Friday, December 06, 2002
FRI-DAY (is the last day...and then it's W.E.E.K.E.N.D.... IT'S WEEEEEKENNNND!)
Yes, it's the weekend. Because she was incredibly nice enough to wake up damn early on Wednesday and follow me to/drive me home from the Hyundai Service Center in Huntingon (a good 25 minute drive) so I could get my car's brake pads and rotors restored to mint condition, I made dinner for Flie tonight (she's my neighbor down the hall, head of development and constituent relations, and a School alum). Linguini with half-homemade meat sauce, garlic bread (with garlic powder left over from the stash of the infamous kitchen at Newell 5), and Medoc 1997 that she won today in some raffle, along with some other amazing booze (Stoli, Beam, other good wines, some amazing Gin I've never even seen before).
Tomorrow...I get to wake up and do "the drive" to see my Laura and the SMuTCo. production of Cabaret. Laura is one of the sleazy dansing girls, as well as prop-master for the show (at one point she had to hand-dye a giant white sheet Nazi-red and paint a swatstika on it: home (r)e(i)c(ch)onomics!). SHe also gets to dance alone onstage with Matt Brogan (the EMCEE) while wearing a gorilla mask. The rest of the show, she wears only a bra for a top (and she looks damn sexxy in it, too). Can't wait!! A SMuTCo. cast party is to follow, and many of you know what that means....
Yes, it's the weekend. Because she was incredibly nice enough to wake up damn early on Wednesday and follow me to/drive me home from the Hyundai Service Center in Huntingon (a good 25 minute drive) so I could get my car's brake pads and rotors restored to mint condition, I made dinner for Flie tonight (she's my neighbor down the hall, head of development and constituent relations, and a School alum). Linguini with half-homemade meat sauce, garlic bread (with garlic powder left over from the stash of the infamous kitchen at Newell 5), and Medoc 1997 that she won today in some raffle, along with some other amazing booze (Stoli, Beam, other good wines, some amazing Gin I've never even seen before).
Tomorrow...I get to wake up and do "the drive" to see my Laura and the SMuTCo. production of Cabaret. Laura is one of the sleazy dansing girls, as well as prop-master for the show (at one point she had to hand-dye a giant white sheet Nazi-red and paint a swatstika on it: home (r)e(i)c(ch)onomics!). SHe also gets to dance alone onstage with Matt Brogan (the EMCEE) while wearing a gorilla mask. The rest of the show, she wears only a bra for a top (and she looks damn sexxy in it, too). Can't wait!! A SMuTCo. cast party is to follow, and many of you know what that means....
Thursday, December 05, 2002
THURSDAY, SNOW!
ITEM:
Yes, a serious snow squall has is befalling (on) Long Island, and the greater East Coast, as well, paralyzing both travel and the ability to keep my students in any kind of focus. Many School residents, foremost Taiwan's one and only "Dean" Wu (of "soldiers are the wager of war" fame), were pumped and hyper as hell. "Everything is so...white!" he exclaimed in my English I class.
What weren't my seniors focusing on today?:
After two days of "fun" introductory material, including jokes the students brought in, close analysis of Far Side cartoons, and the K.I.T.H. "Ascertain" skit, we settled back into good old harty Brit Lit with Alexander Pope, whose style includes compression, balance as modelled after the Classic cultures of Western Civ., and wit. Some paid attention, some did not.
Creative Writing Report:
Day two went remarkably well; Kaitlin Launds is creatively INSANE. We shared our VOICE OF GOD monologues, and then played the classic picture/phrase passing game where everyone starts with piece of paper and a phrase, sketches a visual representation of that phrase and folds the paper to hide original phrase before passing it to the right, then on newly recieved paper they write a phrase or sentence describing or titling the new picture/image they recieve, repeat until all pieces have circulated, read aloud and laugh. I've had this game work and fail, but today was incredible. Gallibaster, freshman wunderkind, wrote some boss lines.
Examples of boss Gabby lines: (1)When she recieved a (crudely drawn) picture of a classroom where the teacher is freaked out and stick figure students are both trying to exit and also raising their hands in the air, she wrote "CONSPIRACY" (2) For an image of four flowers in a beaker, she wrote "perfection isn't always loved." Just wow. That's the title of her second book of poetry! The magic may not be getting through, but I assure you in the moment is was brilliant (if you could only see the papers!).
ITEM:
I realized today that, like some of my students, when I was in High School, I had a hard time grasping the concept of irony. A deep-seated example came rushing back to me today. When I was six or seven, a Care Bears movie came out in which one of the non-Care Bear characters said, sarcastically, "well what ELSE is new?" And, although I think I always understood the intention from her tone of voice, I could never seem to work out logically how that sentence made sense. I mean, the tone of voice suggested that whatever happened happened ALL the time, so then why would it make sense to call it "new" or compare it to something else that might be "new?" It always pissed me off that I couldn't "get it." I think today, I finally projected back and quelled my pre-adolescent/adolescent confused anger. Irony, it's killer.
ITEM:
Yes, a serious snow squall has is befalling (on) Long Island, and the greater East Coast, as well, paralyzing both travel and the ability to keep my students in any kind of focus. Many School residents, foremost Taiwan's one and only "Dean" Wu (of "soldiers are the wager of war" fame), were pumped and hyper as hell. "Everything is so...white!" he exclaimed in my English I class.
What weren't my seniors focusing on today?:
After two days of "fun" introductory material, including jokes the students brought in, close analysis of Far Side cartoons, and the K.I.T.H. "Ascertain" skit, we settled back into good old harty Brit Lit with Alexander Pope, whose style includes compression, balance as modelled after the Classic cultures of Western Civ., and wit. Some paid attention, some did not.
Creative Writing Report:
Day two went remarkably well; Kaitlin Launds is creatively INSANE. We shared our VOICE OF GOD monologues, and then played the classic picture/phrase passing game where everyone starts with piece of paper and a phrase, sketches a visual representation of that phrase and folds the paper to hide original phrase before passing it to the right, then on newly recieved paper they write a phrase or sentence describing or titling the new picture/image they recieve, repeat until all pieces have circulated, read aloud and laugh. I've had this game work and fail, but today was incredible. Gallibaster, freshman wunderkind, wrote some boss lines.
Examples of boss Gabby lines: (1)When she recieved a (crudely drawn) picture of a classroom where the teacher is freaked out and stick figure students are both trying to exit and also raising their hands in the air, she wrote "CONSPIRACY" (2) For an image of four flowers in a beaker, she wrote "perfection isn't always loved." Just wow. That's the title of her second book of poetry! The magic may not be getting through, but I assure you in the moment is was brilliant (if you could only see the papers!).
ITEM:
I realized today that, like some of my students, when I was in High School, I had a hard time grasping the concept of irony. A deep-seated example came rushing back to me today. When I was six or seven, a Care Bears movie came out in which one of the non-Care Bear characters said, sarcastically, "well what ELSE is new?" And, although I think I always understood the intention from her tone of voice, I could never seem to work out logically how that sentence made sense. I mean, the tone of voice suggested that whatever happened happened ALL the time, so then why would it make sense to call it "new" or compare it to something else that might be "new?" It always pissed me off that I couldn't "get it." I think today, I finally projected back and quelled my pre-adolescent/adolescent confused anger. Irony, it's killer.
Tuesday, December 03, 2002
ITEM:
God bless "the internet." One of my vocabulary words for the week is "ascertain;" coincidentaly, I also introduced the topic Wit and Wordplay as our focus for the entire Winter term. While we are reading funnies from such greats Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, John Dryden, and Jonathon Swift, we'll be analyzing "what makes funny funny with the help of stand-up comedy, The Far Side, and sketch comedy. I was struck in class with a hazy memory of Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCulloch (in typically histerically esoterically odd BRUCE stylee) in a short piece were he abuses the verb "ascertain." It didn't take long to find a transcript of the sketch, which we will perform in class tomorrow (or soon).
AMAZING ITEM:
In a shocking turn of fate, I and the Lower School students of The School, have been rescued from my attempts at music teaching. A new (actually qualified) music teacher has been hired to teach the one class per day, and I have taken over Carl Tillona's (my teaching mentor and poet) creative writing class so he can free up time to assume new responsibilites as director of student life. This is a huge improvement. Huge. E-gantic, gi-normous. I've already been spinning ideas for projects in my head, writing down the better ones. I'll share when I have more time, and any suggestions are highly welcome. Things are looking good. Getting young writers to learn about the balancing act of poetry, about living with and for their characters, about the white hot center where ideas come from, about spontenaity, about their own unique talents and predilictions (sp?).
ITEM:
I was sucked in to watching Crossfire tonight, which was actually pretty good. A man named Zogby, president of the Arabs of American group, came on and handled himself brilliantly from both sides of attack. The topic was our tenuous relationship/alli-ship with Saudi Arabia, given their contributions to the Taliban, Iraq, that more than a dozen of the 911 terrorists were Saudi, and that sentiments toward the West there are questionable as fundamentalist Islam is popular/taught in many schools. If I were cool, I'd find a web-link to a transcript or media file or something, but I'm sure Flynn will have that covered at the Cocktail Sermons, else check any major news/political site.
God bless "the internet." One of my vocabulary words for the week is "ascertain;" coincidentaly, I also introduced the topic Wit and Wordplay as our focus for the entire Winter term. While we are reading funnies from such greats Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, John Dryden, and Jonathon Swift, we'll be analyzing "what makes funny funny with the help of stand-up comedy, The Far Side, and sketch comedy. I was struck in class with a hazy memory of Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCulloch (in typically histerically esoterically odd BRUCE stylee) in a short piece were he abuses the verb "ascertain." It didn't take long to find a transcript of the sketch, which we will perform in class tomorrow (or soon).
AMAZING ITEM:
In a shocking turn of fate, I and the Lower School students of The School, have been rescued from my attempts at music teaching. A new (actually qualified) music teacher has been hired to teach the one class per day, and I have taken over Carl Tillona's (my teaching mentor and poet) creative writing class so he can free up time to assume new responsibilites as director of student life. This is a huge improvement. Huge. E-gantic, gi-normous. I've already been spinning ideas for projects in my head, writing down the better ones. I'll share when I have more time, and any suggestions are highly welcome. Things are looking good. Getting young writers to learn about the balancing act of poetry, about living with and for their characters, about the white hot center where ideas come from, about spontenaity, about their own unique talents and predilictions (sp?).
ITEM:
I was sucked in to watching Crossfire tonight, which was actually pretty good. A man named Zogby, president of the Arabs of American group, came on and handled himself brilliantly from both sides of attack. The topic was our tenuous relationship/alli-ship with Saudi Arabia, given their contributions to the Taliban, Iraq, that more than a dozen of the 911 terrorists were Saudi, and that sentiments toward the West there are questionable as fundamentalist Islam is popular/taught in many schools. If I were cool, I'd find a web-link to a transcript or media file or something, but I'm sure Flynn will have that covered at the Cocktail Sermons, else check any major news/political site.
Toosday, again. Ding, dong the internet was dead yesterday, thus no posts.
ITEM:
Evidence that the fringe of popular culture/art is percolating into the mainstream is mounting:
1. The most recent trailer for LOTR: The Two Towers contains music from the original soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream, only re-recorded by a full orchestra (and minus the turntable-scratched beats and minimalist approach of the Kronos Quartet).
2. Justin Theroux, of Mulholland Drive fame, can be seen in a Progresso Soup add that has been syndicated in the last couple months.
A pun that synthesizes elements from both of these occurences: What's the Frodo for?
ITEM: Whether at New Haven's Bar, or bottled from the Brooklyn Brewery, the beer flavor known as Black Chocolate Stout still tastes, to me, like chocolate-flavored nail-polish remover.
ITEM:
Evidence that the fringe of popular culture/art is percolating into the mainstream is mounting:
1. The most recent trailer for LOTR: The Two Towers contains music from the original soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream, only re-recorded by a full orchestra (and minus the turntable-scratched beats and minimalist approach of the Kronos Quartet).
2. Justin Theroux, of Mulholland Drive fame, can be seen in a Progresso Soup add that has been syndicated in the last couple months.
A pun that synthesizes elements from both of these occurences: What's the Frodo for?
ITEM: Whether at New Haven's Bar, or bottled from the Brooklyn Brewery, the beer flavor known as Black Chocolate Stout still tastes, to me, like chocolate-flavored nail-polish remover.
Sunday, December 01, 2002
