Tuesday Bluesday

Yesterday I won the heart of one of my tutees by recognizing her reference to a Velvet Underground song, and regaling her with the time I saw Lou Reed at the Beacon in leather pants.

He was in leather pants, that is. And they were gorgeous. And my friends and I had snuck in a poland spring bottle that wasn't poland spring, making it all the better. But I didn't tell her that part.

I'm wondering if I should give up the tiny smidgen of pretense I have of being a good role model and just embrace being a "cool" teacher/tutor thoroughly, start bragging about my nonexistent tatoos and the nonexistent trail of brokenhearted exes/heroin habits in my past. And then offer my students some nonexistent weed. Thought, dear readers?

...But c'mon now folks, who can forget hearing their first Velvet Underground album? I mean, I'm not going to describe it here because I'm saving it for fiction/memoirs, but even more than the Beatles or Bob, that was a seminal moment. Let's just put it that way.

Lou, I love you!


PS I had another crazy early morning dream involving a kidnapped Chelsea Clinton, Mel Gibson, a car crash and financial ruin. But not necessarily in that order. Try to interpret that, Sigmund.

PPS Studio 60 on the sunset strip needs to make like Aaron Sorkin when he tokes up and CHILL THE FUCK OUT. Hello, it's a show about a COMEDY. But it's kind of seriously addictive.

I Spent My First Rosh Hashanah in a Church School

Surrounded by posters advertising the goodness of Jesus.

Fortunately, I was doing secular work: teaching my first grammar class at a program called College Bound, which prepares teens for law careers and helps them get into top colleges-- even though many of them come from tough, tough neighborhoods and backgrounds.

The head of the entire program actually demo-ed the first lesson (would that such things occured in the Public School System) and I saw that the kids were infinitely ninth grade: they giggled inapproriately, occasionally sassed the instructor, whispered, fidgeted, showed undisciplined thinking.

But oh my god, were they eager to learn, to participate, to be polite and respectful and successful. I've never seen anything like it, except during Regents week; even as the class stretched into its fifth hour and the students were bored and hot and hungry, they still tried. rather valiantly.

I can't wait for next week, where our subject will be, well... the subject!
And it was most definitely a better way to spend my time than a shofar-less saturday at shul.

Hey, Teachers! Got any geniuses who love to write on your roster this year?

Check this out.

Oh, Heavens.

I've always had somewhat sensitive skin, but this morning's topper was two massive red zits, nonexistent yesterday, on the tip and bridge of my nose, which already is somewhat prominent. I had a slice of pizza with an 11th-grade tutee yesterday, and I swear to GOD, that shit's contagious. Now I just look like a bloody alcoholic and I can't leave my home. On second thought, that's just cause I'm lazy.

In other equally really really important news, the life of someone working three part-time jobs while trying to finish a novel and advance her freelance career is less like a roller coaster and more like one of those jerky haunted-house kind of rides, where the mean people jumping out at you are the specters of your own doubts, regrets, and laziness(es).

But at least I can sleep in!

Amazing dream...

I had an amazing dream about my former students early this morning, while my flatmate was making eggs and I was, well, dreaming.

We were in an auditorium, and T, the "skinny greek" literacy coach was in charge of whatever was happening. All my worst behavioral offenders, plus some of their buddies who I came to know intimately, were there, and they started throwing things. Small things, at first, and then a bike lock, and some other stuff. and T. kept catching them and laughing. And then M, the most disturbed child I will ever teach, threw a BASEBALL bat, and T. told him he had "gone too far."

Then I woke up.

Another Rainy Day...

Yesterday I had a series of public transportation disasters as only can happen in New York including: an inordinate wait for a train that jus din' come...

*a bus ride that included a wheelchair passenger, agonizingly lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered. And you want to be like, hey, I'm all for your rights, but you're also like, shit I'm so fucking late right now. You know what I'm talking about.

*an unplanned stop at the bus terminal to switch drivers, discuss said switch, and then for driver numero dos to "test out" the equipment, the seatbelt, etc. Safety first!

*rainy day slowness on both rail and caravan routes.

Anyhooch, the day was improved upon with a visit to my chic SoHo fiction-writing workshop. The class was smaller, more intimate, and more relaxed on round two, a relief and an inspiration.

Other random thoughts:

On Rock Star: Supernova, Dilana was robbed, mothafuckas...
Also, watching her performance has led to a huge surge in lipsynching in my apartment.

Proof that I am sometimes really a real-life Bridget Jones

We're not even going to talk about opening the fridge door at Mani Marketplace on W. 94th, and watching in slow mo as a half-gallon of lactaid tumbled off the shelf and coated the floor with its milky (but lactose-free and digestible!) contents.




No. But what we will talk about is the particle of dust that snuck its way up my nose in the bowels of the subway system, far beneath the intersection of 168, B'way, and St. Nicholas...ready to make my life hell.
I sneezed once, with a ferocity that surprised even me.
Twice.
"Bless you," someone muttered.
Three times.
I started to blush. But still, it wasn't a snotty, blechy kind of coldy sneezing fit. It was obviously a something's up there kind of sneezing fit.
Four times.
I was aiming right into the crook of my arm, looking away from everyone, smushed at the end of my bench and leaning into the empty space by the door, like the 'asponsible citizen I am.
Nonetheless, by 175th street, the elderly pair of real estate dealers, he in a bow-tie and stiff expression, glanced at me warily, and then...
without a HINT of subtlety or consideration for my poor nasal passages...
MOVED to the other end of the car. To avoid me and my nonexistent germs!
Six, seven, eight.
At this point some sympathetic older guy who didn't speak much english started making facial expressions which were a cross between understanding and hitting-upon. This did not comfort me.
We passed 184th, and I had now sneezed at least 15-20 times. I desperately considered getting out here and walking the extra five blocks home, but then there was the issue of the elevators... If i stood in one of them and this attack continued, I might alienate half my neighborhood.
22, 23, 24.
People were definitely staring at me.
At last, as we pulled into 190th, I dashed off my car, and as I was climbing up the stairs, I sneezed lucky sneeze number 31. "Bless you," said someone, for the first time since sneeze No. 2.
32, 33.
Then I had my own, hometown elevator to deal with; my final test. Would it be my waterloo, or would I contain it?
I breathed in deeply and concentrated, as the elevator rose, rose, from Bennett ave up to Ft. Washington. I itched and I twitched...
And I didn't sneeze! Not til I hit the street, and there, it was sort of a final honk of victory. My ordeal was over. Home was near. I had made it.


Moralz of the story: One mini-pack of tissues is never enough. Old real-estate agents with bow-ties are mean, selfish creatures. If at first you don't expel the dust from your nose; try, try, again.

Next time: The story of the hiccuping dude on the D out to Coney Island.

Musings on education...

I'm still an urban teacher in a sense. Most every Saturday, I'll be instructing a host of freshman in an "enrichment" program not unlike Prep for Prep in a highly regimented grammar course. I'm excited, slightly nervous because they're freshman, and I know just what they're like at that age now. And I know they like to test, test, test all figures of authority.
However, the routine, the curriculum, and the discipline, are all hand-fed to me by the program. I have the liberty to ask any unprepared or unruly student to step outside the room, which is nice. I think nothing can ever compare to the little monsters my freshman at my former HS were... even though they ended up being my best class, they were a wild bunch at first.
So I'm actually quite excited. And the "he said WHAT?" stories will be back on AGW... with, hopefully, not as much of the frustration. Stay tuned.
****

*As always, I have the instruction of young minds on the brain. Eliot Spitzer, speaking in a "town hall" the other night, said that without educational reforms, there will be no resurgence of a middle class. (Incidentally, he went to my preppy prep high school and worked on our school paper, and he's a smug bastard, but so dead on.)

*But education isn't even a priority for our nation
...so how's change ever going to trickle down? The manpower it takes to educate and train youth is staggering.

*Meanwhile, in the higher eschelons, injustice still wears a suit, has a Y chromosome and a pallid skin tone, and is given affirmative action that sees color: the color green.

*Read all about the "Price of Admission" and weep.

Things I Hate...

*skinny jeans (ugly)
*annoying women talking on subway about their tribulations (loud)
*hayfever (sneezy)
*Lance Armstrong (cad)
*laundry (un-done)

oh my saints... oh my stars

SO much to report, blogland. SO much to report.

First of all, in family news, mon frere, il a depart a L'Ecosse hier soir. C'est Dure!!!!! I miss him already even though we've gmail chatted three times today. Glasgow is putting its party hat on for him... slainte, brotha man! I'll be there soon, kilt on.

Second of all, in career news... I decided firmly that my non-acceptance to a certain verrrryyy prestigious magazine internship was a sign from the cosmos (a spiritual atheist's superstition) that I should, well, to quote what Astrophil (aka Sir Philip Sidney)'s muse said to him, "Fool, look in thy heart and write!"
So I bared my teeth. I applied up to tutor privileged youngsters, with a very professional, nice-seeming organization. I applied up to teach grammar on saturdays to underprivileged youngsters. I signed up to help my parenting magazine put out a teen issue (I'm to be the "deputy editor"), and I spent a butload of money (considering my current situation) enrolling in a fiction workshop to help speed my novel (now approaching 40 thousand words) towards something resembling completion. I vowed I would finish the book, because all these commitments together would still leave me time to write every morning.

And then I got a phone call offering me the original job. Apparently, I was the numero uno runner up.

I was excited, I was flattered...and, dear reader, I turned it down!

(Gnarls Barkley playing in background... does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazeee? Possibleee. [NB: I used to think this line was either "eyes so blue" or "eyes of blue", but I've been corrected]...)

Karmically, I just couldn't do it. It's not even as much about committing to the three jobs, although that matters, as it is what I promised to myself. I told myself fhat I would take my fiction, my dream, and massage it until ittoo, got rejected, and I settled into pragmatism--or I landed a contract and a movie deal, and people compared me negatively to Marisha Van Pessl and Curtis Sittenfeld, but teenage girls bought my books in droves and had crushes on my dreamy hero so I didn't care about the snotty reviewers.

So that's what I'm doing. And should that fail, I will re-apply to internshipland.
*****************************

Third of All, in Education News:

Completely shameless self-promotion: emails from a few students after hearing I've left teaching to try to write for magazines.

______________________________

Hi Ms. [Fellow-ette] How are you? I miss you so much. You are realy a good teacher.
I feel so bad when i hear you are not teach. Today when i waik through my english class i look in your class i so another teacher. This year my english teacher is Ms.[redacted]. I love you so much and i want to be in your class. I pass the math regents.

Your love [Student A, who is ESL]

______________________________

Hey ms.[fellow-ette],

I hope all goes well for you with the magazine. I was hoping that you
were going to return this year to teach juniors:) but i'll keep in touch though....
I actually have Mrs. [redacted] for english this year, she seems alright....
Once again, [very talkative student] happens to be in my class :( lol
Since Junior year is my most important year, im going to make it
my best year:) .........
well i guess i'll talk to you later,
[student B, who clearly got her elementary ed in the suburbs]

______________

good luck with your new job i hope you do very well with that career path
i will stay in touch
you are a wonderful teacher

[very succinct student C]

_________________

damn, that's sad.... a great [school name] loss there is... good luck to u.... i'll see what u write on ur magazines..... hope that is no cosmo mag XD

[student D, who loves ellipses]

___________________

ok thank you ms.[f] anyways good luck to you and yea i will and yea i am going to tell you everything hopefully everything goes fine, by the way is junior year hard?and take care much love.....[student E, who hates punctuation]

_________________

first day:

it was cool untill it started to rain and I got my new sneakers wet.... me and [very hyperactive student] went to eat at wendies and we were cracking up on the old times.... ALSO he did some ghetto shit XD.... he went to get a metro card from the machine WITH COINS!.... a long line was made.... one coin fell... we made some people angry and the lady on the cabin was yelling at him with the MIC. it was FUNNEY!
Att: [student D again, reporting on first day of school]

PS: WE miss u and [very hyperactive student] says for u to write him

_____________________

it's amazing how these kids, who all hated me at times, let the good times supercede the bad in their memory! And so does their teacher (she tries, anyway).

Lastly, read