I'm not here to make friends.

the mantra of reality television...


Speaking of reality tv, I'm watching the finale of Hell's Kitchen right now, and I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed Petrozza didn't win. I'm not a regular watcher per se, but I know enough about it to doubt that Kristina, who just graduated, can run a restaurant. I wanted LouRoss to win anyway, but the whole show is so ridiculous and profanity-laden. Kristina's camera confession scene (which came after a dizzying array of suspense-building camera shots for about 45 seconds and a commercial break) consisted of screaming "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!" I have to wonder--don't these people realize their grandmas and childhood friends and pastors' wives see all this? I cuss like a sailor, but I try not to be filmed on national television doing it.

Speaking of not making friends, I must vent for just a minute--I've been taking Krav Maga for the last couple weeks, and most of the time I love it. If you haven't heard of it, it's Israeli combat/self-defense. It kicks my ass, my muscles burn, and I leave with my hair soaked and feeling like an old lady. But a tough old lady. Today, I had to pair up with this dykeadelic chick who was, to her credit, a badass. She was however uncoordinated as all hell, and tried to blame my punching for it. I was "doing something weird." Uh huh. I admit I don't always give 100% and I joke around some, but I do work hard. So anyway, we're learning defensive moves and blocks tonight, and she starts blocking my punches with more force than I'm punching with--the point is to defend, you don't have to do it really hard. Plus this is a beginner class. It's essentially non-contact, but sometimes we kinda get physical. So anyway, my forearms are getting bruised like peaches but she doesn't give a shit. Then--she hit me in the face. We were adding combination moves and were supposed to be giving it like 50%--not full on war. I'm tough too, so it wasn't a big deal. Then she did it again. No apology, no oops. The third time she popped me right in the mouth, and I stepped up, towering over her, and said quietly, "Do that again and I'll hit you back. A lot harder." Her sweaty pale face with its set expression of rarrrr fell. I stepped back and put my hands up, ready, but she just stood there. I could see she had been rattled, unnerved. The instructor called us together, gave us a few last tips, and dismissed us, and Blondie hightailed it out of there like her ass was on fire. I resisted the temptation to yell after her, "Yeah you better run, you little bitch!"

Moxie's Summer Entertainment Preview

Dear Blog,

Sorry I haven't written. Between graduation and the subsequent loss of student loan money plus the spiraling out-of-controlness of American society, I've found it difficult to get my thoughts in order. I graduated last weekend, the parents came down and met my friends and Mark--went better than I expected. I'll be leaving the ATX in a few more months to set up shop with honey in west Texas, something I'm deliriously excited about. The times, they are a-changin', but change is good.

Until I have some solid thoughts on anything solid, here what I think of the summer entertainment lineup. First, TV: TV by and large is total crap. Aside from a few worthy shows, it's insulting, especially the commercials (that's a whole 'nother post). Two upcoming shows have at least induced a quizzically raised eyebrow:

90210. Jebus. Has it been 18 years for real? I was 10 when the original aired? From the looks of it, Jennie Garth has fared the best by nailing a 3pm sitcom with the slightly cross-eyed Amanda Bynes, unless you count Shannen Dougherty's Charmed as success. From what I can tell, the only appeal to the show is that it signals a transition tv time between horrendous daytime court and talk shows before the news and primetime come on. The remaining members of Snobbery White High or whatever high school that is can be found on milk cartoons.

Try not to get distracted by the eyebrows or the asymmetrical eyes:


The new onslaught of CW teen "talent" have updated names--Daphne, Dixon, Annie, etc. There seems to be more of a multi-cultural inclusion as well. Before you start judging, keep in mind that I've been home by myself all night with nothing to do. And I'm grumpy, so shut up. What's next, Saved by the Bell: Redux? Melrose the Second Place? I'm all for recycling, but this is ridiculous.

Another show that intrigues me in a sick kind of way is Swingtown, from CBS: "From the director of "Big Love" and "Rome," SWINGTOWN peeks into the shag-carpeted suburban homes of the 1970s to find couples reveling in the sexual and social revolution that introduced open marriages and women's liberation." Here I thought we couldn't get any sluttier. Although I'm attracted to the 70's context (as I'm sick of shows set in nowadays, as nowadays is all janky), I have a bad taste in my mouth watching these commercials, which keep showing up on my five channels of television. It tastes kind of like latex mixed with salt and shame.

Movies I'm looking forward to:





1. Batman--starring the dead and beautifully tragic Heath Ledger. I bet I'll cry.
2. Get Smart--hell yeah. I love Steve Carrell, and I loved watching the original on Nick at Night as a kid, starring Don Adams. Here's a clip of it featuring another of my heroines, the great Carol Burnett:



Decidedly Stinkers:
1. Sex in the City, the Movie--I'm a devoted fan, don't get me wrong. But here's the thing: if she gets married, it's kind of a sell-out as to her character. If she "chooses New York," not a damn person will be surprised. If he runs out on her, I'll just be depressed. I've seen all the seasons many times over, I don't need to spend $8 to see a longer version of an episode.
2. The Strangers--I don't like movies that feature people with bags on their heads.


Boy, it feels good to write again. I'll cut things off there, 2 tv shows, 2 good movies (hopefully), and 2 bad. I'm out of mixer drink so I either need to drink the vodka straight or go to bed. As I am working tomorrow, I imagine the latter is better.

Happy long weekend, hope you don't have to drive anywhere...

A Moment of Kickass

Rarely have I ever cheered for anything other than the Bears on TV. I dislike game shows as a rule. I'd much rather watch a comforting episode of Seinfeld than Escape from Whore Island or Are You Smarter Than a Retarded Kid. Shit, even 2 1/2 Men (a terrible parody of Charlie Sheen, performed by Charlie Sheen) provides decent white noise to study by. But tonight, dear readers, I cheered. I whooped. I jumped to my feet. Let me explain.

I've expressed my cynicism about A Moment of Truth before, knowing it was sure to be pure spectacle of people ruining their and others' lives in the name of the money pyramid. Great ratings, but a sad aftertaste. From what I can gather, there are various levels of questioning ranging from mildly embarrassing to world-shattering--the farther you go, the more money you get. One's truthfulness is measured by polygraph, which basically judges bodily reactions between first and second answers of questions. So they know what questions they'll be asked, having already answered them once. Slightly ineffective--polygraphs aren't admissible in a court of law, but Fox don't give a shit.

Ok. So I caught the last few minutes after class, just as some bleached blond answered a question asked by her ex-boyfriend as to whether or not she would get back with him and subsequently leave her husband. All three of these people looked to be in their early 20's, which is IMHO, too fucking young to get married. Obviously the answers was going to be yes, but Sis helped Blondie out by pushing the buzzer--the one-time get out of jail free button. The crowd booed. Blondie could have walked with 10K, but she decided to keep going--apparently this couple had already shared their wedding/honeymoon experience, during which Blondie confessed to being in love with another man. The next question looked suspiciously like the last one (and also asked by her ex): Do you think I'm the man you should be married to? Answer: Yes. Ouch. Fuck. Next question: Have you had sexual relations with other men while married? Her poor hubbie (a cop who met Blondie while arresting her for stealing from her workplace) encouraged her to just keep going--what's the point of stopping now when you can get $150K for both his nuts? Honesty's the best policy, right? So in front of God, Fox, her family and everybody, she said....yes, she had. The crowd clapped, what for I'm not sure.

So here's the Best Part. Two questions to that chunk of money, all secrets out of the bag at this point, nothing left to lose, she wants to continue. The question is: Do you think you're a good person? In that second, I changed my mind about Fox and this show, at least temporarily. Her answer, unbelievably, was yes. The pleasant disembodied voice reported: "That answer is.....false." FUCK YEAH!!! YEAH YEAH YEAH!!! OH YOU STUPID BITCH!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! Blondie's face fell. Her lip quivered. Her eyes got teary. She clearly was in disbelief that she, after cheating on and lying to her husband, was in fact NOT a good person. The fucking kicker was that she herself knew or believed deep down that she wasn't. She left with NO money, which is slightly sad--divorces are expensive.

shape shifting

I found myself nodding my head and occasionally saying "yeah" outloud while reading chapter 9 at the coffeehouse (understandable as it was written by one of the Gee brothers), luckily there are always some weirdos at coffeehouses. Today it was the girl reading and talking to herself.

Hello? Life has changed. People can’t expect to stay in the same job moving ever gradually up in the ladder their whole lives any more. The age of computer programming (in terms of the model of mind being like a computer with certain formulas and projected answers to slotted outcomes) is over--now we use rapidly evolving technology to enhance the person side of us rather than the other way around. "Identities today take work, a person is expected to craft them out of available social and cultural resources. A person is expected to take on new identities through life, dropping some, changing others, and taking on new ones." (166) We know narratives, story-telling, collaboration, authentic questions, critical thinking, all these things should be making up our classroom practices. And I think technology addresses all these things, but isn't being connected to education enough.

Gee examines particularly the identity-forming potential of current media, despite reluctance and inability to give true equitable experiences with all available technology in the classroom. This would scrape too hard the scab of traditional schooling. Jazus, we can't be letting the kids carry their Ipods and cell phones around willy-nilly! We can't let them chat or look at music videos online, are you crazy? There are no TAKS questions on that kind of thing. Plus, hell, they might enjoy it, and we can't have that. Plus who has the time or the desire to sit around and try to figure out ways to tie personal technology and communication to learning? Certainly not a grad student, that's for sure. Har.

Taking that idea a step further, Brian and I discussed during break once all the components of symbolic interactionism and self-fashioning available via....wait for it.....Myspace. My boyfriend claims to have contracted myspace from a public restroom somewhere in Oklahoma. It has that effect on you. Of course the space that is yours has its limitations (its trendiness being the first), there are only a fixed number of ways to express who you really are, but still, your username, your song, your pictures, your videos, your groups, your quote, your layout, who your top friends are (and in what order, and dammit you better be careful about that), which comments you approve/deny, the comments you leave others, the 'about me' section, the interests section, the blog, etc...all these things attempt to present a digital version of you. You form yourself. You shape your identity, and continue shaping. And of course it's a playground for pedophiles, phonies, porno-hopefuls, and other losers, but you gotta take the good with the bad. More importantly, you have to teach people how to use the tools. But did anyone teach our kids to do myspace stuff? No. That's my point. If there's something a kid latches onto, almost innately knowing how and liking to do things, we owe it to him to connect it to his classroom. Not in a dissecting, scientific, TEKS aligned way, but to consider it knowledge and not playing around. Kids LIKE using technology--they're not scared of it like my parents, or unable to use it in a meaningful way that will enhance their lives.

I'm starting to think that educational equity is tied to the amount of opportunities and experience (with an emphasis on exploration) we can give students, but opportunities are tied not only to economic resources but also to trust. Do we trust that students can benefit from multiple literacies? Trust goes back to underlying beliefs and values. Chapter 12 talks about the differences in search skill (in analyzing the experiences students of different SES attempting to conduct online research) being due to difference in symbolic capital, number of opportunities, prior academic experiences and families' economic realities, and calls for deliberate instructional practices by teachers who understand reproduction theory.

Here's why we really need to be teaching digital literacy:

Adolesense Pt 2

Rosenblatt's description of adolescent upheaval includes some insight to confusing aspect of sex. She claims there's an inadequate amount of preparation in the discourse of the bedroom, and avoid or misrepresent sexual matters, leaving young people to draw their own conclusions while being bombarded by sexual messages in the media and from other unreliable sources.

This book was discussed on Mike and Juliet's Morning Show today. Ms. Levkoff managed to say "vulva," "masturbation," "erection," and "wet dream" in the first five minutes. I tried to watch, as it directly relates to the topic of conversations--what you can and can't talk about and why. But when Mike offered up that he remembered having a wet dream, I had to change channels. I can talk about sex probably more than the next person, but I was trying to eat.

Ellen DeGeneres also discussed the difficulty of explaining sex to kids as she had a guest to her show read a passage of her rereleased book, "My Point (and I Do Have One)." The passage was a funny dialogue between a young child and a parent, who attempts to explain the youngster's query by metaphors of an egg, a mama bear and papa bear, growing a baby in their stomach, Daddy's special sauce, and ended on a mutual liking for hamburgers. The guest reader, by the way, was a woman who claimed in her survey (the whole audience was surveyed about their sexual lives in order to examine America's lacking sex life and need for frank, open conversations) that she had sex everyday. She looked healthy, relaxed, happy. Her husband was a piledriver. No, that's his job. Seriously.

a thing of beauty and the geek is a joy forever (not so much about class)

Stay with me.

Dear Nielsen Family,
Today was a long day. I walked around the house trying to decide what needs procrastinating and got caught up in Beauty and the Geek, Ashton Kutcher's famous social experiment. I tried, I really did, to hold back my cynicism regarding primetime dating reality shows. But this medium necessitates discussion, cause fucking everybody watches tv way too much. We mindlessly allow someone's ideologies to pander to us, punctuated by fast food and car commercials. Case in point--B and the G. 8 "beauties" were paraded out--a massage therapist, a sorority girl (that was her profession, I guess), the ultimate Hooters girl (she's on the mousepads too, yo), a Playboy centerfold hopeful, a nanny, etc. Then 8 "geeks": robotic engineers, level five dungeon masters, graduate students, physicists, etc. This year there's a twist--a geek chick and a hot dude. This was the best part--all the couples looked over the stairwell as the plot bombshell walked in, up the stairs, slowly. The "beauties" put their hands over their mouths, salivating at the mere thought of a hot dude in the house while the geeks looked on, disgruntled. Lots of reaction shots. Dum dum dummmm....They turned around to face the camera. And here's the dude, wearing a sleeveless shirt, completely douchebag haircut, fake tan, and a look of undeserved accomplishment on his face. I went to go have a cigarette and cuss. Add a montage complete with reaction shots, embraces, tears, slow-motion, and a pathetically asinine soundtrack and you have yourself a hit tv show which millions of normal people tuning in each week.

People like beauty, I get it. It's no surprise that pretty people get more breaks. I suppose it all evens out when you have your Britneys and Anna Nicoles. There's research that shows newborns favor symmetrical faces. Hotties get hired over not-so-hotties. Not a lot of ugly prom queens. The beautiful people are most usually the rich and the powerful as well. It's human nature. But good genes and luck obviously aren't character traits, you know? It doesn't make you a good person, or better than anyone else. I even understand why such shows have to go to extremes, otherwise it'd just be liking watching a tv version of our own lives, and who wants that?

What bothers me is that the CW and everyone in the biz get to impose stereotypes on the masses, and we blindly accept that this person is a geek and therefore smart and this one is pretty and must be stupid (although that does seem to be the case on this show). They're undermining themselves even as they try to negate said stereotypes. So one chick is smart and necessarily nerd? She could get some nasty extensions and wear too much makeup and get a boob job and be a beauty too, right? I can't wait to hear the shit coming out of the male beauty's mouth. Also, why are there 6 blonds, one black girl, and one Mexican? Just what is beauty? Just curious.

You can be lots of things, you know.

Go here for something else.

Thinking outside the idiot box

Has our collective sense of humor gotten more sophisticated in the last few decades? I present to you: Small Wonder vs. Arrested Development:




I have been saying for a while now that daytime television sucks the soul out of people. It's a chicken and egg type question--does being depressed and out of work make horrible shows such as Springer, Maury Povich, Keith Ablow, Cristina's Court, Judge Alex, Divorce Court, etc seem worse, or do horrible shows cause people to be depressed and out of work? It's a shame spiral, really, I might have to just move out or get extended cable or something if I continue to stay at home during the day when I don't have class or work. Or perhaps attending Everest Institute to become a medical assistant in seven short months is the answer. At least then I'd get to wear scrubs, that seems to be a selling point of their commercials. I like to bitch about TV, the messages sent discretely and overtly, the predictability of plot lines, the representation of life. TV is white noise for me, something to have on while doing homework, although I find situational and cartoon comedies comforting. I like Cops and Sex in the City (that's two shows). I dearly miss having Comedy Central and think that shows like the Colbert Report and the Daily Show have a lot of potential to educate the masses. Not MTV. I think Sesame Street is an amazing program still. But I digress.

I think we are overlooking an important resource in assuming that television and other pop culture items have little or no educational value. We are going against the grain. Kids want to talk about movies they've seen, songs they like, shows they watch, but we rarely incorporate common themes or ideas from their natural interest. Granted, TV for the most part sucks. I dig Steven Johnson and his article for suggesting that TV programs such as 24 (which I can't watch since I haven't seen the first season) are cognitively beneficial. His explanation of the Sleeper Curve (the most debased forms of mass diversion--video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms--turn out to be nutritional after all) supports my idea that most of what you think you know is probably wrong. If nothing else, Johnson's prescription to just watch the box for a few hours and think about it will inspire great enthusiasm in students who are increasingly difficult to engaged in classrooms and textbooks. Also, as much as we hate to admit it, television and movies are an extremely influential part of pop culture, our sources of fashion, slang, brand name consciousness, etc.

I really don't dig on reality TV, but Johnson claims the true test of the Sleeper Curve is the junk improving as well as mediocre/good programming. I loathe Fear Factor. I love Being Bobby Brown. It's a crap shoot. In addition to being a vehicle for extensive public humiliation, reality television provides water-cooler chat and camaraderie. Most seem to rely on plying contestants with alcohol or an overabundance of dramatic camera work. I agree with Johnson that being aware of the junk and the non-junk is key if you're going to try to make a case for educational television. I have used some advertising/media literacy/awareness lessons before, both in AISD and in Gardner Betts with a lot of success, this link is probably best for high school, this one's good for littler ones.

Making the case for a hip-hop education is a challenge. Today's hip hop as heard on radio don't often strike a cord with me, maybe because I'm white or too old, whatever. But I do know that the kids, they love the music, and we overlook this in the classroom the same way we do other non-traditional media. H2ED seems like a good organization with a strong support base of teachers, parents, community, etc. Also, it reaches further into the culture than does the traditional white-based public school curriculum. Hip hop music as I've seen it would require a certain amount of discernment, as there are a lot of controversial messages sent in many hip hop videos and songs.

Shihan, poetry slam: