Tomorrow is March! Thank you!
E3H: finishing off the projects, maybe reading another ESC example, probably looking ahead to The Theban Plays.
E2CP: DOAS projects, etc. Maybe some Catcher.
Drama: working on scenes.
If you watched the Oscars, you know that "The King's Speech" won Best Picture. Well, Jimmy Kimmel has already prepared a spoof:
Here are my predictions:
Best Picture: The King's Speech
Best Actor: Colin Firth
Best Actress: Natalie Portman
Best Supporting Actress: Hailee Steinfeld
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale
Will I be right? Tune in Sunday night and find out!
Meanwhile...
E3H: Finishing projects on Monday and reading examples of ESC papers. WW later in the week. HW: find your own personal epiphany and brainstorm the life events that make up the scaffolding scenes for it.
E2CP: WW Monday; Doas scenes Tuesday.
Drama: Memorize (to the greatest extent possible: goal = 100%) your scenes.
I forgot to put yesterday's journal music on the blog, so here it is:
And...have you seen this little girl????
and more!
and she's even been auto-tuned!
and now they are predicting more snow.
i'm beginning to hate "them"...
grrr...
e3h: do stuff. then do other stuff. and when you are finished with that, sleep. oh, and if you get the chance to look at the link from yesterday and think about it, that might be good too. had any good epiphanies lately?
e2cp: there's the catcher journal. and your doas scene. clench your butt cheeks.
drama: finished backlogged performances today (except that jess still owes a monologue and rory owes everything). tomorrow we move toward duets.
...we still managed to have class. And in those classes we managed to do things that actually seemed like stuff that we were supposed to be doing. Wow! I'm, like, focused or something!
Don't worry. That won't last.
E3H: More projects tomorrow. Theban plays coming. HW: Read King Oedipus for Tuesday. More on the Epiphany/Stream of Consciousness papers (ESC) as the week wears on, but if you wish to get a jump on it, the assignment can be found here.
E2CP: Keep working on DOAS projects. Check out the Catcher in the Rye journal project here. Remember that you should be doing these journals as you read the book, and that you should begin reading the book now. Best bet: print out a copy of the journal topics and keep it with the book; that way you will know when you reach one of the phrases. :-)
Drama: Tomorrow we finish performing everything that we have not yet finished. Also, I am collecting journals.
Jimmy Kimmel on Rush Limbaugh on Michelle Obama:
Like a slow internal bleed, this infernal month just keeps insisting on being there whenever I stare at the calendar. For the shortest month on the calendar, this little bit of a placeholder between the frigid deep winter of January and the oncoming spring of March sure does take its sweet time passing. Maybe a few thoughts are in order about this endless, snowbound beast of a month...
...then 60 must be really something! In Chicago in February I'd say that would be doing very well indeed. Now I recall that the very first time I spent a February in this town (back in '76) there were a few days late in the month in the 70's--we were playing frisbee in bathing suits on the tall ice floes along Lake Michigan at Northwestern--but that is such an anomaly that it is hardly worth mentioning.
60 degrees in Chicago in February. I could deal with that. We did not quite get there today but it's something to strive for.
Of course, we're heading back down tomorrow...
E3H: We finished Portrait today. I will say that again. We finished Portrait today. All that remains are your projects. Good luck with them over the long weekend; they are due Wednesday.
More E3H notes: Those who still need to turn in blueprints and calendars for your capstone projects, here once again is the link to the project overview. There is a WW on Tuesday.
E2CP: Death of a Salesman scene projects begin now. It is critical that you start them this weekend and get huge chunks of them done. Waiting until after the four day weekend to get started is a horrible idea. We will be starting Catcher in the Rye on Thursday. There is a WW on Tuesday.
Drama: We welcome out newest member: way to survive the gauntlet. And BTW a smile goes out to Jessica for her official Full Membership after today's parodies. A word about my end-of-class comments: it is not that the re-done parody was not funny. It most certainly was, and I'm sure that the video will reveal that I was laughing as much as anyone. But it is not always about the laughs. It's more about the integrity of the performance: anyone can go for the cheap laughs, but trying to reclaim yuks you got "last time" only works sometimes, and today I think we saw what can occur when it ends up being too driven. Not just by Ross either: the whole class was intentionally asking the same questions as before, seeking the same results, and that is not improv. The crudely named frigate, for example, was far funnier the other day in its two or three fleeting mentions than today when the word was bandied about as if it were the whipped cream on a sundae. You simply cannot force that, and you shouldn't try.
Lesson over.
As to homework: Find a conversation, overheard or overseen. (Yes, it might be something you saw, very animated but words unknown to you.) Script it out exactly as Draft One. In Draft Two, tweak it so that it will play better as a scene with a beginning, middle and end. Then...
Find a Drama Class partner and get together to figure out how to perform your scene. You do not need to perform each other's scenes. In fact, since we have an odd number, that will not even work unless someone groups with a threesome. But try to come in Tuesday ready, with only a bit of warmup, to play them out. (And I want the scripts, of course.)
Know what else I want? Your journals!!!
Have a nice weekend. :-)
No one, nowhere, no how is going to convince me that 40 degrees is anything but bloody chilly. I don't care about the context. However...
50 degrees...
In February in Chicago...
OK, maybe I can call that a warmup. :-)
E3H: Yes, that was the sound of Portrait of the Artist completing its run. I have a few more points to make tomorrow that I do not think will take more than 15 or 20 minutes and then you'll have time to spend in your groups for the final projects. Theban Plays next week! Oh, and since we have no school on Monday, WW is Tuesday. (Yes that means the assignment is due on Wednesday. You may all offer me profuse thanks now.)
E2CP: We finished up DOAS today, and I think you all seemed to get what I was talking about. Please tell me (via email or conference or passing reference or smoke signal or whatever) if you did not. Anyway, we'll be moving on, but not before we do one final project, taking advantage of a long weekend to do it. It will be an acting unit. You may make your own groups of 2 people and select your own scenes from the list at the end of the link above. Over the long weekend: get together, read and practice practice practice, and create "the book" for your scene. If getting together proves difficult, you can at least work on your lines and your parts of the book. This project will be performed in class beginning on March 1. Meanwhile, we will be beginning Catcher in the Rye, so get a HUGE head start on this during the four-day weekend, and also don't forget that you should be working on a third WW piece.
Drama: Nice work on classmates with four to go. Everyone come as your secondary impersonation tomorrow. :-)
definition of irony:
You know that, if it were October...or May...or just about any month other than December through February, 40 degrees would not feel warm by any stretch of the imagination, but here we all are, reacting as if we have been saved. It is amazing what a bit of juxtaposition can do for what by any intrinsic standard is a damn chilly day.
Nonetheless, by any standard, I am very glad it is not -5 anymore!
:-)
E3H: WW today. In P7 we introduced new vocab; we'll have to do so in P1 tomorrow, but you can find them online. Finishing (cross your fingers) Portrait discussions tomorrow and Thursday. Groups should be hard at work for projects--due Tuesday.
E2CP: WW today. DOAS tomorrow, registration Thursday.
Drama: Nice work with teachers, folks. Tomorrow: Bring in a classmate day! All of those observations pay off. Be prepared to look like, interact like, walk like, and chat like your subject!
Want more great reality shows?
I know: are those not lovely words to hear, E3H-ers?
:-)
I hardly need to say much more to make you have a beautiful, happy weekend. But I will:
High temps in the thirties all weekend. :-)
Heading in the right direction...
E3H: Keep those wikicab posts a-comin'! Also... PART ONE of Portrait End Game starts now, and it's a project. See the specifics about it on the E3H page . I know I said there would be an essay option, but you'll all be writing essays next week anyway: let's work on a creative piece right now. :-) We will finish the groups on Monday. WW on Tuesday.
E2CP: Keep those wikicab posts a-comin'! Also: for Monday (by email and/or hard copy): the answers to four short essay questions on DOAS. We will finish the movie on Monday. WW on Tuesday.
Drama: Great work again today, guys! More teachers on Monday. Exercise 3.4 (and journal entries) over the weekend. I need to collect journals next week. Observations Game Day is coming next week!
And now, for you sports fans (or just fans of pure skill):
On his bi-weekly broadcast of "Lin's Bin," Lin Brehmer of WXRT (93.1 FM) will try to answer that question at 7:15 Friday morning. Might be worth a listen; maybe we can all figure it out together. :-) I know one thing: it sure as heck is not the weather.
E3H: Tonight, go online and play with Wikicab. Also, read the posts in your group's topic and continue research to get ready to act as "experts" for tomorrow's discussion. Your group will own about eight minutes of class time; this is for a grade. There will be short essays on Portrait over the weekend.
E2CP: RW tomorrow. There will be a short essay on Death of a Salesman over the weekend.
Drama: Nice work today on the parent assignment! Tomorrow: prepare a short "lesson" presented by a caricature of one of your favorite teachers. Make the impersonation clearly recognizable but a bit exaggerated for comic effect. Have a good time with this one!
You know those Groupon ads that have everyone up in arms? Well, Conan has been spoofing them:
Last week there was a story making the rounds from an Australian newspaper, picked up by sources here in the US, that the star Betelgeuse, one of our nearest neighbors and a red giant, would soon go supernova and explode, creating a brilliance in the sky visible from Earth as a "second sun" that would make our days like a scene from Star Wars' Tatooine and our nights nonexistent for a time. And all of this, they said, could happen by 2012.
2012!
It sounded so cool that I even told some of you about it.
But then I got to thinking: this is a HUGE story, right? Why then have I not heard anything more about it? So I looked it up, and damn! My instinct was right: it is not quite the huge story it first appeared. It is yet another piece of evidence of how we are taken in by the incorrect pieces of "information" out there on the Information Superhighway. It's easy to be lured by stories that one wants to believe. No wonder so many people so easily believe the falsehoods spread by the media about political candidates: if you're leaning that way anyway, you don't really require evidence; you only need the story itself.
That's how "death panels" were created.
And that's how Betelgeuse (pronounced "beetlejuice") became our second sun.
Here's the article that explains why it is not any kind of imminent threat.
Meanwhile:
All classes, just prepare for tomorrow as you prepared for today. Consider this to be a one-day extension.
I am not feeling well. I may not be in tomorrow (Wed). E3H and E2CP, please bring your RW books. If I am not in, we'll flip the RW to tomorrow. Spread this on facebook please.
OK. Back to what I laughingly refer to as "normal." heck, we even had birthdays today. (And more tomorrow!) So I guess the after-shocks of Snowzilla '11 have officially calmed down...although I understand that at least one numbskull weatherman has been referring to this week's weather as "wind-chill-pocalypse."
Oy.
I mean it's one thing for a high school English teacher to make silly references once in a while to a completely absurd amalgam of frozen precipitation and a Japanese claymation ocean-dwelling dinosaur, but something else altogether for a meteorologist to stir up random fears by tacking the bizarre and invented suffix "pocalypse" to everything like a poltical reporter using "Gate" or a health reporter using "oholic," neither of which makes a bit of sense outside of its original context either. It's as if the job of a reporter has been redefined to be, instead of reporting the news, creating it by causing as much panic and paranoia as humanly possible.
End of rant.
And now a word from your teacher about classes.
E3H: Today was Writing Workshop (unless you were period 1, in which case today's writing workshop was yesterday). No matter which section you are in, though, tomorrow's Adventures With Stephen will still be tomorrow. Also, check out the NEW WORDS on wikicab! And don't forget: six Portrait posts by tomorrow. And annotations (for those who need them graded) are also due. (Whew! Big day!)
E2CP: Today we watched Act One. We'll discuss it some more tomorrow, so prepare. Here's the thing: if we try to have a discussion and I'm the only one ready for it, Teacher is not going to be happy... Also tomorrow, we will have a quiz on Act Two. BTW: Check out the NEW WORDS on wikicab!
Drama: We watched the remaining monologues (except for Jori and Topher because they were absent). Tomorrow we will see theirs and we will all "bring along" our parents to the class. Don't forget your Observation Game.
And now, a story from a very unusual music group: