God, Incorporated

Basically, when I first got some photo editing software, I stayed up all night screwing around, trying to do something appropriately sacrilegious. But I abandoned it after the first page.

P.S. You have to click on it. I can't figure out how to get Blogger to leave more room for images.

Retort to Facebook Moms

Retort to Facebook Moms

And whoever feels the need to tell the world,
"Oh, how I need a mani and a pedi!"
Ensures my absence at her child's First Communion.

I can't concentrate on my work. Because I've been drinking too much. So:

Heroic Couplets I Wrote Today

"On Flipping Through the Classified Section of the Chicago Tribune"
To break the wave, and see what skies behind
Ope arms and opportunities divine?
Or, making anchor fast, to hunker down
In waters stagnant, true, but not unsound?

"On Drinking Heavily While Doing Lesson Plans"
The beer commutes from hand to mouth to brain
And throws a wall betwixt my will and gain.
Tis foolish, true, to gorge on nectar sweet,
But comfort tis, since I've goals yet to meet.

"Why I Want to Marry [My Girlfriend] (for reals)"
That woman calls herself my "common" wife.
I'd think this folly, if not for the strife
That does her presence dear accompany--
No trophy that which comes too easily.

Summer Employment Emerges

The Shakespearian powers that be in Washington, D.C. have bestowed a stipend upon yours truly to study four Shakespeare plays this summer and ways to integrate them into the high school curriculum. So, for a month, I'll be living in downtown D.C. boning up on Macbeth, Henry IV Part One, Measure for Measure and Twelfth Night (I think) and cooking up lesson plans for today's beleaguered high school teachers. Nifty.

I have to strut a bit here. Sorry, but this is just further evidence of the quality you get when I'm in the picture. My position on the arts and literature in today's public school curriculum is hardly news (I've written and spoken about it extensively in circles where, in all honesty, people would prefer to be speaking about the Chicago Bears or their own cutie-pie kids instead), but now I've got the full power of the NEH and the Mellon Foundation writing me a check to carry out my crusade to Save the Humanities. From now on, when you envision me, envision me with a cape. Because I think it's more accurate to envision me as a caped crusader.

Oh yeah, and my "wife" said I could go. So, you know, I'm unstoppable.

For posterity, here's the essay that got me in:

Take me into your program, goddammit!

An Application Essay

In Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning play History Boys, seven Oxford and Cambridge candidates conduct mock interviews in front of a triumvirate of teachers, filtering out personal interests and passions that might potentially be obstacles to admission. One of the students professes an interest in the theater and acting, to which the more utilitarian teacher warns him not to “play it up too much. Most dons think acting is a waste of time.” To this, Hector, the defender of the humanities, responds wearily, “So much for Shakespeare.”

“So much for Shakespeare” is practically a trope in certain pedagogic circles today. The artists and literature that inspire educators and make us wish to pass along knowledge, perspective, language and feeling to our students are being swallowed up by naysayers and test prep seminars. Forget acting: reading Shakespeare in the classroom has suddenly become almost an embarrassment. “You can’t expect them to ‘get’ Shakespeare, “a colleague of mine recently scoffed. “I didn’t get it at their age, and I wound up being an English teacher!”

It seems to me this is no time for those who would be full-throated defenders of the humanities to toil away alone in their classrooms, locking the door against progress and standardized exams. Networking is necessary. Collaboration is of the utmost advantage. And these are the main reasons I am applying to the Folgers Shakespeare Library Teaching Shakespeare Institute. I need help. And I wish to do my part as well.

The idea of studying the plays the Institute plans to address this summer is reason enough for me to apply, but the idea of studying them in an attempt to reintegrate them into the curriculum in the wake of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top is the real reason. I want to look into ways to use Shakespeare more interactively with the students, as well as finding ways to force them to wallow in his work on their own. I want students to have Shakespearian allusions and references at their disposal. I want them to know the vocabulary. I want them to be able to connect the characters and situations to today’s world, and discover a nuance previously unknown. If, as Marjorie Garber argues, Shakespeare reflects, anticipates and shapes both his own and our culture, I want today’s students to take a part in that. It seems to me that the Institute is a perfect opportunity to approach Shakespeare with the old school passion that drove me into the classroom in the first place, but also an opportunity to tackle the plays with 21st century technology and pedagogical theory in mind as well.

In all honesty, I didn’t develop a passion for William Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets until relatively recently. I devoured the standard fare in high school, college and graduate school, of course: in my Family Systems Therapy seminar, for example, we spent a wonderful three hours dissecting King Lear’s behavior towards his daughter in the light of familial power grids. But one year into my current job teaching English, I was showing the film Henry V, which I had never read, to my Honors Sophomore English class, in order to assign them an analytic essay. I read the play, and then reread it. I found more of the lines familiar to me than I thought. I spent some time wallowing in the historical analogies (this was right smack in the middle of President Bush’s foray into the Iraq war, and the Prince Hal/Dubya comparisons were all over the pages of the New York Times). I cracked open Henry IV, then Richard III, and pretty soon, I was haunting the web for news about any of these plays going on stage anywhere near me. The rest, as they say, is history.

I’m often told the best way to inspire students is to inspire yourself. After a summer studying the Henry plays and Richard III, I managed to cook up a week-long unit on the Evil Guy Speech in Shakespeare for my sophomores. The idea was to get them to memorize a speech of their choice in which an antagonist, be it Aaron the Moor, Richard III or Iago, would spill his plans, and then find a contemporary scenario in which this villain would thrive. I assigned a compare and contrast essay, and to me, the idea was simplicity itself: “Tell why Shylock would have thrived at Enron! Or how about Lady Macbeth in the world of fashion? Go to it, people. This essay will write itself.”

And it would have, if I had spent more time going over current events with them. Or if I had made the choice of characters wider (famous lovers, for example? or military advisers?) and given them more options to explore. The idea was sound enough, but in my private lesson plans, under “Explore Play,” I’d simply noted that the language would draw them in. I’d not made any effort to “sell” the material, whether out of intellectual arrogance or naiveté. As a result, I got about fifty essays basically saying that Lady Macbeth would have excelled in fashion. Because, you know, she’s ruthless. Like Meryl Streep in that Prada movie.

The following year, the lesson was much more successful: students were asked to find correlations between a modern-day icon of their choice and a corresponding character of their choice from Hamlet, Henry V or Macbeth. Some students glommed on to an interest I was taking in President Nixon at the time and cooked up arguments concerning Macbeth, Watergate and the notion of Abuse of Power; many students found moody grunge and pop rock stars to tie to Hamlet’s weariness with a corrupt and “phony” world. A few took the high road and argued that guys like Bardolph and Nym were just like Oliver North, John Dean and former NSA analyst Russell Tice, since their own base natures were consistent when their superior threw the book at them, making the superior the hypocrite and them the “tragic” heroes. What the essays lacked in historical perspective, they more than made up for in tone and enthusiasm. I have rarely enjoyed reading such dubious arguments as much as I did then.

Those lessons are currently ancient history. My high school did not make AYP for three years in a row, and as a result, we rewrote the course into a World Literature and Communication class, with an emphasis on incremental English and Reading skills. This is necessary in many ways: the complaint that too many teachers approach the arts as if they were literature professors is a justified one. But I firmly believe that, in teaching content, one teaches skills as well. My three-play unit on Shakespeare has been truncated to one (Macbeth), while Romeo and Juliet has disappeared from the freshman curriculum altogether. That makes the time remaining spent on Shakespeare that much more valuable, and I feel the Institute would be a good way to make the most of this time.

I have a voracious appetite for the works of William Shakespeare. I’m relatively tech savvy, with interpersonal skills and the discipline and focus necessary to embark on a long-term project such as this. I want to contribute ideas and hear the ideas of others. I absolutely love the idea of collaborating with a diverse group of teachers, all with a common goal, and I think I would be of considerable use. Please accept my application for the summer institute, and feel free to contact me with any questions. William Shakespeare is not done with my students yet, nor they with him. If indeed “The weight of this sad time we must obey,” that’s not to also mean we can’t speak “what we ought to say.”

This week's book review:

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch

"Seasoned Argument--Needs to be Required Reading on Capitol Hill"

This week, the Chicago Tribune has been running a series of editorials calling for more vouchers, more teacher accountability, getting competitive, weeding out the bad teachers, giving kids a better chance at a good education, "dumping" failing schools, etc. Militaristic language. Take no prisoners. Seek and destroy. Etc. I should have seen all this coming years ago. I mean, it's no compliment to my intelligence that I had to have colleagues complain about Education Secretary Arnie Duncan for the past year now before I could truly share in their ire. "I mean, the guy ran the CTA!" a friend vented one day over lunch. "What were they thinking?"

"Well, he improved scheduling and budget issues," I intoned wisely, clutching that day's paper ("Duncan Named Ed Secretary: He Improved CTA Budgets and Schedules!" emblazoned on the front).

"Yeah, but if kids could be handled like a Metra line, we wouldn't have Head Start and Title I."

It is Duncan's sort of thinking about education, as per the Tribune's editorials, or John Stossel, or any number of well-meaning fools, that has aggravated me the most about public discussions concerning the profession that makes all other professions possible. "Dump" the crappy teachers (am I one of them? I don't think so, but then, I haven't yet seen my students' Prairie State averages compared with others'.) "Lose" the substandard schools (and do what? bring in outside experts? why not bring them in now? because we already did and the kids are still faililng?). In education, you gotta deliver, and if we were delivering, why, our kids would all be rocket scientists. You get a salary, don't you? For what, letting them fail? Get to work, pal. Some of us have "full time jobs" and we actually have to earn our living.

I know. I'm incredibly repressed. It makes me quite the hit at parties.

With this attitude, I picked up Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System, figuring it would soothe my troubled soul somewhat about how my profession has been maligned over the past few decades (it did) but also hoping it would give appropriate weight to the counter arguments mucking the problem up. Put it another way: What are the reformists doing right, what can we keep, and what do we need to ditch before it does further harm?

Ravitch's book doesn't read like a big "eff you!" to NCLB or anything, but that's because she was initially behind it. The lauded education historian trots out her thinking (briefly) early on about teacher and school accountability, the viability of school choice and the necessity for continued testing, but she's quick to point out what she saw wrong with it all. She's reliable. She's got no particular political agenda; she only wants what's best for schools, and by her way of thinking, the current rage about "school reform" will do but nothing to fix our beleaguered school system and educate our next generation.

Ravitch has plenty of hard evidence, and not all of it is conclusive, which she is the first to point out. She argues that, though the jury is still out concerning the effectiveness of vouchers and, to a lesser extent, charter schools, there's no conclusive evidence that they provide a better education, not when you look at test scores, attrition rates, selective enrollment practices and overall competence. "[Charter schools have:] demonstrated that youngsters from some of the toughest neighborhoods in the nation can succeed in a safe and structured environment, if they have supportive parents and are willing to work hard, spend long days in school, and comply with the school's expectations," she writes. "They can't throw out the kids who do not work hard or the kids who have many absences or the kids who are disrespectful or the kids whose parents are absent or inattentive. They have to find ways to educate even those students who do not want to be there. That's the dilemma of public education."

She labels No Child Left Behind, and Obama's current Race to the Top, as all stick, no carrot, quite rightly arguing that, if all we're out to do is "punish" bad teachers, shouldn't we be examining what these "punishments" will to do improve education for the students? (Not much, as it turns out, if anything). Teacher evaluations are notoriously spotty, based on a ridiculously small amount of time and an attempt to objectify something beyond the pale of subjectivity. In her discussion of teacher fallibility, I'm reminded of what Bill Maher said in a recent column: There are always going to be bad teachers. Even Yale has crappy teachers. They must--they gave us George Bush.

She even dissects philanthropists like Bill Gates and the Walton Family Foundation, calling them the "billionaire boys' clubs" and asserting that, even though these entrepreneurs are engaged in laudable and noble efforts, they are remarkably reluctant to keep educators in a position to police education. They prefer instead to rely on trends (smaller schools, for example) that, while not without merit, do not produce the immediate panacea they initially thought they would. For example, Gates at one point argued that a school full of teachers in the "top quartile" would "erase" the achievement gap between blacks and whites; an argument like that is like saying, well, why not fill the Chicago Police Department with Olympic triathletes with 180 IQs so we can erase crime?

Overall, Ravitch's point is to take down the "invisible hand" theory a peg or two in its applicability to education. She argues (and I tend to agree with her) that the principles of good business do not work as well with education. Tests are not nearly reliable enough an indicator of a child's education, to say nothing of a teacher's effectiveness (though we still need them as barometers, of course); reform, if it is to be successful, is a complex effort that will span years, without always showing tangible results. When doctors became judged on the well being of their patients, they stopped taking the terminally ill, the risky procedures, the patients who really needed care but weren't likely to pull through, because it would then reflect on the doctors' performance. The low-performers, likewise, or the delinquents, or the low-ability aren't likely to get top-notch teachers lining up to help them if those teachers are judged on their pupils' ability to get a 36 on their ACTs.

Ravitch has no tone of outrage or weariness, and she does not entirely scrap Milton Friedman. But in the end, her point is clear: You can't run a school like a Fortune 500 company. She calls for a content- and skills-based curriculum encompassing not just math and reading (those subjects most heavily tested), but one including science, the arts, literature, history, geography, civics, music. We've got to discard this inanity that it doesn't matter what you teach the kids as long as you teach them how to learn. That's crap, and the countries currently kicking our asses in education have never done it that way. Look at Finland: something like a 100 percent literacy rate, with across-the-board learning goals and a strong teacher's union. We can certainly do better as educators, but it doesn't all happen inside our classrooms.

Bravo, Professor Ravitch. Get the word out.

FURTHER READING:

Ravitch interviewed by Democracynow.org. Further history of the accountability movement and how she came to look at it the way she does now.

Lunch with my old man

Lunch with my old man

Here, Dad changes my ring tone to something suitably masculine and hard core. So. Who is this "Boy George" person?

The Rage is Not About Health Care." From today's Times, by Frank Rich. Who knew?

Vice-Presidential Potty Mouthes

Vice President Joe Biden's f-bomb after President Obama's passage of the health care bill, coupled with former Vice President Cheney's snarled "go (bleep) yourself" from a few years ago, was shocking. Utterly shocking. Truly and utterly shocking. It's language we haven't heard from the esteemed second banana of the Oval Office...except for a few notable examples. The Flannel Diaries presents an exhausting study of White House f-bombs, culled from the Flannel Diaries' Official Presidential Archives:

"As far as Indochina was concerned, I stated over and over again that it was essential during that period that the United States make it clear that we would not tolerate Indochina falling under Communist domination. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, I stated over and over again that they could all go (bleep) themselves."
--Vice President Richard Nixon, debate with John F. Kennedy

“In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.” Off camera: "What the (bleep) does that mean, anyway?"
--Vice President Spiro Agnew, on Watergate

“Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love. And (bleeping). (Bleeping) is pretty powerful too."
--Vice President Nelson Rockefeller

“Running for President is physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually the most demanding single undertaking I can envisage unless it's (bleeping) Nancy Reagan. Score!"
--Vice President Walter Mondale, on his campaign for President

"Why Iraq? Why Iraq? Why the (bleep) not?"
--Vice President Dan Quayle, on the Persian Gulf war

"(Bleep) me."
--Vice President Al Gore, on the 2000 election

"Bullets in Madison Schwings at Schuba's: Episode II

Missed Episode I? Go read it first. Done? Good. Continue, mes enfants.

I'm on a plane with Bullets in Madison, and I'm going to die.

Yeah, I know. I said that already. But here's the part where it actually happens. Beforehand, we were all going to die. Beforehand we were only on a plane ride to Chicago for the band's concert at Schuba's, and everything was hunky-dory. If boring. With Morton learning elementary Spanish, Sandberg retiring to the men's room every ten minutes for "him-time" and the saxophonist getting high on ventilated air, I had nothing else to do but write up analyses and reflections on Bullets in Madison's music and performances. And seriously, who wants to read that?

But now, things are different. The captain has made it clear he's nowhere within driving distance of being able to land the plane without slam-dunking it into Lake Michigan. The plane is spinning through the air like fabric softener in a dryer. And all of us are cursing ourselves for hooting at the airline stewardess to give lap dances instead of paying attention to her instructions about turning our seat cushions into flotation devices. Still, as the band has reminded me, the new album, We Became Your Family When You Died is available for free download, so at least their lives have meaning. I, meanwhile, have yet to visit my ailing father in a nursing home, pay the last ten years' worth of taxes, and watch the rest of my Eight is Enough DVD series, so clearly, I've got a lot weighing on my conscience.

But before I can come to some sort of emotional grip over my unfulfilled ambitions, the band goes totally China Syndrome. This is too good to pass up. As the plane continues to plummet towards the earth, I settle back, light a cigarette, and begin to take notes.

“Oh shit! We’re all going to die!” yells Losch.

“Agh! My hair!” shrieks Sandberg, grabbing his baby oil and diving for the lavatory.

“What did he just say?” asks the saxophonist, sticking a Q-tip up his nose.

“Guys…I have a confession.” Morton, ignoring the laws of physics and gravitational pull, struggles to unbuckle his seat belt. “I need you all to know this before we’re all dead. I’m—“

“Gay. We know.” Losch pats his shoulder. “It’s okay.”

Sandberg, back from the bathroom, and the saxophonist are nodding. Morton looks pained. “No. No, that’s not it.”

“Sure, buddy. Whatever you say. You’re not gay.” Losch winks, taps his finger on his nose. Sandberg snickers.

“Look, I’m really not gay. Why would I lie about that now? No, it’s just that I've been taking rent money from our petty cash. It’s been eating away at me ever since. I just wanted to clear my conscience.”

“Riiiight.” Sandberg puffs his cheeks out. “Thief. You betcha.” He goes to pat Morton on the shoulder, but when Morton recoils, he yanks out a Hand-I-Wipe and hurriedly scrubs up.

“You’re such a tough, masculine spare change robbing type,” says Losch, flapping his wrists and simpering when Morton’s back is turned. Sandberg, cheered by how attention has been diverted from his bathroom shenanigans, takes special pains to laugh obnoxiously at Morton’s expense.

“It’s okay to be who you are,” says the saxophonist, desperately rummaging through his bag for more glue.

"It's not okay to steal from your friends!" Morton yells, getting exasperated.

"But it is okay to be homosexual," Losch reassures him. "We've known for years."

“Who keeps grabbing my butt?" Morton snaps, whirling around.

"Whoops. Sorry." I withdraw my offending limb. "I thought you'd be okay with it now."

"I'm not. Because I'm not gay."

“I am,” announces the saxophonist. “I think. Is it gay if you make out with guys?”

“Nah,” I reassure him. “Only if you like it.”

“Oh. I guess I’m straight, then.”

“I thought I was gay in grade school,” Sandberg announces. “Turns out I was just really into gymnastics.”

“I’m a robber!” shrieks Morton, stamping his foot. “I’m not—oh Jesus Christ, you idiots, I’m--”

“My dark secret is kleptomania,” says Sandberg. “I stole my dad’s insulin and sold it to school kids.”

“I ducked out of cab fare once,” says Losch. “After I knifed the driver.”

Here, they launch into a round of Last Confessions that would have done Stillwater proud.

“I knocked over an old lady once,” says Sandberg. “She had the seat on the bus behind the DVD player.”

“I used to club baby seals,” says the saxophonist. “After I robbed a bank.”

“I never learned to read!” shrieks Losch.

“I took some pictures of Brendan in the shower,” says Sandberg.

“I burned my ex-girlfriend’s summer home down,” says Losch.

“I voted Republican in 2000,” says the saxophonist, at which point we all stuff our shoes into our carry-on bags and proceed to beat him over the head with them. Which only seems fair. You know, because of that war thing.

This entire time, the plane has been spinning out of control faster and faster. Morton has given up trying to wipe his conscience clean and is leafing through a Spanish Bible. The other band members are composing themselves for the Big Adios. “This is it!” yells Sandberg, clutching his copy of Richard Dawkins (and Losch’s Swank) to his chest. “I’m ready to meet God! If there is a God! Which there isn’t!”

“Death can’t be as bad as this,” mutters Losch, tuning his guitar.

“Can I borrow fifty dollars?” the saxophonist mutters to me, nursing two black eyes.

“En caso de una emergencia su cojín de asiento puede ser usado como un dispositivo de emisión,” sings Morton, carefully putting on a crucifix necklace.

“Fuck you all,” says Sandberg.

Then, sudden stability. The plane stops spinning. Our stomachs settle.

The captain gets on the mike: “Woo. Sorry about that, folks. No more Scotch for breakfast for this guy. Anyway, we’ll be landing in about twenty minutes.”

A heavy, ponderous silence envelopes the cabin. There is an abundance of feet-shuffling. No one makes eye contact. Some clearing of throats. The saxophonist engages in some hurried snorting of Bausch & Lomb contact solution.

Then, several dark, brooding glances are thrown surreptitiously my way. I can see it passing through their minds right in front of me: This guy is a liability. He knows too much.

I visibly gulp. I square my shoulders. I make sure my notebook is safely stashed in my undershorts. “Look, we can agree to be adults about this,” I say, rubbing my hands together nervously. “I can keep it all confidential. Trust me.”

They all look at each other. Nods are exchanged silently. Knowing glances fly through the air.

“We’ll just have to trust each other,” says Sandberg, scheming to push me out the airplane window and throw Losch’s copy of Swank after me.

“Trust is important,” says Losch, scheming to dope me up, stick me in a car and run me over the Canal Street bridge at ninety-five miles an hour.

“Without trust, where are we in this crazy world,” agrees Morton, scheming to lock me in a room with the rest of his asshole band members and set the walls on fire. After borrowing some petty cash.

“How about that fifty dollars?” says the saxophonist, scheming to get high on fifty dollars’ worth of drugs.

Matters of life and death always bring out the best and worst of people. Unless you’re Bullets in Madison, in which case they only bring out the worst. No matter. Having seen what I’ve seen and heard what I’ve heard, I give myself about two days more to live before their bumbling efforts to bump me off finally hit paydirt. Still, don't let my fate rule your opinion. Their new album is totally worth checking out, provided you don’t have to spend any time alone with them.

So then, dear readers, until my moldering, violated corpse is discovered at the bottom of Lake Michigan by the proper authorities, I remain, as always, immeasurably jealous of anyone who doesn't have this shit job.

NEXT WEEK'S COLUMN: The band takes me fishing.

Bullets in Madison Schwings at Schuba's: Episode I

I’m on a plane ride to Chicago with Bullets in Madison, and we're all going to die.

Of course, this particular plane ride didn’t start out that way. At first, I thought only I was going to die. Having sat through another two-hour ordeal they call a concert at Schaumburg’s Dave and Buster's, I was more than ready to take my toaster into the bathtub, assuming their piledriver melodies and screeching vocals didn't do the job. The new album, We Became your Family When You Died, is saturating the airwaves, though, and if you drop the ball halfway through the game, you get...bad...scores (insert sports metaphor here).

We’ve been in the air for half an hour, maybe ten, and we’ve been cruising comfortably long enough for Sandberg to disappear into the closet-sized bathroom ten times to “check his hair,” although guitarist Brendan Losch pointed out at least twice that one didn’t need baby oil and dirty magazines to “check hair,” particularly when the person doing the hair-checking didn’t have any hair, to which Sandberg responded that Brendan was maybe too mouthy for his own good and should clam up a little if he didn’t want a mouth full of seat cushion. Lead singer and keyboardist John Morton has spent the majority of the flight leafing through Spanish language emergency cards stuffed in the fronts of seats, trying to bone up on his Spanish based on rudimentary drawings of and emergency procedures. The saxophonist, whose name I haven’t yet bothered to learn, has been throwing together hallucinogenics out of seat upholstery and shaving cream. (He and I get along just fine.)

“Well, I think I got my follicles in place this time,” Sandberg says, emerging from the bathroom and wiping his palms on his denim pants.

“You took long enough,” snarls Losch, swiping his copy of Swank from Sandberg’s sticky grip.

“Por favor no lanze toallas de papel en los servicios,” says Morton, stuffing his pockets with free airline peanuts.

“I can smell colors,” says the saxophonist, lighting up a banana.

“Enough screwing around,” I say, waving away the scent of United’s mute grey and scorched fruit. “Let’s do an interview. How would you describe the tour so far?”

“Engaging,” says Sandberg, sneaking another peek at Losch’s magazine.

“I’ve had better,” says Losch, burying his magazine into his bag.

“Saliendo se caen los pies pegarás un tiro primero.,” says Morton, admiring his own reflection in a nearby mirror.

“What tour?” asks the saxophonist, burying his face into a Ziploc of airplane glue.

“Okay then. Follow up question.” I squint at my notes, trying to decipher the journalistic endeavors from the one-liners I’d copied down while watching Almost Famous. “If your band were a mountain, which one would it be?”

“The K2,” says Losch. “Because we’re at the top of the world.”

“That’s not the K2,” says Sandberg. “You’re an idiot.”

“We’re the Mount Everest of indie rock,” boasts Morton. “Because you can’t beat us.”

“Unlike Sandberg,” says Losch, at which point we all break up laughing, while Sandberg flounces off into the lavatory to sulk by himself.

“We’re the Himalayas,” says the saxophonist.

“We’re the Himalayas on top of the Andes,” says Morton.

“We’re the Himalayas and Andes on top of a really big building,” declares Sandberg, who has finished pouting relatively quickly.

“This is a stupid question,” says Losch. “Who invited this guy?”

At this point, before I can defend myself, the captain’s voice comes piping over the cabin speakers. Throughout the entire flight, we’ve heard nary a peep out of the cockpit, except for the usual this-is-your-captain-we’ll-be-crusing-at-ten-million-feet bit and the old oh-I-didn’t-know-the-mike-was-on-and-I-so-wasn’t-checking-ESPN-scores-in-here bit. Now, however, I’m hearing words that would make John McClain grip the sides of his armrests in panic: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. I’m afraid we’re experiencing some altitude alignment problems. We fully expect—“

Suddenly, the plan begins plummeting towards the earth at a deadly speed. Luggage and music equipment is flying all over the cabin. A screech enveloped the cabin. My stomach drops into my feet and I scream like a 1960s-era teenaged Beatles fan told Paul McCartney just married her evil stepsister.

My time on this earth is suddenly limited. And I'm stuck with an indie rock band.

I immediately begin weeping.

"Hey, don't do that." "Everything will work out okay." "Just relax, pal. We're going to make it."

Soothing words. I begin to calm down.

"Morton!" yells Losch. "You ate all the goddam airline peanuts."

Now we're all weeping, except Morton, who grabs a last package of peanuts from his jacket and devours it. He is unrepentant. We are unconsoled. I am disconsolate. I am out of ink.

This ends Episode I. Click here for the end of this extremely stupid story.

Going Mobile

On a quest for the perfect blog software...

Tso: The (un)Heroic Couplets

1
The wheel finds its rut within the road,
And like as not, so Tso finds his true voice
By parroting those lesser minds before:
"No taxes! And to hell with all the poor!"

2
The infantile penis jokes abound,
And male dancers about Tso's head surround.

3
A fool finds strength from fools who've spoke before;
Tso'd have a shot, but oh! he's such a bore:
"No deficit! Except if I don't get
My home exemption from the government."

4
Whose beer I drank, I'm not aware,
He's hiding in the restroom there;
I do not think he'll be out soon
Since, of my point, he seems quite scared.
They say the even-tempered minds
Find ample room to disagree,
But even-tempered's not a trait
It's possible, round Tso, to be.

5
Oh day that's long and without reprieve--
You force submission and neglect my needs.
Still, compared to Tso, I'm more than legit,
Considering his impotence and bestial habit.

LAYOUT--My editor asked for a movie review for this month's A&E pages. So, here 'tis.

P.S. For all those out partying on St. Paddy's day tonight whilst I tarry here...fuck you all.

An Education deserves attention
It’s not hard to admit—I was prejudiced in favor of An Education before walking into the theater. For one thing, Lone Scherfig’s narrative of a young English schoolgirl seduced by a con man (played to snake oil salesman-perfection by Peter Sarsgaard) wasn’t getting much Oscar press. Avatar was getting a going-over by film critics about whether James Cameron was throwing around too many special effects and not enough original story, while Jeff Bridges’ tour de force in Crazy Heart was only starting to leak into the headlines.

But An Education, from a memoir by Lynn Barber and a script by Nick Hornby (About a Boy), wasn’t getting much commentary. And that’s a shame—the film is engaging and contemplative, playing an old, familiar song yet still managing to say something new.

Carey Mulligan is Jenny, a precocious sixteen-year-old who gets a ride from David (Sarsgaard), a mid-thirties motorist, in the pouring rain. The two get to talking, and with one thing and another, become pretty friendly. He marvels up front at how literate and cultured she is, while Jenny bemoans her dreary life in her working class neighborhood. It’s only a matter of time before David is wooing her, first taking her to a concert and dinner with friends, then later spiriting her to Oxford to meet his buddy C.S. Lewis.

It’s a bit of a stretch to imagine David getting away with this, but Scherfig pulls it off with several scenes in which David seduces Jenny’s family just as flawlessly as he does her: her father Jack (Alfred Molina) and mother Marjorie (Cara Seymour) are all too willing to pull the wool over their own eyes after David shows up with a bottle of wine and some good conversation. “Knowing a famous author is better than becoming one,” Jack tells his daughter at one point. “It shows you’re connected.” And yes, you can spend the weekend with a man twice your age. Blech.

Jenny becomes tight with David and his friends Danny and Helen (Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike), although the parties, concerts and weekend trips don’t quite explain their habit of stealing paintings from open houses, or David’s real estate scams. Clearly, this guy is more than a little shady, but Jenny doesn’t care, or at least she doesn’t care enough. It’s only a matter of time before seduction rears its head, but it’s pulled off tastefully enough.

There is a romance, physical intimacy (more cringe-inducing than anything else), a marriage proposal, the works. Her English teacher warns her of the pitfall before her, while her headmistress (Emma Thompson) tells her off in a beautifully scathing scene. But Jenny, anyone at that age, can’t be told anything by anyone over thirty, and that’s when the tragedy kicks in. (Am I hinting at anything here? Nah.)

Thankfully, An Education doesn’t fall into any clichés or narrative fallbacks of the seduction narrative. Mulligan was up for Best Actress for her performance, and it’s hard to justify her getting passed over. Her performance makes you want to both ride to Jenny’s rescue and scream yourself hoarse at her idiocy. Sarsgaard didn’t even get an Oscar nod, which is a shame. His character oozes duplicity, and at times, he comes off as even younger than Mulligan, even while he’s using his age like a cloak to cover up his ugly little secrets. Their futures don’t look especially promising—Mulligan is in a Wall Street sequel next year, while Sarsgaard is playing second fiddle to Ryan Reynolds in the upcoming Green Lantern. However, An Education is a thoughtful piece of work that will hopefully stand the test of time and become the yardstick these two fine actors are measured by in years to come.

LAYOUT--Co-workers wanted To Kill a Mockingbird lesson plans. So I'm submitting these. That'll show them--don't ask me for nothing.

Still waiting to get out of here and go drink green beer.

From The Tragedy of a High School Newspaper, Part II

By William Shakespeare

ACT III Scene ii

Enter hautboys, pages, servants, who survey the empty computer lab, shrug their shoulders and leave. Then, enter Mr. L., Adviser, pale and stoop-shouldered, with trouble concealing his displeasure at the empty lab. Also, he has a bad back.

L.
That which hath given them software
For layout, hath been given to a sponge. E’en though
The hour grows late, and the deadline approacheth,
I fear next week not. Since the path to publication
Is traditionally thorny and steep, every ounce
Of patience I possess shall empower me to not
Yell and scream at anyone upon late night,
When, like the cat I’ the adage, they whine
About their homework, social obligations and
Empty pages. None shall give me pause,
And I shall champion myself to the utterance.

Enter Editor

L
What would thou have, thou saucy boy?

Editor
My lord, as I did survey the parking lot,
I did observe several cars taking flight,
The with to begin the weekend; the without
To neglect all newspaper duties.

L
Go throw dust into the wind and let it
Blow back in thine face, thou lily-livered coward.
I am but one who, buffeted by the winds of fate,
Can do no more than curse, and hear my own voice
Thrown back at me. Begone, vile cretin!

Editor
Okay, whatever.

Exuent

And now, a memo from Channel 9

Things the WGN anchors aren’t allowed to say any more.
 
Apparently, Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels sent a memo with over 100 phrases, words and the like that must not be uttered on the airwaves under any circumstance.
 
 At first, I thought this was stupid, if not alarming: are we dumbing down news language yet again? Oh dear God. Is “torpor” shooting too high for our Chicago audience?
 
Turns out I was mistaken. While some of the items on the list have a dubious quality (“laud” and “icon” are now forbidden? was there some cock-up of which I’m unaware?), others are more than fine with me. Such as “Giving 110%”;  “Completely destroyed, completely abolished, completely finished or any other completely redundant use”; “fatal death”; “the fact of the matter.” I make fun of these nuggets in class often enough. Feels good to see the pros axing them as well.

Kids are getting an earful from counseling about college entrance. So I'm hiding in the back, grading papers and reading Salon.com:

Glenn Beck and Eric Massa waste America's time.

Sarah Palin is of no importance.

Does Limbaugh remember 1994? Probably not.

Good stuff.

My First Sonnet

or

Water in the desert

The empty vessel, overflowing though
Its brim be wide, remains, I do so hold,
A porous liability, since so
Inadequate its sides when filled with holes.

A leaky bucket’s no alternative
When water in the desert’s found no more;
Dehydrated, no comfort do we feel
In noting water drops outside our doors.

Encircle your hands about, and bring them down;
No time is there for transport, vain or no;
You cannot say you drink enough, e’en now
When nourishment’s a dream, or just for show.

Too far to walk, too high the price to pay;
That water serves if thou, to drink, would stay.

NCTE's Definition of 21st Century Literacy, from about two years ago. What struck me as interesting: One bullet point says that today's writers "Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information." This, after multiple studies have documented just how bad multitaskers are at multitasking, that when you multitask, you do multiple chores badly, whereas focusing on one task at a time results in greater productivity. This, when we see what happens when today's news and print consumers are barraged with voices and stories fighting for their attention, so that even less sinks in than previously.

Multitasking is killing literacy. The secret is out. Shame on you, NCTE.

Your position should be, "21st century writers need to be able to select and filter multiple streams of communication, so as to absorb more and worthwhile information." But then, you didn't put me on this committee.

Slightly altered copy ghost written for a client today:

Real Men Moisturize

by Kara Sellalot, Retail Representative

My friend Mark laughed out loud when he saw me putting together a list of beauty tips for men. At the top: “Guys, make sure you keep your hands and nails presentable by applying hand cream several times a day.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed. “Guys don’t do that kind of thing.”

I just smiled and waited. Sure enough, his girlfriend, who’d overheard him, walked in the door.

“You do need hand cream, Mark,” she said, grabbing one of his hands and pointing at it accusingly. “Do you have any idea how rough your hands are? I feel like you’re wearing garden gloves when we get all mushy.”

“Hey, I’m a man,” he asserted. “I don’t use hand cream. It’s not my thing.”

Mark may be a man. But he also likes handjobs. Ten minutes later, Mark was using Biotone hand cream. It keeps hangnails at bay, making him more professional-looking. It softened his cuticles, making his hands much more appealing at first glance. And it helps him avoid infections, which his hands were prone to because of the skin’s weakness due to dryness and cracks.

I left Mark, Mr. I’m-not-a-hand-cream-guy, with two bottles of moisturizer and a beaming, happy girlfriend.

"But why do his hands matter if you're the one doing the servicing?" I asked innocently.

"Shut up," she hissed. "You got your commission, didn't you?"

Going back to school for a doctorate is my favorite wet dream. And then I read this: The Big Lie About the Life of the Mind. It's like a bucket of cold water dumped in my lap.

Finally, Fox gives me something that makes me feel good

"I'm Not Saying Your Mother's a Whore: Jon Stewart on the O'Reilly Factor. I don't know, seems to me the points Mr. Stewart makes are irrefutable, especially when you Youtube some of Fox and Friends' more telling moments. I'm going to use some of this banter as examples of various rhetorical tropes. There's analogy, erotesis, synechdoche, and so many others that I have to change my pants after listing them. Enjoy.

My Interview with Sarah Palin Part III

Click here for the first dumb part | Click here for the second even dumber part

Again, all quotes taken from Palin's "book." Dramamine, necessary for a first reading, can be purchased at most drug stores.

ME: Ms. Palin, since we spoke last, you've given a rousing speech at the first National Tea Party Convention, where you made fun of our president for being a law professor at the lectern, and your foreign policy suggestion boils down to basically: "Reagan rocked. I say we win like he did." This is a pretty good sedgway to your own mind and how it works. You took some heat for not having enough of an intellect to tackle the job. You want to clear that up now?

SP: “[My qualifications go] beyond common sense conservatism and traditional values to the fact that [Todd and I] are everyday Americans. We know what it’s like to have to make payroll and take care of employees. We know what it’s like to be on a tight budget and wonder how we’re going to pay for our own health care, let alone college tuition. We know what it’s like to work union jobs, to be blue-collar, white-collar, to have our kids in public schools.” (221)

ME: That makes about 300 million Americans qualified for the job. Isn’t this democracy thing great? Still, I understand Katie Couric was a little dubious about your grasp of current events?

SP: “Over the past several months… I had been interviewed on energy and security issues by numerous national media outlets, including her hometown newspaper, the New York Times, for whom I had also penned an op-ed earlier in the year on another issue. Had she read those, I wondered?” (277)

ME: Probably not. But then, she was asking what you read, not what you wrote. Right?

SP: Yes. (44)

ME: Speaking of writing, there are some real gems of composition in your book. What was it you said about running that one time?

SP: “As the soles of my shoes hit the soft ground, I pushed past the tall cottonwood trees in a euphoric cadence, and meandered through willow branches that the moose munched on.” (102)

ME: [Pause] Ms. Palin, that is beautiful. I wish my kids could write shit like that. What else you got?

SP: “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” (133)

ME: And if God had not intended for men to marry other men, why did He give them penises!

SP: …

ME: You want to see my penis?

SP: …no… (16)

ME: Okay. Too soon. Sorry. Let’s talk about your family.

SP: “Let’s debate ideas. Let’s argue about legislation and policy. Let’s talk about political philosophy. But leave my children alone.” (372)

ME: Right. Apologies.

SP: “It was reported nationally that a New York judge . . . blasted me for bringing Trig onstage during the campaign. . . No one told me that running for office means a woman candidate has to switch off her maternal instincts and hide her children from view. If that’s required, then count me out.”(372)

ME: But I thought you wanted to leave them out. Then why did you bring him…

SP: “Gossipmongers had been] spreading lies that Todd and I were divorcing…Dang, I thought. Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd?” (352)

ME: I have, actually. Does he swing?

SP: Yes. (44)

ME: Excellent. [Makes note] But when did all this gossip happen happen?

SP: “A group of left-wing bloggers had been yakking about porn pictures and videos of me that they threatened would soon be released to the public.” (348)

ME: Okay, Ms. Palin. This is getting seriously hot. But if you don’t want to bring up your family, why do you keep bringing up your family?

SP: “[Being] married to Todd, I was also accused of literally being ‘in bed’ with the oil industry.

ME: Ah. Like with TransCanada Alaska.

SP: I had to explain that as a blue-collar union hand, a production operator wearing a hard hat and steel-toed boots, Todd wasn’t calling the shots for the corporate bosses in London. In fact, I told Alaskans, ‘Todd’s not in management. He actually works.’” (95)

ME: If he’s swinging with you, I guess he does. Any other family members you don’t want to talk about?

SP: “Lena [Palin, Ms. Palin’s grandmother-in-law] is a tough frontier woman. How many American women do you know who can weave a grass basket; sew squirrel skins into a garment and adorn it with intricate beadwork; haul a thousand salmon out of the ocean, get them to market in a sailboat, then take some home, fillet them, and serve them for dinner?” (119)

ME: [Pause] What the fuck are you talking about?

SP: “We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary Americans, could be a much-needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington D.C.” (221)

ME: Ah. I see. [awkward pause] You’re yanking my chain, right?

SP: “I hope you get a good laugh as well!” (405)

ME: I totally did! I actually took you seriously for a minute there! Ms. Palin, you realize you’re contradictory, shallow, full of party rhetoric that you barely understand the basics of and not even competent enough to helm a rowboat across the river. But you know what? I think this book, your grandstanding with the Tea Partiers and your Fox News schtick will actually do your political career some good. And that scares hell out of me.

SP: “[I am] so Alaska. I had to share. (405)

ME: And I’m forever glad you did. You sure you don’t want to see my penis?

SP: “God didn’t give me natural athleticism.” (30)

ME: That’s a very considerate turndown. By the way, your pipeline you’re always crowing about? The one you say is helping the economy already? It hasn’t been built yet. You knew that?

SP: “Oh. My. Gosh.” (51)

ME: Well, these mistakes will happen.

SP: “Dang, I must be getting old.” (401)

ME: Not old enough, unfortunately. Good night, Ms. Palin. And good night, America.

Fin

from politicalhumor.about.com. Sorry. Too lazy to do one myself.

My Interview with Sarah Palin Part II

Quotes taken from Going Rogue, just like always. Hey, I read the damned thing. Might as well make some use of it.

Click here for Part I.

ME: All right, Ms. Palin, I’ve had a chance to calm down and you’ve had a chance to Google economics, so we should be ready to start again, right? I’d like to get more into your tenure as governor. Now, what about this China bid thing? I understand you had an offer from them on the pipeline?

SP: “The bid, by Sinopec, bothered me. There was little doubt that the company could muster the manpower, technology, and funding necessary to do the job, but this proposal skated on the razor’s edge between the free-market and national sovereignty. An energy-thirsty Communist nation controlling Alaska’s natural gas reserves was not in the best interests of the state or our country.” (205)

ME: Unlike, say, oil deals with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. So why didn’t you give them the deal? I guess you would have had to have an ostensible reason.
SP: “It turned out Sinopec’s application was incomplete anyway. (205)

ME: Yeah, the Chinese are notorious for being lazy s.o.b.’s when it comes to paperwork. So who got the deal after all?

SP: “[The] Calgary-based TransCanada-Alaska, a firm that had not only met every single enforceable requirement of AGIA but exceeded them.” (205)

ME: Wow, that company with all those ties to your administration? The one you all but solicited, according to the AP? That’s a pretty sweet deal.

SP: “[National media is] too lazy to sift fact from fiction.” (203)

ME: Bastards.

SP: “It was one lie after another—from rape kits to Bridges to Nowhere. All easy enough to disprove if the press had done its job.” (237)

ME: Hey, what about that bridge? I understand there was some confusion as to whether or not you took federal money for it? And that the record states that you did?

SP: …

ME: Hmm. Well, we’ll chalk that issue up for a possible sequel. Let’s change gears a bit here: Matt Damon lambasted you for believing that dinosaurs were around two thousand years ago and that science is bogus. So to get the record straight: What’s your stance on evolution?

SP: “’[Science] proves parts of evolution…But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt.’”(217)

ME: [Lighting a cigarette] Makes sense.

SP: “And, by the way, I saw nothing wrong with students debating the merits of evolution in the classroom. If William F. Buckley—a devout Catholic and a world-class intellectual—could believe in the divine origins of man, why couldn’t I?” (219)

ME: Off the top of my head, because he wasn’t teaching a high school science course, and you’re not a world-class intellectual.

SP: “God says in Scripture, ‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the LORD Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.’” (22-23)

ME: That socialist prick! Sounds a lot like our current president, taking what we all have and distributing it to the poor.

SP: “I considered the Obama administration’s panicky effort to stimulate the economy by spending enormous amounts of borrowed money shortsighted and ill conceived.

ME: But doesn’t Jesus say, through Scripture, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me”?

SP: [The bailout] defied the lessons of history and common sense.

ME: So much for theologic/political consistency, folks.

SP: [Obama’s] nearly $1 trillion stimulus package was patently unfair both to future generations who will inherit our wasteful debt and to the everyday Americans who work very hard to pay the taxes that the administration seeks to spend at breakneck speed.” (357)

ME: Well, to be fair, President Bush did the exact same thing. He cut taxes and raised spending. And Senator McCain supported this, and so did you, if I’m not mistaken. That’s one reason the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006, and another reason you guys lost.

SP: [Rahm Emanuel], now President Obama’ chief of staff, … crafted and executed the ruthless 2006 campaign strategy that won back Congress for the Democrats…” (370)

ME: Oh. I see. It had nothing to do with two wars, Hurricane Katrina, failure to find WMDs…cutting taxes on the wealthy and increasing deficit spending to fight overseas for dubious causes?

SP: “Servicing the $1.5 trillion debt is a huge annual expenditure in the federal budget. . . Our overspending today could destroy our children’s future.” (389)

ME: That must be why Senator McCain voted with the Republicans seven times to raise the debt ceiling. Gotcha. By the way, according to the Chicago Tribune, the bailout is a fraction of a fraction of the deficit. Just so you know.

SP: “That’s not entirely true.” (87)

ME: No, it is true. You can look it up on the Treasury page itself. Look at the figures on the wars, if you want to talk high spending.

SP: “Today our sons and daughters are fighting in distant countries to protect our freedoms and to nurture freedom for others. I understand that many Americans are war-weary…

ME: Nah. We love wars.

SP: “… but we do have a responsibility to complete our missions in these countries so that we can keep our homeland safe. America must remain the strongest nation in the world in order to remain free. And our goal in the War on Terror must be the same as Reagan’s: ‘We won. They lost.’” (393)

ME: Boy, if Reagan were around today, this whole mess would be gone. All he’d have to do would be to tell Karzai, “Mister President, get rid of those terrorists.”

SP: “I was in high school the day Reagan took the oath of office. On the same day, minutes after he was sworn in, a band of Iranian militants released fifty-two Americans, after having held them—and our national pride—hostage for 444 days. I had followed the Iran hostage crisis and remember wondering why President Jimmy Carter didn’t act more decisively.

ME: I think his retrieval operation was pretty decisive. Even if it sucked.

SP: From my high schooler’s perspective, I thought the question was, Why did he allow America to be humiliated and pushed around?

ME: And your adult perspective has led you to think…?

SP: “The new president being sworn in radiated confidence and optimism. The enemies of freedom took notice. In years to come, people would ask, what did he have that Carter didn’t? To me, the answer was obvious. He had a steel spine.” (46)

ME: I think that, if you’re going to exchange arms for hostages and fund contras, not to mention orchestrate campaigns that result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans, you have to have a steel spine. That pansy Carter would have been running off to weep at Stockholm at word of the first dead nine-year-old El Salvadoran refugee. Right?

SP: “…no…” (16)

ME: Well, maybe not. Let’s take a short break while readers look up our contradictory assertions and come to the inevitable conclusion that I’m right. Sound good?

SP: “I [don’t] put much stock in fickle polls.” (6)

ME: And I don’t put much stock in fickle minds. So let’s give each other one more shot.

Interruption in interview here. Palin heads to library, and the interviewer heads to a neighborhood Wasilla bar and gets the snot beat out of him for playing The Dixie Chicks on the jukebox.

Next week: The exciting conclusion!

My Interview with Sarah Palin

All Palin dialogue taken from her book Going Rogue: An American Life, available anywhere fine hardcover memoirs are sold.

Handsome, young, budding and incredibly talented reporter walks up to a rustic cabin surrounded by rustic folks field-dressing moose and saluting the flag as only rustic people can do. He knocks on the door and Sarah Palin answers.

ME: Ms. Palin, I want to thank you for your time. I know that, being an ex-governor, you probably have tons of it, but still, holla. [Fist bumps galore here.]

SARAH PALIN: “That’s not entirely true.” (87)

ME: And you’re not entirely Ms. Frontier Woman of the New Millenium either, so let’s call it even.

They enter Palin’s living room.

ME: Okay. Let’s start with the basics. Now, I read Going Rogue, and I checked out your Facebook page…

SP: “Isn’t Facebook a terrific illustration of the power of American ingenuity?” (400)

ME: And by the way, your Mafia Wars score is un-frickin’-believable. But I think we ought to begin at the beginning. Start fresh. So. Tell me how you got to where you are today?

SP: “’Before I became governor…I was mayor of my hometown. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.’” (242)

ME: Ha ha! Take that, Martin Luther King, Jr.!

SP: “[An] individual’s commitment to his or her own business and family—that is significantly more important than any community leadership role.” (243)

ME: And take that, Jesus Christ!

SP: “[Government] experience doesn’t necessarily count for much.” (84)

ME: Well that leaves you in the clear all right. Now, you had a lot of people telling you you couldn’t be a mom and run for office, right?

SP: [Alaska Governor] Mukowski [when interviewing me for a Senate seat] …launched into a soliloquy on how tough it was on a family to serve in the Senate. It seemed to me that though he thought me competent enough to make his short list, the father in him felt compelled to protect me from the storm that is national politics.” (98)

ME: That sucks. Hell, you can prioritize, right? But then why didn’t you go for the Senate later, in 2006?

SP: “[Who would] be [my son’s] hockey manager?”

ME: But I thought you said…

SP: At that point in [my son Track’s] life, having an involved mom was more important to him—and to me—than having a mom with a powerful position in Washington, D.C.” (341)

ME: So a mom can do it, except when a mom can’t. Now, I understand these non-qualification qualifications didn’t really get the attention you felt they deserved? Particularly with the Katie Couric interview?

SP: “There was so much I could and should have said [to Katie Couric regarding foreign policy]…For instance that Alaska’s geographic position makes our relations with Pacific Rom countries of great strategic import, and that we’re the air crossroads of the world…

ME: Well, she was asking about experience, right? Not just situations, but your actual actions and decisions.

SP: That Russian bombers often play cat and mouse with our Air Force near Alaska’s airspace…

ME: Did you deal with that directly? What did you actually do?

SP: That I dealt with Canadian officials on a weekly basis and have signed agreements concerning everything from security to salmon fishing…

ME: Okay, you signed stuff. But what did you do?

SP: …and that NAFTA has significantly affected our economy…

ME: That’s what NAFTA does. Not you.

SP: That melting polar sea ice has created new trade routes but has also created security threats to North America…

ME: Look, I don’t think we’re communicating here…

SP: That Alaska takes on Japanese and Russian fishing trawlers that want to ravage the ocean floor…

ME: Goddamnit…

SP: That Chinese and Russian energy companies had both sought access to (and possible control of) our natural gas resources. That these and other countries were staking their own resource claims in Arctic waters while the U.S. sat on its hands.” (275)

ME: [Whining] Come on! In your years as governor, what did you actually do?

SP: “[The Governor’s mansion] came with a personal chef, but I unbudgeted the position. … The chef seemed so darned bored because the kids didn’t want anything fancy to eat.” (133)

ME: Ms. Palin, give me something specific or I’m hitting your baby.

SP: …

ME: Christ. Fine. Why don’t we take a break so people can check your non-rebuttal rebuttal out? And where are those little darlings of yours, anyway?

Click here for Part II of this completely idiotic thing.

From the entertainment wires: Natalie Portman refuses to bare all. The actress recently said she wouldn't do any more nude scenes after her Full Monty in Hotel Chevalier had Internet pervs doing still frame screensaver shots of it and throwing the images all over the Internet. Shame. Uh...anyone got a copy? My PrintScreen key seems to be working just fine...

Comments I returned to my sophomores today after spending agonizing hours reading their final essay exams.

What I Said on the assignment and in person the day I gave them the prompt…
MLA headings go in the top left-hand corner of the first page.
What They Must Have Heard...
“Left, right, what’s the difference? I won’t stand for petty politics in this classroom.”

What I Said
“Put your citations in proper punctuation” (Smith 4550).
What They Must Have Heard...
“Ah, guys, in this postmodern world, who’s to really say who said what? It’s all relative.”

What I Said...
“Can be,” “has been,” etc. is passive. Don’t have done this.
What They Must Have Heard...
“Passive voice rules. Because we all want to ‘pass’ this class, right? Who is with me?” (high fives for all)

What I Said...
If I see a fragment. I will fail you.
What They Must Have Heard...
“When writing an essay, you want to stay in the zone. Complete sentences be damned.”

What I Said...
Check the names and facts. Antigone was not a character in Whale Rider. Beowulf was not an Indian."
What They Must Have Heard...
“Most of the stuff we read was written so long ago, nobody knows anything about who wrote it. Consequently, we can pretty much make up whatever names we want.”

What I Said...
The title of a long work like Antigone or Beowulf is in italics. Shorter works like “Rama and Ravana” are in quotation marks.
What They Must Have Heard...
"Font styles are stupid."

What I Said...
“When you paste in quotations and the format is different” it’s really annoying. Don’t do this."
What They Must Have Heard...
“Fonts are limiting. You can’t encompass true writing in Times Roman. We cannot be boxed in, people. We are free thinkers.”

What I Said...
"A thesis must be an argument."
What They Must Have Heard...
“As long as there are words filling up the page, I’m satisfied.”

What I Said...
"A main idea must help prove that argument."
What They Must Have Heard...
“As long as there are words on the page, I’m satisfied. Keep going! You’re doing great.”

What I Said...
"Your topic sentences are main ideas. Not plot. Not the obvious. They help you prove the thesis."
What They Must Have Heard...
“As long as you have pages, I’m satisfied. Remember that paper comes from trees, people.”

What I Said...
"Your links argue how your evidence proves your main idea. No links=no argument. Please, people. You need to have links. Please. I beg of you. Please."
What They Must Have Heard...
“Arguments are tearing this country apart. I want you all to write like civilized people of the greatest nation in the world, and only state the obvious.”

What I Said...
"Which is better? “I think Dante’s particular brand of Catholicism is extreme compared to Catholicism today,” or “Dante’s particular brand of Catholicism is extreme compared to Catholicism today”? Nobody cares what you think. We care about what is said."
What They Must Have Heard...
“How does Dante make you feel like a little miracle? Fill up your essay with that. You can do it! And if you can’t, don’t worry! We’ll figure something out.”

What I Said...
What words should we never “throw” in an essay? What kind of “crap” shouldn’t be in a final exam essay? What “garbage”? What wouldn’t be “cool”? What might be “awesome” to leave out? Or “sweet”?
What They Must Have Heard...
“I think teenaged lingo is going to replace Shakespeare before the end of the decade. Who wants to help me burn your thesaurus?”

What I Said...
Edit and proofread. Or I’ll, you know, have an aneurism.
What They Must Have Heard...
“Bill Gates created Microsoft Word so we’d never have to bother learning spelling. I expect you all to respect his work accordingly.

What I Said...
"Turn it in on time."
What They Must Have Heard...
“You are a wonderful person.”

A Moderate "Engagement Status" suggestion for Facebook

To Whom It May Concern (aka that young jerk who built this site and is worth the price of a small country...)

I have been a Facebook user for about a year now, and I wish to register a complaint. Your "relationship" possibilities are severely limited at best. In truth, they stink. You have "single," "married," "in a relationship with," and "bitterly divorced from." In my current situation, this will not do, as I am planning a wedding with a woman who hates the terms "engaged," "fiancee," and "willing to be seen with him in public."

I have compiled a list of possible relationship statuses I might be able to use, as opposed to the ones you already have. Please consider them as friendly suggestions and not irritable rejoinders to an otherwise shoddy social networking site.

"...is chained in impending matrimony to ..."
This would work well, as "chained in" seems to me a more accurate verbal phrase, connoting duty, fidelity and, yes, the mandatory.

"... is successful in boozing up and weakening the marriage-related resistance of ..."
As it happens, I had to pour about two gallons of Thunderbird down her throat before she would even agree to sit quietly while I spelled out a life together. After that, all she required was mimosas.

"... is temporarily insane regarding legal commitment to ...
What was I thinking? Dear God in Heaven, what was I thinking? I already got her to pick up the tab for dinner; I don't need that again!

"... is pushing his luck concerning commitment with ..."
As she never fails to remind me. Which reminds me. I'm pushing my luck.

Bullets in Madison Emotes at the Empty Bottle

Special to the Flannel Diaries

It's about seven-thirty on a Tuesday night and I'm being dropped off at the Empty Bottle on Western Avenue on the beautiful West Side of Chicago. My girlfriend, the Woman who Holds the Bottle Opener to the Beer That Is My Heart, has an annoyed, peeved look on her face. I get that look a lot. It's a masquerade for true love. Especially for when I make her drive me around the city.

"So...have a good time," she intones, checking her watch and thinking about cookies. "Enjoy the show. Don't stay out too late."

"Decidedly."

"Tell the band I'm sorry I couldn't make it, but I had to, you know, whatever."

"Assuredly."

"And be sure to take out the garbage and walk the dogs when you get home."

"Abso....wait. What?"

Before I can protest that I surely will get back late, that I won't enjoy the show, and that I have no plans to be in any condition to do anything productive upon my return, she speeds away, still holding the keys to the car that I realize, belatedly, I'm supposed to drive home that night. Screams after her are unheeded. Frantic calls to her cell phone remain unanswered.

This sort of shit always happens to me when I'm sent to review a Bullets in Madison concert. Of course, none of it is their fault. I mean, it sort of is when you figure that if they didn't play these dives at these ridiculous hours, and if they would only spring for a press limo to take the reporters like me home...actually, it is all their fault. Bastards. I will make them rue the day they even formed a band. I have that power.

I am a music reviewer. I review music.

And occasionally, I listen to it.

**************************************************

I stalked into the Empty Bottle surly and mean. The place looked like the kind of joint BiM loves to headline: walls and a ceiling. I sidled up to the bar and growled at the guy behind the counter, "Gimmee a whiskey. Double. Leave the bottle."

He casts an eye over me, measuring me for manliness and ability to control strong drink. "I think you might want a nice Lemon Wedge," he offered. "They're tasty and nutritious, and there's nothing like--"

"Whiskey," I growled again. John Wayne doesn't have shit on me, I tell you. "The bottle."

"You're going to be on the floor in twenty minutes."

I ignored him, and eventually he went off to fetch it. It's at this point that somebody comes up to me. "Hey, man. Nice to see you again."

I cast a bleary eye in his direction. "Who the hell are you?"

"Brendan. Brendan Losch."

"Oh, great. But I already ordered my drink, so..." I made hand motions indicating that he could leave me alone.

"No, I'm the guitarist. For the band? We've spoken before. You've interviewed me like twenty times."

"Oh, Bren-DAN Losch. I thought you said BREN-dan." I made a face that I hoped looked friendly. "So. Uh, what are you doing here?"

Brendan made an effort to be patient. "We're doing a show tonight. You're reviewing it, right?"

"Right. Right." I made a mental note to do just that. "But you can't get me free drinks, right?"

Brendan stared at me. "No."

"Oh. Well...good. Got to support the economy, right?"

He eventually stalked off, looking pissed. Man, musicians and their big heads. I made another mental note to make a comment in my review about his shoes or something. However, before I could compose a pithy bon mot, I was interrupted by the bartender, who returned with my whiskey. I downed it in one gulp, just like they do in the tough-guy movies. Blech. It tasted like paint thinner.

"That's bad for you," the bartender remonstrated. "You're going to have the megrims."

I ignored him.

"Sure you don't want that Lemon Wedge?" the bartender offered.

"Go away," I muttered.

Three or four more whiskeys later, the house lights came on and the crowd started cheering. The show was apparently starting. And I was ready to review the show. After all, I am a Music Reviewer, right? It's what I came here to do, yes? So here's the body of my article, compiled straight from my painstaking notes during the performance:

Bullets in Madison rocked the joint. They really did. We Became Your Family When You Died is one hell of an album, I tell you. Full of...meaning and...vibrancy...junk like that. Man, my head is killing me...That trumpet thing they do? Woo. Powerful stuff...Don't know about all the bugs on the wall, though...This band, they've got rhythm...they've got music...who could ask for anything more? Ha. What is with the moving walls, though? Now they're moving and they've got bugs on them. Crap. Why didn't that jackass bartender just give me a Lemon Wedge? I hear those are good. Well...oh, man, I love this song! "Wiiiild thing...You make my heart..." ...wait...that's the jukebox...show must be over. What did I miss? Damnit. Oh well. I'll get some stuff about them from Wikipedia or something. Maybe I can go get some after-show interviews right now...Ugh. Floor won't stay steady.

Unfortunately, before I could corral any of them for additional comments, the band had sped off in a hired limo, champagne and caviar practically flying out the windows, Losch tossing a few oyster crackers in my direction and laughing as I scrabbled on the pavement for something to eat.

After a moment, they were gone, the last remnants of their esoteric performance ringing in my ears.

I was alone in Chicago. No review written. No car. No money. And a seventy dollar bar tab with a smug bartender waiting for me inside.

The perfect setting for a closing paragraph:

In a top single from their new album, "Sarah is a State of Mind," vocalist John Morton sings, "You slam the door shut to break it through / No one hears you." That may apply to Sarah, whoever she is. But BiM has slammed the door shut, doublebolted it, and set fire to it, which makes their breaking through it all the more impressive. Not to mention the fact that it is impossible not to hear them.

WBYFWYD is an album that pulses with a heartbeat never heard before in the Chicago indy rock scene, and a melody that grabs you by the lapels and throws you off your seat. The more BiM tours and gets this music out there, the better.

There. That should do it.

Now...where's a hotel?

This new phone is a total time suck. I waste more time on stupid crap than I ever did and I'm reading less than ever in my life. However, the voice blogging is pretty cool.

MY GOLDEN APPLE MOMENTS OF 2009

These accounts are not invented. They are written here verbatim. Especially #3301.
These are my students.
I am their teacher.
We are all so screwed.

Teaching Moment #1826

ME: Okay, open your books to page 23.
KID: What page?
ME: Twenty-three.
OTHER KID: Okay. Wait, what page?
ME: I quit.

Teaching Moment #1827

ME: Some of you forgot to put title pages on your papers.
KID: You didn’t tell us to.
ME: It says so right there on the assignment.
KID: But you didn’t read the directions to us.
ME: So I need to type up the directions and read them to you?
KID: We’d definitely do better.
ME: I quit.

Teaching Moment #1894

ME: You understand that the transition in this paragraph doesn’t apply to--
KID: Doorknob!
ME: What?
KID: What? I didn’t say anything.
ME: I think you just said…doorknob.
KID: (sarcastically) Sorry!
ME: That’s it. I quit.

Teaching Moment #2002

KID: Is it true Shakespeare was a fag?
ME: I quit.

Teaching Moment #2003

ME: All right, let’s open our books to—
KID: Is it true you’re a fag?

Teaching Moment #2157

ME: Now, for film criticism. We have to be analytic. So what did you guys think of the film Zombieland that just came out?
KID: It sucked!
ME: (writes “It sucked” on board) What else?
KID: You fucking suck!
ME: I couldn’t have been as bad as Zombieland. Let’s not say things we can’t take back.
KID: Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.

Teaching Moment #2897

KID: I’m sorry, but I just don’t like cops.
ME: Why not?
KID: They hassle you. Even when you’re not doing anything wrong.
ME: So you’re basing your opinion of an entire group on the actions of a few? Sounds to me like what racists say about blacks.
KID: Yeah…Yeah, you know what? I think I changed my mind. I don’t hate cops.
ME: Good for you.
KID: What?
ME: Kid, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to change your mind. As the poet Taylor Mali once said, “changing your mind is one of the best ways of finding out whether or not you still have one.”
KID: Mali? He’s a fag.
ME: That’s it. This time, I really quit.

Teaching Moment #3010

ME: Movies don't deliver as much info as texts. In fact...
STUDENT: Yeah they do. I was watching Dodgeball, and--
ME: No. No no no. You did not just deputize a Ben Stiller movie into your argument.
STUDENT: It rocked. And it had a deus ex machina in it.
ME: So what is a deus ex machina?
STUDENT: The deus ex machina, man! It was…it…
ME: Yes?
STUDENT: Forget it. I quit.

Teaching Moment #3194

KID IN HALL: (to friend) Hey there, bitch.
ME: Ahem.
KID: Oh…sorry…I meant, ‘Hey there, ho.’
ME: I quit.

Teaching Moment #3209

Kid: What are we doing today?
Me: It’s on the syllabus. And the board.
Kid: Man, you always say that!
Me: And it’s always true, right?
Kid: But still!
Me: Yes? You have some further point to make?
Kid: That’s it. I quit.
Me: No no…I’ll race you to the door.

Teaching Moment #3301

ME: So in the Ninth Circle, Satan is gnawing on the heads of the three worst sinners in existence, right?
HONORS CLASS: Yeah, yeah…(writes this down in notes)
ME: And what might Dante be implying with this particular choice of sinners?
HONORS KID: He’s telling us…it’s wrong…to eat people?
HONORS CLASS: Yeah, yeah…(writes this down in notes)

Teaching Moment #3307

KID: What’s this word supposed to mean?
ME: “Anecdotal,” right? It means hearsay.
KID: What’s hearsay?
ME: You heard it through someone else’s account.
KID: What’s an account?
ME: It’s a telling of…wait a minute, why are you not looking this up yourself?
KID: Look it up where?
ME: …
KID: You just quit again, right?
ME: Shut up.

Ode to Jackson, MI

Overture

The night is wrapped like a woolen blanket
About a pair of irritated feet.
Three a.m.
The women in doorways beckon to their men,
One hand behind the back
While shoving them through the door.
I have seen them all before
In some dimly lit, half-forgotten place.
I have heard the story
Of forgotten glory
And a newly remembered face,
But this is a book I couldn't complete
Before its return-by date
And a movie I couldn't finish
Because it was a school night
And I couldn't stay up that late.

Doug, from MTV's "The State." True teenaged angst.

The State - MTV Shows

Andrew Hicks is back! Check out the reposted A Year in the Life of a Nerd. He's no Jay Pinkerton, but he's good for a chuckle.