Red Wine and Sleeping Pills

The Movie Trailers I Imagine for Select Songs from My Spring Jamz Playlist

LIARS - “Plaster Casts of Everything” This is a trailer for a movie about a gang of gay bikers that make meth using a PtoP (P2P?) cook behind the bar from “Footloose.” The trailer starts out with them looking cool and menacing as they ride on their motorcycles wearing leather jackets with their biker names bedazzled on the backs. Their aesthetic is sort of like the Jokerz from “Batman Beyond” crossed with “…And Justice for All” Metallica. Anyway, they ride around swinging chains and selling meth and being stylish and menacing until the breakdown of the song, where the one biker who will be a fan favorite tries the meth and then goes crazy and then the gang has to pull together to stop him. Maybe they will have ESP and it will end like “Akira.” I haven’t thought it out completely. 

Britney Spears - “Toxic.” This is a drama about BCG and their role in the school closures in Philadelphia, as well as the plucky community group in North Philly that bands together to stop them (spoiler alert: they don’t stop them). The beginning starts out sort of glamorizing the consultants, making them seem cool with their Frye-boots-with-suits-aesthetic, but then - with the first chorus - you see that really they want to close the school buildings because they don’t care about student achievement and want to build condos or something equally banal. So then the rest of the trailer is picket lines and communities being built to stand up against neo-liberal education reform. Wendy Kopp makes a guest appearance as a well-meaning, but ultimately misguided University of Pennsylvania professor who tries to organize the residents of North Philly but really just diminishes their civic capacity by over-relying on outside organizers.

Taylor Swift - “We Are Never Evert Getting Back Together.” Katherine Heigl stars opposite Jim Cavaziel in this political satire-romantic comedy. Heigl plays a secretary of state who is desperately trying to avoid war with the Middle Easter nation where Cavaziel is president. But here’s the kicker: when they studied abroad at Oxford (she was on a Rhodes scholarship, he studied finance to liberate his nation from the grips of Western hegemony) they dated and fell in love but broke up because of politics. The final chorus shows footage of jets scrambling, missiles being calibrated and ground troops shipping out. Antonio Negri does a cameo as their former tutor, a now-imprisoned leftist that they visit at the same time to seek guidance.

So My Teacher of the Year Application Really Ended on some Fucking “Stand and Deliver” Type Shit

I often wish that I could talk to anyone that has previous judged my students as somehow deficient and share the most important piece of knowledge that I have learned as a corps member: my students possess tremendous potential. I wish that I could show anyone that has ever judged my student Aaron the joy and promise that I saw when he built a molecule and explained its structure using a computer simulation. I wish that her former teachers could see Destiny strive to draw a Bohr model of a negatively charged Carbon atom. I want to record my conversations with Aleyah and Shaikurrah about the importance of thinking critically and challenging injustice as we make our way through Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem during their lunch period. I want educators, administrators, policy-makers, community members, and anyone that has ever judged my students without getting to know them and teach them and watch them grow as I have to know the most essential, fundamental fact of my teaching experience: my students inside my school are not what others have assume they are. My students are not the “bad” kids and they are not incapable of learning or achieving. They are brilliant young men and women who possess tremendous talent and promise. They can and do learn. They show me daily in a multitude of ways just how much they are capable of learning and how deeply they care for and respect themselves and one another.

Not everything I do is coated in 50 layers of ironic detachment.

My first year with an iPod

I used to have a Zune, but then it fell on the subway tracks. I didn’t replace it for a long time, because of “nostalgia is the pain from an old wound,” but then The Moms gave me an iPod for Christmas because of “what do you get for the 22 year-old that has everything except a Zune?” and so this was my first year with an iPod. And iPods are not that great: they distract me while I’m driving and I am still not used to the wheel and its play button is too sensitive and changing album art in iToons is confusing.

But the thing I like about iPods is the way you can have a “year in review” and count how many times you have listened to Kendrick Lamar since everyone in the world (friends, students, blogs) told you that you should listen to Kendrick Lamar. You can’t do that with a Zune.

The other thing you can’t do with a Zune is have evidence re: your Radiohead listening patterns. In, like, June, all but 23 of my top 25 most played songs were Radiohead songs. (The other two were Fucked Up’s “Queen of Hearts” and Blur’s “Ambulance.”) And now none of my top 25 most played are Radiohead songs. (“Ambulance” is still number one, but that song is so good. I don’t know if liking it means that I am not a real Blur fan, but it is just so good.) And, like, obviously some of my most played songs are equally bleak (Xiu Xiu’s “I Luv the Valley”) and most of it gets characterized as “shouting music” (Death Grips’ “I’ve Seen Footage” has 34 inexplicable plays). But a lot of these songs are pretty upbeat or are most played for fun reasons (which is not how you get a Top 25 Most Played composed of Radiohead songs). Like a train ride to Boston spent listening only to Grizzly Bear’s “Foreground,” Bjork’s “Unravel,” and Annie’s “Heartbeat.” Or a midnight drive on the Pennsylvania Turnpike on my way back from a wedding in Rochester listening only to “June’s Foreign Spell” and “The Classical.” Or “Fell in Love With a Girl” playing during a traffic jam on the way back from the Newark airport with wooden flowers from Rotterdam being held for me in the passenger seat.

I guess I am glad that my iPod keeps track of these things for me. I don’t need any reminders that I am shockingly lucky and that my first year with an iPod was just a great year, but it is nice to remember that at some point in the year, I was the sort of person that listened to “I Might Be Wrong” on a daily basis and now I am the sort of person that sings Beatles songs on the way to work.

A synopsis of The Amazing Spiderman that I emailed to a friend in an attempt to convince them to see it with me in 3-D

Andrew Garfield is a cute little kid that likes playing hide and seek and his dad is very good at it. So good that while he was hiding, someone snuck into their house and stole some science things and his dad was like, “Well, I guess this means we have to dump our son on his "aunt” and “uncle” who are SIGNIFICANTLY older than us, but are not our parents’ siblings or maybe it is unclear, who knows? And then we should go into hiding and never be seen again? Good plan?“ To which everyone else replies: "BEST PLAN, DAD!” And then Andrew Garfield becomes a pretty attractive teenager but is SO AWKWARD and is always, like, ‘UHHHH, EMMA STONE!! UHHHH, BULLIES!’ And then he finds his dad’s messenger bag and inside there is SCIENCE and he goes to a lab and we all knows what happens next! (SPIDER BITE! SUPERPOWERS! POISON!) One of the things that always fascinated me about the Spiderman mythos was how the spider was not poisonous. Like, I dunno. Just a thing, I guess. ANYWAY, BACK TO THE SPOILERS: after he gets bit, he takes on the bully in basketball and TOTALLY SHATTERS THE RIM and is like “I do not know my own strength.” And then I was bored and talked for a while and then Uncle Ben was dead. (Oh, but also, Emma Stone apparently likes Peter and Peter likes her and they are SO AWKWARD and he asks her on a date before Uncle Ben dies and it’s like “What? do you even know each other? Can someone explain this? The relationship between these characters was NEVER EVER established). So then Peter goes to school and it is sad and Emma Stone is like "Peter! I really don’t understand how or why we care about each other because IT WAS NEVER ESTABLISHED but I still love you and please just share your emotions!” And then Andrew Garfield starts fighting criminals and gradually becomes Spiderman and it is okay. Whatever. Then Dr. Connors (who did SCIENCE with Andrew Garfield’s dad) like, gets some science from Peter and then there is some complicated corporate power battle and then I was like YAAAAWWWWWWWN and then Dr. Connors becomes a lizard and, like, attacks a bridge and Spiderman savea a kid and everyone is like “Okay, we DEFINITELY need to stop this Spiderman guy.” Blah-blah, stuff happens, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone deepen their relationship by having dinner and then he shows her he is Spiderman by shooting webs at her butt and she is like “I want you so badly!” and he is like, “I’m dangerous. I’m covered in glass. Don’t touch me” and I am like “YOUR RELATIONSHIP WAS NEVER ESTABLISHED! THIS IS IN NO WAY SENSIBLE OR LOGICAL OR EVEN IN ACCORDANCE WITH ANY STORYLINE IN THE SPIDERMAN UNIVERSE” And then there is a fight at their high school, which is cool. And then some other stuff happens (I am trying to shorten this synposis) and then the lizard man decides to make everyone a lizard (normal problems: New York: amirite?) and then crane operators give spiderman a way to get to the tower faster and then I thought about this line from the movie “In the Loop” where the wall in an office is falling and they are like “Well, we called some builders.” and the guy in charge is like, “Do you know why there are no superhero films where the builder is the hero? Because they never show up in the nick of time!” Normal. So anyway, there is a fight and then Denis Leary (remember him? No? Okay) who is also Emma Stone’s dad dies and he is like “Stay away from Emma Stone!” So after they save New York (too boring to explain) there is a funeral and Emma Stone is like “I am in the rain in a music video from the 1990s!” and then she goes to Andrew Garfield’s house and she was like “I AM SO MAD AT YOU BUT ALSO LOVE YOU FOR NO CLEARLY ESTABLISHED REASON” and then she is like “He made you promise to stay away from me, didn’t he?” and then they are in school and Andrew Garfield whispers something about breaking promises and Emma Stone smiles and we have our cake and eat it too AND SCENE! THAT’S A WRAP! SPIDERMAN!

When my scout starts coming in while I’m naked

hereticnarrative:

whatshouldwecallmeoxford:

“Things have finally turned sexual with my scout.” - Matt (1989-2012)

It was only a couple times. And we never did anything but stare.

(Source: essaycrisis, via hereticnarrative-deactivated201)