Let Me Do It Now.

Well it's that time of year folks - school is starting mighty soon. For those of us who are in fact teachers this can be the most exciting time of year (well it is for me at least as I'm anxious to meet all of my new amazing students and get a chance to get to know them over the year - plus I'm a much more motivated writer during the school year so expect much more from me on the site!) I have found that although not all teachers share the same enthusiasm about the beginning of a new school year they almost all tend to share the same enthusiasm about students and teaching in general. It takes a special type of person to want to become a teacher and I can already tell how fortunate I am to be working with the folks I am going to be working with this year.

Today was a bit of a pre-school year celebration for folks who had been working at my school for an extended period of time and it absolutely blew my mind how long some people had been there. For most people the idea of sitting with middle schoolers for any extended period of time sounds unbearable but think about how much dedication it must have taken someone to remain there for over THIRTY years teaching them math or science! As a society we certainly take teachers for granted, even myself AS a teacher takes other teachers for granted and I am ashamed that I have. It struck me today while sitting there in this meeting just how much these folks have given to something that is far more than a job to them. It's impressive for anyone to dedicate thirty years of their life to any endeavor yet there is something even more impressive when that endeavor is teaching. Teaching is a thankless job a great deal of the time - not because children or teenagers aren't thankful but because all of us don't take enough time to take a step back and see how much we truly have to be thankful for - and most certainly adults are far more guilty of this than children.

I am imploring you to do just that. Take a step back from your life and look at what you have to be thankful for. Maybe you have a great group of friends who are always there for you when you need to call them at odd hours to talk. Maybe your mom spends every Sunday with you cooking. Maybe you ran into your best friend from high school and drive around listening to music on weekends without having to say a word because you are so content. Maybe you have a great job where you feel you really make a difference in the world. Maybe you have a great significant other who respects you for who you are. Maybe you have a teacher who cared about your success as if you were their own child. And then? Go tell them that you are thankful - and don't be shy, pour it out.

I would like to end with a quote that has really made an impression on me;

I expect to pass through this life but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again. -William Penn

Ain't that the truth.

Emiliana Torrini “Me and Armini” Album Review (by Matt Dickson)

Emiliana Torrini’s latest effort creates quite a quizzical, interesting, and somewhat bizarre structure for a musical release. Emiliana seems to balance carefully between powerful and delicate primarily alternating between these sensations on each song on her upcoming “Me and Armini” cd. Listening to the third song, Birds got me excited about the musical theme that she was creating. Opening with a beautifully crafted first line, “Let’s stay awake and listen to the dark.” I was immediately removed from my day job to a floating experience. With touching lyrics throughout, this song was one of my favorites.

One of my favorite aspects of “Me and Armini” was the effortless ability Emiliana showcased at transferring from different genres. Bouncing between pop, world, reggae(ish), introspective music, she seems to create a genre of her own. While it is easy to pigeonhole female musicians with touching lyrics and breathy voices into the a simple category I was continuously impressed with Emiliana’s ability to take risks while staying within her control area. There were some parts that seemed a bit scripted on the album, primarily the use of sounds rather then words during some of the singing, but it never took away from the finished product. Gun is a great example of how the lyrics were strong and the vocal sounds created by Emiliana did not take away from the quality of the song, but did not really add to it. I was impressed with the back-up musicians on Gun. The bass and guitars really helped in creating a dark and dreary setting, I was truly waiting for the next lyric because I was roped into the story of the song. One listen to Gun was not enough for me so I repeated it three times and was able to pick something new and enjoyable out of it each time.

Emiliana Torrini created a wonderfully crafted album that is easy to listen to all the way through. Though her alternating style of power and sensitivity gets a bit predictive at times, the overall content of the album cannot be questioned. This is a strong performance from an established artist who used her experience to achieve a listening experience for the audience.

(Ed. note - as you can see she is visually wacky - just like her Icelandic pal Bjork)

Creating Handmade Books by Alisa Golden (review by Beth Bathory)

Why has the term “handmade” become shorthand for “unattractive, poorly assembled, and utterly unnecessary”? Apparently how-to publication reviews have become my forum for social commentary, and this one, “Creating Handmade Books” by Alisa Golden, is not an exception. It seems that the American craftperson has vanished, and the tradition rests heavily on the shoulders of society’s sole remaining practitioners: resolute five-year-olds churning out handmade valentines and macaroni necklaces.

This is not a mere attempt to shake my cane at rosy memories of yesteryear—it’s about my concern regarding the inability of individuals in industrialized nations to make meaningful contributions toward their own survival. Seriously, how many of the items and services that support your daily life could you produce and perform yourself?

Whether books count as survival items depends on your level of willingness to confess your nerdiness, but the fact that you’re reading this indicates some level of commitment to written communication, so I’ll share with you a secret of literary preservation: Golden’s books, both the instruction manual and the handmade art it describes, are useful and relatively attractive. “Creating Handmade Books” provides detailed instructions for an extensive and sophisticated collection of paper folding and book binding techniques as well as related projects and embellishments.

Golden is comfortable and apt in writing distilled free verse, but the epigraphic language that anchors her poetry is less effective as traditional text, particularly as it composes the eight-page preface which reads like some combination of autobiography, curriculum vitae, and diary. Luckily, the personal details of the author’s life trajectory from a aimless, nineteen-year-old Berkeley poet to a wife, mother, teacher, artist, and author soon yield to useful lists of suggestions, materials, terms, and techniques, and the rest of the book remains concise and accessible.

For a book about the art of making books, however, the publication’s layout is surprisingly awkward and prosaic. Most projects begin and end mid-page, making it difficult to construct something (particularly a project requiring needles, glue, and two hands) while consulting the book’s instructions simultaneously. The text is also oddly justified, leaving large, blank spaces on foredges while words disappear into the depths of the back margins.

Nevertheless, the extensive illustrations of Golden’s various handmade creations are inspiring and otherwise forgive the presentation. The multidimensional, multimedia word and image collages breathe imagination into the intricate skills described, and Golden is an artist who cites her sources for readers who wish to learn more. It is refreshing to read a handicraft book that skips the scrapbooking gadgetry isle at the local mega-art supply store and details an actual creative process and functional product. For those interested in reviving the art of handmade papercraft, “Creating Handmade Books” provides useful techniques and unique designs. While you may not have enough self-preservation skills to survive a complete collapse of societal and economic infrastructure, you can at least leave behind a one-of-a-kind document asserting your once-upon-a-time existence...

Drillbit Taylor Review and Bullying

Sure, it may be a bit much to review an Owen Wilson comedy movie and tie it to real life bullying but I know one guy who could accomplish something that grand and that guy is me.

Owen Wilson is a lovable kinda guy. He's always kinda goofy in his movies, always a troublemaking little smirk on his face, always getting into some sort of negligible and humorous little bit of trouble. He's the comedic younger brother with the busted nose who just wants to make people laugh even if he isn't laughing inside. And so it makes perfect sense that a man who plays this role on the screen and plays the role he does in real life would choose a part like Drillbit Taylor.

A terrifically unsuccessful movie, Drillbit Taylor came out to just about no acclaim in the movie theatre and even less when it was recently released on DVD - and it makes sense.

The story of two (and quickly three) teenage boys entering high school destined to be uncool but wanting so badly to not be - DT appeals to a small demographic - the bullies victim. Oddly enough, most folks can completely ignore serious bullying and as they grow older write off other people's experiences with bullying since they have no idea what the long term effects of it really are. And so you get parents like in the movie who tell stories of when they were a kid and bullying was harmless fun. And you get principals who chuckle at the ingenuity of bullies instead of taking their threats seriously. And then you get kids in real life who make terrible choices and harm people around them or, much more often, just turn into adults who aren't as happy as they deserve to be.

The movie is funny - that is a fact. Wade and Ryan (Nate Hartley and Troy Gentile) are as lovable as any awkward movie stereotype of an uncool kid is - one skinny and tall and dying for a girlfriend and the other short and fat dying for rap stardom. Their antics are clever and the antics of Drillbit's homeless buddies (including a delightful Cedric Yarbrough and a hilarious Don McBride) are probably the funniest parts of the movie. The movie is also frighteningly realistic.

As a result of standing up to two senior bullies to save someone who is "probably not a hobbit" Wade and Ryan become the target of the increasingly vicious Filkins and Ronnie. The movie makes little light of the mindless cruelty these two are involved with (occasionally it does fall into that trap though) and what's more, writers Kristofor Brown and Seth Rogen (what don't you write these days - who are you trying to be, John Hughes? Oh wait...the third writer IS John Hughes....) show just how simple it is for bullies to get away with torturing other students without anyone ever taking them seriously.

Although it's no documentary and clearly is meant more for laughs than education Drillbit Taylor is an important movie. Bullying is one of the least necessary and most stoppable aspects of American education and if everyone just stood up for everyone else it wouldn't happen - unfortunately there is a sheepish mentality (and HARDLY just with children - adults are even worse) and as a result this sort of thing keeps happening.

For the comedy, Drillbit Taylor is just one more in the long list of movies that proves that Owen Wilson is one of the funniest men alive. For the message, this movie proves that maybe John Hughes isn't the only writer who believes in putting real messages into his writing - let's just hope people are listening.

Jennifer O'Connor "Here With Me" Album Review (by Beth Bathory)

Singer-songwriter Jennifer O’Connor has a voice that’s really more worthy of an imperative than a description: go listen to it yourself. Recommendations of O’Connor’s latest release, “Here With Me,” come forth with a few more qualifiers, so you should listen to those, too, but the recording may leave you convinced that O’Connor could sing anything and make it sound lovely—the weighty pop-folk of “Here With Me” or jingles for toothpaste and cereal.

O’Connor writes seriously, though—simple songs of love and loss, ones that would risk sounding simplistic without the support of her effortlessly consistent vocals. In truth, there are still moments of lyrical awkwardness (the anti-pop culture fumblings of “XMas Party”); pockets of repetitive intonation (the directionless “Days Become Months” captures a mood, but it’s not one I want to linger in for four and a half minutes); and sadly sizeable piles of forgettable lines and melodies, but O’Connor sings with such clarity and sincerity that I almost feel bad for saying so.

This may be due to the album’s utter lack of pretention: what O’Connor presents is real, and, because of that, it’s really pretty good. Furthermore, there are elements of the album that fully deserve to be called beautiful. The austere confidence in the vocal opening to “The Church and the River,” the confessional acoustic style of “Valley Road 86,” and the viscerally melancholic chorus of “End of the Hall” each point to possibilities that could carry O’Connor’s career further if sustained.

O’Connor backs herself with coffee shop-esque guitar, piano, and organ. Jon Langmead provides drums, Michael Brodlieb plays bass, and Michael Strandberg adds more guitar, with a few extra instrumental and vocal guests also credited. The twelve songs were impressively recorded and mixed in twelve days—a budgetary necessity rather than an artistic choice, but not one that appears to have impacted the integrity of the songs. A full band is a luxury for O’Connor, and surely the quartet must be tight to have hit the caliber of the live tracks with limited takes, but the music appears content to ride backseat to O’Connor’s vocals. Compositionally, this tends to make sense, and the album’s one attempt to rock, “Daylight Out,” feels somewhat canned and out-of-place.

Another imperative to whoever is in charge of such things: get this woman some stellar songs and a knockout band, stat. Whenever “Here with Me”’s phrasing and arrangement rise to the merit of O’Connor’s voice, the effects are compelling, quite literally. The real challenge seems to be that O’Connor’s songwriter sensibilities are still playing catch-up to her singer abilities, but she makes things sound so nice in the meantime that I hardly mind waiting around.