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I’ve been flipping back and forth between NFL coverage and CNN and I’ve discovered that there is a lot of hype with precious little truth or story behind any of it. I’ll start with a sports example. Come draft time everyone is talking about the next truly amazing athlete and trying to be the channel that gets it right by picking a winner. To that end they all hype a handful of ‘could be’s’ of their choosing while the world gets behind one or two folks who were dominant at the college level. Every year there is a QB that might be the next Brady or Manning. Every running back considered a first rounder is the next Beast Mode or AP. Likewise CNN sells hype like its land in AZ–cheaply and all the dang time. We’ve seen the station push the Trump machine as an important story to follow and we all bought the heck in. We’ve seen how they can do that to any candidate or story in order to make it relevant and sell commercial time. Don’t believe me?

CNN is still running front page stories on the MH370 disappearance. Yeah, that plane search I once compared to the entire first season of LOST is still relevant to these guys and it still is being hyped up enough that every now and again someone gives a hoot. The problem there is that we (the masses) fall in so easily behind these stories and people and hype mattering that we lose any real since of objectivity and understanding in the process.

That ain’t the media world I want to live in.

I had an opportunity to visit the Grand Canyon today. I went alongside my fourth grader who’d asked me to be a chaperone on the journey. It was fun, overall. Towards the end of the day I had nearly two hours to spend with the four boys under my charge. Until then it had been a lot of soul searching and seeking patience, but as we drifted into the trees and our adventure began, all of that stress bled out of me.

The first part of the day was rather structured and involved me saying ‘No!’ quite a bit. Recently she-who-makes-me-whole pointed out that I might be ‘that dad’. We all know him, the one you always look down and away from as he screams at his kids any time they step just a tad out of line. I suppose I might be that dad. I’m that dad in public at least, when these boys know they ought to act right and occasionally don’t. Heck, i’m that dad to everyone’s kids because I believe it takes a village to raise a child. So, yeah. I call out my kids publicly and did so with my four who did tend to act the very fool of which I speak. They would saunter super close to the edge of the canyon after the teacher and ranger both repeatedly warned them not to. Food was discarded haphazardly. Rocks were eventually dug up. In other words, they were boys trying to be boys.

Once we were done with the canyon proper we headed into the woods for a walk to the lodge where dinner was planned. We turned it into an adventure, walking into thickets of trees so deep that multiple kids were like, ‘I’ve never seen real woods before’ and ‘I know we’re lost because I can’t see the road!’ Yep, they were in the deepest patch of wilderness most of them had ever known and it was totally fun. We picked up sticks and called them hiking sticks, we looked for animals, and we walked and walked and walked.

Deep down inside I’m a twelve year old. That isn’t always a good thing, but sometimes it is just what you need to find an adventure.

I’m starting to feel for Trump a little. Not a lot, mind you. I don’t want the man to be president, but I have noticed that media coverage of him has shifted to a really negative cycle now that his campaign manager is accused of roughing up a reporter. Lets be clear: The man relegates campaign press to a caged bullpen during rallies. His distaste for the press is clear. That being said, it is interesting that the negative cycle was only triggered by the abuse story. Here’s the worst part:

I’m on his side here.

Hear me out. I saw the footage and recognize the coming lawsuit and criminal charges as frivolous. Yet everyone is demanding the dude be fired. Why? This is behavior in line with his role and responsibility. Trump cannot and will not cave to the media pressure on this one and it will make him a stronger candidate. I will say this: I’d rather Trump be my president than Cruz.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Some of the best basketball in the history of the sport is being played over in the Western Conference of the NBA. The Warriors are on pace the break the 72-win mark set by the Jordan and Pippen lead Bulls oh so long ago (95-96). The Spurs have already set the home win streak record at 38-0 and have a legit chance to win the last three to have a perfect home season. It isn’t like everyone else in the league sucks. I mean the Knicks always suck and the Lakers are terrible, but there seems to be a level of parity everywhere else in the league. This is a big accomplishment.
2. Speaking of the Lakers, as Kobe makes his farewell tour the Lake show seems to be on the verge of absolute implosion. Check this figure: It is possible that both the Spurs and the Warriors will have fewer losses than the Lakers have wins. The Spurs have 12 losses. The Warriors have 7 losses. The Lakers have 15 wins. At least Kobe is having fun on his farewell tour. Last night Dwayne Wade crashed Kobe’s press conference just for giggles and a public goodbye.
3. Rhonda Rousey is done. She is done the way Tyson was done after the surprise Buster Douglas loss. Her confidence is broken and her desire–her heart–seems out of it now.

Couple of things to say tonight so I will run them down:

1. Blog and wine is merely perfection. Or per-fiction as the wine goes. The hard to get red blend is magical.
2. Saw Batman v. Superman again and enjoyed it more the second time around. First view is the fanboy viewing and as a fanboy I was disappointed. I wanted a great many things to happen that did not. As an educator I found that there is a lot of great material in the script, though I felt that it was very much paint-by-numbers. The film painstakingly pointed out all of the deeper context stuff we arrived that on our own.
3. I still have very little hope for the large crossover movies as they pertain to DC. Marvel will get it going again, but DC is too damn introspective to make it work all of the time.
4. Three minutes left to blog and I’m low on words and consciousness. Yet another one of those nights where I don’t seem to have enough left in the tank to make a valuable contribution.
5. Going back to the movie, I felt Affleck did a better job as Wayne than the Bat. He was better than Clooney at least. I’m okay with him filling out the suit moving forward, but if I don’t get me some Robin imma snap.

Education is not really about teaching. I suppose, on a grand scale, it never was.

Sure, there are some people who teach because they want students to learn but the more and more you get drawn into things the more and more you get sucked into the politics and straight up nonsense that plagues the profession. I’ve practically gone into hiding in an effort to shift my focus back to the teaching and away from the nonsense that is education. Its working a bit–I’m rediscovering my love for the classroom one day at a time–but that doesn’t change the fact that nonsense hovers above me like one of those giant interplanetary ships from Independence Day.

This most recent rant on the topic is triggered by a ‘discussion’ taking place at the developmental education level about changing the competencies of a developmental english class to remove language that suggests we need to help students know how to actually understand what they read. This bit of hopefulness is possibly being replaced with a line about ‘analyzing evidence for its relevance to a specific writing task’ Can you guess what I think that line sounds like? Yep, bullshit.

All the wordsmithing in the world can only serve to distract people from the task and further distract us from the gigantic turf war that is education. One school (in our district of 10) wants to remove any reading-based competencies from writing, mainly because we are trained to teach writing and the reading instructors are trained to teach reading and there should be no overlap.

But there is overlap. Simply put, there is no reading without writing and vice versa. This nonsense about analyzing evidence for relevance borrows heavily from the language of the Toulmin model, which most dev educators don’t even want to teach to students because of how overtly and uselessly complex it tends to be.

The real issue here is that this is the bitter end of a two year fight over language about what we should call what we teach. I spent over a year as part of that conversation and I promise there wasn’t more than a few days of discussion about what actually benefited student learning. These academic conversations are always about the academics. It is politics–partisan at best–writ large on a tiny stage. Frankly, I’m done with all of it.

It is high past time to start calling things how I see them and quit being so politically correct with the world. Maybe there is a little Trump in me after all…

Some Thoughts:

1. Had a student remind me today that bitterness is just anger with a heap of jealously mixed in. That being said, I remain somewhat bitter about my eldest son’s football experience last year. Dang near ruined him on the sport. Sad, because he was such a fan and becoming a breakout player in season 1. Season 2 ruined him. Season 3? Still not sure he is getting back on that horse. I wish he’d had a better friend-level experience, but the way things were structured he wound up an outsider and made absolutely no friends on that team. Lost some in fact. That is the anger part and the jealousy part as well. I can’t deny being jealous of the parents and kids that did form bonds while we did not. That lack of inclusivity was a problem and it played itself out on the field as well as on the sideline. In my role as a coach now I strive to avoid that situation and I will work my ass off to get every child incorporated into the fold.

So I’m about to turn a corner. Or die trying. I’ve been experiencing a several odd physical symptoms that relate to one body issue or the other and all pointing towards the inexorable fact that I am actually getting old.

And Fat.

All of these things are not good. Weight is fine so long as it is a healthy and comfortable weight for your body, which mine clearly is not and is likely contributing to my condition, whatever that may be. I’m not sure what it is, but I can be fairly certain of how we got here. I don’t take good care of myself physically or mentally. For a while I didn’t even challenge myself to be or do better. At this point I am challenging myself and it isn’t entirely for me. I don’t know that I set a great role model for my three boys (dem franchise boys) but I do know that they absorb my actions and behaviors like sponges. They react to and often repeat all that I say and do, so it is important that what I say and do is positive. Not all the time, of course. Children need balance as much as they need hope. Me? I need to capitalize on opportunity.

That’s the thing. It is still there, a fading shadow in the doorway. It is entirely up to me to capitalize on such things and to make myself more healthy and be around for the people I love. I come from a family where there weren’t any men. My stepdad died when I was twelve, which is about the age my eldest son already is. That kind of stuff scares me and forces me to question my health and my choices. As they say in London is Falling, “bourbon and bad choices”

I’m not much for the bourbon.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Apparently it is impossible to locate this iteration of the blog on Google. Any suggestions?
2. Sometimes I use these thoughts as a rambling start to the blog vs. doing them at the end when I have a few minutes (or mere seconds) to kill.
3. This is one of those times.

For a while now I’ve been working with the book American Gods, which goes into some detail about the idea of Avatars and how we tend to house a great deal of emotion and faith into these objects and persons of belief. Imagine my surprise watching the trope-tastic London Has Fallen and realizing that the lead is yet another American God leading us down the path of nationalistic righteousness.

The movie is a sequel, picking up a few years after the original Olympus has Fallen. The first movie dealt with an all out attack on the President of the United States which included a destroyed White House and a disgraced secret service officer making good on his vow to protect the president. The second movie follows the same pattern, except the relationships have shifted back to the way they began in the first movie. The officer and the president are best friends again and he continues to be in charge of the president’s safety. Once again the ‘leader of the free world’ is thrown into harms way–this time in London.

There is a moment early on in the film where it stopped being an original movie and turned right into Tom Clancy’s The Division. I’m talking dark zone level firefights here, folks. That isn’t the God part or even the part that made the movie nearly intolerable. What did it in was the comical level of testorone-laden trash talk and ball swinging. At one point the guy walks out to face 100 baddies and says, “they should’ve brought more guys.” This is old school Bruce Lee transposed unto a brash American macho man (played by a british actor). This is the stuff that raised Lee to the level of fable and in some circles, avatar/god.

The movie isn’t good enough to push our actor up there. Indeed, this is no Sparta. Still I enjoyed it in a boyish bang-bang sort of way that cannot really be matched by a lot of films these days. Was it believeable? No. Did it make a social commetary? Maybe for a split second. Is it worth seeing on the big screen? No. The explosions, etc. aren’t so special that they cannot be enjoyed a home. Or on a tablet. This is Strike Back without the sex and so much longer.

Once I found my way back to consciousness I noticed the spelling. It cannot be a good sign when the title of the blog itself is horribly misspelled. I didn’t even want to reread the thing, knowing I’d be so disappointed in the way I’d mangled it. The blog was supposed to be about Dawn of Justice and it was, for a while. I wrote and wrote and, at some point, I realized that I was typing, my eyes were closed, and I was snoring.

Neat trick.

Rather than face the stream of unconsciousness on the page, I highlighted the whole mess and hit delete. Then I began again. Then I fell asleep again. And here we are.

The thing about creating a blog in this format is you are truly naked on the page. You are exposed and vulnerable without all of the nifty revision trickery that makes good writers into outstanding literary giants. Doing things the way I do not only forces me to write honestly and openly, but it builds up the protective tissues necessary to deal with public critique. Look, if I can come back to the page after yesterday then I can do anything. This is exactly the type of confidence I try to cultivate in my students as their teacher and often their alpha reader. I say be naked in front of me (I don’t actually say that. It would be very weird). I tell them not to fear what I will think about their work because it doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks about a first draft. That is the time to get it all out and on the page so that you have the words to work with. Sure, some–nay most–of it is night soil, but you can use that to grow a novel (shout out to Sol Stein) or a story or a career in what you truly love to do.

I truly love what I do, so much that I make it a habit in my life to share what I do with the world every day. Maybe there’s some ego involved in thinking I have something to share, but I’m proud of that ego. I’m proud to be a storyteller and proud of the occasional reader that picks up a book or blog and says, I really enjoyed the moments I spent with this writing.

What sucks is I deleted what I spent t8 minutes of this bog accomplishing. I wanted to do an off an cuff review of Dawn of Justice but I wrote that tragic little bit with my eyes half closed and a losing consciousness. Long day. The review was terribly written. It also said means this is a teril blog. Better luck in the morning.

Back in Village Inn after three weeks of being out of rhythm I realize I recognize the regulars and feel a comfortable warmness at the atmosphere of the place in the mornings. By morning I mean 5 AM, because that is how early I need to get here in order to do this before my official work day starts. Of course, that changes in a month or so.

Summer is Coming…

Condolences to George RR Martin for the riff (finish your damn series, sir), but there is truth in the change of seasons. I’m looking forward to the sun (though not the accompanying heat) and the freedom to run and play and hang with the kids as long as I so chose.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I have a mental block against the proper spelling of ‘rhythm’. Thank you spell check. I continue to want to add the letter Y in places it does not belong. Must be a guy thing.
2. Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford died of cancer recently. He was mourned, which is a major shift from the ridicule he received while in office due to his unfortunate drug and alcohol addiction. Nobody is laughing at him now and that has as much to do with the fact that he died as it does with how it happened. See, cancer is not considered a choice and drugs and alcohol are. I spent years as a rehab counselor and I can tell you addiction is not a choice either. Sure, we ridiculed him because he was a liar who made funny statements about his plight while simultaneously serving as a public figure, but throughout it all the underlying medical condition of addiction was ignored. Yes, I’m talking about the medicalization of deviance and I recognize that we have taken steps in seeing alcoholism as a real thing, but coke is no less addictive.