From the weekly Northwood High School bulletin:
Do you like reading? Do you like children? Do you like children but not reading? Or reading but not children?
Come to the Giving Tree meetings every Monday in Mr. Emery’s room 1103.
Overheard
Microblog: 2009-04-21
- RT @diablocody: Specifically, porny ’70s-inspired one-pieces are in. Or “maillots,” if you will: http://store.americanapparel.net/rnt44.html #
- USC Song Girls Swim with Mike: http://www.bustedcoverage.com/?p=13898 #
- RT @NoReinsGirl @internetcases: Dear CIA: I’m an American citizen, & U have my permission 2 waterboard terrorists as many times as U want 2. #
My Kid Gets a New Nickname
The counselor also stressed that colleges are looking for well-rounded kids, not just academic standouts.
“If you’re talking about well-rounded kids, you’re talking about Casey,” I said. “He’s like a sphere, that’s how well-rounded he is.”
“That can be his new nickname,” she said. “Sphere.”
“I like it!”
Microblog: 2009-04-20
- Carrie Fisher on her core audience: Alcoholics, addicts, gay (both sexes), mentally ill & people named Erica – http://twurl.nl/hvswww #
- You know my motto: I never metacognitive I didn’t like. #
- Temps are soaring in the OC. Treated myself to an ice-cold lemonade at lunch… #
- @NoReinsGirl That’s why I stockpile rum, coke and ice. Emergency preparedness! in reply to NoReinsGirl #
The Best Counselor Ever
We were at Northwood High today for an academic planning session with my son and his counselor.
One of the things the counselor went over in the college prep handbook was a section on interview tips.
“At a private school like USC,” she told the boy, “you can schedule an interview with them if you think that will help your candidacy.”
“UCLA won’t let you do that,” I added. “They don’t want to talk to you.” I went through the application process at both schools so I know all about it.
“None of the UC schools will do an interview with you,” she said.
“It’s very impersonal,” I said, “like if the DMV ran a university.”
“It’s worse. At the DMV, eventually you’ll get to talk to someone.”
“By the way,” I said, pointing to a “Joey Ramone, 1951-2001” poster on the wall, “do you think Joey Ramone is a good role model for the kids?”
“I like him,” she said, “and it’s my office.”
“You’re the best counselor ever,” I said.
Metacognitive
My son’s got an assignment to write a “metacognitive” for English — basically a short essay describing the thought process he went through in writing a longer essay.
“Let me know if you need any help,” I say. “You know my motto: I never metacognitive I didn’t like.”
Core Audience
Carrie Fisher on her core audience:
Alcoholics, addicts, gay (both sexes), mentally ill & people named Erica……
At the Dinner Table
My son looks at his plate . . .
“What’s up with these little tomatoes?” he asks.
“They’re cherry tomatoes,” I tell him.
“I don’t like cherries,” he says.
“They’re not cherries. They’re tomatoes.”
“The flavor is different than regular tomatoes.”
“They’re concentrated. They pack the maximum flavor per square inch. Or since we’re talking about volume, I guess I should say the maximum flavor per cubic centimeter. That’s why Mom bought them.”
“Actually,” his mom says, “I bought them because they were on sale.”
The Starbucks Girl Will Be a Good Pug Owner
My owner took me to the dog park this morning and then we went to the Starbucks drive-thru.
I like to stick my head out the window and say hi to the drive-thru people!
This morning, the drive-thru girl said, “Oh I want a pug so bad! Is it true that they snore?”
I don’t snore.
“Some do,” my owner said, “but this one doesn’t.”
“When I get my pug,” the girl said, “if she snores I’m going to love her snoring SO MUCH!”
That’s sweet. What a nice girl.
“She’ll be a lucky pug,” my owner said.
— Lightning 
Imagine Finding Me
Visual artist Chino Otsuka has created composite images of her past and present selves, like a digital time machine. This is so good. Otsuka’s work has restored my faith in humanity, which was pulverized a couple of days ago by the news that Ashton Kutcher has a million followers on Twitter.
I have a rule of thumb about art and artists: If a normal person has no hope of seeing the point of your work without an accompanying explanation about you and your artistic “theory” — you suck.
I look at Otsuka’s photos and with no words at all I’m immediately transported, I’m weeping with joy at the possibilities of life . . .
If,
again
I have a chance to meet,
there is so much I want to ask
and so much I want to tell.
If you could go back and meet yourself as a child, what would you say?
When I look at photographs of myself as a boy, I see someone whose parents were not cut out to be parents, who, when they turned their attention to the boy at all, it was to tell him how disappointing and inadequate he was.
I see a boy who has taken that to heart, and will grow up with it, and even though as an adult he’ll eventually learn to compensate and in some cases overcompensate for it, will always know in his heart that he’s inadequate because his parents taught him that he was.
I’d like to go back and meet that boy and tell him that I love him. That’s all.
An Absolute Pleasure
I’m reading a recommendation on LinkedIn, written by a person I know for another person I know.
Unbeknownst to the vast majority of people who’ll read the recommendation, these two people used to date each other. I know I’m a bad person but I can’t help mentally adding “…in bed” to the end of each sentence.
Try it:
Cleopatra is an absolute pleasure to work with. While working together, I found her to be a consummate professional. Clearly, her keen attention to detail is without equal. . . .
You get the idea . . .
Microblog: 2009-04-17
- RT @KathySierra: Time-travel via Photoshop–woman edits herself into her own childhood pics http://tinyurl.com/con4vn (thanks @ddmeyer !) #
- Thinking of doing IPC over the long haul? The laws of physics say you’re hosed: http://twurl.nl/n6a6r8 #
- @PeteCarroll As an SC alum I say 1) stick to football; 2) Don’t chase two rabbits; 3) Will Ferrell is not funny. in reply to PeteCarroll #
Beth Orton Sings “Frankie”
This made me sit up and take notice:
Another Reason Why All the Great Scientists (Except Marie Curie) Are Men
Two women are talking in the lunch room. One is wearing a black pullover sweater.
The other woman says, “I like your sweater.”
“Thanks. It’s long, so it covers my ass.”
“That’s what I like about it. Not that it covers your ass, but that it would cover my ass.”
I’m speechless . . .
The sweater isn’t covering her ass, her pants are covering her ass, and the sweater is covering the pants!
It’s a total misread of the geometry of the situation!
Taxes Make People Nuts
One of the post offices here in Irvine is a best-kept secret . . . it’s off Culver Drive, down a side street and around a corner, basically in a residential area. It’s never busy because, unlike the post office on Sand Canyon, it’s not visible from a major street and most people don’t know it’s there.
My wife emailed me at work yesterday morning to say that she went to that post office and tons of cars were lined up to get in, which reminded her that it was April 15.
Not to worry though. We mailed our taxes on the 14th — to beat that last-minute rush.
Twenty years or so ago, I was living in Hollywood and — on the evening of April 15 — filling up at a gas station just south of the freeway from Union Station. Beyond Union Station on Alameda St. is the Terminal Annex post office.
As I said, it was April 15 . . . cars were lined up on Alameda from the post office, past Union Station and past the gas station for as far as I was able to see. News helicopters were circling overhead filming the Tax Day madness.
A man drove into the gas station, stopped next to me, rolled down his window and said — I am not kidding — “Can you tell me how to get to the post office?”
“Sure. You see that line of cars?”
Taxes make people nuts . . .
Microblog: 2009-04-16
- I love California but if Texas secedes from the union, I might move there: http://twurl.nl/8wgzbz #
- At a stop light, driver in front of me starts making out w/girl in the passenger seat. Did I mention the driver is also a girl? #
O.J., Hulk and the Shaggy-Haired Pool Boy
Hulk Hogan on his estranged wife and her new boyfriend, “some shaggy-haired pool boy 30 years her junior”:
“You live half a mile from the 20,000-square-foot home you can’t go to anymore, you’re driving through downtown Clearwater [Florida] and see a 19-year-old boy driving your Escalade, and you know that a 19-year-old boy is sleeping in your bed, with your wife …. I totally understand O.J. I get it.”
Look for the new reality show, “O.J. and Hulk: BFFs & Cellmates 4 Life,” coming soon to a closed-circuit prison camera near you.
Microblog: 2009-04-15
- Chivalry is dead — literally: http://twurl.nl/xctutr #
A Father-Son Day
Everyone’s got armbands and 3-D glasses . . .
Irvine schools are on spring break this week. I took a day off for father-son activities with my boy, age 15.
As we were driving back from lunch at Wingstop, I said, “You want to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3-D IMAX?”
“Not particularly,” he said.
I’d already decided that I did want to see it so I got off at the Irvine Spectrum exit.
“I guess this means we’re going to see it,” he said.
“You know what they say: Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time, but regret for the things we didn’t do is inconsolable.”
“Oh shut up, Sophocles. It’s a movie for two-year-olds.”
“No it isn’t. There’s a giant girl in it. It looks cool.”
“I’ll be the combined age of everyone else in the theater.”
We got there a little early so we bought the movie tickets and walked around the Spectrum for a while. I bought a Tommy Bahama shirt and the boy got some red sneakers at Vans.
I have to admit that the movie didn’t really live up to my expectations, but the 3-D IMAX was good and I liked this line from BOB, the monster with no brain, when the battle against the aliens looks hopeless:
“Gentlemen, I may not have a brain — but I have an idea!”
In the evening, the boy had a high school roller hockey game and his mom and I watched him. It was a good day . . .