Sad story

Had parent conferences last night and the night before. Here's typically what I'm thinking:

"Man, that kid took forever to turn in his friggin' essay. Jeez, he's got to get his act together; this is ridiculous. Let's look up his other grades--5 F's! Let's definitely have a parent conference."

Then, the parent shows up, and occasionally I find out that my students are dealing with so many difficult situations in life, it's no wonder when students don't complete a stupid essay.

Ie: Found out a student like above has a 10-years-left-in-life prognosis (and some other things I won't go into). Shit. Every time I think about it, my eyes are welling up.

I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now

Alright, I know I've told most of the dudes about this (except Clearwater... so this is news to you). Christmas Gift Challenge, should you choose to accept it:
Create a mix-cd for an as-yet unmade film to be directed by Wes Anderson. Title of the mix-cd will be title of the film. If desired, create liner notes/synopsis of the plot.
We'll get together to exchange said CD's with a good amount of holiday bev's, and listen to our mix-cds/party on down Apt. 108 style. You in?
Oh, and then, we'll send the whole set to Wes Anderson.

Dirty Projectors

I feel like there's a ton going on that I want to blog about. Then I put it off a few days, and I'm at the point where I have about 10 posts simmering on the back burner. I'm going to post one every couple of days just to get them out there.

1) Dirty Projectors = Awesome.
Went and saw the Dirty Projectors with Hippy Steve and Meredith last saturday (Halloween). We walked through echo park, stopped for some street tacos at the place down the block (hands down, best street tacos in Echo park), and went to the early show at the Jensen Rec center. Little Wings opened, and it was my first time seeing them. The band played great, and even though I don't own any little wings albums, I still recognized a few songs (scooby's gone away, something like that).

The Dirty Projectors came on by 8:20 for an hour long set, mostly off Bitte Orca. It was incredible. Each member of the band has so much musical talent. The drummer was particularly impressive; he played like he was going to destroy the heads on his drums while keeping perfect time and tempo changes every other minute. The lead guitarist also really impressed me, reminded me of the guitarist from YES with some of his finger picking. One last note, one of the female vocalists suprised me by all of a sudden belting out a song like a soul singer from the seventies.

If you want to hear one of their songs, see the Iguana in the Sun mix below.