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Friday, July 17, 2009
from the new york times review of the new harry potter movie
hanging out with the dudes
I suspect these guys and I have stuff in common.
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wow stephen holder, that's HARSH
Not that I was planning to go see this, the horrible review it got is actually the reason I even know it exists. But still, that was pretty harsh, LOL.
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ha!
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
dear and the headlights
performing "bad news" on "the daily habit". i saw these guys live here in lawrence last year and they were awesome. :)
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Escapism in Minutiae of Daily Life
The Sims series is different. What makes it special is its exuberant, big-hearted, unabashedly joyful embrace of the minutiae of daily middle-class life. The Sims provides a training and socialization playground. For adults The Sims offers an unflinching, potentially uncomfortable and perhaps almost psychoanalytic view into one’s desires and fears about that real world beyond the computer screen. Most video games exist to allow the player to forget completely about the real world. The Sims accomplishes the rare feat of entertaining while also provoking intellectual and emotional engagement with some of life’s fundamental questions.
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Monday, June 01, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
on awkwardness
Galifianakis is especially proud of “Apology,” a two-part bait-and-switch routine he developed a few years earlier. Several years back, performing at a dinner theater in L.A., Galifianakis delivered the following one-liner: “When I get drunk, sometimes my Southern accent comes out, and I say words like ‘y’all’ . . . and ‘nigger.’ ” It went over the way his jokes tend to: an instant of silence, then loud, slightly horrified laughter, sprinkled with the occasional boo. Then it became something more. “The audience was getting very upset — people in the crowd were yelling, ‘You’re a racist,’ ” Galifianakis told me. At this point, he interrupted his act to address a young black woman sitting in the front row. “I said, ‘I want to publicly apologize for this joke,’ ” Galifianakis told me. “I brought the woman up onstage, and I began to read an apology I’d written out, to the tune of Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White.’ Halfway through it, another black woman came out from backstage, and we did an elaborate dance routine together. That was the close of the show.”
When I asked whether setting up the audience that way was satisfying for a comic — revenge, of a kind, for being misunderstood — Galifianakis surprised me by shaking his head soberly. “That’s one of the great things about comedy: we can — and should — say the things that other people aren’t supposed to say. If we didn’t do that, if we didn’t push against those limits, we’d just be standing around onstage and yelling.”
By that measure, one of the most illuminating moments during Galifianakis’s performance in TriBeCa came when he parted ways, momentarily, with his audience. After performing a few “characters,” like Guy From Queens Who Is Obsessed With Cargo Shorts — a regular bit that changes only in the particulars from show to show — he announced one that seemed to have been made up on the spot: The Kid Who Doesn’t Know, Down In His Living Room, That His Uncle, Who’s Upstairs, Has Suddenly Gone Deaf. Like many of Galifianakis’s characters, the intro was more elaborate than the performance itself, which consisted of Galifianakis shouting, ‘Uncle David? Uncle Da-vid!’ in an increasingly nervous little kid’s voice. The audience appeared more puzzled than amused, which isn’t especially unusual in the course of a typical Galifianakis set; what was unusual was Galifianakis’s response. The ‘Kid’ sketch went on so long that a number of people in the crowd grew noticeably restless — and then it went on even longer. Much longer. Even the hard-core fans in the room seemed to get a bit uncomfortable. By the time he finally finished, everyone in the room had experienced the awkwardness — and even, to a small degree, the terror — of improvised stand-up firsthand. When I asked Galifianakis about the “Kid” later, he said it was his favorite moment of the night.
From The Making of Zach Galifianakis
By JOHN WRAY
Published: May 28, 2009
Article found in its entirety here.
When I asked whether setting up the audience that way was satisfying for a comic — revenge, of a kind, for being misunderstood — Galifianakis surprised me by shaking his head soberly. “That’s one of the great things about comedy: we can — and should — say the things that other people aren’t supposed to say. If we didn’t do that, if we didn’t push against those limits, we’d just be standing around onstage and yelling.”
By that measure, one of the most illuminating moments during Galifianakis’s performance in TriBeCa came when he parted ways, momentarily, with his audience. After performing a few “characters,” like Guy From Queens Who Is Obsessed With Cargo Shorts — a regular bit that changes only in the particulars from show to show — he announced one that seemed to have been made up on the spot: The Kid Who Doesn’t Know, Down In His Living Room, That His Uncle, Who’s Upstairs, Has Suddenly Gone Deaf. Like many of Galifianakis’s characters, the intro was more elaborate than the performance itself, which consisted of Galifianakis shouting, ‘Uncle David? Uncle Da-vid!’ in an increasingly nervous little kid’s voice. The audience appeared more puzzled than amused, which isn’t especially unusual in the course of a typical Galifianakis set; what was unusual was Galifianakis’s response. The ‘Kid’ sketch went on so long that a number of people in the crowd grew noticeably restless — and then it went on even longer. Much longer. Even the hard-core fans in the room seemed to get a bit uncomfortable. By the time he finally finished, everyone in the room had experienced the awkwardness — and even, to a small degree, the terror — of improvised stand-up firsthand. When I asked Galifianakis about the “Kid” later, he said it was his favorite moment of the night.
From The Making of Zach Galifianakis
By JOHN WRAY
Published: May 28, 2009
Article found in its entirety here.
The Making of Zach Galifianakis
From The Making of Zach Galifianakis
By JOHN WRAY
Published: May 28, 2009
Article found in its entirety here.
On a blustery Wednesday night this past December, the newly opened TriBeCa branch of New York’s 92nd Street Y was host to a stand-up comedy show, but you’d never have guessed it from the goings-on backstage. The only people in the modest, disconcertingly spotless greenroom were the opening acts: two smartly dressed, well-spoken, polite comedians in their early 30s, both of whom could have passed for architecture students, or graphic designers, or even grass-roots organizers for the Obama campaign. No entourage was in evidence; marijuana was alluded to, but never actually smoked; gourmet hummus and He’brew ale were partaken of, but only in moderation. And the headlining act, the reason for the capacity crowd buzzing with controlled impatience in the 300-person theater just a few feet down the hall, was not in the greenroom at all. He was crouched just offstage with his back to the curtain, running intently through “Joy to the World” with a trio of young tuba players he’d recruited that morning from Craigslist, looking less like one of the great new hopes of American comedy than the leader of a severely underfunded marching band. He didn’t look like a comic at all, in fact, and he certainly wasn’t acting like one. Which, as it turned out, was precisely the point.
“What I call the ‘geography’ of a room — its size, its layout, the overall feel of the place — really determines how far you can push things,” the comic in question, a cherubic man with a fiery red beard and the distinctly unshowbizlike name of Zach Galifianakis, told me in the greenroom a short time before. “I love to do shows in unlikely places, because the audience’s expectations are less fixed. If you’re going on right after a guy with suspenders and a skinny, 1980’s-style comedy tie, who’s been striking crazy poses — doing the same type of material that worked in 1991 — there’s no space for trying unconventional stuff. A place like this, on the other hand, is more of a blank slate.” Galifianakis took a deep, unsteady breath (the first sign of nervousness he’d shown) and stared down intently at the tips of his New Balance sneakers. “Which is lucky for me, because I have no idea what I’m going to say to those people out there.”
Coming from most other performers — even most other stand-up comics — such a statement might seem coy, if not outright preposterous; from Galifianakis, it comes close to being credible. When Galifianakis hit the 92Y stage in his customary jogging shoes and corduroy blazer, instead of breaking the crowd in by leading off with a few jokes, he regarded them blankly for a moment, then handed out a fistful of short yellow pencils and white slips of paper. “I don’t know what to say to you guys tonight, so I’m taking requests,” he announced. “Write down a song you feel like hearing.” The front tables looked to be a mix of stand-up fans and 92Y regulars reserving their judgment, but the slips were duly filled out and collected. Galifianakis rifled through the slips as he walked over to the baby grand piano at stage right, then stopped short, frowned and looked back at the crowd. “ ‘Joy to the World,’ huh?” he murmured. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then he turned and gestured to someone off stage left.
Suddenly, like a conjuring trick, the trio of tuba players stood center stage, playing a tightly rehearsed rendition of the requested song with businesslike looks on their faces. The reaction of the crowd was a mixture of astonishment, confusion and childlike pleasure at the unlikeliness of what they were seeing; the gag was, essentially, a bait and switch, but with no agenda other than delight. The mood in the room was now closer to that of a sweet-16 party — or, for that matter, a bar mitzvah — than any stand-up show I’d ever been to. Galifianakis looked out at the crowd as the trio played on, beaming as childishly as anyone else in the room. He appeared to have forgotten, along with the audience, that he was the featured performer of the evening. “That’s not really a joke,” a 30ish man just in front of me observed to the woman beside him. She nodded at him and kept laughing.
The considerable cult that has grown up around Galifianakis’s performances over the last few years, both live and on video-sharing sites like YouTube, has done so largely because his routines are, arguably, the most unpredictable in contemporary comedy. A typical hourlong set might meander from carefully composed, conceptual one-liners à la Steven Wright to profanity-drenched tirades against members of the audience to slapstick to solemnly tacky musical interludes (Galifianakis is an able pianist) to Andy Kaufman-esque attacks on the genre that seem less concerned with eliciting laughs from the crowd than with confounding its notions of what comedy or, for that matter, entertainment ought to be.
Perhaps more than anyone else in the business, Galifianakis embodies the rebellion against the outmoded Comedy Club circuit — the exposed brick, the two-drink minimum, the indifferent audience, the “regular guy with an attitude” routine — which has come to be labeled the “indie comedy” movement. “Zach is so conceptual,” Sarah Silverman, who has known and worked with Galifianakis since the mid-’90s, told me. “He’s definitely part of the excitement of this shift, this idea of comedy as art. Whether he’s at his piano, offering deadpan one-liners, or trying out some brand-new conceptual piece — like the ways he uses musicians, or flip-board messages, or the first thing that comes into his head — he is so totally original and thrilling to watch.”
By JOHN WRAY
Published: May 28, 2009
Article found in its entirety here.
On a blustery Wednesday night this past December, the newly opened TriBeCa branch of New York’s 92nd Street Y was host to a stand-up comedy show, but you’d never have guessed it from the goings-on backstage. The only people in the modest, disconcertingly spotless greenroom were the opening acts: two smartly dressed, well-spoken, polite comedians in their early 30s, both of whom could have passed for architecture students, or graphic designers, or even grass-roots organizers for the Obama campaign. No entourage was in evidence; marijuana was alluded to, but never actually smoked; gourmet hummus and He’brew ale were partaken of, but only in moderation. And the headlining act, the reason for the capacity crowd buzzing with controlled impatience in the 300-person theater just a few feet down the hall, was not in the greenroom at all. He was crouched just offstage with his back to the curtain, running intently through “Joy to the World” with a trio of young tuba players he’d recruited that morning from Craigslist, looking less like one of the great new hopes of American comedy than the leader of a severely underfunded marching band. He didn’t look like a comic at all, in fact, and he certainly wasn’t acting like one. Which, as it turned out, was precisely the point.
“What I call the ‘geography’ of a room — its size, its layout, the overall feel of the place — really determines how far you can push things,” the comic in question, a cherubic man with a fiery red beard and the distinctly unshowbizlike name of Zach Galifianakis, told me in the greenroom a short time before. “I love to do shows in unlikely places, because the audience’s expectations are less fixed. If you’re going on right after a guy with suspenders and a skinny, 1980’s-style comedy tie, who’s been striking crazy poses — doing the same type of material that worked in 1991 — there’s no space for trying unconventional stuff. A place like this, on the other hand, is more of a blank slate.” Galifianakis took a deep, unsteady breath (the first sign of nervousness he’d shown) and stared down intently at the tips of his New Balance sneakers. “Which is lucky for me, because I have no idea what I’m going to say to those people out there.”
Coming from most other performers — even most other stand-up comics — such a statement might seem coy, if not outright preposterous; from Galifianakis, it comes close to being credible. When Galifianakis hit the 92Y stage in his customary jogging shoes and corduroy blazer, instead of breaking the crowd in by leading off with a few jokes, he regarded them blankly for a moment, then handed out a fistful of short yellow pencils and white slips of paper. “I don’t know what to say to you guys tonight, so I’m taking requests,” he announced. “Write down a song you feel like hearing.” The front tables looked to be a mix of stand-up fans and 92Y regulars reserving their judgment, but the slips were duly filled out and collected. Galifianakis rifled through the slips as he walked over to the baby grand piano at stage right, then stopped short, frowned and looked back at the crowd. “ ‘Joy to the World,’ huh?” he murmured. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then he turned and gestured to someone off stage left.
Suddenly, like a conjuring trick, the trio of tuba players stood center stage, playing a tightly rehearsed rendition of the requested song with businesslike looks on their faces. The reaction of the crowd was a mixture of astonishment, confusion and childlike pleasure at the unlikeliness of what they were seeing; the gag was, essentially, a bait and switch, but with no agenda other than delight. The mood in the room was now closer to that of a sweet-16 party — or, for that matter, a bar mitzvah — than any stand-up show I’d ever been to. Galifianakis looked out at the crowd as the trio played on, beaming as childishly as anyone else in the room. He appeared to have forgotten, along with the audience, that he was the featured performer of the evening. “That’s not really a joke,” a 30ish man just in front of me observed to the woman beside him. She nodded at him and kept laughing.
The considerable cult that has grown up around Galifianakis’s performances over the last few years, both live and on video-sharing sites like YouTube, has done so largely because his routines are, arguably, the most unpredictable in contemporary comedy. A typical hourlong set might meander from carefully composed, conceptual one-liners à la Steven Wright to profanity-drenched tirades against members of the audience to slapstick to solemnly tacky musical interludes (Galifianakis is an able pianist) to Andy Kaufman-esque attacks on the genre that seem less concerned with eliciting laughs from the crowd than with confounding its notions of what comedy or, for that matter, entertainment ought to be.
Perhaps more than anyone else in the business, Galifianakis embodies the rebellion against the outmoded Comedy Club circuit — the exposed brick, the two-drink minimum, the indifferent audience, the “regular guy with an attitude” routine — which has come to be labeled the “indie comedy” movement. “Zach is so conceptual,” Sarah Silverman, who has known and worked with Galifianakis since the mid-’90s, told me. “He’s definitely part of the excitement of this shift, this idea of comedy as art. Whether he’s at his piano, offering deadpan one-liners, or trying out some brand-new conceptual piece — like the ways he uses musicians, or flip-board messages, or the first thing that comes into his head — he is so totally original and thrilling to watch.”
Saturday, May 30, 2009
blind pilot - oviedo
So I got home that night and bought the album online. This is one of my favorite songs. :)
blind pilot
This band opened for The Decemberists on Wednesday. They were the best musical surprise I have had in ages. They are also from Portland, Oregon. Their music is beautiful and heartfelt. I can't wait to see them live again!
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
school reading that made my sunday :)
from Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal. 32(3), 465-491.
Much has been written about classroom social interactions (see, e.g., Brophy
& Good, 1970; Rist, 1970; Wilcox, 1982). Perhaps the strength of some
of the research in this area is evidenced by its impact on classroom practices.
For example, teachers throughout the nation have either heard of or implemented
various forms of cooperative learning (Cohen & Benton, 1988; Slavin,
1987): cross-aged, multi-aged, and heterogeneous ability groupings. While
these classroom arrangements may be designed to improve student achievement,
culturally relevant teachers consciously create social interactions to
help them meet the three previously mentioned criteria of academic success,
cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Briefly, the teachers:
* maintain fluid student-teacher relationships,
* demonstrate a connectedness with all of the students,
* develop a community of learners,
* encourage students to learn collaboratively and be responsible for
another.
In these teachers' classrooms, the teacher-student relationships are equitable
and reciprocal. All of the teachers gave students opportunities to act
as teachers. In one class, the teacher regularly sat at a student's desk, while
the student stood at the front of the room and explained a concept or some
aspect of student culture. Another teacher highlighted the expertise of various
students and required other students to consult those students before coming
to her for help: "Did you ask Jamal how to do those math problems?" "Make
sure you check with Latasha before you turn in your reading." Because she
acknowledged a wide range of expertise, the individual students were not
isolated from their peers as teacher's pets. Instead, all of the students were
made aware that they were expected to excel at something and that the
teacher would call on them to share that expertise with classmates.
The culturally relevant teachers encouraged a community of learners
rather than competitive, individual achievement. By demanding a higher
level of academic success for the entire class, individual success did not
suffer. However, rather than lifting up individuals (and, perhaps, contributing
to feelings of peer alienation), the teachers made it clear that they were
working with smart classes. For many of the students, this identification with
academic success was a new experience. "Calvin was a bad student last
year," said one student. "And that was last year," replied the teacher, as
she designated Calvin to lead a discussion group. Another example of this
community of learners was exemplified by a teacher who, herself, was a
graduate student. She made a conscious decision to share what she was
learning with her sixth graders. Every Friday, after her Thursday evening
class, the students queried her about what she had learned.
A demonstration of the students' understanding of what she was learning
occurred during the principal's observation of her teaching. A few minutes
into a discussion where students were required to come up with questions
they wanted answered about the book they were reading, a young man
seated at a table near the rear of the class remarked with seeming disgust,
"We're never gonna learn anything if y'all don't stop asking all of these low
level questions!" (This is my favorite part!) His comment was evidence of the fact
that the teacher had shared Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956)
with the class. At another time, two African-American boys were arguing over a notebook.
"What seems to be the problem?" asked the teacher. "He's got my metacognitive
journal!" replied one of the boys. By using the language of the
teacher's graduate class, the students demonstrated their ability to assimilate
her language with their own experiences.
To solidify the social relationships in their classes, the teachers encouraged
the students to learn collaboratively, teach each other, and be responsible
for the academic success of others. These collaborative arrangements
were not necessarily structured like those of cooperative learning. Instead,
the teachers used a combination of formal and informal peer collaborations.
One teacher used a buddy system, where each student was paired with
another. The buddies checked each other's homework and class assignments.
Buddies quizzed each other for tests, and, if one buddy was absent, it was
the responsibility of the other to call to see why and to help with makeup
work. The teachers used this ethos of reciprocity and mutuality to insist that
one person's success was the success of all and one person's failure was the
failure of all. These feelings were exemplified by the teacher who insisted,
"We're a family. We have to care for one another as if our very survival
depended on it.... Actually, it does!"
Social Relations
Much has been written about classroom social interactions (see, e.g., Brophy
& Good, 1970; Rist, 1970; Wilcox, 1982). Perhaps the strength of some
of the research in this area is evidenced by its impact on classroom practices.
For example, teachers throughout the nation have either heard of or implemented
various forms of cooperative learning (Cohen & Benton, 1988; Slavin,
1987): cross-aged, multi-aged, and heterogeneous ability groupings. While
these classroom arrangements may be designed to improve student achievement,
culturally relevant teachers consciously create social interactions to
help them meet the three previously mentioned criteria of academic success,
cultural competence, and critical consciousness. Briefly, the teachers:
* maintain fluid student-teacher relationships,
* demonstrate a connectedness with all of the students,
* develop a community of learners,
* encourage students to learn collaboratively and be responsible for
another.
In these teachers' classrooms, the teacher-student relationships are equitable
and reciprocal. All of the teachers gave students opportunities to act
as teachers. In one class, the teacher regularly sat at a student's desk, while
the student stood at the front of the room and explained a concept or some
aspect of student culture. Another teacher highlighted the expertise of various
students and required other students to consult those students before coming
to her for help: "Did you ask Jamal how to do those math problems?" "Make
sure you check with Latasha before you turn in your reading." Because she
acknowledged a wide range of expertise, the individual students were not
isolated from their peers as teacher's pets. Instead, all of the students were
made aware that they were expected to excel at something and that the
teacher would call on them to share that expertise with classmates.
The culturally relevant teachers encouraged a community of learners
rather than competitive, individual achievement. By demanding a higher
level of academic success for the entire class, individual success did not
suffer. However, rather than lifting up individuals (and, perhaps, contributing
to feelings of peer alienation), the teachers made it clear that they were
working with smart classes. For many of the students, this identification with
academic success was a new experience. "Calvin was a bad student last
year," said one student. "And that was last year," replied the teacher, as
she designated Calvin to lead a discussion group. Another example of this
community of learners was exemplified by a teacher who, herself, was a
graduate student. She made a conscious decision to share what she was
learning with her sixth graders. Every Friday, after her Thursday evening
class, the students queried her about what she had learned.
A demonstration of the students' understanding of what she was learning
occurred during the principal's observation of her teaching. A few minutes
into a discussion where students were required to come up with questions
they wanted answered about the book they were reading, a young man
seated at a table near the rear of the class remarked with seeming disgust,
"We're never gonna learn anything if y'all don't stop asking all of these low
level questions!" (This is my favorite part!) His comment was evidence of the fact
that the teacher had shared Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956)
with the class. At another time, two African-American boys were arguing over a notebook.
"What seems to be the problem?" asked the teacher. "He's got my metacognitive
journal!" replied one of the boys. By using the language of the
teacher's graduate class, the students demonstrated their ability to assimilate
her language with their own experiences.
To solidify the social relationships in their classes, the teachers encouraged
the students to learn collaboratively, teach each other, and be responsible
for the academic success of others. These collaborative arrangements
were not necessarily structured like those of cooperative learning. Instead,
the teachers used a combination of formal and informal peer collaborations.
One teacher used a buddy system, where each student was paired with
another. The buddies checked each other's homework and class assignments.
Buddies quizzed each other for tests, and, if one buddy was absent, it was
the responsibility of the other to call to see why and to help with makeup
work. The teachers used this ethos of reciprocity and mutuality to insist that
one person's success was the success of all and one person's failure was the
failure of all. These feelings were exemplified by the teacher who insisted,
"We're a family. We have to care for one another as if our very survival
depended on it.... Actually, it does!"
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
david b. owns my brain
Epileptic by David B.My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
I LOVED this book. It was intense, dark, sweet, sad, funny, and above all unnervingly honest. I could not put it down. It was the first graphic novel I've read in ages that made me feel as I might not be smart enough to read it. I love that feeling of challenge and a book that dares me to think. It's like Alison Bechdel's Fun Home on crack. Highly, highly recommended.
View all my reviews.
best paragraph i read this week hahaha
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Monday, May 11, 2009
cheating?
The Decemberists began rehearsals for their tour today. Colin Meloy posted this photo on his Twitter profile. I am SO excited!
Saturday, May 09, 2009
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