The Wily Filipino

Izzy This Weekend.

We try something for the first time on our semiregular walk to the PollyEggettes Experience at 39th and Noriega: Izzy decides to take her Disney Princess portable CD player and her headphones, which she hasn't really used, and loads it up with Puffy's "Jet" CD, and places it in her pink Hello Kitty shoulder bag.

Izzy: "This is a better way of walking!"

I tell her that it seems kind of unfair, since she won't be able to hear Daddy talk to her. (I set the volume very low, however.)

Me: And I can't play "I Spy" with you anymore.

Izzy: You can play "I Spy" with yourself!

But we played I Spy anyway. And every now and then she'd sing a fragment, so I'd know which song she was listening to.

Got a little Hamtaro finger puppet for her at Eggettes, then to Polly Ann's: a dish of strawberry ice cream for Izzy (she's a total purist when it comes to ice cream), and a cone of Peppermint Fluff (peppermint and marshmallow chunks) for me.

Afterwards:

Me: That totally hit the spot!
Izzy [looks around]: What spot?

And in case you were wondering how she managed to walk the total of 20 blocks back and forth to PollyEggettes, here's how:

Lately she has been preparing some elaborate stage show with her toys. The stuffed animals will be arranged, quite deliberately, on the bed, with "sheet music," i.e., propped-open books on either side, and will generally involve something related to Halcali or Puffy (keep in mind that neither one of us can understand Japanese).

The stage show doesn't always begin on time -- I'm usually kicked out of the bedroom because they're still rehearsing. ("Daaad! We still need to practice!") Now she's starting to charge money as well: $45 for what was clearly only a dress rehearsal! (It went up $10 from the previous show, probably after Ticketmaster started charging extra, and I'm running out of little colored paper slips to give her.)

The coolest part is the utter unpredictability (and inventiveness) of the shows. The other week Ami and Yumi, these two stuffed cats, performed "Kore ga watashi no ikiru michi." (Act 2 involved a Carebear and a necklace, but can't remember now what it involved.) Keroppi and
Pooh joined them on stage, while Izzy played guitar and drums simultaneously, and launched into this completely extemporaneous 5-minute song about a "panda clam" with the chorus "Everybody sunshine room." Then she segued into "a sad song" titled "The Sun Won't Come Out."

Then she announced that she was going to see a song entitled "Somebody Stole My Birthday," which went like this:

Somebody stole my birthday
Somebody stole my birthday
Somebody stole my birthday
Somebody round and round

At this point I started getting concerned, fretting that the song was reflecting deeper psychological unease, especially since she just turned four a month ago:

Me: Oh, Izzy! Sweetheart, nobody's going to steal your birthday! You know you'll always have your birthday!

Izzy: Daaad! It's a song! Not my birthday!

My favorite title is still "An Alligator Ate Me," which sounded a lot like Roky Erickson's "I Walked With A Zombie:"

An alligator ate me
An alligator ate me
An alligator ate me
An alligator ate me

And then she concluded with a song entitled "Via Va," which she explained was "in Japanese:"

I have been fast folks
There's nowhere to be done

Posted by the wily filipino at September 6, 2005 06:52 AM