hungry, like the wolf

i can't seem to make an i pod playlist lately without including duran duran.  they go with everything.

i have taken to playing halo with the sound turned all the way down on the television and my i pod on, since i can't freakin' stand the ridiculous chatter of the halo nerd-boys who are, unavoidably, my x-box live companions.  they are quite possibly the most annoying subculture of people on the planet, since they combine being a perpetual teenager with being the most insufferably self-righteous assholes EVER.  i say ever because how insufferably self-righteous would you be if you had never left your suburban white-bread mommy's living room?  right?  and if the most important thing in the world to you was your status on a online gaming system's alien warlord v. marine corps (or something) game?  uh-huh.  i think you are getting the picture.  if you need more proof of their consummate annoyingness, you need look no further than their x-box live handles... one idiot tonight was "girs luv me"  

i bet they do, buddy.  i bet they do...

if it's not love, then it's the bomb that will bring us together...

oh boy.  well, it's almost may (already!) which is good for many reasons: it's that time of year between when nyc resembles a frozen tundra and when you feel as if you are being cooked on the asphalt like an egg on a griddle, where you can actually enjoy being out and about in the streets of new york.  i have been doing just that; taking every opportunity to walk around town and enjoy the springtime.  it's wonderful.

school is coming to an end, which means i have a ton of stuff due.  at the moment i think i am relatively on-track; however, i feel as if i am in a sort of freeze-frame, and at any moment the film will pick up again and i will find that it is may 7th, and i have a project to present.  hopefully i will not be caught off-guard.  

as for said project, i have been doing a bunch of research and have found the usual disillusionment at the end of the rainbow.  there are some certainties in life which seem to get overlooked, even though they are startling in their predictability.  the bureaucratic, nonsense-ridden, money hoarding nature of the human service "industry" is certainly one of those things.  perhaps it starts with the ridiculous contradiction of the terms "human service" and "industry."  yesterday in my notes i jotted down a line or two about how the funds necessary to run programs such as the one i tutor in are always in the possession of those who least understand what they are needed for.  and in an attempt to explain, somehow or another it always gets reduced to gains and losses, losses and gains, as if human existence could ever be reduced to something so rigid and disembodied.  

why would it ever make sense to shift the emphasis of a program that teaches middle-aged, mainly learning disabled, underprivileged, often disenfranchised people how to read, to the task of attaining scores on standardized tests, the only purpose of which is to generate numbers that indicate someone should continue to pay money to a program which can administer those standardized tests?  what the hell difference does it make if these people can score one point higher than last time on some ridiculous, out-of-context series of questions?  these people want to be able to read a can of spaghetti sauce!  they want to be able to go into the post office and stand on the right line!  they want to be able to read the subway map.  teaching them how to take a fucking standardized test is the most egregious waste of time this side of doing the same thing to children.  

it makes me crazy.  

but that is how this stuff goes.  it's the same deal, over and over and over.  the work of people, the NEEDS of people are overlooked and more importantly, disregarded, in favor of using them to create a series of statistics which can be printed out and taken to a meeting and regurgitated to people who really don't give a fuck, but who are just trying to decide which check to sign this week, or month or whatever.  

have you seen that cable commercial with ed begley jr. (is he desperate for work or what?  those hybrid cars are expensive...)  where the guy is like "statistics can be made to say pretty much whatever you want them to!"  yes.  exactly.

anyhow.  enough of that.  in other news, it's almost summer, as i mentioned.  i am still beating a.b. in fantasy baseball, which is really my goal for that endeavor.  i don't have to win the whole thing, or even be in the top five.  i just have to continue to beat her, and her crew over at chico's bail bonds.  that's right... me and manny, doing it for the people.

the nba playoff's are in full swing, reminding me of how much i love basketball... i even used it as an excuse to work b.ball into my lesson plan on monday.  good times.  

finally, i will be out and about in the lovely weather all week rocking my new Diana+ camera...  so exciting!   

mooooooooose!

Yankee time again, friends...  we are headed to the Yanks-Sox game tonight at the stadium, where we shall sit in the right field loge box section, (right above the kyocera k counter, i believe) and watch Moose and co. go to work.  i will be sporting my Moose shirt.  i mean, come on. 

i am unbelievably amped to be going; once again it was a last-minute ticket buying decision, spurred on by my mission(which i believe i have explained here on the blog) to make sure we see as many games as we can this season, as they prepare to rip down my beloved stadium.  i love craigslist.  it makes things like this entirely possible.

last night's game was perfect, a wonderful baseball viewing experience:  it had all the drama, the rivalry, the ridiculous Manny stunts (always a good time), the times square hooker performance of the year thus far by our back-up, back-up catcher, who's name i am not remembering but who we may as well just call John Olerud, since that's where the prototype comes from.  LaTroy Hawkins got the win!  LaTroy, who wisely switched to a different (rocket's) number after the yankee fans and Paul O'Neill threatened to converge upon him and rip the 21 from his back(he wanted to wear Paul's number.  didn't go over well) and who lately has looked like unmitigated pitching garbage, GOT THE WIN.  Michael Kay actually said "LaTroy Hawkins came in and really took control of this game."  and i said, "somebody write that shit down, cause it is certainly the first time, and likely the last time, it will ever be uttered."  sorry, LaTroy.  you are still the inspiration for our future child's name.  

also, in other sports news, we have the Chad Johnson spectacle... can someone please tell me what is going on over there?  has he developed a crystal meth habit in the offseason?  i don't understand what is happening.

and then there are the NBA playoffs... always good for some excitement.  i was startled to learn the other day that there are teams with worse records than the Knicks!  i know about the Miami Heat, where half way through they brought on an intramural team from Bally's total fitness to finish out the season(does Bally's even have intramurals?  basketball?  anyone???)  

but there were some other horrible records as well, and the Knicks weren't even on the list. and no, that doesn't mean the Knicks did better than i thought.  don't you worry about that.

spring fever...

today in new york was absolutely gorgeous... i wore a hoodie with my puffy vest on top(just to be safe) and found out in the first 30 seconds outside that i didn't need either one...

i went to tutoring and met with one of my students, gary, who had an amazingly successful day and at the end of it all, told the program director (with a slight smile on his face that i had never seen before) that he was "learning a lot from this lady here."

i cannot tell you what that meant to my heart. every night i sit down to the yankee game with a pile of paperwork in front of me and start to plan my lesson for the next day... gary is my shining star... he is doing so well- he read from a book with me for the first time (in his recollection) the other day, and to hear him say that today made me feel so good... he is not a very "emotive" person; when i ask him how he is doing with the material we study he usually says "good." nothing more, nothing less. he came to our adult literacy center with no reading skills, and when i asked him his goals, he told me he wanted to pass his GED and become a basketball coach. when i see where he is at, and what it will entail to get him there, i certainly feel overwhelmed. but i know it can happen... someday.

to hear that he felt as if we were making progress made me feel like a superhero- i walked out of that building on top of the world. i went into work, my silly job where i bring margaritas and americanized mexican food to a bunch of i-phone-wielding elitist trendite brooklyn-heads, feeling like i could handle ANYTHING, and i did; we were so slammed, and i managed it all with the greatest of composure (one woman told me i was the best waitress she ever had! another table told me that they didn't know how i had kept so calm...) i was, truly, on top of the world.

how can you panic about not getting someone a margarita when, earlier, a man who has struggled with drug addiction his entire adult(? and more...) life and currently lives in a drug rehab facility where his main form of self-improvement is to come meet with you three times a week so he can LEARN HOW TO READ tells you that he feels he is learning a lot from being your student?

you can't. and i didn't. i was cool. i was calm. i was composed. i made those people fucking WAIT for me, dammit.

and it felt good.

on top of all that, i have made an amazing friend in my teacher, Jane Maher, who you should all immediately head to Amazon and search for as an author because she is amazing and she has written amazing books about wonderful, important people. she is one of those people that you meet and know immediately that you were meant to. i know that i will know her forever, and that she will have (and is already having) an amazing impact on me as a person, as a student, as a teacher, as a writer...

i feel so lucky to have come to this place that i am at right now. i love my life: i have an amazing love, an amazing life, and i am discovering myself and others in a way that constantly gives to me and (i hope) everyone again and again...

spring fever, y'all..

the glory, yeah yeah...

it was there in front of our face all this time and we just didn't even see it. the perfect name for any NFL-bound spawn of CWiii and myself: La'Charles. thank you, LaTroy Hawkins, for the inspiration. no thank you, however, for being such a stunningly predictable Yanks middle reliever. that is to say, mostly useless.

anyhow. we went to our first Yanks game of the season this weekend...sitting in the center field bleachers three rows from melkert, twenty feet from the bullpen(i waved to the hut like a ten year old, sadly he did not wave back.)

our fellow bleacher creatures spent a good portion of the game loudly ridiculing devil rays centerfielder B.J. Upton. here's a bit of advice: you shouldn't ever encourage your child to allow themselves to be called B.J. i feel like that should be fairly obvious. and if there is even the SLIGHTEST chance that your son will play centerfield for a MLB team other than the NYY in the AL who will subsequently play against the NYY and, heaven forbid, also will play in the outfield and will therefore find himself standing 20 feet in front of creatures from the Yankee Stadium bleachers, then for christ's sake, YOU MAKE SURE that he doesn't call himself B.J.

naturally, they started by pointing out the unfortunate condition of his sharing a nickname with a popular form of oral sex. this "discussion," carried on in shouts across many rows of bleacher seats between complete strangers served as a sort of glue that would bind the shit-talking efforts of many extremely loud Yankee fans, who then powered up like Voltron and moved on from there. my favorites were the simple, yet elegant "HEY B.J! YOU SUCK!" the baseness of it all seemed to move him to new levels of anger. i think that is possibly the trump card carried by yankee fans, especially at the stadium: we don't require our shit talk be rooted in anything other than utter contempt for the state of non-yankeeness. even when B.J. made a spectacular diving catch to rob Derek Jeter of a first inning single, the bleachers remained steadfast. no eyes were batted, no cages rattled. for B.J. Upton, in our estimation, still just sucked.

ah, the bleachers.

here's a shot of ol' B.J. shooting us the death glare. this was taken pretty late in the game... a lot had been said at this point.

the game was great. we got to see the hut pitch for the first time live and in person... of course he blew through six batters like it wasn't, as they say, no thing. have i told you lately that i love the hut? well i do.
not waving back...

i realized, while watching the yankees pregame warmups, that when you are a yankee fan, sitting in yankee stadium in the twenty or so minutes that precede the first pitch, it feels at that moment like there is simply no way the yankees can lose. all the realities fall away and you are swept up in the glory of the stadium, watching a rod and jeter run their warmups

or seeing ol' jorge get all suited up...

it just seems overwhelmingly like greatness is just moments away... and of course it is, but so is a lot of other stuff too. it's just amazing how in that little moment, everything can seem so grand and powerful. i love yankee stadium. jeter assures us that the ghosts can cross the street... but as i glance warily at that new monstrosity going up across river avenue, i remain unconvinced, and unenthusiastic, to say the least...

i think that charles has gotten rather sick of hearing my indignant accounts of some rumor or another that i have picked up about the new stadium; although from what i hear... basically the average yankee joe is not going to be, well, the focus of the attention, if you know what i mean. charles himself told me that there is supposedly going to be a martini bar. A MARTINI BAR?!?! in a baseball stadium? what the hell is wrong with people? i hope a-rod crushes a foul ball right into their martini bar and kills some hedge fund douche who doesn't even know what sport he is watching. HELP!

oh, i forgot... i almost had a chance to actually, literally, take one for the team: kyle farnsworth, who absolutely has to be the most dubiously employed individual on earth, started to warm up in the bullpen (right next to the hut, which elicited genuine terror among my fellow bleacher creatures- if kyle farnsworth's extreme suckitude is contagious, we don't wanna find out!) sparking in me a sudden impetus to jump the concrete wall separating me from the yankee bullpen and jump wwf-style on to farnsworth's upper body, during which i would snap his pitching arm, or at the very least, his wrist, so as to neutralize the threat of his pitching anytime in the near future for the new york yankees. the folks sitting behind me were all for it, and offered to bail me out of jail later that evening. see? everybody hates kyle farnsworth.

anyhow, i didn't do it. i didn't want little La'Charles to have a jailbird for a mommy, although that would give Outside The Lines something to do a story about someday... they love that stuff!

so the yanks won. which was also awesome, cause we haven't been doing too much of that lately, and in addition to the hut, we got to see Mo, aka sandman, put the thing to bed...

there he is, crossing left field to the ominous opening strains of "enter sandman," getting ready to help the light exit, night enter... end scene.

good times! i look forward to many more this season, as i make my final tour of yankee stadium as i have known and loved it. and then, after the final game of the season, as i take up my protest by chaining myself to the yankee dugout.

you think i'm kidding. La'Charles, get ready for Outside The Lines...