another week in the can

February break has been everything except what it is supposed to be. Rarely did I find myself at home or hanging out with friends. Predominately I found myself at school or in the car driving back and forth. Rather than spend an unnessesary amount of time discussing the events of the past week, I have decided that rehearsals for the Bacchae can be summed up in a two hour period, and more specifically, the trials of Flynn and Gavin.

Gavin has had a rough week. Having left due to his treatment by Tyler on at least one occasion, things were less than harmonious between himself and everyone else on the face of the planet except myself and a few select others. Trying to find peace in the lighting booth today, Gavin was with Vitale, Kevin and Toop listening to a radio (which turned out to be Brothers) loudly and singing along to it. Meanwhile, Alicia screamed for tech to accompany the actors for the scene and I read a book and played with Justin's cellphone. After about 10 minutes as such Flynn came out of the abyss, went into the booth, ripped the radio out of the wall (thus damaging the board temporarily) and threw it ten feet in the air to the seating. This prompted the manhunt of Gavin by Flynn and Flynn by Gavin.

Fastfoward half-an-hour. Flynn and Gavin enjoy an hour chat with Alicia in the hall while sound plays Queens of the Stone Age and the Beatles and frisbee gets thrown around the theater (reminiscent of freshmen year). Of course the downer actors got in the way of hour fun, but whatever.

Ah, crew. Never boring (except when it is).

if only

"And then last night i had that strange dream
Where everything was exactly how it seemed
Where concerns about the world getting warmer
The people thought they were just being rewarded
For treating others as they like to be treated
For obeying stop signs and curing diseases
For mailing letters with the address of the sender
Now we can swim any day in november"

"Sleeping In"
The Postal Service

well now we know, overexamination sucks. or is this just plain examination.

"He was Republican because his father before him was a Republican and because this country was Republican. It never occured to him to be otherwise. And, as in the case of his politics and his religion, he had borrowed all his notions of what was right and wrong from those about him. A single, serious intelligent or rightly informing book had never been read had never been read by any member of this family -- not one. But they were nevertheless excellent, as conventions, morals and religions go -- honest, upright, God-fearing and respectable."

"An American Tragedy"
Theodore Dreiser

Now, this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, 100 percent true of my family and life, but it still strikes home.
Damn.

it's nothing personal

Mr. Smith, you are one of my favorite teachers of all time. I am more than glad that I took your world history class last year and spent a good deal of time hating it superficially. Now, that I am in Holocaust, and you feel that the brotherhood you and your students have has evolved enough for free usage of the f-bomb, I have no regrets of joining you for another go-around. However, this does not mean that I agree with everything you say. Now, I know you re-evalute your teaching methods a great deal (since you have asked me about your preachiness and what I thought of the class), and because of this fact my gripe is rather limited, but sometimes I just feel like you are oblivious to what you are doing.
Exhibit A: You will not allow yourself to admit that while you are correct in saying that stereotypes do not represent a fair amount of the population, they do do justice to some.
Exhibit B: You preach of open-mindedness but won't accept anything but what you believe to be true as answers from us. (Thank God you don't teach English.)
Exhibit C: You won't just say what we are all thinking. I mean come on, old people drive slow.

That being said, thanks for a great class so far...

this is your mind, this is your mind on holocaust

After a night of service at Beverley House I hopped into my car and waited for the air that was seeping through the vents to morph from cool to warm. 35 minutes later, listening to Saves the Day and pondering that which great minds ponder, I made the final turn onto Westville Rd. Turning from one deserted street to another, my lights shined brightly and illuminated the cold winter air. For the fist time of the night, I saw grayish white flakes flailing towards me and littering the cool pale night. And you know what the first thing to come to my mind was? Ashes. A death camp. The holocaust. Awareness has it's defects, overexposure can creep up on you. It was awful.

27 up, 27 down (and no regrets)

Whether they showcase one of pity or hatred, the attitudes of the religion teachers at St. John's Prep towards material wealth and affection, all rest on the same thesis, that we are condescending and therefore must be right. Personally, I have spent countless hours trying to decipher their purpose in digressing from more worthy, not to mention course specific, endeavors, just to remind me how superficial my fondness of products is as it relates to real life. Why do they feel like it is their duty to make me understand the triteness and lack of true fulfillment involved with materials? Why must dependence, or as I prefer to acknowledge it as, interdependence, be equated with failure or a cry for help? Because the truth is, I am not looking for your handout. I am not embarrased and I am not ashamed. I might be a little dissapointed but I've never known anything else. I have never felt the cool sensation of a summer breeze in Europe or taken a long walk on the beach with a special gal. So for the time being (and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel seems dimer and dimmer) one must take salvage in what is accessible, in this case, family (who I will never appreciate like I should no matter how hard I try) and purchases. You can call it settling, you can call it materialistic or you can call it, as I do, the best course of action given the circumstances.

And if rejecting drugs and alchohol and pairing off with the new Bear vs. Shark CD or The OC Season One on DVD isn't the American Dream, then I don't know what is. Maybe you'll even end up closer to someone, maybe you will bond through your common product-centered interest and be content to have taken the low road to the same destination as those low life teachers. Maybe you will lose yourself if a lyric, maybe you will be inspired by the happiness on a show to try something new. I hope you will. I hope they will. I hope they understand (but I don't really care).

Money, cars, television, music. These are the things that they hate. These are the things that get me through the day. These 27 episodes really made life just a bit less routine for a while. Those 27 episodes were worth it. When it's 1:00am and I've just finished a paper, there's nothing better than a little music to go to sleep to, and when your eating dinner and it's silence or Marissa, Seth and Ryan, the answer is clear.

This is my declaration to the teachers, to the pompous and the content. It seems as if you assume that achieveing happiness is a mandate to handout their blueprints to everyone else, friend or foe, colleague or student. Never does it enter into your equation that this is not nearly as noble as it sounds, but more appropriately labeled an encroachment upon the life and times of a number of students. A number of students who, not particually favored by their social situation, make use of music and television as a modern day sanctuary. That doesn't seem so bad, now does it?

This is the lament of an addict, take it or leave it.

bene!

During the past week or so the junior class has been racking their brains over what classes to take senior year. Whether to take that free period, whether a fun, art-filled senior year is worth it in the end, and whether AP is where I really belong, are just a sample of the multitude of questions that have been plaguing many a mind. But let's look more closely at that last question, the question of AP, or advance placement classes. To understand this loaded issue I offer you a speech made by one, Dr. Eugene Baron, to my latin IIIH class on Wednesday. These are not his exact words because I just plain can't remember them, but the general idea is the same. Keep in mind the skepticm over open-enrollment.

The school is really pushing for everyone to load up on APs, for everyone to take as many of them as possible. And I don't think that is necessarily a good thing. An AP class is supposed to be a college level course, requiring a great deal of time. I think by forcing kids to take a lot of APs you can kind of dumb the class down. It's getting harder and harder to make your transcript look unique, to make it stand out from the crowd. The real problem is grade inflation. Unfortunately you have everyone from any Joe Schmo High School with a 5.0. So you look for new ways to make your transcipt stand out. So you have to try and build up a lot of extracuricular activities. You try everything from skydiving to swordswallowing. But then everyone has a bunch of activities, so now what do you do. The school is encouraging everyone to take as many APs as possible. I just don't think you can take more than a couple and do them adaquetely. There are just not enough hours in the day. I think the school should require anyone who takes an AP to take the AP exam at the end of year, but that isn't going to happen.....

You get the jist of what he was saying and it was hilarious at the time. I just wish I hadn't waited two days to try and write it down. I should have written it down right away, but hey, that's life.

By the way here's my proposed schedule for next year:

AP Government
AP English
AP Latin
AP US History
H War and Peace
CP1 Ethics
CP1 Stats/Calc
Acc Philosophy

no comment

There is nothing intelligent to say about this, so I won't even bother. And I won't bore you with lame jokes either because no doubt all the good ones are already taken. Instead, just a reccomendation: after reading the article, immediately forget it,or risk a loss of IQ and faith in the human race.

independence

"somehow, someway, we perservere
the questions on our lips fall on deafened ears
and if and when we rise to our feet again
we'll be on our own"

"If And When We Rise Again"
Streetlight Manifesto

since you can't see me i'll just tell you i'm smiling

Need blind.

it's a great day to be an eagle

Between the junior mentor assembly and dinner at Skip's for XBSS, today could not have epitomized the St. John's spirit any more. But don't let me get to ahead of myself. First let me embellish you with my impression of junior mentor day and it's significance. While I was dissapointed with the disrespectful and downright pethetic manner in which our class presented itself, I could not have been more enthused by the speakers and their overwhelming guidance. The two speakers that really stuck with me the most were (and let me now refer to their business cards) John Cushing and Mark Pothier, the senior assistant metro editor/globe south. Mr. Cushing really had an excellent attitude and benefitial advice on language selection in college. After Mr. Pothier, who by the way, I found impressive and exceedingly helpful due to his specific advice on the one field I am looking most strongly at for a career, mentioned the importance of Spanish in regards to interviews and overall communication with a large part of the population, I asked him and Mr. Cushing about it in a little chat afterwards. After explaining that I was locked into Latin already, Mr. Cushing responded by telling me that he had taken Latin as well and that the big mistake that he made, was when required by his college to take a language freshman year, he took it again just because it would be easy. Before this that would have been my course of action as well but now I would lean towards taking Spanish. (And this from the kid who wishes those little buggers would learn to speak English or leave - I'm such a sell-out.)
In terms of dinner at Skip's house I could not have been more pleased at how it went. Great food, good company and tasteful discussions (including our sentiments on girls at SJP). Mr. Hardiman was insanely funny and the dialogue between Skip and himself could not have been more entertaining. (Note to self: never ask for a principle's holiday!). I have a good feeling about the retreat and now that MJ is scheduled to bring cookies for our departure (about 30 minutes after we finish our prelim performance on March 5th), I can not see anything going wrong.

books, books everywhere but not a...oh nevermind

Reading. For each man a different task. For a real man an egotistical act. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment it gives me and the superficial mind power I mistakenly assume I have gained. I want to be able to say to that hot English major at a downtown bar, "Of course I read "The Scarlet Letter," rather than, "Well, I know the story because I...well...spark noted it." It would be a travesty for laziness in high school, to come between a man's lower half and an eventful evening later in life. Furthermore, on the subject of missed oppurtunities, the feeling of a half-read book sitting on your shelf really is incredibly degrading and mocking.
Therefore, we all need to band together and solemnly swear to read all the books assigned to us these last two years. I guarantee it will come in handy later in life. And even if it doesn't, what do you have to lose?

So far for this school year:

Summer Reading:
The Killer Angels
Cats Cradle
Into the Wild

In School:
The Last of the Mohicans
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Scarlet Letter
Huck Finn
Ethan Frome
An American Tragedy
Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps

Out of School:
Escape from Slavery