Author Archives: Tim Elhajj

Aug 30 2009
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family

Did You Make It?

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I got a little reminder about why I write nonfiction today at Aaron’s football jamboree. 

This is his first year out for football, so I was interested in getting to know the rest of the parents. I was standing on the sidelines watching the drills. One of the boys on the team hollered to the man standing next to me about what he had brought for the team’s snack. The man hollered back about having picked up a twelve pack of something from the local warehouse store and his boy beamed. I was so amused by this exchange: the importance of the snack, the boy’s earnest query, Dad’s dutiful reply. I stopped taking photographs and grinned at the man.

I pointed out my son, and we struck up a conversation.

When I asked him what grade and school his son attended, he told me the boy had recently switched to a new school and was doing poorly. I told him I had had the same experience myself, switching to a new school.

The man surprised me by asking, “Did you make it?”

By this I understood him to mean, did you make it to graduation, are you a high school graduate, which I am not. I am embarrassed to say that I came this >< close to lying to the man. I felt a huge wave of shame roll over me–me, Mr. Memoir, a guy who has written about being a divorcee, an absentee father, shooting IV drugs, and even being homeless. There is just something intimidating about being asked something like this point blank in a conversation. I really wasn’t sure what to say. I started to bluster, but then I finally just smiled and said, “Nah–not really.”

This man grinned and said, “Me either.”

We had a good chuckle. I didn’t get his name, but I connected with this man in a way I would not have had I tried to save face by going on about my time in college, the military, or even getting my GED.

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Aug 20 2009
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family

Game Face

8-16-2009 141, originally uploaded by tim_elhajj.

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Aug 20 2009
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family

Butterfly


8-16-2009 158, originally uploaded by tim_elhajj.

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Aug 19 2009
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movies

District 9

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I almost split in the first 20 minutes or so because the main character was just so incredibly annoying. I am glad I stayed.

Wikus (Sharlto Copley) is a petty, brutal bureaucrat, who is in over his head. The movie uses a fake documentary style to let us know that something has happened to him, but we don’t know what. It could be anything, considering the state of the world: For 20 years, aliens have been stranded on earth and forced to live like savages in a hastily constructed camp outside of Johannesburg.

You can’t see a ghetto outside Johannesburg or shots of signage restricting alien access to retail establishments without making some uncomfortable political associations, but the movie is surprisingly light handed here. No cheap moralizing or preaching.

Instead of allegory, this movie offers a character study. And what a character: Wikus is so unlikeable, it’s almost a pleasure to watch him squirm as the story unfolds. I felt my allegiance toward him change as he refuses to give up, despite how hopeless his situation becomes. The second half of the movie is a full on action flick, but it pleases me to no end that Wikus never really learns how to fight effectively. He fires his ray gun over his shoulder with his eyes screwed shut. At the end, he falls to his knees at the feet of a merciless warrior who has been a thorn in Wikus’ side from the start. He is the consummate weakling everyman, blundering forward hoping for a bit of good luck.

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Aug 08 2009
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food

Garlic Dip

tahini

This is my little sister Tina’s recipe.

It’s an especially delicious Arabic treat and goes good with the chicken skewers and tabbouleh salad.

Watch out! Tahini is very calorific (but it’s just a dip so it can’t hurt you).

Thank you Tina!

Ingredients:

  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 cup of tahini sauce (You can get this in the organic section of grocery store.)
  • Appx 1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice
  • Water (to taste)
  • (optional) 1/2 cup finely chopped parsley

Steps:

  1. Crush the garlic and salt together to a paste. 
  2. Mix in the tahini and beat in the lemon juice.  Gradually mix in enough water to make the mixture the
    consistency of very thick cream or mayonnaise. 
  3. Add parsley and adjust salt and lemon to taste.
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Aug 05 2009
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books

Rick Bragg’s, The Prince of Frogtown

frogtown

I am a sucker for a good father story.

By that I mean an enjoyable story about the experience of fatherhood, whether its told from the point of view of the fathered or the father. Certainly I don’t mean the father has to be good. Terrible fathers are some of the most compelling portraits of fatherhood in literature today, from hopeless alcoholics (Angela’s Ashes) to clinging despots (This Boy’s Life). The Prince of Frogtown is about Rick Bragg’s father, Charles Bragg, a no good father for sure.

Right off the bat, Bragg tells us he has written about his father in two earlier memoirs (neither of which I have read). If he is candid about having previously dismissed his father as a drunken lout, his reasons for revisiting him in the current work are less clear. We learn that a 10 year-old stepson has come into the author’s life and he wants… what? Reconciliation? Redemption? To his credit, Bragg never absolves his father, but he does paint a complicated picture of the circumstances that contributed to his downfall.

What drives this story is Bragg’s relationship with his stepson. What a pleasure to watch it unfold: The demanding, macho Bragg tries hard to relate to a boy of the 90s, who isn’t as invested in the same boyhood ethos that Bragg has long held in such high esteem. Bragg inserts these short vignettes about himself and the boy between the longer chapters that document his own father’s circumstances. Those longer chapters suffer somewhat from coming to us second hand and from so long ago (the older Bragg died young in the 70s, the author hardly knew him).

Despite making up the bulk of the book, those longer chapters work best as context for the relationship between author and stepson. And the beauty of that relationship is how man and child move slowly toward one another: the boy picking up some of those old school boyhood values to impress the adult, who in turn ends up having to discard his reverence for some of those very same values to accept the boy.

A little bit of give, a little bit of take: That’s mostly what fatherhood is all about.

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Jul 26 2009
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movies

Taken

taken

Taken is a revenge flick about an ex-CIA spook who has to rescue his daughter from the clutches of an Albanian prostitution ring. Critics have compared it to an episode of 24, which is an apt description: there are plenty of innocents mowed down in the interest of expedient justice and there is a time limit (96 hours) driving the plot.

The problem with this type movie is that it’s hard to justify a Jack Bauer type character this far from 9/11 and this close to Abu Ghraib. Maybe it’s just the first time I’ve noticed this sort of thing, but this movie seems to go further than any other I’ve seen to put the viewer at ease with its politics. It’s like how in first person shooter video games the bad guys are always the types of characters it’s okay to kill: zombies, Nazis, or aliens. In Taken, we have Albanian mafia guys and innocent French nationals. Our hero just shot an innocent woman in the arm, but it’s okay because she’s French and (as Liam Neeson says, defending himself to the husband of the woman he just shot), “It’s just a flesh wound!” I can kind of understand Albanian mafia, but it’s harder to wrap my head around innocent French nationals, unless it’s more fallout from the French resistance to US invasion of Iraq (freedom fries, anyone?).

They play up the angle of the father trying atone for a lifetime of absenteeism. Toward the end of the picture, Liam has been coming on like a steamroller, and the bad guy asks, “Who is this guy?” For an answer, the boss hears, “It’s the girl’s father,” which is true enough, but considering what the “girl’s father” has just done to the lair, it’s like the understatement of the century.

Hard for me not to like this movie, but it was definitely a guilty pleasure.

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Jul 18 2009
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movies

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

harry-potter-and-the-half-blood-prince4

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince runs a little long, but I love the franchise and think this is a fine addition to the series (although my favorite is still Prisoner of Azkaban).

I’m not going to belabor a synopsis of the plot, except to say that if you haven’t seen any of the other films, you’ll be totally confused by this one. There is very little backstory and everything about the ending points to the final episode.

I loved it.

I can’t remember another franchise that spans the childhood of so many of its main actors. I noticed how much more accomplished Rupert Gint (above) was in this one. His comedy relief has often left me cold, but he really nailed the love potion scene. I couldn’t stop giggling as he pined for the moon. Oddly I haven’t felt the same way about Dan Radcliffe and Emma Watson. It’s not so much this movie, but more how their appearance has changed over the last few years. They both looked exactly as I imagined their characters would in 2001, but now they look a little too perfect: Dan and his rugged jaw, Emma’s lovely hair. At one, point Dumbldore even says something to Harry like “hard to imagine you’re the same little boy from under the stairs.” Indeed. I loved the gravity of Emma’s precocious ten-year-old Hermionie, but now her seriousness seems really forced. There was a single scene where they seemed to act their age (she swats Harry for trying to take advantage of his reputation to get a date) instead of all the grim looks and gassy expressions. But these are all quibbles. I’m mostly pleased the characters have been played by the same team over the years. Watching them grow into and change with their roles has the potential to add something to the film experience not available in the books. There is one scene in Half-Blood Prince where Harry and Ron stand in the hall at school, towering over all their peers, with such looks of utter contentment and pride. There is nothing like that in the books.

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Jul 17 2009
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family

My Girls of Summer

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Holly, Kennedy, and a big floppy hat.

I think this photo is from the kid’s elementary school graduation celebration, which didn’t happen until late June because of the teacher’s strike.

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Jul 16 2009
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family

Chicken in the Middle

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Aaron and Dad playing football in the backyard–the defensive line is a bunch of chickens. (Yuk, yuk!)

Chickens can be amusing, but this positive attribute is largely offset by the fact that they are disgusting, smelly, nasty creatures. Mine haven’t started to lay eggs yet, so my feelings may change, but I doubt it. I’m not that big on eggs.

Our neighbors, who have chickens, too (What is this?), suggested that when we feed the chickens table scraps, we say something like, “Here chick, chick, chick! Here chick, chick, chick!” This trains the birds to respond to your voice. The problem is that now, whenever we say “Here chick, chick, chick!,” our dog comes racing out back for the table scraps. 

Pace is our biggest chicken.

If you don’t give him some of the scraps, he looks at you with the saddest eyes. Nothing for me? Again?

The chickens like to sleep in the alcove over the nesting box, instead of going inside the nesting box (where it is safer) to spend the night. This means I have to pick them up and put them in the nesting box at night.

There is no good way to grab a chicken.

Chickens don’t have a scruff, like cats or dogs. If you grab one of the legs, they squawk and flap their wings. I find it best to just bat them off the top ledge and then scold them.

Soon I am going to do a post on chicken coop construction.

I bought the plans from one Dennis J Harrison-Noonan, who I have yet to pay (sorry Dennis!) and for whom I have promised to do a review of my experience  using the plans. I’ve added a few improvements (hopefully) to the design, and it turned out better than I expected.

Stay tuned.

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