A Break From De Palma...
The last two De Palma A'la Modes were supposed to be up this past weekend, but I had a busy weekend and not much downtime last week in order to watch two more movies...oh don't worry, I watched movies...just not those two. Life intervened again in my blogging, and rather than get upset about it and gripe about how busy I was...I'm doing what any sensible write would do in this situation...I'm writing about it.
To tell the truth, there isn't all that much that happened last week or weekend that was terribly interesting. I went to work everyday, convinced my students to read a novel ("Night" by Elie Wiesel, a truly wonderful and heartbreaking memoir) and got on my feet with my new Theater and Speech classes for the semester. The Theater kids are the same for the most part (minus a few) and the Speech kids are all new and seem good. I did run into a little drama over the casting of our senior class play..."Twelve Angry Men" (well...more like Twelve Angry Jurors since there's a mix of the sexes) however. I ran auditions for two days and put the cast list up on Friday, hoping that those cast would be pleased and those who weren't would get over it. Oh how wrong I was. It seems that, in casting some underclassmen who were great over some seniors who were good, I broke some big taboo. There were cries of 'foul' all day to fellow teachers and superiors...none of those cries ever reaching my ears. I instead heard of it second hand from colleagues and from our principal who (in his very unsubtle way) informed me that I should change my mind on the casting. I was incensed, mainly because I felt that I was being pushed to make huge cast changes just because some seniors threw a temper tantrum because its supposed to be THEIR PLAY. Under the advise of one of my peers...I called a last minute meeting of all who tried out (and amazingly they all pretty much showed) and told them how the whole thing made me feel and what a difficult position it had put me in (basically no matter what I did, I was going to be the bad guy). They understood where I was coming from and stated their case calmly and rationally and, after several underclassmen conceded to give up their parts in order to further the unity of the senior class, I agreed to change the cast list. It worked out well, as I had 15 parts and 14 seniors, and I got to keep my underclassman who was the most crushed about the idea of losing her part. I also think I earned some respect. If I needed proof of that, I only had to be at our first read through last night where everyone was having a good time and seemed delighted to be there.
You can understand how, after all that drama, I would have wanted to disappear on Friday night...and I had a Friday the 13th marathon and pizza in order to comfort myself. I think very few people knew where I was that evening, it had been a very stressful and busy week. Then on Saturday I chose to go out dancing with Jacques Pablo and his friend Mini Me (I call him that because, not only does he share the same name as me, he also is a lot like me). I discovered upon meeting Mini Me that he and I had actually talked before online, years ago. How's that for odd coincidences? It was a fun time...Jacques and I flirted with our waiter Ty Ty at Otani, an excellent sushi restaurant, and then went to a bar called Tradewinds which was a little scummy, but was wonderful for people watching. As Jacques was dancing his heart out, Mini Me and I spent the evening giving names to the various people on the dance floor. There were celebrity lookalikes (Ed Bagley Jr.and Crispin Glover were our favorites), cartoon characters come to life (The Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons") and the truly original (a 50 year old gay man with a beer gut and too tight t-shirt who liked to try to dance like a 20 year old...who we simply called Fancy). It was great. I woke up much too groggy for a Sunday the next day and had a million things left to do, but it was worth it. This coming weekend I think I'd like a quieter and more at home weekend...though Bond is coming over at some point.
So that's me catching up with you after days and days of MIA. I hope this pleases my 3 followers and the other mystery guests that I have who keep my weekly view count at about 56. Check back later this evening when I write about my yearly February 2nd tradition!
To tell the truth, there isn't all that much that happened last week or weekend that was terribly interesting. I went to work everyday, convinced my students to read a novel ("Night" by Elie Wiesel, a truly wonderful and heartbreaking memoir) and got on my feet with my new Theater and Speech classes for the semester. The Theater kids are the same for the most part (minus a few) and the Speech kids are all new and seem good. I did run into a little drama over the casting of our senior class play..."Twelve Angry Men" (well...more like Twelve Angry Jurors since there's a mix of the sexes) however. I ran auditions for two days and put the cast list up on Friday, hoping that those cast would be pleased and those who weren't would get over it. Oh how wrong I was. It seems that, in casting some underclassmen who were great over some seniors who were good, I broke some big taboo. There were cries of 'foul' all day to fellow teachers and superiors...none of those cries ever reaching my ears. I instead heard of it second hand from colleagues and from our principal who (in his very unsubtle way) informed me that I should change my mind on the casting. I was incensed, mainly because I felt that I was being pushed to make huge cast changes just because some seniors threw a temper tantrum because its supposed to be THEIR PLAY. Under the advise of one of my peers...I called a last minute meeting of all who tried out (and amazingly they all pretty much showed) and told them how the whole thing made me feel and what a difficult position it had put me in (basically no matter what I did, I was going to be the bad guy). They understood where I was coming from and stated their case calmly and rationally and, after several underclassmen conceded to give up their parts in order to further the unity of the senior class, I agreed to change the cast list. It worked out well, as I had 15 parts and 14 seniors, and I got to keep my underclassman who was the most crushed about the idea of losing her part. I also think I earned some respect. If I needed proof of that, I only had to be at our first read through last night where everyone was having a good time and seemed delighted to be there.
You can understand how, after all that drama, I would have wanted to disappear on Friday night...and I had a Friday the 13th marathon and pizza in order to comfort myself. I think very few people knew where I was that evening, it had been a very stressful and busy week. Then on Saturday I chose to go out dancing with Jacques Pablo and his friend Mini Me (I call him that because, not only does he share the same name as me, he also is a lot like me). I discovered upon meeting Mini Me that he and I had actually talked before online, years ago. How's that for odd coincidences? It was a fun time...Jacques and I flirted with our waiter Ty Ty at Otani, an excellent sushi restaurant, and then went to a bar called Tradewinds which was a little scummy, but was wonderful for people watching. As Jacques was dancing his heart out, Mini Me and I spent the evening giving names to the various people on the dance floor. There were celebrity lookalikes (Ed Bagley Jr.and Crispin Glover were our favorites), cartoon characters come to life (The Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons") and the truly original (a 50 year old gay man with a beer gut and too tight t-shirt who liked to try to dance like a 20 year old...who we simply called Fancy). It was great. I woke up much too groggy for a Sunday the next day and had a million things left to do, but it was worth it. This coming weekend I think I'd like a quieter and more at home weekend...though Bond is coming over at some point.
So that's me catching up with you after days and days of MIA. I hope this pleases my 3 followers and the other mystery guests that I have who keep my weekly view count at about 56. Check back later this evening when I write about my yearly February 2nd tradition!
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