Thursday, September 22, 2005

Currently Listening Don't Look Now By Way Out West anything but you see related never busy enough to post up concert news: bridge school this year? lineup: Crosby Stills, Nash & Young Dave Matthews (Solo, Sunday only) Norah Jones Emmylou Harris Jerry Lee Lewis Good Charlotte Bright Eyes Los Lobos and Special Guests oct 29/30 not as hot a lineup as years past, but as always, special guests make up for it, TBA. would love to catch norah again, though.

I'm still here. Just so incredibly busy. It's my first free moment to blog but it's past midnight and I need to get up at six to student teach my first graders. It'll be day two for me, day one was incredibly interesting and nerve-wracking. That coupled with my coordinating teacher being seven plus months pregnant. I don't want to easily annoy her with such obvious questions that any 'ol student teacher would naively ask. Ahhh, hopefully I'll have better stories to write about sometime -

some quick bay area shows to jot down

vienna teng performs 9.24 in fremont, california for a hurricane katrina benefit. details at her site.

asian comedy night 10.8 in the montgomery theater, downtown san jose with dat phan amongst others.

download festival 10.8 - same day as above, at the shoreline amphitheater - the killers, the doves, modest mouse, and my favorite band that everyone loves, the arcade fire.

bridge school benefit 10.29-30 - acts TBA , but just know that it'll be amazing. it always is.

depeche mode 11.18 hp pavilion, san jose - DM. new album. tour. 'nuff said.

wish me luck.

I can't believe I'm using a Rolling Stone review to quote but this drew a smile on my face earlier:

With strings, horns, backward sound effects, an atypically straightforward vocal and a naggingly catchy keyboard hook that another band could make millions with, "Hoppipolla" offers itself as the autumn's feel-good anthem. Radio won't get it, but the iPods will understand.

I posted this song earlier, here it is again.

Wow, a week between posts, I hope this doesn't permeate into something permanent. I just never, and I'll blame myself, thought that this program I'm in would eat away at so much of my time. It's definitely the most challenging experience I've ever been in. It's like I'm going to two entirely separate schools even though it's one program. Half of the time, I'm learning practicum and how to actually properly teach. Granted, that's what I expected. The other half is spent on far off theory meant to propel us future teachers as becoming radicals who will make changes from within the system to move classroom curriculum into a post modernistic society. Unfortunately, this means that we're always in a constant liminal state pretty much all the time. Confused, befuddled, stuff I thought I was done with in undergrad work. Oh well. The only consolation is that since I went through so much social theory as an undergrad, I seem to have a better grip of the text than the others. They (my cohort), though, have so much more applied experience either as afterschool teachers, substitute teachers, or overseas teachers, that it's intimidating. I guess there's got to be a trade-off somewhere.

Oops, I think I gone and complained. Here's what's really of news if that matters-

*I'm student teaching this semester a class of first graders starting on Thursday. First graders scare the begeezes out of me, but I've been placed at a school I wanted where there are no bells and teachers are called by their first names. Did you hear that? Good morning, Johnny!

*I sneaked in an hour of Oasis's concert tonight. Wow. Remember them? Wonderwall? Don't Look Back in Anger? Champagne Supernova (where were you while we were getting high)? Live Forever? I even brought a guitar and sung part of Live Forever in a Freshman college class once to impress a girl. It didn't work.

*Oh, and the band was pretty static. Fun seeing Liam snarl at the mike in real life for once, though.

*I can't believe that I didn't post about Six Feet Under's series finale. It was brutal. What a great fifth season. Television doesn't get much more honest and well written. Name me another show that tackles head-on issues without wincing as this show. The final song to end the show was beautiful too. It's a song called Breath Me by Sia. You can't find the album in the States, but you can hear the song here after I spent too long looking for it. Or you can buy the soundtrack, full of great songs by the Arcade Fire, Coldplay, Radiohead, Nina Simone, Interpol, and more I can't think of.

*Sigur Ros and David Gray albums out Tuesday.

*Nickel Creek's on the cover of current month's issue of No Depression, and it's in-depth to say the least! For the uninitiated, it gives the best description on who they are, how they came to be, and anything else you would ever want to know. For the rest of us, themes that have shaped their lives and how it has translated to their music are bountiful in this article. Religion, relationships, literature are just a few. Pick it up at your neighborhood Borders.

Currently Listening The Forgotten Arm By Aimee Mann see related

This was featured on Matt Good's site, but I found it interesting enough to repeat it here for thought and discussion. It was printed in the NY Times Sunday, written by Jason DeParle-

“The white people got out. Most of them, anyway. If television and newspaper images can be deemed a statistical sample, it was mostly black people who were left behind. Poor black people, growing more hungry, sick and frightened by the hour as faraway officials counseled patience and warned that rescues take time.

What a shocked world saw exposed in New Orleans last week wasn’t just a broken levee. It was a cleavage of race and class, at once familiar and startlingly new, laid bare in a setting where they suddenly amounted to matters of life and death. Hydrology joined sociology throughout the story line, from the settling of the flood-prone city, where well-to-do white people lived on the high ground, to its frantic abandonment.

The pictures of the suffering vied with reports of marauding, of gunshots fired at rescue vehicles and armed bands taking over the streets. The city of quaint eccentricity - of King Cakes, Mardi Gras beads and nice neighbors named Tookie - had taken a Conradian turn.

In the middle of the delayed rescue, the New Orleans mayor, C.Ray Nagin, a local boy made good from a poor, black ward, burst into tears of frustration as he denounced slow moving federal officials and called for martial law.

Even people who had spent a lifetime studying race and class found themselves slack-jawed.”

More importantly, the events that took place in the past week represent a class issue, but that of course is related towards a race issue (or will be portrayed at least) since the minorities, in this case black people, are the ones who typically represent the low end of the class heirarchy. What really peaks my interest for better or worse will come when in three months (or however long it takes) refugees are relocated back to New Orleans and surrounding areas. How will thousands of people start over again with nothing in an area that will have as much opportunities as the worst cities in the country? What could this lead to? Guess I'll nervously wait and see.

Part of my CRA cohort, otherwise known as my support group and fellow victims for the next few months.


L-R (Me, friend who's not in the program, Liz, Robyn, Jill, Jill's Sister, Melissa)

I love this song.

Sigur Ros - Hoppipolla

It's a bit celebratory. It's uplifting. It's helping me get by with school. And if you're wondering what language they're singing, it's their own made up language. It's a Sigur Ros thing.

Seriously, I don't know what I got myself into with this master's program. So far I'm spending every available minute either a. reading or b. writing. I've never been the type of individual who has to rely on finishing up something on a deadline literally just before it. But now I have to be that person.

Looks like a lot of drinking to be had these weekends.

But you know what. Consider ourselves lucky, I can't imagine and fathom what is going on in and around New Orleans. All the best to them. An area with so much history (and especially music), it's hard to imagine the possibility that it could be lost forever.