Xander's Dadaist pep talk? [link]

Having taught drama to that age kids for several years, may I suggest something more accessible to them. Buffy is an old show to 14-year-olds. If it is a performing arts school, you might use a famous soliliquy, Like Hamlet's "To be or not to be" and change it around to use your subject matter and your new teacher status in some silly way. Being self-aware and a bit ironic will go over better than being sincere and falling short in any way.

Yeah, my real goal was "something funny." Buffy came to mind mostly because, you know, I like it and sometimes it's really funny. But I'm definitely starting to think that the wit/humor is a) too subtle for the average ninth grader and b) requires more background than I can give them to really be developed.

Oh well. Thanks for the help.

Rewriting "To be" from a math teacher perspective is a fun idea. Our English teacher is going to do a classical ballet piece in which she falls in love with a book.

Actually, I could probably sing some slightly modified version of "Seasons of Love" from Rent that really plays off the whole numbers thing, too.

I'd love to read Pooh, but, yeah, not gonna go over. This is my first chance to impress them a little. Pooh is for six months in, when they like me and want to hear that I love them, which is what Pooh is all about. It's a read-aloud-to-people-you-love book. Right now, being funny or interesting is the goal.

How about Irving Kaplansky's song about pi?

3 1 41 Oh (5) my (9), here's (2) a (6) song (5) to (3) sing (5) about (8,9) pi (7).
Not a sigma or mu but a well-known Greek letter too.
You can have your alphas and the great phi-bates, and omega for a friend,
But that's just what a circle doesn't have--a beginning or an end.
3 1 4 1 5 9 is a ratio we don't define;
Two pi times radii gives circumf'rence you can rely;
If you square the radius times the pi, you will get the circle's space.
Here's a song about pi, fit for a mathematician's embrace.

Scroll down for a random puppet Spike.

Oy.

Rest of the stuff is pretty funny too.

Oh, that's awful. Love the Monty Python Horse Kit, though.

'Wrecked' is bad. But those shots of the floor in the crack den turning into a forest of the most vivid green and then, the beast, appearing and disappearing, dragging a woman's body behind are good. So dark and strange and too good for their surrounds.

Nicholas Brendon is getting good reviews in a play running in Los Angeles. (registration or bugmenot required for LA Times)

It's a play about Salvador Dali's brief stint working at Disney. Dali is played by...Noah Wylie.

It's a play about Salvador Dali's brief stint working at Disney.

Lobster Alice! Huzzah!

(It debuted at the Jungle Theater right when I moved back to the Cities. Actually not a large fan of the play, but glad to see more exposure.)

So, I got home and found a message I my answering machine from a woman who is half a couple I've had the first season of Buffy out to for years but they've never watched, in the hope of converting them (someone tried to convert the husband OUAT, and the episode in question was "Innocence" where he decided the way they dealt with the judge was so stupid vis-a-vis the prophecy for him that he's never given it a chance since), and who I did convert to FIREFLY and FARSCAPE.

The message? "Do you have the first season of ANGEL, because I've been watching it at the gym, because it's a lot better than the alternative watching the middle east bomb the crap out of each other, and I really like it.", or words to that effect. Better a late toaster than never, I guess.