Two Nikes

Took Rebekah to the hardware store the other day, looking for the right shelving brackets for her closet (HD had the standards, not the right size brackets. Arrrgh!) Walking down the aisle, she sees some of those basic nail-up angle brackets hanging from a peg, and asks, “What are those Nike things?” Had to admit, they did look kinda like the swoosh.

Last night, Hannah was describing something her grandfather had said “the night he babysat me” a few nights ago. But I misheard her and thought she had said, “The Nike babysat me,” which set me to wondering how the Winged Victory of Samothrace had gotten through the back door. Then I thought, there have been worse sitcoms. “An ancient statue comes to life — but she can only find work as a nanny for three precocious youngsters! Next on ‘The Nike Babysat Me!'” Then I realized it’s good that I’ve sworn to use my powers only for good, or I’d be phoning my agent and taking meetings right now.

It’s President’s Day, which means that we could sit around and contemplate Washington (who’s been all but forgotten in this) and Lincoln (who still somehow has his birthday as a separate semi-holiday in New York, but instead we honor them with cartoon caricatures hawking used automobiles, cheap mattresses and furniture sales. If the founding fathers had foreseen this, copyright would last forever. (Plus, they would have made a fortune on the stock market, throwing money into the carriage companies that would eventually crank out automobiles.) And on any normal day, the last place on earth I want to be is a furniture store. I have a very narrow range of taste when it comes to furniture, and I usually can’t find it. It’s pretty much Mission, Shaker, and very simple. And on a big sale weekend, the very last place I would want to be is The Big Store, as it is advertised locally, a massive furniture store that could sleep thousands comfortably in the event of an emergency (a light bulb just went off in my head — make a note for the next big disaster). But my girls have a very generous grandmother, who decided they needed bedroom sets. So we went, along with pretty much everyone else for 20 miles, wandering around aimlessly, looking at ugly furniture. And as we walked down an aisle, a book laid on a table for decorate effect caught my eye — it was a hardcover edition of Muriel Spark’s “The Only Problem,” my favorite Muriel Spark book ever. I couldn’t believe it was lying there in a furniture store, providing atmosphere. It was in great condition, too. After my mother had plunked down several million dollars for these bedroom sets (which will be lovely, I should add), she asked if we could take the book, too, but incredibly the salesman had to decline. Apparently sometimes the salespeople bring these things in themselves, and take them back later, and it could have belonged to someone else. Who knew?

Saw fragments of the terribly named “Ballistics: Ecks vs. Sever” the other night, and got what I expected — an action movie that makes blowing things up dull. Hell, it made Lucy Liu dull. Then last night we watched Robert Rodriguez’s “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” an insanely over the top shoot-’em-up which gets every single detail exactly right, and which first thought of the idea of combining a bandolero of knives with Salma Hayek’s right thigh, which to my mind is a brilliant idea.

Also good? “Freaky Friday.” The new one. I laughed insanely. I really didn’t expect to. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s Jamie Lee. The girl playing her daughter is Lindsay Lohan, whom I was unaware is also a singer. Hannah knew one of her songs from Radio Disney, a perfectly pleasant little piece of pop. But Hannah also made the connection between it being a Disney movie and the song getting played on Radio Disney. I said something about being glad she was aware her tastes were manipulated by corporate giants, and then said something about them not being giant enough to not be a takeover target, and Hannah said, “Yeah, by Comcast,” a piece of information I really didn’t expect her to have. Then she explained when she had heard it — she was watching the news on TV with her grandfather, “the nike babysat me.”