I hope I didn't just give away the ending

New Radicals, Maybe you've been brainwashed too.

Yep, that's how the dude capitalized & punctuated.

Also, after his one hit Gregg Alexander decided to quit the business so he would not be a one-hit wonder.

(!?!?!?!).
This dance-funk-groove record sold a few back in '98-'99, thanks to that one hit, "You get what you give." (Again, album-cover capitals.)

I will warn you here, too: the dude wrote some pretty good lyrics.

& the album features a back-up singer named Danielle Brisebois, who had been a child "star" as Edith's niece Stephanie.

How about that for some trivia?

You 're welcome.

(oh, & the post title is another song title.)

NON-POLITICALLY-CHARGED REFERENCE TO A (SADLY) POLITICALLY-CHARGED TOPIC ALERT:

I just today finished reading Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.

Wow.
The book was written by Jon Krakauer, whose Into the Wild you were supposed to read last year

I had a grandfather, an uncle, several neighbors, & various other folks in my life fight in wars, & I have never done enough to thank them.

At the base level I probably think of Veterans Day & Memorial Day as barbeque days.

Let's all be honest: how often to we stop for a moment to think of those who, as we say, "gave all"?

Here's a guy who gave up millions to do the right thing, to stand up for what he felt was right, to defend the freedoms we like to discuss. Anyway it can be parsed, that comes out as "hero."

There's a book about him because of his fame as well as the horrific lies that were told in a cover-up of the facts of his death.

There are thousands of others who get no books, just mourning relatives & friends.

LIFE-LESSON TO BE LEARNED FROM ALL THIS ALERT

I honestly do not care what one thinks of the wars--& sadly, I think too many of us do not think of them at all--but I do care that all of us realize the sacrifice that goes on daily by those who wear the uniform.

This is in no way a "left" or "right," "liberal" or "conservative" issue.

It's a human issue.


Juniors:
As we read The Waste Land, let us ponder,as Eliot did, the horrors of war.

Great things can come from war, but no sane person can say that war is great.

Great things arose in class today, as I asked you for a key line you had noted or a line you happened upon when opening the book this morning.

Some examples:

Memory and desire

Winter kept us warm

A heap of broken images

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Fear death by water

Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head?

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you

Here there is no water but only rock

Shantih shantih shantih

Sophomores:
You took an open-book quiz on the material we read aloud in class yesterday.

Many of you did very well, mixing the CDs & the CMs.

You analyzed the chorus's response to Antingone & Creon.

You discussed Haimon & Creon, how the son is just like the daddy in many ways, especially rhetorically.

We have finished a big chunk of the play, & we will do more Monday.

Also, next week TUESDAY will be unit 4 synonyms, THURSDAY will be unit 4 completing sentences.

Soon, you will be submitting those quotations you were assigned, 4 from each scene, including the ones we did in class, from the Prologue as well as Scene 1.

Until then we march FORWARD!!!

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he was what he is

Frank Zappa, Joe's Garage

I could write about this one for hours.

Days, maybe.

But I won't.

It's brilliant in its insanity, insane in its brilliance.

My wife & I saw it performed on stage at The Open Fist Theatre (now, seriously, is that not a great name?!) 2 years ago, & it absolutely rocked.

The Zappa Family Trust gave the OK, it was performed straight through as a musical w/ a live band . . . & the lights went down for the album's version of "Watermelon in Easter Hay."

It was amazing.

That was the song that had sold her on Zappa, & that was the moment we just sat there in the dark ruminating on life & taking it all in.

"Beautiful" is the word here, I believe.

As for the play as a whole, I wrote up a review if you would for some strange reason be interested.

As for the song--which FZ stated he originally titled "Playing a Guitar Solo With This Band Is Like Trying to Grow a Watermelon in Easter Hay," it is 1 of my 5 favorite guitar instrumentals (that makes 2 I have mentioned thus far--anyone paying attention? 5 bonus points to the 1st to identify the other in the comments below).

PMRC WARNING ALERT:
Dude was an absolute musical genius, but had a bizarre, some would say "obscene" sense of humor, & it manifested in his lyrics. So, listener beware.

Also, come & see me for advice if you are interested, because FZ has something for (almost) everyone.

Juniors:
I played Zappa today because he, like T. S. Eliot, is a difficult artist, one who demands from his audience more than many want to offer up.

I love these guys, many cannot stand them, & I can pretty much understand why.

I believe art should challenge our beliefs, make us examine all that we hold dear, help us to re-establish ourselves or re-imagine ourselves.

Zappa & Eliot do just that.

They will take you places you may not want to go, definitely out of your comfort zone. They will make that journey worth every gut-wrenching or side-splitting moment.

They will frustrate & amaze w/in about, oh, 3-5 seconds.

Man, I LOVE this stuff.

We went over the concepts of poetry & art, using Marianne Moore's "Poetry," the 1st line of which I do not believe. As usual, many of you had great ideas, today about the "meaning" of poetry & communication in general.

Sophomores:
You were asked to re-think the characters of Ismene & Antigone.

1 has changed, the other not so much.

We read scene 3 of Antigone.

Haimon learned from his daddy, I tell you: same rhetoric, same process of argumentation.

Oh, & Creon went from "kill her" to "kill her no, in front of him" to "take her somewhere where she'll die."

Sets up the coming scenes.

I LOVE this stuff, too.

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yours, mine, truth

Extreme, III Sides to Every Story

The "subtitle" to this one is "Yours, Mine, & the Truth."

I love that.

I love this album.

Also, the idea is fitting, given the conversation we have had about Houyhnhnms & the DFW piece & the idea of "truth" in general.

I may prefer Pornograffiti on certain days, but this one hits me in the head as well as the heart.

[SIDENOTE: any Guitar Hero players still around? The band's "Play With Me" was 1 of those "hardest-songs-ever," up there w/ Buckethead's  "Jordan"  & Dragonforce's "Through the Fire & Flames."]

"Yours" is the rockin' side, w/ "Politicalamity" continuing the band's creation-of-words motif; "Peacemaker Die" includes an excerpt of King's "I Have a Dream" speech, & "Cupid's Dead" just flat-out rocks.

"Mine," the mellower, ballad-y side, has 1 of the the funniest love songs ever written, "Tragic Comic."

& "The Truth" is a progressive tour-de-force, a 3-part, 20+ minute epic. It's called "Everything Under the Sun," & the parts are "Rise n Shine," " Am I Ever Gonna Change"  & "Who Cares?"

A fantastic, highly underrated near-masterpiece by a great band that never got a real foothold because of

(a) the length of their hair,
(b) the advent of "grunge," &
(c) their one big, huge monster hit, "More Than Words," which made people think they were Simon & Garfunkel & not a funky metal band.

Also, Nuno Bettencourt is a genius.

Yeah, I said it.

Later you'll hear more of his stuff, but if you're interested now, check out Mourning Widows (my favorite of his bands), Dramagods (bog melodic rock), Satellite Party (w/ Perry Farrell), & Population 1.

& how may I  connect this w/ you young'uns?

How about this: he toured as Rihanna's guitarist this year.

A lot of metalheads were quite angry.

I thought it was way, way cool.

Juniors:
You struggled to listen as my speakers struggled to give the amazingly quiet rendition of Eliot reading his own work.

I got a few words for you:

"O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag"

(& yes, that's how he spells it.)

If you didn't know it, you heard stuff from Hamlet, Greek mythology, the Upanishads, the Fisher King, selected plays, poems, stories, & myths.

It's all a heap of broken images.

& that's why it rules.

Sophomores:
An in-class open-book quiz on the stuff we had previously read aloud in class.

Many of you did quite well . . . & a few of you continue not to try.

We then looked at scene 2, in which things get downright conflict-heavy.

Creon's gonna kill Antigone.

Now Ismene wants to die fro the crime she did not commit.

(Wait--what!?!?!)

Antigone says, bring it on, big boy.

Will he kill his son's fiancee?

Will Antigone find a loophole in the law?

Will the sentry return?

Tune in tomorrow, same Greek time, same Greek channel.

(Also, bring your unit 4 definitions.)

&

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the chairman of the board

Frank Sinatra, Duets

Great, great album cover, huh?

For some reason I just had to buy this the day it came out back in '93.

Pretty sure it's the only Sinatra I own, & it's well worth it.

Highlights: "I've Got You Under My Skin" w/ Bono . . . "The Lady Is a Tramp" w/ Luther Vandross . . . "Witchcraft" w/ Anita Baker . . . "All the Way/ One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" w/ Kenny G . . . "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry/In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" w/ Carly Simon

Ol' Blue Eyes.

TEACHABLE MOMENTS FROM THE REALM OF SPORTS ALERT:
The Rangers have won every inning of this series except 1, but they are up just 2 games to 1.

(I hate the Yankees, so this annoys me.)

My son Aodhan is a fantastic keeper, but about 5 seconds of loss of focus cost him a goal Saturday. But he had the chance to make it up, & he did.

Rutgers football player Eric LeGrand remains hospitalized, paralyzed from the neck down after a vicious helmet-1st hit on a kick return. He may never have a chance to walk again.

What I think when I think about stuff like this:

We have to focus at all times, & maybe we have to be a little lucky or blessed by god or the universe.

We often have the power to make the proper choices, but sometimes maybe we have no power at all.

We need to embrace every moment, to, as Thoreau said, "live deep and suck all the marrow out of life."

Remember all those words of wisdom from DFW & all of your colleagues last week.

Send out some positive vibes.

Juniors:
Mary Karr rocks.

She shows you "How to Read 'The Waste Land' So It Alters your Soul Rather Than Just Addling Your Head."

You shared some opening thoughts on poetry, &, as has happened every year I have taught poetry, to every class, some said, "yeah!!!' some said "NOOO!!!" some groaned some cheered some like free verse some only like rhyme Dr. Seuss Shel Silverstein Emily Dickinson free association.

Oh, & 3rd period met my wife.

So, 3rd period wins the day.


Sophomores:
Units 1-3 vocabulary big quiz.

Ode 1 read out loud--remember, we control everything . . . except death

More Antigone quotations, this time from scene 1.

Back to the reading, scene 2 tomorrow; 5 of you will volunteer to read.

Unit 4 vocabulary definitions due Wednesday.

be cool

it is (not is) water

Was (Not Was), What Up, Dog?

Yep, another "one-hit wonder, the band had its hit "Walk the Dinosaur" & released this album back in 1988.

Yep, the year I graduated high school.

You may have heard Queen Latifa's cover  in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Another genre-bending band, into jazz, funk, disco, & rock.

Don Was went on to record & produce artists like The Black Crowes, Garth Brooks, Poison, Ziggy Marley, Barenaked Ladies, Bob Dylan, & about a million others.

Yes, "eclectic" is the word.

Juniors:
More "Water," some of the greatest words of wisdom ever.

By demand, a DFW recommended-reading list is coming.

Remember, get out of your own head for a while when possible, re-configure your "default setting."

Because of fantastic discussion of the ideas w/in "This Is Water," we will get back to the "Forward" part of Friday 22 October.

Sophomores:
Forward!!!

Active voice.

Sounds familiar . . .

be cool

(that sounds familiar, too?!?)

way more than luck

Dude said something today, & it sounded weird

I heard "I love you, too"

He said "I love U2."

Because this was playing:




















U2, The Unforgettable Fire.

For my money, the best the band ever did (2nd place: War).

One of the simple pleasures at my job is the look on a student's face when she or he

(a) recognizes

& better yet

(b) likes the daily selection.

Today ranks up there w/ the best of receptions.

You can thank Tony for the request, & big ups to Sebastian & Leanna for their U2-related discussions.

By the way, the song that truly got me into the band is "Pride (In the Name of Love), which is on this album.

But the one that absolutely, 100% sold me is "Bad."

In fact, the top 3 U2 songs, in order, simply must be

(1) "Bad"
(2) "One"
(3) "Walk On"

These are the spine-tingling, shiver-inducing tracks that make you wanna live inside the music.

Oh, & big ups also to Bono, for transitioning form pompous, angst-ridden pseudo-intellectual rock star to a pretty durn important humanitarian.


Juniors:
"This Is Water."

Enough said.

But, yeah, I'll say more.

Actually, I'll let DFW do the speaking, down below.

You all shared some great words of wisdom, from parents & grandparents, siblings & friends, songs & films. Many of them had a genuine carpe diem feel, living in the present, being yourself &/or selfless, caring for others, maximizing your potential & such.

Thanks for that; we have to put these all together somewhere, not just on a "Do Now" page.

The goal was to analyze the style of the piece, get a little encouragement, & bridge the gap between hilariously sardonic satire & mind-altering despondent poetry.

(&, of course, spread the word of DFW.)

I hope it worked.

Sophomores:
We cherry-picked from the juniors & gave some great advice of our own.

Days like these make me confident in the future.

Antigone, however, should not be so confident.

Neither should Creon.

You turned in your vocabulary review, & we will go over the answers tomorrow to prep for the exam MONDAY.

Also, remember . . .

FORWARD!!!

to Friday . . .

Oh, &

"HERE HE GOES AGAIN W/ THE DAVID FOSTER WALLACE STUFF" ALERT

Courtesy of DFW, some things for all y'all to contemplate:

" . . . the really significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about."

"The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded."

" learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. "

"The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations."

"Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness."

"Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing."

"The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death."

"I wish you way more than luck."


McB SIGN-OFF ALERT

be cool

because it has Bucket, Bootsy, Bernie, & Brain

Praxis, Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis)

Bill Laswell got these guys together, & Buckethead, Bootsy, Bernie, & Brain (along w/ some turntable guy) provide the electro-funk-rock-metal groove.

They have a few albums, but this is probably my favorite.

I got my wife into Buckethead many years ago, & we have seen all his area shows since about 2002. Love seeing him at Downtown Disney's House of Blues. (You probably know not much about Big B, but he has a Disneyland fixation--if you're ever there &  see a crazy-tall crazy-skinny longhaired dude, let me know).

Bootsy Collins may be the coolest bass player ever (just wait until you hear his Christmas album in 2 months).

Bernie Worrel is a living legend.

& Brain is my favorite drummer not named "Chris Adler."

Super-fantastic album, but one warning: only a few vocals.

Standout tracks: "Crash Victim/Black Science Navigator," "Animal Behavior" (Bootsy vocal), "Seven Laws of Woo."

& everything else on the album.


Wednesday:

Juniors:
Socratic seminar wrap.

I love these days, when you all vote for MVPs & share your thoughts on the seminars & the level-2 & level-3 questions asked in the "wrap."

Also, You wrote a "timed" paragraph of your choice, related to Gulliver's Travels & including a topic, some CDs & some CMs.

I cannot stress how important assignments like this will be in your future, especially those of you who will major in the liberal arts.

As I said, I was blown away the 1st time I had a choice in the matter.

At 1st glance, many of the paragraphs look pretty good, covering them, character, incident, symbol, & all other kinds of fun stuff.

My faith in the future is again recharged!!

Oh, & if you didn't see it in the comments, I had mentioned that the seminar & the comments had made me decide to throw in "This Is Water" Thursday & head back to The Waste Land a day later.



Sophomores:
Antigone.

Ismene.

God's law.

Man's law.

2 women enter the prologue, & only 1 will arise victorious.

Tune in tomorrow for Creon's speech.

(Also, vocabulary, as we went over in class, examples on the TVs, the past 2 days.)

be cool