August 14, 2013
-
Say cheese.
The Daily News
1 WHEW!
2 Thursday already, and we are rockin’ it!
3 I LOVE teaching!
4 I don’t ALWAYS love teaching, but right now, I LOVE it.
5 There’s always something about the beginning of a new school year that is eternally refreshing.
6 Yes, we have to sit through all the rules, regulations, trends and things but once the dust settles, we get into the classroom, roll up our sleeves, and get down to it.
7 Moving on, Part One: Speaking of school, I’d like to talk to the guy who pitched Staples’ Back-to-School commercial that begins with a horrid version of Alice Cooper’s monster hit School’s Out. I didn’t really catch the entire commercial, because most of teevee these days is like a lava lamp with droning sounds that fall to the floor like obnoxious raindrops.
8 Last night I busied myself with writing this when that commercial came on. The Staples’ version of the classic end-of-the-school year song sounded as though it was being sung by the Angel’s Camp Girls’ Choir. This with a song about the end of the school year done originally by a band whose lead singer purportedly tore a live chicken to pieces on stage, bit off its head, and quaffed its blood during a September 1969 concert at a festival in Toronto. The press jumped all over the story the following day, prompting Cooper to deny all accusations. The immortal Frank Zappa heard this and swiftly got this message to Cooper: “Well, whatever you do, don’t tell anyone you didn’t do it!”
The inimitable Frank Zappa
9 Staples. My head spun. Aren’t they supposed to target students during their Back-to-School campaign? Isn’t Back-to-School one of their biggest seasons of the year?
10 The place has to be teeming with executives who majored in Back-to-School. They had to use some good bait to get the Back-to-Schoolers to come in and spend money on their products. Somebody somewhere came in with the idea of using School’s Out, not by Cooper, but by a rather dull cherubic choir in order to ignite huge spending sprees.
11 I REALLY had to ponder: “Who PITCHED that?”
12 I glanced over the top of my granny glasses and hitched a smile.
13 I then gave my head a non-physical shake and got back to work on this. I again looked up and pondered. Sidebar: English majors actually major in pondering. They look up and ponder more than the average citizen.
14 I remembered as a seven or eight-year old I would watch on teevee obnoxiously stupid commercials, most of which would make me go berserk. At one time I couldn’t stand it any longer. I looked up at my Dad, who was reading his morning Chronicle when I abruptly blurted out, “I could write stuff better than that!” I had reached the boiling point.
15 His response? “If you think you could do it, then do it.” And he turned the page and got right back to reading.
16 That incident shut me up for about a hundred years.
17 I never did get around to pursuing advertising as a career. I remember toying with the idea in college, but thought about how truly scary it must be to pitch an idea to executives and investors.
18 I spun it around and decided it probably isn’t as easy as it looks.
19 What is?
20 #sigh
21 Those who can.
22 Moving on, Part Two: Yesterday morning’s Merc News had this as a headline: THRIVING GIANTS. For about a billionth of a second I thought I had somehow wandered into a parallel universe. Fireworks and explosions burst all through my frabjous mind.
23 But only for about a billionth of a second. The Giants. Our Giants. My Giants #allapologiesrusshodges
24 It’s all darned impossible for mortal man to comprehend.
25 Hold on to that feelin’.
26 Yeesh.
27 I can’t wait to channel surf back and forth between the Giants and Property Virgins tonight. I just shake my head when I think of the legacy of this team. History won’t be kind. This team will be remembered as the all-time choke team that gave up when things got tough. Not true maybe, but that’s the legacy they have carved for themselves. I still love them because they’re my team. But it is a mild sort of sad. Just mild.There are worse things.There are worse things.But I shall say no more.
28 Moving on, Part Three: Later that night: Oh, what it has all come to! Woe is me! Woe are we! Woe, woe, woe!
29 I’m pretty sure that was from Oedipus Rex.That guy did a lot of woeing.
30 He was sort of a woeing machine.
31 Anybody lookin’?
32 I’ll never do that again.
33 No. Seriously this time. I PROMISE.
34 Is there a back door outta here?
35 Moving on, Part Four: My historical battle with inanimate objects continued into the day before yesterday.
36 It was darned well Chaplinesque.
37 I washed a few dishes by hand the other night, a secret obsession I have with being clean. I wanted to wash them and THEN put them into the dishwasher.
38 I was scrubbing a coffee cup when the handle broke off, right in my hand.
39 Probably brittle from so much washing.
40 I’ve also been trying to stay all over the laundry, since we actively work out, garden, and LIVE, which includes lots and lots of organic grime.
41 I’ve gotten Zen about the grime.
42 I learned it from Lennon.
43 I put my head inside a bag and do a grimal scream.
44
45 Oh stop. Somehow I had to get a camel in here for longtime DN fan Cindy Barrett.
46 For the rest of you, I’ll never do that again. I already promised once. And you know me.
47 Moving on, Part Five: Where was I? Oh yeah #inanimateobjects #thinkoldman #Chaplinesque #laundry
48 While trying to keep up with the laundry, I went to take it out of the dryer that same night only to find I had more shirts than I had hangers.
49 I put aside two Hawaiian shirts that had small rips, and took great care to go green with the hangers.
50 I can go green when called upon. I’m cool like that.
51 I put one of my crisp, clean school shirts on a hanger. The weight of the shirt broke the hanger hook off the hanger, right in my hand, EXACTLY like the coffee cup handle earlier in the evening. The shirt’s neck area mysteriously showed evidence of ring-around-the collar.
52 I thought of hiring a detective.
53 I saw this as a copycat inanimate-object occurrence.
54 In laundry terms that’s a high grime.
55
56 OKAY, okay.
57 I’ll never do that again.
58 The same night I was editing the DN when something knocked the teevee tray holding my laptop completely to the floor.Total collapse. The tray flattened at on odd angle. My laptop landed safely on my lap.
59 The teevee tray landed flatly on the floor. I wanted to put chalk lines around it, and again call a detective.
60 Moving on, Part the Last: NOOOOOOOOOO!
61 Sorry. Just having a sudden flashback. I found myself in some odd bubble that was yesterday morning, with some Lifetime movie flickering on tthe teevee. I looked up. What I saw was all these wretched people huddled together singing Amazing Grace.They seemed to be dodging meteor showers. It very much could have been the Angel’s Camp Girls’ Choir doing the singing. Meteor showers. Yeesh.
62 Like I don’t have enough to worry about.
63 About which to worry.
64 That’s about plenty for today. I’m in the present and headed for cover. Can umbrellas stop meteors?
65 I’ll see you tomorrow.
66 Peace and puns.
~H~
