Blood's thicker than mud

I hang out at my parents' place a lot.  It's usually a win-win because I get a meal out of the deal and they get the satisfaction of visual proof that I'm eating (ok, this is more of a win for my mom.)  That's not all, obviously.  We actually enjoy each other's company and provide one other with hours of entertainment - at least by our family's standards.  For example, there's my mom and her growing ability to make technology work for her.  Sort of.

Ever since email had become a thing that people in offices had and she figured out how to hit forward, I've been getting lots of messages involving prayers, cartoons of sassy old ladies, and silly pictures of cats.

Like this:

And this:

Um, who has a cat and a copier in the same location?

A big leap happened last year when my mom learned to text.  She sent me one, but as I was at work when I read it, I was slow to respond.  So I got an email a couple of hours later, with the subject line reading "Did you get my text?!?"  Welcome to the world of texting, Ma.  People here leave you hanging and generally act like jerks.  Or worse, they are witty and cool in this world and disappointingly flat in the real one.

So a couple of months ago, I accompanied my folks to the AT&T store to update their phones and act as interpreter for any fancy tech talk they might encounter (they didn't really need me there, they were fine but whatever, blah blah blah filial piety...) Being equipped with a fancy new phone, my mom decided to show off her mad skillz by texting me a picture of the calendar I made her (out of pictures I took - so meta)  for her cubicle at work.  And she hit a small snag.

Moms can figure out how to scream at you in so many ways.

Speaking of phones, she gets really frustrated playing with my IPhone.  She was super excited to show me a website she discovered and tried to pull it up on my phone, but kept getting all frustrated when she'd touch an icon in the corner and a bookmark menu would come down or she'd open or a new link or other annoyances that prevented her from her goal.  Mind you, while she's doing this, she's moving it closer, then further, back and forth to get the right visual distance because she has inevitably taken off her glasses to see it better and it's this whole hilarious juggling act that I cannot adequately describe.  But it was worth it, because in her web surfing she has stumbled onto something damn hilarious and I spent the rest of the evening scrolling through the images and laughing my ass off. 

This guy Steve Melcher over at this gem right here created a daily comic strip where he takes a painting - and often a famous or historic one - and gives it a new title.  So simple, so brilliant.  So damn funny.  Like the one she sent me today: 

Or this guy, with whom I have something in common:

And my personal favorite: 

Seriously, go through them all.  There are so many recognizable paintings re-appropriated for hilarious purposes.  And you'll learn something, too.  Like I learned that the Dutch masters are depressing, the Flemish are freaky, and there are more paintings of the Annunciation than you can shake a stick at, if that's your thing. This guy's a genius and I'm jealous I didn't think of this first.  

UPDATE:  Here's his blog.  http://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/

So back to hanging out with my parents.  It being Friday, and a stormy one at that, we kicked it old school with pizza and a movie.  Back to the Future III was on, and even though lots of people hate on it as the worst part of the trilogy, my mom and I like it because we both dig Westerns.  My dad had arrived at this point, and he's on the other end of the couch playing with the dog and not paying a whole lot of attention.  At one point he looks up at the screen and asks, 

"Hey, isn't this the movie where they all sit around and fart?"

Pause.

"No, no, Dad, that's Blazing Saddles."

My mother is laughing hysterically and she tells him we're watching Back to the Future III.  Having not hit the nail on the head the first time, and the fact that that my mom was still on the other side of the room, he was back to playing with Stella before taking in that last detail.  Because a minute later, he sees Michael J. Fox on screen and says,

"Hey, isn't that the guy from Back the Future?"

Well that was enough for me and my mom and we both lost it at this point, and now Dad's in on the joke, because he sees Christopher Lloyd and says, 

"Hey, isn't that the guy from Taxi?"

But he's laughing before he gets to the end of the question. It's almost as indescribable as when my mom futzes with her glasses and my IPhone, and he does it all the time, so if you've met him, you've seen this.

Then we all tune in to the Stella show, because it's better than anything on T.V. (though with her gas reserves, she'd fit in with the cast of Blazing Saddles just fine) and she's just crazy and goofy and it's obvious that she and my dad are just nuts about each other.

Dad with his baby girl.  The other one, with four legs.  I have just the two.

Why yes, that's my brilliant father putting his arm in a pit bull's mouth.

Clearly he and this dog have a special bond.  So special, in fact, that he asked me the other day if I thought  my mother was jealous of the dog and how much he loves her.

"Seriously, Dad?  No."

I told my mom about this and she thought it was pretty funny.  Also, no.

After hanging out with them for a while, my dad drove me home and bought me a black and white cookie at the diner on the way.  Awesome, right?  We listened to Cousin Brucie, which I liked, because sometimes when he drives me home he makes me listen to Frank Zappa, which, ok, fine, but this is my dad we're talking about so it's not your ordinary Zappa (whoa, that word pairing doesn't make sense) but the REALLY weird stuff.  And he tells me stories about concerts he's gone to, which brings me to my wrap-up.*  

Since I titled this post with a line from a Sly and the Family Stone song, I'm ending with a link to a seasonally appropriate tune by the same band.  Yesterday was the first day of summer, and it always makes me think of one of my favorite songs:

*If you ever meet my dad, maybe he'll tell you about the time he saw Sly and the Family Stone at the Apollo Theater.   That's right.  The guy feeding his arm to a dog.  That guy right there.

Happy summer, 3 people who read my blog.  Sorry, 4.  Hi Ma!

Baby Elephants

The Biology Regents was today. Because I proctored* it for three hours and then subsequently spent five hours grading it with my colleagues, I need to decompress. I turn not to booze or recreational substances (well, aside from this black and white cookie I'm about to make disappear) or anti-gravity pills to make me forget. I turn not to wild outlandish behavior to distract me from my troubles. No. I turn to baby elephants.

 

I love this baby.  I love how she seems to think that everything around her is just so freakin' awesome.  I also love how they're totally doing Elephant tai chi at about the one minute mark.



The baby in the following video sneezes (god, so cute) and freaks out, but it's hard to tell if it's the sneeze that scares it or the obnoxious laughter from the tourists recording the video that freaks it out.



Plus, um, did you see how the mom looked at the camera?  Did we ever hear the adage about elephants and how they don't forget?  She is gonna remember that crap, laughing tourist jerks, and she's gonna hunt you down.  When you're 80.**

This video is a baby elephant getting a bath in a kiddie pool.  There are no words.


I mean, he's just so overcome with joy that he has to run out for a minute and take a break from it all.  And then run back in.  Also, Damn, that pool is taking a beating and not giving in.  My friend with a 4 year old could use something like this.

The next video actually scared me a bit until the end.  Spoiler: baby's ok.  But he slips in the river at one point and his mom is trying to get him out and she and all the adult elephants start trumpeting and panicking and getting really upset when it looks like she might not be able to pull him out.


I get emotional at stuff like this.

Finally, here's one more baby.  Again, no words.




 *(Did you know that there's a special circle of Hell reserved for bad teachers where you have to proctor for eternity? It's true. Dante didn't include it in The Inferno because it was TOO BORING and worse a fate than even Paolo and Francesca deserved.)

** Read Water for Elephants . No need to watch the R Patz movie.  In it, there's an elephant named Rosie (yes, I'm biased to like her already) who never forgets.  She just waits for the right moment.  This Rosie could learn a lot from that Rosie.

Raising a dork: nature or nurture?

My parents just had some major work done on the house.  It's a pretty old house that requires some upkeep, so a friend of the family who happens to be a contractor basically moved in for almost a month and sanded, stained, and polyurethaned ALL the wooden floors and repainted all the rooms in the upper 2 stories.  Every time I went over to walk The Stella or hang out with my parents, I felt like I had inadvertently stumbled onto the set of This Old House.  I was waiting for Bob Vila to pop out from behind the piano and duke it out with Tommy Silva for the title of best home renovator.

The place looks really beautiful now, but all that work generated about a metric ton of dust that settled all over the place (no joke, Stella somewhat resembled Pig Pen as she tore through the living room).  So after proctoring the big fat stupid Earth Science Regents and wanting to claw my own face off from boredom, I headed over to have pizza with my mom and help her excavate the living room a little bit.

While unearthing the furniture, we flipped through the channels for something to have on in the background and stumbled upon Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, or as mom and I like to call it "Lord of the Rings: The Great Schlep" and figured that this particular Tolkien-fest would be the perfect backdrop to some tedious housework.  My mom is a Tolkien NUT, and she was in charge of raising me, so what happened next is hardly a surprise, but it did make me wonder whether there's a specific gene for dorkiness (dorkishness?) or whether one is inculcated into Dorkdom by current members.

Mom and me about 13 years ago.  We both of us have greyed a bit since this pic was taken.

So we hit a stride with the cleaning during the battle at Helm's Deep.  One of the best threads in that scene is the competition between Gimli and Legolas over who can kill more, so this translated to a contest between Mom and me over our furniture dusting.  While dwarf and elf yelled "17! 19" my mom and I would yell out what we finished cleaning:  "Lamp!" "Piano!" "Coffee table!" "Cat!" (Sorry Ma, you're the dwarf in this analogy cuz I'm taller.  And I'm wearing my hair like Legolas right now because my bangs are way too long.  Did all the elves decide to grow out their bangs at the same time?)

At this point, I'm thinking we should enroll in an Elvish immersion course to solidify our status as super-dorks.  We're already amped up for The Hobbit this summer, (ETA: apparently December for Part I of III) where, by the way, Sherlock and Watson reunite as Smaug and Bilbo, respectively.   

Between this and our penchant for misreading signs, I have to wonder whether the cause is blood or environment.  Maybe it's a little from column A, a little from column B.  I guess the world will never know.

And neither will Bob Vila.

I guess they thought that DJ'ing while kids were murdering each other was kinda inappropriate.

"It's like a whole friggin zoo. In my arms.  Made of balloons."

This actually made me not completely hate Jean Claude Van Damme.
(If the embed doesn't work, it's here.)

Though I'll never hate him as much as Abbey.  See her glare at him...

This is from years ago - you can tell because Abbey is currently WAY fatter and I  actually have a tv stand now.  

Hurricane Season, Rainbows, and a love/hate relationship with June

Well, the season really began on June 1st. Hurricane season also works as quite a nice metaphor for this time of year if you're a teacher.  I kinda wish a hurricane would hit my classroom and blow away all the work I have for the next two weeks.  Hell, it looks like one already hit my desk.  Either that or an Office Max threw up all over it.

(I cannot stop listening to Florence and the Machine lately.  This song in particular.)

When I was 10, Hurricane Bob hit Montauk when my family and I were staying out there on vacation.  We rode it out in the main building of the old-fashioned family motel where we were staying, and even though it was scary to see the ocean going nuts just on the other side of Route 27, it's one of the most memorable vacations I've ever had.  And after the storm passed, my family went down to the beach with the other families with whom we passed the day behind taped up windows, and maybe I'm romanticizing the past (and  I really don't think I am) but I remember it being one of the most beautiful evenings on that beach with the surf still churning and the sun setting and shells and driftwood washed up from all the action.  (And I write this with the caveat that my family was lucky that this is the memory we have of hurricanes while others have lost a lot more than one day's vacation 21 years ago.)

Anyway, metaphors: wreckage, detritus, new beginnings.  My life right now.

Keepin' it classy: barefoot at toughcookienyc's nuptials

Speaking of new beginnings and weather phenomena, my homegirl over at toughcookienyc.com got married last Sunday, and I was blessed to be part of the celebration.  Earlier in the day, a sudden cloudburst accompanied by dramatic thunder cut short the photo session for the bridal party, so we ended up hiding in a greenhouse (I bet there's a great pic of that) and bolting for various cabs before the wedding.  But during the final blessings in the ceremony, the skies cleared and a big fat double rainbow appeared over the East River right outside the big picture window in our room at the Water Club.

No rainbow in this picture, but still awesome.  This is before I went barefoot .  

I added my own contribution to the day's waterworks at that point.  If you're gonna have big enthusiastic  downpours on your wedding day, the least the universe can do is provide you with some color and light at just the right moment.  Timing really is everything.

So here's to a beautiful and auspicious beginning to my newlywed buddies, and to a salvageable year's end for me.  Hope I can ride it out without sustaining too much damage.

Teen Angst

I've been spending a lot of time with teenagers lately.  And boy, does that sentence sound extra-creepy once you read it out loud.  Relax, I'm not spending time with them in a Vladimir Nabokov "Here-let-me-ride-this-yellow-schoolbus-to-get-the-speech-patterns-of-adolescent-girls-so-I-can-write-a-novel - about-their-seductive-powers" kind of way, but more incidentally.  Since I teach high school, I end up spending about 60% of my time with them anyway, and as is sometimes part of the job, found myself at the prom the other night.  The theme was "Hollywood Glamour" or something like that, and the kids really committed to it and looked beautiful and elegant, but still like themselves.  I love the prom because it's really the first time we see the kids as the adults they're on their way to becoming, and I get a little choked up because I know it's one also one of the last times we'll see them all together like that before they graduate.  I'm very fond of this graduating class.  Some of them I've taught three out of their four years, and it makes me proud when they enthusiastically point out the Doppler Effect when a loud truck or siren passes by outside or they produce awesome videos like these * because of what they've learned in Media and MSG Varsity.  I wonder if there's a handful of kids that have gotten in touch with their inner dorks a little bit more closely because of me (partially, anyway).

I also love the prom because it's one of the few times a year when I have a sanctioned excuse to DANCE.  The kids this year were extra-good sports about the fact that OMG THERE ARE TEACHERS ON THE DANCE FLOOR.  Most of the time,  they were actually dancing with us, while in years past, former classes would pretend it just was not happening.  For some reason though, the DJs had a drummer to accompany them, which was rather awesome except for the fact that he kept wearing terrifying masks while drumming.  Even worse, when he wasn't wearing the masks and was just wearing his standard-issue god-given head and hair, he looked a lot like a Die Hard villain.  Y'know, this guy?

Way to scare all the girls trying to enjoy their big night, blondie.

So that was Thursday.  On Friday, I saw my niece Lizz in a play that was truly amazing.  She's part of a group called The Possibility Project (Oh my god! She's in the stock photo they're using on homepage!) and they put on a production called "The Writer's Block" or, as my brother and I were calling it, "Teen Angst: A Series of Vignettes."  Lizz has been doing this for 2 years, and it was such a kick to see her up on stage with a few dozen other extraordinarily talented teenagers singing, dancing, and acting their little hearts out.  I could spot Lizz right away because she's easily the skinniest thing up there (she has teeny bird bones) and had two things on her face that made her stand out: a heart drawn in eyeliner on her right cheek and the BIGGEST smile in the cast.  The show was amazing.  It's so easy to dismiss teenagers for what they are and what you expect from them, but they channeled all of that and created a genuine work of art.  My parents saw her show on Saturday night and were equally floored.  Basically, the group created it from their own personal stories and experiences, and the theme of this year's production that threaded the vignettes together was how writing - especially about love, the people you love, and letters to the people you love - can be a daunting and difficult task that forces you to confront the light and dark within your own mind and heart.  But it also brings you to a place of beauty, connection, and catharsis.  The whole thing was at times extreme, over-the-top, high energy,  intensely emotional, goofy, ridiculous, hilarious, and heartbreaking.  You know, kind of like a teenager's day.  I'm so proud of her for being part of something so creative and positive, and I hope she keeps being part of it.

Speaking of Lizz and creating works of art, a week beforehand she and I had a long-overdue Lizz and Rosie fun day, where we got Chipotle and went to see Dark Shadows together.  Earlier that day, my homegirl Kristin had put me on to this new app called "Cat Paint" which may be one of the best things ever invented.  EVER.  So while we were indulging in tacos and waiting for the movie to start,  we were taking photos and sticking cat heads on them.  We ended up with some truly awesome post-modern masterpieces.

Observe:  Lizz Before:

Look how pretty she is!

And now behold: Lizz after:

ALL BOW BEFORE THE CANNIBALISTIC CAT OVERLORD.

This is also a great way to counteract the teen angst of a fresh breakup.  Still thinking about how cute the erstwhile boyf is?  THINK AGAIN.

He's not cute!  He has an evil giant cat's head.  And was surrounded by levitating kitties 24/7.  Clearly, a bullet has been dodged. 

I don't know why, but adding laser beams makes the whole thing just that much more extra-special.  

So while teen angst is omnipresent and difficult, it can often bring forth something beautiful.  Or at least entertaining.

* no idea if link will actually work, but trust me: Awesomeness abounds.

Age is just a (prime) number