Building Bears
So two of the boys on the Forensics team decided they needed to bring their girlfriends back something from Chicago. Instead of asking one of the girls on the team what would be an appropriate gift, they thought that I would know what was best. They thought it would be good if they bought gifts from a souvenir shop because it was called “Feelings.” It didn’t matter that there was just junk in the shop.
I convinced the boys to wait and find something more authentic when we went to Navy Pier later that evening. Upon our arrival at NP, the perfect gift opportunity presented itself: Build a Bear. I mean, what self-respecting teenage girly-girl wouldn’t want a bear that her boyfriend made her? So we drag the two boys to the Build a Bear Store.
Unfortunately, the older of the two guys has been told by one of the girls on the team, that maybe his girlfriend wouldn’t like a bear. Apparently, she’s not a real girly-girl, so the two of them go to look for her a piece of jewelry or something. That leaves the other 12 of us to keep the guy, who we’ll call TJ, in the store so that he can build his girlfriend a bear.
I’d never seen anybody build a bear before, but it was a fascinating process. TJ first had to select the outer shell for the bear he wanted, the whole time muttering how emasculating the entire process was. He then took the raggedy shell to an attendant whose job it was to stuff the bear. The attendant loo
ked at TJ, asked “hard or soft?” and we all burst into laughter. TJ looked even more humiliated, now muttering about how gay the entire process was. Well, it only got “gayer” because after the bear was stuffed, they gave TJ a heart, which he had to kiss before the bear would “accept it.” I’ve never seen someone turn as red as this teen did when he stared at the heart, debating whether to kiss it or not. Instead of kissing it, he almost bolted out of the store, but thankfully, one of the group blocked his path. Finally, after much hesitation, TJ kissed the bear’s heart and shoved it into its stuffing.
Then came what I think might be the most humiliating part. He had to hold the bear up and turn around in a circle. No explanation was ever given to the reason for this. I think the Build a Bear people probably know that by this time in the process, they’ve got you so beat down, that they could ask you to roll over and whine like a bear and you would, cause TJ sure did. This kid, who two years ago objected to the idea of pretending to dance in a duo, held a stuffed bear over his head and twirled around in the middle of a store in Chicago. Mother Earth smiled.
After twirling around, he was then instructed to go give the bear an air bath. For some reason, here, TJ tried to put up some resistance. Why, I’m not sure, but this portion of the process seemed excessively unreasonable to him. This is actually the part in the procedure that I thought made the most sense, but that’s just me I guess. I wouldn’t want lint and dust covering the bear I just kissed and held up as an offering to the bear gods of Olympus. So I had to intervene and help TJ scrub down the bear.
We ensured the bear was clean and TJ proceeded to put all the bear’s information into the computer so that he could generate a birth certificate for the bear. There ended up being a technical problem with the name, so he had to reprint the certificate a couple of times, but as of Sunday, May 28, 2006, the bear has been born.
And I do agree with TJ, his girlfriend better be impressed. Cause otherwise, he needs to dump her.
Forensics Finale
So I think I took my final Forensics trip this past weekend. I flew to Chicago to meet the students for the National Catholic Forensics League Tournament.
The tournament was very poorly run to the point of having to ship the Extempers off to the middle of nowhere Chicago. They also made judges judge the same thing all day long on the first day of prelims, so I got on the bus with the Extempers, trudged over the river and through the ghetto to listen to students answer questions about “current events.”
The rounds were horrible. Not only because the students weren’t very good, but also because the questions were even worse. The first round was about contemporary culture. Literally, one girl was given the question, “To what extent, if any, should actors use their celebrity to advocate for a cause?” We had taken a Senior who hadn’t qualified for Nationals with us and she decided to join me as my timekeeper for the morning. As soon as the competitor read that question, our student turned and looked at me and tried not to break out into laughter. I tried not to completely tell the competitor she was the stupidest thing in the world, but I don’t think I succeeded. But in my defense, she did say that
Brokeback Mountain was a controversial movie—lie—and that Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger took those parts because they were advocating for gay rights. I had to set her straight and I didn’t have a lot of time to focus on being “nice” to do it. Frankly, a comment as stupid as that doesn’t deserve “nice” behavior.
Thankfully, I had the second round off, though the tab staff got upset with the judges in the judges’ lounge who started eating the food they brought in. Apparently, even though it was in the judges’ lounge, it wasn’t for the judges. Go figure! But be sure and do so without any signage.
Third round, the questions were about legal cases. These weren’t as sucky. Sure, they were outdated. I mean, they asked a question about Rehnquist’s lasting legacy. Um….hasn’t he been dead for a few months? What’s the point of the event? To cover anything that’s happened in the last year? Who knows. Anyway, the first student comes in, gives us his question about whether justice was done for Moussaui. He then starts talking about Rehnquist in his intro. I have to say, I was really intrigued. I wanted to see how he was going to pull these two things together. But in a second, it becomes clear that this kid is talking about a question other than what he’s given us. So, I already mentally start ranking the kid last in the round. Not that he was that bad, but they made a HUGE deal during the judges’ meeting that the students HAD to speak to the question they were given. And if the kid couldn’t get his act together enough to get everything in order, why am I gonna help him?
Because the two other judges in the room are pansies! That’s why. The female judges starts looking around at me, wondering what in the world is going on. I just ignore her, instead, focusing on the competitor. She starts looking at the other judge. He looks at her. Their eyes meet. They assume their destiny. Then, they run to the kid, hold his hand, give him a pacifier to suck on, telling the little one that it will be okay. Mommy and daddy will let him start all over. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the back, rolling my eyes—waiting for the whole thing to get over with. So the child take the question back to the Extemp prep room, comes back, and starts all over! And the other judges thought that was fair! Clearly, somebody thinks that because most of these kids go to private school means they shouldn’t be introduced to the degree of hard knocks.
Then, the last speaker comes in. Starts talking about the military recruiting lawsuit, admits he doesn’t know enough to really do a speech on it, but he does know why military recruiting is down: because the army doesn’t want to give anybody cool guns. He then proceeds to talk for three minutes about guns—in great detail. I’ll admit, I quickly tuned him out, but I did see the timekeeper’s eyes go big more than once because of the amount of detailed information he shared.
Finally, I got to the final round of prelims and had to listen to questions about religion. I’d dreaded this round all day. I judged this religion round last year at Nationals and remember it being painful. I wasn’t wrong. Kids talked about condoms in Africa (by far the best speech), how Evangelicals agree with
The DaVinci Code (um, what evangelicals are you talking about?), the Gospel of Judas (you don’t even want to see what I wrote on that ballot) and some other crap that I’ve tried to purge from my mind.
Thankfully, I only had to judge one out-round: Prose quarter-finals. There were a couple of really bad pieces, one piece that I lodged a protest against in an effort to get it disqualified (sorry, but
700 Sundays is a DI, not prose), and then there was one amazing piece about being the “ugly friend.” After the round, our students that went with me to observe all commented that it was very obvious I thought the ugly piece was the best since I was laughing the entire time. Well, duh! And it was far better than the most racist presentation of
The Wiz in DI finals I could ever imagine. If I were a black man, I would have stood up during the middle of that round, walked up to the front, taken that competitor over my knee, and spanked him for selling out our people like that. But since I’m not black, I just sat in awe at the most spectacular and blatant presentation of stereotypes I’ve seen in years.
Unfortunately, only one of our kids made it to out-rounds, but the rest of the students had a great time. In fact one of them learned to “Build a bear.” (That’s a whole different story for a different blog.)
Formulas
While there’s something always comforting about a formula, and knowing how it works, there’s also something energizing and invigorating about abandoning that formula. Much of television drama follows a very close formula. These shows, often called “procedurals” follow the same basic format every episode. (i.e., patient comes in, Dr. House doesn’t want to look at him, flunkies try and guess what’s going on, get it wrong, get it wrong again, House starts to get interested, still can’t figure out what it is, and at the moment of last hope, the brilliant doctor figures out what it is, thus saving the day.)
Most procedurals find their signature and never abandon it. Think of the “dunk-dunk” with
Law & Order, the music montage of
Cold Case, or the slow fade-away of
Without a Trace.
However, abandoning that familiar structure sometimes gives an episode energy it might not otherwise find. Of the current procedurals on television, CBS’s
Without a Trace is the most eager to break the mold. And in doing so, it always continues to rise to ranks of excellence when it does.
Three times this season, the show blatantly broke the mold and in doing so, it demonstrated why this is the best of producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s television programs. Last fall, the series did an entire episode from the perspective of an abducted teenager’s parents. The episode was compelling, gripping, and incredibly well-acted.
Then, for May sweeps, the show again broke the mold twice. Once was for an episode that dealt with the disappearance of two teenagers—one black, one white. While the FBI team did go through the process of trying to track down the whereabouts of the teens, the focus of the episode was really about the latent racism currently found in the media regarding what stories are promoted, and which aren’t.
Finally, for the season finale, the show abandoned the most basic signature—the slow fade-away. It used a bookend to frame the show, which though not changing the very nature of the show did help to provide more suspense than a typical episode. The audience couldn’t help but watch in anticipation, waiting for the other shoe to drop from what we saw at the beginning. It was a top-notch hour.
Sometimes, there’s something to be said for breaking the rules.
Country Music
I had the ACM awards on while I was packing tonight and just had random thoughts.
First, country music may never be hip or cool. It’s the equivalent of the PC. It might not be as sexy as a Mac, but it’s not really interested in being edgy or trendy. It just wants to do what it’s always done—make people happy. I was reminded of this last night when I started crying watching all the vets come out during the trite Big and Rich song. It was a moment you’d never get at any other awards show. Every other show would be too interested in being cool to recognize the values that serve as the backbone of America. There’s a reason why there’s a disconnect between the “red” states and “blue” states. While I disagree with the “state” rhetoric, all you have to do is watch a country music awards show in comparison to any other awards program to see how blatant it is.
And just how awesome is Brad Paisley? He just seems like a very normal kind of guy. Granted, the whole “inflatable globe” thing he had going on during the number was a huge bust, but he’s just too fun to care.
Love her a lot, but did Sara Evans hit a single note right during her performance last night on the ACM awards? If that’s how that song goes, I think I’d have found another one to perform. Ouch.
A member of Blink 182 playing on a country music show? Well, I didn’t see that one coming.
And while we’re talking about unlikely combinations, how in the world did Pete Yorn end up co-writing a song with the Dixie Chicks for their new album? I mean, I love the guy, but he doesn’t strike me as a country music kind of guy. But then, if John Mayer is going to play on your album, why not have Pete Yorn work on it too?
No Blog No Cry
Sorry for the lack of blogging.
I’m still coming to grips with the impending death of
Everwood.
ked at TJ, asked “hard or soft?” and we all burst into laughter. TJ looked even more humiliated, now muttering about how gay the entire process was. Well, it only got “gayer” because after the bear was stuffed, they gave TJ a heart, which he had to kiss before the bear would “accept it.” I’ve never seen someone turn as red as this teen did when he stared at the heart, debating whether to kiss it or not. Instead of kissing it, he almost bolted out of the store, but thankfully, one of the group blocked his path. Finally, after much hesitation, TJ kissed the bear’s heart and shoved it into its stuffing.
