and ran over to me, mummy you are so wet.

i know kitten, and so will you be!

we walked downstairs and i explained to sebastian, "let's take off your shirt and socks and shoes. it is very wet and i don't want you shivering in a wet shirt. let's see if your knapsack can keep your shoes dry." we agreed that was a fun thing to do. i also said that i would go barefoot too, and stuffed my flip flops into his knapsack.

ready as we would get for the elements, i picked him up and walked outside.

the rain was really pelting down. but instead of dashing for the car, sebastian and i looked around. i pointed to water rushing down a set of concrete steps and how a car door/window was helping to turn the water 90 degrees so it could continue down the hill. we looked at overflowing drains and talked about how leaves and sticks and rubbish can stop drains from working well. i hope he remembers these sights.

ninety minutes later, dressed in his incredibles outfit, sebastian and adam were running around outside in the mist. there was no rain, and no visibility. they felt like superheroes and thankfully were dressed for the part.