Ha! I loved the "Great Mouse Detective" as a kid. It's even got a bit of the best Sherlock Holmes ever to grace the silver screen, Basil Rathbone, in it.
Oh, and the kid sounds like I did when I was his age. Good luck with that.
Dammit, I NEED to find crumpets here in the states ... *yum* Now you have me hungry ...
Of course, crumpets around the commonwealth can have a totally different definition ... but we probably shouldn't be telling PK about that one just yet.
You guys held in there a long time but the kid won.
Crumpets, like artichokes, are just a good excuse to eat butter. Mmmmmmmm.........
You could just give him a muffin. Cruffins! Mumpets!
I personally prefer mine with butter and golden-syrup ... but the latter is another one of those silly commonwealth things (though have found it in Irish shops here thank ghu, as well as english bacon, real meat pies, sausage rolls, vegemite, english baked beans, hokey-pokey, etc, etc ... oooo, I'm hungry now)
And don't get me started on the abominations american's perpetrate on fish and chips ... okay, a chip is NOT a xerox-ed up french-fry, NO crispy outside, they are SUPPOSED to be thick and soggy ... and the fish? It's not supposed to be gourmet for crying out loud, a battered piece of "whatever was at the bottom on the net that morning" is like a buck, a buck!! I could get one scoop of chips and a piece of fish for like $2 and that would be dinner!
I think the problem is that you and Mr. B were talking about people crumpets, and PK wants to eat mouse crumpets. Did you google 'mouse crumpets'? See? Mice just have their own recipe.
On a slightly related muffin note, Pistola is obsessed with the book If You Give a Moose a Muffin and is demanding blackberry jam with her meals (the moose in said book wants blackberry jam to go with his muffin). Telling her we have no blackberry jam, much less homemade blackberry such as in the book, is getting us nowhere. Sigh.
So funny. I wonder if he'll remember this when he is older ... when I was little, my mom always wanted to get a Frasier Xmas tree, because you can "see the ornaments." But I INSISTED on a scrubby-ass Douglas Fir because they have the story-book perfect, dense, triangular look.
Now that I'm grown up, I like the Frasier. I mentioned this to my mom and she says, "You're crazy. That never happened. You're always dreaming up these things from you're childhood." INFURIATING! If I can remember my rationale for wanting something to be a certain way, so desperately, when I was little, why would I be dreaming it up? I think she must just be old. Ha.
PK is so fun to read about in the midst of the political elucidation I find here. Thanks.
uh, "YOUR childhood."
ADM, I tried the "mouse crumpets are maybe different from people crumpets" thing. No dice.
However! If you *do* google mouse crumpets, the first hit is, indeed, "The Great Mouse Detective." It's some kind of PG "animated lust" site, though....
My sympathies are with PK. It's really frustrating when you know exactly what you want and the adults pretend that the wrong thing is the right thing.
When I was a kid, I loved the french toast my mom made from old challah and so I would order it when we went out to eat for breakfast and this "thing" would show up made out of blah white bread and with POWDERED SUGAR on top. And no matter what I said, the stupid adults would just tell me that it was french toast and I should just go ahead and eat it. How dumb can you get?
For the love of God, woman, go out and buy the poor boy a box of "mini muffins" and tell him they are mouse crumpets. Sometimes you just have to know when to give in.
It's like eating a delicious sponge!
Hilarious!
Very nice. I remembering loving that movie when I was little. I also remember craving muffins at that time. Although I don't think I ever demanded mouse crumpets...
dear sarah in chicago,
oh ... you did you though. you mentioned them. fish and chips.
i lived in new zealand as a preschooler while my dad was down in the antarctic with the navy. and what i remember loving as my favorite food is "real" fish and chips ... which i've never had since ... because the u.s. version is ... unsavory, unpalatable, unbelievably ucky ... and unacceptable.
i'm haunted by this memory of a perfect food emerging from unfolded newspapers, an aroma of delicacies, and hot fish eaten around a small wooden table with bare fingers.
/e
Love this blog—every time you post about PK I can always be assured of a laugh. 
dear ehj2,
what in the heck kind of tables did you use in new zealand...tables with bare fingers? i think i will stay with the u.s. version...
diana christine
...i'd be haunted too...
maybe that's why I don't have kids of my own. My fake-em-out talents seem to be an 'auntie' thing.
ehj2 -
table? We don't need no stinken table! I'm talking down in front of the telli on the floor with the newspaper all folded out covered in grease, with the watties tomato sauce at one hand (our version of ketchup btw) and vinegar at the other (should you so chose).
Disney is evil. Disney lies.
Re-write history - check.
Promote racial sterotypes - check.
Fuck with little kid's crumpets - double-check.
I've been a dad exactly 1 week and people are already giving us Disney stuff. I don't know what I'm going to do.
Ron O - tried the no Disney thing. Give it up. Your relatives won't possibly understand. They're afraid their precious little niece/granddaughter/cousin will somehow "miss out" on something. I am surrounded with Disney princess stuff. I soldier on.
You can't get a $&*@# crumpet around here! Where in the U.S. can you? I fell in love with them while in Australia.
Also - what is it with Disney and killing of the parents? Is it just a prerequisite that all Disney movies must start by orphaning the protagonist (at least one, sometimes both parents) ? And how is this not terrifyingly scary to little kids?
Well, PK is certainly a boy who knows his own mind. Score one for genetics.
Re. the dead parent thing--that's ubiquitous to fairy tales, and I suspect it has something to do with the whole childhood id thing. It's a way for kids to imagine themselves as autonomous, free of the bossiness of parents. It doesn't seem to have harmed PK. I'm not a huge Disney fan, but I don't think it's quite the evil brainwashing that some people do. Then again, I don't have a girl (although PK *does* really like Cinderella--mostly b/c of the mice).
Re. crumpets, you should be able to get them at Trader Joe's. Not that we have a TJ's in Tinytown, but there is a little "Europeean grocery" place that has crumpets and a couple of other things.
[1] I am forever falling for that grammatical "trick." Yes, I wrote, "the wooden table with bare fingers" ... when I intended to write "the bear table with wooden fingers" ... (clearly a table made out of a bear, and the bear's fingers had worn off and needed to be replaced with wooden ones) ...
[2] I was five and we didn't eat on the floor. I think they were trying to teach me manners. This was a moderate success.
[3] The orphan motif is common in mythology and fairy tales. There is a part of the psyche of every child that knows "This isn't quite it; this isn't where I came from." And believes that "Somewhere else I'm the child of a King." There's a part of every person that feels "orphaned."
Many of the heros in mythology are missing a father, or they are orphans. Psychologically, the hero wins "increased consciousness" no matter what the "hero's tasks" seem to be about. The theft of fire from the Gods is the theft of awareness from the unconscious. The missing father in a fairy tale simply underscores the motif of reduced awareness ... that ... during the story ... and at the successful conclusion of the "tasks" will be restored or attained.
These motifs are the natural language of our unconscious and fill our dreams ...
For me a dream is a letter from the unconscious, and I open and read each one carefully.
[4] And I miss New Zealand.
[4] And I miss New Zealand.
Hon, I am completely with you on this one ... I haven't been home in over 4 years since I arrived here to start my phd ... hell, my baby sister is getting married in september and neither her nor me has the cash to fly me back, as much as we both SO want it (my parents wouldn't waste water on me if I were on fire).
It was so bad that earlier today I was reading Curve (lesbian magazine) and an advert for Subaru was in it (they know their target markets) and the photo was one of the MacKensie Country looking out across a storm-covered portion of the Southern Alps ... and got a wave of homesickness ... hell, I get homesick watching the new BMW 3 series adverts on the telli which are also filmed in the South Island (where I am from).
I wish I could go back, just for a bit, just to see my baby sister marry this awesome guy, my brother-in-law-to-be (she's marrying the total geek that adores her) ... but it's not to be.
LoL!
A muffin by any other name would taste as sweet ... er, that is to say, a crumpet by any other name ...
Oh, how did I miss this?
Congrats, Ron O!!!!
This is such a powerful example of the power of 1. visual media, 2. popular culture, and 3. commodity culture. Damn Disney to hell!
(And, horay for your good parenting -- explain, demonstrate, explain, and then accomodate!)
By "accomodate," you mean "give up."
Is it time for a blog button for "Sarah's ticket to sis's wedding"?
I'd contribute, except I leave for Europe in two weeks to live on about 1/3 of a shoestring ... so I feel her pain!!
PK is so adorable. And completely like my son. Insistant on being absolutely correct, even when he's totally wrong.
I could get one scoop of chips and a piece of fish for like $2 and that would be dinner!
Inflate that by 50-100% and you have fish and chip prices in NZ these days. Either Sarah has been out of the country too long, or she remembers some rural area far from the inflated prices charged in cities.
And, besides, we have Chinese food delivered now.
I'd contribute to "Send Sarah Home", but my only credit card is a constant source of income to the bank, precluding any paypal (or Amazon, or pr0n-site) adventures.
Ah, the food arguments with small children. I had a long, "intense" discussion with my 3 year old yesterday about the nutritional content of a cupcake. She wanted the cupcake as breakfast, I insisted that she eat something nutritious first, like cereal and milk, or a bananna.
"No no no, cupcake has nutrition, only for ME!"
Normally we aren't cupcake for breakfast people, it was a BBQ leftover and I figured once it was gone my life would get easier. Or at least less cupcake-centric.
Oh, and as a parent of two girls, I hate most Disney with a passion and have been actively boycotting since Pocahantas.
So happy to have a little girl with no Disney-centric relatives! Occasionally some random item might show up, but we're mostly tie-in product free (although sometimes we get books that we don't even recognize as being part of a larger industry - like Maisy, the flounder-eyed mouse who has pets!).
Oh, and I loved the Basil books, but never saw the movie. Part of my non-Disney-centric upbringing....
Aaarrggghhhh.
PLEASE stop saying what the bad things about moving to the US are... I fly the day after tomorrow! Anyone want me to smuggle in some genuine English crumpets?
BTW: what do YOU mean by muffins? In Britain, a muffin IS a flat thing, though we seem to be flooded by enormous, oversized aerated wodges of cupcakes (or "buns" in my grandmother's and mother's language) which coffee shops pass off as muffins. A muffin is bread-like, unsweetened and should be split open and toasted, before drenching in butter and golden syrup (Sarah: you want some golden syrup? There's room in my second suitcase still...)
Why Greedy, those be "English Muffins" of course! Which you CAN get in buckets in the U.S. Also, Australian Toaster Biscuits which are similar though denser. But not as yummy as crumpets (and not to be confused as such).
What do you call a cakelike pastry that resembles a mushroom (and usually comes laden with blueberries or bran, or poppyseeds...)?
I loved Great Mouse Detective though I wish that'd had scones instead of crumpets!
The newer Disney movies make me wish in-vain for the Disney movies of my child-hood. What ever happened to movies like Robin Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Sword in the Stone and the like?
Adorable story. Most of the time I feel like I can live without having children, but when I read stories like that, I start to second-guess that thought. And awesome what everyone was able to do for SarahfromChicago, by the way.
Mustang Sally: you allude to the impostor "muffins", I think. As far as I can tell, they are just failed attempts at sponge cake - sort of the same texture, but denser than they should be. As I said, oversized cupcakes. But yes, generally referred to as muffins.
Australian Toaster Biscuits? Never come across these. Biscuits here are basically equivalent to the US "cookie", though most home grown varieties are crisp affairs. Hmmmm... Biscuits.... :-P
You see this is why we'll never have world peace.
We can't even agree on the names of baked goods. *G*
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