In the second year of grad school, we had a project ("project") wherein teams of six or seven would receive $5K seed money to start a "new venture." In retrospect, the idea is comical on its face. My team boondoggled the money into a "dating service company" which hosts small singles parties, a.k.a. a way to launder $5K into food, booze, and merch.
One of the other teams designed a box called The Conbo (CONversation BOx), which is a small wooden box that would be purchased by bars, restaurants, etc. The Conbo lives on a restaurant table wherein the patrons place their cell phones into it (chargers would be an upgraded Conbo feature) as to facilitate face-to-face communication during the dinner. Funny thing is I definitely have seen some take on that in the wild, which is wild.
I bring up this story because in the final presentation, the team dressed up in America flag headbands and marched out to "Rockin' in the Free World," in such a way I had seen before and would see since. Sometime around the fourth time of this bit and the umpeenth time of hearing the song did I really listen to the lyrics of the verses between the hooks.
One time, in the same class that I made the PowerPoint presentation about penis cancer for, the professor started teaching us about genograms, and she ended up going fucking bugnuts and killing 65 minutes of class drawing her entire family tree on the board, and talking us through every minute family drama that had occurred in her life that she could remember to the best of her ability. It should probably go without saying that, when she began at the center, with her own location, and drew a thick line to her husband, that she then explained how she met her husband when they both performed in a college production of Godspell—hers was the work of a true theater geek with a lust for self-deprecating and unnecessary performance.
One semester later, I'm learning about genograms again (MSW professors fucking love genograms), and we manage to convince the professor to ditch a turgid process recording assignment in favor of everyone in the class making their own genograms, and writing a short paper about them. As someone who loves to talk about themselves and be a gossipy little bitch about the people who are closest to me (again: theater nerd), I attacked the assignment with aplomb. Made that genogram look like a fucking Pollock with all those jagged lines and crowded shapes.
I may have overshot the point where I should have explained that a genogram is basically like a family tree, except the lines don't just trace the generations, but also jut all over the place, connecting anyone on the tree who has an emotional connection, either positive or negative. It's a tool for therapy. Your cousin and your aunt hate each other? That gets a zig-zagged red line. Your uncle cut off contact with your dad? That get a thick black line that's got a big gaping hole in the middle. And so on. I know this isn't the type of "tree" *wink wink nudge nudge* that we're supposed to be alluding to through today's prompt, but just let me go with it.
But here are some of the highlights, in one beefy-ass paragraph, while being as vague as I possibly can be, almost to the point of gibberish... At least one divorce on one side of my extended family, which means that there are tense and/or severed relationships jutting out from that in multiple directions—between the couple themselves, between one party and the ex-FIL who is a trad-Cath anti-divorce kinda dude, between that one party and the ex-sibling-in-law, who had warned their sibling originally not to get married, etc. For shits and giggles, I might now include the ex's newer children who were born to a different parent and thus not related to me but at least one of whom is now friends with my own kid through total coincidental preschool classroom placements. Another wing of the same side of the family finds another divorce, though in this case, the other party has more or less disappeared after also having another child with a different party, but in a very cool social-work-y twist, my family member has tasked himself with raising this child who isn't even biologically his, and they have bonded. Red lines between negative relationships and blue lines between positive relationships, you see. Higher up on that tree, technically higher but a kind of half-step generationally speaking, is a relative who passed away, and whose widow has, out of some misplaced grief, cut themselves off from members of the family. That's a tricky one because there's no one who is wrong in those types of situations. But I'm not really involved so what the fuck do I know, that's just me running my mouth about shit that don't concern me. Some drama all the way across the aisle on the other side of the family, with a large arm of the family being really messy emotionally and building up the numbers but not really providing the humans behind those numbers anything resembling a foundational support... and this ripples off into actual violence on the streets of upper Kensington and secret (grand)children and even secreter phone bills being paid on the sly, much to the chagrin of other members of the family who had been somewhat financially supporting the payer of those phone bills, so you can imagine the tension created when the payee removes themselves from the family but some of those family members find out their money is being funneled toward that payee anyway, this despite the fact that he was caught throwing a rock through a church window, and claims he didn't do it, and I'm not gonna say the police aren't liars because they very much are most of the time, but c'mon, we all know this dude, and if I had to make a bet on it, I'd put my money on this probably not being a Chris Chambers-type situation. Plus, there's some alleged domestic violence on that side that is never spoken about by anyone who would've been involved and only speculated upon by those who could have heard about it from others, and most of those parties are dead now and so it's all historical and far enough removed that it's just a matter of pondering, and not a current threat or danger or anything. Pondering how those types of patterns, and traumas, ripple through the generations, not in literal ways but in distant emotional ways, how maybe subsequent relationships are viewed differently, weaker or stronger or something like that, than they would be had that violence not occurred all those years ago. Lots of jagged red arrows point toward boxes marked with questions marks up there in the corner, sexual assaults that very much matter in the grand scope of multiple lives, despite the fact that the specific demographics have never reached my ears or eyes. Also: I have a once-removed cousin and an uncle on opposing sides of my family who are both Dallas Cowboys fans, so there's that.
The book we read for book club recently featured a priest character who was seeing a therapist, and this priest, in his youth, had been in Europe during the WWII bombings, and had seen his mother killed under the rubble of his home, her life leaving her body and he held her hand under the crushing brick and stone... the quasi-joke being that the priest concluded to the therapist that his childhood had been fine and pleasant and relatively drama-free, and the therapist looked at him like, what the fuck are you even talking about, dude, you just told me about the death and destruction, and you don't even realize. I like the idea of genograms because it provides a good opportunity to exam how you yourself fit into the wild drama that is your typical American family. This isn't to say that by doing my genogram I found that I was intimately involved in any trauma that I hadn't realized earlier. I guess I'm just saying that this kinda stuff might occasionally be tough to see when you're right in the middle of it, and it's worth the effort to take a bird's-eye view of things every once in a while. I also like genograms because this subject—the idea that we are all connected in the really complex and complicated ways—has always come pretty naturally to me, and when I'm thinking about genograms, I think that maybe becoming a social worker was my true calling after all (and not, say, blogging, perhaps).
I've heard a bunch of Radiohead in my lifetime, but never sat and listened to a full album. Until now. I listened to In Rainbows while I typed away at my final paper for a one-off grad school class I’m taking to boost credits for the next step up in my pay. It's a class about the brain and "brain rules," etc. so the moody but calm feel of Radiohead was the perfect background music I didn't know I needed. I finished the paper for the most part, aside from some resources and edits, so I'll have to give In Rainbows some credit for helping me get there. Overall, this album was fine. It was Radiohead, and what I would expect a full album of their music to sound like.
I spent a decent chunk of my higher educational experience learning about behavioral disorders, and schizoid personality disorder is the only one that ever made me think: oh shit, do I have this? I don't, and it would have been pretty simple-minded of me to consider the possibility for more than like one minute, mainly because in order to have a "disorder" you need to present an inability to function in our normal capitalistic society, and also because one of the specific symptoms of being schizoid is being "unable to form intimate attachments to others," and I do a decent job with that occasionally (I'm not understating it: I'm sincerely just okay with it, but definitely not so hopeless that it's a disorder... this isn't really the point of this blog post, so let's cut off this path of thinking here).
I probably had the brief temporary thought about whether I had schizoid personality disorder because my favorite grad-school professor was really kind and insightful and empathetic as she went through the various disorders in the DSM-5, and she used these words to describe someone with SzPD: "they have a rich inner world." Which spoke to me in some way. Now, the real important point about this disorder is that the person who has it prefers the inner world, and ignores the outer world, and all the relationship challenges that come with engaging with that outer world. So that's why I'm not diagnosed. But I do like to think that my "inner world" is "rich." Basically, I'm good at daydreaming. This doesn't make me special, but it does give me something to write about today. (What, you thought this was a music club? You thought the song I picked matters? It's a good song, and you should listen to more Video Age if you think this one is good, but that ain't why I'm here.)
Give me three hours without anything to do, and I'm content to pass the time just thinking. Hermit was my favorite drinking just as much because it afforded me a chance to be alone with my thoughts as because I loved drinking heavily. Those two-and-a-half-hour classes on Wednesday afternoons at La Salle were pretty brutal generally but I got by because I would spend at least an hour just sitting in my desk chair and getting lost in thought. Walks and runs are the best because my feet are on autopilot and my brain is working overtime; I've put together a bunch of school projects and blog posts in my head as I travel upright around the neighborhood.
The best/worst was the year I spent working for Zipcar, where more than 50% of my responsibilities involved standing in public with Zipcar literature and trying to convince random passersby to sign up for this car service that was definitely not going to be annihilated by Uber within three years, oh no. Sure, I could've done my actual job and engaged with the public, but that's for suckers. Instead, I often found myself just standing in one place in, like, 30th Street Station for two hours, just lost in my rich inner world. I would try to memorize something, or think obsessively about something that had happened four years ago, or play a game where I would try to determine how attractive a particular public space was, on average (it would be like: for the next 200 women I see, I'll note whether I 1) would, or 2) would not have sex with them, if given the hypothetical opportunity, and then average that out for any given space, so that I ended up thinking something like "the public is 61.5% attractive outside of the parking garage at 18th and Market").
I guess there might be an argument that I was not a willing participant in our capitalistic society in those situations, that instead of performing my responsibilities as a citizen (a worker, a student), I chose to disappear within myself, and thus become a detriment to society through my mental absence. Sure. But Zipcar would've Icarus'ed themselves out of existence whether I was doing my job or popping boners during my job or whatever. And I still got a diploma, even if I spent most of my undergrad in-class experience zoned out (and, depending on the class, popping more boners). None of this is a symptom of schizoid personality disorder; all of it is a symptom of a life of privilege and a perverse reaction to boredom.
How long's eternity? It's as long as you're willing to withstand it, and shorter if you can manage to escape it.
The following are excerpts from a 1500-word paper I wrote in 2007 for an English composition class. The prompt was "Write about a word." I chose "Cunt." Because I was fun and edgy once.
"Once upon a time, children learned naughty words from their fathers when they hurt themselves, not from television or music. There was a time, a simpler time, when swear words were outlawed in most households and offenders were severely punished. It was the time of the American dream, a chicken in every pot and a bar of Dial Soap in every dirty mouth."
"Cunt is a four-letter slang word for female genitalia. It cannot be said on television or around your grandmother. Feminists and activists wish to reclaim Cunt and change its negative meaning. This is tricky. Should there be rules when reclaiming Cunt? Who gets to say it? Who can they say it to? There is a clear power in the word, and the power comes from women. Women hold the key to Cunt's negative or positive power. There are too many women out there who are simply disgusted, uninformed, or afraid to use the word. The word Cunt is only as bad as people make it. Despite, or perhaps because of, efforts to desensitize Cunt, the word is still offensive and is still not acceptable. No matter how often the word is said, listeners still cringe. Many women refuse to say the word aloud, and men only seem to use it in its derogatory tone.
"Cunt may never lose its obscene status, and that may be for the best. However, as long as the power of the word rests with women, there is hope. For once, women can be proud that a feminine insult reigns as the be-all-end-all of dirty words. Women can choose to let the word offend them, or let it empower them. The word can work for them or against them. Women have the power to hold on to Cunt and let it become the most obscene word in the English language. And that is nothing to be ashamed of."
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowing Evening" by Robert Frost (as interpreted by Joseph K*** in Mrs. Ryan's sixth-period English class).
Art is what we make of it. Here is what I make of the classic Robert Frost poem. I will not break character at any point, not during this exercise on the Xanga, and not in English class tomorrow when I hand this in.
"Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me here To watch his woods fill up with snow."
From the very first, Frost makes it clear that "woods" is a metaphor for his (or, the narrator's) body. This is from the perspective of an unreliable narrator—he is under the influence of crack. "Whose woods are these" is proof of this. He doesn't even recognize his own body, so high is his elation in the moment. "He will not see me here"—I take the "he" in this line to be referring to the police or some other type of authority figure. The narrator is feeling on top of the world, like no one can catch him. He can outfox anyone. And of course, "woods fill up with snow" should go without saying at this point. His body is filling up with crack.
"My little horse must think it queer To stop without his farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year."
Now here's where it gets tricky. We're switching metaphors here. "Woods" turns into "my little horse." My feeble little body, under the influence of crack. He's coming down from his high. His vision is blurring, thus creating the sensation of "darkness." He doesn't even know if he's going to make it back from this drug-induced trip. (I also don't think it's a coincidence that another hardcore drug of choice, heroin, sometimes goes by the street name "horse." We must examine all angles here, even the historical ones!!!)
"He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. the only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake."
"He" is still the horse, and thus, the narrator's body. It's starting to shake, either because the crack is draining his body and he is losing his energy or he is consciously attempting to shake loose the demons that have enveloped him or it's really cold and in his drug-induced stupor he forgot a jacket, or all three. Either way, "downy flake"? Seems like his nose is dripping a little bit. That happens after you snort! It numbs the nasal cavity! So if that's the case, then we can assume that "easy wind" is the constant sniffling. Seems pretty clear to me that Robert Frost is intimately familiar with these sensations.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."
Here, we have the tension between what the narrator wishes for himself and what he acknowledges the reality of the situation to be. Optimism vs. pessimism. Short-term gain vs. long-term loss. "The woods are lovely"—it sure does feel lovely in the moment, but the road ahead (the comedowns, the relapses, the cravings) can be pretty overwhelming ("and miles to go before I sleep"). I love how the words "lovely" and "dark" and "deep" are all laid next to each other, and each word could be interpreted either way. "Deep," for example, could be good, like "that's deep, man," or bad, like "in too deep." Maybe this reflects how the narrator is feeling in the moment—good and bad, and mostly conflicted. We are left without resolution.
What I like about poetry is that is doesn't always have to have one specific meaning. Sure, the author intended for it to mean one thing, but the audience is totally justified in using the poem for their own purposes, or to address their own needs. When we feel a connection to a poem, that tells us more about ourselves than it does the author and their intentions.
I should note here that I have never done crack. That's not what I'm trying to say here, in terms of forging a connection to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowing Evening." But I can relate, in a way. I know what it means to be a slave to something, to an ideal that I don't even necessarily agree with or abide by. I feel that shit every day. I read this poem and I can feel myself in those woods. I can feel the perverse warmth of relief from the cold. I feel that moment of reflection, even now, while it remains in the hypothetical and I continue to type away at the keyboard.
Knowing Mrs. Ryan, she'll think I'm just fucking around when I hand this in. Why wouldn't she? I've done nothing but fuck around in that class all year. But this is where I take a stand and say: No, I'm deadly serious. I am exercising my write to analyze poetry however I see fit. And I am interpreting this poem in a way that sure does make it seem like Robert Frost was a crackhead.
~~~~~~~~~~
Comments
TOTONKA: crack was invented in the late 1970's, after Robert Frost was dead. Cocaine on the other hand was made in the late 1800's. the poem is actually about some guy who sees something worthwhile and appreciates it. The horse, in my opinion, is the guy's conscience telling him he has crap that he has to get done. he knows this and doesnt want to get sidetracked to long, but wants to be able to enjoy life, in this case, watching snow in the woods
lacol_elohssa: In my eyes, I saw a suicidal man who realized that he couldn't kill himself because he still had too much he had to complete before he could die... the first "And miles to go before I sleep" would be a drudging thing... him realizing that he HAD to do things... and the second time that line is said, it his him expressing a newfound conviction to live life to the fullest, and thus the poem ends on a positive note.Who wants to write my Mr. Nick essay for me?
Anonymous: I once knew a man, named Joe K*** He said he sold propane He couldn’t take it anymore, so he did cocaine And ate nothing but chicken lo main
Anonymous: Everyone can have their own interpretation of poetry; I wonder how your teacher will take that. Entertaining.
I don't know why I dread the school week so much. Every Sunday night I find myself praying that everything goes smoothly, and then by Thursday night, I realize that it usually did. This week was a full week. It was quick and uneventful. Nothing bad happened. So then why will I get so uptight at the beginning of next week? It's like I never learn my lesson.
For example, I got a bunch of tests back, and all of them were satisfactory at least. Spanish (a class I loathe, and a subject I know very little about, still, two years into), Pre-Calculus (okay, fair—Dr. Pace was attempting to teach me calculus in like third grade), and separate English tests on the novel Frankenstein, a book which I haven't even read (Sparknotes don't count), and yet still did well.
Then the Chemistry test came back, and I saw a 39/43. I am publicly stating my score here for two reasons. One, I feel like Honors Chem is filled with the smartest kids in our whole fucking class, and I'm generally curious as to what everyone else got, to see if I can hang with the big boys or if I'm what I suspect/fear/except, the dumbest dude in the class. Two, I think it's a good grade, and this isn't my first "good grade" of my life, but in grade school, I was taught by my peers over time that getting good grades is something to be ashamed of. And I'm trying to gradually unburden myself of that toxic notion. I'm not bragging, but I am proud and relieved that a good grade came in. Tell me your good grade too; let's celebrate together.
Let's see. In other news, apropos of nothing, I had to write an essay for my World Civ history class. The subject was "father and son relationships" in the novel Night, which was just incredibly sad and moving. I only bring up the theme of the assignment because of the coincidence—on the day that it was due, our teacher, Mr. Tate, had to leave class early because he got The Call. His wife was about to give birth, and he was about to become a father. I know nothing about his personal life, but I am inclined to believe that things will work out better for him and his child than they did for the characters in Night.
And so, it's almost Friday. I again repeat the mantra: Just one more day. Just one more day. Just one more day. I can make it. I can make it. It should be a pretty good weekend too. Of course it will be—I'm young, I'm free, and I won't be in school for two whole days.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Comments
Joe_Mac89: I hate you. You already saw my score.
Stoner311: Daammnn….39/42 is impressive. I had a 36/42, not half bad, but you aced that test.
Let me start this by quoting Ms. Robinson who raps "I'm a teacher, ya'll" in the brilliant song "12 Times Tables (Whaagwaan)." If you've missed this from previous reviews, I am a teacher, ya'll. In fact, I just won an award for being a "Staff All-Star" as voted by a committee of students. Admin used to call this "All-Star Staff," until someone pointed out that the acronym would be ASS. So, you're welcome, this review is written by a twice-recognized ASS.
After today, I imagine another nomination is in the works for the next ASS/SAS award as I, onceagain, used my students to reflect on a Record Club album.
I teach a class called AP Seminar, which is intense. We study academic texts, we synthesize various perspectives on multiple global problems using different lens perspectives, and then they do scored group and independent presentations.
I repeat: it is intense.
Today, in the midst of a tense moment, I thought "brain break time," which is a phrase that we use in Education now for a prescribed time to let loose a little. Have a little fun. Stretch, etc. I imagine this is for more rigid teachers than myself, but there I was taking time to brain break.
I know you're wondering—was Ms. Robinson a hit with the kids? The better question is was this even a brain break when it caused so much more questioning than I had imagined?
"Did she produce this herself?"
"Is this real?"
"Does she make money off of this?"
"What is she even rapping?"
"Is this on Apple Music?"
"What category of music does this fall under?"
"Are you friends with this person? Does she work here?"
"Is that the times table?"—This one came from a student who is frequently lost and, even though I had repeated the album title multiple times, still needed clarification.
"IT'S CALLED HIP HOP TABLES, LEARN YOUR TIMES TABLES WITH MS. ROBINSON," the SAS/ASS teacher of the semester yelled in response. There are no dumb questions... there are no dumb questions... there are no dumb questions...
After the general chaos of this brain break, students asked me to turn it off. They chose silence and hard work. They wanted the intensity of their academic texts and discussions about GMOs. They did not want Ms. Robinson.
Later in the block, when they got off topic (the class created their own brain break, a debate about which is better Chipotle or Pancheros), I threatened them with Ms. Robinson.
"Don't make me turn on Ms. Robinson again!"
"Oh! No!" they yelled in horror. HORROR!
They would rather focus than listen to Ms. Robinson. Poor Ms. Robinson. Honestly, I liked some of her beats—even if they sounded like they were auto-generated by Apple. But, hell did I cackle when a student said "I prefer the quiet."
I'll start by saying thank you. I can't believe we're at 250 weeks for this stupid little online club. The best part is that I'm still having a blast. I hope you are too. Thanks for being here.
We're here to celebrate the Semiquincentennial of Record Club (except for weeks instead of years... I don't think we're going to see Year 250 of RC in our lifetimes, but ya never know). And to celebrate, I want to do a CHARITY WEEK. We haven't done one in a while, but the last time we did—the McGruff week—we raised over $1000 for charity, with the help of RC members Sunny, Sean, and Lamson, who matched my $10/review contribution.
I'm going to do that again. I'll donate $10 to charity for every review that I receive this week (whether it's about this week's album or a previous week's album, it doesn't matter). To stay with the theme of the album (which you can read about below), I'll donate to the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, a non-profit that supports public schools in Record Club's hometown city. (Full disclosure: my oldest daughter is in a Philly public school this year, and so I feel some sort of responsibility to pay something back for the free schooling she's received so far.)
I probably won't go as crazy as I did for the McGruff thing (which involved a lot of individually texting and calling people), but I'll definitely encourage anyone who hasn't participated in RC for a while to use this as a good opportunity to get back into it, and encourage all the great friends who've written for RC in 2023 already to keep that energy up here at the end of the year.
Thanks for being part of Record Club. I'm glad you're here. Let's listen to some music.
JOE'S COMMENTS: Thanks for allowing me this space to once again pick an album that mainly exists because the internet thinks it is a meme but which might have some musical value to it anyway so let's just see. Some random thoughts. One, I've personally made good faith attempts to get into hip hop this year, and it's working, and I see this as a sort of celebration of that—let's listen to hip hop, but let's also allow it to be silly. Two, this album has been on my "potential for RC" list for a while, and so why not make it Week 250's pick, why not mark time with the arrival of a potentially terrible/memorable album, and get as many people as we can to review it? Three, I'm hoping this will finally help Nate get help for the PTSD he suffered at the hands of McGruff the Crime Dog. Enjoy, gang.
~~~~~~~~~~
ALBUM DETAILS
GENRE: educational music, hardcore hip hop, children's music, southern hip hop
RELEASED: December 6, 2007
LENGTH: 39:57
NOTES ABOUT CAPITALIZATION: Most of the streaming services have the first two words of the album title in all caps, so that it looks like HIP HOP Tables. But the actual album cover has normal capitalization. I'm more inclined to think that the all-caps thing was an arbitrary choice made by one streaming service and copied by others, and until I get legitimate proof that Ms. Robinson herself wants the all-caps, I'm keeping it normal.
TRACKLIST:
Intro (1 Times Tables)
2 Times Tables (Bringing Tables Back)
3 Times Tables (Basketball)
4 Times Tables (Betcha Never Thought)
5 Times Tables (Football)
6 Times Tables (Stay in School)
7 Times Tables (DownPack)
8 Times Tables (Conversation)
9 Times Tables (I'm Ready!)
10 Times Tables (Rollin)
11 Times Tables (Double Up)
12 Times Tables (Whaagwaan)
Perfect Squares
Outro (Thank You!)
LYRICS: Genius.com only has lyrics for six of the songs
~~~~~~~~~~
ARTIST DETAILS
PRONOUNS: she/her/hers (?)
ABOUT: No idea. Sorry to report this, but I couldn't find any information about who Ms. Robinson is. Nothing definitive, anyway. I see a bunch of comments around the internet that say stuff like "Ms. Robinson was the best math teacher I ever had!" I don't know how many of them are serious. There were enough of them that I'm going to assume that Ms. Robinson was (or still is) a math teacher somewhere.
DISCOGRAPHY: No other albums are listed on RYM besides this one.
~~~~~~~~~~
ADDITIONAL INFO
READING SOME SHIT: If anyone finds anything for this section, like anything at all, please let me know, and I'll edit this. I couldn't find any interviews, any explainers, nothing. Maybe review your times tables?
WATCHING SOME SHIT: I found a video for "9 Times Tables (I'm Ready!)" but I haven't watched it yet. I didn't want to spoil anything before I finished this write-up.
PREVIOUSLY ON RECORD CLUB: Without much info on the album of the artist, we're really grasping at straws in this section. Examples: Ms. Robinson and Missy Elliott both have honorifics in their name; Margaret Glaspy had an album called Emotions and Math; the only time we have heard from another Robinson in RC was when Cam'ron sampled Smokey Robinson; "5 Times Table (Football)" recalls Johnny Football Hero and the Philadelphia Eagles, while "3 Times Table (Basketball)" recalls Free Throw and JackmanHartlowmann's White Men Can't Jump remake.
Let's just forget about the past 250 weeks and concentrate on the next 750 weeks.
My first thought through the first minute of Universal Consciousness was "Is this how the whole album will sound?" Then, what is that sound? Spiritual? Jazz? Or is this more the noise that is made when you present a toddler with an organ and a rattle?
One of the comments on YouTube reads "the sound of the universe balancing itself," to which I choked on my water. If this is balancing anything, what is even life? I must be too off-kilter to be returned, soundly placed upright, by the mothership of this Spiritual Jazz.
So I tried an experiment where I let this music play in the background as students entered the room. The polite kid didn't say anything. He moved on. The next snarky kid smirked a little. A kind soul who is SO nice, flat-out LAUGHED when she heard this album playing in the background. Even a darling human with not a mean bone in her body was like "what is this trash you're listening to... it must be a joke!" Yet, no one asked me a single question—which is upsetting. Do they think this is what I listen to on my own? Do they think I sit in my quiet, unusually cold classroom during lunch and listen to the straining weasel-like noises of this album?
When we got to "Hare Krishna," things evened a bit. Did the universe right itself? Is this what I was missing? Not entirely, but I feel a little less dizzy than before.
As for the inspo bumper sticker, I think I'd prefer the honking.
I like stupid reddit posts like this one, because it keeps me on my toes. Well, first, because it gets me listening to the Smiths again (haven't in a while, autumn seems like a good time for it). Contrary to popular belief, I like this band's music. It's good enough to forget about the questionable politics that its leader would later adopt, in any case.
And then second, it keeps me on my toes. Clearly this is a Smiths fan being sarcastic, and the sarcasm is funny, but it also makes me wonder: Do I ever actually come across like that? I really could see myself making an argument that goes a little something like "I like the Smiths but we don't agree with the idea of pain being mistaken for pleasure, and it can be depressing to wallow in the sardonic joy that Morrissey seems to take on regarding every depressing subject" and yadda yadda yadda. There's a time and a place for all that. Maybe crushing another repeat of "This Charming Man" ain't that time.
I realize this argument is reductive, but I refuse to be turned into a meme.
Something New
Another good autumnal band, but this one literal—Teenage Halloween is back, and just in time for the actually Halloween. I don't know if I'll be playing Till You Return at Sophie's birthday gathering tomorrow night, since I'll probably be the only one who thinks Luke Henderiks' lawnmower of a voice kicks ass and transcends stupid one-year-old birthday music playlist expectations, but whatever.
This is their second LP, and the first since I went through two years of grad school to get a master's degree (in a subject and at a school that will both go unnamed here but could easily be pieced together if you're keeping up with the blog), and I gotta say, Teenage Halloween seems to be speaking the language that I heard for those four semester, to a frighteningly accurate degree. Some I heard a lot (like a hook that includes "intergenerational trauma!"), and some would fit right in (like a hook that goes "You're a proper noun!!").
I like it. Makes me kinda sad that I'm back to working full time. And it also makes me think that if Teenage Halloween was teaching my classes, I would have felt a little more comfortable participating in the use of such language. Punk music that fucking rips but also wears wokeness on its sleeve? Count me in.
Something Borrowed
I don't know who David Sedaris is. An author or a comedian or something? That's what this article on Slate made it seem like. He was on tour, telling silly stories on stage. So whatever you call someone who does that. But that's not why I was interested in the article. Instead, I found the point of view fascinating. The author of the article had told Sedaris an embarrassing childhood story, and Sedaris ended up "using" that story in a subsequent routine. And the author here brings up some really good points about the responsibilities of an author when they are writing about real events and, more importantly, real people.
"The kind of writer that Sedaris embodies seems motivated by a compulsive, self-righteous duty to act as a one-man literary extraction industry, indivisible, to serve one's own greater glory. If he doesn't repeat these stories, then they'll be lost forever or not exist at all, like how some metaphysicists perceive a tree falling in a forest with nobody around to hear it."
Read the whole thing HERE. As someone who spends a lot of his time writing non-fiction—though a much smaller scale and for a far smaller audience—it was a humbling read. I can see where Sedaris might be coming from: "life is absurd and I have a talent for making that known." But at the same time, there are indeed ethical obligations when you deem yourself a "keeper of the human tale." If your message is one of joy, then you want to make sure the subjects hold a piece of that story. If your message is one of despair, then you want to protect the subjects and make sure that the original despair is not magnified.
And this also relieves some of the burden your typical author might feel to be "humble" and not speak about themselves so often. No—keeping yourself in the spotlight is a great way to take the brunt of the story and its consequences. Embarrassing yourself is a great way to refrain from embarrassing others.
Something Blue
I cannot say anything bad about the Netflix reality dating show Love Is Blind, because I haven't sat down to watch it and I reject my right to critique it when I choose to ignore it. My beautiful wife spent a few hours over the past couple weeks indulging on the new season, though, and so I sustained some of the collateral damage from that particular attack, just by nature of residing in the same home as her.
And so, despite this being the "Something Blue" section, with all that entails, I'll stick to the one positive thing I have to say about it. I appreciate, on a sociological level, that it seems to be testing a romance theory that I've described on this blog before. That theory being that there are certain truths that you need your partner to know eventually, and that there is a window for that truth about one's self to be revealed. You can speak that truth too early, and you can wait too long and risk speaking it too late.
I appreciate how Love Is Blind, or at least its contestants, seem to acknowledge that this theory is true, but due to circumstances of the structure of the game show in which they are participating, they are forced to tighten the size of that truth window significantly. Shit that you wouldn't normally about until date #20 are being asked after engagement. Things that you might want to know on date #10 are being revealed only the second time you even hear your potential partner's voice. Concerns that you might voice a couple years into a strong relationship are causing women who are literally already in their wedding gowns and walking down the aisle to stop and run the opposite direction, all on national TV.
Do I think it's a stupid show? Of course. But as long as a sociological experiment is safe for all participants, then I'm down to watch it play out. (I also appreciate the women's attire, typically, but that would go make me "something blue" for a completely different reason.)
You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Kanye West. But he does get a shoutout, along with music producer Darius "Deezle" Harrison, a snare, and an 808, for helping Lil Wayne produce this song. If you love the song like I do, but feel queasy about Yeezy, I recommend checking out this very fun video that rapper Nyle Emerson made for his senior project at NYU.
I enjoy writing. I don't know if I'm any good at it. Most days I think that I am probably not. You do something every day 724 days in a row, and you start to develop certain rhythms and patterns that can get you through the task, and so I can fool even myself, occasionally. Being very clear and honest about this being a hobby is helpful, because it acts as a defense mechanism: so what if I am not good at this I'm just writing for myself anyway it doesn't matter. My livelihood doesn't depend on whether my Constantines review is up to snuff. But regardless of whether I am mildly competent or blowing a digital ton of hot useless air, I think it is, at the baseline, obviously that a certain measure of this activity brings me some sense of joy. Writing makes me happy. Not everything I write makes me happy, but the act of writing and the constant search for the combination of words that will give me that extremely rare sense of satisfaction at what I just wrote, yeah man, that makes me happy.
The first time I got that feeling was in seventh grade English class. Mrs. Sielski taught all four classes of English on the third floor—both seventh grade classes, and both eighth grade classes, so I actually had her for English both of my final two years at Presentation B.V.M. If her last name looks familiar, that's probably because you read the Inquirer sports section—columnist Mike Sielski is her son. I actually remember Mike coming to talk to our class one day. If I'm doing the math correctly, he must have been the La Salle Collegian sports editor at the time. Small world, man.
Anyways, I'm not going to "credit" Mrs. Sielski for inspiring me in any such way that I became a writer. If she did, then I probably would've, ya know, been a professional writer instead of just bullshitting my way through blogging in between government child abuse reports. Also, consider the fact that for some fucking reason they let her switch to Honors Math after I graduated, which just seems like a terrible fit, since Sielski at the very least gave me space to write creatively, which I appreciate even all these years later, and how the fuck do you do that in a math class? (I could go on a tangent about my actual Honors Math class, and how bonkers that thing was, but let's stick to the path.)
I remember fondly the weekly ten sentences we had to write for Vocab homework. Ten new words, use 'em in a sentence. I would get as weird as possible. I remember, for example, that early in the year I had learned that "gobbledygook" was a real, actual, dictionary-certified word, and every week for two years I used that word in one of my weekly sentences. Shit like that. I can't remember the other things, but c'mon, you've seen some bullshit here on Puke on Your Birthday. Extrapolate backwards from there. Seventh grade English class was where that joy first sparked.
I couldn't have been the only one. I remember one time, probably in eighth grade at this point (since eighth graders thought they were hot shit), my buddy Jim M. got caught eating a Starburst in class. This was against the rules. Mrs. Sielski, as punishment, had Jim write a 500-word essay on why he should not eat Starbursts in class. The best part was that Jim actually put some heart and soul into the assignment, and the next day in class, he stood up in front of everyone and read a really well though-out essay on why he shouldn't eat Starburst. It was a stupid rule and a stupid punishment, and that dude took the negatives and spun 'em into positives. I remember being sincerely proud of him.
It almost made me regret that I wasn't the one who got caught with the Starburst candy. I feel like I would've been able to tackle the assignment with similar aplomb. Ah well. Regrets. But ya know what? It's never too late!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So for today's Song Challenge assignment, I'm going to give you a tight 500-word essay on "Why I Shouldn't Eat Starbursts in Class." I'll pretend that it's eighth grade, let's say February 2003. The subsequent twenty years haven't happened yet. I'm fourteen years old, getting caught with a pink Starburst in my mouth during a quiz on The Outsiders, and I'm told that, as punishment, I need to write an essay. Here is that essay.
I stand accused of a crime. That crime is eating Starbursts in public. To these charges, I admit fault, with full guilt. This being a private institution, there are certain rules and regulations allowed by federal and state law, and one of those is that the teachers and administration may set their own discipline standards, within reason. I am currently standing here, in front of my peers, to confess to a crime because I have been caught red-handed and pink-tongued, and I must now make amends in the form of an essay. Writing a 500-word essay does not constitute child abuse or neglect under current PA child abuse laws. Trust me, I checked. I may only be fourteen years old, and most of that extensive law appeared to me like gobbledygook, but I scanned the entire document and didn't see anything about otherwise pointless academic exercises in response to unauthorized Starburst consumption. So here we are.
I was asked to explain why I shouldn't eat Starbursts in the classroom. The only answer to that question is that Mrs. Sielski has stipulated that she will only teach lessons in English writing if her pupils' mouths remain Starburstless. While I fail to see how sticky chewed Starburst stuck between adolescent teeth could affect the learning capabilities of said student or his peers, I also understand the need for order in the classroom. An efficient educator establishes leadership and control. A classroom full of hormonal teenagers could quickly devolve into chaos without a strong leader and strict rules. I get it. It's not the Starbursts themselves, or whether you should or should not be allowed to eat said Starbursts. It's a matter of principle. You are explicitly asked to not eat Starbursts, and thus you are implicitly asked to not, say, stand on top of your desk and yell swear words at the ceiling. A pink Starburst is akin to a brown M&M backstage at a Van Halen concert. The confection is representative of control and peace. It's a metaphor.
I know life won't always be like this for us. It'll be easier to sneak a pink Starburst into my throat in high school, and in college I doubt any professor will bat an eye at any candy whatsoever. But there's a level of trust built into those higher forms of education. We have to earn that trust here, in this elementary school, earn that trust while we used our Papermate Flexigrip Fine-Point Pens to learn what a dependent clause is and how to write that dependent clause in cursive handwriting. And most importantly, we must demonstrate the ability to do so without pink Startbursts in our mouths. It's not that Mrs. Sielski is trying to "control" us, however like that it might seem. No. What we're actually learning is to control ourselves. This is called adulthood. I have learned my lesson, vis-Ã -vis my Starburst-related misdemeanor, and with that lesson learned, I have taken one strong step toward that promised adulthood. Thank you.
Ah fuck, man, it's been a hot minute since I sat down and listened to Go to School by the Lemon Twigs. It's a fairly ridiculous rock opera, which is saying something since rock operas tend to be pretty ridiculous affairs to begin with. The premise is that a couple decides to adopt a monkey named Shane, and hilarity ensues when he is sent to human school. You can't really knock that narrative hook. I love monkeys to begin with, but a rock opera about a monkey? C'mon, you're speaking my language. Unfortunately, the music isn't quite there. It's like the Lemon Twigs learned the wrong lessons from the Who and the Beatles. Imagine something like "Honey Pie" filtered through Tommy. Corny in a bad way. Which fucking sucks, because "monkey goes to school" is a no-miss proposition, and yet.
"The Fire" is by far the best song on the album. It might be the only song that the Lemon Twigs ever wrote that could be graded above a B (okay, alright, "Queen of My School" is like a B+, but only because I'm pretty sure it's about the homecoming queen begging to have sex with the monkey? don't quote me on that). I keep using the word "ridiculous," but here's where the ridiculousness actually becomes emotionally effecting. First, we lament that Shane is the victim of relentless bullying at school (this is after we hear all about how much his parents regret adopting him, mind you). Then, we listen as Shane the monkey... well, he burns down the entire school and kills 100 kids.
That sounds like a punchline, but I promise you that it works really well in the context of the music, somehow. Like, the Lemon Twigs get hyped up for once in their still young careers and actually match the chaos and confusion, musically, that such a scenario would require. I'm talking about the whole back half of the song. I'm not sure who reads these blog posts or listens to the songs or what, but if you're doing the former and not the latter, then do yourself a favor and go against the grain today. The ironic smirk that comes with singing about a goddamn monkey is completely blown away, and you can begin to feel something real and powerful and kinda scary.
I don't know if I have much else to tell you today. Does this blog post need anything else? I'm answering the prompt. I was told to find a song with an animal in the lyrics. Shane is a monkey, and this song is about him. It's about Shane, the monkey who went to school, and had such a miserable time that he burned the school down. Poor, poor Shane, sha na na na na na na na.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
I'm returning to this blog post, after sleeping on it for a night, and I now think that, yes, it does in fact need something else. I've said before that all the good blog posts have at least two things to say, and I'm going to stand by that. The first thing I'm saying here is that this is a great song about a murderous monkey. The second thing is... what?
There is both nothing to write about and everything to write about, and the choice is paralyzing. So I have chosen to make a list of all the potential options for how I could've tackled the back half of this blog post. This list will then, in turn, become that so desired "second thing."
Talk about other pop culture monkeys, from Rafiki to Curious George
Rank those monkeys, and place Shane the Fire-Setting Monkey within that pantheon (he's like mid-tier, probably between Abu and the Wicked Witch's Flying Monkeys)
Get a reaction to this song from my sister's paramour, who is named Shane, but who is not a fire-setting monkey
Get Shane's list of favorite monkeys in pop culture
Better yet: a list of Best Shanes, from Shane Omen of Mean Girls to Shane Victorino of the 2008 Phillies World Series team
Talk about what it would take for me to light a fire
Reasons my school deserved to burn down
How to light a fire without a match
Adventures in Boy Scouting, when we actually attempted to make a fire without a match, using a sort of man-made bow mechanism
Troop 321's patrol names (Hawks, Dragons, Frontiersmen), and what would have changed if we had been smart and named one of our patrols after the best animal (Monkeys)
How much it pisses me off that the Super Mario Bros. Movie changed the canon so that Cranky Kong was Donkey Kong's father, instead of his grandfather. Don't fuck with my favorite monkeys, you unscrupulous money-grubbing assholes!
Wait, would a monkey have the capability to light a fire? This would require research. I'm not saying intelligence, I'm talking about dexterity.
What do fire codes look like in schools that would typically prevent 100 student deaths? What went wrong? Did Shane use explosives or something?
Rock operas are usually vague on these details; is there an argument against rock operas because they can get away with telling such half-assed stories?
Some of these questions can be cancelled out by the magical realism of the whole endeavor. Just like we have to just believe that a deaf and blind kid is able to play pinball by sense of smell, we must also take seriously the notion that a monkey was sent to a regular human high school. Like, this was allowed by school officials.
There are walls of defense against bullying in schools. They aren't foolproof, and a lot of bullying still happens, of course. But you'd think that if a monkey was somehow holding his own in school, then the monkey's notoriety at least would prevent him from getting bullied so relentlessly that he feels the need to burn down the school. Right?
Wait, I know monkeys are smart, but can they feel the emotion of "need for revenge"? How would one even google that one?
Do we trust the NY Post on anything? Even monkey murder news? Or does this conservative rag exaggerate or straight-up lie about literally everything?
I could talk about my experiences with being bullied, even though they were pretty light, and even though I already touched on it a little bit in Summer Song Challenge.
Does my anti-dog stance extend to monkeys? Or does saying here that I like monkeys make me a hypocrite?
OR should we go ahead and assume that my theory is correct and that Shane's parents were abusing him through the simple fact of keeping him as a pet (to say nothing about allowing him to be abused so badly that he burned down a fucking school)?
I could say something like: these prompts that require knowledge of lyrical content, as opposed to words in a title, are way harder than I thought they'd be.
I could also say something like: I really hope there aren't a whole bunch of other dog songs for this one.
Maybe someone will write about, like, a snake or a kangaroo or a flamingo or a worm. There are songs about those animals, right?
Actually, that would've been a good thing to put down here: alternate songs featuring other animals
A list of my favorite animals, and songs about them!
Or, if I was really invested, a list of every type of animal at the Philadelphia Zoo, and a song for each.
The Philly Zoo has some cool monkeys. I've never seen any of them start a fire.
Holy shit... wait... wasn't there a fire at the monkey house at the Philadelphia Zoo some years ago?
It was actually a heating cable that malfunctioned, but this actually gives us good reason to believe that Shane would be able to start a fire at a school without having to worry about lighting a match. Just rip apart an electrical wire. Plus add to the fact that a lot of those old high schools still have highly flammable asbestos in the ceiling, and you have yourself a deathtrap.
You ever watch those videos where a family adopts a wild exotic animal, and they become part of the family? Like, say a family adopts a lion when they are a one-day-old cub. Then the lion is fully grown and like snuggling with the seven-year-old human. I wonder how often this scenario has played out with a gorilla? Like if a large monkey was part of a family. How many Shanes are there out there?
I've made the case plenty of times over the years on this blog that pet ownership is a net negative, but know this: you probably shouldn't own a monkey either, since he might murder you with fire.
The new Lemon Twigs album from this year is very bad and lame. But they'll always have "The Fire."
BONUS: Here is a story that I wrote in second grade about a stuffed pet monkey whom everyone in the class took home for a day at least once throughout the school year. Doesn't look like Julius tried to burn our house down, so that's good.
I babysat Julius on April 23, 1997. We had a fun day. First we had music class. Julius sang really good! Then we just had a regular school day. After school, I brought him home and introduced him to my family. Julius sat next to me at dinner. We had banana cream pie for dessert. Me and Julius played Donkey Kong Country until I got my shower. At 9:00 [we] went to bed. Julius slept on the top bunk. The next day I [brought] him back to school. Would you like to have Julius?
I was enrolled in a class called Substance Use Interventions when I decided to get sober. If you're curious about why I made that decision, then you might be tempted to ask if there was any connection between the fact that I was learning about interventions for substance abuse while at the same time turning some of these interventions around on myself. The answer? I don't know. Probably no connection. I learned a lot about myself in that class, but it wasn't like I had some fucking epiphany in a sterile classroom at 8:45 AM on a Wednesday morning that I had issues and they needed to be addressed. More coincidence than anything that literally the first thing I did after making a stalwart decision to stop drinking was to attend a class about deciding to stop drinking. Actually, that's not even true—the first thing I did was stop at Wawa and buy two sausage biscuit Sizzlis to eat on my drive to school. Fuck, man, talk about your addictions, jeez.
And it's not like I told anyone in that class (besides Galia) that I was sober. That's not really something that you're supposed to be talking about with mere hours of sobriety under your belt. I've made plenty of claims of attempts at sobriety over the years, and none of them panned out, so maybe this time I should just shut the fuck up about it for a while and see how it settles (i.e. wait like five weeks and then start writing on the blog like a fucking jabroni). But my point being that my sobriety was never a focus in that class and never became a focus. I will say that it was pretty easy to play the part of "addict" in the numerous class role-playing exercises.
At the end of the semester—and the end of my school career in toto—we had a "party," and the quotation marks are intentional because the term was used but it had to have been ironic. We ate a donut provided by the professor. We painted a rock that was supposed to be kept as a totem of our time here. We talked about what we liked and disliked about the class. And then we... took our final exam. Woo, party.
But an idea was also thrown out there by the professor in the weeks leading up to that final class period, that maybe someone would want to make a playlist that we could listen to for the "party." For reasons that should be painfully obvious to anyone who has ever visited Puke on Your Birthday, I voraciously attached myself to the idea, and spent an hour or two putting together a short playlist that would get us through that pre-exam hour of class.
My criteria for inclusion on the playlist was not strict, but more or less met two basic points. One, the song had to be about substance use or lack thereof. It couldn't just include alcohol or drugs in the lyrics or narrative, but rather it had to speak somehow to the idea of substance abuse or sobriety. And then two, the song had to be created and/or performed by an artist who has some experience with the idea of substance abuse or sobriety. Not that every word has to be true or that the song must be entirely from a first-person point of view, but there's gotta be some sort of non-fictional element to the song, even just a little bit.
I've included the playlist below, and either linked to the YouTube video or, preferably, a previous blog post about the song or about the artist (and priority to any Summer Song Challenge entries, either written by myself or someone else).
I chose the Jason Isbell song "It Gets Easier" for my actual song pick today. It's a great song. It might not even be the best song on this list, but I think it speaks the most clearly to the point of the playlist in the first place, and also to today's prompt. It's explicitly about sobriety. Here we have an incredibly talented musician and songwriter who has been really upfront about his recovery, and here we have a song that speaks to his personal journey, with the honesty and the courage that it takes to say something like "it gets easier but it never gets easy." There's such a dense truth to that line, and it's something I keep thinking about as I start to have my own dreams/nightmares about drinking.
It's crazy how as a teenager you can love something while also so thoroughly misunderstanding it at the same time. So it went with Stand by Me, the 1986 coming-age-film, directed by Rob Reiner, based on Stephen King's novella The Body, and beloved in my youth by me and those in my intimate social circles. On its surface, it's the story of four loveable pre-teen kids who go on an adventure to find a dead body and all the fame and fortune associated with that, infamously following the train tracks to their destination. That's the movie I originally fell in love with.
So we attempted to make a plan to walk the tracks ourselves. Not to find anything, but just to find out where they went. It never happened, of course—back then, even more than now, I was so full of big plans and hot air—but I feel like it might have gotten to a planning stage in that it was on a summer calendar somewhere. Dumb plan (especially because we could just look at a map if we really wanted to know... and unfortunately the train tracks we'd be following just basically went to New York). Who knows if there was ever actually a chance that we were going to do it. I doubt anyone wanted to sleep outside, and I doubt that our parents would have collectively been so uninvolved in our lives that such a journey would have gone unnoticed.
That last point is really how we misunderstood the point of the movie. Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern weren't walking the train tracks to find something, not really; they were walking the train tracks in an unconscious attempt to escape. Each of the four kids had their own troubles at home—abusive parents, neglectful community members—and each, in his own way, was out there trying to find a piece of themselves that they had lost in the emotionally haunted town of Castle Rock. E.g. Chris was assumed by everyone in town to be a thug and a thief, and he was out here trying to prove that he was a good guy, that he wasn't like his brother and deadbeat dad, that he had value in this world. E.g. Gordie had been recently completely ignored by his parents, after his older brother passed away the year before, and he was trying to find the body because in some fucked up way it was going to help him grieve and cope with the loss of his one true role model.
There was nothing like that around here, at least not with me personally (can't speak for any potential pals for the hypothetical journey, but I'd like to think I knew my friends pretty well, and would have known if there were any fucked up Stephen King-esque shit happening in their lives). There was no escape from anything. A couple years later, I'd enter undergrad at a university 20 minutes away from the home I grew up in—there was no ideas of or need for escape, not really.
So that whole thing about walking the tracks and seeing where they went? A complete misreading of Stand by Me. This wasn't just something cool they wanted to do. This was a journey—physically, emotionally—that they needed to take. This was a matter of life or death on multiple levels. They weren't just some punk-ass privileged upper-middle-class kids bored out of their skull in a quiet corner of a big city.
I know that now, and—probably for the best—I'm probably too old for it to matter anyway.
II. Teddy
In my Practice with Children and Adolescent class (the same one I wrote that slumber party essay for), we had to take turns presenting a case that we were currently working on in our field placement, and just kind of talk with the class about a child and what was going on with that child and what you were working on with that child. Not everyone in the class was necessarily working with children at their internship, so the assignment had a certain measure of leeway. I took that leeway to its extreme and decided to pretend that Teddy from Stand by Me was my client.
The joke was that I would play it completely deadpan, and not tell anyone that I was talking about a fictional character. I would just talk about Teddy as if he was a child I was actually interacting with on a day-to-day basis, and then see how long it took people to notice (if anyone—there was a chance that no one else had seen this movie, I guess).
In my class of seven other people plus the teacher, only three people (including the teacher) got the joke, and only then when I explicitly mentioned the trauma of finding a dead body on the train tracks. So there were a lot of laughs by the two students (who I should mention were not coincidentally the two oldest students in the room besides myself), and the professor claimed like he felt like he just got catfished. Everyone else was just puzzled. It was a good time. Here are the PowerPoint slides. (You might have to click on them to zoom in—yes, this fifteen-year-old blogging interface sucks, I know!)
III. Chris
But was it a misinterpretation of the film? It depends on who you ask, and from what perspective you are viewing it. First off, it is my firm belief that art mostly earns value from the audience's interpretation of that art, and so if a teenager who is unhaunted by any specific childhood trauma wants to still find a connection to the four young kids in Stand by Me, then so be it.
But secondly, I think we need to consider the fact that the narrative framework involves Gordie as a middle-aged dad, and this is him being nostalgic for the past, writing about a specific adventure (literally and spiritually) that he and his friends took when they were kids. So this isn't just an exploration of trauma and the need to escape or grieve. It's also rose-colored. It's about how Gordie and Chris and Teddy and Vern actually did find that escape, through each other. And it's about the value of friendship, both in that type of situation and otherwise.
I think maybe if we had walked the tracks, there's a good chance that it would have been a let down. There would have been no dead bodies to speak of, just an endless walk through a bleak cinderblock-blasted suburbia. But maybe there's a chance too that it would have been a bonding experience for whichever brave/dumb friends who wanted to take part. That's basically what we were doing anyway every weekend otherwise, no? Hanging out and shooting the shit and escaping our humdrum NEast-y existence and bonding and proving the maxim that no one ever has friends like the ones you had at that age.
IV. Vern
Stand by Me isn't my favorite movie—easy top three, though—but Dazed and Confused has been relitigated on this blog toomany times already, and I thought we should maybe mix it up a little bit. But if I was trying to be boring, I probably would've gone with "Tuesday's Gone" and talked about keg parties in the woods or some shit.
