A F#$%ed Up View

Colin Ferrell was on "The View" today, promoting Alexander (it was a rerun). Every other word that he said was f#$%. Barbara Walters laughed every time, but I bet she was secretly pissed off that the show would have to later be so heavily edited. And it made me think of an episode of Ellen's talk show, when she interviewed Leah Remini (who is sooooo hilarious). All Leah kept talking about was how she thought women should shave you know...areas...when they are pregnant, because the doctors have to look at you. All the while, Ellen sits there, with this look on her face like she doesn't know what to do or say. This interview is running away from her and you can tell she's thinking, "Are they going to be able to show this...at all?" I've never thought much about what it would be like to be a talk show host. I wonder if the host gets in trouble when the guest is so...I dunno...uncouth. I bet that would suck. I would be mad, if I was a host and one of my guests said the f-word a thousand times, or talked about intimate personal grooming, and then the network gave me crap over it. I'd be like, "Hey...shut the f"#k up!" Yeah...that's what I'd say.

The best dog in the world, after he nearly killed us both. This is his choice of post-near-death-experience activity.  

Prank Calling Automotive Assistance

So here's what happened. All I wanted was to spend some time with my nephew (my best friend's 100 lb. 2 yr. old golden retriever) during my vacation. So, around lunch time today, I go over there and pick him up so he can come and spend the afternoon sleeping at my house while I watch television and pretend that I'm going to do some work. When we load up, Colin (best friend's husband) puts him in the front passenger seat. Now, despite the fact that he is huge, I think nothing of this. He rides up there all the time. No big deal. He curls up in the seat and sometimes he looks out the window to you know...check things out. He's a very observant dog.

Well, today, he's got his head over on the console so that it can be on my arm, very loving and sweet-like. I say to him, "Wrigley, watch the gear shift." And like most people who own pets, I assume naturally that he understands what I've just said.

Well, we carry on down I-26, headed towards Harbison. About a mile away from Piney Grove Road, I suddenly feel as though something has fallen out from underneath my car. The odometer begins to drop at an incredibly rapid pace, and I go from about 70mph to 30mph in a matter of seconds. Trying not to panic, I hit the gas pedal only to hear this very very loud VROOOOOOM noise. So, I ease on over to the side of the interstate and sit quietly for a few moments awaiting the inevitable panic attack. Wrigley, meanwhile, is sitting up and looking at me as if to say, "What are you doing?" I pull out my cell phone and begin trying to formulate some sort of plan. Who could come rescue me?

I should call AAA!

No, I need someone that I know to come and help me. I'm not equipped for this. But who?

Meredith and Colin are both at work.

Kris is not in town yet...I don't think.

Renee is on a plane (I'm supposed to pick her up at the Airport at 6.00).

I'm pretty sure Anna is still in Laurens.

Poda might be home, but I don't think so.

Joe moved to Charlotte.

After making a mental note to make more friends, in preparation for such occasions as this one, I decide that I'll call Colin. He just left to go back to work. He'll just have to call in and come get me off of the side of the interstate. But, before I dial his number, I figure I'll try to crank the car again...you know...just in case it was kidding with me. It cranks right up. "Wrigley," I say, "this is very odd." I'm afraid to pull back onto the road, thinking that my car might die again. Since I'm so close to my apartment, I decide that I will risk it. My car drives like a dream...no problem.

I am terribly puzzled, and very close to declaring the whole thing a miracle when I suddenly realize something: Wrigley's head is so very close to my gear shift. I eye him suspiciously. "What'd you do Wrigs?" He just looks up at me. At this point, I'm in my apartment complex and I decide to do a little experiment. I shift the car into neutral and try to drive. The result is identical to what happened to me on the interstate.

Now, how funny would that have been if I had actually called AAA?
Me: Hello Mr. AAA Help-man, I can't start my car.
Mr. AAA: Well, perhaps you should think of driving it while it's in the DRIVE gear.

Burning Harry Potter

I never much cared for Ryder Strong, the kid who played Sean on "Boy Meets World." My childhood best friend, however, thought he was awesome. I dunno...his "cuteness" just never registered for me. In any event, he's on television right now in some movie that's on Court TV. I should be doing work, all kinds of work...lesson planning, assignment creating, syllabus making, blah blah blah. But right now, I'd just rather not. I'd rather sit here at the computer in the pretense of doing actual work, and instead just look up things as they come to mind, like for instance, the ALA 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books list. Now, according to the ALA website, books get challenged with the "best intentions, to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information." That's interesting.

I wonder what difficult ideas and information prompted the challenging of The Outsiders (#43) and The Pigman (#44), two books that I will be teaching this semester. I'll bet that, in the case of The Outsiders, it had something to do with the fact that there are no adults in the book and the boys are all taking care of one another...maybe "gang mentality" or "latent homosexual innuendoes," or something to that effect. And as for The Pigman, the challenge likely involved something about "pedophilia," because the two main characters are teenagers and they befriend an elderly man.

Those two novels are higher up on the list than Fade (#65), which I wish I could teach. This whole banning books thing is really very arbitrary when you think about it...you could find something to "challenge" in any book, if you wanted to bad enough. What's so crazy about this, is that people want to do that. Robert Cormier said, "Political correctness is one of the worst things to happen to literature. It's killing language and thought. It's evading real life. It's substituting euphemisms for truth." He's currently at #3 on the list of 10 Most Challenged Authors from 1990-Present. He's been dead for four years, and his work is still being challenged. He wrote Fade.

In some places, they're still burning Harry Potter.

The whole thing is crazy. I wonder what Ryder Strong would think...

Interesting note: during the spellcheck of this post, I was notified that I had misspelled "semester." I had typed "semetser." The spellcheck's only suggestion for replacement? Snatcher. That's good stuff.

LIVE from a Hershey's Kiss

So I have a blog. A few weeks ago, I had never heard of these things. Ok, so maybe I had heard the word "blog" thrown around on television, but I was in no ways savvy about it. I'm still not, and yet here I am, picking templates and deciding on a blog name, because I had to register so that I could comment on Kris's. The process has been interesting. I had to try about eighteen different names before the little "This blog name is unavailable" notice went away, and I was allowed to continue in my registration. Kris's blog has a great name. I wanted something...enigmatic, something unique that would be a signal of my coolness. But, after all of my amazingly original ideas got shot down by the blog-naming people (whoever they may be), I settled on this. "Run to the Water" is the title of my favorite song by my favorite band, Live. I'm thinking of them because I got their greatest hits CD Awake from Santa Claus about 48-hours ago. I traveled back to Columbia tonight so that I could spend the upcoming week planning like a madwoman, so that when my darling little 8th graders return to me on January 3rd, I'll be totally ready to teach them...something. So, on the ride back here, which is 90 minutes, I listened to my CD. I love this band. Ed Kowalczyk's lyrics are like poetry, and being an English teacher, that appeals to me. He has a very artistic mastry of his own language, and there is something to be said for being able to say something beautifully. The review for the Awake CD on Amazon.com said that "LIVE might be the best thing to come from central Pennsylvania since Hershey's chocolate." Quite a compliment.