Thursday, June 09, 2005

Stuff and Nonsense

Val and I have been chastised before for caring about celebrity marriages, but just like Rebecca Traister on Salon, I am so very, very sad for Mel Brooks. I can’t imagine his sense of sadness and loss; he must be truly bereft, and I’m so sorry for him. I felt the same way when June Carter Cash died, and I was correct in assuming that Johnny wouldn’t last long without her. I hope that won’t be the case with Brooks, but I admit that I’ll think it’s romantic if it does.

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What am I reading? Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue. I think there should be a National Treasure award, and I think Bryson should get one. I have repeatedly laughed out loud while reading a book about language. Bryson’s books should be required reading for people in teacher certification programs.


What am I going to read next? A guy from school gave me a collection of X-Men comics that begins with the very first edition (these are crappy reprints on crappy paper—nothing valuable), so I’m excited to dig into the real history of the X-Men and compare it to what I’ve put together from the movies and that cartoon that aired when I was in college.

Other than that, I’m not sure what I’ll pick up next. I started Peace Like a River, and I liked it, but I didn’t feel like reading it. I’m about sixty pages in, and I have time to pick it up again, but I’m just not in the mood for something filled with angst. In fact, I think I’ve been a little too filled with general angst lately to want to read anything that isn’t funny and lighthearted. Give me some suggestions, please. I’d like the literary equivalent of party foods: I’d like a nice sharp cheese spread, or a pepperoni roll. Or how about a super light lemon cookie that seems to dissolve on the tongue? Maybe something salty? You get the picture.

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My son is officially in third grade—his Moving Up Day ceremony was Tuesday, and his class sang a song, answered a few questions the head of the lower school directed at them to make sure they were “ready”, and then trouped down from the stage into the newly-emptied seats in the third-grade section of the auditorium.

I might be a scrooge, but I think this is a little too much fanfare. Sure I’m proud of the growing and learning Teddy has done this year, but if completing second grade is worthy of hoopla . . . Oh, I should shut up. It’s cute.

2 comments:

BabelBabe said...

No, I'm with you. It seems a bit much hoopla. But hey, if the kids are ok with it, what's the harm, right? We were just generally thrilled to be done school and knew we'd be moving to the next grade in the fall and we could think about it then. Oh, those were simpler times...

Mother Tongue got reamed by reviewers on Amazon, but I still might check it out.

I'll talk about book reccs in my blog entry later...

Katy said...

at CMU Drama there is the changing of the seats... there are no questions asked by the head of the school, but there is singing and cheering and running to the new area of the auditorium. It might be a lot of hoopla, but its fun in college, so I'm pretty sure its fun in elementary school too.