Algernon D.D.S.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Day 257 - The Oneders

June 21, 2011

A gift made by a kid.

Fun!

The Oneders at Redhook Trivia Night

Placing 5th out of 35 teams isn't bad.

And they're having a Harry Potter themed night on July 19.

One of the categories was Second Grade Cinema:

You had to guess the movie based on the crayon drawings.

(Answers after the Linkage)

Linkage:

YA Fiction Debate Summarized

There are some people who think that Young Adult fiction is bad for kids.

They try to lump "The Hunger Games" in with "Twilight".

We have to make a distinction between "Good" and "Crap".

Darkness Too Visible

The Wall Street Journal article that started this controversy.

Why The Best Kid Books Are Written In Blood

Sherman Alexie's response to the above.
He makes a great point.
Why are we trying to protect kids from the world where they already live?

Best Coast Video coming with Donald Glover

Whoa.

Answers

1) Oldboy

2) Rebel Without A Cause

3) Terminator 2: Judgement Day

4) A Christmas Story

5)Total Recall

6) Mrs. Doubtfire

7) Spiderman

8) Crybaby

Day 257 - Carnival Day

June 20, 2011

Our Carnival today was AWESOME!!!

Great Idea #1 - Give the kids a map and a powerpoint to explain all the events.

Kids were so excited before the carnival even started.

Great Idea #2 - Use punchcards to encourage the kids to try different events.

Every event used a different punch so kids couldn't cheat.
After 3 punches, kids could get cotton candy or a sno-cone.

After 7 punches, kids got a bag of candy.

Great Idea #3 - Let Me DJ

DJ ScrizzleScratch in the HOUSE!!
Wait, on second thought, don't call me that.
I need a killer DJ name.
Thoughts?
And remind me never to play Dubstep again.

Great Idea #4 - My classes chose to watch the 1986 animated Transformers Movie instead of a Pixar film.

Trivia Night at Greenlake Bar and Grill

I did not choose our team name.

Nor can I take credit for this impressive graphical representation.

Linkage:

Outdoor Movies

A listing of outdoor movies in and around Seattle.

Jersey Shoresical

The dream has not been realized yet. But this kickstarter page could give us a chance to see a Ronnie and Sammie love ballad.

Pottermore Speculation

The mysterious Pottermore site could be anything.

Top Albums So Far from LA Times

These lists help me find new music, but everyone has a list, so take it with a grain of salt.

Hello Giggles

Zooey Deschanel helped start this humor site for girls.

Seems fun, but I know I'm not the target audience.

Can we get a female opinion on this?

Day 256 - My Father Does Not Read Blogs

June 19, 2011

Happy Father's Day.

My dad will not read this blog.

He has not set up the voicemail for his cell phone.

He has had this phone for one year.

I'll just have to talk to him in person.

Watching Sports Night is like being in a time warp.

(1998 was a strange time.)

- The World Trade Center is in every establishing shot. -

- MLS Teams are completely different -

- Mark McGuire is a hero. -

- Cell phones are bricks, but not quite as bad as Saved By The Bell -

- They use a mail order catalog instead of Amazon.com -

Five Books I Might Want To Read This Summer

The Passage - Justin Cronin

The AbsolutelyTrue Diary of a Part Time Indian - Sherman Alexie

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Columbine - Dave Cullen

Jane Jones: Worst Vampire Ever - Caissie St. Onge

Linkage:

Joe Posnanski Article about The Promise

Beautifully written article about how a Bruce Springsteen song helped a son understand his father. The song is linked below.

Bruce singing The Promise

You can listen while you read the article.

Onion Article about Father Songs

If only someone had written this song.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Day 255 - Sports Night

June 18, 2011

Sports Night

The show Aaron Sorkin did before West Wing.

The whole series is on Netflix streaming.

I'll be busy for a while.

Sorkin stopped writing this show so he could focus on West Wing, though it's clear he used many of the same ideas on both shows.

Sports Night - West Wing Similarities

Sip and Sit

I attended a Sip and Sit Party.

This is a new thing for babies.

I guess it's an open house with a fancier name and a baby.

Linkage in descending order of ridiculousness:

Jon Stewart Rips Fox News…Again

Jon Stewart talks with Chris Wallace.

There's no crazy aftermath like when Jon Stewart was on Crossfire

(which led to the cancellation of that show)

Stephen Colbert at Northwestern

Always funny and insightful.

I like his story about his missing diploma.

He had an incomplete class and nobody told him until graduation.

I feel like that will happen in our school district soon

Songify This: Ride A Bike

SUCH A JAM!!

Day 254 - Fake Birthday

June 17, 2011

Today is not my birthday.

But the pod wanted a reason to party.

Somehow, the idea of a birthday morphed into making nachos for lunch.

Real avocados. Real pulled pork. Real fake cheese.

Cake from Hoffman's Bakery in Kirkland Park Place.

German Chocolate.

It was as delicious as it looked.

Three students came to visit me today.

I was their teacher and coach my very first year and they are juniors in high school now.

They are the best kids I could ever ask to work with.

When they thought back to our time together, they remember the fun stuff, and had placed all of the other lunacy in it's proper place. They could recognize that I adored them but was frustrated with some of the dopes in their class. I am so relieved that the good kids felt how much I cared about them, and that they understood the difficulties of dealing with chuckleheads.

Linkage:

Kissing Couple in the Vancouver Riot

I can't put my finger on why I love this picture so much.

I was almost disappointed that they found the couple.

The story in my head is probably better than the real story.

Vancouver Post Its

People used Post-Its to cover a police car with thank you notes.

A spontaneous outpouring of support by citizens appreciating their law enforcement.

Breaking Bad-athon Plan For Catching Up

Everyone who watches Breaking Bad freaking LOVES it.

This schedule helps you get caught up in time for the Season 4 premiere. The plan is super helpful because it breaks the episodes down by their emotional impact. Some days, you can only stomach one episode before you are emotionally ruined.

I'm probably not making this show sound fun...

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Day 254 - Refocus

June 16, 2011

Inspired by recent readings, I decided to take a drive tonight.

Here's what I saw:

Reading that prompted this trip:

Five Reasons Life Actually Does Get Better

by John Cheese at Cracked.com (but it's still really good)

I know it seems silly, but this piece is poignant and insightful.

You owe it to yourself to read it.

In the last year you've probably heard "It gets better" used as a motto to encourage gay teens who've been the victims of bullying. This is not a rebuttal of that, because I am not an asshole. What I do want to do is expand that message to everyone that age, whether you have a bully problem or not.

I figure it's time, as I tend to write about dark and often brutally depressing subjects, like how I was a smoldering drunk for over half of my life and how much my parents sucked at being parents. But I do it for a reason. I figure there are a lot of people in the same situation who feel like they're alone. That's always the worst part about having a shitty life in your teens or 20s, feeling like everyone else in the world has it figured out but you.

So, as a man with a truly shitty past, let me say that it's not just a slogan. It does get better.

And just to make sure you didn't skip over the "it's not easy" part: If you think "it gets better" means you can sit back and wait for a naked genie to fart cash into your living room, it will not. "It gets better" doesn't mean life lets up, it means you no longer have to submit to it. Not like when you're a kid, when your parents can divorce without your consent or make you change schools or make you get a stupid haircut. When you're an adult, you can get pissed and swing back.

From Patton Oswalt:

First off: Reputation, Posterity and Cool are traps.   They’ll drain the life from your life.   Reputation, Posterity and Cool = Fear.

Let me put that another way.   Bob Hope once said, “When I was twenty, I worried what everything thought of me.    When I turned forty, I didn’t care what anyone thought of me.   And then I made it to sixty, and I realized no one was ever thinking of me.”    And then he pooed his pants, but that didn’t make what he said any less profound.

Secondly:   The path is made by walking.    And when you’re walking that path, you choose how things affect you. You always have that freedom, no matter how much your liberty it curtailed.   You…get to choose…how things affect you.

And lastly, and I guarantee this.   It’s the one thing I know ‘cause I’ve experienced it:

There Is No Them.

Day 253 - Math Project Results

June 15, 2011

Students were supposed to find real world applications for various math concepts we have studied throughout the year.

They did it with their own style:

Don't ask me.

I don't understand it either.

Bring on the Linkage:

Sam Jackson performing Go the F#$@ to sleep

One of the best ideas for a children's book finds one of the best voices.

Super 8 Easter Eggs

and

Super 8 Pop Culture Artifacts

These make more sense if you've seen the movie.

You should totally see it. You'll like it.

Cricket Article on Grantland

If you've ever wondered about cricket, so have these guys.

There is also a movie about cricket called Fire in Babylon about the rise of the West Indies team.

Ferris Bueller's Last Day Off via Atom.com

Answers the question: What if Ferris still acted the same way when he was 35?

Other Channel
Tags: Atom.com | Funny Videos | Tournament | Upload

Book Of Mormon at the Tony Awards
Yes, I watched the Tony's because of The Book Of Mormon.
I cannot stop listening to this:

Have I talked this up enough?

Being new to the Tony Awards, I would totally watch them next year.
But only if Neil Patrick Harris is involved
Opening Number - Closing Rap (Yeah, Rap)

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Day 252 - Two Dollar Tuesday

June 14, 2011

$2 Tuesdays at Rock Bottom in Bellevue

Great deal, but this place got PACKED!

The key seems to be getting here early.

The Bellevue Galeria will validate 4 hours of parking, so that shouldn't be a concern.

And I did not have to join a mug club... or maybe I did.

I'm not sure.

Two Other Headlines:

1) How To Land Your Kid In Therapy

via The Atlantic

This fantastic article was written by a therapist who wondered why so many adults were coming to her claiming they were "unhappy". There were no typical triggers for depression (kids had loving, present, upper-middle class parents and no history of trauma), but patients claimed they felt empty.

A fascinating read.

“Happiness as a byproduct of living your life is a great thing,” Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory at Swarthmore College, told me. “But happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster.” It’s precisely this goal, though, that many modern parents focus on obsessively—only to see it backfire. Observing this phenomenon, my colleagues and I began to wonder: Could it be that by protecting our kids from unhappiness as children, we’re depriving them of happiness as adults?

Today, Wendy Mogel says, “every child is either learning-disabled, gifted, or both—there’s no curve left, no average.” When she first started doing psychological testing, in the 1980s, she would dread having to tell parents that their child had a learning disability. But now, she says, parents would prefer to believe that their child has a learning disability that explains any less-than-stellar performance, rather than have their child be perceived as simply average. “They believe that ‘average’ is bad for self-esteem.”

2) Legend Of Zelda: Link to the Past

Emulators are AWESOME.

Day 251 - 8th Grade Commencement

June 13, 2011

The last few days of school, I meet with kids individually to talk about the year.

Sometimes we talk about how they progressed this year. Sometimes we talk about their plans for the future which amaze me ("I want to be a neurosurgeon... or a pilot.").

Sometimes we talk about college and I tend to offer more advice than they probably wanted ("Seriously, having a car as a freshman will make you SO popular.").

The process restores some of my faith in the youth of America.

But the kids deserve something bigger.

These are the kinds of things kids should hear at the end of school:

Conan O'Brien at Dartmouth

Amy Pohler at Harvard College Class Day

Ali G at Harvard

Fred Armisen at Oregon Episcopal High School

Link to Video

Remember that there's no one way of doing things. You know how when you unscrew something it's 'righty tighty, lefty loosey'? If you just get a hammer and hit it really hard, whatever it is, I guarantee you it'll open.

No music is better than the music that you grew up on. Try to remember all the bands' names and all the band members' names, and that's gonna help you in the future when you play trivia games.

Patton Oswalt at Broad Run High School

Link to Full Text

First off, I want to thank the teachers and faculty of Broad Run High School for first considering and then inviting me to speak here. It was flattering, I am touched and humbled, and you have made a grave mistake.

I’m being paid for this, right? Oh, wait, there’s some advice, right off the bat – always get paid. If you make enough money in this world you can smoke pot all day and have people killed.

I’m sorry, that was irresponsible.

You shouldn’t have people killed.

Boom! Marijuana endorsement eleven seconds into my speech! Too late to cancel me now!

Day 250 - Sleep Cycle

June 12, 2011

Yesterday was exhausting. Just look how much sleep I needed to recover.

Yes, I can see my sleep!

The graph is from an app called "Sleep Cycle". It uses the accelerometer in the iPhone to measure how much you fidget while you sleep, which supposedly corresponds with your current sleep state.

The alarm wakes you in a half hour window, but waits until you are in a shallow sleep state for a gentler transition.

It might be total phooey, but when the graph shows better sleep, I feel better.

I know this only proves correlation and not causality.

Whatever.

I feel better.

Celebrate it.