One Little Victory

Yesterday was big news in Georgia regarding education and SAT scores. Sonny Perdue, our esteemed governor and self-proclaimed proponent of education (even if he did cut $1 billion from education funding and is taking credit for classroom initiatives begun long before he considered running for office) got up behind his podium trumpeting that Georgia was now 46th in the nation in SAT score results, up from dead last last year. Being a re-election year for Sonny, the trumpet was blown pretty loud. I say this objectively and as a student of history when I state that Georgia has a long tradition of religious zealotry and anti-intellectualism when it comes to education. On many occasions the state government if not outright tried to bring about the demise of its flagship state university, then it tried to set it on the course to destruction. So education, for all the rhetoric and grandstanding, has never been an overwhelming priority in the state for either the Democrats or Republicans. There have been political debts to be paid, shady backroom deals to be made, and that's been the priority.

But not this year. Georgia has moved up four places in the SAT standings! On the surface it looks like improvement, but the silver lining on this cloud cannot conceal the severe storm underneath. If you compare the SAT with last year's criteria, eliminating the new written portion of the exam, then Georgia ranks 49th. Overall the average scores in Georgia have dropped this year by three points, so it's not so much that we've moved up as Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Hawaii's scores dropped more than ours. In terms of the math portion of the exam, Georgia still ranks last in the nation; in writing 41st, in reading 45th. We're still in the bottom 10% of the nation in scores, and seeing who's behind us means that states that we could traditionally count on to act as a buffer between us and last place, Alabama and Mississippi, are ahead of us. Elect me as president; I'll immediately rescind the "No Child Left Behind Act." It's time to make the classroom someplace to teach, not train students to take exams.

Some may find 46th place as something to be proud of. I don't. But Sonny did.

OUCH!

This looks like it really hurt. Stupid bastard! Only one jump on the diving board!

Era of discovery

Stumbled upon or was reminded of some interesting things this past weekend. My brother had his fortieth birthday, which is fine by me. I hated being the only one amongst my siblings who were in their forties. Now I have company and I can call someone else an old bastard for a change. I had the house to myself before heading to his surprise party on Saturday so I put Harold Lloyd's "The Freshman" from 1925 in the DVD player. I was only able to watch twenty minutes worth of the movie before I had leave. When the wife, daughter and I returned home later that afternoon, I turned the movie back on. Usually my daughter doesn't like to watch silent movies with me, but for some reason she sat down with me on this particular day. It didn't take long for me to realize that she was reading the captions which were so necessary to convey parts of the dialogue and storyline in silent movies. It then hit me that this was great reading practice for her! What a great idea: she's introduced to the 1920s comedic genius that was Harold Lloyd while at the same time practicing her reading skills!

I was also reminded of another good band from the 1980s. I found a couple of their videos on You Tube. This band's first two albums are really, really good. Do you know who they are? You get three guesses.

Relax...

...you're in good hands!

Yeah, well get bent

I had to call the ticket office at the campus' athletic association this morning. Everyone I know had received their season football tickets, and mine hadn't shown up yet. Turns out I'm not getting tickets after all, even though they charged my credit card for them four months ago. Seems I didn't rank a high enough priority number. The gentleman I spoke to suggested that I order again next year and move up in the priority number line. Hmmmm, have my credit card tapped again for tickets I won't receive and then not get back $15 for your shipping and handling charge for tickets you neither shipped nor handled? Sorry, but fuck you buddy. And fuck this sorry-ass university I work for and graduated from.

A taste of fall

The weather this past weekend was pretty nice. A cold front blew through on Friday and Saturday, dropping the temperature around here into the upper-70s for the high on Saturday. Nevermind that the sky was overcast, it occasionally rained, and the humidity was still present; it was still cool enough to keep the windows open all day and night. It was a hint of things to come in the next couple of months and now I'm really looking forward to the change of season and possibly hiking trips in the mountains.

Good thing, bad thing

One of my all-favorite television shows is Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was a rarity in the medium of television: smart, well-written, intelligent, it didn’t pander to get cheap laughs. The premise of the show is a guy is launched into space (first Joel, later Mike) who is stuck watching bad movies with his two robot companions and add their own comments/dialogue/jokes as the movie plays. At the end of the very early episodes of the show, Joel would make the robots mention one good thing and one bad thing about the movie they had just watched, rewarding them with a RAM chip for their efforts. Life of late has seemed to be a similar situation for me of late: one good thing, one not so good thing.

Good Thing: Last Friday evening my wife and I took our daughter to go swimming in the diving well at the physical activity center on campus. Once again we all had fun at the pool. Our daughter still enjoys jumping off the three meter diving board, and is getting braver on the one meter board, jumping off after getting a running start instead of just standing on the end and jumping. Admittedly I love diving off the boards as well, harkening back to my younger days and swimming in the pool at my grandparents’ apartment building.

Not So Good Thing: I got to go swimming again the next day, though I hadn’t planned on it. Late in the afternoon we headed to the store to pick up birthday presents for a party the child was invited to attend on Sunday plus a few groceries. We had been in the store for about forty-five minutes when we began to hear loud rumbles of thunder. The skylights in the ceiling were no longer bright with sunshine; rather they were dark, occasionally brightening up with flashes of lightning. The lights flickered as the storm outside got worse. I turned to my wife and advised that we should finish up and go, the sooner the better. I knew the store had only an half hour power backup for its registers (on the plus side, the security system also had thirty minutes of power backup, so after thirty-one minutes everything was FREE!). My worry was that if the power went out we’d be stuck in a long line of yahoos all also wanting to get out while the getting was good.

We beat most of the crowd, but not all of it. We were only second in line, but the lady ahead of us had her cart crammed full of stuff, enough to fill two carts actually. After about twelve minutes we had our turn at the register. As we headed out, the foyer at the front door was filled with people, none of whom wanted to leave and with good reason. Although it was only a few minutes past six in the afternoon, it was dark outside, quite dark. A strong wind was blowing, the rain was coming down in buckets. It was simply the strongest storm we’d had in these parts in quite some time. As my wife wondered aloud how long the storm would last, I was contemplating making a dash for the car.

The car wasn’t that far away, but in a driving rain it may as well have been parked a mile away. The number of people gathering by the front door was increasing exponentially, so my choice was clear—time to make a break for the car. Knowing I’d have to literally throw things in the back of my car, I handed my wife the bags containing eggs and bread and ran off into the rain. At first things went well; I can’t run as fast as I did when I was sixteen, but I can still make good time. Running up the lane in the parking lot, I rapidly closed in on my car. I hadn’t been struck by lightning yet, so that was a good sign. I was almost to my car when a car came down the lane towards me, plowing into a sizeable puddle of water, drenching my running shoes. Sonofabitch! No time to get angry or flip the driver off. The rain was still coming down pretty hard and the lightning seemed to be closing in on me. I get to my van, open the rear hatch, and throw in eight bags of stuff. I had spent a total of fifteen to twenty seconds outside but it looked like I had just jumped in the pool.

Good Thing: My daughter started first grade last week, and on Friday she had her first show and tell day. Whatever she brought in was supposed to fit into a small lunch sack the teacher had sent home and should be something that tells a little something about the child. She couldn’t decide what to bring, so I casually suggested bringing a Marx Brothers movie, specifically the movie Horse Feathers. I didn’t think she’d go for it, but she loved the idea. My DVD recorder had botched this particular disc and it wouldn’t play, so if the disc was lost it was no big deal. My daughter has been exposed to a number of older movies and comedy acts. She’s familiar with the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and for the past few weeks on “family night” she’s picked The Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, and Dracula as the movies we’ve watched. She knows Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert as those people from It Happened One Night. It’s nice to be able to watch old movies with my daughter and have her like them, though I know sometime in the future she’ll think poorly about these movies because her dad likes them and whatever dad likes is not cool.

Not So Good Thing: Last Saturday I was watching The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio when my daughter came wandering into the living room. I quickly pulled up the channel guide looking for something she could watch; I didn’t think she was ready for a movie about Howard Hughes and his substance abuse and mental health issues—not to mention I didn’t want her handing me some excuse one morning that she can’t go to school because there are GERMS EVERYWHERE.

I found the movie The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl on another channel, and tuned that in. Being a good dad, I sat with her and watched the last forty five minutes of the movie. I know the film’s target audience is children, but I’m just a big kid (ask my wife) so in theory I should have enjoyed the movie. Instead, it was like Hell on the t.v. screen. The film, about a boy’s dream about two characters he created in a notebook, was so astoundingly bad that I think anyone who watches it actually loses IQ points. Bad dialogue, bad hair, I think this piece of junk was made in 3-D, which is very scary. Who would want to see Sharkgirl and her overbite coming at them in 3-D? I certainly don’t want to have to deal with the nightmares of incisors chasing me down a dark street. But I was a dutiful dad and watched the movie with my daughter. She liked it, of course, and that’s what truly mattered. And after watching only half this movie, I’m hoping that my physical rehab and psychotherapy sessions will stop my slurred speech, annoying drooling problem, and get me back on the road to living life without wearing Depends.

Well, obviously!

Poor FDR. Once again I put his biography on the backburner to work on another book. The new book is yet another biography, this time of Julius Henry Marx, better known to most folks as Groucho. It’s an enlightening book which put a great number of things in perspective to me. Take for example the film Sunset Boulevard, which depicts a silent film star who has been all but forgotten by Hollywood. After reading Groucho’s biography I have to say the film was pretty accurate in Hollywood’s attitude at the time. By 1950 many actors and actresses who had come of age in vaudeville and silent films were truly being left by the wayside by Hollywood. Groucho was able to endure because he and his talents for ad-libbing on his You Bet Your Life program made the leap from radio to television. Other notable artists, such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, weren’t as lucky, finding work hard to come by. I finished off Groucho’s biography this past weekend, but obviously I won’t finish FDR’s unless I stop allowing myself to be distracted by new books.

Sometimes it amazes me that people miss those things in life that I think should be obvious. From time to time we all suffer from brain lapses that cause us to overlook details in life that should be as clear as the nose on our face. I’m guilty of suffering many such brain lapses and I readily admit that. It comes with the territory of being a male: forgetting birthdays, anniversaries, and on occasion our girlfriend’s/wife’s name is not beyond the potential of those of us who suffer from the XX chromosome syndrome. My dad was notorious for forgetting my brother’s and my birthdays, not to mention those late night dashes to the store because he just remembered his anniversary was the next day. There’s no need to again bring up his knack for resorting to his go-to gift of a toaster oven, so we’ll skip that part.

By way of example, I point out my experience of last week. Many years ago when I worked in a law firm I obtained a commission as a notary public. It came in very handy when preparing releases to obtain medical records and other sundry tasks in the office. A few months back I let my notary expire; it came down to a choice between having repairs made to my car’s transmission or renewing my notary. It was an easy choice. I knew I’d be submitting a new application as soon as the money became available again. So last week I took my completed application to the courthouse to regain my status as a notary. I handed over the form and took a seat while someone in the clerk of courts office typed up my new certificate. The lady who typed up the form called me to the counter, handed me the certificate, and asked me to proofread it to make sure all my information on it was correct. It took me about half a second to find a major error on the form.

“You’ve got the wrong gender,” I pointed out.

Incredulously, she said, “You’re kidding me,” somehow not believing that she had made that big of a mistake. I showed her the certificate and the line where it said I was female.

“Unless I’m heading to Sweden for a reassignment, I think it’s wrong” I told her, but in a manner indicating I thought the mistake was funny and wasn’t angry.

The clerk was beside herself, apologizing profusely, but I told her it was okay and it was the best laugh I had had all day (which was quite true). She mentioned that she had been making all sorts of mistakes that day, to which I had to chime in, “Just so long as you don’t make a mistake sending someone up for a stretch at Alto state prison, you’re fine.”

Putting the wrong gender on a public document is one thing; spending more money than you actually have is another one of life’s obvious details that most of us should know. But not all of us do. A couple of weeks ago I read a letter to the editor in our local paper that addresses the federal budget deficit. Not to worry, the writer heralded, the national deficit is a good thing. The money we’re spending that we don’t have is actually an investment in our future. Boy, I’d sure like to try that with my credit card company. Let’s see…purchase a very expensive plasma screen television, default on the payments, and tell my creditor that it’s an investment in our future. Somehow I don’t think that story would get very far. Most of us should know that if you practice deficit spending to excess, the interest alone starts to eat you alive and you never put a dent in the principal. And for some reason I don’t think massive cuts to the student loan and Pell Grant programs are an investment in our future. It seems most of our “investment” money is going to support our goodwill tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the press recently was perhaps the biggest “That’s So Obvious” story that’s happened in quite some time. In an announcement that fairly screams “My Career is Dead and I Need Some PR,” Former N’ Sync member Lance Bass came out of the closet. That this made the news and was a surprise to anyone is a mystery to me; I’ve been saying N’ Sync is gay since 1998. One can only look at the musical group to conclude that Bass was gay. For starters, look at the band’s name: N’ Sync. For five males to be in sync is strange and unnatural. The only thing that should be in sync is a house full of sorority girls, not a group of guys. Second, just look at this photo. If that doesn’t scream gay I don’t know what does (maybe except for this photo). Now I don’t begrudge anyone for their sexual preference and the friends I have in the local LGBT community will confirm that. But this is one Lance I don’t want in my pants. Obviously.

Marketing Disasters

Nobody under thirty will remember this actual t.v. ad. Very unfortunate that they gave their product a similar name to a fatal disease. But in their defense, they named their product before the CDC named their disease.

Happy (?) birthday....

No matter which way I turned this morning, the 1980s kept hitting me in the face, which is not in and of itself a bad thing. During that decade I was definitely younger, in better physical shape, weighed at least fifty pounds less, fewer graying hairs. On the way to work I passed a woman whose hair was so tall, teased, and hair sprayed that she looked like they had just removed her from a time capsule buried in 1984. This comes on top of today being the twenty-fifth birthday for MTV. To celebrate this apparent “historic” day, one of the radio stations in Atlanta is only playing songs that were featured in videos from on MTVs first day of broadcasting. What’s more, VH1 Classic is running all the videos that were featured on that first day.

I watched about an hours worth of the programming on VH1 Classic this morning. Many of the videos they showed I had never seen before. When MTV hit the airwaves in 1981, I was living in the Augusta area and the crappy cable service there didn’t carry the channel. To give an idea of just how crappy the cable service was, just the mere mention of the word lightning would cause the cable to go out anywhere from a couple of hours (if you were lucky) to a few days. So I got to miss many of the videos that were run during MTV s first year of operation.

It was very interesting watching some of those videos as I had no idea that an accompanying video had ever been made with some of those songs. For instance, I had never seen the video for the Ramones’ “Do You Remember Rock N’ Roll Radio” from their End of the Century album. It’s an average video for 1980 but odd watching it now knowing that 75% of the people in the band are now dead.

Which brings me to this video from the very early 80s from Cliff Richard for his song “We Don’t Talk Anymore.” This song brought back some horrible memories of being a teenager living in the Augusta area; the accompanying video would’ve been my coup de grace had I seen it. Perhaps not having MTV in 1981 was a good idea (not having it now is definitely a good idea). I’m guessing the cost for making this video was $12.50 and a reach-around. Still the only song I'm aware of that includes the lyric "she-e-e-e-p" in the backing vocals. Welcome to the 80s! Welcome to Hell!