The DN
1 It's fitting that JFK was on Sundance last night.
2 Don't know why.
3 I taught it last month before the 50th anniversary of his murder.
4 It's fun looking at it after doing research on all sorts of new info I never knew before.
5 It's fun because I got a new sound bar at Christmas, so the film sounds like it's in a theater.
6 Great job.
7 I watch. I still want people arrested.
8 My good friend and confidant Al Russell from YB was always into the JFK assassination too.
9 We had some great talks over the years.
10 I don't remember the exact convo, but if memory serves he told me he had always thought of writing a play about a guy who is well-advanced in age, being an old codger screaming at anybody and everybody that it was clearly a government/CIA/anti-Castro/Texas Oil Billionaire hit.
11 We'd laugh.
12 The thought of some guy in his 90's screaming at random people amused me.
13 Still does.
14 The feeling I got from Al was, "I don't wanna be that guy."
15 Amen, pal.
16 Great guy, great teacher. He and I did the Blues Brothers for a couple of events at the school, and it was always a blast.
17 The last time we did it I'm pretty sure I had already been hired at EV. Rocha asked if we could do it for a talent show. I LOVED the idea.
18 We practiced a few crossovers to I Can't Turn You Loose, grabbed two rocking chairs from offstage, posed on the last note of the song, and then said, "We're ready to rock!"
19 Fun stuff. I think we did Soul Man and Oh, Pretty Woman. Comin' to ya, on a dusty road. Fun night.
20 I wish my memory worked better; I'd be a lot more accurate in my recollections.
21 That's one of the bad things and one of the great things about getting older.
22 You have those moments.
23 It begins young.
24 For example, have you ever walked into a room in your house and not remember why?
25 It doesn't get any better.
26 That happened to me beginning at around age twenty-five.
27 In so many ways it's a bad thing because you can't remember things the way you used to.
28 It's also a great thing because can't remember things the way you used to.
29 Two-way Street.
30 Anybody lookin'?
31 Moving On, Part One: Yesterday we had our first fire drill of the year. I think every school and business should do this.
32 Even though it was a tad disruptive, it worked. They had the entire school evacuated within seven minutes.
33 Pretty impressive.
34 Except the following period a voice came over the P.A. " Attention all teachers and students. Please evacuate all buildings immediately."
35 NOBODY expected this. I stayed calm and evacuated my students. I always have them meet at the baseball field right across from our building. We are to meet at home plate, entering through the first base side so we don't block the delivery road where fire engines would enter.
36 I've done this before.
37 My students were awesome. Fire alarms rang out from buildings. My students thought it was staged, but I didn't. I took it seriously, even though it seemed a remarkable coincidence.
38 When it continued, I instructed my students to stay right where we were so that I knew where everyone was at all times.
39 I knew it would go into lunch and told them that they had to stay with me.
40 The were amazing. When the lunch bell went off, my students stayed put. The were AMAZING. A lot of students headed immediately for lunch.
41 We didn't. We had NO idea why alarms were going off. For all we knew it could have been a bomb scare. To move my students back toward possible danger made no sense.
42 I made them stay until we got an "All Clear" from the safety team.
43 I had them return to the classroom because I assumed we would be able to hear further instructions over the classroom PA.
44 Again I was right. They asked everyone to wait until they heard a bell, and then go to lunch, and that lunch would be extended ten minutes.
45 Done.
46 From what I could see, most of the teachers did the same thing. I was pretty proud of our staff and students yesterday.
47 My last class of the day is right after lunch, and THAT class behaved wonderfully. The don't always, because they are right after lunch, always a tough time of day to quiet a class down.
48 They were really cooperative. I gave them a lesson in where we are to go as a class in the event of a future fire alarm, gave my lesson, and then went online to see if there was any further information about what had taken place.
49 At the end of class I still had nothing to report. Just before the bell I reported this to my class. "We still don't know exactly what took place, but I want to thank you for being really good through all of this. Have a good day."
50 As the bell rang and the students gathered their belongings, one kid shouted over the din, "I think someone dropped a bomb in the boys' bathroom!" The class erupted in laughter, all ears and braces. There's only one thing a bomb being dropped in the boys' bathroom means to a bunch of freshmen.
51 He then smiled all ears and braces. I couldn't help laughing. I knew I shouldn't have, but for just a second I thought like a ninth-grader.
52 I laughed more than once.
53 Good times. For the record, we were informed by email that there was a fire set in the upstairs boys' bathroom of the "B" building. Someone had lit the paper towel machine afire. That could have been a lot worse.
54 Good day. Nobody was hurt. Good day. I'm proud of our school. I'm proud of the administration, staff, students, and paras. Everyone was a hero and nobody was hurt. That's how it should go down. I feel better today. And proud.
55 You have a good weekend.
56 See you again.
57 Peace.
~H~
The DN
1 Thursday.
2 Garbage Day.
3 At least over in my parts.
4 This is the third consecutive Thursday that I mentioned Garbage Day.
5 That's why I capitalized it.
6 Round here that's a big night.
7 To me mentioning it in the DN saves me the time I would have spent putting it in my laptop notes.
8 Ah the joys of galloping into madness.
9 fkdfadfdkjdfjdfkjlf.
10 Want in on a secret?
11 I thought last night was Thursday.
12 Wishful thinking.
13 Moving On, Part One: Speaking of thinking, I've been doing a lot of it lately.
14 This is always dangerous.
15 Yesterday I thought that human beings were designed to hibernate this time of the year.
16 Makes sense to me.
17 To test the pulse, I took a stroll down Facebook Street yesterday.
18 You don't hear a lot of cheering about people getting up and going to work.
19 You don't hear a lot of cheering about people getting up and going to school.
20 If someone has the day off, they talk about cuddling under a large comforter and going back to sleep.
21 I wonder if human beings were once bears?
22 Anyhow that's part of what I was thinking yesterday.
23 Moving On, Part Two: The other night I had written a DN all about recent coincidences.
24 The thing that happened was what ALWAYS happens when I write about coincidences: they occur more frequently as I write.
25 Two nights ago I wrote about coincidences and just as I was ready to put the DN to bed, a commercial came on TCM. It was an old ad campaign for the film The Great Waltz, all about Strauss.
26 I wrote the words "The Blue Danube" at the exact moment it played.
27 This followed with an ad for The Time Machine, complete with commentary from leading actor and protagonist Rod Taylor.
28 The trouble was my DN already had several coincidences, and these additional coincidences compounded it.
29 I decided yesterday morning to deep six that DN, because NOBODY really cares about rapid-fire coincidences. I care because it happens despite ridiculous odds, and because it happens constantly.
30 I liken it to the Cole character in The Sixth Sense. Unless it happens to you personally, nobody gets it.
31 Something like that.
32 I enjoy it. I enjoy that pictures from The Time Machine danced live at me the other night just as I was ready to turn in. It was as though someone had animated the DN.
33 So yesterday I didn't bother printing that one. I might sneak it in on Saturday or something, just for the curious.
34 I will say this: I decided to take a lunch time stroll yesterday. I walked down my hallway and this girl looked up at me. I had on my favorite hat, slanted just so.
35 "Cool hat!" she said. I smiled.
36 "Know what it reminds me of?"
37 I smiled again. "Nope."
38 "It reminds me of that old movie The Time Machine and that guy, what was his name?"
39 I stared. My mind went blank. This happens more and more. I shook my head slightly. I thought "Best coincidence of the year and you can't remember the guy's name even though you JUST watched it."
40 "Robert Wagner," I said. I added, "I think..." Another teacher heard me and smiled.
41 That kick went wide.
42 It drove me crazy. I finally looked it up on my cell and instantly remembered Rod Taylor from the night before.
43 All that psychic training for nix.
44 Ah well.
45 I still thought it was cool that she brought The Time Machine up. Nice kid, good spirited. The whole thing made me smile.
46 Last night I turned off the teevee when I wrote this.
47 I didn't know if I could take any more coincidences.
48 So I looked at a blue screen that kept putting up floating ads that said Press OK to watch TV.
49 I ain't pressin' nuttin'!
50 I'm pressin' my luck if I don't duck outta here.
51 Happy Garbage Day.
52 We'll see you again.
53 Peace.
~H~
The DN
1 All right! I'll try it!
2 Are we on the air? <shuffle of microphones> Are we on?
3 Good morning.
4 Guess you heard that.
5 A voice in my head told me to attempt writing a DN LIVE this morning.
6 "I wrote something last night," I said.
7 "You wrote crap. You wrote about your coincidences again. Read my lips: NOBODY CARES."
8 "I care. I think some people are interested. And it wasn't just about coincidences. It was about telekinesis."
9 "Telekuwhatis?"
10 "Nevermind."
11
12 That Voice. I suppose I could call it the Voice. I'll do that but I'll forget I ever said I would. The Voice. Why not?
13 It's a combo of my own ideas mixed with my own critic.
14 I DID realize that I haven't reported any real news since the Niners. <Crosses self.>
15 Have pitchers and catchers reported yet?
16
17 Maybe I'll hold the telekinesis until tomorrow when I have a more accurate spelling of it.
18 Moving things with the Mind.
19 I capitalized the word Mind to give it almost an alien look. Large head. Small face.
20 Nevermind.
21 Okay then, here's TODAY'S news coming to you LIVE!
22 The radio down the hall just had a piece about how cold it is.
23 It was sure cold in Chicago yesterday.
24 How cold was it?
25 <Johnny Carson smile>
26 It was so cold...it was so cold that a "Chicago area" restaurant was selling soup to the elderly at the price of the outside Farenheit temperature.
27 In some cases the restaurant had to pay the customers if the temp went below zero. This fun promo continues through February. You gotta love it.
28 Could the restaurant get its money back if the customers complain?
29 Last week I read that Angry Birds, Flickr, and some other apps connected to Facebook tracked our info and it is now in the hands of someone.
30 Who knew?
31 I thought Arlen Specter investigated that one a few years ago and came up with an sheepish admission that the government had been spying on our cell phones, but just for little stuff.
32 Specter is the guy who along with Gerald Ford came up with the single-bullet theory in the JFK assassination.
33 I prefer the Angry Birds angle.
34 Here's an item. Nobody listened to Obama's State of the Union speech last night.
35 I tried. It didn't even seem noisy or newsworthy. You'd think a sleepy nation would wake up to that address.
36 John Boehner looked like Sleepy.
37 Anybody lookin'?
38 The Voice seems to have rested here a bit.
39 Moving On, Part One: Sad to see that folk icon Pete Seeger walked into the proverbial bar.
40 Seeger, a songwriter and political activist extraordinaire wrote such lovely tunes as If I Had a Hammer, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, and the immortal Turn! Turn! Turn!
41 Heartbreaking in an era when heartbreak now means someone didn't answer a tweet.
42 When will they ever learn?
43 So simple.
44 I'll leave it at that.
45 So simple.
46 Live life.
47 Love life.
48 Peace.
~H~
