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Television That Is Better Than Most Books

The WireFrom the looks of its ratings, there’s a good chance you’ve never watched HBO’s “The Wire”, and that’s okay.  You probably haven’t heard much about it.  It’s not the kind of show most of the people you work with will stand around and talk about.  Honestly, it’s not the kind of show most of the people you work with can grasp.  But that’s not the fault of the show.

If you think about it, most television dramas are written for the kids you went to high school with who got through literature class either reading Cliff Notes or speed reading the whole novel in a night.  They could ace the test when asked to regurgitate the main events of the book and could tell you about the characters, plot and major themes.  There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, it’s just a reality–most people have a hard time thinking beyond what is merely written.  I think that’s the reason The Wire doesn’t get the attention it deserves from the average television viewer.  The Wire is literary television.

You walk away from each episode of The Wire wanting to talk about it.  When I say “talk about it”, I don’t mean “what do you think will happen next week?”  I mean you walk away actually discussing it.  If you watched it alone, you wish you had someone with whom you could share your thoughts.  It’s something that stays with you.  You come away drawing parallels to what you see happening in real life with education, politics, and the war on drugs.  You are forced to ask yourself some very tough questions about your own belief system and how it applies to situations you aren’t likely to encounter in your own life.  In effect, The Wire does all the things through the medium of television that good literature does through writing–it forces you to think.

HBO has shown each season OnDemand in the months leading up to the fifth and final season which begins in January, and they’ve also shown a couple of mini-docs about the making of the show and the reality it portrays.  Someone (I can’t remember who) commented in one of these documentaries that a possible reason the show isn’t a ratings success is that the majority of America just isn’t comfortable watching a program with a predominantly black cast.  But I’m not sure that’s the case.  I think the real reason may be that most Americans aren’t interested in making the intellectual investment to enjoy a show like The Wire.

I was probably wrong when I said that it’s okay if you’ve never watched The Wire.  I wasn’t considering my audience.  What I should have said is that it is okay that most Americans have never watched The Wire.  You?  I expect more from you.  Check it out on Netflix or Blockbuster and get ready for some serious couch marathoning.

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Steroids and Baseball–Let The Records Stand

The report everyone’s been on the edge of their seat anticipating was released today.  Of course, there were the names you’d expect to see (Bonds, Giambi, Sheffield, and McGwire), but there were some surprising names on the list:  Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, and Eric Gagne, among them.  Notice something here?

The pitchers are/were juicing too…not just the hitters!

This changes everything in my mind.  I’m more than happy to let any records a steroid user attained competing against a bunch of other steroid users stand.

Ask not why these players were juicing, ask why the rest of the league wasn’t! 

The report culminated a 20-month investigation by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, hired by commissioner Bud Selig to examine the Steroids Era.

The real question should be, “why the hell are my tax dollars being spent to fund a 20-month investigation into a kids’ game?”

Note to Congress:  this is why we have a media.  If When the truth comes out about steroid use in baseball, it will be baseball’s problem to deal with.

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We Co-Sleep, But Don’t Want to Argue About It

Over at Music City Bloggers there is a post about co-sleeping that thankfully hasn’t erupted into a full-on war over what is right and what isn’t.

We co-sleep with our four month old, and I think it’s great.  Of course, nursing, kicking, crying, grunting, cats, and trains don’t wake me up, so not a problem for me either way.  :)   The biggest advantage I’ve noticed so far is that the baby actually likes bedtime.  Hopefully this will carry over into toddlership.  The other advantage is that we get to spend as much time as possible with her while she still likes us.

However, that doesn’t make it right (or wrong).  Honestly, I don’t understand why people get so militant about this kind of stuff to begin with–breast feeding, co-sleeping, etc.  Do what works for you and your kids.  We’ll do what works for us.  It seems like most people spend their entire parenthood in survival mode, so I’m not sure what qualifies them to give advice or direction.  Or as I so tactfully put it on a message board a few years ago…

You worry about screwing up your kids, and I’ll worry about screwing up mine. 

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Miss Milwaukee 1959

Joanie Cunningham All Grown UpFirst of all, thanks to those of you who continue to vote in my idiotic polls. They usually start off as stupid ideas that pop into my head. They later graduate to stupid ideas that show up on my blog. I then spend a week or more trying to figure out if there are any real conclusions I can draw about my readers from the answers. For this past poll, I think I was pretty successful in doing just that.

When asked the question “which one?” of the women from Happy Days, 33% of respondents chose Jenny Piccolo, which was one of two correct answers. Why Jenny Piccolo? She was a minor character, right? She didn’t contribute much to the show until long after Fonzie jumped the shark and Marcy’s second husband (Married With Children reference) showed up, right?

Good point. But savvy male viewers, even in their early childhood, could infer quite a bit about Jenny Piccolo. One thing was certainly implied by every reference to her–she was bad. Not crackwhore bad. Naughty bad. Bad influence on Joanie bad. Break curfew bad. Willing to kiss on the first date bad. I guess in the 50s you’d take whatever you could get as far as naughty goes. Either way, guys knew that Jenny Piccolo was down. Not only that, but she was the hottest of the available choices. Jenny Piccolo is the only acceptable choice for the type of guy who’d be looking to hook up while on vacation for a week in Milwaukee.

The only other acceptable answer was Lori Beth, but only 17% of respondents chose her. How does she qualify as an acceptable answer? Well, Ritchie Cunningham picked her didn’t he? Lori Beth was a nice girl, at least on the surface. She was the anti-Jenny Piccolo. She had Ritchie p-whipped (the “p” stand for “prude” of course). Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham loved her, The Fonz respected her, and Potsy and Ralph were on a never ending quest to find a girl just like her. I have a theory that Lori Beth and Potsy actually hooked up in the bathroom at Arnold’s one night after getting all hopped up on root beer floats. I also suspect that Rick Ocasek wrote “My Best Friend’s Girl” about Lori Beth from Potsy’s perspective. But that’s here nor there.

Lori Beth is the long term girl. She’s the type of girl you want to date for years. If you play your cards right, you can build up her hopes that you’ll one day marry her and have a couple of kids in your middle class house. She’ll stay home and bake cookies while you get up every morning and head off to your dad’s hardware store. Of course, you have no intention of ever following through, but still. Her hopes will finally be dashed one steamy night at Inspiration Point when you accidentally call her…

Leather Tuscadero? Someone actually chose Leather Tuscadero? Uh, not sure if you were aware, but Leather Tuscadero doesn’t even like dudes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I don’t like dudes either–at least not in that way. Is that the attraction to her? Some kind of psychological thing that makes you want what you can’t have? Are you that much of a masochist? Oh wait, maybe the “leather” part of the name ties in there somewhere. If that weren’t enough, she looks like Joan Jett on a 12 day meth binge. She was only included on the list as a trick answer, and you fell for it. I’d never even have considered her if I hadn’t been thinking about…

Pinky Tuscadero. Those of you who chose her, I get it. Sort of. I was just as worried as you were when the Malachi brothers gave her the Malachi crunch in the demolition derby. But please, let’s think this through. She’s a carny–a sideshow act. She’s just one step above the usual crowd of groupies that follow Fonzie around. She’s always leaving to go out on the road and jump her motorcycle through a hoop of fire or something. I half expected her to turn up on an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard playing a middle aged woman who comes back and reveals to Bo and Luke that they are actually her sons whom she left with her brother Jesse in order to keep them from finding out that Roscoe was their real father. That would explain where they got their daredevil genes wouldn’t it?

The obvious wrong choice out of this list, Joanie, was chosen by 25% of respondents. Who picked Joanie? Identify yourselves! How can you do that to your boy Chachi? And that’s nothing compared to the fact that she’s Ritchie’s sister! His little baby sister! Is nothing sacred anymore? I’m more disappointed in those of you who selected Joanie than I am in those who selected Leather.

I’ve learned a lot about my readers from this poll. Now how can I top it?

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Write It Down You Selfish Jerk!

After I posted my grandfather’s Thanksgiving thoughts last night, I spent the next few hours re-reading some other things that he wrote. I will definitely be posting more of it in the future. He was a great storyteller, and there are plenty of good stories in his memoirs.

TCH brought up something in the comments of that post that I think was pretty significant. We’ve all but lost the art of good, personal writing–letter writing was what he called it. I’m making a call right now with my small little voice that we do what we can to remedy this. If your parents and/or grandparents are still living, encourage them to chronicle the big events in their lives at a minimum, or to write an entire life story. You’ll be surprised how much entertainment and wisdom you can gain from their experiences, and you’ll probably make their day by just showing interest in their lives.

In the same vein, it’s worthwhile for all us to do the same. Blog software makes that easier than ever before (you don’t have to make the blog publicly available) but a pen and pad work just as well. I actually have everything my grandfather wrote scanned and converted to .pdfs, and it is cool to see it in his handwriting.

Some of the best stuff my grandfather wrote was about what it was like growing up in the 1920s and 1930s. It is really interesting to me because he grew up about 10 miles from where I did; yet his experiences were so different from mine. It is strange to imagine, but the way we grew up would be very foreign to the way kids are growing up today. Your personal description of the Atari 2600 or riding a bike with no helmet may actually interest someone somewhere down the line.

When I think of all the funny stories I have accumulated over the years, it is sad to think that they will all die with me. Maybe I’ll record them all, at least cleaned up versions of them, and no one will care. But maybe someone will. I should at least give them the opportunity to decide if any of it is worth the bother.

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School Fundraising–Producing Beggars for at Least 30 Years

Is anyone else really put off when they are attacked by an army of eight year olds in front of the grocery store trying to sell something for their school?  We were just talking about this yesterday after our weekly trip to the store.  Yesterday’s group of kids wasn’t even selling anything, they were just taking donations.

I despise this practice for so many reasons it actually warrants its own post, or several posts.  I have no doubt in my mind that public schools need more money.  After all, what gov’ment run project doesn’t?  How can our schools maintain their mediocre performance without more money?  Financing sports programs alone is insanely expensive, yet essential to providing an average education, right?

It gets better.  Our doorbell rang at 8:00 last night–a little girl selling overpriced stuff I don’t need for her school.  Well, a little of the money was for her school.  The rest was no doubt going to line the pockets of some guys in an MLM program.  Of course the little girl was super motivated by the plastic paddle game, or sticker book, or whatever it was she would get for being the top beggar salesperson in her class.

Or maybe not.  I told her if she wanted to come back the next day and ask the Missus, she may want to buy something.  No dice.  “This has to be turned in tomorrow.”

I at least admire her procrastination.  It reminds me of my elementary school days when I waited until the last minute to sell some insanely expensive junk to people.

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It’s All About The Process

Ken has a great post on a project his kids are working on.  They’ve researched 4th Amendment Supreme Court cases and are filming re-enactments (he hopes).  Technology has given them the opportunity to learn in a way that they couldn’t before, and even if they never get to finalizing filming and editing, he’s okay with that.  Unfortunately, others may not be as excited.

Because process doesn’t fill the seats and it surely doesn’t wow the eyes of the masses.

But it’s not about what they do with their understanding that creates the ‘wow’ factor; rather, it’s about how they reach that understanding that is the educational equivalent of CGI.

I had a ‘wow’ moment a few years ago that was very similar.  Unfortunately for me, I was 30 before I realized that the  process towards the goal is almost always more rewarding and educational than the goal itself.

Think about it.  Looking back, which did you enjoy more–graduation, or being in college?  Winning a championship in a sport, or the hard work you put into training so that you could win?  Getting the girl, or chasing her?

I’m on a tangent now.  Forget what I said, just read Ken’s entire post.

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So What Is The Purpose of Schools?

Taylor the Teacher makes some good points about our education system…

If schools are for parenting, dietary management, public safety, sex ed, driver’s ed, football, lifelong memories, values, morals AND learning, that changes the equation significantly.

If schools are about learning only when learning doesn’t confict with the culture war, get in anyone’s political path, or become too expensive, then the equation is even more drastically changed.

If they are about all of those things plus learning, but we’re going to keep saying they’re about learning, schools are a farce.

But learning still rocks.

The political issues aside, I think the biggest problem lies in kids’ attitude toward school in general. Many see school as all of things Taylor mentioned besides learning. Many more view the completion of their 12 year sentence in the public indoctrination education system as the sum of education of their lives. After that, they’ve “finished”.

Where does this attitude come from? My guess is either their parents, or the schools themselves, who have to tout themselves as the end all beat all of intellectual development in order to justify their place in our communities. Winning football games seems to go a long way in being considered a quality school as well.

Taylor is right. Learning does rock. And learning starts at birth and ends at death. The 12 years between ages 6 and 18 are just a small piece of a real education.

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Naughty Pictures of Knox County Teacher Being Investigated

From the KNS:

School security chief Steve Griffin said this morning that his department scoured the web after they received information Friday relating to photographs of Inskip Elementary School teacher Melinda England.

Get ready for an onslaught of this. I predict that “nude teacher pictures” will be the new “doing it with the teacher” in 2008.

The fact is, lots of people have digital cameras, but not many people have common sense. Really, it’s bad enough to let someone else take and have pictures of you in compromising situations, but to post them yourself?

Forget about whether or not it is inappropriate–is this person smart enough to teach kids?

Some people don’t think it’s a big deal, and maybe they are right. But if you are going to be employed by the public (schools) you have expect that they (the public) are going to judge you by the community’s accepted standards–right or wrong doesn’t come into play.

Maybe people will eventually catch on that you can’t do stuff like this and expect that it is going to be copasetic, because chances are we are pretty far away from parents thinking this is ok.

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What Will You Be For Halloween?

The question gets asked every year of everybody. If you’re like me, there are two basic rules–your costume has to be homemade, and you have to keep it a secret until Halloween. It seems the administration at Kohl Elementary School in Westminster, CO only have half of the equation down.

What they are going to be is definitely homemade, but unfortunately they let it slip to the Denver Post early this year. So what will they be?

Turds.

We’re still weeks from this glorious pagan celebration, but you can already hear the sound of the pinheads sucking the fun out of life.
…
Why can’t kids celebrate this spooky orgy of fun? Well, as one fourth-grade Kohl teacher puts it – and I paraphrase here – if even one child feels left out because of Halloween, we’ve all failed.

Hopefully this is a wake up call to all of the people who cheer when Christmas is attacked and banned because it is exclusionary or offensive to a few people. I’m sure included in that group are a few Pagans, to whom Halloween has some meaning beyond wearing really uncomrotable platic masks with rubber bands holding them to your head (remember those?) and eating teeth-rotting candy for two weeks.

Realistically, most kids either don’t know or don’t fully understand the deeper meaning behind either one of these holidays. To them it is just innocent and harmless fun. You may view that as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your own religious beliefs, or lack of. But as a guy who doesn’t really care one way or the other, I can tell you this…

When you start squashing something that is innocent and harmless fun for kids, you are just a jerk.

If you don’t want it for your own kids, that’s your right. And honestly, I applaud the fact that you have some conviction and care enough about your kids to raise them the way you think is rght. But don’t ruin it for everybody else.

Now, what are you guys gonna be for Halloween?