Changing Paradigms

It's Monday, which means I have my Teaching Writing class tonight and therefore I'll spend all of today reading and hyping myself up for it. (Teaching is a frame of mind, people.)

Below is a video we watched the first day of class at the beginning of the quarter. It really blows my mind with how eloquent, interesting and engaging it is. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) took a speech by Sir Ken Robinson and turned it into an animated infographic. The talk poses some really great questions about how we view education in our society, and from where those conceptions came (hint: the intellectual culture, social structure and economic imperative of the Enlightenment).

If learning were this fun all the time, we wouldn't have as many problems with education. One of the things that really jumps out at me is the idea that we shuttle our anesthetized kids through school by age -- "manufacture date" -- as opposed to any sort of objective system. What works for one kid, for one classroom, for one entire socioeconomic class, doesn't work for all.

"God Damn You Half-Japanese Girls"

A couple weekends ago I saw Weezer at the Aragon with my friend Laura. I've been completely obsessed ever since, particularly with this song (off the Pinkerton album, which they played in full when I saw them) and video. Happy Friday!

I love the moment around 2:15 when they've been going double-time and then they HIT IT and go halftime again. Every time it happens, no matter where I am -- sitting at my desk, on the el, on the treadmill -- I have to stop and do a little head bang dance.

Also, I will boldly* declare here, in print, on this blog, on the Internet, which means it's forever, that the Aragon is the best music venue in the country. Dare to argue?

* GET IT?

FDA Approves Alcoholism Treatment Pill

The time has come. Despite a volatile and expensive lobbying effort on behalf of the Southern California Rehabilitation Clinic Consortium, last week the FDA officially approved a revolutionary new pill that purports to cure alcoholism. Pharmacies have since been overwhelmed with prescription requests as alcoholism sufferers camped outside Walgreens all over the country, with some street corners turning into booze-soaked “last hurrah” parties.

“I bought my last bottle of gin today,” self-described alcoholic and Skokie homemaker Terry Davis said. “I’m excited to transfer my dependence from alcohol to pills. Fewer calories! I’ll be a Real Housewife of Cook County yet!”

The pill, dubbed the Voluntary Opportunity to Definitively Knock Alcoholism (or VODKA) pill, represses the desire to drink alcohol and replaces it with hallucinations of puppies and rainbows. Preliminary clinical trials reported a 99-percent success rate, but the limited choice of imagery has left some disappointed.

“Unfortunately I’m a cat person, so I’m looking forward to the next generation that is more animal-inclusive,” Davis said.

Alcohol rehabilitation centers have already felt the economic crunch induced by the VODKA pill. The Lindsey Lohan Suite at the Betty Ford Clinic – a room that is infamously booked months in advance by starlets anticipating their next rehab stint – has been vacant since Tuesday, with all future bookings canceled.

The Ford Center’s marketing director, Don Welsch, said the clinic is looking into a new advertising campaign to combat the exodus.

“We need to remind people that the presence of the VODKA pill hasn’t changed our mission: To offer safe haven for those struggling with addiction,” Welsch said. “Our clinic continues to offer top-notch rehabilitation service in the form of a 12-step program, counseling, business center, daily massages, personal trainers and fitness regimens, access to luxury retailers and custom boutiques, five-star chefs, a 12-screen movie theater, and a whole campus of recreation destinations, including private bowling alleys, swimming pools and an eighteen-hole golf course. Our new slogan is ‘Betty Ford: A home away from home!’”

In other news, retailers report that DVD copies of the ‘60s-era psychedelic children’s show “Spot and His Pet Rainbow” have seen an inexplicable 3,200-percent spike in sales since Monday.

--

Our assignment for Humor & Satire Writing this week was to take an actual Newsweek story from 2007 about the development of an alcoholism treatment pill and turn it into satire. This is what I ended up with. I have new respect for Onion writers.

Question, for my own enlightenment: At what point did you realize this was satire? Or did you? What sounded realistic enough to be true?

The problem with education

Education in America.

One of the problems with the American educational system (and there are many) is the working definition of its purpose: the acquisition of knowledge. Rote memorization, standardized testing -- this is how we foster facts, not knowledge. We should be helping kids develop the language and thinking that they already started learning as a member of their community, not sitting them in desks and telling them what they supposedly need to know. That only works with the kids who would have succeeded anyway, and even those kids are quick to catch on that they only need to do enough to get by. Not all who are capable of excelling do so, because they don't have to.

Reading and writing are the key -- but not reading and writing as traditionally taught. We need to teach kids things that are relevant, meaningful, useful. We also need to discuss their own education with them. Only if we show them why they're learning something will they be excited to learn it. Otherwise it's just work, and we perpetuate a fear of failure.

My Teaching Writing class is really starting to get under my skin.

Friday Jams

Nom.

I got a lot from my parents. Shelter, food, love and support, an inexplicable love of Velveeta, a sense of humor that relies heavily on teasing. "We tease because we love," my mom would say when I was growing up. Apparently unaware of the tenuous social standing I held at age 13, she'd lean out of the car after dropping me off at my junior high: "Have a good day, Pookie Bear!! I looooove yoouuuuuuu!" Oh. Dear. God.

Beyond a thick skin, perhaps the most tangible thing I inherited from my parents was their insatiable love of music. I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Doors, Pearl Jam, Jimi Hendrix. Primus and Blind Melon and Dave Matthews and James Brown and Jamiroquai and Smashing Pumpkins and Phish. It was an eclectic bag, but it was the music I knew. I'd walk around at age three singing "Bag it, tag, it takeitotheboerandohohohoh" -- much like this kid, actually. My first concert was Blues Traveler at age four, and my mom spent a good chunk of my toddlerhood following around the Grateful Dead on tour. That's where she met my stepdad, actually -- on a road trip to a show. Almost 20 years later, they're still together. (D'awwwww.)

Thanks for bringing them together, Jerry!

Eventually I rebelled, music-wise. I brought Spice Girls and boy bands into our home, and things got tense for awhile. I remember once, I was about 10, singing along to some Spice Girls lyrics in the backseat. My mother turned around to look at me, incredulous.

"What are you saying?"

"It's a song, Mom. It's called 'When Two Become One.' It's awesome, it's the Spice Girls!"

She stared at me, perplexed. Then she slowly and silently turned back around. Years later, I finally understood the lyrics, and her horror.

Not that her music was innocent. Curtis Mayfield and Jim Morrison and Patti Smith weren't exactly celibate, drug-free saints. But the thing I was missing in my youth was an appreciation of why my parents (particularly my mother) liked the music they did: It was well-done. Well-produced. Smart, or innovative, or completely original. But most of all, it sounded just as good or better live than it did on an album. Real music cred, real musicians. Most of what I listened to between the ages of 12 and 22 would not fit that criteria. (Sorry, Britney.)

I only get to visit my parents once or twice a year, so each time I go home, I load up on new music. On the most recent trip last month I acquired an immediate obsession with the defunct Chicago band Soul Coughing; before that, it was Keller Williams (who I'm seeing live for the second time next month at the Park West). The Spice Girls and BSB still have a place on my iPod, but now they're relegated to nostalgia.

I won't give up Kelly Clarkson though. She's for real.

Sing it, girl.

My parents, for their part, have continued to evolve in their musical tastes and endeavors. They persist in finding and re-finding bands from every decade; my mom has been on a Jack White binge lately, which I take credit for. (See? It goes both ways!) They probably wouldn't be crushed if most of the 1980's fell into a black hole, though.

A few years ago my parents got it into their heads that they'd be great a running a radio station because, well, they'd probably be great at running a radio station. Especially in Hilo, Hawaii, where most of the FM radio stations are absolute crap. (Sorry, 808 readers, but it's true.) They started organizing and editing their musical collection, digitizing the hundreds of hours of CD music and getting it ready for broadcast. For awhile they maintained an online streaming radio station called Gecko Rock, but that project fizzled after a some months of just a few (but devoted) listeners here and there.

Around the same time, the dreaded happened: My parents joined Facebook. I didn't really mind, but the constant barrage of my mom's Mafia Wars notifications and Dan's links to music videos on YouTube grew tiring, so I pretty much ignored them.

Then something weird happened. They created a new Facebook profile called "Friday Jams" and invited me to be its friend. It turns out there were so many friends posting videos on Dan's wall (in reaction to the 10 videos per hour he'd post himself) that they decided to move it to a separate account dedicated just to music videos. Now with around 100 friends, a solid fifth of whom post regularly, Friday Jams is buzzing almost 24 hours a day with music videos.

Screen shot.

My mom describes it as the best market research for a radio station in history. You post a song and then people post songs related to it; it's an "Oh you like that band? Try this!" method. And it works. Their library has grown exponentially, along with their dreams of running an actual FM station.

The original concept of Friday Jams was that a theme would be posted every Friday - colors, cities, "sticky stuff," jam videos, and the like -- and people could post their hearts out, "like" each others' music, and so forth. But soon people were grumbling that the theme was stale by Monday night, so a new mid-week theme has become a regular feature.

Bring some music and a sense of humor and you'll find a community that welcomes all music tastes with open arms. A favorite theme was "food fight," posted on Thanksgiving. After they ran out of food songs, people started throwing plates and knives and forks. In general, when people get sick of the theme, they'll start threatening to post videos of the Muppets.

What kills me about this whole thing is that my parents -- members of a generation that use Facebook completely differently than mine, and who came after us -- have managed to find a whole new purpose for the number one social networking site. A few individual souls have found their way to Friday Jams on their own, but for the most part my parents invited their friends, who invited their friends, who invited their friends. I friend-suggested John Popper, the front man of Blues Traveler, who accepted the invitation but has yet to post a video. (And I doubt he ever will, but isn't that cool?!)

I really love Blues Traveler.

Friday Jams is the next iteration, the interactive version, of Pandora. And you don't have to pay for it. Whether or not an FM station results, it's absolute genius, for users and founders alike.

And hey, it's Friday! Today's theme? Chicago! Don't worry, I've already covered the Blues Brothers and Kanye and OK Go. If you've got something to add, or if you want to glance in on the fun, check out the phenomenon here.

And don't feel obligated to accept if my mom Facebook friends you. Seriously, the Mafia Wars thing is really annoying.

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UPDATE, 1:31 pm: My mom pointed out that there is a picture from the trip on which she and Dan met. Check it out:

Bunch of hippies. Mom's in the red dress, Dan is fourth from the right, and I'm...noticeably younger.

One person's subjective list of the best webcomics

My cat elicits a similar response from me and others. From xkcd.com.

With the death of the newspaper -- for which the inevitable obituary will ironically and cruelly be broadcast through every available non-paper channel -- we're losing an important art form: the comics section. A piece of my childhood was nestled amongst the movie listings and crossword puzzles, from the lasagna-guzzling and Odie-hating Garfield to the neurotic and "ACK"-inducing Cathy to the Peanuts gang and Family Circus and even Doonesbury, which I totally didn't get at age 10.

As I got a little older, I gravitated toward a slightly more mature (but still juvenile) brand of humor. In junior high I had a weekly calendar composed of Far Side comics, which are beautiful in their simplicity, sometimes not even requiring a caption:


The history of American cartoons goes back to Ben Franklin, but the modern era began in the 1920's when The New Yorker was founded on the basis of the urban, New York-centric humor that filled its pages. New Yorker cartoons have become iconic -- die-hards enter the caption contest every week and dream of the day their caption is chosen -- and remain a large part of the identity of one of the world's most respected magazines.

The comic format is straightforward and endlessly replicable. In just a few frames (or just one), a joke, a one-liner, is executed in classic fashion: foundation, build-up, punchline. This form of comedy is so simple and yet often so badly executed (ex. the last many seasons of SNL). But done well, the humor can be subtle, outrageous, thought-provoking, uproarious -- the good stuff touches a nerve in some way. It taps into pop culture, or shared experience, or human nature. Comics are a succinct, expert rendering of short-form comedy.

Luckily for us, the comics don't have to go down with the newsprint ship. The Internet has swooped in to save frame-by-frame humor. Below are the webcomics that make me laugh and that I purport to keep up with on a semi-regular basis. Warning: I appreciate webcomic humor that incorporates wordplay, existential crises, rampant pop culture references and occasionally the voice of God.

xkcd - A classic, and the first webcomic I ever read. One day, while really, really, really bored in college, I went back and read every single one. (There are almost 900, and the first few are sparse save the suggestion that the author had some deep thoughts to work out on graph paper while sitting in class.) Published M/W/F and billed as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language," xkcd is particularly popular with the tech nerds who probably understand the 20% of the comics that go completely over my head. The other 80% is pure gold for everyone, though, especially if you're even the slightest bit geeky/bereft/pretentious about language/a pop culture junkie.


garfield minus garfield - For the particularly angst-ridden among us. Or those who enjoy the Garfield cartoons with Garfield erased, leaving a severely depressed and lonely Jon talking to himself in the suburbs. For some reason I find it funny, and if that makes me a bad person, then so be it. At least I'm not alone. This isn't one to be "kept up with" as much as checked out every once in awhile when you need reminding of how inconsequential your own problems really are.

Dinosaur Comics - Probably the most existential comic on the list, DC utilizes the same artwork every day, changing around only the dialogue. And it's bloody brilliant. It's published almost every weekday and usually deals with some sort of personal realization or crisis in the life of "27-year-old" T-Rex, with an occasional cameo from God (in bold print because, you know, he's God). Be sure to look for the Easter eggs in captions and RSS feed descriptors. (Hint: Look at my blogroll on the right!)


Hyperbole and a Half - With a completely different format than most webcomics - author Allie Brosh creates individual, crudely drawn frames interspersed with autobiographical text -- the humor of this one sometimes feels manic. In short, I like it alot.

Cowbirds in Love - The most recent addition to my webcomic repertoire, I'm not completely sold yet but some funny moments have kept me coming back, like this one. Not exactly laugh-out-loud, but still funny.

My knowledge of webcomics is minuscule compared to what's out there; I left out a number of notables that are amusing but not as much my style (Homestar Runner, Penny Arcade, etc.), so if you're still not satisfied, the good people over at Mashable and Cracked.com have a few more suggestions for you. Whatever your personal webcomic style, rejoice in the knowledge that we can all share in a form of writing that is as robust in the Internet age as it was when New Yorker founder Harold Ross and his jocular compatriots gathered around the Algonquin Round Table in the 1920's.

Other comics I should be reading? I can't promise anything -- my time is so valuable, after all -- but give me a shout in the comments.

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UPDATE, 12:15 pm: I just realized one of the primary reasons webcomics have a leg up on newspaper comics! No censorship.

White House Poetry Slam

This video apparently went viral back in the spring of 2009, but I missed it until my friend Franklin sent it to me this weekend. If you haven't heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda, here's a crash course: He's Puerto Rican, born in New York and in his early twenties he penned the music and lyrics for In the Heights. By age 28 he was playing the lead role in the Broadway production and winning Tony Awards and Grammy Awards and a bunch of other awards. He also helped Stephen Sondheim translate West Side Story into Spanish for a stage adaptation. Dude's brilliant, and his way of bending and mixing words is unreal. (He also really seems to "get" it: He taught English for awhile at his former high school in Washington Heights.)

I'm not terribly familiar with the slam poetry world, but sometimes a performance (or performer) just stops you in your tracks and demands that you listen. Miranda is one of those. And you have to love performance art that your high school U.S. History teacher would appreciate.

And look! We now have proof that Michelle Obama can snap. Of course, with those arms, we never really had any doubts.

RDMLKJD

We studied the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in one of my classes last quarter. I was familiar, of course, with his "I Had a Dream" speech, but I hadn't given much thought beyond that to the influence that Dr. King had on American rhetoric. He was an educated, incredibly thoughtful man, and the clarity with which he conveyed ideas through his sermons and speeches is breathtaking. He was a great writer, a great orator, an iconic preacher. His speeches are like music. Everything from the structure of his message to his use of alliteration, isocolon and especially rhythm serve to ensure his words continue to echo throughout our society. The truth that guided him continues to guide us.

We've come a long way since 1963. We still have a long way to go, but Dr. King's dream for a world that transcends what we used to think possible is alive and thriving in the minds of the people who will lead us further into the 21st century. I am hopeful, at least.

Let's all go to the movies! But, oh dear, not that one...

I'd never really thought much about the movie ratings system until a couple of months ago when I watched the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated. (Netflix instant streaming: Helping me rediscover my love of progressive documentaries since 2008-ish.)

Overall, it was a well-made film about how a biased, independent, secretive board gets to rate movies and therefore control and sometimes censor pop culture. I watched the film with a critical eye: It made some really good points, but at times it felt blown out of proportion. I was in a documentary frenzy and had just finished watching Food Inc., a must-see about how the American food industry and our developing societal norms are totally screwing over the citizenry's health. So in comparison to that weighty subject matter, movie ratings felt like not as big a deal.

But if we're talking about the larger picture of societal norms, and the question is about who's making those decisions, then the egregiously under-reported actions of the MPAA become incredibly relevant in understanding American culture and the direction we're headed. I came away agreeing with Kirby Dick, the film's creator and director, and feeling indignant about how exceedingly graphic violence (hello, Quentin Tarantino) can make it through with an R rating while a hint of sexual intimacy can merit an NC-17 rating, which basically spells death at the box office.

An NC-17 rating means that no one under 17 can see it, so it's generally understood to mean that it's halfway to porn -- even if it's really not that bad. (The documentary lists a number of great examples, including the Oscar-winning Boys Don't Cry.) That's all fine and good -- whatever, children come first and we should protect them and blah blah blah -- except that theater chains like Landmark and Century don't show NC-17 movies. Period. And if you choose not to accept the rating, your marketing options are severely limited. So basically no one ever gets to see them, and NC-17 movies die a sad, silent, poor death.

And normally, the rating cannot be appealed and reversed without taking out pieces of the movie, which oftentimes amounts to sanitizing not only the scenes, but the plot itself. And the MPAA hides behind the stipulation that they don't give specific notes on what to cut -- because that would make them a "censorship organization." Except, you know, they do, and they are.

Don't cry, masculine Hilary Swank!

Anyway, I sort of forgot about the whole thing until last month, when the MPAA made headlines by giving two movies with similarly sexual moments two different ratings: Black Swan, featuring a lesbian oral sex scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, received an R rating, while a similar scene in Blue Valentine starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams got the dreaded NC-17 sticker. Both movies are considered Oscar contenders, so studio head Harvey Weinstein went to bat and appealed to the MPAA. In a rare move, today the MPAA actually reversed the decision, and Blue Valentine opened in theaters across the country to huge buzz and critical acclaim.

I'm not sure what sort of victory this is, but I do know that the press around the issue is the most I've seen, especially since I apparently missed the original release of the documentary back in 2006. So while an unjust movie ratings system may not be something to march or hunger strike about, it's something to be aware of and healthfully question. The role the MPAA plays in the movie industry is, in a word, unholy.

In case you're unfamiliar with the two movies -- not sure how you could be, unless you live under a rock and ignore ballerina horror flicks and the inimitable Ryan Gosling (and this from a girl that's never seen The Notebook) -- check out the trailers below.

Black Swan (succinct review by friend and movie buff Joe here):



And Blue Valentine:

Strike a chord; don't pound the keys

In high school I started watching re-runs of The West Wing and dreaming about working in the White House. Specifically, I wanted to be either Press Secretary CJ Cregg or speechwriter Sam Seaborn or, most of all, head speechwriter Toby Ziegler. No one plays a tortured writer quite like Richard Schiff. (For the record, I would have also settled for dating Sam Seaborn. Rob Lowe in his prime, people.)

I'd never before seen speechwriting celebrated as an art apart from any other; this scene in particular is iconic in my mind:

In college I double-majored in journalism and political science, always thinking in the back of my mind of speechwriting but never actually attempting it. I spent a summer interning in the Washington, D.C. office of Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka, working on the Hill during the day and traipsing back to my West End sublet and devouring two or three West Wing episodes a night. Obviously reality didn't have much in common with my favorite TV show, but it was an incredible summer and I came away with a deeper appreciation for the complexities of working in government, particularly in communications.

Yesterday President Obama gave a speech in Tucson at the memorial for the victims of the shooting last Saturday. He's getting praise for it all over the place, and for good reason: It's a really, really phenomenal piece of writing. If you haven't seen it, read the transcript here or watch below:

The speech is emotional but balanced. It is precise and focused and does not take advantage of the situation. Most of all, it's sincere. This is the best speech of Obama's presidency thus far.

I'm a little embarrassed that I don't know more about Obama's speechwriters beyond the fact that a 29-year-old whippersnapper leads the team. Jon Favreau (no, not that one) started as a Kerry intern in 2004 and, six years later, is Obama's Director of Speechwriting. Talk about making me and everyone else under 30 look bad.

Besides an incident last summer wherein Favreau was photographed playing beer pong shirtless (the horror!), he's received mostly positive reviews under the current administration. Favreau was on the Time 100 list and also got some love from GQ and Vanity Fair.

(By the way, Favreau is not the youngest head speechwriter the White House has seen: That would be James Fallows, who wrote for Jimmy Carter in the '80s and has since established himself as a total badass with a pen, writing for the Atlantic Monthly and pumping out top-notch books like nobody's business.)

It's inspiring to see this caliber of writing coming from the very top of the government communication machine. It makes me want to be a part of politics again, a part of bringing eloquence to a national forum which is too often dominated by trying to out-scream the other guy. Of this speech, I think Toby Ziegler would be proud.

At least we're an equal-opportunity dream-squasher

The longer I don't work in journalism, the more I feel my membership card is expiring. Once a journalist, always a journalist? The term "writer" is a lot more broad and welcoming, and doesn't require me to follow the same set of rules. It's a club that the journalists are part of, but admission isn't as difficult. No hazing, at least. So while journalists are so easy to make fun of, it was a treat to see someone over at xtranormal find the humor behind the capacious study of English.

We watched this video in my Humor & Satire Writing class last night. A Ph.D was never really in my personal plans, but I'm curious as to whether the rest of the world finds this as funny and distressing as a room full of English master's students.

Non sequitur: How sad is it that I knew more HTML code when I was 12 than today?