The Sounds of Spring

As I convalesce at home with a sprained ankle, (and get some end-of-semester work done), I find myself reflecting upon the music I return to in spring. When I was in Paris last year, once the weather got really nice, I'd take long perambulations with no particular direction or endpoint. My iPhone (really a glorified iPod while in Europe due to lack of function as a phone) was my constant companion. The music I listened to imbued an emotional depth of my surroundings--often jubilant, sometimes pensive. I think that's one of the reasons we have such a profound connection to music, as a society--there is an emotive quality there. "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars" was the first David Bowie album that really clicked with me. I discovered it in junior or senior year of high school, I' certain when exactly. I had always appreciated glam aesthetics--the makeup, outfits, androgyney, and theatrics--but I had never really listened to the music. The album, track for track, resonated with me. I have since gone on to love many other Bowie albums--pretty much everything until "China Girl"--as well as his stage presence, use of persona and performativity to constantly reinvent himself. As great as the other albums are, I always come back to "Ziggy Stardust", and usually in the spring or summer. I'm not certain why I have a seasonal attachment to it, but I just feel it's a perfect summer album. "Ziggy Stardust" is not the only album I think is perfectly matched to warmer weather. what else? Of The Rolling Stone's catalogue, I'd select Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. I also tend to come back to my two favorite Pulp albums as the weather warms--"His'n'Hers" and "Different Class". The Electric Light Orchestra (specifically "A New World Record", but really any album) is well-suited to relaxing outside, but honestly, I love some ELO during any time of the year. As there is music appropriate for the warmer months, there are also choice tunes for the cold. I always retreat to Dylan, the Smiths, and Simon and Garfunkel in the colder months ("Hazy Shade of Winter", anyone?). When I lived in Paris, portability of music was key. When I'm at home, however, I prefer to enjoy my music on vinyl. It's not just an affectation--I truly believe the format improves the quality of music--especially music recorded specifically for release on vinyl. When I first listened to Bowie, the Stones, and the Beatles (among many others), I first heard them on digital transfer. Some are better than others, but with the worst of the bunch (I'm looking at you, downloaded copy of "Exile on Main Street"), the music sounded tinny and shallow. The other thing I really love about vinyl is that the format compels you to listen to an album straight through, without skipping around. There's a purity of form in listening to a piece as the artists intended. Contemporary society is so hung up on instant gratification (I admit I'm quite the guilty party myself!), that often we just want to skip to our favorite songs. Listening to the whole album enables us to engage with the artist, and to participate in the cultural experience.

Megabus misadventures part deux

I've written before about a VERY funny trip courtesy of Megabus before. Well, I'm back on one of their coaches, and I have an amusing story to tell. This time, instead of a misogynistic control freak driver, we have a rather jolly older fellow who has a flair for drama.

So, on our bus the latch to the bathroom is stuck. If you are in the
restroom and try to lock the door, it may just get stuck that way and you could end up stuck in the bathroom! Our driver recommended not locking the door, and simply knocking to see if it is in use. The doors on the restrooms have a tendency to swing around, so I could definitely see someone getting an unwelcome and haunting visual in this situation.

Our driver just embellished this news with a personal anecdote. About a year ago, the same issue with the bathroom door occurred. However this time, he locked himself in! He managed to get help from a passenger, who asked "where's the driver?". The voice from the interior of the bathroom replied "I AM THE DRIVER" à la Star Wars, and the subsequent silence was deafening. He instructed the passenger where the key was, and managed to extricate himself from the locked lavatory.

To quote the immortal Gilda Radner, "It's always something!"--I don't think she had Megabus in mind when she coined the phrase, but it certainly is applicable.

Duck Soup

Yesterday, we decided last-minute (VERY last minute) to see the Marx Brother's Duck Soup playing on the big screen. I had watched many Marx Brothers films as a child on vacation (we had several on VHS-- A Night At The Opera and Animal Crackers are two favorites), but had never seen this particular title.

It had been approximately 15 years since i'd seen a Marx Brothers film. As a kid, I relished the slapstick physical humor, especially Groucho's dances and everything Harpo. The finer points of some of the dialogue were lost upon me.

Duck Soup struck me as utterly refreshing. I couldn't believe how well the dialogue and material held up. It remains funny--SO funny, in fact. I also couldn't believe how daring it was. For 1933 there were a lot of overt sex jokes! Perhaps my favorite scenes were Harpo showing off his tattoos as a case of mistaken identity with Groucho, Harpo, and Chico all dressed as Groucho. Seeing it has prompted me to want to rewatch my old favorites (nothing can top the "Hello, I Must Be Going" song and dance from Animal Crackers) and discover new features I haven't seen. Also, I need to check out "You Bet Your Life" Groucho's TV show.

Perhaps what struck me the most about Duck Soup is that I really noticed the profound influence that Groucho had on one of my other favorites, Woody Allen. Although Allen makes this overt my name-checking their films several times (and by ning one of his films "Everyone Says I Love You", this is most evident to me in the dialogue and slapstick. While watching the film, I kept having déjà vu of "Love and Death". Some of the physical humor is also a clear influence on another great, Mel Brooks. Therefore, I think a double, if not triple, feature is in order!

Amazing building

On our way to brunch on Bond St, where i'd never been before, we passed the most exquisite building. It looks like it's either offices or apartments. It's like something out of Mucha and Klimt's art nouveau fever dreams!

Cultural spelunking

If I don't do something culturally relevant once a week or so (okay, since grad school hit, once every two weeks), I feel under-stimulated. By this, I mean going to a museum, gallery; local festival or celebration, or seeing an independent/artsy film. I'm talking about getting out in my community and engaging with the pop cultural artistic output.

The weekend before last, I took a long-awaited trip to MoMa, the museum of modern art. There is currently a Japanese art and design show that finishes up late in february, and I'd been eager to see it since i first heard about it in October. I only have pictures of the exterior, as photography wasn't permitted inside. The show dealt with art emerging from Tokyo between 1950 and 1970. Fascinating! Asian art is an area where my knowledge is lacking, so I entered the museum with a mind to get schooled. I was familiar with only two of the artists-- Yayoi Kusama (whose retrospective I have incidentally and accidentally seen in three countries, but that's another story) and Terayama, an avant garde film director. The show was a treat! A lot of the pieces dealt with the direct aftermath of the war: Hiroshima, cultural trauma, and a rapidly changing society. A lot of the works featured fantastical, amorphous forms that you just don't see a lot in western art, apart from the likes of Hieronymous Bosch. If you're in NYC, definitely check this show out! MoMa Is also doing a corresponding film series.

An unexpected surprise while at MoMa was their show about abstraction, running until April I believe. Lots of Kandinsky, Mondrian; and a painter named Kupka. The latter is truly a great painter, utilizing bright kaleidoscopic colors and geometric rays. However, his name is hilarious. See, in Polish "Kupka" (pronounced just like the artists name) means poop. So there you have it!

Another VERY special treat at MoMA is the copy of Edvard Munch's The Scream on view. It's not the best or most iconic copy of the work, but hey, it's The Scream, i'll take what I can get--it pretty much never leaves Norway. The real treat of this was that when I looked at the exhibition site, I was expecting to see JUST The Scream. Oh, no. There were prints of Madonna and Child, and The Vampire, and about ten other works. It was just TOO COOL! So, if you're in NYC or planning to come in soon and are a spectator of the arts, do take a visitor MoMA!

Reflections upon high school

I have had two experiences this year of working in the New York City public school system, and last year I taught English in a high school in the Parisian suburbs. All of these experiences have led me to reflect critically upon my own high school experience, especially upon the varying rates of "social problems" seen in all these schools, specifically teen pregnancy and violence within the schools.

When I refer to "my" high school, I'm actually talking about where I completed my junior and senior year of high school. I had transferred from a very small, sheltered private school to a large public school that served many diverse populations in Pittsburgh. I quickly normalized to my new environment. Walking through metal detectors every day was annoying, but bearable. I understood it was for my own safety, and indeed, I did feel safer. I even became friendly with the security guards. I became used to seeing heavily pregnant girls walk the halls, and hear of fights that broke out daily. Although this happened in my school environment, I was rather removed from all this. There were three tracks in my school: gifted, college prep, and mainstream. Nearly all my classes were in the gifted program. All the pregnancies and fighting occurred among the mainstream kids. Furthermore, the three separate tracks unfortunately divided along racial lines. Fired students were all white, college prep was a mix of black and white, and mainstream was pretty much all black. Additionally, all of the bathrooms smelled like smoke. None of the locks on the stalls worked, and the staff took to locking the bathrooms during class so students couldn't sneak off and cut class there.

Despite all this, I never felt like I went to a particularly troubled school. I had wonderful teachers whom I forged strong bonds with, and with whom I communicate to this day (hi there JMS!)

Neither of the two schools in New York have metal detectors. Indeed, the principals at both schools consider the use of metal detectors as barbarous and akin to a police state within the school. In my first school, there was an upsurge of teen pregnancy in the freshman and sophomore classes. Although I absolutely promote sexual health advocacy, it was hard for me to be shocked at this news. Certainly, there was a much higher rate of teen pregnancy in my own high school. In Pittsburgh. Enough to necessitate a child rearing class (called Human Development, which initially I thought was a psychology class, but really it taught how to bottle feed and change diapers). Then I think about how we received no comprehensive sex education whatsoever at my school. In my health class, we discussed cardiovascular health and exercise, but nary a mention of healthy sexuality. It could have been because the teacher's wife was pregnant at the time, and perhaps it was a touchy subject. Still, there is no excuse. At my first school this year, we kept asking whether we could distribute condoms to student. However, we were told we had to go through a special training to be able to do so, one which my supervisor never arranged. Why can't they just do what they did in France and have condom dispensers (like vending machines) in the hallways?

I was shocked when I got to my new school. Even though students hail from the same low income areas as my former school, there is a paucity of teen pregnancy. Fights don't erupt daily as they did both in my own high school and in my first school this year. I don't know what the difference is. Perhaps because this school has a higher ranking by the Board of Ed, students are more motivated to complete work and more engaged with academics.

I reflect on these differences often these days. I find myself thinking "was my own high school really that bad?" I think no, given that I still had a positive experience there and I firmly believe any academic opportunity is shaped by what the individual puts into it. However, what I do find troubling is that all these issues (pregnancy, violence, race division) were out in the open, and yet nobody was having an engaged dialogue about them. Who knows, maybe the faculty and staff were. I have a friend who would reiterate "this school makes you racist!" I certainly don't agree with that. No such power should be given to a social context. People make themselves racist, not their environment. However, what a refreshing surprise it is to see how integrated all the high schools I have worked in have been. Fighting and pregnancy are no longer "the black students problem"; they are EVERYONE's problem, as they should rightfully be. Furthermore,I was very happy that in my new school we've had professional development meetings to discuss academic disparities between the white community and African American and Latino counterparts. These types of issues (and the cultural differences inherent in these communities) need to be actively addressed by the school. School environments have the unique opportunity to combat prejudice, discrimination, and fighting from within.

Epic Megabus Time

I find myself, as I often do, on a Megabus. If you've ever had the distinct pleasure of riding on one of these carriages, you will know that there are good drivers and bad drivers. Nice drivers and stern ones. Drivers that play wonderful wake-up music (like this song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Lf6n1sTPM) at each destination, and drivers who say nothing at all as you disembark.

Well, today, ladies and gentlemen, I have had a truly unique transportation experience. Even before we started moving, our driver tells us, "if you have a connecting bus, call and cancel now. Weather is bad, and I am not on a schedule. I am paid by the hour. I will not be killing all of you and myself to get you there on time!" I understand the sentiment, but wasn't that rather brusque? Just the tip of the iceberg!


Then, he informs us that it is utterly prohibited to remove our shoes on the bus. If he catches us without our shoes, he will pull over, eject us from the vehicle, and call the nearest state trooper to arrest us. The rationale of the shoe rule is that on other busses, passengers have been injured by flying shoes. Would that not be just as much the onus of the driver? If shoes are FLYING, I think the issue is less that people have removed then, and more how the driver is manning his vehicle.

I digress.
As one awaits departure upon a Megabus, the driver either shows a video or gives a speech containing safety information, much like the preflight message on an airplane.

This driver showed the video and decided to add a little somethin' special.

On the PA system, he tells us "DO NOT LEAVE URINE ALL OVER THE TOILET SEAT. NOBODY WANTS TO SIT DOWN ON A STRANGER's URINE" reasonable enough, I guess?, but doesn't that go without saying? He also gave us this gem: "LADIES: IF YOUR MONTHLY FRIEND IS VISITING, CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELVES AND DO NOT LEAVE BLOOD ON THE FLOOR OF MY BATHROOM".
At this point, a passenger cries out and says what we're all thinking: "Enough! I don't need to hear this. I want to enjoy my ride"
Now it gets interesting.
The driver: "YOU ARE BEING RUDE. YOU DO NOT TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB. I HAVE BEEN WORKING THIS JOB LONGER THAN ANY OF YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING YOUR JOBS. I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO DISRESPECT ME. IF YOU ARE RUDE TO ME AGAIN, I WILL PULL OVER, LEAVE YOU ON THE HIGHWAY, AND CALL THE POLICE"

My imagination does wonder what kind of legal clout this driver has. Not that I'm going to test it!