Fall 2012: A Semester In Review

The Fall semester is usually a pretty crazy one for high school teachers, what with the football season, Homecoming, tons of testing, yearbook photo days, big focus-draining holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving, band competition season, theatre competition season, All-State auditions and district events for NAfME groups...yeah.  I wouldn't be surprised if, taking out the days you miss both in holiday form and in something-crazy-is-happening-so-no-one's-paying-attention form, the Fall semester is something like 1/4 shorter than Spring.  Lots of life jammed into roughly 4.5 months!

Awesome Things that Happened in Fall 2012

• I met lots of great new students, some of whom were new baby freshmen and some of whom I adopted from band and theatre.
• The second annual Combined Fall Concert with the middle school, in which I got to do my two favorite things: play and conduct!
• I made use of a rich pool of instrumental talent by having my kids play in concerts.
• I HAD MY FIRST FUNDRAISER!
• It actually made money!
• No big disasters happened!
• I discovered that part of the reason my kids are awesome is because their parents are awesome - parent volunteers made Coffeehouse the success it was.
• I WON THE "I INSPIRE GOLD" AWARD!
• The second annual Inspire was super fun and proved a perfect vehicle for getting to know the students so we could make more informed decisions with the other musicals!
• I had some kids go to "I Love A Piano" at Brenau, which was really fun and educational!
• I got to play Middle Treble Honor Chorus!
• I got to play the middle school's Winter Concert!  Every year, I get so excited hearing the progress, especially within the 8th grade, since those kids are coming to me soon!
• I GOT TO BE IN THE 25th ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE!
• I took two Master's degree courses and, as of this writing, am making As in both!  (Check back with me in January, when the finals have been graded and grades posted...)
• I had 6 kids make All-State!
• I switched my kids to solfege and nobody died!
• Inside Joke Theatre
• "Recognize!" (taken from Scrubs)
• "Soiled it!" (taken from SpongeBob)
• "It's a joke."
• "It's a metaphor."
• "BOJANGLES"
• Football Eyes
• "Scooping is for ice cream parlors!" (K.B.)
• "Break hearts?  BREAK FACE!" (R.B.)
• "WHAT NOW????" (J.T.)
• Herp Derpington, Sir John Trollingham, and Derpina
• "Trololololololololooooooo!"
• "He's a matador."
• "We-EEEEEEEE!"

Now onward to Spring and LGPE, Footloose, ACP 2013, concert and finals season...bring it!

The Southern Cooking Hierarchy

My professor and I met today to discuss my project for her class, what courses I'm going to take next semester and in the summer, and naturally got around to talking about Thanksgiving.  She asked whether I was cooking.

She is not from the South.  I can tell by how she pronounces her "o"s.  So I schooled her in the Southern Cooking Hierarchy, in which big families often share the burden of the Thanksgiving meal...

Tier 1: Oldest Female Relatives
Yes, here in the South we are largely still clinging to 1950s gender roles, nauseating as they are.  So your top-tier relatives, usually the grandmothers and great-grandmothers, get the most important dishes because ostensibly they have had the most experience in cooking and will do the best job.  Also they walked to school in the snow barefoot uphill both ways and DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN and what-not.  They get the dishes that top the Thanksgiving marquee: turkey, dressing, really excellent desserts, and gravy.  Naturally, I took a momentary tangent at this point in the conversation to preach the gospel of gravy and how the good ones don't come in a packet and how top-tier relatives get this one because it takes a good 30 years to get good at homemade gravy.  And even then, God still won't let you get it right sometimes.

Tier 2: Next Generation of Female Relatives, aka "Everyone who turns her head when someone yells 'MOM' or sisters thereof."
The second tier of female relatives tends to consist of parents of dependent children and other adults in their same age group.  This group gets assigned side dishes - green bean casserole, sweet potato souffle, and occasionally deviled eggs if someone in this group is over 45.  Otherwise, the eggs are sent to Tier 1, because DEVILED EGGS!!

Tier 3: Awkward Semi-Adults
I fall into this category; these are the adults who have been out of their parents' homes for 5 or fewer years, give or take.  Often, this group includes women who are younger siblings or in-laws of Tier 2 people who are aged out of Tier 2 and adult children of Tier 2 people.  Tier 3 people are assigned microwaveable or canned dishes because Tiers 1 and 2 tend to suspect that Tier 3 people eat Easy Mac every night and don't understand the difference between "broiling" and "boiling" outside of the "r".  If the Tier 3 person is still in the WOO GIRL stage of life, she'll probably get assigned Coca-Cola or napkins, with a Tier 2 person at the ready to run to Kroger in case the Tier 3 girl doesn't show up at all.

Tier 4: Consumers
Children and husbands.  Because apparently (as the aforementioned 50s gender roles would suggest), men are incapable of cooking unless there's actual fire involved.

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

Of course, I am only joking around.  I am really looking forward to this Thanksgiving - both my family and my husband's family are wonderful people and I love spending time with them all.

And for those of you who are curious, I got assigned rice by one group (upper-level Tier 3 with an imminent promotion) and cookies by another (Tier 2.)  We grow up so fast.

Venture Predictions

SPOILER/INSIDER ALERT: If you're a Venture fan who hasn't seen Very Venture Halloween yet, I'll be spoiling it left and right.  If you're unfamiliar with The Venture Brothers, (a) get on that and (b) you'll find this post pretty obscure.

So we got Rokus for each of our televisions and are on the verge of abandoning broadcast television altogether in favor of internet streaming.  There are about seven hundred things in the "Pro" list on this decision and only three in the "Con" list:
1. The internet gets slow/buggy more often than the satellite.  The bugs and occasional wait time for loading don't really bother me...I'm not sure the same can be said for my husband.
2. No local channels, so I can't watch channel 2 to see which counties are in red for tornado warning and which are yellow for tornado watch.  Since March 20, 1998 (for some of our more seasoned residents, since April 6, 1936), we're all a little squeamish about tornados around here.
3. The new Venture Brothers episodes.

Regular readers know about my love of all things Venture, despite its pretty spectacular failing of the Bechdel test (SRSLY, Tatiana, Y U NO HAVE LINES?); It's snappy and funny and I am really jonesing for new episodes.  I suppose I could bite the bullet and spend the money on that Adult Swim Gold membership or whatever and watch them on my computer or just be patient and wait until they're released to Adult Swim's general-access site.  But it's tough to wait, especially since I watched (on the satellite that we haven't abandoned quite yet) the Very Venture Halloween special, which was the first new episode in a long time - the Shallow Gravy special aired a year and change ago and the last season finale was over two years ago.  The series was never cancelled and the next season has been repeatedly promised, though its ETA has moved several times - James Urbaniak (the voice of Dr. Venture) says it's coming soon and the Very Venture Halloween threw some weight behind all those promises by advancing various story arcs from the last season and introducing new plot points that presumably will be clarified in the new season.  I'm in a sporting mood, so I'm going to make some observations and a few predictions about some of the weirdness going on in that episode and we'll see in the forthcoming season if I'm right!

1. Sergeant Hatred's "Costume."
It seems picayune on the surface, but it really bugs me that the only thing distinguishing Halloween Hatred from Everyday Hatred was a bosom.  He was still in Venture blues, no makeup or wigs or anything.  And we know he at least has access to face paint from "Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel," so he could easily have given himself fake lipstick or something if it were actually a costume.
My Prediction
He's going the Hunter Gathers route, not for undercover reasons as Hunter did, but because he thinks it will help him reverse his dark secret and also because Princess Tinyfeet likes it, seeing as how she's got a few secrets of her own.

2. New Dean
This one's obvious to any follower of the show.  New Dean isn't really that new at all - he's morose, disillusioned and aloof, just like Rusty was at his age.  In "Every Which Way But Zeus," Rusty confesses to a disguised Hank that, "I see so much of myself in that kid that I want to apologize to him for his existence." [EDIT: Whoops!  Rusty said this of Hank, not Dean.  But I think my prediction still holds water.]
My Prediction
Given the overall vibe of the show, which is all about glorious failure, Dean is most certainly not going to be the Venture Who Makes It.  No one is.  But Dean also won't break his neck trying to make it because he's watched his dad walk down that tired road too many times.  Rusty was right in the aforementioned episode at the time when he said, "Dean believes this crap!"  But by now, Dean has already started disbelieving all this crap.  He will try to disappear.  As soon as he's able, he will get as far away from Venture Industries, The Guild, OSI, Hank and Rusty as he can.  He'll go from the trembling child who asked, "Why can't I just have a normal life???" to the bitter adult who will say, "I can, and I will."
But he won't.  Hank and Rusty will always come around asking for money, people will stop him on the street because they recognize his last name - even later in life because of Jonas Jr. - and he will always grimace around Hot Topics because of Triana.  Because (don't judge, Rusty said lots of good stuff in that episode!), "He's a Venture.  He can't shake it." [EDIT: Again, this was actually said of Hank, but I'm pretty sure it holds true for Dean as well.]

3. Dermott and Doc
Never assume that any Venture thing is a one-off.  Dermott himself is evidence of that.  The Shallow Gravy special is neatly folded into this episode when Rusty tries to cultivate manners in Dermott, saying, "I have my reasons."  Even though it comes with all these provisos, like the fact that Dermott's situation is Rusty's fault, I find it vaguely noble that Rusty is taking a little filial responsibility.
My Prediction
What we saw is what we'll get.  Rusty will continue to insist that Dermott wipe his feet and put his napkin in his lap and ring doorbells and will never tell him or anyone else why.  Because the same vague nobility that compels him to try and improve Dermott as a person will also compel him not to destroy the life Dermott knows, even if it is built on lies.

4. Rusty in General
Is it just me, or did Rusty seem more lethargic in this episode?  I know he was drinking Hunchbacks all through the episode, but if they had any effect, it should have been copious vomiting.  Rusty has never been one to get too enthusiastic about anything that doesn't stand a chance of making him rich or popular, but in this episode he was more crotchety and morose than usual.
My Prediction
Between the therapy sessions in "Self-Medication" and the psychological earthquake of "Assisted Suicide," Rusty is finally coming to terms with himself.  Just as Orpheus's cheesy speech at the end says, Rusty is finding his true self.  He's beginning to realize that he never truly was the Boy Adventurer, he was never a Super Scientist, he was never suave or popular.  He was a neglected child star who was pushed into a career he had no aptitude for and as a result of his childhood abuse was never able to form meaningful relationships with friends, partners or his own children, hence his preference for making cloned copies of his boys over, you know, keeping them safe.  But now the clones are gone, there's a new child in his life, and he's not getting any younger.  He is realizing that he will never be like Jonas or Jonas Jr. and this realization will send him spiraling into depression.  He won't do anything drastic - at least, nothing any more drastic than his existing bad habits - he'll just be less happy.  But it will be a different type of unhappiness than his usual frustration over his failed get-rich-quick schemes and such.  It will be a more genuine unhappiness born of realizing the giant lie that is his life.  In a perverse way, this unhappiness will be the most grounded and secure he has ever been because finally, something in his world is based on truth.

5. Ben
Everyone will be making predictions about this because it was the biggest ERMAHGERD in the episode.  Who the heck is Ben?
My Prediction
In the episode, Ben says that he worked with Jonas on cloning and later with Rusty, so this is what I think: Ben is Jonas's brother and the real super science muscle behind Venture Industries.  Growing up, Jonas was more athletic and charismatic, while Ben was more scientifically gifted and withdrawn.  Jonas took credit for Ben's work on cloning, rocketing him to fame and fortune and setting him up to found Team Venture and create the shows.  Ben, upset but a generally laid-back guy, approached Jonas and threatened to out him as a liar if he didn't let Ben enjoy some of the trappings of his success.  Ben was not extroverted and didn't want any of the fame and popularity - Jonas could have all of that - but Ben did want and deserve the money.  So Jonas struck a deal in which Ben got a piece of the Venture property in which to live in solitude, a state Jonas helped ensure by turning the adjacent field into a mass grave for the various villains he killed as well as setting up Ben's home to appear "haunted" so that people would leave him alone.  Ben supplied the super-science "discoveries" that were attributed to Jonas, got the profits from those discoveries and got to pursue his hobbies (which obviously include taxidermy as evidenced by his home) at length, while Jonas lived off of the television shows and superheroing around with Team Venture.  On their combined efforts, Venture Industries became a media and science giant.  Jonas, ever the opportunistic guy, tried to push Rusty into a science career so that he could eventually run Venture Industries with Rusty instead of Ben, but soon discovered that Rusty was just as inept at science as he was.  Rusty, however, was unwilling to accept this and initially vowed that he would someday run Venture Industries entirely on his own, gaining even more fame than Jonas and making even more scientific breakthroughs than Ben.  Jonas died before he could try to talk Rusty out of his mismatched aspirations.  Through the years, Rusty would keep working toward his goals and continue to fail and would periodically have to go to Ben to keep the company afloat, always telling himself that he was including Ben out of altruism rather than desperation.  Ben saw this behavior for what it was: the straw-grasping of a man so emotionally destroyed by his father that he might never be able to perceive reality.  Since Rusty's visits occurred frequently enough to keep them both in homes and fed, and because he knew full well that it would be a long time before Rusty would acknowledge the truth, Ben chose not to rock the boat and kept Rusty and Venture Industries supplied with this and that product.  But during the time period of the latest season, during Rusty's two big psychological events, Ben noticed the same sort of descending depression that I did and thought that it might be getting close to time to put everything out in the open and that he would take the next opportunity that presented itself.
And it presented itself at Halloween 2012, when Dean decided to see what was in that creepy old building that they called "The Potter Place."

So now let's all watch the new season, whenever it comes, and see if I'm psychic or what!

A Letter To Me

I was thinking about that Brad Paisley song in which he sings to his 17-year-old self the other day and wondered what I would tell my 17-year-old self in a letter.  So I'm going to give it a shot - maybe the teens who read this blog will get something out of it.

Dear Ashley at 17,

Because, as you just learned from On Writing Well, giant paragraphs are hard to read, I'm going to give you information in bullet points.  Just some little bites to encourage you!

• Don't worry so much about big shiny achievements.  All those trophies and plaques you used to display in your room are now in a box in your storage room - it's no longer important to me that everyone know I won the school spelling bee in 5th grade.
• I know it's your nature to be this way, but you don't need to worry about what other people think of you.  The people around you are too focused on how *they* are being perceived to really notice you much at all.
• Even though it feels this way when people call you this, being "sensitive" doesn't mean you're weak.  It's a side effect of your artistic ability.  It's what makes you able to put your feelings into meaningful words and music and someday, it will give you lots of compassion for your high school students who also feel hurt and alienated by the world.
• You already know the person you're going to marry and you even like him a little, but it's not anyone you think it is right now.  Boys your age are largely not ready to love and commit the way you need/want them to (not because they're bad or wrong - they're just young), but the guy you end up marrying will be different.  He will roll with you even as your beliefs and identity change, and even though you'll go through some difficult times, you will learn and grow so much because of him.
• Let things go.  In an hour, no one will remember that you answered a question wrong.  In a week, no one will remember when you accidentally hit a tree (going very slowly) with your car.  And in 9 years, you yourself will not remember many of the things that take up so much of your psyche now.
• Technology will progress so much.  One day, that massive CD collection will be replaced by a little device you can fit in your pocket that can instantly access music, the internet, your email, and even games you enjoy now like Bookworm!
• It is annoying to hear, but Mom really does know more than you do.  When she seems to be coming out of left field with her thoughts, it's because she's seen things you can't and don't want to envision.
• A bunch of the friends you have now are married, have or are having kids, or are embarking on big careers.  Also, you'll still be friends with a lot of the people in your close circle of friends because they are such good people; Sybil, Ashlyn, Sara, Deanna, Niki and so many others will be your friends for years to come.
• Right now, you have a slightly skewed view of forgiveness because of your people-pleasing nature - it's ok to acknowledge when someone you love makes a mistake.  That is, in fact, the first step of forgiving.  It's also ok to feel pain because of that mistake.  The forgiveness part happens when you don't make that person make up for the pain.
• Thank your drama teacher.  She has already had and will continue to have a huge impact on your career.
• Thank your chorus teacher.  Same goes for him.
• I would keep listing people who impact your career, but the fact is that every musician and performer you encounter will do that in some way.  Appreciate them.
• Appreciate the people in your life in general, even the ones you might not favor so much right now.  Life is unpredictable.
• In 9 years, many of your opinions and much of how you perceive the world will change.  That's how it's supposed to be - you adapt to new information.  
• You already sense that you are insecure.  The biggest thing I'd like to impress upon you in this letter is that one day, you will feel secure.  Much of what is happening now in your life will fade into a few scattered memories.  You are happy some of the time now - by the time you are 26, you will be happy much more often.  You will find joy in things you didn't expect.  You will meet wonderful people.  You will learn wonderful things.  Everything about your world will be different, and nearly everything about your world will be better.

So hang in there.  Like Brad Paisley will say in a few years' time: "And I'd end by saying, 'Have no fear.  These are nowhere near the best years of your life.'"

Love, Ashley

Mushy Gushy Saccharine Sentimentality

Today, I turned in my final project for one of my classes and fully completed my first semester of my Master's degree.  I feel two ways about this.

1. Imma sleep late and go swimming and watch Maury and stay up late watching movies and goof off and write blog posts because NO MORE SMARTY THINKINGNESS for two weeks!

2. I miss my friends already.

It's like we went to Master's Degree (or, for some of us, Ed. S or Ed. D or certification) Summer Camp and now it's over.  I met a lot of very talented, fun, dynamic people and while I will not miss getting up at 5, making the hour commute both ways, or drawing timelines in which I trace some genre, I will definitely miss getting to hang out with them every day.  As I walked down the stairs to my car to head back home, I actually misted up a little because I am a giant dorkfish.

So here's to the good things, the things I will miss...

Asking for certain types of refreshments at inappropriate times.  ("Dude, it's 8:15 in the morning!")

Keeping people straight on which discussions actually took place in class and which took place in someone's mind.

Pretend due dates.

"I want to see the worst project you've ever seen."  "You haven't turned yours in yet."

Laughs over expensive sandwiches and Lucky Charms donuts at the art museum.

"I think I hate people."

"8:00, night of the concert."

The terrible things that will happen if we teach dotted rhythms incorrectly.

"Raise it, lower it," and everything else about Choral Seminar.

"They keep the Steinways on ice!"

"Does anyone else want to turn these pages?"

Accelerate...BOOM

"And then the clarinets go dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah and then the piccolos go dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee and..."

Epic Facebook conversations during class, featuring HATS

Confections by Meg: Breakfast of Champions

"Say yes!"

"Punch your brother!"

and of course, "Wisdom stands in the middle of things."  Which, I am not ashamed to admit, I'm pretty sure I'm going to hang on to forever.

Track 1 - "Losing Grip"

The first in a series of posts in which I pick apart the tracks of Avril Lavigne's debut album Let Go, which was pretty much the soundtrack to my junior and senior years of high school.  No schedule to these posts - I'll just write 'em whenever I'm tired of homework.

"Losing Grip"

Typically, whenever I got a new CD as a teen, I would listen through it and decide, with a swift and picky ear, which tracks were going to be my favorites.  This one was not one of my favorites on this album, but I did occasionally play this one when I was frustrated with a particular male friend (the same friend whose complicated interaction with me would cause me to identify so readily with track 2...)

The lyrical content is pretty accessible, even simplistic - we all know what situation Avril is referring to.  There are spots, like "grinning with a lost stare" (huh?) and "cause you weren't there when I was scared" (scared of what?) where she clouds the narrative in favor of rhyming, but it's still better than the pop music I was writing at 17.  A mini-catharsis occurs when we go from the verse or the bridge/breakdown into the chorus, going from a muted acoustic-driven sound with Avril singing in her middle register to electrics and a quasi-yell on "WHYYYYYYYYYYY should I CAAAAAAAAAARE?"  To my ear and sensibilities, this initial line of the chorus is the best alignment of lyric, melody and instrumentation in the song.  It would not surprise me if this line was what came to her first, a visceral cry in response to her beloved's neglect, around which she then constructed the rest of the song.

One vocal technique that is typical among pop musicians then and since is the changing of a vowel during a held syllable with multiple notes.  (I realize there is a musical word for that and I know what that word is, but the Eternal Overlooking Spirit of Your Theory Teacher won't let me use it in reference to a Lavigne song.)  In the first verse, "...like I'm not reh-eee-eh-eee-ehl."  Or in the bridge, "crying out lah-eee-yowd."  I suppose it's a security blanket to help keep the notes clearly differentiated from each other, so that it's obvious to a pop listener that she intends there to be multiple notes and she isn't just wobbling from nerves or inexperience.  Either that or her voice doesn't move smoothly or easily and she uses the physical motion of changing her vowel shape to help it move.

Harmonically, it follows a lot of the conventions of angsty music of the period (We'll say, 1990 to 2005, The Nirvanian Style...I am totes Music Historian Barbie right now.)  Minor character...because of the absence of the "si" leading tone and the dominant chord it lives with and the occasional appearance of the "fi" in a couple of chords, I might even refer to it as being modal if I were in the mood to bug the aforementioned EOSoYTT.  The majorized IV in a minor song was widely used in mopey rock music to give it a raw, unstable feel to ears that were accustomed to relentlessly diatonic pop/rock.  The tonal center shifts for the bridge, a piece of harmonic interest that only lasts a few bars before we're back to hollering at Mr. Wrong for the last few choruses.

Gotta love the little alteration she makes to the last lines of the last couple of choruses: "If you don't care, then I don't care / We're not going anywhere."  The musical equivalent of one teen yelling "Well FINE then!" to another.

Academiac

If you are a Facebook friend of mine or have seen me IRL in the last few months, you're probably abundantly (annoyedly, shut-up-about-it-alreadily) aware that I have started graduate school.  Of all the first days of school I've had, this might be the most interesting...

The First Day of Kindergarten

The First Day of Sixth Grade

(for any far-flung readers: in this region, sixth grade is the first year of a three-year "middle school")

The First Day of Ninth Grade

(again, for those whose systems may differ: in my area, ninth grade is the first year of a four-year high school)

The First Day of an Undergraduate Degree

The First Day of Graduate School

A Series of Homes

A forever long, reminiscing post that is part autobiography, part commentary on class and wealth, and extremely self-centered.

I had a pleasant lunch with my mother and my oldest sister today.  We talked about this and that and got to reminiscing about our history together.  We have always been fortunate - we had places to live, food, working cars, toys, and later on could even swing piano lessons and college educations - but as we talked today, I got to thinking about how my perception of being "normal" in terms of wealth changed as I grew and as our circumstances changed here and there.

Up until about age 4 or so, I hadn't thought much about these sorts of things, seeing as how I was still in the business of acquiring language, socialization and fine motor skills, in addition to singing songs to anyone who would listen.  Once I hit pre-k age, though, I think a certain crude, infantile understanding of "wealth" had been subliminally transfused to me through things like Scrooge McDuck's endless counting of gold coins in the DuckTales cartoons.  I cite that specifically because (1) it's one of the few things I clearly remember watching a lot during that period of time and (2) it's the only explanation I can come up with for why I believed that Grandma having "gold" handles on the drawers of her furniture meant that she was rich.  No seriously - I would go into her home (a newly acquired double-wide) and sit in front of the end tables running my fingers along the drawer handles.  She still has those furniture pieces and the handles are now only partially gold, as the veneer has been worn off by use and by my childhood caressing.  When we moved in with her, I believed we were moving into a nicer home because we were going from no gold handles to gold handles and from a heating system that consisted of one very loud heater in the living room to a system where heat actually came out of this hole in the floor right into your own personal bedroom!  Three bathrooms instead of one!  A big (to us) Christmas tree every Christmas!  We were so lucky!

As I became a preteen, my perception of wealth and status became influenced by harmful and misleading cultural narratives.  I made snarky remarks about being "trailer trash."  Not once did I consider what sort of stereotypes I was reinforcing, or how hurtful that sort of language might have been to anyone sitting near me who might also live in a trailer or who might wish they were lucky enough to have one...all I cared about was that the people I wanted to make laugh were laughing.  In any event, it was a sign of my new viewpoint: we were clearly classless and poor because we lived in a trailer, whereas normal people lived in "real" houses.  Never mind that the "real" house we had occupied prior to living in the trailer was crumbling and dangerous...I was a shining example of the phenomenon in which humans tend to hang on tenaciously to a specific worldview once they've landed on it and they tend to remember all data that supports it while disremembering all data that disproves it.  Stubborn creatures of habit, we are.

During my sixth grade year (which in my region is the first year in a new school for public school kids) we made our next move up the ladder.  We had one false alarm - had a house decided upon and were going to move during Winter Break, but then it fell through.  I was delighted, of course, because I had just gotten used to my school and was not at all anxious to leave.  Shortly thereafter, though, the parents picked out another house and we moved right before my 12th birthday.  I was partially distraught; dagnabbit, I had just gotten used to my old middle school and here I was having to start over completely and with only 2.5 months left in the school year!  But on the other hand, there was this house.

This.  House.  It was a "real" house, and it was so much prettier than the previous "real" house we had lived in, which was built in the 50s, had wood paneling on the walls and didn't originally sport a bathroom (one had been added before we lived there.)  This house, however, was built in the 90s.  The walls were painted, white in most of the house except the wallpapered bathrooms and the painted kid bedrooms.  THE BEDROOMS!!  Amber and I had separate ones!  Mine was big enough not only for a double bed all for me and standard bedroom furniture, but we could even finagle it so that the spinet piano Mimi gave us could fit in my bedroom as well!  There was a backyard with a playhouse and a hammock, a paved driveway instead of gravel that we could write on in chalk, a crawlspace to hide in during tornadoes so that we didn't have to run across the road to someone else's house...it was the most wonderful house ever.  We weren't poor people anymore, we were normal!

My assessment of us as "normal" lasted until I saw some of my new friends' homes, with their multiple stories and their internet access and their DVD players and in some cases, pools.  I downgraded us to the low side of normal - we weren't poor, but there were times when it felt like I was the only kid in the entire county school system who didn't have an AIM screen name, which I assumed was the result of us not being able to afford internet (it wasn't.)  Like lots of kids, I hoped that one day I would be successful enough at something to make enough money to have a big house with a pool and digital gadgetry and pretty decor and all that.  I wasn't contemptuous of our home, but I didn't fully appreciate it.

My next move came at 18, and I'll say only this: nothing will make you appreciate your one-story unpooled house like living at college.  To this day I rejoice in floors that are the same elevation at one side of the room as they are at the other.

Once I got married and started working, my whole understanding of wealth and class began to broaden.  I began to see the myriad ways in which people gain and lose, began to think about the crushing cyclical nature of poverty, and began to realize how unbelievably lucky I had been as a kid.  I had parents (several!) who were able to acquire jobs to support the family and were able to complete their own educations so that they could help me and my sisters complete ours, we lived in structures where we felt reasonably safe and felt confident that if something did happen, we would be listened to and protected by law enforcement, we had enough money to buy nutritive food, medical care, and cars to take us to get those things, the parents had sufficient income without any of the kids having to get jobs to help sustain the family (getting jobs to help pay for things the kid wants or help with college is a different thing) so we kids could focus on school, our parents' occupations were scheduled so that they were at home most evenings and thus had time and energy (hehehe) to talk to us and see after our emotional well-being and included weekends off for leisure activities...there's a domino effect happening here.  One layer of luck tends to lead to another.  I have no personal lived experience with poverty, but based on what I have read from those who have and various thinky blogs like Sociological Images, the same happens at the other end of the spectrum.  One layer of suck leading to another.  If any one of several elements in my family's history had been just a little different...if this one hadn't graduated from high school and thus hadn't gotten into this career, or if another hadn't had a parent at home to help with homework in the subject that would one day become his/her passion, or if I hadn't been at the right place at the right time, the whole story could have changed.

Of the many advantages I had as a kid, one of the biggest was the life lesson that you should never stop learning, never stop listening, and never believe that you are 100% right because the world is big and varied and you aren't God.  I hope to keep that lesson always and use it to keep learning about people and to help them add some layers of luck to their own lives.    

MEEP

I have me a theory based purely on my own musings while cooking myself lunch and watching old Looney Tunes on Cartoon Network.  Probably I am noticing things that are glaringly obvious and stupid to someone who knows from animation and film, just as I am contemptuous of people who declare that "the ABC song and Twinkle Twinkle have the same rhythm!"*  Or I am noticing things that have already been written about and I just haven't searched long enough.  But I'm having too much fun with this train of thought to keep it to myself, even if it is potentially idiotic and/or unintentionally pirated.

In my neverending search for film and television trivia/nostalgia, one of my favorite tidbits (owing likely to the fact that it has to do with two movies I adore) is the fact that Dumbo was made quickly and cheaply to help recoup the losses from Fantasia, which was a pretty big flop in its initial release.  They expected Fantasia to capture people's hearts and they expected Dumbo to just squeak by and nearly the opposite happened.  Fortunately, both movies turned out to be major favorites over the course of the seven billion re-releases that each one has gotten as film technology has changed.  (I've not looked, but it occurs to me to wonder whether they pull that Disney Vault crapola with digital retailers like iTunes and Amazon.  They're like the Girl Scouts of cinema and their best films are the cookies.)

I thought of this today while I was watching Wile E. Coyote attempt to accost the Road Runner.  My extensive minutes-long research on Wikipedia has not produced anything that confirms my theory, but it didn't produce anything that disproves it either.  To be safe, however, please consider everything in this post, as you likely consider everything on this blog, to be purely hypothetical.

I bet that the Coyote/RR cartoons acted as budget savers for the Warner Bros. animation studio.  During the golden age of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, such cartoons were shown in theaters and I would think that they, though to a smaller degree, were at the mercy of audience whims just like feature films.  Maybe if they blew the budget on one of the bigger names like Bugs or Daffy, but still needed to create another cartoon for another venue or purpose, the Coyote cartoons were a quick fix.

Consider:

1. Sound and Syncing

As far as I know, in every cartoon that pits Wile E. against the Road Runner, not one word of spoken dialogue was uttered.  (There were about 6 or so cartoons produced toward the end of the Looney Tunes era that paired Wile E. with Bugs Bunny - in these, he finally speaks and turns out to be kind of a jerk.)  So they didn't have to hire voice actors or worry about animating mouths to sync with the recorded dialogue, which probably saved a great deal of time and money.  They had only the musical score, the sound effects (your standard booms, bangs, propellers, large springs, hammers, etc.) and the one piece of vocalization - "thunka-thunka-MEEP-MEEP" - to sync with the animated images.  They may have granted the Coyote one or two "YEEEEEEOWS!" in reaction to being blown up, but I have a feeling that "YEEEEEEOW!" is easier to animate and sync than, "My goodness, but that was a painful experience."

I noticed something with the ubiquitous MEEP today in my viewing: in this particular cartoon, even though the MEEP MEEP happened several times, Road Runner was only on screen for one of them.  For all the others, he was either in the process of running toward us from a distance with fine details obscured, or was simply not visible at all, his location meant to be inferred by the viewer based on wherever we last saw him.  Genius, I tell you!  Because then you don't have to be achingly precise with where the sound goes - as long as it occurs somewhere within whatever 5-second time period you're trying to establish his presence, you're good!

2. Storyboard/Plot

It's rather difficult to call what was going on in these cartoons a "plot."  One reason I have never actually been fond of these types of cartoons is the repetition.  I feel similarly about Tom and Jerry.  But again, this could have been a money-saving move, because you don't have to pay a bunch of writers to come up with the witty banter and clever mischief required of more complex stars like Bugs Bunny.  You don't even have to use "real" writers - you can take two of your goofy friends out for dinner and then ask them to come up with weird schemes to catch Road Runners.  Insert explosion/failure and poof: completed script!

3. Setting

This ties a little into the previous point about the monotony of the stories.  Whereas Porky Pig might be on an island in one cartoon and in a house in the next, or Daffy in the woods one day and in the arctic that night, or Bugs continually making wrong turns at Albuquerque that land him in all manner of locales, the Coyote and the Road Runner reside exclusively in Unnamed Desert.  Backgrounds often have little detail besides the topography of whichever section of Unnamed Desert they're hanging out in.  Road + sand + cliffs + sky = a Coyote/Road Runner background!

*     *     *     *     *     *

Of course, it is possible (likely, in fact) that I am grossly generalizing and conjecturing because of a hyper brain that no longer has students to visit its whims upon.  This was, after all, ignited by a single viewing of a single cartoon out of many in the same vein, which is not a statistically significant sample.  But it was a fun little mental exercise to envision what sort of work might have gone into these sorts of cartoons as opposed to others.  Chuck Jones was involved in several of the Coyote/Road Runner cartoons and was also one of the major animators and shapers of Bugs Bunny and it mystifies me a little how such a creative talent could produce such different products.  Bugs cartoons are filled with personality, layered with cultural commentary and innuendo, infused with all manner of comedy from the satirical to the slapstick...they dazzle with their compact complexity** and Coyote cartoons just seem so...elementary.  So formulaic and dull.  I have trouble believing that the same sort of professional pride and vigor went into "I'm a fiddler crab!  Shoot me!  It's fiddler crab season!" as went into "......[crash boom MEEP]...."  I keep seeing where different behind-the-scenes books have been published, but I've yet to find many of them in Kindle editions.  What a bunch of crap.  Until that happens, expect lots more navel-gazing and hypothesizing from me!

Actually, you can probably expect that henceforth in any case.   

*For any nonmusical readers who are mystified by the ABC/Twinkle thing...they have the same rhythm, which is a single element of music, because they are in fact the same tune, which is a broader entity encompassing rhythm.  It would be like your friend saying, "This vegetable is the same color as this vegetable!" while pointing to two identical pieces of broccoli.
**Well, most of them dazzle...the Censored Eleven disappoint in their blatant racism and stereotyping.

Inexplicable Bad Days

Yes, I know I haven't posted in about a zillion years...I started a bunch of posts that got to be inordinately long and I had to stop halfway through and never restarted and by the time I revisited the dashboard, too much time had passed for them to still be relevant.  Sorry.

So something was sort of...off today.  Nothing particularly bad happened, certainly nothing to justify the semi-depressed, sensitive mood I was in.  As a matter of fact, my unshakeable raincloud is the only thing that made it a bad day.  It painted neutral or inconsequential events into sepia-toned bummers.  Many good things happened today.  I got to watch a silly video, my kids started painting ceiling tiles, my department head treated me to a pedicure, I got to sit poolside with some family members and got a free dinner with my good friends in the worship department at Pueblos.  That ought to be a good day.

Normally when this happens, I try to probe my own brain and emotions to find a root cause.  I look for clues in my own psyche, like things that I catch myself constantly thinking about or moments I keep replaying in my head.  I have a similar process for when I'm mad at somebody - if I find myself continually arguing with this person in my brain and trying to find different points with which to defend my opinion, it usually means that there is something about me (usually that I was wrong) or about the situation (usually that the other person highlighted something about me that needs improvement) that I am unwilling to admit to myself and I just need to admit it and move on.  My mom always taught me to pick my battles and it's turned out to be fabulous advice because really and truly, there are lots of battles that are really not worth fighting and although I am not one to fight with people very much, this little mental process helps me stop fighting with my ownself as well. 

With sad days, it's a little tricky, because sometimes things pile up on you and create or inflame sensitive spots in your emotions that you don't realize are getting sensitive until you find yourself ready to punch somebody because they told you your fly was down.  It is much more rare for me to think of a specific moment in the day that caused me to be sad - instead, I find a collage of moments, physical states and environmental influences that all contribute to a down day.  In reflecting, I think lots of different things all conspired to start today on a wrong foot.  I didn't sleep well last night because I was beset by horrible pain for about an hour, I felt uncomfortable in the clothing I picked out but didn't have time to pick out different clothes, some of my students and coworkers were in a funk as well, and at two different times I had very valid, gracefully articulated advice given to me that, because I am a sensitive egotist, I took as being told that all my decisions are invalid and stupid.  With one of these people, I did not even bother to conceal my pique in my facial expression, though I did weakly try to excuse it as being "tired" (Sorry, Jenna!  You were right and I was wrong and it made me grouchy!)

At this point in writing this post, I feel my mood improving a little, which usually means I found the problem.  It disappoints me a little how often it's the same problem - feeling like I'm being criticized when someone was actually just expressing a difference of opinion, or being validly but kindly criticized and feeling like OMG NOTHING I DO IS RIGHT EVAAAAAAR!  It has been my goal this year to teach myself that a difference of opinion doesn't automatically mean I am wrong and stupid, and that valid criticism of my mistakes doesn't make me a failure because everyone makes mistakes.  It seems so basic and uncomplicated when I type it out, and yet my psyche reacts to the phrase "you should" the way my body reacts to an allergen.

But hey, a couple of years ago, this wouldn't just have made for a sad day, it would have made for a sad week, at the end of which I *still* wouldn't be totally clear on why I was so sad.  Progress!