I'll Be Your Candle on the Water

This blog post directly coincides with my severe procrastination disorder that is keeping my stack of freshman personal essays from entering even my peripheral vision. I promised my students tomorrow. I gave them my word. And I'll do it, too. After I post about Pete's Dragon on my blog.

First, if you are my real friend, you will go to this link and listen to Marcos Valle and Patricia Alvi sing "Nao E Facil," a brilliantly poignant bossa nova version of "It's So Easy." This was the best internet find I've had in years. I've wasted twenty minutes of my office time listening to it on repeat and dancing. You are no longer my friend if you do not take two minutes out of your life and follow that link.

I didn't upload these movie images myself, some other great Pete's Dragon soulmate must have, somewhere out there in the cyberspace world. Aside from my crushes on Red Buttons as Hoagie and Mickey Rooney as Lampey, my heart will always belong with Jim Dale as Dr. Terminus. Money by the pound, indeed.

I have a feeling there will be more Pete posts in the future, but this should do for today. I think I can tackle more papers now, what with the sweet lilt of Bossa Nova dancing in my brainwaves.

He has the head of a camel. The neck of a crocodile. The ears of a cow. He's both a fish and mammal and I hope he'll never change...'cause it's not easy to share somebody's dream. It gets easy when you work as a team. You've got to tend it, fan it--that's what I plan to do.

Or....

Liiiiiiiiife is lollipops and rainbows, with the one you love. Someone you can always be with, argue and agree with.....climb the highest tree with.

What my life needs is a large cartoon dragon that only I and drunk people can see.

Last Picture: The Disney Ink and Paint Girls work on Eliot.

Tuggin' my sleeve, Chicago is.......

Chicago did not let me down. And yes, it did have all that jazz. I left on the plane with major apprehensions. I wasn't sure who would show or who I'd hang with or what exactly the panels at AWP are even like. I was scared, a bit. Ask my mom.

But that is the beauty of Friday the 13ths and holidays, especially when so many of them are packed into the same three-day weekend. It's like standing in the center of a ring of toadstools--something wicked or supernatural must happen, it's a general rule of the universe. Chicago now ranks as one of my top five cities in the nation, and last weekend ranks as one of the new best nostalgic string of moments that I'll be talking about until I finally quit this earth and move ahead. I'm pretty sure I'll still be talking about it after then, too.

So, some pictures. It was truly a Ferris Bueller Chicago experience. I went to three panels and that was it. I ditched out on everything and painted the town red with trusty old chums and brand new interests. Joe and I searched all the crannies of the Art Institute and saw mummies and Sue the T-Rex and other natural history paraphenalia (you ought to check out the room about "Our Moving Earth." There's no way you can be disappointed. At all. Really. Not disappointing. Anti-disappoint.) at the Field Museum and pressed our foreheads against the windows at the top of the Sears Tower. Sharon joined us for a Valentines' Day Massacre reenactment on Friday the 13th, and I even had a Charlie-Sheen/Jennifer-Grey moment with a charming new prospect and that's all the details you're going to get here. Except I wasn't wearing a lot of eye make-up and he didn't compare me to a whore.

Chicago from the Sears Tower:

Blade Runner as seen from the Sears Tower:

A large trough of appetizers (mushrooms, zucchini, mozzarella) that Joe and I ate about half of, triumphantly, disgustedly.

The deep dish stuffed Chicago-style pizza that did us in after the appetizers. We murdered about half of it, too. It was a superhuman effort, I don't care how little we had eaten that day up to that point.

On Friday the 13th, Joe, Sharon, and I caught a cab to Chicago's Oven Grinder, across the street from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, when "Bugs" Moran and Al Capone's men had it out in a bloody Chicago bite of history. We saluted the ghosts that haunt that thar side street and enjoyed the best salad and pizza pot pies I think I'll ever eat. It was truly wicked and pagan.



Sharon under the Antiques sign *snicker*

This is the part where we expressed how much fun we were having in Chicago.

Later that night I was invited to a rollicking Friday the 13th game night at Grover's hotel room. I held my own. I would have won had we played cards or Mouse Trap.

This is David Grover. Sometimes he comments here. Everyone be nice to him. You can tell he is quality from the kickass Cosby sweater he is sporting.

This pic is courtesy of Joe. It's the large metallic awesome lima bean next to the ice skating rink. I believe it has magical properties and I visited it more than once during my time in Chicago.

Here it is up close.

The inside is a great concave tunnel of reflection and shimmering acid trip. It makes you walk around looking as idiotic as I do here.


On Valentines Day we walked through the many leg statues on the way to the Field Museum. The legs reminded me oddly of Pink Floyd's goosestepping hammers.....maybe?

Here's me in front of the stained glass Chagall at the Chicago Art Institute.

Oh right, that's Sloane and Bueller. Yeah, not me. The Chagalls, the Magrittes, Wood's "American Gothic"--none were on display at this time. Foiled again. Nothing has peeved me more since Jeff Koons' ceramic statue of Michael Jackson and his monkey, Bubbles, was in storage when I went to the SFMOMA. Fortunately I saw my fair share of Van Goghs, Toulouse-Latrecs, Monets, Manets, Winslow Homers, Hopper's "Nighthawks," Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon," lots of Frank Lloyd Wright chairs, and a truly inspiring shot of Peter Lorre that Joe pointed out for me.

I can't complain. I had a truly transcendent and surreal twenty minutes when I thought my calves were going to burst, I'd pumped them up with so much blood from walking around not going to any AWP panels, and I lay down on the floor of the old Chicago stock exchange room at the Art Institute, listening to one of my greatest old friends play the piano in a room of great acoustics, staring up at this:

I can't recreate it for you. Not here. There isn't the time or the space. It was a fantastic weekend. Dream Academy's "Please Let Me Get What I Want" didn't stop running through my head and neither did Frankie Sinatra. Life altering, literally. Cathartic. Irresponsible. Nostalgic. New.

Later on Valentine's Day I got to watch many Oscar-nominated animated shorts in a truly fabulous old-timey theater with some really swell kids. I ate even more pizza, laughed at even more jokes, and then I was escorted back to my hotel by a charming man with plenty of charming conversation and charming charms. Well done, Chicago. Well done.

Bonus ghost pictures:
"Sharon As Sloth Fratelli"

"Amy Sucked into a Brothers Quay Twitchy Short"

"Presidents Day Flashy Ghost avec Gilliland Chillun"

For Adrianne McBride

A friend of mine passed away in a car accident yesterday morning as she was leaving Provo. She was a friend of a friend, but we had made plans that would secure us as bosom buddies if I ever got around to visiting her in Utah. We were alike as far as how our general lives matched up--we had both dated the same man at one point (hence the friend of a friend), we were both graduated, working, single LDS women with great dreams of love and family and general life success. She was very kind to me--one of those people that smiled and laughed with me when I was feeling awkward and new in their circle of friends. Anyway, she really wanted these shoes, they'd been one of the most recent life goals she blogged about. So I guess this blog post is for you, Adrianne, to let you know I'm thinking about you and really praying that people walk around wearing these in the spirit kingdom, and not those awful silky white slippers with the tiny bows on the tops. Though, if people really are walking around in these for all eternity, I'm entrusting you to give me high heel lessons when I catch up to you. We'll miss you, and thanks again so much for your friendship, even after you were no longer obligated to be my friend. I hope you are feeling rested and happy wherever you are, and that people still tell really good jokes and you can still laugh really hard without getting into too much trouble.
We'll still get together someday, I promise.

For those who have found this blog by googling Adrianne's name, a memorial blog has been created by one of her best friends and you can link to this page here.

Top Five Reasons High Fidelity Brings Me Break-Up Catharsis

1: It sheds light on the all too fortunate reality that my former fellow and I had absolute minimum common interest in music and movies. Not quite true. Movies we bonded over a bit, but he never did pull me onto the Battlestar Galactica bandwagon and I still hate most of the cartoons on Adult Swim because they make me feel small, and not in that good humble sort of way. But music set us even further apart. Save a couple of Gary Jules tracks and Harry Chapin, our opposing taste in bands put an impatient strain on any long drives and road trips. The language and sex in his punk collections clammed me up and he complained that my music wasn't loud enough to cover the humming noise his tape deck makes, which irritated him. Though, he did like Elliott Smith and Jose Gonzalez even though he could never remember their names. He'd just say, "Oh, I like this," whenever one of their tracks came on. It became almost uncanny, how I came to count on that, "Oh, I like this." I made him a mix cd the week he first kissed me. I thought he was somebody totally different and made it all completely wrong for him.

2: High Fidelity brilliantly captures the subtle dishonesties and honesties in virtually every budding or breaking romance tale. I love when Cusack and Lisa Bonet talk all night and Cusack admits he is only acting the role he contrived as the sensitive, witty guy who has hints of melancholy beneath the surface of his recent split romance. Or the bridge scene when he gives the top five things he misses about Laura. Or when he cries at Laura crying at her dad's funeral. It's cathartic to me because I now feel less like a moron or a loon for talking to myself during my run through east Rigby on Tuesday. Telling a couple of shaggy-coated ponies on 4300 East all about the specifics of my recent heartbreak makes me more like John Cusack, who is awesome, thus making me also awesome and not crazy like I had originally pigeonholed myself.

3: The violence and the sarcasm. It might make me look like a jerk, but I love the scene when Tim Robbins confronts Cusack in the record store and Cusack fantasizes about what he'd like to do to the guy, which escalates into knocking out Robbin's teeth and slamming a cash register onto his face. I'm not saying I condone this kind of violence or that I'd ever put a comparable scene into any movie I'd ever shoot, I'm just also saying that it kind of felt good to feel an outlet for the conflicting and embarrassing emotions I have felt myself trying to bury all week. I like Cusack's anger. And Jack Black's anger makes me laugh, which feels good too.

4: Obviously the soundtrack is cathartic. I've dated enough guys who love that movie that almost every track reminds me of someone I've cried over since the film came out in 2000. While Rob Gordon is reliving his top five most humiliating breakups, I'm reliving my own top five. This can be cleansing. A smart man I know sent me the sentiment that breakups always involve your same heart falling onto the same hardwood floor, except each time your heart cracks into new patterns, different wounds. I agree. But I also think the fall can reopen old scars; I can hear echoes of past losses exhaling through the split seams I'd forgotten I'd only just sewn up the year or two or three before.

5: High Fidelity helps me fall in love with John Cusack all over again. When life takes away a lover, Hollywood provides fantasy characters for us to project all our desires for kissing and cuddling and long hand-holding walks along a pretty horizon. It hurts too badly to think back on the real-life experiences you just had because it only magnifies your inability to have that again with that same love, and it almost always gets followed up with an image of this said former lover doing all of those same things with somebody different--usually a skinny blonde with cute, clever fashion and perfect teeth. And a clean car. And no moodiness or clamming up moments. Just any perfect blonde skinny girl one can find almost anywhere along the Wasatch Front or in a singles' ward near you. But John Cusack, he'll always be there for me. I just slide in an old VHS of Say Anything and let the dreams begin. The trenchcoat, the boombox, the idea of being led around a pile of broken glass, that car in the rain. Or Better Off Dead, the mad scientist laugh in the cafeteria scene......I swoon! I swoon! And when I'm not swooning for Cusack in High Fidelity, I'm swooning for Jack Black. Black is witty, spazzy, quirky, and he makes me laugh. I would totally date him. Plus, what a voice. Seriously.

The only drawback for having High Fidelity act as a catharsis for my recent breakup is that Cusack's character ends up with Laura in the end after all. They get back together!? So I'm left feeling cleansed and jealous and almost angry that Cusack is making that perfect mixtape for the girl he wants to make happy for the rest of forever and I'm sitting on this lonely couch in this lonely house in this lonely town in the middle of nowhere, where I am an anachronism at my own school--too young to be treated like I belong with the faculty folk, too old to be let into any of the singles' institutes or social events........I'm lost in limbo, and it's cold outside.

I'm going to get a bowl of cookie dough ice cream out and watch Say Anything until someone responds to this post and then I'll read your comment and check "Be Social" off my list of appropriate human functions to accomplish on this day of February 6, 2009.

What I Learned in School Today

Today was tough. And refreshing. I had to teach my college freshmen a hard lesson. I'm quite the softie, as most of you can hopefully attest. However, my 75 freshmen students made me read over 200 pages of pure trash over the weekend. I was offended by their lack of proofreading, their absence of any original thoughts or genuine feelings, their dogmatic assertions that contained less than a lick of concrete evidence or proof to back up their Mormon clichés and catch phrases. 25 of the essays looked exactly the same. I wrote down on a 5X8 card lists of meaningless words that showed up on almost all the essays without any example or qualification accompanying them: good, bad, future, past, people, things, society, media, tools, gifts, habits, choices, goals, callings, responsibilities, passing time, modern day, blessings, trials.

I warned them I was harsh in my comments, but lenient in my grades. A B- this time would be a straight flunk next time. I told them how disappointed I was that their essays about being "leaders of this generation," about how "blessed" and "privileged" they were to be attending "God's school in the latter days," about how the "fulness of the everlasting Gospel" sets them apart from "the evil world"--these essays--were fluff. Garbage. Empty, aimless, lazy words.

They had spoken of themselves against "the world." They had spoken only to each other in smug, ethnocentric confidence. So the new rule is that their audience in my class must include people outside of our own faith. They can still share spiritual experiences, mission stories, faith-promoting anecdotes--but they must speak to the world. This shocked them. I talked about Chaim Potok and how I'm not Jewish but I spiritually connect with him and the traditions and beliefs he includes in his literature. One student yelled out Gandhi. I supported that. I would have thrown candy at her if I had had any.

I told them about the teenage girls I taught at the boarding school I came from--how many of them had been through abortions, about how they still get high when they go home for Christmas, and have sex, because they are addicted. I told how half of them had attempted suicide before and that their arms are raked with long red lines from where they cut and don't know how to stop wanting to cut. I accused my students of labeling girls like this as ignorant, evil, carnal, incapable of the spiritual epiphanies my freshmen students purportedly have just by breathing the air on this campus. Then I told them about how some of these 14, 15-year-old girls with scars on their wrists and straight Fs on their report cards had handed in essays to me that were more profound, more honest, more sincere, with stronger spiritual connections and energy than 75% of the essays I had received from these self-proclaimed chosen generation leaders.

Boy, you should have listened to me. I've never spoken so boldly to a college classroom before, not that I can remember, anyway. They were listening so hard. I loved them for that. I love them for their humility. We read three excellent examples of good essays I had received (there were only 10 A's out of the 75 students), and we looked at one of my student's rough draft and final draft and the impressive rethinking, reorganizing, and reviewing process he went through.

I just got an email from a girl whose paper I had commented harshly on. She had written in response to an Aldous Huxley article about Hitler and "herd poisoning." She discussed the Holocaust in a naive, shallow way--not because she is naive or shallow, just that it was the typical lazy freshman comp. essay. Her email is lengthy and sincere. It begins: "I have read your notes on my Essay many times over and yes you were harsh, in fact I have never had someone tell me that I had a lack of research, sight and empathy. It really did hurt, and yes I did cry, but I can never tell you how much your words, in class and on my paper, have changed what I think about writing and thinking in general." She goes on to talk about her proposed revisions, which involves a topic change. Her excitement to write a paper about something personal and important to her is evident in the length and energy of the remains of the email. It was not kissing up. It was not guilt-induced.

Instead of feeling like a conqueror, I feel weaker than ever. I asked this girl to stare herself down, look at her own crap, and admit her weaknesses. And she did it! And I feel like a selfish fool for sidestepping my own crap as often as I do. I know that by holding my students to these expectations, I am raising my own standard as an instructor and a writer. I feel like in today's victory, I am surrounded by a hundred before unseen idiotic and puny traits of myself. I guess this where I'm supposed to go out to a rock in the woods and pray. And yet, all the animal inside of me wants is a delicious sandwich from the Hogi Yogi drive-thru and to watch a crappy movie. Yeeeeeeeeargh...........and it's only Monday!

I better bring cookies to my classes on Wednesday. Cookies and love.