2012: A Year of Firsts

It’s the last day of 2012. Society practically dictates that you take a look back and reflect on what you’ve seen and done throughout the course of the last 365 days (plus one for a leap). For film critics and other fanatics, this usually takes the form of “best of the year” top ten lists. I suppose I could have written one of those. However, in comparison to years past, I’ve hardly seen anything. Instead, I’ve looked wider and deeper at my life to uncover what I’ve accomplished this year for the first time ever. Don’t get too excited, as the following list still leaves me wanting.

1.) A full-time job. I know, I know. At 26, this should have happened to me earlier in life. But remember, I’ve been in school for about 20 cumulative years, and I only ever worked part-time before. Anyway, I’m still getting used to spending 8-hour-long days, five times a week, on my feet (and decidedly not behind a desk). This is just one of the many reasons why I’m not ideally suited to this particular full-time upright position. Side note: I was also an election judge for the first (and probably the last) time ever.

2.) Experience working with kids (no, I never babysat during my teenage years). More specifically, experience working with ESOL students. As you may already know, I think I want to be a public school teacher whose specialty is English for Speakers of Other Languages. For years, I have been working toward achieving this goal. 2012 was not without its setbacks in this regard, but in response to the first one I received, I chose to volunteer in the ESOL classroom. So far, so good. I’m set to continue my work next year.

3.) A movie-centric blog. I created CINE FEEL YEAH in January and redesigned it several times as its content areas quickly expanded. It took up so much of my time that I have all but quit hosting it. Perhaps next year I will return, with a simpler conceptual framework. Either that or I will start all over again, as I am wont to do.

4.) Compulsive TV-watching. Sure, I have always watched TV. But never before have the hours spent watching TV programs outnumbered the hours spent watching movies. Moving back home, where there is premium cable, at the end of last year pretty much sealed the deal. Some of my favorite programs to watch include Raising Hope, The Mindy Project (which I hate-watch, actually), The Neighbors, Modern Family (way over-hyped, but it’s solid entertainment), Nashville, Parks and Recreation (the best comedy on television), Grey’s Anatomy (don’t judge; I hate it as much as you do), Elementary, Rock Center with Brian Williams, Shark Tank (I’ve waxed rhapsodic about this one before), Downton Abbey (before everyone else was hooked!), Girls, True Blood (whose only good season was the first), and Boardwalk Empire, which leads me to the last item on the list…

5.) A crush on Jack Huston. His character on Boardwalk Empire, though a ruthless killer (he trained his sniper rifle on over 60 men during his stint fighting the Great War, which also left his face horribly disfigured, his voice raspy beyond all repair), is the most sympathetic and respectable of the bunch. What can I say? Men in three-piece suits just kill me. I freely admit that my admiration for Huston’s anti-hero has influenced me to see the actor in a special light. I’m not that familiar with his other work, and I suppose that if my crush was more fevered, I’d probably be rushing out to see David Chase’s coming-of-age rock ‘n’ roll story, Not Fade Away. But I’m not.

Here’s to hoping that, starting tomorrow, next year will be filled with even more firsts!

Where Is It? And Who Am I?

Owing to my latent obsessive compulsive disorder (which, I have to say, seems to be in remission these days), I never lose anything. Yes, I am neat and organized. But because I constantly check for, say, my keys, phone, and wallet before I leave any place I visit, I cannot relate to all those people who have misplaced any of these vital things.

Having said all this, I have recently lost something. Yesterday, I brought last Sunday’s Washington Post Style section with me to school, in case I had any down time during which I could read. I remember shoving it in my folder, and I vaguely remember later taking it out once I returned home, before putting the folder away. What I don’t know is where the newspaper is now. It’s not on my desk, in the car, or in my locker at work (which is where I first realized it was missing, because I could have sworn that I brought it with me to peruse during my break). This is no big whoop—at least I know exactly where my keys, phone, and wallet are—but in some ways, its disappearance is earth-shattering. I just might have an identity crisis.

By the way, we still haven’t found Samson’s missing bone. Dad and I just cannot accept the most likely conclusion, that the pooch ate the whole thing.

Wish Fulfillment

I want to come up with a one-liner.

The Mystery of the Missing Bone

As you may recall, Saturday was my dog Samson’s 14th birthday. I decided to celebrate with a little gift-giving. Before work on that day, my brother and I popped into a pet store that hawks healthy, organic, and natural pet foods, toys, and accessories. After much superficial perusing, I decided on a seven-inch bone that would improve his oral hygiene as well as his breath. Vanilla mint.

Though I instructed my brother to bring it home as I went to work for eight hours, everyone waited until I returned to open up the present. Holding it out to Sam, who has never before received a treat in the shape of a bone, I’m pretty certain, he took one whiff of it and looked away. “Take it,” I commanded, and he did—but only after much more goading. He immediately put it down on the floor and looked up at me. We went through this sketch one more time before my dad had the brilliant idea to lead Samson to his bed in the living room, where he dropped the treat, thereby signaling “this one’s for you.” Samson followed and soon took to it like a duck to water. He gnawed and bit and licked for at least an hour, about nine minutes of which I recorded on video. All the while, Dad and I wondered how long it would take for him to finish the bone. He’d hardly made a dent the last time I saw it.

Later that night, I found it wedged between his bed and the wall, covered in his hair. I stripped it of its unnecessary fur and replaced it in its original packaging. Dad said he didn’t want Samson to chew on it through the night. Stunned that I would do such a thing, Sam followed me into the kitchen, where we keep his food and treats, begging me with his puppy dog eyes to return it to him. From that point on, he gave me the cold shoulder. Literally. I’m serious! He turned away from me whenever I spoke to him. The next morning, Dad gave him back the bone. And that’s precisely the last time I glimpsed it. Since yesterday morning, Dad and I have been wondering where it is, absolutely incredulous that he could have polished it off since then. One theory we have is that he’s taken to hiding it from us. This mystery is either destined to remain unsolved, perhaps best remembered as a future a cold case (soon we’ll be asking ourselves who abducted that young dog bone and where did he stash it?), or labeled a murder in the first degree. Samson was, after all, killing it.

I Can Have It All

Since 2008, when my sister and I were living together in Los Angeles, we have exchanged Hanukkah gifts. I remember that that year, she gave me a rainbow-colored cross-body bag (I refuse to call it my purse) that I still use to this day. The strap is wearing down on one end, which means it may be time to replace it soon. That seems like an impossible task.

It’s too emotionally draining to explain why we restarted this gift-giving tradition; there is a fair bit of family controversy involved. Suffice it to say that it’s because we hadn’t received presents for at least a decade beforehand. Neither one of us is religious, so we admittedly use Hanukkah as an excuse to give each other something special. After all, there’s no such thing as Sisters’ Day to complement Mother’s and Father’s Days.

The good news is that I finally reached a decision about what I want for Hanukkah this year. I frustrate my sister to no end because I never know what I want; I’m apparently the hardest person to buy for. At first I thought it was a good thing that I couldn’t identify anything I wanted, but isn’t having no desire also a sign of depression? So, I whittled my choices down to the DVDs of two BBC series: Cranford (starring birthday girl Dame Judi Dench) and Jane Eyre (the one with the incomparable Toby Stephens as Mr. Rochester). Eventually, I decided that I would get more out of Cranford, which I get a craving to watch more often because almost every night I can switch on a channel playing some version of the over-familiar Jane Eyre story, which I love regardless.

But there’s a twist to this story: when I came home from work last night, I saw that my great aunt—the same one I am going to clip coupons for in just a minute—sent me a monetary Hanukkah gift via my dad. Now I can afford to have Jane Eyre, too. Funny how at first, I didn’t want anything, and now I want it all.

Happy Birthday, Sammy!

Today is my dog Samson’s 14th birthday. I just found him lounging on the stairs, and I “sang” “Happy Birthday to You” to the unsuspecting pooch. His incredibly expressive eyes said something like, “What is she on about now? She’s crazier than usual. And she calls that singing?” In addition to the new pet bed we’re getting for him, I plan on buying a special dog treat before I go to work this afternoon.

This photo is about 5 years old, but Samson looks the same. Though, he might have more gray in his beard.

To be honest, we’re not 100% certain that Samson was born December 8, 1998. However, we know that he was about three months old when we brought him home in February 1999. Actually, I should rephrase that. My mother and sister brought him home; I had nothing to do with it. The story goes that they stopped in at a pet store on the way home and couldn’t resist playing with the German Shepherd/Welsh Corgi puppy, the only one left from a litter of four. We weren’t in the market for a new dog; we already had middle-aged adoptees at home. My mother, the perfectly gentle manipulator that she was, probably knew that by phoning my father while he was eating dinner meant that she would get her way, that she would be able to bring the puppy home. When I learned what was going on, I was excited, of course, but I also resented not being party to choosing our new dog. Would I even like him? Is he cute? Wait, how are we going to raise a puppy?! We’ve never had one before!

I don’t remember everything about that first night, except that’s when Samson gained his reputation for being a genius. Although he shat three times—always under my desk, mind you—he became housebroken on his first night in our house. Having three older dogs to look up to, to model his behavior after, he must have realized early on—but not early enough!—that barking to go outside of the house will trigger one of us humans to open the door, thereby allowing you to relieve yourself in the most appropriate venue. Samson has done other things throughout the years that have earned him the highest respect and admiration from all of us. One time, my chronically unwell mother told him to retrieve my brother in the middle of the night, and he did.

But there are also some things Samson has done that have made us less proud, such as when he escaped from the house with Gigi, our resident trouble-maker, and broke a pet bunny rabbit out of its cage, which was situated outside a neighbor’s house. Together, our dogs proceeded to kill the innocent animal. That was more than ten years ago. Nowadays, my dad and I like to say that he’s the best dog that ever lived, despite what he did during his Terrible Twos (we spend the most time with Sam, taking him for long walks wherein all the dogs in the neighborhood bark at him, but their intimidating cries never seem to faze him). I used to feel guilty for favoring Samson over all the others, who have since passed away. Now, I just think, I am so lucky to have him in my life. He’s a dear friend, one who accepts me for who I am and doesn’t mind it so much when I playfully pull his tail.

Time to Shut Down?

I’m seriously thinking of taking off the badge that identifies me as part of WordPress’s “Post A Day” challenge. I feel as if I haven’t written anything of substance for days. (Today, I had wanted to write about the time I spent in the ESOL classroom yesterday, but a video chat with my sister on the West Coast ran too long.) With my new full-time job, I barely have the time and energy to write the one-liners I post, usually about being exhausted or having too much dessert. Worse, I’m afraid that on paper—I mean, in digital ink—my life doesn’t come across as very exciting or frankly very interesting. Thus, while twiddling my thumbs at work today during one of the slowest moments in the store, the thought crossed my mind of shutting down or at least putting on hiatus The Rumination Refinery. I honestly don’t know what to do.

It’s On!

I am totally overdoing dessert right now. I already regret doing so, but I can’t… help… myself.

You Can’t Stop Progress

When my dad dropped me off at school yesterday, he wondered aloud whether or not I knew the number of days I have so far volunteered in the ESOL classroom. Why, yes, Dad, I do: Tuesday constituted my 15th visit. Consistent with the recent trend, yesterday was a lot of fun. For the most part, I felt productive, useful. I also noticed how certain lesson plans allow for more probable student learning improvements while others, I predict, will not. (For the record, I use Bill Heslop’s losing campaign slogan in Muriel’s Wedding, “You Can’t Stop Progress,” in a slight, ironic sense.)

The county’s (or is it the state’s?) curriculum for ESOL level 1 stipulates that the students know certain verbs in the present and past tenses by the end of the school year. With time running out this semester, the teacher instituted a new regime yesterday to quicken this learning process: every week, the students will learn ten verbs and take a quiz each Friday that gauges their comprehension of these verbs as well as all the ones that have come before in weeks prior. She prepared three different kinds of the same packet: one with French translations of the verbs, another with Spanish ones, and yet another with blank spaces for students whose native languages are neither French nor Spanish; she invited them to use a bilingual dictionary to fill in these spaces. Crucially, there is a column on their verb chart packet where they are meant to write a sentence using each verb in the past tense.

From what I could tell, the students hadn’t yet learned how to form the simple past tense let alone what it means. Instead of teaching this lesson, she quickly reviewed how the verb to be has two forms, was and were, depending on the subject. Then she instructed them to write sentences for the first ten entries on the alphabetical list. This lesson structure poses many challenges, I think. First, most of the verbs on the chart are irregular in the past tense, such as become (became), blow (blew), and catch (caught). Drawing on my own experiences learning a foreign language, I was surprised that she would teach them irregular verbs before even demonstrating how to conjugate regular verbs, like ask (asked), walk (walked), and watch (watched)—that is, by adding -ed to the stem. Second, working from an alphabetical list means that the students aren’t learning the words in context. As such, many students whose work I supervised and corrected didn’t understand how to use words like blew and caught. Since she hadn’t taught them, relying too heavily on direct translation, I’m hardly surprised many didn’t know what the words evensignify. It will be interesting to see how this new program unfolds in the coming weeks. Some students were quick to get it (one impressed me with her offering of The wind blew very hard yesterday), while others struggled to put a sentence together at all. I’m not sure they’ve ever been explicitly told what the different parts of speech are and how they relate to one another. Otherwise, I think they’d understand that they need only one verb per phrase/sentence (remember, they’re writing simply at level 1). For I corrected many who’d written something along the lines of My aunt was became an American citizen last year.

Toward the end of the period, we reviewed the names of places around town (bank, post office, and laundromat to name but a few) because there’s a new class project in the works: each student signed up to draw one of them on a letter-size piece of paper. We will then collect the drawings and lay them out on a street map strewn across the floor. I like this lesson plan because it is creative and will likely engage them in the upcoming unit’s material: asking for and giving directions around town. Plus, I like the idea of strengthening their visual and spatial reasoning skills.

Before I move on to talk about a new group I worked with during period 3’s basic reading class for ESOL students, I’d like to report that the level 1 teacher revealed a new rule she’s instituting after the class returns from winter break. Starting January 2, the students must drop 5 cents in a collection jar every time they are caught speaking in their native tongue rather than in English. Eventually, we will donate the money to an agreed-upon charity. The only exceptions are when a student explains a part of the lesson in their language to someone who doesn’t understand it in English. I look forward to seeing how well they adapt to the new law.

For a change of pace, I worked with a different reading group during period 3, one composed of the five weakest students in the class. I’d worked with two of them before, many weeks or months ago, and I was both surprised and delighted that I didn’t encounter any stubbornness from either one. In fact, all five of the students were engaged in the lesson, and they all worked very hard. We read the first chapter (or four illustrated pages) of a story about a Japanese boy who moves to New York with his family. Each sentence is accompanied by a demonstrative image. After reading it once as a big group, I checked for comprehension, asking them for the antonym (or “opposite”) of wide and explained that Jackson Heights, the protagonist’s new neighborhood is also difficult for him to pronounce, as evidenced in a scene that phonetically spells out the name in his Japanese accent. It’s a nice touch. The teacher was more concerned about the students’ understanding the content of the story rather than their proper use of grammar when answering a worksheet’s questions about the plot. This was a pretty effective lesson, I have to say. The students seemed to enjoy it, probably because it didn’t go way beyond their abilities. However, I could tell that one student was really struggling, and I have resolved to help him more tomorrow. At the teacher’s request, I’d paid more individualized attention to one of his classmates, the boy who in the past resented having to work with me because he couldn’t understand me and wanted me to speak to him in French. Incidentally, he is the worst student in ESOL level 1, and he most likely has a learning disability that has heretofore never been addressed. But he did well yesterday.

Switching gears, I mainly observed the reading class for special education students, but I interacted with a greater variety of pupils than I ever expected to. One, the friendliest of the bunch, talked my ear off almost the entire period. At one point, a classmate bluntly asked her why her voice is so high. Appalled at the other girl’s rudeness, the teacher reprimanded her and quickly explained that people are born with different pitches. Meanwhile, I whispered to my companion that she should just ignore the… um… bitch (I didn’t use that word, of course). Earlier, I’d successfully engaged the rude girl in an exchange about the social studies homework she was finishing up when I arrived. She even let me look at what she simply described as “Unit 3” when I asked what it was about. Ouch. I glanced at her paper, which was in fact about imperialism, and was perplexed as to why she wrote “national security” and “humanitarian [issues]” as reasons for imperialism. Her response to my question? “That’s what the teacher told us to put down.” I didn’t want to push it, believing that the rude girl wouldn’t listen to my lecture anyway, but I couldn’t help but think, Just what is her teacher teaching her?!

Unexpectedly, a fire alarm rang out for one of the school’s monthly tests. I’d been dreading such an occurrence since the beginning of my volunteership (they’re major time suckages), but if it was going to happen, I am glad it did during period 4, my least favorite hour. It managed to stem some of the awkwardness I routinely feel in that room. Have I told you that I have resolved not to return to it in the spring semester?

Finally, I stayed for tutoring during the open lunch period. The ESOL students slowly trickled into the room, either seeking to take missed or failed tests or to have one of the American students help them with their homework or review English language lessons. Just when I thought I wouldn’t have anyone to work with, I wound up helping two students. The first was preoccupied with some minor errors she thought that she had made on Friday’s test about clothing. Since the teacher hadn’t yet graded her exam, she allowed the student to look it over with me, telling me which changes she would make if she could (she couldn’t permanently make them). I scanned her entire test, assuring her that aside from those few small mistakes she’d learned that she’d made after the fact, she had an “A” test on her hands. She left happy, relieved, and grateful for my feedback. Then I turned my attention to the boy whom I’d had problems with in the past, the same one with whom I worked during period 3. At first he was impatient that I started working with the other student while he stepped out to buy an apple; his teacher suggested he work with someone else. But he refused. “You want to work with me?” I asked to clarify. “Yes.” I’m not sure if he could tell or not, but I was stunned, flattered, and absolutely fuckin’ chuffed!

Like Father, Like Son

If I’m not mistaken, the trailer for Roman Coppola’s follow-up to 2001’s quirky sci-fi romance CQ, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, dropped just yesterday. The film, scheduled to be released on my sister’s birthday in February, stars Charlie Sheen—in a bad wig, it has to be said—as a heartbroken man who goes on crazy adventures with friends and strangers (is Bill Murray playing John Wayne or Rooster Cogburn?). Anyway, according to the Internet Movie Database, Swan’s a graphic designer, but he looks like a 70s porn king to me, which is a role I can more easily see Sheen playing. He did, after all, come close with Rated X.

As with most of my astute—and by that I mean “trivial”—observations, the one I am going to tell you about now occurred to me with water running in the background. While washing my cereal bowl and spoon just a few moments ago (yes, I let it go unwashed from 6 am until now and thereby let the residue from my quick, cold breakfast meal calcify along the walls of the bowl over the course of a day), I realized that perhaps it’s not so strange that Charlie Sheen, now a caustic hack/rabble-rouser of an actor, should appear in a (R.) Coppola film. For there’s a family connection: Roman’s papa Francis memorably directed Charlie’s dad, Martin Sheen, in Apocalypse Now. Perhaps the famous offspring have known each other for years; they may have even grown up together. Perhaps the new film was shot before Sheen went crazy in public… for the sixteenth time. Regardless, it remains an open question whether or not his unstable persona will promote or damage the film upon its release.

If we further draw out the family connection, then we must remember that Charlie played a version of himself in Being John Malkovich, which was directed by Roman’s then-brother-in-law Spike Jonze. Small world? I think not. So there you have it. I think I figured out the reason why Sheen is in this “quirky” (W.) Anderson-lite picture.