I just came back from the first UW HSO film showing. The flick was Dirty Harry, and it was quite good. The movie, like Clint Eastwood's character, was bold, decisive, and unapologetic.
2004-03-27
2004-03-25
The School
by Donald Barthelme
Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that ... that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems ... and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don't know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We complained about it. So we've got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant, and we've got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing.
It wouldn't have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes -- well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that ... you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes they weren't too disturbed.
With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now they know not to overwater. The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens and some of them probably ... you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren't looking. Or maybe ... well, I don't like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander ... well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags.
Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those numbers, you look at them crooked and they're belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical-fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.
We weren't even supposed to have a puppy.
We weren't even supposed to have one, it was just a puppy the Murdoch girl found under a Gristede's truck one day and she was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had finished making his delivery, so she stuck it in her knapsack and brought it to school with her. So we had this puppy. As soon as I saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for about two weeks and then ... And that's what it did. It wasn't supposed to be in the classroom at all, there's some kind of regulation about it, but you can't tell them they can't have a puppy when the puppy is already there, right in front of them, running around on the floor and yap yap yapping. They named it Edgar -- that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and yelling, "Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!". Then they'd laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity. I enjoyed it myself. I don't mind being kidded. They made a little house for it in the supply closet and all that. I don't know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. It probably hadn't had any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning, routinely, because I knew that was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian.
And then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program, all the kids brought in a quarter a month, that was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing, the kid's name was Kim and maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got, they suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case histories, but we didn't have the heart. The class took it pretty hard, they began (I think, nobody ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the school, particularly. I've seen better and I've seen worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance. There were I think two heart attacks and two suicides, one drowning, and four killed together in a car accident. One stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier that year, it seemed so. And finally the tragedy.
The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo were playing over where they're excavating for the new federal office building. There were all these big wooden beams stacked, you know, at the edge of the excavation. There's a court case coming out of that, the parents are claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don't know what's true and what's not. It's been a strange year.
I forgot to mention Billy Brandt's father, who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked intruder in his home.
One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don't know, I don't know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn't death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of --
I said, yes, maybe.
They said, we don't like it.
I said, that's sound.
They said, it's a bloody shame!
I said, it is.
They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done? We know you like Helen.
I do like Helen, but I said that I would not.
We've heard so much about it, they said, but we've never seen it.
I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out the window.
They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.
I said that they shouldn't be frightened (although I am often frightened) and that there was value everywhere. Helen came and embraced me. I kissed her a few times on the brow. We held each other. The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door. I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. The children cheered wildly.
Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that ... that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems ... and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don't know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We complained about it. So we've got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant, and we've got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing.
It wouldn't have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes -- well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that ... you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes they weren't too disturbed.
With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now they know not to overwater. The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens and some of them probably ... you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren't looking. Or maybe ... well, I don't like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander ... well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags.
Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those numbers, you look at them crooked and they're belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical-fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.
We weren't even supposed to have a puppy.
We weren't even supposed to have one, it was just a puppy the Murdoch girl found under a Gristede's truck one day and she was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had finished making his delivery, so she stuck it in her knapsack and brought it to school with her. So we had this puppy. As soon as I saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for about two weeks and then ... And that's what it did. It wasn't supposed to be in the classroom at all, there's some kind of regulation about it, but you can't tell them they can't have a puppy when the puppy is already there, right in front of them, running around on the floor and yap yap yapping. They named it Edgar -- that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and yelling, "Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!". Then they'd laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity. I enjoyed it myself. I don't mind being kidded. They made a little house for it in the supply closet and all that. I don't know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. It probably hadn't had any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning, routinely, because I knew that was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian.
And then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program, all the kids brought in a quarter a month, that was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing, the kid's name was Kim and maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got, they suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case histories, but we didn't have the heart. The class took it pretty hard, they began (I think, nobody ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the school, particularly. I've seen better and I've seen worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance. There were I think two heart attacks and two suicides, one drowning, and four killed together in a car accident. One stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier that year, it seemed so. And finally the tragedy.
The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo were playing over where they're excavating for the new federal office building. There were all these big wooden beams stacked, you know, at the edge of the excavation. There's a court case coming out of that, the parents are claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don't know what's true and what's not. It's been a strange year.
I forgot to mention Billy Brandt's father, who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked intruder in his home.
One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don't know, I don't know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn't death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of --
I said, yes, maybe.
They said, we don't like it.
I said, that's sound.
They said, it's a bloody shame!
I said, it is.
They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done? We know you like Helen.
I do like Helen, but I said that I would not.
We've heard so much about it, they said, but we've never seen it.
I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out the window.
They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.
I said that they shouldn't be frightened (although I am often frightened) and that there was value everywhere. Helen came and embraced me. I kissed her a few times on the brow. We held each other. The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door. I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. The children cheered wildly.
2004-03-21
Post-Spring Break Rundown
I'm back in the Mad Town. It was a good break, and I saw a lot of movies:
Matchstick Men - 1.5 stars
Big Trouble - 3.5 stars
Hildalgo - 2 stars
Spellbound - 3 stars
Donnie Darko - 4 stars
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra - 3.5 stars
Big Night - 3.5 stars
Intolerable Cruelty - 3 stars
Magnolia - 3.5 stars
King Solomon's Mines - 1.5 stars
Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind - 3.5 stars
Second Hand Lions - 3 stars
Radio - 2 stars
The Runaway Jury - 1.5 stars
That averages out to a smidgen over three stars, so I guess it was a pretty good week for films.
Matchstick Men - 1.5 stars
Big Trouble - 3.5 stars
Hildalgo - 2 stars
Spellbound - 3 stars
Donnie Darko - 4 stars
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra - 3.5 stars
Big Night - 3.5 stars
Intolerable Cruelty - 3 stars
Magnolia - 3.5 stars
King Solomon's Mines - 1.5 stars
Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind - 3.5 stars
Second Hand Lions - 3 stars
Radio - 2 stars
The Runaway Jury - 1.5 stars
That averages out to a smidgen over three stars, so I guess it was a pretty good week for films.
2004-03-11
Pre-Spring Break Report
I'm taking the Mad-Bus back to the Cities this afternoon. I've finished the last of my pre-break homework, and now I'm packing all the stuff I've gathered into piles around my room. The biggest challenge has been figuring out what I can take home now so that the load will be lighter in the summer. There's a lot of stuff in this little room. I emptied my trash for the first time this semester(!), found a lost sock, and put away a few more artifacts of Marget at which I've been looking all semester without really seeing. I'll be back on the twenty-first.
2004-03-10
Small World
I finished Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days just a moment ago. It is a very quick read and quite a bit of fun, but not the most plausible of books, in terms of its factual correctness, likeliness of events, and consistency of character behavior. It's not the great work that I was expecting, but worth my time nonetheless.
2004-03-09
International Cuisine
PRH is 2 for 2 so far. The International Dumpling night at the Highlander was fabulous, and Oriental Night at the Towers was a close second for Best Cafeteria Food in my college career!
2004-03-08
2004-03-07
Pizza and Picasso
I had a long but rewarding day yesterday, as I traveled to Chicago as part of an Honors Student Organization activity. For twenty bucks I got a round trip bus ride, admission to the Art Institute of Chicago and the special Rembrandt exhibit, and dinner. The Rembrandt exhibit was truly amazing. Due to the small size of most of the pieces on display, the usual special-exhibit space was filled with about 200 works. It took me just over ninety minutes to make it through, although I think I was more meticulous than most. The final two galleries were fairly empty, as people grew tired and sped through to the end. Upon exiting I met up with a fellow member of the HSO film society, and we adventured out into Chicago for lunch. We decided on a restaurant called Giornano's, and had quite an adventure looking for the place. We encountered a lot of misleading signs, locked doors, and mysterious courtyards. We found the place though, and boy was it worth it. I think I had the second-best pizza of my life (after MC's 2002 St. Patrick's Day gastronomic delight); Les and I split a stuffed pizza with spinach and sausage. I ate my half with difficulty, and Les had leave one of his pieces behind, much to our mutual despair.
Back in the museum, we toured for a few more hours, taking in Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon in the Island of La Grande Jatte, a handful of Monets, some interesting pieces by Hedri de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa set in the Moulin Rouge, and some more modern art, most notably a substantial number of paintings by Tanguy Yves. When we met-up with our group, we drove over to Ed Debevic's for a quick dinner. The place was loud, and their intentionally rude waitresses were less funny that they could have been. I can't really judge the food, since we, as a group of 45, got a fixed meal dinner, with a choice of hamburger, cheeseburger, veggieburger, grilled cheese, or grilled chicken. I had the chicken, and it was a simple, but tasty sandwich. The bus ride back was long (since I didn't want to nap so late in the day), but I through about 50 pages of Art History reading. All in all, it was a well-spent day.
Back in the museum, we toured for a few more hours, taking in Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon in the Island of La Grande Jatte, a handful of Monets, some interesting pieces by Hedri de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa set in the Moulin Rouge, and some more modern art, most notably a substantial number of paintings by Tanguy Yves. When we met-up with our group, we drove over to Ed Debevic's for a quick dinner. The place was loud, and their intentionally rude waitresses were less funny that they could have been. I can't really judge the food, since we, as a group of 45, got a fixed meal dinner, with a choice of hamburger, cheeseburger, veggieburger, grilled cheese, or grilled chicken. I had the chicken, and it was a simple, but tasty sandwich. The bus ride back was long (since I didn't want to nap so late in the day), but I through about 50 pages of Art History reading. All in all, it was a well-spent day.
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