Hugo's Big Adventure

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a beautiful story told in both words and pictures that I read in a couple hours on Thanksgiving day. Hugo is a young boy who has lost his father (this seems to be a recurring motif in books I've read lately) in a tragic fire-related accident. Prior to his death, Hugo's father had been restoring an automaton--a mechanical man made from gears much like those of a clock--and now, Hugo has taken on his father's project. Automata are complicated machines and this particular man seems to be the most complicated and confounding one ever created. Through the course of the story, Hugo meets an old toy seller who also seems to have a mysterious connection to the automaton. The relationship that develops between this old man and this young boy is as complicated and wonderous as the machine itself. The images in the book are beautiful. It is worth picking up just to skim over the pictures:

Choose Your Own Theory of Craziness

Groundhog's Day it is! The final season of 'Lost', in which all of the universe's biggest questions are answered and we leave feeling warm and fuzzy for the rest of our days, will indeed commence on February 2nd, 2010. That is Groundhog's Day folks. What could it possibly mean? Probably nothing, but then again, it could mean SO many things. Here are some ideas from Doc Jensen (who is more verbose and has done more background research than me):

"A. ABC and the Lost producers were totally going for a Groundhog Day resonance! The choice of date affirms Time Loop Theory: that the castaways have been participating in a cycle of events that's been repeating for who-knows-how-long. But did someone (Ben? Jacob? The Man In Black? One of the castaways?) finally break that loop by producing a meaningful deviation during the course of this last cycle dramatized by the past five seasons of Lost?

B. Actually, ABC and the producers were winking at ''Veja Diena,'' an annual Latvian festival also held on Feb. 2 honoring the god of wind. The significance: The castaways were blown through time via the Jughead and the cosmic gameplaying of gods Jacob and the Man In Black.

C. ''Veja Diena''? No way! Feb. 2 is a link to Yemaja, the ocean/fertility goddess of the Yoruba religion, who is celebrated in Brazil on Feb. 2. This makes total sense, because Rodrigo Santoro, the actor who played Paulo back in season three, is also from Brazil. See? Paulo really was massively important to the larger Lost saga!

D. The Feb. 2-Groundhog Day-Veja Diena-Yemaja connections really are just total coincidences — a rare exception to the larger rule that each episode of Lost is layered with hundreds of thousands of clues, references, and allusions. I mean, that's right, right? RIGHT?!"

What the what!?! and Why the face!?! These are crazy ideas that illustrate why Jensen is one of my favorite pop-culture experts. Any way you look at it, February 2nd could not come soon enough for me.

New Gems in Television

You already know that I love TV. Now that 'Mad Men' is over and 'Lost' is so...far...away... I have more time to devote to other televised wonders. Here are some of my new favs (and one that is not new, but new to my favs). Allow me to tell you why I love them:

Glee:
So many reasons, where to start? Well, how about the fact that this show is loosely based on my husband's own high school experience. Finn=Rhett in so many ways. Not to mention the fact that this show might be single-handedly responsible for jumpstarting high school arts programs nation-wide. Take, for example, my school. We have had slim to no interest in the drama program since I started teaching here six years ago. Then, this fall, our choir director held auditions for a musical production and seventy (70!) kids tried out for a play with 17 roles. Holy why the face*. This show is taking the world, high schoolers and me by storm. I love, love, love it.

*See Modern Family entry below.

Modern Family:
Because Phil is a "cool dad" who knows all the hip adolescent lingo and text speak: "Lol is Laugh Out Loud; Wtf is Why the Face?" And because Jay's pre-teen stepson is a hybrid fencing-Columbian-gentleman who is trying to be 30. AND because, well, look at that baby with those creme puffs.

Parks and Recreation:
This show is so much funnier in its sophomore effort! All hail Aziz Ansari! He may be overly crass and abrasive on Twitter, but he slays me on P&R. My favorite Tom Haverford quote of the year to date: "On a scale of one to Chris Brown, how mad is he?" I tried to say it the other day to one of my co-workers and I accidentally said "On a scale of one to Chris Rock..." He was all, "Huh? Why the face?"


Flash Forward:
I'm actually not sure about this one. I want it to be good, because the cast is so great (Will Shakespeare/Joseph Fienes AND Charlie/The Hot Hobbit/Dominique Monaghan as a bad guy!). And in the pilot, I saw a billboard for Oceanic Airlines. But I'm not sure about the lifespan of this show, which would seemingly end on 04/29/10. And it is starting to come off as kind of cheesy (I'm a self-proclaimed cheese-o-meter). But I keep watching because I secretly hope that DM is actually Charlie and that maybe, just maybe, out of the shadows might step Benjamin Linus.

In a rare twist, I have been reading so much lately that I haven't had time to watch TV and need to do some catch-up. Luckily the weekends come quickly when your job is as hilarious and your kids are as adorable as mine.

Question Me Not

This post is an extention of my previous post. Here are some questions I have been asked today:

Is the old guy's disability that his leg is broken? Is he blind? Is being old a disability?

Can we make Indian headresses? Can we make those turkeys where you trace your hand and glue feathers on? Can I take a nap?

Do you know any gang signs? Does this look like B-L-O-O-D?

Do you want to hear a song I just wrote? Do you want to read my poetry?

Did you watch 'Family Guy' last night? Did you watch 'American Dad'? How about 'The Clevelands'?

Do you have a pencil? Do you have a different pencil? Do you have a different pencil sharpener?

Can I go to the bathroom? I know, I need to go again.

Thankful For Weekends

One of the best things about being a teacher is getting to go away from it all for various increments of time. Such as three-day weekends. Or, in this case, four-day weekends. Now that might seem brusque, but this is an emotional job--dealing with kids every day whose frontal lobes are not yet fully developed, resulting in their making terrible decisions and ridiculous statements such as: "Why was Hoover Jackson responsible for the Great Depression?" Blurgh.

In honor of being away from it all, these are the things I will not do this weekend:

1. Talk about the new 'Twilight' movie.
2. Really, talk about vampires in general.
3. Explain why, actually, that is not a complete sentence.
4. Erase pictures of giant animated mushrooms from table surfaces.
5. Overuse hand-sanitizer.
6. Respond to non-sequiters. (Student:"What day does Christmas Break start?" Me: "George and Lennie don't get a Christmas Break.")
7. Make up crazy stories about my personal life. (I was gone yesterday because I am actually working on a new reality show. It is about cat whispering. I am going to be the Cat Whisperer.)
8. Explain what "pants rabbits" are or why Curley has that glove full of vaseline.

Looking forward to a weekend full of intelligent adult conversation and over-the-top sarcasm. And I am not going to worry about whether or not people get it.

The Heaviest Boots Ever

Sometimes a story is just really, really hard to tell. Often, when this is the case, the story is also really, really hard to read. This is one of those stories. But it is also really, really lovely and wonderful to read as well. It is a conundrum of sorts.

I am in a book club with a group of incredibly loud and extremely close women who also happen to be remarkably intelligent and astonishingly interesting. This is the book we are reading in November and boy oh boy it is so very addicting. In the story, Oskar Schell (shell=a hard outer coating or structure) is a struggling through life as a survivor. His father was killed in the World Trade Center, something Oskar knows to be true, but still Oskar can't stop looking for his father everywhere he goes. He finds a key in an envelope labeled "Black", comes to the conclusion that the key must have something to do with a person whose name is Black, then proceeds to find and interview every person in New York with the last name Black.

Ahhh!!!#@$%*&^@ This book is so good and I am growing increasingly frustrated with my inability to locate time to finish it. My 2009 Top 10 list is going to be a doozy.

Who Reads That Much?

I went to a Young Adult Literature conference this week and the presenter (a high school librarian who does this on the side) told us she reads roughly 400 books a year. Yes, you heard me correctly. That is crazy, right? Now, granted, she reads almost exclusively young adult lit., which means some of the things she reads you could finish in one sitting, but you would have to be able to if you were going to read more than one book a day! I read a lot, but not that much. At one point someone asked her about a movie and she commented on how she doesn't have time to watch TV or movies since she reads so much. This is where she and I parted ways on the Reading Express. I toted my books along to the sitcom car, where I can read during the commercials.

One thing I like to do is read local authors and debut novels. I found both in The Last Town on Earth, a novel by Thomas Mullen. The story takes place in 1918, in a small town called Commonwealth, just northeast of Everett, WA. Commonwealth is a self-sustaining mill town, and it's people are proud of what they have made there. When the Spanish flu breaks out in surrounding areas, the townsfolk are desperate for a strategy to keep it at bay and away from Commonwealth. They decide to set up a reverse quarantine. No one can enter the town and if one wants to leave, he'd better be prepared to stay away until the flu outbreak dies down. The men volunteer to stand guard on the road into town, determined to protect their families and friends. Not long after they start, a soldier wanders toward town, cold and starving, and begs for entry. The men refuse, the soldier persists, and the resulting scuffle ends with a dead soldier and a new plague on the men of Commonwealth.

This book was particularly interesting to read during an "outbreak" of the flu. Worried for the safety of my own children, I have learned to spot a cough or a headache from a distance and carry anti-bacterial hand-sanitizer in every satchel I own. I felt that, on some crazy level, I could relate to the characters' fear, even if I can't relate to their irrational behaviors. This book gave me an interesting historical perspective on a local area too, and I really liked that.