Jazz on a Winter's Day

I don't get out of the house much during these holiday breaks. I'm very close to becoming an elderly shut-in, it seems, but every now and then, someone will request my company and I manage to shower and shave and put on clean clothes and venture forth into the outside world.

Yesterday, the son of one of my friends from work was playing in his five-member band at the Jazz Bakery, located in the old Helms Building on Venice Boulevard (the building where they used to make a lot of bread, apparently). Five of us from work, plus his sister and one of her friends, joined the small but enthusiastic crowd. The group is called the Big Enough Band, which I think is a great name, and they are amazingly talented young men. They're all probably in their early to mid-20s, and all of the songs they performed were written by various members of the band. I feel like such a slacker when I meet young people like this. I could barely manage to string together coherent sentences at that age, and they're already performing their own music at a well-respected jazz venue.

The band includes a tenor saxophone player (the son of the friend from work), an alto sax player (who seems to be the leader of the group), a guitarist (the most talented composer of the bunch, I think), a bass player (who seemed to be having a blast for the whole show), and a drummer (who really knows how to pound the skins). While jazz is not my favorite type of music, I know enough about it to appreciate just how good these guys are. They perform well together, and I hope they start to get some recognition for their talents. They all met through the music program at their university, apparently, and it's good to know that the university system is bringing together and nurturing young talent like this.

After the show, we went to a nearby restaurant in Culver City. The restaurant, called Fraise (I think I got the spelling right), is one of those places where you can have a slow leisurely meal and talk. I enjoy getting a chance to spend time with these friends outside of work and away from all of the little demands that are placed upon us. We talked very little about teaching or our classes or much having to do with the college. We talked instead about books we've read or are reading and movies we've seen or want to see. We had an interesting conversation about Stuff White People Like, with an interesting detour to #116 on that list, Black Music that Black People Don't Listen to Anymore (i.e., jazz). We ate well, although the portions are a bit on the small side, no doubt due to that nouvelle cuisine residual effect. And we had quite an entertaining discussion on how we were going to divide up and/or pay the bill. I hope everyone put in enough money, but who can tell when the total exceeds three hundred dollars?

I was actually out of the house for a bit more than five hours on a Sunday. That hardly ever happens, particularly during the semester when there's always papers to grade or lessons to prepare for the upcoming week. I need to get out more, I know. It's just too easy to stay at home and watch all of the episodes of Life on Mars and The Starter Wife that I've saved on the DVR. But I do miss going to events like this concert, and I would like to go to see more live theater/theatre than I do. Here's hoping the new year brings more opportunities to avoid staying at home all of the time.

A Christmas Wish

I hope you are able to carry a little bit of the Christmas spirit with you wherever you go. (Some of you will recognize this as the cover of one of my Christmas cards in the past. I do love this image.)

Yes I Did

I did manage to take the Christmas tree out of the box this year and display it. (I have two of them, actually, but that seemed to be overkill.) You probably can't see the details here, but the ornaments are all characters from Gone with the Wind. No, I didn't buy them for myself. My mother buys me at least one new Gone with the Wind ornament (sometimes more) and at least two Peanuts ornaments from Hallmark each year. I don't really know why she thinks I am so enamored of Gone with the Wind, but they are well-made ornaments and it's Christmas so why not? Perhaps next year it will be a Peanuts-themed tree. (Yes, I know why she buys the Peanuts ornaments. When I was younger, I loved Peanuts, particularly Linus. I always felt a certain affinity with him.) My ex used to get Marilyn Monroe ornaments each year because he or I once mentioned in the vicinity of my mother that one of his favorite movies was How to Marry a Millionaire. She does sometimes latch on to the oddest comments to remember. By the way, she asked this morning if I had put up the tree and then she wanted to know if I used the Gone with the Wind ornaments. The tree itself is only about four feet tall. It's one of those with the lights already on it. (The other tree-in-a-box has multicolored lights, for the record.) I know an artificial tree isn't "green," but I figure if I do keep using it, that is better than tossing a living tree each year. I can't really plant one, living on the fifth floor of an apartment tower as I do. I may keep this one up for a couple of days more. Then it's back to the box for another year. However, I did want everyone to know that despite my usual Scrooge tendencies, I was somewhat in a holiday mood this week.

Nutty Neighbors: Just a Thought

On Monday night, while trying to watch The Big Bang Theory during a particularly noisy discussion by Mr. Echo and the Woo Girls, it occurred to me that perhaps one of the women in that apartment is Logan's girlfriend/lover/whatever. It struck me that, post-coital, she might say to him, "Oh My God, Logan, that was SO awesome," and I started to giggle.

Overheard

While I was in the Los Angeles airport on Thanksgiving Day, waiting to start my long journey to Alabama, I happened to sit next to an older couple with their grandchildren. The grandmother was busy keeping track of the kids while the grandfather was on the phone. Normally, I try not to overhear phone conversations involving strangers, but some people just talk so loudly that you can't avoid it. And, somewhat surprisingly, there weren't a lot of open seats in the airport that day.

I don't know to whom he was talking, but the grandfather was asking about the recent elections. He was trying to discern the other person's voting pattern, I guess. So he finally just asked, "Well, who did you wind up voting for?" The other person was apparently an Obama supporter. Hearing this, the grandfather replied, "Well, I could never vote for a Democrat. Not with me being Christian and all."

Is this where our country is today? There are people who really believe that Christianity and the Democratic Party are in conflict? Is it any wonder that I'm still worried about the future of the United States?

Am I Missing Something?

I've not shared a lot with you about my classes this semester, but I'm still puzzling over the rough draft submitted by one of my students in the American literature course. It's the second half of American literature, from 1865 to the present, and I tend to divide the course into three historical periods. The second part of the semester covers Modernism in American literature, the period including World Wars I and II, roughly 1914-1945.

I ask students to write one essay and take one exam on each of the three periods that we cover. So the second essay assignment asks them to choose a literary work written in America between 1914 and 1945 to analyze. Sounds like a simple enough assignment, doesn't it? They get to choose the work and determine the critical approach that they want to take toward it. That's really all I ask of them.

When I received the rough drafts for this second set of papers--yes, I still read rough drafts even in my literature courses--I received one or two that were not on American literature from this period. Now, some were just mistakes that could be easily explained. The students had accidently chosen works from earlier or later than the period, but the works were written close to the Modernist era. Once I pointed this out to them, they quickly chose a different subject and were happy with the final results.

One, however, completely puzzled me. I wrote down the thesis statement because I knew I would probably want to talk about it here. This is what it said: "This essay will analyze whether or not the Bible is meant to be read as fully divine, fully human, or a mixture of both elements."

Did I fail to mention that this was a paper written for an American literature class? Did I also note that the period covered was to be 1914-1945? How could anyone so badly misinterpret an assignment to think that the Bible would be a good choice? When I asked the student why he had picked this topic, he said it was because it interested him. When I reminded him that he was supposed to be writing about some work of American literature produced during the era of Modernism, he said he had found a source from the 1930s that talked about the issue of the Bible's divinity. I gave him additional time to write another draft but told him that it had to follow the assignment guidelines more closely.

So, I ask you, am I missing something? Have I gone crazy? Am I the one who just doesn't get it?

He has since submitted an essay on a more appropriate topic for the class. I did not, however, give him credit for the rough draft since it didn't even begin to fit what I had asked the class to do. Now he's requested that I reconsider that decision. He says he did, after all, submit a rough draft even if it happened to be on the Bible. I will probably give him some points just to keep the peace, but I frankly don't feel too inclined to be generous at this point. Should I really be kind to someone who thinks that the Bible is a work of American literature written between 1914 and 1945? Or is it me who's losing touch with reality?

Nutty Neighbors: Mr. Echo and the Woo Girls

I know I haven't blogged in a while. I've had too many papers and rough drafts to grade, and frankly, I've just been feeling a bit overwhelmed lately. I managed to squeeze in a quick trip to Alabama to visit the family for Thanksgiving, but otherwise, it's been work, work, work.

So I haven't even shared with you that I have new neighbors. I can't go into all of the details because I don't even know all of them. They moved in about six weeks ago, but they remain a mystery to me. I don't, for instance, even know how many people live next door. It could be as many as five or as few as two. There's sort of a revolving door on that apartment. I do know that they're all young, early 20s, I'd guess. And they're very restless, it seems. They can't seem to stay put for long stretches of time. Some people in our building come home at the end of the day and just want to relax. Once they're inside the apartment, that's pretty much it for the rest of the night. Not these kids. They go in and out almost all day and all night, never staying in the apartment for more than a couple of hours at a time. I guess I should be grateful that, unlike the previous tenants, these kids don't slam the door each time they walk in or out.

I'm beginning to wonder if any of them have a job. None of them seems to have a regular schedule. If they are students, I don't know when any of them goes to class because they always seem to be here except when they go out at night. If they leave during the day, it's usually only for a couple of hours, and that's not long enough to be work-related (unless, of course, you know...). How could anyone afford an apartment in this building without a job? Mommy and Daddy must be very generous to fund such an extravagance. I'm still living here thanks to rent stabilization, but the going rate for the two-bedroom apartments here must be more than $2000 a month nowadays. (I just checked: the range is from a little more than $2000 to more than $2900 for a two-bedroom. Yikes.)

I've dubbed them "Mr. Echo and the Woo Girls" because they do tend to talk very loudly. (I briefly toyed with calling them Mr. Echo and the OMGs as an homage to a very frequently stated phrase.) Mr. Echo's real name is Logan, apparently. I know this because they talk very loudly, but I think I mentioned that already. He, in particular, has a very deep, resonant voice that seems to echo throughout the apartment and into the hallway. The Woo Girls--number still to be determined--are the kind of girls who like to yell "Woo" whenever someone makes a statement or suggestion. You know the kind or you've seen the recent episode of How I Met Your Mother that addresses this in more depth. These are the girls who, when you say, "Who's ready to party?!" yell back, "Woo!" (Although it's more like "Wooooooooooooo!") Thankfully, so far, this has not been incredibly frequent.

Twice, though, I've had to knock on the door to ask them to turn down the music. Yeah, I know. I'm an old fuddy-duddy. But they do love their bass when they play hip-hop music (yeah, typical suburban white kids), and it's a bit tough to concentrate with the thumping going on next door. What I noticed when they opened the door was a bit surprising. They have no furniture. The living room, which is a very big space in these apartments, is empty. That's why there's such an echo. There's nothing to block the sound. I wonder if they even have beds or if it's just a series of mattresses on the floor. For me, it would be pathetic to have to live that way. I'd find a smaller place and spend less on rent so that I could afford some furniture.

I was duly punished for asking them to turn the music down, just so you know. When Logan showed up yesterday--his arrival announced much like Norm's used to be on the TV show Cheers--they started playing music again. It wasn't quite as loud as in the afternoon, but it was certainly turned up enough to make me aware of it. Sadly for them, I slept through most of it because I was so tired from the work week. The music was either turned off or down by the time the rest of the crowd showed up, and they all talked loudly until late into the night. I went to bed at 11 p.m., so I don't know how long the party went on. The noise level didn't keep me from sleeping yesterday. I guess that will show me, huh?

I'd should add that they're also very fond of the balcony on this end of the hallway. There's a sort of V-shape to the ends of the buildings here, and the balconies are in the middle of those Vs. Sometimes, the kids like to take a drink out to the balcony and have a smoke and talk loudly a lot. There's only a couple of problems with this. Given how loudly they talk, they've disturbed the neighbors a couple of times. I've heard them grumbling as they walk back into the apartment about having the security patrol tell them to be quiet. The other problem is with the cigarettes themselves. Apparently, they've been leaving the butts and ashes out on the balcony, prompting a rather sternly worded memo sent to the residents of our floor about the proper disposal of said waste products. I'm sure that also went over well next door, especially since everyone on our floor now knows about it.

Look, I'm sure on some level they are nice kids. They don't seem to be running a meth lab (although I could be wrong about that). They're just noisy and boisterous, the way kids that age tend to be. Unfortunately, I am getting to an age where I really don't like noisy, boisterous people. I find them annoying. I may start looking for another place to live if this keeps up since the folks who run this apartment complex seem to want to saddle me with the kinds of neighbors who just don't seem to recall that they're living in an apartment, not a dorm room.