The Daily News
1 I don’t know when it happened, but the DN is suddenly getting followers from all over the world.
2 I have things coming to me from Ukraine, Washington, Ireland, France, Taiwan, and the far reaches of Europe.
3 They are listed under my “visitors.” I don’t think I know anybody who lives in any of those places. I don’t know many people who live past Tully Road.
4 Odd.
5 According to Xanga, I still have no friends.
6 AND I still have no subscribers.
7 But I do have visitors. That sounds almost extraterrestrial.
8 My “visits” have increased substantially in the past couple of weeks.
9 Anybody looking?
10 Moving on, Part One: I think part of the reason I’ve increased visits is word got out at my school that I write this nonsense.
11 I know I have a few colleagues at school who are now onto this nonsense. Welcome aboard!
12 Rumor has it that a few students have cracked the secret code of the DN.
13 <dramatic old-movie music> dun dun DUN!!!
14 <valley girl voice> like, em…heh-LOW.
15 The DN was originally written for students duh.
16 It is officially in its seventeenth year.
17 That’s a lot of years. That’s older than a lot of students who might be looking at this. I’m not sure about the French, and I’m WAY not sure about the Ukrainians.
18 Fear not.
19 Some are amazed that I have not one, but TWO Facebooks! WHAAAEEEEEEET???
20 Yup. I didn’t want to be left out of the picture.
21 Sue me.
22 Sue me.
23 Shoot bullets through me.
24 I love you.
25 Those are lines from a song from the very excellent Guys and Dolls, which started all this folderol.
26 At the risk of putting off regular listeners, the history of the Daily News is that it was a means of communicating with the company of Guys and Dolls years and years ago.
27 Directing a musical has little to do with art, and LOTS to do with communicating what needs to be done, where, and when.
28 Guys and Dolls is a huge show. It needed a lot of organization, but instead of handing out schedules of who needed to be where and when, I just posted little ten-to twelve item DN’s on the wall of the Performing Arts Department at Yerba Buena High School. It would include deviations from the regular schedule.
29 Thinking back, I imagine it was probably a pain for the Company, but that was sort of how we rolled back then.
30 The DN always had its basic essence of my commenting on world events, sports, goofiness, and puns. From the start it was a complete lark.
31 And often amusing. There was never a time that I thought I wrote it.
32 I had little control about what would wind up on that wall. These thoughts would enter my mind like stray birds, twitter at me, and fly off.
33 It became a morning ritual for all of those involved in producing and staging that show.
34 The name was of course picked from the New York Daily News, and directly picked from the song Guys and Dolls from the selfsame show.
35 It used to be on various colored papers and posted with a thumb tack.
36 Students slowly got into it and would arrive early just to read all the stupid stuff I would post each morning. After a while it had little to do with who would be where and when.
37 It was a rallying point in the morning, and became a ritual of laughter, of amusement, and of high-fiving. I wanted people smiling in the morning, and we smiled an awful lot. Laughter filled the building each morning. I have always loved my job, because I could cause good days and good times. I used to tell Ponch, the music man, “Mr. Ponticelli, we are in the business of making memories!” He and Shawna, our choir director became my best friends. It was a fun trio. Ponch and I were the bad boys on the block, and she was always the gracious, wonderful counterpart who brought class and charm to everything, a perfect contrast to our Wild West show.
38 Somewhere around 2004 I began posting the Daily News online. Historically, that’s pretty advanced. Most teachers had cheap websites that went through the school. I eventually put up two websites, one that was unique to YB Drama, and the other that was for the entire department.
39 I used Yahoo Geocities to post a lot of this stuff, and to archive everything. I stopped after a few years because they claimed I had stopped paying them when I clearly hadn’t.
40 I wish I had taken a little more effort to keep those websites, because the YB Drama one took me ages to set up. It had a history of the Workshop, a comment thread, and a feel for what that entire world was.
41 It now is rusting somewhere in some weeds. It was a rocking website that had all sorts of fun areas to travel, including the entire Heidi story, the story of the Theatre “ghost” who purportedly haunted the Theatre, and even a link to Strong Bad, the bad-ass cartoon character that I believe is still rocking laughter all through digital space. He’s the guy that stands in front of the sign that says, “I’m using technology.”
42 Fun stuff.
43 When I finally left YB because of administrative cluelessness about the Performing Arts, I landed at Evergreen Valley, became their Activities’ Director, and stepped up the DN to the snappy look it has today.
44 To this day, people who were in Guys and Dolls still rally to read this, and many former students and colleagues get this nonsense sent to them each day.
45 But really? Until a few weeks ago, I probably had a pretty small following.
46 Hardly anybody would hit the actual Xanga website. Most people who read this nowadays are on one of my two Facebook accounts, I’m quite certain. I have one site for school people, former students, colleagues and former colleagues, friends, and another for family and friends from home.
47 The reason for the separation originally was to spare my school peeps from having to see me do a cannonball into a swimming pool.
48 Family has seen it, so it won’t burn their eyes.
49 But my professional persona doesn’t include swimming suits or too much family goofiness. Privacy policy.
50 AnywayZ
51 The DN in recent years has been re-hashed to reach everyone all at once. I retained Xanga because there was an era earlier this century when everybody had Xangas. I kept it for nostalgic reasons. The DN has little to do with shows anymore, although my cameo appearance as one of three Teen Angels in EV’s Grease last Spring brought a lot of the old stuff back. It was a blast working on that very special show and watching a show that I had thought of when I first arrived as the activities’ guy come to fruition.
52 They are doing High School Musical this year. Occasionally I see students who were in Grease, and there is this sort of fond smile that comes of it.
53 Do I miss directing?
54 <basketball buzzer>
55 Nope.
56 People ask me that all the time.
57 “Don’t you miss directing?” Like anything, I have fond memories of a lot of it, so the answer is actually “Yes.” But when I think of the stress, of the outside groups suddenly appearing and interrupting rehearsals, of the constant fights with admin about theatre usage, and the lonnnnnng tech Saturdays, I smile and relax. Nope. No thanks. I’m done being an artiste.
58 I like being in careful touch with the Performing Arts’ Department at my school. I do occasional lights and sound for concerts. I enjoy the tech booth. I like that I support the arts unconditionally.
59 But I LOVE that I don’t have to do it anymore. I get all the perks and none of the responsibility. I don’t have to fight all the battles. I don’t have to worry about flaky performers.
60 And I can still jam with rock bands, sing with people, and perform in musicals, talent shows, and variety shows, most of which are for good causes.
61 I prefer at this point to make classroom teaching my art, even though the students don’t know it. My entire set-up has a cheery, fun yet academic air to it. I have a gorgeous classroom in a brand new building. It has vaulted ceilings and cathedral windows with curtains that go up and down at the push of a button. They look out on the fabulous East Hills of San Jose, which are lush and green this time of the year.
62 It is the Cafe Verona. It morphs to that in the Spring. It is designed after Starbuck’s ambient lighting, and Disney’s imagination. There is always music, laughter, ears and braces.
63 It is my new art. It is a silent art. I wish to improve each minute, each period, each day. It is seldom perfect. Yesterday, for example, I messed up getting my third period interested in Much Ado. I must fix that in the next week. Fortunately, I saved it at the end of the period. I had absolutely BORED them when we read it in a read-around that blew up in my face. Eight heads conked out. That simply can’t happen.
64 I rescued it the next period by reading parts of it briefly, bringing in the double entendres, and then firing up Kenneth Branagh’s epic film of the show.
65 It worked in my third period after the eight heads had come back alive when all the butts started appearing on the screen (no worries; I put Mr. Censor all over the screen. He’s a cartoon censor originally designed to hide Romeo’s butt, but he was on the job yesterday.), so there was sense of success. It worked MUCH better in my fourth, where eyes lit up and everybody loved the language, the music, the “sigh no mores” and all the rest.
66 So the art came back with twinkling eyes, ears and braces.
67 Great fun!
68 Well, the clock tells me that I have timed out, so have a GREAT weekend, and we’ll see you again!
69 Peace.
~H~
www.xanga.com/bharrington
www.xanga.com/bharrington
