Today is not exactly promising to be a gem of a day, so I apologize in advance if this entry gets even more bitter than I originally intended. It started this morning with my mercilessly loud alarm clock waking me after not nearly enough sleep – I had promised myself I’d do a better job at this, but the book I’m currently reading* thwarted my best efforts to put it down and get a good night’s rest. Then I discovered that I was dreadfully low on provisions, and would be surviving sans a proper meal until lunchtime. And then I dumped half of the grape juice I intended for my stomach on my wall, floor, and (miraculously still functioning) cell phone. Sigh.
*The Harsh Cry of the Heron: The Last Tale of the Otori. Think 1600s Japanese historical fiction, with a bit of fantasy element thrown in for flavor. I highly recommend it; the author clearly has a deep understanding of the Japanese language and culture that pervades his writing (he is not Japanese and the book has only been published in English, to my knowledge).
Today I’m back to the School in the Sky, which is a good thing, but is also part of the inspiration for this (rather touchy) subject. As you may be aware, the Japanese education system requires students here to study English for the equivalent of 7th through 12th grade. Many elementary schools are even pushing their kids to start it earlier, beginning with the alphabet and basic vocabulary around 4th grade. Mind you, it takes until 6th grade for the Japanese to completely learn the 2000+ characters they need to know to read their own language, so foreign language instruction at that early level is pretty rudimentary.
Anyway, students study English for a minimum of six years here, whether they like it or not. They study very specific, standardized English, though, through which the one goal is preparing them for high school and college entrance exams. Any of you who have made a serious effort at learning a foreign language before may have an idea of how much this sucks. What happens when your knowledge base has grown to the point where you start becoming curious about grammar and vocabulary not covered by the government-stamped-and-approved textbook? Here…well, not much, unless you’re lucky enough to study somewhere that has an after school English club (not so much the case around my area, but it’s a goal of mine to get one started). So, we have pretty much every student in Japan doing the same dry, boring-ass New Horizon P.O.S. for 6+ years…does it shock you that they aren’t all chomping at the bit with excitement?
The obvious result of this system is that not all students want to learn English. And they certainly don’t all plan on going into English-related fields in the future (if they’re even considering that sort of thing at age 14), so they don’t even have a reason to learn it (aside from those bloody entrance exams, of course). We shouldn’t, then, be at all surprised when we encounter students who couldn’t be arsed to study English even if they were being paid for it. Especially because…
In Japan, one does not fail classes. This is not because they are necessarily a country of geniuses, or because of any sort of societal pressure to study one’s ass off. They don’t fail classes because teachers simply will not fail them. And regardless of what they say, students know this. The students who don’t care (fortunately the minority) know that they do not have to try, that they can sail through junior high school and they’ll still be handed a diploma at the end of 9th grade. They may or may not go on to high school, but that’s hardly a concern of theirs – no, the law does not require them to. These students (hereafter referred to as Coat-racks) can usually blend in well in an average classroom of 30-40, but take them outside that sort of camouflage zone and they stick out like proverbial sore thumbs.
This gets back to part of the inspiration for this entry, the School in the Sky. Most of the kids here are great; they put forth a serious effort (at least, in the English classes that I’m part of) and the teachers all seem proud of them. There are currently only 11 students in this entire little school, though, and the average class size is 2, so there’s nowhere for Coat-racks to hide. When I first walked into one sannensei class here and discovered within ten minutes that my ichinenseis could pwn them without even trying, it was a tad depressing. I asked a little about this and got rather nebulous responses: so-and-so isn’t good at studying, they are often truant, they aren’t interested in going to school, etc. Umm…why? The teachers either honestly don’t know or are saying so to cover for some sort of situation they don’t want to talk about. One can see how this seriously hampers my goal of turning would be Coat-racks into productive, almost-English-speaking members of society.
I don’t really feel angry with these kids, though; they are part of a system that utterly fails to instill in them any desire to succeed. And that’s where I ideally come in.
My role as an English teacher here is one of both instructor and motivator, and the latter is infinitely more complicated than the former. Surely, I have the option of taking the easy way out, of spending my time with the kids who do give a shit and who want to make something of themselves instead of slipping through the cracks of society and working in a factory or McD’s for the rest of their lives. But if I do that, I fail in what is easily at least half of my job here. This doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that I’ve got this motivation thing figured out, though. Humor and general self-degradation are fun and will make (most) students pay attention for at least a bit, but I’m not always the font of clownish idiocy that I strive to be. And there is always that first part of the job, teaching. Ah, what a balancing act this is turning out to be.
In the long run, I know I’ll be fine. I also know that I can’t “save” everyone, that some students are happy where they are and don’t want my help. It still hurts to see them fall, though, especially since I’m fair certain that no one else will pick them up.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
My immaturity
If ever you harbored even the suspicion that living in Japan would kill my puerile sense of humor...Ha! Think again, my friend, think again.
Heh-heh. Hey Beavis, check this out... I kid you not, this is seriously a restaurant near my place.
Does your trash can kiss your ass?
Playing with our boogers in science class.
This is what happens when you feed a young Japanese male his body weight in beer.
Ok, WTF? I know it's just a box of incense, but still... Gonna get me some hot black lovin' tonight!
The pot leaf really completes the image, too. Do you suppose this is a subliminal racist statement on the supposed pharmaceutical habits of some African-American men and women?
And revisiting that first image, I am now accepting caption suggestions for the above. "This Old Woody" and "Little Boner on the Prairie" are ideas I've received so far.
Heh-heh. Hey Beavis, check this out... I kid you not, this is seriously a restaurant near my place.
Does your trash can kiss your ass?
Playing with our boogers in science class.
This is what happens when you feed a young Japanese male his body weight in beer.
Ok, WTF? I know it's just a box of incense, but still... Gonna get me some hot black lovin' tonight!
The pot leaf really completes the image, too. Do you suppose this is a subliminal racist statement on the supposed pharmaceutical habits of some African-American men and women?
And revisiting that first image, I am now accepting caption suggestions for the above. "This Old Woody" and "Little Boner on the Prairie" are ideas I've received so far.
A picture’s worth a thousand cliché sayings…
…none of which will be repeated here :)
Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Linkin Park
Correlation? Maybe.
I just found out that the school lunches I’ve been eating for free will become something I get to (have to) pay for, starting in October. It’s break time after lunch at School in the Sky (or, mountains anyway), and I just finished another one of my awestruck tours around the place, camera in hand. It’s typical at my schools during lunch/break time for them to play some popular music over the school’s PA…but today it’s “What I’ve Done”...on repeat. Over and over. And over. And again. Grrr.
Ah, well. To take my mind off of that and other stupidity, I’ll post some pictures of this place. As beautiful as they are, the photographs don’t do this place justice. If there was some way to convey the smell of the Japanese cedar, the sheer atmosphere that comes with being up in the mountains alongside a fog-covered lake, I’d being doing it right now. Still fine-tuning that holodeck, though.
Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Linkin Park
Correlation? Maybe.
I just found out that the school lunches I’ve been eating for free will become something I get to (have to) pay for, starting in October. It’s break time after lunch at School in the Sky (or, mountains anyway), and I just finished another one of my awestruck tours around the place, camera in hand. It’s typical at my schools during lunch/break time for them to play some popular music over the school’s PA…but today it’s “What I’ve Done”...on repeat. Over and over. And over. And again. Grrr.
Ah, well. To take my mind off of that and other stupidity, I’ll post some pictures of this place. As beautiful as they are, the photographs don’t do this place justice. If there was some way to convey the smell of the Japanese cedar, the sheer atmosphere that comes with being up in the mountains alongside a fog-covered lake, I’d being doing it right now. Still fine-tuning that holodeck, though.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
My quasi-day off
One unfortunate fact of the Japanese work ethic is that they place great value on just showing up, even when there’s not a damn thing to do. See also: today.
Yesterday was a national holiday (敬老の日 – Day of Respect for the Elderly), so everyone was free to do whatever they pleased. I had a plan to drive to Akita City to see a friend or two, but then we received 26 bazillion cm of rain and travel became not exactly safe; Akita City may still be underwater or floating out to the Pacific as I type this. So, I slept in, watched a movie with a friend, and then while channel-surfing we discovered that the autumn sumo wrestling tournament was on, so we watched that for most of the afternoon. There are a surprising number of foreign (not Japanese) wrestlers in sumo these days, I must say. Quite an ass-ton (no pun intended, I swear) of Mongolians, plus a few from Eastern Europe (one of whom I’m pretty sure my friend has the hots for), were in the tournament, even in the upper ranks (ōzeki, 大関). And actually, the two highest ranked guys right now (yokozuna, 横綱) are both Mongolian, although apparently that’s kind of rare. So we sat and cheered and made some tacos and basically did nothing productive all day. It was fabulous.
Getting back to that work ethic thing, though… Sigh. So, school’s still on break today, but I need to show up at the Board of Education anyway, ostensibly to put in a full day’s work. Even the Japanese people in my office, who have the remarkable ability to look busy and/or find work to do in nearly any situation, seemed to understand that we are all in the office today only because not showing up would look bad*. I spent the majority of the morning conducting complicated and exhausting experiments in the fields of physics and aerodynamics with my immediate supervisor. What this really means is that we compared paper airplane designs and tried to see who could keep one airborne the longest, within the confines of the BoE office. She won.
*The Japanese have an inbred fear of or aversion to standing out, in any situation. They even have an expression that translates to, You will be assimi…erm, no, wrong TV show. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Yeah, that’s the one. This (mostly) explains my students’ inability to speak the hell up in class, forcing me the drag the answer out of them with 50 lb. test line even when they know it perfectly well.
The afternoon improved somewhat, as one of the local places we get lunch at when I work at the BoE was able to make some udon spicy enough to singe my nosehairs. I worked for a while on some of my fiction, and by the time I could open my mouth without unleashing gouts of flame I decided to go for a wander. I found a few of my students in the BoE building’s common area playing Final Fantasy: Crisis Core on their PSPs. I of course had to play with their gullibility a bit, so I asked them why they weren’t studying for the English test tomorrow (which there isn’t, of course). They discussed their scores on the last English exam (anywhere from 76% down to 22%) and came to the conclusion that they were hopeless, so they might as well continue trying to beat the White Dragon. Sigh. I do indeed have my work cut out for me.
In slightly more promising news, there was also a group of girls (likewise some of my students) who were actually studying. A few were working on social studies, something about French independence I think, but I didn’t pay too much attention. The rest were engrossed in a ‘bonus project’ for English – nothing I assigned since I hadn’t seen it before. I spent a good hour sitting with them, sipping some hideously sugared coffee and helping when they got stuck on their English project. It mostly involved searching one of their textbooks for translations of unfamiliar expressions, but it kept my attention because unlike the entirety of the New Horizon textbooks we use in class, this one contained useful, [gasp!] relevant expressions. I don’t care if the Japanese government has a steamy love affair with every last page of New Horizon; Ann Green can still go straight to hell – do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Yesterday was a national holiday (敬老の日 – Day of Respect for the Elderly), so everyone was free to do whatever they pleased. I had a plan to drive to Akita City to see a friend or two, but then we received 26 bazillion cm of rain and travel became not exactly safe; Akita City may still be underwater or floating out to the Pacific as I type this. So, I slept in, watched a movie with a friend, and then while channel-surfing we discovered that the autumn sumo wrestling tournament was on, so we watched that for most of the afternoon. There are a surprising number of foreign (not Japanese) wrestlers in sumo these days, I must say. Quite an ass-ton (no pun intended, I swear) of Mongolians, plus a few from Eastern Europe (one of whom I’m pretty sure my friend has the hots for), were in the tournament, even in the upper ranks (ōzeki, 大関). And actually, the two highest ranked guys right now (yokozuna, 横綱) are both Mongolian, although apparently that’s kind of rare. So we sat and cheered and made some tacos and basically did nothing productive all day. It was fabulous.
Getting back to that work ethic thing, though… Sigh. So, school’s still on break today, but I need to show up at the Board of Education anyway, ostensibly to put in a full day’s work. Even the Japanese people in my office, who have the remarkable ability to look busy and/or find work to do in nearly any situation, seemed to understand that we are all in the office today only because not showing up would look bad*. I spent the majority of the morning conducting complicated and exhausting experiments in the fields of physics and aerodynamics with my immediate supervisor. What this really means is that we compared paper airplane designs and tried to see who could keep one airborne the longest, within the confines of the BoE office. She won.
*The Japanese have an inbred fear of or aversion to standing out, in any situation. They even have an expression that translates to, You will be assimi…erm, no, wrong TV show. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down. Yeah, that’s the one. This (mostly) explains my students’ inability to speak the hell up in class, forcing me the drag the answer out of them with 50 lb. test line even when they know it perfectly well.
The afternoon improved somewhat, as one of the local places we get lunch at when I work at the BoE was able to make some udon spicy enough to singe my nosehairs. I worked for a while on some of my fiction, and by the time I could open my mouth without unleashing gouts of flame I decided to go for a wander. I found a few of my students in the BoE building’s common area playing Final Fantasy: Crisis Core on their PSPs. I of course had to play with their gullibility a bit, so I asked them why they weren’t studying for the English test tomorrow (which there isn’t, of course). They discussed their scores on the last English exam (anywhere from 76% down to 22%) and came to the conclusion that they were hopeless, so they might as well continue trying to beat the White Dragon. Sigh. I do indeed have my work cut out for me.
In slightly more promising news, there was also a group of girls (likewise some of my students) who were actually studying. A few were working on social studies, something about French independence I think, but I didn’t pay too much attention. The rest were engrossed in a ‘bonus project’ for English – nothing I assigned since I hadn’t seen it before. I spent a good hour sitting with them, sipping some hideously sugared coffee and helping when they got stuck on their English project. It mostly involved searching one of their textbooks for translations of unfamiliar expressions, but it kept my attention because unlike the entirety of the New Horizon textbooks we use in class, this one contained useful, [gasp!] relevant expressions. I don’t care if the Japanese government has a steamy love affair with every last page of New Horizon; Ann Green can still go straight to hell – do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Profiling my school
Happy terrorist day, everyone! No, it's not actually something anyone pays attention to over here. Warms my heart to think that other civilized countries have gotten over it by now. Anyway, on to the substantial parts of this post.
I've been asked more than once what some of the students and teachers are like at my school(s), so I'll share a bit. I primarily teach at Kosaka Junior High, so this'll be about people there.
Ms. Giggles
Ms. Giggles is the youngest teacher at KJH, being fresh out of college and in her first year here. She teaches English and laughs at everything. She has this ridiculously girly, high-pitched laugh that, coming from anyone less educated, would be nearly suicide-inducing. Somehow she manages to pull it off, though. We first met kind of randomly when all of the teachers (none of whom I had met at this time) were invited on a tour of a new high-tech recycling plant that had just been opened in Odate (next town over, about 2o min. by car). On the way back, a woman I had spoken to briefly asked me if I'd like to exchange bus seats with her. She was sitting next to Giggles, who apparently wanted to talk to me but was too shy to ask. I think her head nearly exploded when I sat down next to her and tried some conversation. Turns out she's real sweet, though, and fun to teach with (all of the English classes are team-teaching style).
NEXT...
I refuse to steal the name Ms. (or even Mrs., since she's recently married) Americanized, but I'm hard-pressed to come up with one more appropriate (so far). She's the next English teacher up the food chain, and she went to college in Washington state for four years, so she basically speaks perfect English. We'll go with Mrs. Freckles for now, since she has quite a population of them. I've had a great time teaching and planning lessons with her so far, as she has a good grasp of American humor. Our current project involves very occasionally rewarding students who perform well with a fake dollar bill, and telling them to take good care of it. We won't tell them what it's for, though, and it drives them batshit crazy. I spent 15 minutes of lunch time today dodging questions from one poor boy who begged me to tell him before the next exam, because he was worried that the stress would keep him from adequately preparing. Tee-hee, I'm such an ass.
Baldy
I don't actually work with Baldy every day, but he's the bureau chief of the Board of Education, so I see him plenty. As you might have guessed, he has very little hair. I did not have to give him this name, though - one of his co-workers at the BoE introduced him as Baldy when we met on my first day in Kosaka. This is indeed the same one I mentioned at the end of "Sugitaru wa oyobazaru ga gotoshi." He's the sort of guy who always has a mischievous gleam in his eye, as if he's constantly sharing some private joke with everyone he speaks to. And he loves beer. We get along well, needless to say.
CPB
CPB is short for Condescending, Patronizing Bitch. This may come as a shock to you, but I don't care for her much. CPB is the principal's secretary. The principal is a kind, old man who really seems to love what he does, but his harpy is a waste of human parts. She speaks to everyone (that I've witnessed) with a sing-song, holier-than-thou mannerism that grates on the nerves, and she seems to enjoy finding useless tasks to occupy my time. My recent *ahem* favorite was a form that needed to be filled out after I went out on a business-related event during work hours. She had filled out the entire form in pencil, and then asked me to trace her letters in pen. Because obviously she doesn't know how to use a pen herself, and just giving me the bloody thing to fill out from scratch would mean acknowledging that I have a reasonable understanding of her language (she knows I speak Japanese). Better yet, when I was finished filling it out in blue pen (she hadn't specified a color preference), she asked me to retrace it in black pen.
...If you listen closely, you might be able to hear my eyes rolling. I swear that if she disappears and they never find the body, though, that I had nothing to do with it. Ah, but this entry has enough vitriol for now. Moving on...
Squid Boy
Squid Boy is a sannensei student who is generally one of the more active and enthusiastic class participants. For this reason alone I'm glad to have him around; he sets a fine example for all the other kids who need to consult with their nearest 4 neighbors just to answer a question like, "Do you live in Kosaka?" His nickname isn't a tremendously profound affair, though; it just came from the first English statement he made to me. I was eating lunch with his class one day, and he came up to me and announced, "I...like SQUID! I love it!!" Whatever does it for ya, kid.
Egghead
Egghead's nickname has nothing to do with the shape of his head (well, mostly...he is kind of baldish), but comes from his diet-related choices.
School lunches are served in the classrooms; there is no separate cafeteria. All of the food is wheeled in on a big metal cart, and students dish up the food, eat, and bus their own dishes. One day the main course included some meat, vegis, and scrambled egg served over noodles (kind of like fried rice w/o the rice part). The egg was served from a separate bowl, and there was a lot left over after everyone had taken their share. So, Egghead finishes eating, refills his bowl half way with rice, and then proceeds to pile about a kilo of egg matter on top and dig right in. Everyone around him watched in horror, and I think a few made bets on whether he'd finish his embryonic mountain or not. I pity anyone who had to be downwind of that boy a few hours later.
I've not given tongue-in-cheek nicknames to the majority of my students, but some of them have really impressed me.
I ate lunch with one of the ninensei classes recently, and tried to talk to a shy boy who was reading a magazine after fooding was complete. The magazine had some pictures of motorbikes in it, and it turns out that this kid rides motocross up in the mountains every weekend - he's freaking 13 years old!
Another had some highly detailed pictures of anime characters in a plastic bag on his desk. He carefully removed one of them and began to trace around the edges with a razor blade*. As I watched he completely cut out this figure in absurd detail, down to the individual locks of hair that stuck up in different directions. He told me that he makes collages from these and does some sketching as well. I asked to see his sketch book, which contained a plethora of tanks, guns, and airplanes, plus a few Gundam-like creations, all in incredible detail. I have a feeling this kid has a steady enough hand to perform brain surgery.
*Yes, it's ok to have a razor blade in school here. In Japan, a razor blade is a tool and not a WMD.
I've written all my hands are good for right now, but I imagine this post will have additions as I encounter more people who have stories I'd like to tell.
I've been asked more than once what some of the students and teachers are like at my school(s), so I'll share a bit. I primarily teach at Kosaka Junior High, so this'll be about people there.
Ms. Giggles
Ms. Giggles is the youngest teacher at KJH, being fresh out of college and in her first year here. She teaches English and laughs at everything. She has this ridiculously girly, high-pitched laugh that, coming from anyone less educated, would be nearly suicide-inducing. Somehow she manages to pull it off, though. We first met kind of randomly when all of the teachers (none of whom I had met at this time) were invited on a tour of a new high-tech recycling plant that had just been opened in Odate (next town over, about 2o min. by car). On the way back, a woman I had spoken to briefly asked me if I'd like to exchange bus seats with her. She was sitting next to Giggles, who apparently wanted to talk to me but was too shy to ask. I think her head nearly exploded when I sat down next to her and tried some conversation. Turns out she's real sweet, though, and fun to teach with (all of the English classes are team-teaching style).
NEXT...
I refuse to steal the name Ms. (or even Mrs., since she's recently married) Americanized, but I'm hard-pressed to come up with one more appropriate (so far). She's the next English teacher up the food chain, and she went to college in Washington state for four years, so she basically speaks perfect English. We'll go with Mrs. Freckles for now, since she has quite a population of them. I've had a great time teaching and planning lessons with her so far, as she has a good grasp of American humor. Our current project involves very occasionally rewarding students who perform well with a fake dollar bill, and telling them to take good care of it. We won't tell them what it's for, though, and it drives them batshit crazy. I spent 15 minutes of lunch time today dodging questions from one poor boy who begged me to tell him before the next exam, because he was worried that the stress would keep him from adequately preparing. Tee-hee, I'm such an ass.
Baldy
I don't actually work with Baldy every day, but he's the bureau chief of the Board of Education, so I see him plenty. As you might have guessed, he has very little hair. I did not have to give him this name, though - one of his co-workers at the BoE introduced him as Baldy when we met on my first day in Kosaka. This is indeed the same one I mentioned at the end of "Sugitaru wa oyobazaru ga gotoshi." He's the sort of guy who always has a mischievous gleam in his eye, as if he's constantly sharing some private joke with everyone he speaks to. And he loves beer. We get along well, needless to say.
CPB
CPB is short for Condescending, Patronizing Bitch. This may come as a shock to you, but I don't care for her much. CPB is the principal's secretary. The principal is a kind, old man who really seems to love what he does, but his harpy is a waste of human parts. She speaks to everyone (that I've witnessed) with a sing-song, holier-than-thou mannerism that grates on the nerves, and she seems to enjoy finding useless tasks to occupy my time. My recent *ahem* favorite was a form that needed to be filled out after I went out on a business-related event during work hours. She had filled out the entire form in pencil, and then asked me to trace her letters in pen. Because obviously she doesn't know how to use a pen herself, and just giving me the bloody thing to fill out from scratch would mean acknowledging that I have a reasonable understanding of her language (she knows I speak Japanese). Better yet, when I was finished filling it out in blue pen (she hadn't specified a color preference), she asked me to retrace it in black pen.
...If you listen closely, you might be able to hear my eyes rolling. I swear that if she disappears and they never find the body, though, that I had nothing to do with it. Ah, but this entry has enough vitriol for now. Moving on...
Squid Boy
Squid Boy is a sannensei student who is generally one of the more active and enthusiastic class participants. For this reason alone I'm glad to have him around; he sets a fine example for all the other kids who need to consult with their nearest 4 neighbors just to answer a question like, "Do you live in Kosaka?" His nickname isn't a tremendously profound affair, though; it just came from the first English statement he made to me. I was eating lunch with his class one day, and he came up to me and announced, "I...like SQUID! I love it!!" Whatever does it for ya, kid.
Egghead
Egghead's nickname has nothing to do with the shape of his head (well, mostly...he is kind of baldish), but comes from his diet-related choices.
School lunches are served in the classrooms; there is no separate cafeteria. All of the food is wheeled in on a big metal cart, and students dish up the food, eat, and bus their own dishes. One day the main course included some meat, vegis, and scrambled egg served over noodles (kind of like fried rice w/o the rice part). The egg was served from a separate bowl, and there was a lot left over after everyone had taken their share. So, Egghead finishes eating, refills his bowl half way with rice, and then proceeds to pile about a kilo of egg matter on top and dig right in. Everyone around him watched in horror, and I think a few made bets on whether he'd finish his embryonic mountain or not. I pity anyone who had to be downwind of that boy a few hours later.
I've not given tongue-in-cheek nicknames to the majority of my students, but some of them have really impressed me.
I ate lunch with one of the ninensei classes recently, and tried to talk to a shy boy who was reading a magazine after fooding was complete. The magazine had some pictures of motorbikes in it, and it turns out that this kid rides motocross up in the mountains every weekend - he's freaking 13 years old!
Another had some highly detailed pictures of anime characters in a plastic bag on his desk. He carefully removed one of them and began to trace around the edges with a razor blade*. As I watched he completely cut out this figure in absurd detail, down to the individual locks of hair that stuck up in different directions. He told me that he makes collages from these and does some sketching as well. I asked to see his sketch book, which contained a plethora of tanks, guns, and airplanes, plus a few Gundam-like creations, all in incredible detail. I have a feeling this kid has a steady enough hand to perform brain surgery.
*Yes, it's ok to have a razor blade in school here. In Japan, a razor blade is a tool and not a WMD.
I've written all my hands are good for right now, but I imagine this post will have additions as I encounter more people who have stories I'd like to tell.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
More than meets the eye, baby
I imagine I'm embarrassingly late here, at least compared to the rest of this planet, but I finally saw the Transformers movie last Thursday. As the Transformers have been near and dear to my heart ever since Weird Al first graced the original cartoon with "Dare to be Stupid" in 1986, I can't pass up the opportunity to turn my impressions of it into a blog entry.
The Good
Peter Cullen. Bringing back the original voice of Optimus Prime was nearly enough nostalgia to bring a tear to my eye. The choice of Hugo Weaving for Megatron's voice was also a fine one, indeed.
Consistency? At first I was worried when I heard that Megatron didn’t turn into a gun…whadya mean you’re not sticking with the classics? Shame! Shame, I say! But as it turned out, having the Transformers able to change into any object they had studied/analyzed/whatever was a wise move that gave them a much more…hmm, organic feel, I guess. In any case, I approve.
And I know it’s been said and said and said by this point, but the special effects are totally badass.
The Bad
Soundtrack use. The credits were packed with moderate to really good songs (ok, aside from Stinkin’ Park), some originally written for this movie, but a much better effort could have been made to meld these songs into the movie itself, like they used to do with soundtracks in days of old. Disturbed’s “This Moment” comes to mind – that would have been perfect for the battle between Optimus Prime and Megatron. Instead, though, we’re left with some quasi-epic orchestral blah, and this song is number 3 into the credits. Psssh, I say. In modern times I’m not sure they can even legally be called soundtracks, as ‘Music Inspired By The Movie’ would be a much more accurate way of describing the damn things.
Sequel setup. In this age of trilogies, follow-ups, and rehashes this comes as no surprise, but from about 10 minutes in, the entire movie felt to me like it was foreshadowing the inevitable sequel. Worse yet, I can see indications that the sequel will follow some of the plot of the original Transformers cartoon movie. Granted, if justice can be done in bringing Unicron (yes, I know Orson Wells is dead) back to the big screen, that may not be entirely a bad thing…still, it annoyed me to sit in the audience and think, Do they really believe us to be this stupid? But then, when you consider that 50% of all people are below average intelligence…*sigh* Yes, they do. Say it with me, kids:
low·est com·mon de·nom·i·na·tor [loh-ist kom-uhn di-nom-uh-ney-ter]; IPA: /ˈloʊ ɪst ˈkɒm
ən dɪˈnɒməˌneɪtər/
noun.
1. The most basic, least sophisticated level of taste, sensibility, or opinion among a group of people.
2. The group having such taste, sensibility, or opinion
The Nauseating
Oh, this is an easy one - fucking product placement. I was at first horrified to hear that Soundwave would turn into an iPod instead of his classic boombox. Then, to my great relief, I heard that they had axed this idea. Now that I’ve finally seen the movie, I understand that one little travesty like that is as a drop of salt water in the freaking Pacific. I can immediately recall utterly shameless plugs for eBay, Mountain Dew, and Ford Camaro, and I have not the slightest doubt that I’d find fistfuls more were I to journey up to Hirosaki to see this commerc…erm, movie again.
And just to keep this post semi-relevant to
Thus, I became known as ‘Great Vinegar Penis.’ I tried to get a hanko with that, but for some reason my Board of Education refused...
-Great Vinegar Penis”
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