My wife and I are halfway through Best Picture winner Anora, and the vibe has shifted from pornographic-Pretty Woman to a Safdie-esque Uncut Gems bad-decisions-thriller (with some Sandler-esque silliness).
The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
Later Children, See You in the Fourth Quarter
Ahh . . . Spring Break . . . finally . . . and so I am drinking a beer, listening to Stereolab (very calming) and writing in peace-- my wife is napping on the couch-- and I am unwinding from a chaotic day with the youth: I started the day at morning basketball and we only had nine and then Frank, one of the older guys (but not as old as me!) went down with a calf cramp and so we played four-on-four full court until exhaustion, and then by the time I got out of the shower the first bell had already rung so I hustled (as fast as I could) to first period-- and I must say that THAT Creative Class is lovely and we read aloud the riddle poems that the kids wrote, guessed, and did a food metaphor fill-in and everything was fairly mellow-- but by my second 82-minute period, the kids were starting to feel it, they knew the end was nigh . . . so I read the end of We Have Always Lived in the Castle to my sophomores and then they made horror skits and enacted them-- and they had to have a couple of classic horror tropes in the skits plus some sort of get out/stay-in debate (lesson plan straight from my podcast!) and while they were loud and nuts, they actually got the skits written and performed them-- mainly because class is endless-- and then my last Creative Class was bananas, a lot of weird bickering and overly energetic teenagers-- and I can't express enough how much I hate block scheduling because 82-minutes is WAY TOO FUCKING LONG to have a class right before Spring Break (or basically any time at all) but I survived and someday I will retire and miss this?
One More Fucking Day of This
Not much intellectual or literary going on in my head today . . . in fact, the only thought that is occupying my brain is that I only have to wake up and teach one more day, and then it's Spring Break-- better late than never but I need a break from school . . . especially since my room smelled like sour vomit this morning-- the foul reek was so disgusting that I called a security guard and he called the head custodian-- but it turns out it was just the smell of new mulch, which had seeped into the room from the courtyard and the acrid mulch smell mixed with the carpet mildew and accumulated BO and created an awful stench-- yuck-- which was impossible to air out and then to celebrate the end of the third quarter with my seniors, I confiscated my first cell phone today . . . a senior boy brazenly playing some video game while another student was presenting (which always makes me angrier than if they're trying to sneak some cell phone usage while I'm talking-- because I'm a professional and expect it and just tell them to put it in the calc pal or on my desk . . . but when a student is presenting . . . unconscionable) but on a positive note, I finally got some new blinds! . . . which operate with a button and seem like they might hold up, but despite the new blinds, we could still see the angry robin that lives in the courtyard and apparently can't find a mate so he fights his own reflection in the window right by my desk, pecking the glass and creating a general disturbance when the students are trying their best to learn (or play video games on their cell phones).
Severance is so Fringe!
Warning!-- there will be some spoilers in this sentence concerning Fringe . . . which aired from 2008 to 2013, so honestly, it's probably past the spoiler statute of limitations, but there will also be some Severance spoilers-- and if you're not watching Severance, get with it-- anyway, in both shows there is an oddball sci-fi love triangle: the main character-- a guy-- has sex for the first time with a bizarre, malevolent version of his love interest and thinks it is the actual love interest, not a doppelganger-- in Severance, Mark thinks he's boinking Helly in the tent, but he's actually boinking her cold and evil "outie" Helena and in Fringe, Peter thinks he's banging fellow Fringe team member Olivia, but he's actually banging the other Olivia, known as Fauxlivia, from the Other Side . . . and in both cases, the original love interests are very upset that their evil doppelganger's jumped the line and made love with their love interest before they could-- it's a weird, awkward, and extremely bizarre lover's quarrel . . . so there's that, plus Peter Bishop's dad, Walter Bishop-- the Australian actor John Noble-- shows up in Severance-- he's Burt's "outie" lover Fields.
Speed is Relative
Perhaps my new sprint-work out is having some sort of salubrious effect on my fitness-- because for a couple weeks now, twice a week I've been running four sets, 30 seconds each, where I run as fast as I can (without hurting myself . . . and I got my son Ian to accompany me on Sunday, which made me push myself a bit harder . . . although he was still much faster than me) because today at morning basketball, which was an up-and-back shitshow, I took off after a defensive rebound and received a long looping fast-break pass, that flew over the top of the last defender, and I caught it on the fly and converted the lay-up . . . the first time I've scored like that in a long time.
What the Fuck is Wrong with a Mini-Symbol?
So I learned a lesson this morning: it's best not to walk into the English Office and ask a bunch of surly, Monday-morning teachers for some ideas about literary motifs-- for whatever reason, explaining what a "motif" is can get very heated amongst the English teachers . . . and apparently they hate the term I invented: "mini-symbol" and my entire definition: "some repeated-- so more than one-- images or elements or mini-symbols that add up to a theme"-- they all find the term "mini-symbol" vague and offensive, although no one was willing to give me a concise and precise working definition-- aside from Stacey, who gave me a definition over the phone when she called me from attendance duty to remind me to post my attendance and I posed the question to her-- but aside from her, mainly they just wanted to rail against my definition . . . my buddy Cunningham told me "I know what it is in my heart" but would not give me any specifics (aside from the fact that she said another teacher, Jansen, who is generally beloved because he's actually a soft-spoken nice intelligent guy-- so lame-- had a much smarter definition . . . which she could not supply because she did not remember it) but I think the term "mini-symbol" is fine-- a restaurant can't have a Mexican theme unless there's a bunch of mini-symbols that create the theme-- one sombrero does not a Mexican restaurant make . . . you need some Day of the Dead skulls and some cacti and perhaps a wooden parrot and a Mexican flag and some mariachi music and some maracas and a chalkboard advertising fresh tamales and some bold colors and tile floors, etcetera . . . and this pattern of mini-symbols adds up to the theme!
Pathetic (and I mean pathetic) Fallacy
A dark pall has fallen over the land this morning, a grungy, gray, and glum gloominess . . . clouds and rain and mud and rot and decay-- and this would be fitting, if the pathetic fallacy was not a literary conceit, an artistic delusion-- but, alas, the weather does not care about my mood, although this morning it is, coincidentally of course, mirroring the contents of my soul: last night, for one brief moment, after Florida beat Auburn, I was in pole position to win the BIG March Madness Pool . . . the 25$ entry, 150 person pool that pays out nearly all the proceeds to the winner-- all I needed was Duke to win over Houston-- and then I would be be the top pool member with Florida as the winner and it would all come down to Monday night-- I was so excited, so happy to have made it this far in, and sure that Duke's high-powered offense would overcome Houston's slow paced style of play . . . and it looked like that was the case, Duke had a 14 point lead in the second half-- and thank God I fell asleep because if I had to watch the catastrophic meltdown and Duke squander a 9 point lead with three minutes to play, I would have maxed out my ticker and had some kind of coronary event-- so at least I was fast alseep when that bullshit happened (although I watched it this morning) and when I awoke deep into the night and checked my phone for the score, that is when the rains came, both inside my soul and outside on my roof . . . so close, yet so pathetic.
THIS is My Secret Purpose
Up until last night, I thought my secret purpose was to see a fairly obscure actor/actress on TV and say to my wife "I totally know that guy/chick" and then struggle to remember their name or what movie or show we previously saw this actor/actress in and then use my phone to track down their name and the roles they played-- and usually my hunch is right and I celebrate my facial recognition acumen-- but my wife is also very annoyed that I'm doing this instead of watching what we're watching-- especially if I pause the show to do my research-- but now I know my secret ability is not to identify faces, it's to identify diners . . . because I am 100% in recognizing diners on a TV show, whilst with actors/actresses I'm probably more around 80 . . . but last night, while we were watching season two of the show Severance, and Mark met his sister at Pip's and they showed the outside of the diner and the mountainous backdrop and I said to my wife "that's the Phoenicia diner!" and then I looked it up and "Pip's" is the Phoenicia Diner, a wonderful place to eat in the Catskills.
Dry Bones (Longmire #11) by Craig johnson
The only thing better than a Craig Johnson Longmire mystery with all the usual fixin's-- the vast and desolate landscape of Wyoming, a well-plotted police procedural, some emotional stuff about Longmire's family, some Native American lore and legend, a moment of deus ex Henry Standing Bear, and some mystical Native American visions-- is a Craig Johnson Longmire mystery with all the usual fixin's plus not one but TWO prehistoric creatures . . . one species that qualifies as a living fossil, with 90 million years of staying power, and the other that is legendary in the fossil record; Danny Long Elk is found floating face down in a farm pond filled with snapping turtles, who have done some damage to the dead body AND a paleontologist discovers a complete tyrannasaurus rex skeleton on his property-- which is a very valuable find-- and also a legal conundrum because the find is on land that belongs to the Cheyenne nation . . . and if the plot of Dry Bones plot sounds enticing, then you should also read Michael Connelly's City of Bones, which features the La Brea Tar Pits and perhaps the first human murder on record (I'm a sucker for mysteries with some forensic paleontology thrown in for good measure).
Sophomores are Sophomoric
As we trudge along towards this year's (very late) Spring Break, my sophomores grow more and more unruly and annoying . . . they can barely concentrate, even during a quiz-- which led me to insert questions like these amidst the actual comprehension questions on Shirley Jackson's masterpiece We Have Always Lived in the Castle:
2. When you are finished with this quiz, you should:
Turn and chat with your neighbor about the answers
Make strange faces at people
Sit silently until the entire class is finished
Poke someone
4. You should take AP English because:
You genuinely enjoy reading and analyzing literature
Your friends are taking it
It looks good for college admissions
Your secret crush is in the class
9. Draw a picture of the Blackwood house. This is not worth any points, but simply to occupy you and prevent you from being obnoxious and annoying while the rest of the class finishes the quiz.
and, oddly, this strategy worked and they were much better behaved during the quiz today than they were last class-- when I had to deliver a profanity-laced diatribe to get them to stop pestering each other while some students finished the quiz . . . now mind you, a profanity-laced tirade does work, but it's exhausting-- so this was a more efficient strategy and I will be putting "behavior reminder questions" and random word jumbles and picture prompts (that are not worth any points) on all their quizzes in the future.
Money, It's a Gas: Squandering Economic Victories
My new episode of We Defy Augury is a rather epic meditation on wealth and its consequences, at both the human and national scale; my thoughts and theories are (loosely) based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner's novel The Long Island Compromise and Andrew Bacevich's political critique The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory . . .
Special Guests: Tana French, Pat Martino, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tom Wolfe, Ayn Rand, Bret Easton Ellis, Gordon Gekko, Noam Chomsky, Ross Perot, and Miley Cyrus.
A Whale of a Prank
Today in my Grade 10 Honors English class, I distributed copies of Moby Dick-- which I found mouldering away on a high shelf in the book room-- and then counted the days of Spring Break on my fingers and did some long division on the board: eleven divided by 822 . . . the days of Spring Break divided by the number to pages in this great behemoth of a novel and I arrived at 74 pages a day . . . but I told them that would be the easy part of their Spring Break assignment-- the hard part would be the vocabulary in the enovel, which is erudite, recondite, and archaic-- and I told them I was halfway through and already the vocab list was over 150 words, and they would be quizzed on those words (and the entirety of the novel)on the day we returned from break . . . and then a couple kids started laughing and the rest of the class realized that I was April fooling them . . . but I did convince a couple of kids to actually take the novel and give it a shot-- I promised them the opening hundred pages would not disappoint, but then they might want to "skip a bit, brother" and make their way to the final sequence-- and perhaps this reverse psychology might work, the joke assignment might be more appealing than an authentic, graded task-- one kid said, "Better this book sits on my shelf than on a shelf in some closet."