Lost Without You

Since there is no Lost this week, I would like to recommend an alternate viewing option that will knock your socks off. And maybe even your pants. But not your underpants--it's not like that. Of course, you could use the time to read a book. But you probably won't, so how about this brilliant televised event of the past:

Slings and Arrows

Leave it to the Canadians to come up with something so good that goes so unnoticed. This is one of my favorite shows of all time. The show centers around Geoffrey, a once highly-acclaimed stage actor who seven years previously had a mental breakdown in the middle of a production of Hamlet, jumped into Ophelia's grave, and ran away. When the series begins, Geoffrey is directing at a hold-in-the-wall theater in Toronto and is constantly trying to avoid bill collectors, but is inspired by the art of it all. Then he gets a drunk-dial call from Oliver, his former partner at the New Burbage Festival, which is shrouded in mystery and followed by Oliver's untimely death by "Canada's Best Hams" truck. Geoffrey ends up taking over Oliver's job "temporarily" and there you have the series.

I could list ten reasons why this series is so brilliant, but I won't do that to you. I'll just say this: each of the three seasons follows the production of one of Shakespeare's major plays (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear), events in the show mirroring important themes and motifs from the plays. A fan of Shakespeare? You will love this. Not a fan? You will still find it hilarious.

***Side Note***I tried to show a portion of Season 2 (Macbeth) to my students last year while we read The Scottish Play and it was a disaster because I could not navigate around the flurry of f-bombs. Needless to say, we had to have a conversation about "mature television viewing."

Battle of the Books

Tuesday got the lucky priveldge of hosting the culminating event of a four-month reading fest that has taken place with our ninth grade students. All ninth-graders participated in Battle of the Books (albeit, some more enthusiastically than others) by choosing a team and reading or becoming knowledgeable about fourteen novels. The first day teams competed in classrooms to answer a variety of questions about these fourteen books. One team from each classroom (17 total) moved on to the Finals, which was nothing short of awesome. Here is a taste:

Quit looking at my answer (Pirates, arrg.)!

Stumped.

Wait for it...

Success is so sweet! And apparently bitter.

In addition to the good times had in the competition, we had a visit from Jim Lynch, the author of The Highest Tide, which was one of the students' book selections. He provided my students with the perfect combo of nerdy-cool writer guy and mysterious sea-life-lover. Plus he dropped a couple f-bombs, which didn't hurt his presentation one bit. The book is now flying off my shelf.

"That douche is my dad."

I knew it! During the first episode of the season, when we saw Pierre Chang and his little baby, I said, "Hey, I think that baby is Miles." Well, for once, my theory has panned out. In "Some Like it Hoth," we got to see the deeply conflicted child and adolescent Miles who turned out to be the deeply conflicted and moderately grumpy adult Miles. And now we get it.

Despite the seven thousand Star Wars references, this episode was totally enlightening. The premise seemed to revolve around the classic time-travel argument over whether the future can be altered by time travelers--something Hurley is convinced of as he hopes to write The Empire Strikes Back three years before its time. And we were treated to an endless stream of Hurleyisms that were laugh-out-loud funny. Like:

"How do you spell 'bounty hunter'?"

"Dude, that guy's a douche."

"Because, let's face it, Ewoks suck, dude."

"Polar bear poop, got it."

But Miles is not sure he buys into Hurley's theory. He has figured out who his daddy is, yet he is reluctant to approach him, choosing instead to "leave things alone." Oh Miles, who doesn't, on some level, want to talk to his once-thought-dead dad who apparently kicked his mom and he off the Island for a yet-unknown ( but we can assume it is that he found out about the Purge) idea? Doc Jensen seems to think that Miles will be the one to tip off his father about the coming Purge, and therefore set his own sucky life in motion. Not a bad idea, if you ask me.

My favorite part: seeing that guy chisel the fateful numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) into the unassembled hatch. Hurley: "Dude, that's our hatch."

A Fly on the Wall in a High School Computer Lab

I feel compelled to share a conversation I just overheard between a math teacher and a student. It may help you to know that the teacher has a thick Texan accent:

Teacher: What are you doing?
Student: I am choosing not to participate today.
Teacher: If you do not participate, you will fail.
Student: Not necessarily true.
Teacher: Yes, necessarily true. There is pass and there is fail. That is all.
Student: Well, in school, yes, but not in life.
Teacher: Yes, in life too. You either pass or you fail.
Different Student: I can't believe I have to listen to this.
(teacher walks away for a minute, but comes back by)
Student: For example, if I don't play my video game, I can't fail at it. I am only neutral.
Teacher:

Some things cannot be transcibed. Like the look on her face. Priceless.

Speaking of Redemption--Ben You've Lost Me

As I blahblahed on and on today about the power of redemption in literature, and a hero's quest and journey, I kept thinking about Benjamin Linus and last week's mind-blowing episode of Lost. I was on the edge of my computer chair seat with my face practically pushed up to the screen for this entire episode. And the result? I felt a human connection to Ben.

Maybe it's that I have recently Mothered, but something about Ben's weakness for the mother-child connection got me. It reminded me of all the literarily orphaned characters I love: Harry Potter, Pip, Anne of Green Gables, Peter Pan, Jane Eyre, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Pippi Longstocking, Annie... And I started to think about the significance of Ben's own motherless journey through adolescence. His mom died in childbirth and not only did he never know her, but his father was a total jerk to him because of her death. So he has to have an elaborate fantasy about what his life would have become had she survived, and in this fantasy, surely she is a bright and wonderful mother who makes him egg salad sandwiches and never lets his father raise his voice or a finger toward Ben. And this fantasy is surely projected onto every mother he meets, which exlpains his obsession with the Island's Dying Baby Syndrome and Juliet, who became a mother-figure to him when she took care of him in the 1970s Dharma Initiative. Hence they all said, "She looks just like her..."

Oh Ben, let the cycle of redemption begin again.

Look at that hiney, so scanlalous! A look into the mock-epic

Of late I've been reading Sophie Gee's Scandal of the Season, a historical novel based on the events leading up to Alexander Pope's 1712 writing of The Rape of the Lock. Pope was a poet and a Roman Catholic, which during the early 18th centrury meant he was an outsider and a victim of Protestant rule in England. Growing up in the country, Pope was mostly self-taught and spent years translating the works of Homer and Virgil, fascinated with the profound morals and larger-than-life epic heroes.

The Rape of the Lock is considered one of the greatest examples in the English language of the mock-epic. Modeled after the serious epic tales of Homer and Milton, The Rape of the Lock pokes fun at the vanities and idleness of 18th century high society. The poem was inspired by an incident among Pope's acquaintances in which Lord Petre cut off a lock of Arabella Fermor's hair, and the young people's families fell into strife as a result. Pope was encouraged by another mutual friend to write something light and humorous in an effort to reconcile the two families. Thus, the birth of The Lock of the Rape.

Gee manages to create deep and sympathetic characters while maintaining vigilant historical accuracy. A great read for anyone interested in poetry, lofty ideals, and the Brits.

An Ode to Working Mothers

My husband has been out of town for about a week and a half now, and the storm that is my existence has slowly been rising. It peaked this morning in a hallway blitzkrieg between myself and a male colleague of mine:

Male Colleague: Wow! Did you just wake up Butler? That's why I don't have hair! Hahaha!

Me (actual): Ha.

Me if there weren't students around: No, actually, I was up at 3 am when my 2-month-old decided he was starving to death, then again at 4 am when my 2-yr-old wanted to talk about his dad and sleep in my bed. Then I was peed on right before we left the house and I didn't change my clothes because we were running late and I felt my time would be better spent getting coffee since we had run out of milk and coffee. And bread for that matter. So read between the lines buddy (that is when I hold up three fingers-this is a family show).

And for the record, that is not why he doesn't have hair.

BlogBlogBlog

Every once in a while I am blown away by how differnt high school is today than it was just twelve years ago when I was there. For example, the internet. I remember my friend Shannon's family first getting the internet (before any of the rest of us) and that we literally thought the sole purpose of it was to make up fake identities and talk to people in chat rooms. No joke. We spent hours in her basement doing just this. And it probably cost a fortune at the time. Then there is research--I used books and encyclopedias, sat at a table in the library copying down information onto 3x5 notecards. That seems like a lifetime ago.

Now, life without the world wide web seems impossible. And school? Forget it--I would be lost without this resource. This week my students started a literary analysis project in which they blog from the perspective of a character in a classic novel. I was prepared for it to take a full week just to set up the blogs and get students familiar with the format. But in 55 minutes or less, everyone had created a blog, done a bit of internet-based research, and written and published their first post. And that was the moment I realized that life without paper is a definite possibility.

The Luxury of Libraries and Lady-bloggers

I totally get now why some women in possession of more than one child would choose not to leave their houses. Allow me to elaborate. I was very excited to be home on Spring Break this week and packed my schedule accordingly--including one of my favorite things, a trip to preschool story-time at our local library. Now, this has been a special tradition for James and I since I started taking him when he was about four months. He could barely hold his head up, but you had better believe he was going to get some stories read to him. I think he cried and I think I was embarassed. Which is utter crazy talk in light of the fact that I now have two children.

Well, let me just say that this week's Library Story-Time Fiasco involved an over-crowded tiered parking lot with an abundance of stairs and no ramp, a two and a half-year old who recently discovered that he has the ability to jump (something we have been trying to keep hidden from him for some time now), sideways rain (if you live in the NW you need no further explanation), and an elaborately landscaped fountain and zen rock garden with a tiny railing and a long, at the moment raging, stream.

This is the story of how I became that lady who is screaming at her selectively deaf child to get out of the road while she struggles to pull a huge stroller up four flights of cement stairs.

After the Library Story-Time Fiasco of 2009, I ditched the kids (and by ditched I mean left them with their very responsible father who had explicit instructions on how to care for them) and went to Seattle with my good friend Allison to a book reading event by one of our favorite lady-bloggers Heather Armstrong. The evening included margaritas, adults, and frozen yogurt. Don't get me started on my love of FroYo (when and why did this fad die?). It was wonderful. Even though I had to employ my breastpump in the front seat of Allison's car while she held my coat up.

So, all-in-all, not a boring day.