- Woody Allen movies
- Driving on deserted eight-lane highways at 2 AM
- Chocolate chip pancakes
- Fruit smoothies
- Nabakovian alliteration
- Warm blankets
- Waterslides
- Playful cats
- Sunsets
- Good conversations
- Great concerts
- Laydown loners
- Urban exploration
- Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album
- Clever puns
- Boat rides
- Fresh breadsticks
- Old Simpsons episodes
- Stratego games
- Anything Spinner says on Degrassi
- Wood-panelled electronics
- Wood-panelled car interiors
- Plausible Macgyver inventions
- Parenthetical clauses
- Books that move you like disaster
- The Funk
- Forgotten bank deposits
- Kevin Smith DVD commentaries
- Drive-in movies
- First kisses
- Watching moths gather around your window on a warm summer night
- Rereading Catcher in the Rye
- The thrill of a bargain
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Laughter
Monday, midday. Childish homophone posters adorn Mrs. Cicoria’s classroom walls. Colored pencils and nubs of crayon lay scattered across the floor. I’ve just come from a lower-level composition class where the students chose to write about such important historical figures as Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears. Fifth period likes to push you. They blurt out terse, incoherent thoughts as we discuss Lord of the Flies and chatter mindlessly while others voice opinions. Time for a coloring activity instead.
“Hey Mr. Rogers,” M—— says with her usual boldness, “you’re always so serious. I’ve never seen you laugh.”
I am confused. Nothing cheers me up more than a fit of sudden uncontrollable laughter. In my writing I enjoy treating overdramatic or everyday subjects with an unexpectedly humorous tone. I keep a blog with a secondary goal of making my readers laugh. My friends and I can crack jokes nonstop for hours, and I feel the closest to the people who will know I’m not serious when I make a potentially offensive one. Many of our oldest inside jokes still make us all laugh. I love Woody Allen and Joseph Heller. Also Dave Barry, Kingsley Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, Carl Hiassen, David Sedaris, and Mark Twain. I like mocking people instead of complaining about them. One of my favorite online activities is making fun of the Adult Gigs on Craigslist (my latest find being an ad by the world’s biggest Lord of the Rings nerd looking for a woman willing to have her vagina and the surrounding area painted to resemble the Eye of Sauron for the laughable sum of twenty-five dollars). Sam and Hannah can attest to the time we were making fun of bad porn titles and I laughed so hard I collapsed. Sex is funny. The pirate tells the hooker that it’s not only his leg that’s made of wood. Serious people are funny: I often feel uncomfortable in formal situations and am compelled to make inappropriate jokes to ease the tension in a room. So what is it about this job that brings out the worst in me?
“I guess you’ve never been around at the right time,” I say.
“Hey Mr. Rogers,” M—— says with her usual boldness, “you’re always so serious. I’ve never seen you laugh.”
I am confused. Nothing cheers me up more than a fit of sudden uncontrollable laughter. In my writing I enjoy treating overdramatic or everyday subjects with an unexpectedly humorous tone. I keep a blog with a secondary goal of making my readers laugh. My friends and I can crack jokes nonstop for hours, and I feel the closest to the people who will know I’m not serious when I make a potentially offensive one. Many of our oldest inside jokes still make us all laugh. I love Woody Allen and Joseph Heller. Also Dave Barry, Kingsley Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, Carl Hiassen, David Sedaris, and Mark Twain. I like mocking people instead of complaining about them. One of my favorite online activities is making fun of the Adult Gigs on Craigslist (my latest find being an ad by the world’s biggest Lord of the Rings nerd looking for a woman willing to have her vagina and the surrounding area painted to resemble the Eye of Sauron for the laughable sum of twenty-five dollars). Sam and Hannah can attest to the time we were making fun of bad porn titles and I laughed so hard I collapsed. Sex is funny. The pirate tells the hooker that it’s not only his leg that’s made of wood. Serious people are funny: I often feel uncomfortable in formal situations and am compelled to make inappropriate jokes to ease the tension in a room. So what is it about this job that brings out the worst in me?
“I guess you’ve never been around at the right time,” I say.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Man Can't Beat Natural
Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” tells the story of an arrogant young man who, despite the advice of seasoned prospectors, attempts to cross the sub-zero Arctic wilderness with only his dog for support. He is counting down the hours until he reaches his destination when he falls through the ice and into the freezing river—a death sentence in this climate unless he can build a fire to dry off. With only minutes until his hands and body succumb to frostbite, the man rushes to gather wood and is finally able to start a roaring blaze when the snow hanging in the tree above him chooses that exact moment to fall; covering his fire and sealing his fate. Panicked and with hands too numb to accomplish even the simplest of tasks, he is only dimly aware of the flames singeing his skin as he attempts to light a match with his wrists. After his last match flickers to nothing, the man flees in an insane rage toward camp but cannot run for long before he succumbs to hypothermia and collapses. The story ends as the dog cheerfully sets out toward home, ignoring its master’s frozen corpse.
I found the following synopsis of this gut-wrenching story tossed in the recycling bin of the eighth grade special ed room:
Somehow, existential statements about the futility of mankind take on a simple fortitude when written by an eighth grader with capitalization issues.
I found the following synopsis of this gut-wrenching story tossed in the recycling bin of the eighth grade special ed room:
In the short storty “To Build a Fire” [A helpful teacher has added in the title] By Jack london,” A man is walking to camp. He Has to walk in sevendy five degree Below zero wether. He tries to biuld a fire to warm up But it is on segsecful. Jack london thought man can’t beat naturl.
Somehow, existential statements about the futility of mankind take on a simple fortitude when written by an eighth grader with capitalization issues.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
One of the Last Real Men
"Mr. Rogers, have you given anyone a detention today?"
"...Day ain't over yet."
"...Day ain't over yet."
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Let's Help Them Marry Young
I’d hate to be 22, and in love, these days. How could I support a bride? How could I find a place to live? How could I train for a profession—in a day where more and more training is essential?
Without financial help I couldn’t.
[...]
The case for making marriage available to hundreds of thousands of the blocked generation is not built on sentiment: it is a serious business of saving young people from frustration, of preserving the American home, of stemming the tidal waves of promiscuity, delinquency and divorce.
We surround boys and girls in their late teens and early twenties with ideals of marriage and home building. We admit that our Hal Smiths and Jean Fosters are biologically mature, that they possess growing and compelling urges toward mating and parenthood. We lure them toward marriage in our movies, our fiction, in the whole romantic gloss with which we daub youthful life. Then we snatch away this illusion with: “Don’t be a fool, Alice. It’s ridiculous to marry a boy who’s making only $30 a week!” Or, “Out of the question, Ned. You can’t marry until you’ve finished your internship!”
The result is a sexual dilemma. Psychiatrists’ offices teem with men and women suffering from guilt complexes because they indulged in premarital sex relations, and with equal numbers who are frigid or impotent because they were too long repressed.
From the files of Dr. Janet Fowler Nelson come these case histories:
Tom and Lillian were in love and wanted to marry, but couldn’t because Tom, an architect, was working out his apprenticeship at $28 a week. Faced with a wait of five years or more, Tom and Lillian realized that they had to make a decision. Either they would (1) have extra-marital relations, thus breaking the rules of society, or (2) stifle their emotional and physical drives, with the resultant frustration. They chose the first alternative.
When they finally married, Lillian was oppressed with the fear that “Tom only married me because he thought he ought to,” and Tom unhappily remarked, “If she was that way with me, maybe she’d be the same with any man.”
Equally bitter is the case of conscientious Arthur and Margaret, who chose the second alternative. Margaret’s parents refused to allow her to marry until she had a college diploma and had taught school for at least a year. She and Arthur “went steady” from the time she was 19 until she was 23. Then they were married. A few years later Margaret was in Dr. Nelson’s office relating a sorrowful story of their failure to reach mature sexual adjustment. “You see,” Margaret said, “we ruled out all petting before we were married. We knew that was the only way to keep out of difficulty. I suppose it was puritanical, but anyway we prided ourselves on never showing any sign of physical affection.”
Arthur and Margaret had fallen into a familiar trap. They had reined in their impulses by labeling them evil and tawdry. “This carried over into their married life and completely blocked a happy adjustment,” Dr. Nelson explains.
[…]
Promiscuity, sociologists agree, is the greatest foe of successful marriage. But a YMCA poll among men in their early 20’s indicated not only that extramarital relations were “greatly increasing” but that 80 percent of the young men blamed financial bars against early marriage for the upward trend.
Our communities, up to their necks in delinquency, scream alarm at the number of wayward girls, young sex offenders, unmarried mothers. “Yet what is this,” asks Will C. Turnbladh, of the National Probation Association, “but an indication of the stone wall many young people are up against.”
- From “Let’s Help Them Marry Young” by Howard Whitman. Taken from The Reader’s Digest condensed version, October 1947.
-------------------------------------------------------
Discussion Questions:
1. Whitman cites an increasing trend towards later marriage and independence among Americans in 1947, stating financial barriers to be the cause. Discuss ways this observation has changed and remained the same in the last sixty years.
2. How have society’s opinions about premarital sex and promiscuity changed since 1947? How does this change affect the author’s argument? Do Tom and Lillian’s fears still sound realistic today?
3. Have the parental arguments in Paragraph 4 become ingrained in our concept of marriage, or are they remnants of the 1940’s? Include specific examples in your response.
4. Why did Ian include such an obviously outdated article in his blog?
Without financial help I couldn’t.
[...]
The case for making marriage available to hundreds of thousands of the blocked generation is not built on sentiment: it is a serious business of saving young people from frustration, of preserving the American home, of stemming the tidal waves of promiscuity, delinquency and divorce.
We surround boys and girls in their late teens and early twenties with ideals of marriage and home building. We admit that our Hal Smiths and Jean Fosters are biologically mature, that they possess growing and compelling urges toward mating and parenthood. We lure them toward marriage in our movies, our fiction, in the whole romantic gloss with which we daub youthful life. Then we snatch away this illusion with: “Don’t be a fool, Alice. It’s ridiculous to marry a boy who’s making only $30 a week!” Or, “Out of the question, Ned. You can’t marry until you’ve finished your internship!”
The result is a sexual dilemma. Psychiatrists’ offices teem with men and women suffering from guilt complexes because they indulged in premarital sex relations, and with equal numbers who are frigid or impotent because they were too long repressed.
From the files of Dr. Janet Fowler Nelson come these case histories:
Tom and Lillian were in love and wanted to marry, but couldn’t because Tom, an architect, was working out his apprenticeship at $28 a week. Faced with a wait of five years or more, Tom and Lillian realized that they had to make a decision. Either they would (1) have extra-marital relations, thus breaking the rules of society, or (2) stifle their emotional and physical drives, with the resultant frustration. They chose the first alternative.
When they finally married, Lillian was oppressed with the fear that “Tom only married me because he thought he ought to,” and Tom unhappily remarked, “If she was that way with me, maybe she’d be the same with any man.”
Equally bitter is the case of conscientious Arthur and Margaret, who chose the second alternative. Margaret’s parents refused to allow her to marry until she had a college diploma and had taught school for at least a year. She and Arthur “went steady” from the time she was 19 until she was 23. Then they were married. A few years later Margaret was in Dr. Nelson’s office relating a sorrowful story of their failure to reach mature sexual adjustment. “You see,” Margaret said, “we ruled out all petting before we were married. We knew that was the only way to keep out of difficulty. I suppose it was puritanical, but anyway we prided ourselves on never showing any sign of physical affection.”
Arthur and Margaret had fallen into a familiar trap. They had reined in their impulses by labeling them evil and tawdry. “This carried over into their married life and completely blocked a happy adjustment,” Dr. Nelson explains.
[…]
Promiscuity, sociologists agree, is the greatest foe of successful marriage. But a YMCA poll among men in their early 20’s indicated not only that extramarital relations were “greatly increasing” but that 80 percent of the young men blamed financial bars against early marriage for the upward trend.
Our communities, up to their necks in delinquency, scream alarm at the number of wayward girls, young sex offenders, unmarried mothers. “Yet what is this,” asks Will C. Turnbladh, of the National Probation Association, “but an indication of the stone wall many young people are up against.”
- From “Let’s Help Them Marry Young” by Howard Whitman. Taken from The Reader’s Digest condensed version, October 1947.
-------------------------------------------------------
Discussion Questions:
1. Whitman cites an increasing trend towards later marriage and independence among Americans in 1947, stating financial barriers to be the cause. Discuss ways this observation has changed and remained the same in the last sixty years.
2. How have society’s opinions about premarital sex and promiscuity changed since 1947? How does this change affect the author’s argument? Do Tom and Lillian’s fears still sound realistic today?
3. Have the parental arguments in Paragraph 4 become ingrained in our concept of marriage, or are they remnants of the 1940’s? Include specific examples in your response.
4. Why did Ian include such an obviously outdated article in his blog?
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Laura's House
Laura’s husband had bought countless DVD boxed sets to watch while he was in Iraq; which Laura was happy to sell to me for my own entrepreneurial purposes. She lived in a brand-new three-story house in a Londonderry subdivision within easy commuting distance of Manchester, Nashua, and all of northeastern Massachusetts; with an attached two-car garage, a shiny black lamppost, a newly paved driveway, and pale-green bushes set firmly on a bed of dry mulch.
Laura herself was engrossed in a large television when I arrived promptly at nine-thirty, and answered my knock wearing a t-shirt and baggy sweatpants with “U-Mass” written down one leg. She couldn’t have been over thirty. I introduced myself and she invited me in to show me the merchandise. The inside of the house reflected the careful yet banal neatness of the outside; and aside from a few tacky travel prints, the walls were covered with framed family photographs centering around a blonde three year-old boy. A nearby study doubled as a playroom filled with large multicolored plastic toys. All the furniture looked and smelled brand new.
She had stacked the DVDs on the kitchen table next to a pile of interior design and celebrity gossip magazines. Had I been a fan of Buffy long? Just getting into the series—my friend and I are going to watch them together. And Deadwood too, a great show; it’ll be good to start with season one instead of trolling through random reruns. How about The Shield? Oh, that one’s not for me—showed the ad to a friend from school who loves it. I always get stuck running the errands. Oh, and where did I go to school? Bennington—it’s in Vermont. Not surprised you haven’t heard of it, it’s a very small place. No cable on campus, so we get together to watch TV boxed sets all the time. Weird schedule, so I won’t go back until the beginning of March. Have a senior thesis to work on in the meantime. Back to business. Curb Your Enthusiasm; that show the Seinfeld guy did, right? My friend loves it, I’ll check with him. It has been hard missing TV during the writer’s strike, but I’m sure it’ll be over soon. Oh, and would you take twenty for the Police Academy set?
Laura kept me in that house for half an hour while she searched for that damn Police Academy boxed set (Amazon resale value $43.00). In the meantime, she showed me her hot-tub, her robotic Roomba vacuum cleaner, her compact DVD storage unit; and explained to me in excruciating detail how difficult it was to recolor the grout on her bathroom floor from brown to off-white. I wondered if she had a job of her own while her husband worked at the base, or if she ever read books. When I had seen enough, I paid her and waved goodbye, still trying to process that house and everything in it. So, I thought, this is what happens when all the popular girls grow up and settle down. I had a sudden urge to run to my car and drive off in whichever direction would get me away from there the fastest.
Laura herself was engrossed in a large television when I arrived promptly at nine-thirty, and answered my knock wearing a t-shirt and baggy sweatpants with “U-Mass” written down one leg. She couldn’t have been over thirty. I introduced myself and she invited me in to show me the merchandise. The inside of the house reflected the careful yet banal neatness of the outside; and aside from a few tacky travel prints, the walls were covered with framed family photographs centering around a blonde three year-old boy. A nearby study doubled as a playroom filled with large multicolored plastic toys. All the furniture looked and smelled brand new.
She had stacked the DVDs on the kitchen table next to a pile of interior design and celebrity gossip magazines. Had I been a fan of Buffy long? Just getting into the series—my friend and I are going to watch them together. And Deadwood too, a great show; it’ll be good to start with season one instead of trolling through random reruns. How about The Shield? Oh, that one’s not for me—showed the ad to a friend from school who loves it. I always get stuck running the errands. Oh, and where did I go to school? Bennington—it’s in Vermont. Not surprised you haven’t heard of it, it’s a very small place. No cable on campus, so we get together to watch TV boxed sets all the time. Weird schedule, so I won’t go back until the beginning of March. Have a senior thesis to work on in the meantime. Back to business. Curb Your Enthusiasm; that show the Seinfeld guy did, right? My friend loves it, I’ll check with him. It has been hard missing TV during the writer’s strike, but I’m sure it’ll be over soon. Oh, and would you take twenty for the Police Academy set?
Laura kept me in that house for half an hour while she searched for that damn Police Academy boxed set (Amazon resale value $43.00). In the meantime, she showed me her hot-tub, her robotic Roomba vacuum cleaner, her compact DVD storage unit; and explained to me in excruciating detail how difficult it was to recolor the grout on her bathroom floor from brown to off-white. I wondered if she had a job of her own while her husband worked at the base, or if she ever read books. When I had seen enough, I paid her and waved goodbye, still trying to process that house and everything in it. So, I thought, this is what happens when all the popular girls grow up and settle down. I had a sudden urge to run to my car and drive off in whichever direction would get me away from there the fastest.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Upcoming Movie Sequels
Blade Runner II: Rise of the Replicants
Deckard (Jim Belushi) and Rachel (Lucy Liu) outlive their four-year lifespans in the sequel to this beloved sci-fi classic directed by Jonathon Mostow (Terminator 3, Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers). Twenty-five years after their first meeting, can the pair save the Off-World colonies from a renegade army of replicant unicorn warriors? Find out in this summer’s most automated sequel!
Indiana Jones V (working title)
Scheduled for 2012, an aging Indy must outrace an army of Cuban revolutionaries on the trail of Noah’s Ark while attempting to save his failing real estate business.
Rocky Zero
Sylvester Stallone reprises his role of Rocky Balboa as viewers remember him best: before he had his shot at the heavyweight title! Watch as Rocky bounces his rubber ball along the streets of Philadelphia, threatens deadbeat gamblers for debt money, delivers advice to neighborhood kids, and feeds his pet turtle. Will Rocky win enough to pay his rent at this Saturday’s small-time fight? Find out this summer!
Star Wars: Episodes VII, VIII & IX
Starting production in 2017 (by which time a generation of moviegoers too young to recall a time before Attack of the Clones will have reached ticket-buying age), George Lucas returns to a galaxy far, far away with these long awaited sequels. This groundbreaking trilogy is slated to be the first created with 140% CGI technology, so even the actor’s voices will be computer generated! Featuring the talents of Dana Carvey as Luke Skywalker and Paris Hilton as Princess Leia.
The Shawshank Redemption II
Tommy Lee Jones returns as a U.S. Marshall out to capture the most infamous fugitive of all time: Andy Dufresne! Set on the beaches of sunny Mexico, this heart-warming Action/Drama features both the narration talents of Morgan Freeman and a high-speed powerboat chase down the coast of Zihuatanejo.
Terminator 4: Back to the Past
After the humans finally win the war against the machines, Skynet has one last trick up its sleeve: send multiple copies of the evil T-853780580 back to kill John and Sarah Connor during the events of the first three movies! Nick Stahl and Arnold Schwarzenegger are together again for some reason with a new version of Cyberdyne’s Time Displacement machine mounted on a rocket-powered hoverbike, and must travel back in time to save humanity not once, but thrice. (By the way, this time the future can be changed—but we can’t make any promises for Terminator 5.)
The Mask II
Oh wait, this piece of shit’s already been made.
Deckard (Jim Belushi) and Rachel (Lucy Liu) outlive their four-year lifespans in the sequel to this beloved sci-fi classic directed by Jonathon Mostow (Terminator 3, Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers). Twenty-five years after their first meeting, can the pair save the Off-World colonies from a renegade army of replicant unicorn warriors? Find out in this summer’s most automated sequel!
Indiana Jones V (working title)
Scheduled for 2012, an aging Indy must outrace an army of Cuban revolutionaries on the trail of Noah’s Ark while attempting to save his failing real estate business.
Rocky Zero
Sylvester Stallone reprises his role of Rocky Balboa as viewers remember him best: before he had his shot at the heavyweight title! Watch as Rocky bounces his rubber ball along the streets of Philadelphia, threatens deadbeat gamblers for debt money, delivers advice to neighborhood kids, and feeds his pet turtle. Will Rocky win enough to pay his rent at this Saturday’s small-time fight? Find out this summer!
Star Wars: Episodes VII, VIII & IX
Starting production in 2017 (by which time a generation of moviegoers too young to recall a time before Attack of the Clones will have reached ticket-buying age), George Lucas returns to a galaxy far, far away with these long awaited sequels. This groundbreaking trilogy is slated to be the first created with 140% CGI technology, so even the actor’s voices will be computer generated! Featuring the talents of Dana Carvey as Luke Skywalker and Paris Hilton as Princess Leia.
The Shawshank Redemption II
Tommy Lee Jones returns as a U.S. Marshall out to capture the most infamous fugitive of all time: Andy Dufresne! Set on the beaches of sunny Mexico, this heart-warming Action/Drama features both the narration talents of Morgan Freeman and a high-speed powerboat chase down the coast of Zihuatanejo.
Terminator 4: Back to the Past
After the humans finally win the war against the machines, Skynet has one last trick up its sleeve: send multiple copies of the evil T-853780580 back to kill John and Sarah Connor during the events of the first three movies! Nick Stahl and Arnold Schwarzenegger are together again for some reason with a new version of Cyberdyne’s Time Displacement machine mounted on a rocket-powered hoverbike, and must travel back in time to save humanity not once, but thrice. (By the way, this time the future can be changed—but we can’t make any promises for Terminator 5.)
The Mask II
Oh wait, this piece of shit’s already been made.
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