Intrepid Girl Reporter

In which we take a break from our regularly scheduled programming of constant complaining about all the stress in my life and examine a few things that I really, really love. It’s a special Super Size version of IGR Recommends.

When we were in Japan, I discovered a heretofore unknown fact about Soccer: given any iteration of the game “Would You Rather,” wherein one option is anything in the world and the other option involves Billy Crystal, she will always choose the one featuring Billy Crystal. This is a rule I like to think of as “Soccer’s Law.” At first I thought she was crazy. I’m not going to say that I suddenly had some sort of epiphany about my feelings towards Billy Crystal - they still remain in the indifferent-to-occasionally-annoying range - but I do, now, understand where she’s coming from.

I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* with some of the Jeju crew and Co-Teacher D, and I was trying to explain to CTD how adorable I find Shia LaBeouf and why. As it happens, I had also been discussing my love of the show “Cupid” with Oregon and Arkansas earlier, which is another relatively obscure thing about which I am passionate. I’ve also been listening to more Korean psychedelia lately. These three seemingly unrelated occurrences helped me to realize that I, too, have a lot of things I don’t necessarily think are the best in the world, but, given the option, will always choose for whatever reason. These strange little obsessions are itemized for the first time here.

Note: the following list doesn’t include obvious concepts like “favorite artist,” and it’s not comprehensive. Also, most of these do not reflect very well on me.

Note 2: if you have known me for longer than six months, you have probably heard me talk about at least one of these.

Note 3: My sister shares a lot of these. I’m not sure why.

1. “Sesame Street”

I love “Sesame Street.” I have always loved “Sesame Street,” and I probably always will. It still makes me laugh, and not in the “oh that’s so cute way,” more in the “Grover why did you bring out a grapefruit on a hot dog bun” kind of way. I love that it doesn’t talk down to kids, that it features characters who aren’t always sugary sweet to each other, that it takes on Hemingway and Hitchcock. If I create something with as wide an impact - if I even created something nearly as entertaining - I will be very, very proud.

Arrivederci, frog.

2. Shia LaBeouf

When I was in high school, I used to watch “Even Stevens” with my sister specifically for the purpose of seeing Shia LaBeouf. If “Even Stevens” was interrupted by “Lizzie McGuire,” I would complain loudly until that Hilary Duff monstrosity had ended and “Even Stevens” was back on again.

I totally want to hang out with him. I think he is absolutely adorable. I thought so when I thought he was like six years younger than me and he seemed to be the kind of kid I would have loved if he were my age, and I think so now that I realize that he is, in fact, my age. I like the fact that he broke into the movie business in an unconventional way and that he chooses a wide variety of movies. Also, he seems to have trouble with women, which if you know me at ALL you will realize that this, to me, makes him even more endearing. I would date him as well as hang out with him. Just saying.

3. Korean psychedelia/folk

I bought an album by Shin Jung Hyeon yesterday and it’s really good. I also want to listen to more Kim Jung Mi. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this stuff before. Don’t get me wrong, I still like Big Bang okay, but this is a total scene that apparently disappeared and was replaced by NOTHING.

4. My Co-Teacher, ACT

ACT is the most awesome woman on the planet. She hugs me and listens to me rant about things she can’t do anything about. Right now she is in Seoul protesting the Lee Myung Bak administration. I asked her what they were going to do in the demonstration and she said, “Shouting.”

5. KoreanAir

Consistently nice, always helpful, everyone speaks English.

6. Jeremy Piven

No one ever knows who Jeremy Piven is. Which is too bad, because I love Jeremy Piven. I have loved him ever since I watched “Ellen” with my mother when I was in elementary school. I loved him in “Cupid” (see below), and I love him in “Entourage.” (Note: this is a key distinction between the items on this list and actual normal things I find attractive. Adrian Grenier is much, much more attractive than Jeremy Piven. I realize this. I find Adrian Grenier incredibly beautiful. But I would not necessarily go see a terrible movie featuring Adrian Grenier. I would do this for Jeremy Piven.) I think that I associate him in part with this sort of nostalgia for the mid-90s, when I was first starting to imagine myself as something more than what I was then, and the media I consumed featured adults living these lives that were possibilities for me. Also, I watched these things with my parents, and that was fun.

7. “Cupid”

“Cupid” was canceled prematurely. “Cupid” is one of the cutest shows ever, and I mean that in the most positive possible way. Jeremy Piven played this guy who was convinced he was Cupid, and Paula Marshall played this psychiatrist who was convinced he wasn’t and that love was all about science, and they wrestled with it as he tried to hook up every single person in the city, and I was twelve and really wanted to fall in love. Theme song by the Pretenders, which added to the awesome, as I also wanted to be tough like Chrissie Hynde.

8. My father’s boss and his wife

They ply us with delicious baked goods and have really adorable Nova Scotian accents. They are older and, we are sure, make wonderful grandparents. Cute dogs round out the package.

9. GS25

10. The book Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Highly recommended. Totally different from the movie, as previously discussed.

11. Blessid Union of Souls

Again from the mid-90s. Lyrically terrible and incredibly catchy.

12. Men’s style magazines

Esquire and Details feature authors I actually like reading outside of magazines (ex. Chuck Klosterman, Nick Hornby). They also write as though they are speaking to an audience older than tenth grade. While I’m not a fan of the way the dating articles occasionally veer into misogyny, they are far more entertaining than their female counterparts. The only comparable women’s mag would probably be Jane, but Jane was a) a little full of itself, b) targeted towards women who wanted to make it known that they read Jane, and c) halted sometime last year, which means I can no longer subscribe.

13. Reusing and making stuff

My father is a pack rat. So am I. He and my mother are also both bargain hunters, a trait I have inherited. Also, I have always liked making things, as my mother can attest, when she used to take me to the craft store as a treat. As a result, my rooms wherever I live are always cluttered with projects in process.

14. Social marketing

I did my thesis on this. I love good marketing. I’d rather be convinced than preached at.

15. Thomas Haden Church

There was a summer when I was moving and everything I owned was in a box, which meant that the only thing I had available as entertainment was USAm, the USA network’s feeble attempt to recycle old programming for the unemployed. I got really into “Ned and Stacey.”

Look at those crazy antics!

I actually think that “Ned and Stacey” was a good show for what it was - the writing may not have been top-notch, but Debra Messing is kind of endearing. More importantly, Thomas Haden Church is both full of himself and completely unashamed of being crazy, which seems to be the role he fits in the best. (Also, I’m a fan of mid-90s sitcoms that weren’t very good. Don’t even ask me about Caroline in the City.)

My sister understands this, as she watched a lot of Nick at Nite during this time and went through a similar phase with “Wings.” We also both enjoyed “Sideways.” Thomas Haden Church seems to be crazy in the same way we are, which is to say that I suspect that if we played “Would You Rather” with him long enough, we would find his Billy Crystal, so to speak. And isn’t someone we can play such games with what we all want, in the end?

*SPOILER: I briefly entertained the notion that the UFO was there, and looked incredibly cliche, as a sort of tribute to these sci-fi movies of the time period when IJ is set, but Oregon disagrees with me here, and I think she might be right. It’s difficult for me to say, anyway, because I’ve never seen the rest of the movies (don’t start on me). Also, CTE is lots of fun.

I spent less than twenty-four hours in Seoul this weekend, tracing the path of our future MSYDP superstars and ensuring that they will have enough speakers to keep them entertained and enough jjajangmyun (ew) to keep them fed. It’s exhilarating now that all of this is starting to coalesce, that we’ll be able to take these kids and let them dream about a better world together. A couple of our friends/allies at the Embassy were gracious enough to spend their Sunday out in the city in the rain with us, helping us make sure that everything was going according to plan, and they even talked a little bit about the possibilities for next year. I’m not even sure if I’m prepared to hope for that possibility yet.

On the subject of possibility, though, here’s an editorial from the NYT that offers some rather sober food for thought, if nothing terribly new:

The Hillary Lesson

I think she’s quite right in asserting that

…voting for Clinton does not make a person sexist - there are other reasons to reject her.

The subject of sexism and Ms. Clinton, of course, isn’t anything that hasn’t been covered before, and the statistics the author cites are hardly surprising. Still, the fact that this article needs to be written at all, that there are still statistics to cite, is indicative of the issues that the girls of MSYDP, at least, will someday face. In one of the few advantages that my school has to offer, they had a gender studies program last year for the students - one that I would ordinarily have dismissed as repetitive, old news, perhaps replacing material of actual substance. But now I’m not so sure. Aside from the fact that a few of the boys at my school have obviously not learned to respect women (or maybe people, for that matter), most of my students seem reasonably aware of the actual, as opposed to societal, limitations placed upon them. But Jeju, with something like 65% of its women involved in the workforce, still outpaces the other provinces here by a good deal. And those women are still cleaning and cooking in addition to teachering and lawyering. Sometimes the girl power message feels repetitive, but I suppose we’re the first real generation to have it hammered into our heads repeatedly, and whether or not it works to change those numbers - and to create candidates who aren’t hated for their gender, as opposed to their tactics - remains to be seen.

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Aside from the article, there are a few other things I’m sharing here. The first is this poem, which I found in a rather roundabout way. I’ve only read one other William Logan poem, and it also used meter and rhyme in a manner that most of the modern poets I’ve read seem to eschew. Guess I should have taken that class on Poetic Forms in college.

For an Old Girlfriend, Long Dead

Lying on that blanket, nights on the seventh green—
in the dry air the faint scent of gasoline,

nothing above us but the ragged moon,
nothing between but a whispered soon…

Well, such was romance in the seventies.
Watergate and Cambodia, the public lies,

made our love seem, somehow, more true.
Of the few things I wanted then, I needed you.

I remember our last arguments, my angry calls,
then the long silence, those northern falls

we drifted toward our newly manufactured lives.
Does anything else of us survive?

That day in Paris, perhaps, when you swore
our crummy hotel was all you were looking for—

each cobbled Paris street, each dry baguette,
even the worthless sous nothing you’d forget.

Outside, a block away, the endless Seine
flowed roughly, then brightly, then…

Then nothing. Nothing later went quite that far.
I remember that Spring. Those breasts. That car.

- William Logan

I’m also going to plug the newest Beirut album, The Flying Cup Club, which isn’t actually new at all, but is if you’re me and just got around to listening to it:

The Flying Club Cup

These are all in .m4a format, but you should probably already have iTunes anyway, and if you don’t, well, not being able to listen to this album is your punishment.

I probably like it mostly because I was listening to it today when it was nasty and rainy out, just like part of the reason I like the Police’s “Spirits in the Material World” is because I first heard it when I had a tiny part in a perfectly awful play we did at My College called “The Beloved Community,” and while the play itself wasn’t worth much, I liked contemplating the ideas of community and how much it’s worth - how beloved it should be. If you will. It gave me this weird feeling of naivete and optimism that, for unknown reasons, I associate with the late 80s and early 90s, probably because that was when I was first contemplating these ideas. It was also the first time I had heard the Police, although certainly not the last time, as I was also listening to that song fairly recently. And so will you, because it’s right here.

The Police - Spirits in the Material World

As a person who has never let actual constraints affect her imaginative powers, I’m often disappointed when I finally see pictures of the people I’ve imagined. Usually this applies to artists, as I don’t have a lot of other occasions to sit around and contemplate what people I don’t know look like. I love Mirah, for example, and Carla Bruni, but for whatever reason the image I had of them in my head simply doesn’t jive with what actually exists. Which isn’t to criticize them, of course; one can only change the way one looks to a certain extent, and the fact that Ms. Bruni isn’t exactly as ethereal and sad-looking as I might have thought doesn’t really mean that what she creates is any less valid. But still, I’m not going to deny a little bit of a letdown.

Perversely, however, Ira Glass is exactly as attractive as I pictured - maybe even a little bit more so - and that’s rather disappointing, too.

Figure 1: It’s a montage. (Or as close as I can get with WordPress.)

Part of me hates the fact that I love This American Life, the show so infamously described by one Summer Roberts as

…that show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are. Gawd.

There are times when I think the show would be perfect if it could just dump Jack Hitt and Sarah Vowell, two of the biggest perpetrators of the patronizing, ludicrously biased, unable-to-see-past-its-own-navel tone to which TAL sometimes falls victim. (Also, I hate hate HATE Sarah Vowell’s voice.) And then, of course, there are other times when it messes up all on its own.

Nonetheless, I love stories, and I love the idea of telling stories, and I respect the fact that - to a certain degree - the show tries to capture a wide range of stories in America. And I like the show, in general, period. It makes me laugh, and it’s interesting.

Still, though, it’s so cliche to be in love with Ira Glass. Couldn’t I have found someone less sort of isolated? Someone less likely to fall victim to all the accusations leveled at this demographic?

What I really want, I think, is to not want this. Because he does look exactly as I imagined, and I still like him.

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I have a lot of quality student material to share and a lot to say about Japan, the reason for my extended hiatus, but not right now, which means probably never. Keep your fingers crossed if you like.

The music in Holly’s today is unusually bad. However, one of the girls watched my backpack while I went to the post office.

I meant to share these earlier:

Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race (NYTimes)

Mixed Messenger (NYTimes) 

I don’t think these articles say anything particularly new about race. And it would be disingenuous for me to say that I’ve ever truly suffered due to my ethnic background. I feel, quite honestly, that it’s been something from which I’ve benefited, almost like an advantage others might not have.

But yes, there are identity issues. Everyone has them; I, and others like me, might have a few more than the average bear. What I do like about these pieces is that they call attention to the fact that our notions of race are changing. I don’t fit into most categories, and neither will my children, and neither will theirs. Our spectrum, our heritage will continue to grow. The question is whether or not America, outside these elite circles where such a thing is a mark of distinction, can keep the same pace.

Today’s featured thing is idealist, probably because it is my last best hope for job finding. Idealist also sponsored the COOL Conference where one of my former roommates and I presented, back in 2005, and they treated us well. I support.

Also, I just realized that what I am doing is essentially a personalized version of McSweeney’s Recommends (although nowhere near as funny and interesting), so now I will be referring to this as IGR Recommends. See tag changes, etc. (Also, I am obviously recommending McSweeney’s Recommends, too.)

The Joni Mitchell link is working now. I still haven’t put up the fixed lesson plan links, sorry. Today I went to a TESL conference that was well-intentioned but really, really boring - not that teaching itself isn’t an interesting thing to discuss, but, well, this was really dull. During one lecture I started writing a letter to my friend Captain Badass at home (give me a shout if you read this still, CB) and during two others I fell asleep.

The workshop proved worth it, however, in that I got quality time with Mrs. Yoo, who teaches all my first grade girls’ classes and who is generally really interesting and sweet. She filled me in on a lot of my students’ backgrounds and performance in other classes, which turned out to be really enlightening and possibly useful; 1A, for instance, is the lowest-performing first grade girls’ class, which I would never have guessed based on their work with me. Also, apparently my best Pop-Song girl will not be able to sing in a concert, should we have one, because she will be having surgery for - and I am not making this up - a brain tumor. GOOD GOD. I would like something good to happen to one of my students, once.

When bad news is delivered in a second language it seems to be divested of its weight; when I was in Cambodia with My College, for instance, one of my most distinct memories is of our tour guides:

TOUR GUIDE Here in the countryside there are many temples. Over there you can see (insert temple), which was built by (insert Khmer king). Next to that is the field where my brother was shot by the Khmer Rouge, and over there you can see a gate to another temple. Soon we will have lunch…

STUDENTS (………)

Exchanges like that, you should understand, were pretty much par for the course. We had two tour guides like that, and they said stuff like that ALL THE TIME, always without any evident sense of irony. There’s a lot of that here too, and I don’t know if we just have a dramatic culture in America or if something is being lost.

As a result of the workshop I skipped pottery and therefore should have gotten a lot more done than I have. Here’s a brief list in order to make myself feel better:

- sort of figured out budget software

- wrote rec letter for former professor

- half-finished tomorrow’s lesson

What have I been doing?

”The first one I ever had I was doing a game in New Orleans,” Mr. Madden said. ”The P.R. guy for the Saints brought me one. And he brought it to the booth. It smelled and looked so good. I didn’t have any plates or silverware or anything, and I just started eating it with my hands.”

“Kansas City Pitmaster Peter ‘Pookie’ Thornhill was credited in 2006 with the invention of the turdbutt.“

The first of what is likely to be many posts today. God bless us, every one.