End of July Notes

I saw some Olympic diving out of the corner of my eye last night and wandered over to the TV for a look. Svelte lads in ridiculously tiny suits -- wait, there are two of them jumping at the same time. Since when has that been an Olympic event? Shows you what I know: since 2000.

Somehow or other, I'd never seen synchronized diving before. Actually, I know how that happened. I didn't watch much of either 2000 or '04 Games and simply missed the contests in '08, when my viewing was less-than-fanatical.

A credit card offer came in the mail today. Nothing unusual about that -- based on the continuous stream of offers, you'd think there had been no painful recession recently. It was a Disney-themed card issued by a too-big-to-fail bank. But not just any Disney theme: a mockup of the card attached to the letter features the Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey in full-magic mode. On the back of the card is Mickey and a couple of the broomstick servants he created.

I thought about that. He's one of the iconic Mickeys, of course. But he's also the one who inadvertently creates a catastrophe instead of the useful servant he imagined he was getting. It started small, but got out of hand. You know, something like a credit card can.

The toys of the moment for Ann are her Monster High dolls. They're Mattel creations, released only a couple of years ago now, and the conceit is that they're teen offspring of famed public domain monsters -- Frankenstein's, Dracula, the Werewolf, the Mummy, et al. Lately Ann has been creating derivative characters on paper based on monsters not mentioned in the series featuring the dolls. Sometimes she asks me for input.

So far, we've come up with the children of the Bogeyman, the Devil, Godzilla, the Loch Ness Monster, a Bug-Eyed Martian, a Roc, the "Seaweed Monster" and -- my favorite -- the daughter of Them. As in monster ants, the kind featured in Them. That was her idea.

She's also been taking pictures of her Monster High dolls.

In black & white, for some reason.