I Love the ’00s

A few years ago in Chicago, 92.7 was a radio station called Energy and it was dedicated entirely to dance music. It was awesome. It was the perfect driving soundtrack about 90% of the time–going out with your girlfriends, running errands on Saturday, going to school in the morning, driving home from the movie extra late at night, road-tripping…it was just upbeat, high BPM, synthesized goodness. Also they used to have these promo spots where listeners who had called in would read lines like, “Hi, my name is Kimberly and I’m a cheerleader from Naperville and I. am. ENERGY!!!!!” Great, right? Yeah, well some people didn’t think so, and I remember coming home for winter break my freshman year of college and flipping to 92.7 and it was no more! Sob. No more “Two Times” or “Heaven” remixes or “I’ll Fly With You.” WHATEVER WOULD I DO?!
Anyway, it was easy to get over the death of Energy, because it was such a niche station and it wasn’t like I was going to hear Basement Jaxx on mainstream radio, so it was forgotten pretty quickly. But lately I’ve been hearing a bunch of singles on the radio that would have fit in perfectly with Energy’s format:

• Chris Brown, “Forever”
• David Guetta, “Love Is Gone”
• September, “Cry For You”
• Rihanna, “Disturbia”
• That one Latin song by the chick who died

I’m really not sure what it all means; I just saw a photo of one of the Olsens wearing Docs, cutoffs, and a flannel, which means the 90s are coming back. But Energy didn’t really pop up until, like, 2000 before fizzling out a mere year later. It was like a candle in the wind, if you will. I guess what I am trying to say is that there is obviously a market for this music, so can I have my Energy back please! CLEAR CHANNEL, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?!

Oh dear.

Is it just me, or is this just about the most depressing thing I’ve ever read?

A Truth Universally Acknowledged

Jonestar and I sat on her roofdeck discussing the 2005 Pride and Prejudice and decided that it fully encapsulates the full spectrum of men in the world that a woman encounters in her life, in which there exist exactly four categories.

• You have your Mr. Bingleys, who are attractive and perfectly nice but are just not for you, but you’d be perfectly ecstatic to have your friend end up with one.
• You have your Mr. Collinses, those men who approach you, but whose sheer undesirability makes you seriously question your own desirability to the opposite sex.
• There are the Mr. Wickhams, morally flexible little heartbreakers whose utter wrongness you never realize until it’s too late.
• And then you have, of course, your Mr. Darcys.  You have to go through a lot of Mr. Wickhams and Mr. Collinses before you recognize the value of a Darcy.

Which category do you fall in?

Harry Potter and the Standardized Test-Based Curriculum

Dolores Umbridge: Your previous instruction in this subject has been disturbingly uneven. But you will be pleased to know from now on, you will be following a carefully structured, Ministry-approved course of defensive magic. Yes?
Hermione Granger: There’s nothing in here about using defensive spells.
Dolores Umbridge: Using spells? Ha ha! Well I can’t imagine why you would need to use spells in my classroom.
Ron Weasley: We’re not gonna use magic?
Dolores Umbridge: You will be learning about defensive spells in a secure, risk-free way.
Harry Potter: Well, what use is that? If we’re gonna be attacked it won’t be risk-free.
Dolores Umbridge: Students will raise their hands when they speak in my class.
[ pauses]
Dolores Umbridge: It is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be sufficient to get you through your examinations, which after all, is what school is all about.
Harry Potter: And how is theory supposed to prepare us for what’s out there?

********************************************

It’s funny to read a Harry Potter book or watch a Harry Potter film now that I’ve got two years of teaching experience behind me, because now there’s a whole new layer to the books that I never noticed before, and that’s the world of Hogwarts’ own instructors.  Their methods, their effect on the students, their relationships with fellow faculty members–well, they’re all very nicely fleshed-out for a book about magical happenings and children.  And furthermore, they’re not that unlike real, non-magical schools and their teachers.

I don’t recall if the exact exchange from above appears word-for-word in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix but it does appear in the film.  I would like to know exactly how aware Rowling is of the state of American education right now, because this exchange was remarkably perceptive.  A curriculum designed purely to get students to ace a big scary test, the total absence of real-world connections, the endless practicing of different techniques and methods but very little true application of the newly acquired “skills,” and who can forget the notion of the government creating and approving a heavily guided, paced, and revised product to be finally shoveled down the mouths of babes.

No wonder our schools are failing so swiftly; there’s no magic going on in these classrooms.  And ain’t no magic spell gonna fix it either.

Where are you going, where have you been

1996- I spend two weeks in August at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp for the first time. All the cabins are grouped in “units” which are named fine-artsy things like Big Band, Bandwagon, etc. All the cabins have corresponding names. I am in the Villanelle unit, in the cabin known as “Oates.” Apparently all the cabins in our unit are named after women writers. I considered myself a fairly well-read 13-year-old and had never heard of this Oates person.

Later in 1996- I read the book Foxfire. I picked it up because a) I liked the name, and b) it was being made into a film. The book features charming topics like girl gangs, teenage aggression, hooking, and a particularly savory scene where a woman with mental retardation gets gang-banged in the woods. Am scarred for life.

1997- I finally catch the movie version of Foxfire on cable one day. It’s not even the same story.

2001- I read “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” in English 100. Traumatized yet again.

2003- I read “Ghost Girls” in my creative writing workshop. Yep, traumatized. I also read “The Strand Used Books 1956″ and for once, am not traumatized, but enchanted.

2007- Joyce Carol Oates makes an appearance at the Borders on Broad Street in Philadelphia. She is frail-looking, slow-speaking and conservative in manner, not at all the kind of person one would expect to publish writing that has traumatized me all these years. She reads a bit from her new book, Gravedigger’s Daughter, and then answers some questions. Some choice gems:

“The Irish, they’re the ones who will break your heart.”

“When you write, you have to make the decision whether you want to include only a few details, like Hemingway, so your writing will move faster and have a more cinematic flow to it, or if you want to include a lot of details like Faulkner or Dickens or Joseph Conrad and really slow your reader down so they can get a sense of atmosphere and setting.”

“Sometimes when I write a novel, I get so caught up in it that I have to take a break from it and write a short story just to break up the intensity.”

(my favorite) “I teach at Princeton, and in the writing of my students, you really get a sense that they believe that history begins with them. I think my students are very aware that they live in a very politically debased time, yet they still retain such a sense of idealism, like they want to make the world a better place and that it doesn’t always have to be this way. Because of that, most of the energy in my writing tends to come from the younger characters.”