For our anniversary, we hired a babysitter Friday night and caught the new X-Men movie. It's the goods. It cobbles a number of classic X-Men comic moments and makes new story with them. The acting is top-notch, and the action is good. It also rewards loyal viewers of the first three X-Men movies.
The local comic store informed me that three minicomics had sold in the past two weeks. Woo.
We biked between thunderstorms Saturday afternoon. The sidekick is taking to it well. We can't ride the bikes back up our hill, and I shoved the boy-burdened bike as we finished riding. It sucks to run it too. But run it I did this morning. I got up before seven and ran our route in under 21 minutes. The school traffic was thin enough to assure me I wouldn't get plastered by a bus. I dunno if I can do this every day, but I did get a good weekend workout between the bike and gardening.
Also, a neighbor's tree rotted and collapsed across the road on Sunday. I only noticed it when I saw traffic slowing in front of our driveway. None of the tree parts landed on our property, but I didn't see anyone cleaning it up. Out I went. It was light work as the tree felt like Styrofoam. The neighbor thought a branch had fallen and thought nothing of it. He didn't seem too concerned when I rang his doorbell and informed him. The pieces were all there as we left town later that morning and returned that night.
We went back to my hometown for a reunion of my maternal grandmother's family. The deputy was cooed over the whole time. Because I was carrying him for the event, we put his nametag on his back, and people knew his name before they talked to us. He watched the older kids play basketball, and he was itching to join in. After, we had our first swim in My Mom's pool. He took to it with relish after weeks of being trained to splash in the tub. He has a swim bodysuit with a hood, and he floated in a small tube raft. When we poured him back into the car, he slept like a coma patient.
As Your Sister wades into the deeper waters of the teacher pool, she learns many a thing:
1) One teacher is moving. His departure surprises us both.
2) Another teacher is staying. Her continuance surprises us both.
3) It's presumed that Your Sister will be department chair. She'd rather not. I'm trying to comfort her by saying that the sidekick's sleep cycle and time at daycare affords her a lot of time to be chair and do chair things.
4) She's teaching AP again, requiring her to scrape together a syllabus before summer.
5) The county manager's budget proposal calls for $38,000 to be cut from the library, virtually all of it from new-acquisition moneys. That affects the teachers who want to order books for their classes. To secure enough copies of one book, she contacted an Asheville bookstore, and they had four copies of it. By the time I got there the next day, they had eight more copies. The cost of these books is, of course, coming out of our pockets. (Oh, and the library budget cuts means they're scrapping periodicals for a year. That's my favorite library section.).
6) The state budget has decreed that schools will have five fewer teacher workdays as they become full school days. This is packaged as a cost-cutting measure, but it adds five days to the 180-day mandatory schedule, and it requires five additional days of utilities, buses, and school meals. The governor vetoed it, but the legislature says they'll override.
We watched the Tonys last night, and it may have been the best broadcast of the show I've seen. The musical numbers this year were all stellar, and let me post two great examples.
If you don't watch the Tonys -- if you have no real interest in Broadway -- I can't blame you. Broadway has catered to the tourist crowd hard in the last ten years and only recently pulled itself out of the jukebox musical genre (take the biggest hits of a mainstream artist & build a plot around it -- you know, ABBA, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, etc.). But I think the American musical is swinging back to a proper display of talent and skill. Now, yes, the new trend is to make musicals based on popular films, and this clip is from the adaptation of Catch Me If You Can, the Spielberg/DiCaprio film. The star of the show -- Norbert Leo Butz -- won the Tony for Best Musical Actor last night for this show (and maybe this number), and he won a Tony a few years back for his work in the musical based on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Anyway, in a Tonys show that was PACKED with talent this year, this number stood out even against hot, hot performances from The Book of Mormon and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Sister Act. This number, I think, stole the show, and god damn if I don't want to audition for a show right now.
The local comic store informed me that three minicomics had sold in the past two weeks. Woo.
We biked between thunderstorms Saturday afternoon. The sidekick is taking to it well. We can't ride the bikes back up our hill, and I shoved the boy-burdened bike as we finished riding. It sucks to run it too. But run it I did this morning. I got up before seven and ran our route in under 21 minutes. The school traffic was thin enough to assure me I wouldn't get plastered by a bus. I dunno if I can do this every day, but I did get a good weekend workout between the bike and gardening.
Also, a neighbor's tree rotted and collapsed across the road on Sunday. I only noticed it when I saw traffic slowing in front of our driveway. None of the tree parts landed on our property, but I didn't see anyone cleaning it up. Out I went. It was light work as the tree felt like Styrofoam. The neighbor thought a branch had fallen and thought nothing of it. He didn't seem too concerned when I rang his doorbell and informed him. The pieces were all there as we left town later that morning and returned that night.
We went back to my hometown for a reunion of my maternal grandmother's family. The deputy was cooed over the whole time. Because I was carrying him for the event, we put his nametag on his back, and people knew his name before they talked to us. He watched the older kids play basketball, and he was itching to join in. After, we had our first swim in My Mom's pool. He took to it with relish after weeks of being trained to splash in the tub. He has a swim bodysuit with a hood, and he floated in a small tube raft. When we poured him back into the car, he slept like a coma patient.
+ + +
As Your Sister wades into the deeper waters of the teacher pool, she learns many a thing:
1) One teacher is moving. His departure surprises us both.
2) Another teacher is staying. Her continuance surprises us both.
3) It's presumed that Your Sister will be department chair. She'd rather not. I'm trying to comfort her by saying that the sidekick's sleep cycle and time at daycare affords her a lot of time to be chair and do chair things.
4) She's teaching AP again, requiring her to scrape together a syllabus before summer.
5) The county manager's budget proposal calls for $38,000 to be cut from the library, virtually all of it from new-acquisition moneys. That affects the teachers who want to order books for their classes. To secure enough copies of one book, she contacted an Asheville bookstore, and they had four copies of it. By the time I got there the next day, they had eight more copies. The cost of these books is, of course, coming out of our pockets. (Oh, and the library budget cuts means they're scrapping periodicals for a year. That's my favorite library section.).
6) The state budget has decreed that schools will have five fewer teacher workdays as they become full school days. This is packaged as a cost-cutting measure, but it adds five days to the 180-day mandatory schedule, and it requires five additional days of utilities, buses, and school meals. The governor vetoed it, but the legislature says they'll override.
+ + +
We watched the Tonys last night, and it may have been the best broadcast of the show I've seen. The musical numbers this year were all stellar, and let me post two great examples.
If you don't watch the Tonys -- if you have no real interest in Broadway -- I can't blame you. Broadway has catered to the tourist crowd hard in the last ten years and only recently pulled itself out of the jukebox musical genre (take the biggest hits of a mainstream artist & build a plot around it -- you know, ABBA, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, etc.). But I think the American musical is swinging back to a proper display of talent and skill. Now, yes, the new trend is to make musicals based on popular films, and this clip is from the adaptation of Catch Me If You Can, the Spielberg/DiCaprio film. The star of the show -- Norbert Leo Butz -- won the Tony for Best Musical Actor last night for this show (and maybe this number), and he won a Tony a few years back for his work in the musical based on Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Anyway, in a Tonys show that was PACKED with talent this year, this number stood out even against hot, hot performances from The Book of Mormon and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Sister Act. This number, I think, stole the show, and god damn if I don't want to audition for a show right now.
And here's Harry Potter tearing it UP in his show. This kid is good.
Your Sister asked if, in all my theatre interest, if I ever wanted to be a song-and-dance man. Of course, but it's only been recently that I felt like I had the pipes to do a decent job. For example, the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors? I can do that.
Leo Bloom in The Producers? I can do that.
As I finished my run this morning, I passed a neighbor who's been in a few local shows with me, and he asked if I was coming back to work with the local company. If I didn't have such sour memories of bad choices and backstage drama, I'd hop at the chance to do the latest musical (Annie, by the way). But I can't risk shouldering Your Sister with a revived work schedule and the boy for such a chunk of time only for me to regret working with people who can't learn their lines.
1 comment:
I HAD NO IDEA STEVE MARTIN WAS IN THE FILM VERSION OF LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS!
you have just improved my life, good sir.
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