...with Amy Winehouse.
Seriously. I mainly knew of her as someone who makes a spectacle of herself with her substance abuse problems, but I'd also heard her music was good, so I finally gave Back to Black a listen, and wow, just wow, Amy Winehouse isn't good, she's friggin' genius. What a revelation.
Here's a couple of songs (lyrics may include some naughty words):
"Back to Black"
"You Know I'm No Good"
"Tears Dry on Their Own"
Here are some pictures of me and my family.
This is me. I've been slacking off on my workouts, so I've lost a little weight in my arms and legs lately.
Here I am with my spouse and children. As you can see, we're a very long-legged family.
This is our house (interior view):
We don't have any pets, but sometimes the Easter Bunny and Dumbo come to visit:
Apparently Oprah sometimes does a show called "Oprah's favorite things," where she gives away thousands of dollars worth of free junk to the audience. The audience seems pleased by this.
"An abridged history of American-centric warfare, from WWII to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict." Awesome.
Here's an explanation of the battles, but it's more fun if you watch the movie first and try to figure it out as it goes along.
In order to support myself while I was going to school, I had begun teaching at English schools in Tokyo. Most of the other students in the International Division at Waseda also taught a few English classes to earn spending money; I was one of very few, only two or three that I knew of in my cohort of about a hundred people, who had to support himself by working while going to school there. The pay for English teaching wasn't bad -- the hourly rate was about twice what most Japanese students could make doing part-time jobs -- but job satisfaction was non-existent.
My students had almost all had six years of English in high school; some of the ones who were college graduates had taken another four years after that. Rote memorization was a specialty of the Japanese education system, so students often had very large English vocabularies. But the national curriculum, designed by the Ministry of Education, was so pathetic that most of them could not speak English at all. They couldn't understand natural-speed pronunciation, and their own poor grammar and pronunciation left them unable to speak English except at the most basic level. Their six to ten years of classes were mostly a waste of time.
Into this gap, supposedly, would step the private English school, emphasizing conversation and communication and thus making up for the deficiencies of the school system. There were hundreds of these English schools in Japan in the late 1980s, running the gamut from major international chains like Berlitz to classes given by illegal aliens in their living rooms. With some exceptions, English schools in Japan were just a big money-making scheme designed to take the students for all they could get. Depending on the school, students could be any kind of person: schoolchildren, housewives, teenagers and college students, business people. There were classes for almost any category you can imagine, and for almost any purpose.
The schools worked hard, milking the students for all they could get. Most places charged big fees to join the school, with long-term contracts and additional fees for each class attended. Some schools hired only qualified, well-trained teachers, but others were willing to hire any native English speaker they could get (or any non-native speaker, as long as they were white), regardless of experience, qualifications, aptitude, intelligence, or visa status. Others were slightly choosier: they only hired people who had visas allowing them to work legally in Japan. The better schools, if they were unable to find qualified teachers, at least provided training, but many schools just gave their teachers a selection of textbooks to use and said, "Go to it."
Not surprisingly, few students learned much English. Sometimes it was at least as much the student's fault as the school's. I always asked my own students during our first class together "Why do you want to learn English?" Many offered practical reasons: "I like to travel," or "It will help me at work." Others, despite the hefty sums they were paying, gave vague or unrealistic reasons. One young woman told me, for example, "I think it would be cool if someday when I have kids I could talk to them in English." Another woman was married to a Japanese-speaking American, and, by coming to English class for one hour per week for four months, wanted to "surprise" him by suddenly speaking to him in fluent English. Many just seemed to think it would be cool if they could speak English. Most students were extremely passive; they seemed to expect to just come to class for one hour a week and have the teacher somehow insert English into their heads. Few of them seemed to have any idea of the hard study involved in learning a foreign language, and even fewer showed any inclination to work at it.
After I finished my year at Waseda, I stayed on in Japan. I continued teaching English, working at two schools, one in the morning and the other in the evening. My morning school was a mom-and-pop operation run by a couple in their mid-thirties. "Pop" was a Waseda graduate who had left his secure but boring job at some major company to follow the dream of running his own business and, never quite able to make ends meet, also worked part-time at some other English related jobs; "Mom" spent most of her days working at the school as secretary and generally running things. The teachers were mainly students from Waseda's International Division, and the owners were unusual in being sincerely interested in their students. They didn't offer extravagant false promises of instant fluency at high prices, but rather an opportunity for cross-cultural communication and modest increases in English ability at a relatively low price. No formal training was given to the teachers, but an effort was made to match the proper teacher and the proper textbook with each student or class. The atmosphere was friendly and sincere.
My evening school, though, was something else.
Next week: My search for a Real Job.
Previous "Let's Ecology!" posts are here.
"Let's Ecology!" is the story of my stint with a Japanese environmental group (or sort of an environmental group -- it's "complicated"). Look for new posts every Monday. The names have been changed to protect me from lawsuits. Everything else really happened.
From CV Rick and a couple of other places:
My manly skills are in bold.
Esquire Magazine – 75 Skills Every Man Should Master
A Man Should Be Able To:
1. Give advice that matters in one sentence.
I've done that a couple of times, I think.
2. Tell if someone is lying.
I think this may be a function of my strange brain or something, but I can usually tell. It makes it hard to vote for people.
3. Take a photo.
4. Score a baseball game.
I think I still remember how. I used to do it for fun, back when kids still liked baseball.
5. Name a book that matters.
6. Know at least one musical group as well as is possible.
7. Cook meat somewhere other than the grill.
8. Not monopolize the conversation.
9. Write a letter.
10. Buy a suit.
11. Swim three different strokes.
Not well, but yeah.
12. Show respect without being a suck-up.
13. Throw a punch.
14. Chop down a tree.
I never have, although I bet I could.
15. Calculate square footage.
16. Tie a bow tie.
Isn't tying a regular one enough?
17. Make one drink, in large batches, very well.
Not my specialty.
18. Speak a foreign language.
19. Approach a woman out of his league.
20. Sew a button.
21. Argue with a European without getting xenophobic or insulting soccer.
22. Give a woman an orgasm so that he doesn't have to ask after it.
My specialty.
23. Be loyal.
24. Know his poison, without standing there, pondering like a dope.
25. Drive an eightpenny nail into a treated two-by-four without thinking about it.
26. Cast a fishing rod without shrieking or sighing or otherwise admitting defeat.
I'm just not interested in fishing. Or hunting.
27. Play gin with an old guy.
Nothing against old guys, I just don't know gin.
28. Play go fish with a kid.
29. Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped.
30. Feign interest.
Like I said yesterday, I used to be pretty bad at that. I think I'm getting better at it... maybe not.
31. Make a bed.
32. Describe a glass of wine in one sentence without using the terms nutty, fruity, oaky, finish, or kick.
33. Hit a jump shot in pool.
34. Dress a wound.
35. Jump-start a car (without any drama). Change a flat tire (safely). Change the oil (once)
I've never changed my oil, but I know how. The other two I've done more than once.
36. Make three different bets at a craps table.
I don't enjoy gambling. Maybe I'll write about why sometime.
37. Shuffle a deck of cards.
38. Tell a joke.
I've even gotten paid for it.
39. Know when to split his cards in blackjack.
40. Speak to an eight-year-old so he will hear.
41. Speak to a waiter so he will hear.
42. Talk to a dog so it will hear.
Out of the three, talking to the waiter is hardest for me.
43. Install: a disposal, an electronic thermostat, or a lighting fixture without asking for help.
I'm pretty sure I could do a disposal or a fixture; don't know about a thermostat.
44. Ask for help.
I've done it, so I guess I could do it again.
45. Break another man's grip on his wrist.
46. Tell a woman's dress size.
WTF?
47. Recite one poem from memory.
"There once was a man from Nantucket..."
48. Remove a stain.
49. Say no.
50. Fry an egg sunny-side up.
That's not enough. A man should be able to ask someone, "How do you like your eggs?" and then cook them that way. IMO.
51. Build a campfire.
52. Step into a job no one wants to do.
53. Sometimes, kick some ass.
54. Break up a fight.
Remind me to tell the story of how I broke up a fight on the subway in Tokyo sometime.
55. Point to the north at any time.
It's on my left now.
56. Create a play-list in which ten seemingly random songs provide a secret message to one person.
OK, I can do that, and I have, but mix tapes are teh lame. They just are. The people who get them never care about them as much as the people who made them.
57. Explain what a light-year is.
The distance light travels in one year (thus, a distance, not a time).
58. Avoid boredom.
That's what blogging is for.
59. Write a thank-you note.
60. Be brand loyal to at least one product.
I dispute this one. I think being anti-brand is more manly.
61. Cook bacon.
62. Hold a baby.
63. Deliver a eulogy.
64. Know that Christopher Columbus was a son of a bitch.
65. Throw a baseball over-hand with some snap.
66. Throw a football with a tight spiral.
67. Shoot a 12-foot jump shot reliably.
68. Find his way out of the woods if lost.
If you're lost, doesn't that mean you can't find your way?
69. Tie a knot.
70. Shake hands.
71. Iron a shirt.
72. Stock an emergency bag for the car.
73. Caress a woman's neck.
"I got my technique down and everything, I don't be ticklin' or nothin'."
74. Know some birds.
I actually know most of the local birds.
75. Negotiate a better price.
...with Bill O'Reilly freak out videos. Language definitely not safe for work/children/prudes. (h/t: Runnin' Scared and many others.)
The original freakout:
Bill O freakout remix:
Bill O freakout dance mix:
And in a perfect world:
A couple days ago, President Bush implicitly compared Barack Obama to pre–World War II appeasers of Hitler. That in itself is bad enough, but yesterday a right-wing talk radio host named Kevin James appeared on Chris Matthews' show. After James yells "Bush good! Obama bad!" for about five minutes, Matthews decides to ask Kevin James what "appeasement" is. He asks him what, specifically, Neville Chamberlain did wrong.
And obviously, James doesn't know. He tries to respond by shouting his talking points over and over again, but he clearly has no idea what he's talking about. He doesn't know what appeasement is, and he doesn't know what Chamberlain did. All he knows is that "appeasement" is the Republican word of the day to attack Obama with.
It's very funny to watch, but unfortunately, it's also all too typical of our political discourse today. Context doesn't matter. History doesn't matter. Accuracy doesn't matter. Just get your talking points and keep shouting them. Don't worry if you don't even know what they mean. That's not the point. The point is to make lots of noise and make the other side look bad.
This is also, to digress a little from politics, all too typical of American education. Kevin James isn't just some guy who dropped out of high school or something. According to his Wiki entry, he has a BA and a law degree, and used to work as a prosecutor. (God help any defendant, guilty or innocent, who had to face a blustering ignoramus like that in court.) How does anybody with an education like that manage to be completely ignorant of such a key turning point in 20th century history?
Oh, and here's a special Unintentional Comedy Bonus: the slogan of his home radio station, KRLA 870 in Los Angeles, is "Intelligent. Conservative. Talk Radio." Two out of three ain't bad, I guess.
In Look Me in the Eye, John Elder Robison wrote, "I don't know if it's an Aspregian trait, or it it's just me, but I was never affected by celebrity." I don't know either, but me too. Celebrities mean nothing to me. I've never understood, for example, what could possibly motivate someone to wait for hours just to see somebody famous pass by. What's the point of that? Certainly, I'm interested in people who are talented and do interesting things -- which describes many celebrities -- but I just don't get what fame has to do with anything. To me, it doesn't make anyone more interesting.
So this brings me to the time I met my first Mormon "celebrity." I joined the LDS Church when I was 20. There were lots of activities for singles my age, and I made lots of new friends in the "Young Single Adults" program, or YSA as it was called. A few months after I joined, there was a giant YSA conference for all the young LDS singles from San Diego and Imperial Counties. That meant several hundred people would show up. It was a very big deal.
It was such a big deal that one of the LDS Apostles was going to speak at it. To Mormons, an Apostle is a very important person, considered equivalent to one of the old-time Apostles like Peter, James, John, Andrew, and those guys. So he was a very big deal too. The Apostle who was going to speak was (the late) Elder Neal A. Maxwell.
All my new friends were very excited to see him. I wasn't. In my typical way, I thought, "Some famous dude is coming. BFD." (Although actually, as a newly-minted Mormon, I probably omitted the F and just thought, "BD.") I was looking forward to the conference though. It sounded like fun -- driving from San Diego out to Imperial County, going to workshops and a dance, staying overnight, and then all going to church together the next morning. Above all, I would be spending the time with my new friends, who I already felt pretty comfortable around. That was what I was looking forward to most.
I went on Saturday, enjoyed being with my friends, learned some stuff in the workshops, danced a lot at the dance, met some cute girls I was too shy to pursue, and generally had a nice time. Sunday morning, I ended up getting to the church way early, probably more than 20 minutes before the services were to start. I walked into the foyer, and there he was: Neal A. Maxwell in all his conservative-business-attire glory. And it was just the two of us. Nobody else seemed to be around. He approached me with a friendly "Good Morning!" and his hand outstretched for a handshake.
As I realized later, to a typical Mormon, this would have been a great moment. A chance not just to shake hands with an Apostle but to chat one-on-one with him for probably 5 or 10 minutes is a once in a lifetime experience if you don't live in Utah or something. It's the sort of story Mormons pass on to their grandkids. For a Catholic, it would be better than talking to a Cardinal (although not as good as talking to the Pope). It would be like a Buddhist meeting -- well not quite like meeting the Dalai Lama, but maybe like meeting the Panchen Lama. It would be a seriously big deal.
But not to me. To me he was just "some famous dude." Of course, I said, "Good morning" and shook his hand -- I wasn't that rude -- but I kept walking and didn't even fake being interested in talking to him. Feigning interest in someone I'm not interested in is something that I have to work at, and I wasn't very good at it back then. My social skills weren't so poor, though, that I didn't notice that he seemed kind of startled, and I thought, "Oops, I guess he expected me to talk with him. I wonder if that was rude," but I didn't stop or anything. I wasn't interested in him; I wanted to see if any of my friends were already inside the chapel.
After a moment, I realized I had been pretty rude -- I didn't actually say, "Yeah, whatever" out loud to him, but my body language might as well have -- but I also thought it was kind of funny. "I guess Elder Famous Dude is used to people fawning all over him. It must have been a bit of a shock to have somebody blow him off like that. Oh well." So I got a chuckle out of that as I went in to look for my friends.
And that's how I snubbed Neal A. Maxwell.
**********
There's also an epilogue to this story. During the actual meeting, Elder Maxwell impressed the hell out of me. He gave a sermon, or "talk" as we call it in the LDS Church, and not surprisingly was a skilled public speaker. But that's not what impressed me. Church that morning included a testimony meeting, where any member of the congregation who wants to can get up and go to the pulpit to talk for a couple minutes.
All kinds of people got up and spoke that morning. Some of them obviously hadn't been to church for a long time -- they weren't dressed "properly," or they didn't know the "proper" words LDS use when bearing a testimony. I watched Elder Maxwell as he watched them, and I saw something. I saw that he loved them and didn't judge them. I'm sure he knew, as even I did, that a lot of us were caught up in the moment and wouldn't come close to living up to the idealized feelings we were expressing in the meeting.
But I could see that that didn't really matter to Elder Maxwell. He just seemed to radiate love for the people who were speaking, and especially for the ones who were a little "off." And that love, I thought, must be what makes at least one Apostle of the Lord someone special, and not just "some famous dude."
...of giving Progivil a try (h/t: Ezra Klein). What do you think?
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