Christmas Letter 2018
Summers-Stay Christmas snippets 2018
Daniel was hilarious in ‘The Tempest’ and 'Musical Comedy Murders of 1940’ this fall. As my sister said, ‘We had no idea he was so good at physical comedy.’ He is in eleventh grade and turned 16 this fall. He got his learner’s permit. Doug presented papers at Artificial Intelligence conferences in Prague, New Hampshire, and San Francisco. I continue to struggle with chronic health problems that severely limit my capacity to accomplish anything. (Really, that’s why I don’t get much done!! No other reason!) -Lesli
[note: over my protests, these are organized by absurd categories, rather than the 300-dimensional faceted classification system that I pushed for. –Doug]
Meanness
Lesli- I am such an idiot! Oh, I shouldn't say that in front of Daniel.
Doug- He already knows.
Lesli [hurt]- That is so mean. [pause] Go write it down.
[Lesli got a cross-stitch Christmas present from Marti that says ‘I hate everyone.’]
Lesli- I love it so much. I’m going to put it on the wall right there so I can see it all the time.
Doug [sigh]- Lesli’s spirit animal is Eeyore.
I was waiting in a really long line in the post office the week before Christmas. A man opened the outside door, looked in at the line, said "Bah, humbug!" and left. –Lesli
Doug [after hearing someone speak at church]- His humility is like other people's bragging. But it's okay—I find it endearing.
Lesli- Are you going to get remarried if I die?
Doug- Are you kidding?
Lesli- Go on.
Doug- I like being single too much.
[Doug puts all the rest of the butter in the macaroni.]
Lesli- That's not nearly enough butter.
Daniel- This macaroni has remarkably enough butter.
Doug- Everybody's a critic.
Lesli- You’ve nailed our family’s main attribute.
Alternate Universes
Lesli- Do you want fermented cabbage?
Daniel- Why would I want that in any universe?
[on a path in the woods]
Lesli- I made this pile of rocks so that when I'm tired I can always know where to turn to go back to the car.
Doug- Oh I thought maybe you dug up a cat and re-buried it. Ooh, silly me. You would never do something like that.
[She buried our cat in the woods and then a year later dug him up and buried him in our yard.]
For April Fool's day, Doug changed Daniel's Chrome homepage (which has Winnie-the-Pooh on it) to look like this:
(Shows cont.)
Lesli- Your director said you were a pleasure to work with. I've been hearing that a lot lately it seems. Do they just say that every time they meet someone’s mother?
Daniel- I tend to be more cooperative than the other kids. And funnier. And smarter. And more engaged.
Lesli- And more humble.
Daniel- Yes. And ...
Daniel- There are only three effective types of [TV] advertising- You can be poignant, you can be informative, or you can be funny. But the second time that you see something, it’s no longer poignant, informative, or funny.
Lesli- He’s annoyed by how we always have to watch the same advertisements over and over before watching a YouTube video.
Doug- Oh, play me a tune on the world’s smallest violin. He has to watch a single advertisement before watching a show on YouTube. The boy has never watched television—where every five minutes you have five minutes of ads.
[Doug and Daniel watching Adventure Time]
Lesli- Did he just say s**t?
Doug- No, never on this show.
Daniel- No, you just said s**t.
Lesli- HE just said s**t. I heard it
Daniel- Mommy, you have mental Tourette’s.
Improv Everywhere
Daniel was told by his leader to be on his best behavior for the youth etiquette dinner. So he arrived in a tuxedo and took everything at the dinner with over-the-top class:
I stood up every time a girl came to the table or left, which made them laugh.
When I was being a waiter, I pretended to repeat all the menu items in French.
I apologized profusely all the time for little things.
I cut up my rolls with a fork and a knife like meat.
I shook hands with everyone I met.
I called everyone by their last names or just, ‘My man’ (including girls) or ‘Sir.
Daniel made it bearable to go shopping at Walmart last night. He gets in the right mood, and it's basically an hour-long improv comedy. (For which, a heartfelt apology to all his teachers...)
‘This isn't really an instant canopy. If it were instant, nearby songbirds would be in danger. It would send out a shockwave as you set it up. It could be used as an offensive weapon...’
At the clearance rack- ‘I wonder who it was who thought, you know, the singing fish plaque is a nearly perfect product already, but what it really needs is a Santa hat and the ability to sing carols. That would just make it ideal...’ –Doug
Daniel- Attendance in Teacher's Quorum tripled the week after I was made president. I take full credit.
Doug- Largest inauguration EVER.
Books
Daniel- Know what would be a good book title?— Belligerent Pacifism.
Doug- Hmm, sounds a little passive-aggressive.
[Daniel was imagining someone angrily and illegally protesting against a war]
Doug- I think a really good idea if you know somebody who’s going to have a baby is to buy them the book The Spanish Inquisition but put on the dust jacket from What to Expect When You're Expecting.
Doug- There was a crash between a car carrier and a pineapple truck on I-70 yesterday.
Lesli- There wasn't a pineapple truck. There’s no such thing as a pineapple truck. Except in Richard Scarry books.
Daniel- Maybe you're overthinking it.
Doug- MAYBE EVERYONE ELSE IS UNDERTHINKING IT. [If I ever write my memoirs, this is going to be the title.]
Clothes
Lesli- Daniel, go put those jeans in the ‘too small’ pile. They are too short on you.
Daniel- No they aren't! Look, they aren't even above the socks!!
Daniel’s friend Charlie wanted to go to Goodwill to look for costumes for the movie they were making. Daniel decided to look thru our house for crazy clothes and found a 1970's velvet bright orange suit coat jacket, which was just what they needed.
Daniel [to Charlie]- Our house is basically Goodwill.
Lesli- Change those pants, they're too short.
Daniel- Here's what I don't understand. You can wear shorts, and you can wear pants. But anything in between isn't okay?
Deep Thoughts
Lesli- Why do cats who have been raised around them their whole lives always act like the doom has come upon them whenever I use the vacuum?
Daniel- Why are you trying to put away all the dishes in the dishwasher in 60 seconds?
Doug [quoting Queen]- I consider it a challenge before the whole human race, and I never lose.
Lesli- Teaching your child to question everything definitely has a down side.
Daniel- I don't think there is any greater feeling than getting passed over in hide-and-go-seek.
Doug- Kai's environmentalism goes a little far, even for me. Did you see he stopped to help a rattlesnake get across the road? One of these days, we're going to find Kai breathing his last breaths and the snake will whisper— “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”
[Discussing a news story where a 17-year-old was arrested with gun and ammo outside of a school]
Lesli- How can they know his intent, unless he's not allowed to have a gun?
Legally he's allowed to have the gun. [pause] Unless maybe, at seventeen he's not? Maybe he has to be 18? Do you know?
Doug- In Texas?! In Texas at three years old you can have a bazooka.
Daniel - In fact, you're issued one.
Lesli [laughing]- Everyone at the hospital when they're born is given one to go home with.
Shows
Daniel picked up a movie titled Playing House and read “Playing House, a documentary on the life of Hugh Laurie.”
Doug [interested]- ‘Is that what it actually is?’
[It was actually some sort of made-for-TV romance movie]
[watching Chariots of Fire]
Doug- He’s running to overcome prejudice against the Jews.
Daniel [watching someone on the show try to outrun a car]- I do that sometimes.
Doug- What? Run to overcome prejudice against Jews?
Daniel's idea- Organize the movies by date.
Doug's idea- Arrange the movies by a 300-dimensional vector encapsulating the semantics of the movie, trained on the script and IMDB page. We might need to buy more shelves.
Lesli's idea- Put them in categories like 'Disney Movies.' Including things like Prince of Egypt and Toy Story and anything else that sort of seems something like a Disney movie.
I was reading about the actors in the new Star Wars and I saw that Richard Grant was one of them (playing an Imperial, surely). I went to look up his IMDB page and saw the funniest title for a short film he was in—Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life. It's too good a title to ruin by actually trying to watch the movie—it would only disappoint. –Doug
Doug- [after a particularly bad musical number in Princess Diaries 2] Let's turn this off.
Lesli- You can't go to bed yet—Daniel's not done with his homework!
Doug- All the more reason to turn it off. It's disturbing him.
Lesli- You mean, it's distracting him.
Doug- I stand by what I said.
Lesli has unusual categorization schemes that only make sense to her. Talking about what category Hitch goes in-
Lesli- It's not a romantic comedy because it's not funny and not romantic.
Doug- So what do you want to put it under then? Historical Drama?
Lesli [cutting Doug’s hair]- I cut off too much of your bangs on this side so I'm going to have to trim the other side to match.
Doug- That's fine. Just don't Bert-and-Ernie it.
Daniel- In The Importance of Being Earnest, when he says he ate all the muffins, did he mean English muffins?
Lesli- I don't know. I don't speak English.
(left-Daniel's cousin Merrick)
[At the artificial intelligence conference in Prague]
British guy- So you're the famous Dr. Summers-Stay! Everyone wants to use your work as a benchmark.
Doug- [I find this very flattering.] Really? Tell me more.
British guy- Yes, everyone always says, ‘Shall I compare thee to a Summers-Stay?’
Psychology
On my Psychology pretest, they asked what the DSM IV was and I knew it from the play Distracted where I was in charge of props. They asked what classical conditioning was and I knew it from a conversation last week with Merrick [cousin]. They asked what split brain surgery was a treatment for, and I knew from an article I’d read about Ben Carson on SlateStarCodex. It was like that for all the questions. It was basically Slumdog Millionaire. –Daniel
Lesli- Why won't you drop psychology?
Daniel- I like psychology.
Lesli- Are you going to start psycho-analyzing me now? Because I don't like that.
Daniel- Why don't you like that?
Lesli- Because, I don't.
Daniel- But, why not?
Lesli- I don't know how to explain it.
Daniel- You don't know how to explain it? Well, we can work through this ...
-end-