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11月22日 WEB NOVELAS -- FANFICTION IN SPANISH
All of these are related to Cuban telenovela superstar superhunk <<Guapisimo Mangote>> William Levy. If the heroine is Jacqueline Bracamontes who was his co-star in SORTILEGIO, then that's a "Levymontes" story. Geddit??? If the heroine is Maite Perroni who was his co-star in CUIDADO CON EL ANGEL, then it's a "Levyrroni" story. Personally, I prefer Bracamontes, whom I call "Placamontes" because she has a truly spectacular set of teeth. Even though her character in Sorti cried a lot and was a total doormat, I liked her character's development better. Perroni's character on CCEA was a petulant, stubborn, annoying, self-absorbed bitch. I could not stand the character, but there I was like an idiot every weeknight at 7 PM. Levy's characters in both novelas were cut from the same cloth: naive and wishy-washy, a total crybaby. And not dignified singular drops gracefully caressing down the cheek, I'm talking wet, snotty, puffy-eyed, mostly snotty...Oh My God! I never saw an actor let so much snot loose since Burton Cummings of The Guess Who in an obscure movie from, like, 1980, where he was having an emotional meltdown and snot and spit was flying everywhere... And he would do it ON DEMAND! Or so it seemed. He was always ready with a tsunami of tears and snot. "La Placa" was too. Damn! William Levy y Jacqueline Bracamontes en los papeles de <<Alejandro Lombardo>> y <<MariaJose Samaniego Miranda>>
So...yeah...webnovelas. They're basically fanfiction in Spanish. The first one I read was "Alex Toda La Noche" (Alex All Night). Levy's Sorti character Alex Lombardo plays a guy who comes to Tuttle, Ohio to work as a DJ. Placa's character Mari (pronounced MA-ree -- with a rolled R) is a radio show producer determined to make him a star. But -- he has a hidden agenda. It was a little disconcerting mentally to read about a Spanish story taking place in Ohio, but you get used to it. It was a sweet little story. I really liked it. It had some good dialogue and a lot of humor. Other characters from Sorti came out in it, too. After I finished reading that one, I started "El Vizconde Que Me Amo" (The Viscount Who Loved Me). It has a Barbara Cartland veneer to it. This one's pretty long as it has actual plot development. It's a really good story for being hobby writing. This one, though, is a "Levyrroni" so I've run a mass find/change -- finding all the Maites and changing them to Jackies. It's costing me a lot of ink to print it, but reading it online is not worth the potential damage to your eyes. My ToBeRead list includes the other titles in the bullet list above. Sure, I could be reading my all-but-forgotten copy of FREEDOM & DEATH, my languishing edition of Aristophanes's "Birds", my festering tome of THE MIRACLE OF CASTEL DI SANGRO...perhaps...even relishing my peripatetic professional publications. But when you have an itch, you have to scratch it or you can't concentrate on anything else. WebNovelas are fun. Period. FanFiction is something I have a little experience with. I've written four, but only posted two. Actually, if you count the one I wrote in 8th grade about a certain pop star who was on tv and making albums at the time, that makes five. Oooh, Oooh! I just remembered the one I wrote in 1997! Oh My God! And there was a WHOPPER of an absolutely horrible one I wrote when I came back from England. Oh Lord! Then there was that utterly GHASTLY bit I wrote after I saw A Room With A View and The Princess Bride. Wow! Oh Wow! I didn't realize I had written so much. It was all coming back to me as I was typing!!! I'm even working on one now. er...when I say "working", I mean, I get around to adding to it every few months. You see, that's the thing about me and fanfiction. I have to be obsessed with the characters. Obsessed! It's the only way for me to do fanfic. As I'm no longer obsessed with the actor, working on the story is not a priority. But getting back to the Spanish ones. I have a huge crush on the actor Levy, and Spanish is my second language anyway, so it's no hardship that webnovelas are in Spanish. What I have a problem with is Spanish grammar. The masculine/feminine thing I just take for granted at this point, having spoken it all my life. Reading Spanish, though, is like scrambling over rocky terrain. It's the fact that Spanish uses so many articles! And words for basic emotions have like 18 prefixes and suffixes you have to climb over to get to the root. Damn Latin! Plus, where we say "a little bit" or "a little tiny bit", in Spanish would be poquito, poquitito, poquititisimo, and so on and so on depending on how emotional you're feeling. Case in point: William Levy is not just guapo, he's guapisisisisimo! Geddit?
"Un Amante A La Medida" (Either "A Custom-Built Lover" or "A Lover Made to Measure") @ YouTube Check William out at YouTube -- just type "William Levy" into the search box.
Technorati Tags: fanfiction,William Levy,Carla Estrada,Sortilegio,Jacqueline Bracamontes,Univision,Televisa,telenovelas,television,soap operas,YouTube
Video from YouTube collection of liayponcho 11月4日 Cabal -- The PMS BreedPMS: Perpetually Mucking about in a Strop
Cabal St. Laurents, Bengal breed, is, sadly, one of the most boring breeds. What? There's another? Yeah, okay. Del-Rey. But anyhoo, this is the story of Cabal in brief (no slouch there, btw.).
pp. 4-5: snarling, murderous p.8: hissing p.16 irritated p.24 growling (and not in a good way) p.25 displeased p.42 snarling p.46 threatening p. 47 angry p. 55 wants to snarl p.64 fury p.67 angry and horny p. 70 frustrated, mad, horny p.92 conflicted p. 95 pissy, snapping at Jonas p. 100 possessive and growling p. 109 mocking p. 117 horny and not happy about it p. 122 suspicious, demanding At this point, I'm tired of this book; I'm tired of Cabal's shitty attitude. Not once has he been relaxed or happy or enjoying his mate. There hasn't been any ROMANCE at all. It's all been duress, duress, duress. GAH! p. 141 bossy, predatory, still being an asshole with Cassa p. 150 latent violence p. 156 tormented. He doesn't even act like he likes Cassa. All he does is make her mad and defensive. This is so 1970s Harlequin Presents. p. 161 using mating heat to control her p. 167 fear of losing his mate; tense p. 173 AT LAST, A CHUCKLE! but it's for Jonas, not his woman. He even made a joke about caffeine. Wow, Cabal's emotions run the entire gamut from A to B! p. 180-183 angry. Quelle shoque! Quelle surprise! By the 190s, he's finally calming the f*ck down and having actual conversations with Cassa. He even cracks another joke. Cassa's even thrown by it. p. 200 HALLE-FREAKIN'-LUJAH!! They are finally relaxing with each other and having fun -- albeit breed/mating heat style fun. But at least it's fun and not strop-sex. (that's my expression, btw. I made it up.) But look at the page number!!! Jeez! p. 205 affectionate and post-coitus lassitude. Now it sounds like a romance. p. 222 all business, but at least he's not angry or "tormented" Whew...I'm a little bit beyond that, but it's been slow going. The first 200 pages were frustrating and even dead boring. The plot has picked up momentum now that all the pieces of the mystery are starting to come together. The plot isn't even that interesting until you get into the 200s. The sex scenes (I'm not about to call them "love" scenes.) were spiritless. After p. 200, Cabal and Cassa start acting more like feisty lovers instead of enemies, which is kind of nice. There's not much more left once you reach the 200s. But, I have high hopes for the last couple of the chapters of the story. I'd like to see an end to this saga soon. Or at least, see it morph into something else.
10月30日 THE FIVER: Better than it sounds, smarter than it looks
guardian.co.uk's tea-time take on the world of football
Just like Harold Bloom turns authors' names into adjectives, THE FIVER turns an alarming variety of bodily noises into verbs -- some I didn't even know were possible by humans. These snippets have been harvested from 2009 columns of THE FIVER. I think their humor writing is absolutely top writing!
"[We] confirm they have made the offer to Manchester United for the acquisition of the rights of the player [Him]," ole-ole-ole-ed a piece of paper delivered from the Bernabéu by a winged fez-wearing monkey earlier today. "At [His] request - who has again expressed [His] desire to leave - and after discussion with [His] representatives, United have agreed to give [Them] permission to talk to [Him]," harrumphed a magnanimous Manchester United club statement this morning. "Consultations with Utrecht, the town and the club, have proved fruitless and I want no risk," sniffed Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen. "We're an attractive proposition to other companies," honked an SFA spokesman. "If you're at the club you always wanted to be at, then that goes beyond any money," Beckham wiffled from the fly-speckled porch of his luxury aluminium trailer. "He'll be the last person we sign," puces Ferguson. [Author's note: How the F*&$ do you make a color a verb???] **This counts towards my "Blog Countdown to South Africa 2010!"
MIDDLE GROUND: The Magazine of Middle Level Education (NMSA)
This journal is magazine-style. It’s well-designed and easy to read – but not without its inconveniences. The artwork is strategically placed for good effect and doesn’t overpower the text. Even the pages with full color are wisely designed so that the text stands out. Good examples of well-balanced page design are pages 20-21 in the August 2009 issue and pages 10-13 in the August 2008 issue. The covers feature a single child, usually in a classroom setting. I appreciate the nod to tolerance and equanimity wherein children on the cover represent various cultures. Articles have section headings, which I really like. I’m not a fan of using sans serif type for vast amounts of text, but the size of the text makes it fairly easy to read. Content is kept pretty tight. Not a wasted word nor a superfluous phrase. This leads me to why I enjoy reading this journal – the articles are informative, concise, descriptive, and they have useful side elements like lists, charts, pictures – cleverly integrated into the page design. They also have one of the cleanest tables of contents that I’ve ever seen. Again – sans serif type, but small and bold, which works just fine. There’s a lot to describe, but I’d rather show you.
Nice! Not every issue is as good as August 2009. February 2008 had an article titled “Transitions: Smoothing the Way for Students and Parents”. The overall layout was good. Pale artwork on a white background. Standard sans serif font, useful section headings. But the text was too pale – more dark gray than black. In fact, the whole issue was like that. It got frustrating fast. Plus, it was crazy with ads, and in some places, it was difficult to tell the article from the ad copy. On top of all that, the paper is excellent quality, so excellent, so slick, so glossy…too glossy, too slick, don’t read it under direct light or you’ll get cataracts – if you can hold on to it to begin with. Some of my fav articles:
I almost never read the editor’s note. The same with the executive director’s note. Just a personal choice. I haven’t analyzed why I flip through those pages with nary a glance. Although, now that I think about it, that type of audience-specific/location-specific writing might be a useful writing lesson. You get your money’s worth out of this journal. One of its strengths is that is covers practices and techniques for all subjects. Philosophically, its content is strongly cross-curricular. Also, not only does it cover pedagogy, but offers helpful articles on professionalism, first-year survival and teacher retention, and not just administrative practices, but leadership by administration, teachers AND students. The ads aren’t too overwhelming, but they are loud and frequent.
9月13日 FULL MOON SPENDING SPREE
Late August 2009 I'm cheating a little bit because I put the blog stuff in my BooksRead column. But it's logical, don't you think? I've read them before and I thought it might seem a bit poncey to do an extra column BOOKS READ AND BLOGGED. Sounds a bit overkill-ish, if you ask me. Whatever is in my purse (SW4M) takes me a long time to finish. I carried my pocket Loeb for a year -- like a baby that refused to be born. I probably need to stop carrying books that make me laugh out loud. I'm already enough of an oddball for reading in public as it is. 80 million people around the world do it, yet I'M THE WEIRDO! I feel like the socialist peasant in Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Maybe if some watery tart handed me a sword, I could slash my way though the unwashed masses. "The peasants are revolting!" But I digress... Satyricon, as I found out in the plump introduction, is a play on words about four levels deep. That's my kinda word! Something you can really sink your teeth into. What it was doing in my parent's closet I'll never know, but it's mine now. There's a movie out called YEAR ONE. From the commercials, I get the impression it's a re-telling of Satyricon, but with way worse dialogue. Or maybe it's the same dialogue, but it sounds more interesting in vulgar Latin. Foreign languages are fun like that. For example, in this Spanish-language soap opera Sortilegio, the hero often refers to his wife as "mi mujer". If you translate that directly, it means "my woman". Kinda sexy, that. However, the proper translation is "my woman-wife". Sounds like a Waylon Jennings song. Or... it sounds like he traded some goats for her. Outlaw I have read about a dozen times since 1993. It's a last-gasp of the old-school where a woman's first sexual experience is a rape. I never understood why what was such a popular theme, especially since women were writing the books. Then they fell in love with the men who assaulted them??? WTF!! It's the 1990s, not the 1790s. Anyway, I didn't keep it because of the love scenes, I kept it because I liked all the characters and Lowell's special touch with Old and New West/ranching themes. Think about it -- ranch life is hard and dreary and unglamorous. And if the author can STILL make you like it, that's amazing. And if you're tempted to scoff at that, go right ahead. Loser. This book was part 2 of a 4-part series. The McKenzie-Blackthorn series by Elizabeth Lowell. (There will never be a story for Utah. EL has moved way on!) Click here for the post on this series or click on the Books in Exile category. The only thing missing from my BooksBought list is a humor book -- unless you count Articles of Faith. That's a soccer book which just happens to be funny. I'm saving that for my soccer book series. Picked up some professional books. They're very stimulating, intellectually. I have my favorites and tend to get books whose pedagogy and practices run along the same lines. That being the case, it's important not to get stuck in a groove. I've done more blogging these last two weeks than I did in all of June. I do a lot of writing for escapism, and this is where a lot of it ends up. Lucky you!
8月15日 NCTE's LANGUAGE ARTS: The Journal of the Elementary Section of the Natl. Council of Teachers of English
Even though the title says "Elementary", this journal easily applies all the way up to middle school.
Here's a random selection of issues. Articles from LANGUAGE ARTS are available for viewing at the www.ncte.org , but you have to be a member to access the full article.
Some buzz words do tend to pop up more than others. "Literacy" is a popular guest at the buzz word tea party. "Inquiry" is a favorite guest as well. The Multis crash the party now and then: multimodal, multilingual, multicultural, multimedia. There's even poetry written by teachers! Sweet! (A word I'd like to see more often is "innovation".) Most of the articles follow a pattern of rhetoric that could use a bit of tightening up. Some of the writing is a bit long-winded, but the page design makes up for it. The page is a 3-column format with page numbers about 2 inches down the margin for easy reference. There's charts, drop quotes, italicized bits, bold-faced section titles, works cited and works referenced, as well as photos and indexes. I don't care for the advertising, but I guess they have to pay the bills. Ads are mostly for books and professional development opportunities. One of the best reasons to get this journal is that it has book reviews of children's/YA books and professional development books. So if you don't have time to read every single children's book that comes out, this journal covers, easily, a half dozen books at a time. You could read HORNBOOK, which is a magnificent publication in its scope, but with LANGUAGE ARTS, you get a lot of book reviews PLUS research, pedagogy, political issues, cultural issues... in a nutshell -- the inquiry and the insight. For members, the online issue has nice extras like blogs, book bargains, online seminars (These are fantastic! Try one!) The beginning of the magazine details future issues AND gives you the lowdown on how to submit articles. NCTE/LA is not just for reading other people's work, it's for you who aspire to get your work published!
OCTOBER 20, 2009
ONCE AND FUTURE CLASSICS: Reading between The Lines
8月13日 THE THINKING FAN'S GUIDE TO THE WORLD CUP (2006) Matt Weiland & Sean Wilsey, eds.
IN my continuing series on soccer books that I am blogging to celebrate the countdown to South Africa 2010, I'm thrilled to present this compendium of the genre's sincerely passionate advocates of "the beautiful game". I first heard about this book on World Soccer Daily -- a podcast hosted by Steven Cohen and Kenny Hassan. They recommended it, and since I trust their judgement, there I go -- type, type, typing -- to impulsebuyer.com! I really liked the writing right away. This is how I want my students to write someday: passionately, thoughtfully, reflectively, analytically. It doesn't matter what the topic is. Love your topic and your readers will love your topic! There's a lot of buildup to the actual heart of the book. First of all, the book is a compilation of professional writers writing about a particular country, ostensibly one they are intimate with for whatever reason. If you follow this blog, you know that I'm not a fan of prefaces and introductions. They tend to be a bit windy, word-wise. But I genuinely enjoyed Matt Weiland's (not that Weiland; that's Scott.) Preface for a few earthy reasons. Firstly, he starts with a quote by Martin Amis, one of my fav writers. I love when a writer I like quotes another writer I like because they too like that writer. I was so captivated by MW's definition of "abroad" because I found myself living that definition when I came back from England the first time. It was so obnoxious! You would think I was the only person who had ever been there. So...yeah. Amis and the whole "abroad" thing. Then, as he went on to describe his indoctrination into the cult of soccer, again, it was like reading about myself -- where emotions were concerned. I didn't have an uncle to take me to a soccer shop and get me a kit. I had to do that myself. After France 98, I bought a Michael Owen Liverpool home game jersey. After Arsenal's undefeated season, I bought their blue away shirt. After Germany 06, I bought a Miroslav Klose national team jersey because he scored 5 goals -- the highest scorer of the tournament. Some of the funny bits were the anecdotes about writers they couldn't get! Here's an excerpt from the part about who got in and who didn't: We asked some of the writers, like (Eduardo) Galeano, to write about their own country. Others we assigned to countries based on an experience there, and some we sent to a country of their choosing. For a month, we made lists and contacted writers, and by the last stage of qualification, we had assigned each nation that looked likely to qualify. Then we sat back to watch and wait. What an awesome job these guys made for themselves! When all was said and done, Roddy Doyle was too depressed over Ireland's flame-out and didn't want to write about football. Rattawut Lapcharoensap didn't get in because Thailand didn't get in to Germany. Nick Hornby wrote about England. OF COURSE!!! Dave Eggers wrote about the US. Cheeky! (Eggers and Hornby both used to write for McSweeneys, btw.) Some of the authors from the book: (the ones I'm familiar with, anyhoo): Sean Wilsey wrote a wonderfully witty and clued-up Introduction. Again -- it's a bit long as introductions go and should have been titled something else, but it's a good read. He has a handle on the insider expressions such as Gli Azzurri (Italy; the sky blues), Les Bleus ("the blues"; the French national team), catenaccio (Italian for "make 1 goal then defend for the rest of the game yawnfest") and an adrenalized uppercase reproduction of GOOOOOOOO...well, you get the idea. I love Sean's description of rambling, rickety Roger Milla, the star of Cameroon in Italia '90. You will probably go straight to the countries you like, but take some time to read about the Ghanas, the Trinidad/Tobagos, the Angolas -- the obscure countries that won't make it out of the group stages but who provide the most gripping, exciting, heartbreaking underdog action you will ever see. Remember Croatia in France '98? South Korea in Korea/Japan 02? Cote d'Ivoire in Germany 06? Whew! Wait -- there's more! This book is great for "anoraking" (an "anorak" is someone who is fixated on stats). An anorak's almanac, if you will. Forgive me, Nick Hornby for that awkward almost-alliteration. Every article comes with demographics and FIFA stats. At the end of the book, there's a section called "The World Cup in Numbers" which serves up juicy dets like "Most Goals in A World Cup", "Most Appearances", and "Penalty Shootouts". After that there's a section called "The 32 Nations in Numbers" and Holee Abacus, Batman! does it ever dish dets on the price of living in each country: Median Age, Birth Rate, Annual GDP, Unemployment Rate, Exports, Tourism, Internet Users...Damn! Such an amalgamation of information on the state of the nation is not just there for filler. When you read about the haves and have-nots of soccer countries, you start to understand what's at stake for them if they succeed or if they don't. Wars have started and stopped because of soccer. If your a 10 year-old boy in Sierra Leone or Somalia or the Congo, would you rather be a half-starved soldier or a soccer player with a salary and a pair of shoes? That is a real career choice in those countries. I love how the demographics come from the CIA World Factbook. Not an atlas. Not Encyclopedia Britannica. Not the internet. The Freaking CIA World Factbook! This book is soaking in a brine of testosterone. It even has a good blurb at the back -- and you know how I am about blurbs. ________________________________________________________________________________ Other posts in this series: Irons in The Fire, Love & Blood FOX FOOTBALL FONE-IN [companion to World Soccer Daily podcast available on iTunes or live on Sirius Ch. 125(?)] Publisher: www.harperperennial.com http://www.harpercollins.com/members/authortracker/default.aspx The British site for this book (The link to the American publishers site didn't work for me. Maybe it's out of date or sumfin or nuffin...)
8月12日 MY BOOK HOUSE Vol. 3: UP ONE PAIR OF STAIRS
The idea that you might need to compete for attention. That urge to walk alone without holding on to anyone's hand. Leaving the stroller behind. But most important of all -- learning the difference between fantasy and reality. That's the premise of this third volume of My Book House. Like the other two volumes, this has stories from all over the world: the Phillipines, Australia, Germany, Scandinavia, the Bible. As per usual, most of the stories come from European sources, but that's okay. It's the foundation of western literature, innit. This volume is particularly fun because so many of the stories have colorful language that begs to be read aloud with funny One of my favs is "Wee, wee mannie and the big, big coo". I can just picture Mike Myers -- in the movie I Married An Axe Murderer. The character of the father: "Oi, heed! Paper! Nooow!" Cracks me up every time! There's lovely illustrations by Kate Greenaway, poems by Emily Dickinson and Amy Lowell, a couple of Grimm fairy tales, even a bit of Chaucer and Wordsworth. It's shamelessly anglo-centric, but then again, that just happens to be the main source of material because of the generation in which this book set was originally produced. It's not a reason to turn your back on it or, as I've often seen, become a reverse snob and turn you nose up because it's not multi-cultural enough. It doesn't have to be. Besides, this is only one volume of twelve. Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean and Polynesia all pop up eventually, just not in a way that would satisfy a radical multi-culturalist. A lot of the stories have to do with family life and living a pastoral existence -- which would make Neil from YOUNG ONES especially happy. The best author name EVER: BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON. I don't know how to do it here, but there should be umlauts on the first Os of the name. Major freaking cool! I feel like the Swedish chef from The Muppets when I try to pronounce it: byern-styern byern-sen. LOL!!! Are you dying? I'm dying! When I read this as a young'un, I remember being fascinated by the lawn growing on the roof of the shack. Everything in my world was so stultifyingly ordinary, this struck me as so fantastical! The book succeeded in introducing me to
RELATED BOOKS:
I bought my book set on eBay. Volume 1: IN THE NURSERY Volume 2: STORY TIME
7月29日 MY BOOK HOUSE Vol. 2: STORY TIME
STORY TIME includes several stories by Aesop, poetry/rhymes from renowned English authors such as William Wordsworth, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rosetti. Lullabies, bed-time stories such as Wynken, Blynken, & Nod, Jack Frost; Christmas classics The Story of The Nutcracker and The Night Before Christmas. There's also poems and the story of Noah's Ark from the Bible. While many cultures are represented, Christianity is the only religion that is addressed, but not as religion, instead as a source of beautiful writing. The preface to each volume explains the logic behind the particular collection. Here's a snippet from the preface for STORY TIME. "Story Time" Begins with repetitive stories, short rhythmic stories in prose of the simplest possible plot, construction, and wording. ...So we have these simple prose stories with a refrain repeated frequently like the one in "The Little Gray Pony" --
The illustrations for the Nutcracker story are enough to give you a toothache. That pile of -- well, to me it looks like cherries with a pile of sugar on top, but it's supposed to be sugar plums. What IS a sugar plum? I've had plums, but what makes a sugar plum different? Is it one of those things like "acid jazz" -- a benign label with a glitter word to make it sound more intense? And the ballerina dresses, big puffy-skirted ones are the stuff of this little girl's dreams!
For being a children's book, and a very young child at that, there's an amazing breadth of authors represented in the volume. Poets, novelists, philosophers! Satirists! Samuel Taylor Coleridge answers a child's question on p. 142. Aesop and Aristophanes represent the ancient Greeks. Someone you probably wouldn't expect to see in a children's book -- Count Leo Tolstoy -- expressing an uncharacteristic bit of whimsy. America is loosing its ties to its folk stories. Here you'll find folk stories from the old world: pre-dictatorship Europe, imperial India, the Bible (as in the first volume, as a source of literature, not preaching), and Native American cultures, as well as ancient Greece. There's a piece of libretto from an opera and the story of a ballet. Children have to get culture early, while their minds are still innocent.
The cover of the book has yet another adorable dress. Two children in an idyllic pastoral setting: a forest with cute animals surround the children sitting on a huge rock by a creek -- it's better than Disney! Another favorite is a story from India called "Rama and The Tigers". This little boy has all his new clothes and umbrella stolen by some tigers. Then the tigers all want to eat the little boy, so they run around a tree chasing each other faster and faster and faster! They ran so fast they melted all away and left a big pool of butter, called "ghi". Rama collected the ghi in a pot and took it home to his mom. She used it to cook pancakes! I'm drooling as I type this. LOL. Wilhelm Schiller's poem about a father coming home in the evening from a busy day of, I'm guessing chopping trees, has a sweet melancholy about it. It reminds me of when I was reading J. B. Bury's book, THE INVASION OF EUROPE BY THE BARBARIANS. Bury explains how Germany was so frustratingly difficult for Roman troops to conquer and control because it was so thickly forested. When you live in south Texas, with its flat brushy, scrubby, cactus-y flatland, it's tough to conceptualize quite how tree-ridden central Europe is. Villages separated by a mere mile of forest were so isolated that they ended up speaking vastly different dialects, which is one of the reasons the German of northern Germany is different from the German of southern Germany. You can't conquer what you can't find. It's similar to when English troops had to deal with native American tribes in New England. The English had no concept of guerrilla warfare. So, for the dad in the poem, spending the day in the forest is no mean feat. Oh! And to top it all off, when I read Beatrix Potter's "The Story of Peter Rabbit", never did I imagine that one day, I would go to the location of one of her stories! It's true. She wrote a story called "The Tailor of Gloucester" about a little old tailor and some magic mice that help him sew the tiniest, most perfect, beautiful stitches anyone ever saw. Gloucester (glos-ster) is a city in the west of England. It's mainly associated with cricket and rugby and the river Severn. Potter lived there for a time and so, near its amazing gothic cathedral, there's a tiny house in College Court that's the Beatrix Potter Museum. At the time I went, it had a window set up with a scene from "Tailor of Gloucester" and a souvenir shop where you could buy postcards and the story books. One of the best stories is "The Dancing Monkeys" by Aesop. It reminds me of Young Frankenstein, and it's a cute story with an interesting semantic twist. Other Aesop classics in the book include "The Hare and The Tortoise", and "The Lion and The Mouse". There's even a poem by Heinrich Heine translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning! How freaking cool is that for a kids' book! And absolutely not to be missed is the story "The Village of Cream Puffs" by Carl Sandburg. This little girl called "Wing Tip", who comes from the Village of Liver and Onions goes to visit her uncles in the Village of Cream Puffs. People have to tie their houses down because the cream puffs are so light and fluffy, that they are in danger of floating away in a brisk wind. Awwwwww..... Hee! 7月28日 ROUNDUP POST 8: SLACKERS WILL INHERIT THE EARTH
...because the workaholics will all be dead from strokes and aneurysms. Yeah, so it's about quality, not quantity this time. Variety, too. I didn't post as much, but the stuff I did post was actual stuff and not a lot of quiz wank. Then as I was compiling the links, I was pleasantly surprised at how much variety was in this last batch. It's always nice when you can impress yourself. I started three different series in this last batch of posts!
New series introductory posts: MY BOOK HOUSE: A Magnificent Series of Literature for Children: Vol. 1 IN THE NURSERY NCTE'S ENGLISH JOURNAL: A Journal of The Secondary Section of NCTE ONE YEAR TO THE WORLD CUP: LEGENDS FORMED & DEFORMED Writing about authors: SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE (I WISH I’D THOUGHT OF THAT) Part 1 MY MODEST TRIBUTE TO FRANK McCOURT Writing about soccer was extra fun this summer with the USMNT reaching the finals of both the Copa de Oro and Confederations Cup! GO TEAM USA! (Carlos Bocanegra is really hot, btw.) Russell Brand is a bloody good columnist. He's going to host the VMAs again this year. Yay! Love & Blood: At The World Cup with The Footballers, Fans, and Freaks/Jamie Trecker 2007 THE GUARDIAN’S FIVER-isms: A Glossary for Glazey-Eyed ARNS IN THE FAR: RUSSELL & HIS BRAND OF FOOTIE FANDOM (1) Bit o'romance. The romance novel market is disgustingly glutted with poor writing and disastrous editing. I'm a very picky shopper in this area and that's to your advantage. I'm not a typical romance novel fan. I'm too sane. 7月25日 MY BOOK HOUSE: A Magnificent Series of Literature for Children: Vol. 1 IN THE NURSERY
My little brother and I received our set when we were around 7 and 8. My oldest brother sent it to us along with a couple of other book sets. I still remember opening the boxes! We were a reading family and so opening the boxes and pulling them out was like Christmas. They were beautiful! We made room for the set in the house like most people make room for furniture and family portraits. Inside each volume was a fascinating world waiting to be explored. Nowadays, it's easy to explain that the books were intellectually stimulating. But back when I was 8, all I express was that the books made me hungry. They made my eyes and my mind and my spirit hungry. But kids being kids, grandkids, spring cleaning, moving family members in and out -- life put the kabosh (sp?) on the set and by the time I was in junior high, the one or two that were left were pretty ragged. Then, in 2005, I decided to take a chance on eBay. Oh my God! Long story short...the end. Sorry, too short. On eBay, I found a set published roughly the same time as the set I had. When I won that auction, I was singing a Hallelujah chorus a capella. When I brought the set home from the post office, I went through about five of the books right away. Looking at the illustrations, I felt overwhelmed by how familiar they felt. I remembered my early reactions to them. They just felt so, so familiar, like I had never been away from them. I remembered where my favorite bits from the stories were. Even back when I was 8 and 9 years old, I was captivated by a particular turn of phrase or description. It's all magic! The left and right end papers. They appear at the beginning and end of every volume. It was fun to figure out who all the characters were. All the characters were featured in stories in the various volumes. VOLUME 1: IN THE NURSERY The first volume in the series is nursery rhymes from all around the world, even places as exotic as Africa, what used to be Czechoslovakia, and Asia. All the Americas are represented including Native American cultures. Now, having been in reprints since the 1920s, some expressions and images are no longer politically correct. I would not recommend this set for a classroom. Better it should be enjoyed in a family setting where certain ideas can be discussed. The rhymes are shamelessly euro-centric. Think of Grimm's Fairy Tales and Charles Perrault and Mother Goose -- completely anglo-centric. These are not black marks against the book though. It's simply our Western literary heritage. A modern child brought up on rap music and bombarded by sexual-oriented images might experience some serious culture shock at the purity and innocence of the rhymes and stories. Even the illustrations are fossils of an era utterly gone from our modern consciousness. I loved the illustrations! I loved the innocence of them. They look like they are from the 1950s. As a wee girl, I was fascinated by the illustrations of little girls' dresses -- voluminous skirts and ballet slippers and CURLS! Oh! to have curls was my dream even more than being a ballerina. Many of the illustrations in this volume are by Mariel Wilhoite. This particular volume is partly why I grew into such a devoted Anglophile. I just wanted the dresses! LOL. Even reading through the table of contents was interesting (does anyone else pay attention to tables of content?). Most of the rhymes don't have official titles and so just go by the first line. As the first introduction to language, many of the rhymes start with an alliterative or onomatopoeic phrase:
Then there's the "Littles":
Also represented is a child's fascination with objects: (some call this the "terrible twos")
There's even instructions for the correct way to play "Farmer in The Dell"! This book is a celebration of innocence. It's a language primer. It's the beginning of literacy. It should be read with an open heart and open mind, for fun.
7月24日 NCTE'S ENGLISH JOURNAL: A Journal of The Secondary Section of NCTENCTE: National Council of Teachers of English [www.ncte.org] English Journal is a fantastic publication! I love it. This is my favorite one, so that's why I'm writing about it first. Page for page, the articles are interesting, stick close to the theme of the issue, and offer methods and practices in clear language. I don't know if that's a prerequisite for the journal, but the articles are easy to read. It's also a very well-designed journal. Blocks of text are relieved by charts and drop quotes, section titles in boldface, end notes, and assorted "bits and bobs" such as "EJ 75 Years Ago". Those reflection sections remind me of one of my favorite paradoxes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. NCTE also provides ENGLISH JOURNAL online, but you have to be a member to access the actual articles. Middle (junior high/middle school) membership runs $40.00 plus the prices of the journals. This one is $25.00 per year. Every month, there's a new theme. One of my favorite issues is May 2006: Contexts for Teaching Grammar. This month's theme (July 2009) is "For The Fun of It". Topics range from lesson plans for immediate implementation to big picture issues like professional development (Nov. 2005). The covers are often a treat, as well. A sublime glass creation by Dale Chihuly, or a photo of a waterfall with colors so vivid you can feel the mist on your skin. A playground with a jungle gym or a page from a hand-drawn manuscript. And the articles are not the only resource. Every one has a works cited list. The journal has its share of adverts. They publish poetry, book reviews, and opportunities to participate in research. The beginning of the journal has a page describing all the contributions they are accepting. There are so many opportunities for teachers to contribute: classroom practices, research, book reviews, photography, cartoons, poetry -- that relate to the theme of the issue. Don't forget -- as a teacher of English, you should be writing for yourself and for your profession. Getting published is exciting and makes you marketable. Every teacher of English/Language Arts/Writing/Creative Writing/Honors English, even Reading, should invest in this particular journal in order to be a better teacher and a better professional.
Click here to go to the NCTE Homepage
7月22日 Love & Blood: At The World Cup with The Footballers, Fans, and Freaks/Jamie Trecker 2007
In the months leading up to World Cup 2010/South Africa, I will be commenting on my collection of soccer books, thus combining two of my greatest loves. LOVE&BLOOD is available through major online retailers, i.e. Amazon, Borders, etc.
When it comes to soccer, the only sport I care deeply about, I’m more of a “people person”. I love learning about the players, the managers, the politics. The gossip! Soccer gossip is way better than Hollywood gossip. Way, way better! The money is unreal! Grown men who own multinational whatsits bow down to lick the Diadoras (who have gone broke, btw.), Adidas, and Nikes of players like Christiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Zidane, and Ronaldinho (who’s on his last legs, having eaten all the pies!). Soccer commercials during the World Cup season are hilarious and brilliant. Remember 2006? Eric Cantona, who once “autographed the face of a fan with his studs”, bursts into a German tv studio to take it over and spread the word about JOGA BONITO! Genius!!! Ronaldinho as a little boy, playing with a passion and love you NEVER see in NFL these days. (College games, maybe. But in NFL, it’s all about sniffing the oxygen. Wimps.) Adidas’s IMPOSSIBLE TEAM! With the real players!! Beat that, NBA. One of the absolute best, and probably most expensive, has to be the 2002 Nike SECRET TOURNAMENT. Cantona was in that one, too. For soccer lovers, that commercial was a dream come true. Seven years later, I still watch it a couple of times a month. Downloadable soccer commercials A lot of the book is about South Korea/Japan 2002. That might seem a waste of space, but Trekker goes on to compare and contrast 02 and 06, which for a reader/writer like me, is just perfect. The whole book is very personal. No Baedeker this, neither Fodor’s. I hate to use the word “cool”, but this is just a freaking cool memoir. And I don’t even like memoirs. Also, it has a 20-page introduction, which is mostly the South Korea 2002 experience. Dude, if it's running to 20 pages, just title it already and call it Chapter One. We won't mind. Really. I really like that the back of the book contains a summary of the 06 World Cup with comments. Love that! There's also a nicely detailed index. It's a very fan-friendly book, written by a fan of the game. I don’t just love soccer. I love it with the enthusiasm of a girl’s first crush. I love it like the promotion you never saw coming, then suddenly it’s yours. Like when you’re going to your first “grownups” party. That fresh, sunny, jubilant, PURE passion. Myopic, consuming, teeth-gnashing, endorphin-releasing, jingoistic soccer. LOVE & BLOOD gives you sackfulls of gory details. The crappy weather in South Korea: Trekker describes the air as “stew”. Oy! The frantic efforts of the Germans to live in the “here and now”. Drinking. Shantytowns set up for the press. More drinking. Dodgy access to electronics. Impregnable press conferences. Reticent managers. Drink. Hype. Above all things, hype. Next year, we get to do it all again in South Africa! Break out your vuvuzelas and take a deep breath... __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Related Posts: · ONE YEAR TO THE WORLD CUP: LEGENDS FORMED & DEFORMED · ARNS IN THE FAR: RUSSELL & HIS BRAND OF FOOTIE FANDOM (1) · Germans: Unspontaneous, micromanaging weirdos or gleefully chaotic? · THE GUARDIAN’S FIVER-isms: A Glossary for Glazey-Eyed
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7月21日 MY MODEST TRIBUTE TO FRANK McCOURT
On pondering Frank McCourt, who passed away on July 19, Has he written other things? Because AA is the only one I ever hear about. But given the saucer of water that personifies the mentality of modern media, I'm not surprised. Frank McCourt has been nowt but a couple of sound bites: Angelas's Ashes and Pulitzer Prize. This isn't sounding like much of a tribute. And there's a picture of a book cover with a smoking rubber chicken on it. The tribute has to do with a satire of McCourt written by one Derrick Martin in the book The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes. McCourt taught in public high schools for many years before becoming a famous author. This bit was the first thing I thought of when I heard McCourt had died. The bit is funny for lots of reasons, depending on what your experience of Irish people is. On the surface, it's funny because it's so single-minded. Every teacher has a favorite topic. Apparently, teachers have political leanings as well. I like it because it's a brilliant piss-take on McCourt. I don't know if he had a sense of humor. I don't know if he would have appreciated what Martin accomplished, but as a teacher, I like it. As a reader and writer, I like it. It's just funny.
FRANK MCCOURT'S AMERICAN HISTORY SYLLABUS by Derrick Martin Week 1: The Irish Week 2: Coming to America Week 3: Marginalizing the Irish people Week 4: Kicking the bog mud off your boots Week 5: Ireland Week 6: My father the Irishman Week 7: The Italians!? Oh, please! Week 8: Looking back (on Ireland)
See? Funny! McCourt, you were not famous for a long time, but you made an impression. Well done. 7月12日 THE GUARDIAN’S FIVER-isms: A Glossary for Glazey-EyedLondon’s THE GUARDIAN online newspaper has a magnificently acerbic column by Barrry Glendenning, Sean Ingle, Paul Doyle, Tom Bryant, Scott Murray and Tom Lutz called “The Fiver”. A fiver usually refers to a five-pound note, but this fiver is probably called that as it is e-mailed to subscribers every day at 5 p.m. Nice. I typed this up in MSWord and the auto-editor went crazy filling in red and green wavy lines everywhere. Ha! Auto-editor, you suck. At the end of the day, there’s nothing like the human eye to discern right and wrong. Auto-editor and spellcheck have no intuition. Even grammar-check is the equivalent of a 1st year English teacher who goes by the textbook and nowt else. (There are way too many of those out there.)
“Mr. 15%” – a player’s manager. Rarely spoken of with a positive connotation. EXAMPLE: Christiano Ronaldo’s Mr. 15% assures Sir Alex that “the gelled one” is happy to graze at ManUre for another year. Big Vase – The UEFA Champion’s League trophy which looks essentially like a … Big Paper – THE GUARDIAN itself, I think. Usually referred to in contrast to its subsidiaries or departments. Big Cup – THE UEFA Champion’s League final. Takes place in late May after 9 months of World Cup-style elimination play. Sometimes not even the best game. In the last 4 years or so, the quarters and semis have been more exciting than the heavily risk-aversive finals. Big Cup Big Day – the day of the Champion’s League final. The most important game after the World Cup final, but that’s up for debate these days. For the last two years, I would have it on in my classroom tv and tape it at home. Next year, I’m taking that day off to watch it at home from beginning to end. ESPN needs to get their shit together and show the entire post-game festivities, thank you very much! Fiver Lawyers – in essence, the censors. They make their presence felt: SEE "snip-snip-snip" Snip-snip-snip – Fiver Lawyers: censored information; usually something very personal or obscene or something that is being swept under the carpet so as not to be libelous even though it’s true. Knack -- injury Knack-prone – injury-prone Toe-knack/knee-knack: i.e. David Beckham and Michael Owen; possibly Rooney, too. Knacked up (make sure it’s got an “a” in it!) – injured EXAMPLE: Petr Cech suffered a horrendous head-knack! “bits and bobs” – alliterative cuteness indicating small chunks of information like gossip, rumors, comments, etc. “on a free” – a free transfer. Refers to the Bosman Ruling where if a player has finished his contract with a team, he can go to another team and they don’t have to pay any transfer money for him. Synonym: “on a Bosman”. This phrase not exclusive to the column; sort of common. EXAMPLE: “Michael Owen has gone to Manchester United on a free now that his contract with Newcastle has expired.” “a medical” - a medical exam on a player done by the organization he's about to join. Mandatory prior to finalizing contracts. pundit - sports critic/writer, perhaps even a broadcaster; often with a sarcastic, demeaning, or otherwise negative connotation. hack – a lousy pundit “to neck” – to swallow something; literally or metaphorically "He" with a capital “H” – Christiano Ronaldo (for now) EXAMPLE: Such was the hoop-la generated by His unveiling at the Bernabéu. (Fiver, 7 July) "At [His] request - who has again expressed [His] desire to leave - and after discussion with [His] representatives, United have agreed to give [Them] permission to talk to [Him]," ______________________________________________________________________ The Guardian>Football>The Fiver 7月5日 ARNS IN THE FAR: RUSSELL & HIS BRAND OF FOOTIE FANDOM (1)
Not to be condescending or pedantic but here’s some background. The “Ham” in West Ham, I think is short for Hammersmith, a section of London. So the team is sometimes called “The Hammers” and their logo includes a couple of crossed sledgehammers. There’s even a reference to them in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It’s the skit where they’re asking Karl Marx questions about politics and soccer. It’s classic. Check it out. The thing you need to understand about London is that some of the surrounding sections were named after the trade or guild that operated out of that part of town. Hence Hammersmith may have been the part of town where you could find someone to shoe your horse or fix a nick on your sword. Nowadays, it’s an urban mélange of immigrants, as are most parts of London and its environs. IRONS IN THE FIRE is the first collection of his columns. Funny! Oh my God. HI-larious. Quippy. Clever. Verbally inventive. I love that urban London patois where he gets all the pronouns and verbs wrong. Like Ali G, except funny. Ali G sounds like an imbecile on purpose. Russell, in spite of the dodgy grammar, sounds intelligent for all the right reasons: complete sentences, complex ideas, lucidity of expression. And he writes like he speaks, which is fantastic because I love listening to him talk. His base voice always sounds a bit incredulous, boyish, and happy-go-lucky. But he can go deep, and disarmingly high, as well. He also does, I don't know if he knows this, a damned sexy American accent – the tv exec suggesting the elephant – wow! So here’s some “bits and bobs” (quotation marks just in case “Big Paper’s” legal team is web surfing) from Russell’s columns that I really got a thrill out of reading for various reasons. If indeed he did write the more sprawling sentences, then I am breathless – even a bit high – from his artistry. “My account is always unbalanced and frightfully biased so unless these as yet unborn, nameless academics crave the solipsistic scribbling of a highly capricious and volatile witness to events at Upton Park and Soho Square they should probably, on uncovering my writings in some excavated knocking shop, keep digging till[sic] they reach the works of Richard Lacey or Oliver Holte.” Bit wordy, this. This is one of those sentences that gave me an endorphin high. It’s so well balanced, so rhythmic, so consistently baroque in its structure, that I’m breathless with wonder. It’s a sprawling Blackadder-esque architectural delight. “gangle-tang of limbs sans gorm” Ha! Gormless is what he’s sayin’, but isn’t this so much more expressive? A cool twist. “scratch my frantic opinions on to the page with the twisted lust of a self-harming adolescent etching anxious, doubtful journals upon her busy wrists.” (Self-harming refers to people who secretly – or not – cut themselves. My students call them “emos”) Is he really comparing the stress of writing his column to an emo cutting their wrists? Blimey, that’s intense. “…the sparkle-eyed Sasquatch from Merseyside”. LMAO! He’s referring to Peter Crouch, formerly of Liverpool, but who has since been craned to another team, Portsmouth. I love this one: referring to the blooming of Joe Cole at WC2006 (not THAT wc, for God’s sake!), he essentially compares Sir Alex to a pervert for “inquiring after Cole like an aged suitor willing the ripening of teenage prey.” That’s a ripe, saucy comment. Sir Alex is not known for his sense of humor, btw. “Here in England[,] we endure an anxious carnival of pain, a Mardi Gras of malcontent, a samba of sadness.” This kind of parallel/alliteration combo-phrasing is a structure I tend to use myself. So I was so excited to see it in the book. In fact, I did something similar way back in one of my spending-too-much-money-at-the-bookstore posts. It’s vindication; it’s absolution; it’s a sign from Thoth, the scribe-god, that I don’t completely suck as a writer.
ALL HAIL THOTH -- EGYPTIAN GOD OF SCRIBES & WRITING
BEST OF BRAND: Russell Brand in New York City Radio Show: The Best of What's Legal (Bonus Dvd)
[Do not even bother with Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It is an excruciatingly crap movie!]
7月4日 ONE YEAR TO THE WORLD CUP: LEGENDS FORMED & DEFORMED
In the course of the coming year, I will try to highlight soccer books. Don’t be surprised if you see some repeats. After a spell of distractedness these last couple of months, the Confederations Cup and our national team's amazing accomplishments have inspired me to "get back in the game" (as opposed to "get back ON the game" which is a reference to prostitution). I started IRONS IN THE FIRE as soon as I took it out of the box. I was in the car at the time on my way to Smoothie King to get a medium “Light & Fluffy”. I should know better than to read and drive. I’ve had my share of fender benders. But such is the tunnel vision of the habitual reader, especially when it’s a book you’re enthusiastic about. I am quite fond of Russell Brand. I like his self-deprecating comedy that enhances his personal vitriol at stupid, ignorant people. He’s like Eddie Izzard in that sense. Those two guys are so freaking intelligent; it’s a shame that they camouflage it. Coming out as a transvestite must be a piece of piss compared to coming out as an exceptionally intelligent, even intellectual person. The unwashed, unread masses would forgive a costumed clown before they would accept someone who sees their proud ignorance for the atrocity that it is. So, yeah...IRONS. It’s a collection of Russell’s (can I call you Russell? Ta.) columns about soccer for the London newspaper THE GUARDIAN during the 2006-07 season – a World Cup preparatory season. It was a lead-in famous for stories of toe-knack and contract-knack and grudges. Croatia would be playing an Australian team teeming with half-Croats. The USA was going to try not to embarrass itself (and failed horribly). Germany had had a chemical peel and was looking fresh, shiny and butch with their new manager Juergen Klinsmann. But in England, there was a serious lack of creativity. The team was depending on faded laurels Owen and Beckham, 9/11 of ManU, 3/11 of Liverpool, and a smattering of players from mid-table teams. I better stop name-dropping because I can’t be arsed to link everything all the time. Sigh... One reason I love IITF is because it serves my ever decreasing attention span. The columns are short, pithy, every-word-counts kind of writing that I love. Also, writing like one speaks sounds easy to the unschooled, but it's quite challenging. You have to sound like yourself on purpose. Elizabeth Gage, in CRAFTING WRITERS, says that one must isolate the quality of writing you want to master. So you basically have figure out what makes you sound like "you", then work from there.
Here are some of the soccer-intensive books I have:
6月3日 SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE 2
From “Born for Me” (Paul Westerberg) …just a man who thinks and feels and loves and speaks in music. How magical to be a musician. To look at some dots on paper And hear What is yet unheard. How mesmerizing to be a writer. To look at some words on paper And envisage someone’s spirit. How sublime to be a painter. To look at some brush strokes on canvas And witness The conscience of a community. Without the creative urge, however it manifests itself, we are no different from telephones. Its importance cannot be overstated. A real writer “thinks and feels and loves and speaks” in prose or poetry. I would be happy for my students to do any two of those.
From “Frankie Teardrop”, “Ain’t That Enough” (Suicide, Teenage Fanclub) It’s a peculiarly modern phenomenon, this obsession with danger. And, in the end, it’s impossible not to conclude that it has been born out of peacetime and prosperity and overeducation. Man, I am so down with this! Obsession with danger makes my job hell. It makes living where I live hell. It offers nothing, repairs nothing, solves nothing. It makes slaves of us all. From a writer’s standpoint, these statements express so much, yet without bombast or melodrama. Hornby shoots from the hip. Simple english simply stated. No wasted words. Even “peculiarly”, while I don’t think it’s necessary, adds a uniquely English quality to his writing, so that it’s not just a writer expressing his opinion, it’s an English writer. However, he does use one of Orwell’s traits of bad writing: what Orwell calls a “verbal false limb” -- “impossible not to conclude that”. In straight English, I think it means “the only conclusion that makes the most sense”. This blip does not make him a bad writer. Orwell himself has offered an out: “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.”
From “Smoke” (Ben Folds Five) ...songwriting is an art distinct from poetry. I can see that. One of the differences is execution. ...and you don’t have to be whoever writes the songs for Celine Dion... That would be Aldo Nova – yeah, that one. I wish I WAS kidding! ...you can, if you’re brave, have a go at being Cole Porter, and aim for texture, detail, wit, and truth. The same idea could apply to writing. Fortune and Venus favor the brave, after all. Anyone can write pop pulp. Barnes & Noble and Borders are full of it. What they’re NOT full of, and neither is the New York Times Bestseller list, is books that contain that alchemical combination of “texture, detail, wit and truth”. And you know why? Because that’s not what appeals to the masses. We would be a very different country if Alexander Pope, Aristophanes, and Voltaire were on the bestseller lists regularly. From “A Minor Incident” (Badly Drawn Boy) My advice to young writers: Never begin a title with a preposition, because you will find that it is impossible to utter or to write any sentence pertaining to your creation without sounding as if you have an especially pitiable stutter. “He wanted to talk to me about About a Boy.” “What about About a Boy?” I think this is hilarious! Reading it looks funny. Sounding it out in my head, it sounds funny. Good advice. But feel free to break this rule, if you think you can make it work.
*A nod to Stevie Wonder for the title. **All of the songs and this book are available through major retailers. 5月30日 SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE (I WISH I’D THOUGHT OF THAT) Part 1
SONGBOOK:
But this is not about all that insanity. My beef is with people who work so hard to make the banal and witless sound important. I agree with random person about the bad taste, but what I’m annoyed about is that the person completely missed the point of SONGBOOK. Missed it, even though Hornby mentions a few times what the book is and isn’t. Random person probably thought the book was like one of those sad, asinine VH1 clip shows that they churn out so often. SONGBOOK is “Songs of Experience”. You can’t tell someone that their experience is wrong. Unless you are someone who has a poor vocabulary. I can’t stand Nelly Furtado, but reading about what her song does for him is what’s interesting. It’s what matters. I haven’t heard most of the songs he writes about, but I’ve enjoyed reading how the songs, some against his will, have woven their melodies and guitar solos into his consciousness and created a personal tapestry. (If he were to read this, he might have a groan or a giggle at how thickly I’m laying on this metaphor.) So, in a nutshell, if you give up on this book because you don’t like the songs, you’re lazy or ignorant or this was never your cup of tea to begin with. As a writer and a writing teacher/consultant, I like so many things about this book! Is there another author who can be charming when they are swearing? NH can get right salty, yet it never sounds gratuitous -- no shock value at all. But it is a charming surprise when it happens. It’s like he grows impatient with polite English and just throws down an “F” bomb or some scat-related expression. On him, it’s cute and funny. I think he’s seen Blackadder. What follows are “bits and bobs” of prose writing that I like in the book . From “Thunder Road” (Bruce Springsteen) ...admiration is a very different thing from the kind of transference I’m talking about. I’m talking about understanding – or at least feeling like I understand, the soul of both the work and its creator. “This is me,” I wanted to say when I read Tyler’s rich, sad, lovely novel. When I first read this bit, I read it as a reader – taking in the words, the basic comprehension, then moving on. The further I got through the book, my mind kept coming back to this. With every chapter, it became truer and truer for me. I started this blog based on my admiration of NH’s style and author persona. His prose collections do for me what the songs in SONGBOOK did for him. They lived in towns for losers, I told myself, and I, like Bruce, was pulling out of there to win. I live in a town for losers. Even the successful people are losers. Soulless, sightless, simple, subsisting on arrogance and exploitation. I got out for a while, then got pulled back in by the fickle finger of fate. From “I’m Like A Bird” (Nelly Furtado) Do you really deny yourselves the pleasure of mastering a tune...because you are afraid it might make you look as if you don’t know who Harold Bloom is? Wow. I’ll bet you’re fun at parties. Ha! He said the magic words – “Harold Bloom”. This – the sentiment, is me. ME. The sarcasm – Classic ME. This is something I would say. That’s practically an impression of ME. How does he do it! From “Heartbreaker” (Led Zeppelin) ...I have less time, less tolerance for bullshit, more interest in good taste, more confidence in my own judgment. This Led Zeppelin song is the first one in the book that I actually like. Heartbreaker been a part of my life for so long, I don’t question its presence. Heee! In this section, Hornby muses on the development of his musical taste. From young and noise-oriented to mature and skill-oriented, he did not throw the baby out with the bath water. His tastes became finer and even sophisticated, but unashamedly admits that sometimes...sometimes, only Zeppelin will do. I’m excited to read this bit because the same thing happened to me. As a child, I was moderately interested in jazz and classical. Starting in about high school, and especially from college on, I dined on classical music. (Classical cassettes were 3 for $10 back in the late 80s!) I started listening to more jazz when I worked at H&B Recordings Direct. One of the perks was getting free sample/promotional CDs and tapes of jazz artists! I was in heaven! As I listened to more, I began to have more confidence in my choices. I could argue my choices for and against and people would listen. Now, it’s become a habit to listen for pleasure and analysis at the same time – a skill I apply when listening to music AND reading. That’s what this post is – pleasure and analysis (left brain and right brain activation). From “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window”, “Rain” (Bob Dylan, The Beatles) “...the best music connects to the soul, not the brain... As a teacher, we get some training in how the brain works. The human brain likes patterns. It likes repetition. But we don’t talk about souls in teacher workshops. Talking about engaging the soul of a student is verboten. Education should connect to the soul as well as the brain. More sticking power. This bit also reminds of a line from Much Ado About Nothing where Benedict has just listened to Don Pedro’s musicians sing a song out in the garden. He says, “is it not strange that sheeps’ guts should hail the souls from men’s bodies...”. (That’s about 98% accurate.) Similar wisdom unifying two men, centuries and philosophies apart. It’s two different sensations when music engages your brain and your soul. When it engages your soul, it’s possible to feel physical pain! In 1986, after I got back from England, any song I would hear on the radio that had been on the radio in London would immediately transport me back to the Tube or my dorm room. “Holding Back The Years”, “Lady in Red”, “Human” – they would leave me catatonic with misery as I felt my spirit being yanked out of me and back to Blighty. When “Lady in Red” came on, I swear I could smell the Tube train again. They’re not songs to be proud of liking. Too schmaltzy. Too pop-drek. The only saving grace for “Holding Back The Years” is its heavy blues influence. But they encapsulate my experience to such an extent that any other association is impossible and that’s why I love those songs. From “You Had Time”, “I’ve Had It” (Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann) Aimee Mann’s lyrics: “Everyone I know is acting weird or way too cool / They hang out by the pool / So I just read a lot and ride my bike around the school.” (“Ghost World”) Ahhh, the song of the fringe dweller...so bittersweet, so torn, so enlightened. The best thing about truly skilled songwriters is that they know how to make a powerful impact with a few well-chosen words. This handful of lyrics represents the same kind of autobiographical endeavor Wordsworth cobbled in four volumes. Songwriters would probably make great therapists. Wait...there’s more...
I’m not going to link all the song titles and artists since their work is readily available from any major retailer (I love the mandala concept!) Some Harold Bloom posts – just so you can see what the fuss is about.
ICE & SNOW – I FREAKIN’ WISH!
Your mind is like Ice & Snow. You like your life to be simple and try to have view over every corner before deciding your direction. You try to play it safe, but somehow adventures frequently sneak up on you. You are a good friend, but don't like to be around too many people. You have great respect for nature and dream about faraway places, but prefer travelling alone or in a small group of your closest ones. I took this quiz on Facebook. |
This is a good journal for exploring research in language and literacy. Every month has a theme that is developed through research, lesson cycles, book reviews, samples of student work, and professional development opportunities. It's $25.00 per year plus the price of the membership.
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