Should be writing a play right now. Yeah, did I mention the school decided they want to start now, instead of later? I have auditions next week, and I decided to write the play for the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders instead of trying to pick something. This way, I can do whatever I want to it, cut things, add things, gender blind cast within an inch of my life, add in songs (because I'm not as afraid of ASCAP as I am of Samuel French), whatever I want. So, turns out I'm busy from now until... well, whenever the show for younger kids closes in the spring.
I worked out the math and I think it's something along the lines of 3 bucks an hour. Except that doesn't count anything but rehersal time. Like I say, if I were doing this as resume padding, or to make money, I wouldn't be there. There are far easier, better paying, more recognisable things to fulfill either of those problems.
So, I should be writing now. It sounds like me at Nano time all over again, except I have to have the play written real fast. I know I should be doing auditions announcements this week sometime. Probably Wednesday I'll take something over to the school, if I have a title by then.
I went to the library and checked out Dealing with Dragons, which I last read in fifth grade, as inspiration. In fifth grade, everything I read, the rest of my class would read too. So, I read the first Dragons book and Bryan discovered there was a series. He read the second Searching for Dragons (which I also checked out this time around), and then Val read the third book, and Winfield read the forth, and they all did book reports on them in the same week.
I liked the book, but everyone made awful book reports. I was so sick of the phrase "cherries jubilee" (if you've read the series, you know why) and awful mispronunciations that I was not inspired to read the rest of the books. So, now I've read the first two, and will probably check out the others later.
Anyway, should be writing a play, but I'm not, because I have ideas, but I don't have a story line. Actually, it was great to read the books because it reminded me what I considered easy reading in fifth grade (I originally read George Eliot's Mill on the Floss for class, until I found out we had to do reports on them, and realised instantly that no one in my class would understand or care), and gives me a lot more license to do what I want.
But, man, it also tells me we are getting way too PC. The series was written back in the 80's, just after I was born, and I kept coming across places where I thought, "Can she say that? She can write that in a book, for kids?" It's not because I object to things like "The Evil Stepmother's Traveling, Drinking and Debating Society", but I am instantly alerted to insane parent organisations who would flip out over such a thing.
I also finally finished What's the Matter with Kansas? I was a little disappointed with it, because I thought he was being maybe more caustic than necessary. Jokes are appropriate, keeps you from being boring, but snide remarks make me doubt your material. The other funny thing is that the essence of what he was saying, I already knew. Specifically how he related it to Kansas I didn't know, but it figures. The idea is that "average people", small town farmers, vote for Republicans. I know this. I know it first hand, one can't live in DM and not realise that you and Iowa City are really the only places voting Democrat. The farmers, the small town people, vote for the party least likely to help them. The specifics, which is what the book is really all about, are just a hop, skip and jump from my original ideas.
In other news, The Boy told me yesterday that Doogie Howser's gay. I looked up at him,
"Yeah, so? Didn't we know this?"
"No, we didn't."
"Huh. Well I did. It was pretty obvious to me."
"You don't even know who Doogie Howser is."
"Trust me, when you've had to watch the All-Celebrity Save the World and Make a Green Earth Show as much as I did in fifth grade, you know who Doogie Howser is. And you know he's gay."
The All-Celebrity Save the World and Make a Green Earth Show is also known as the 1990 Earth Day Special (but I didn't know that until I found it on IMBD just now). By 1994, my fifth grade science teacher was still really excited about it. She was cool, but the movie was stupid, because at age ten we didn't know who half the celebrities were, but were already jaded to the idea that anything a celebrity thought we should do was cool.
You know, I think it was Air Jordans that did it. After years of pumping our shoes full of air, we realised that they didn't do anything, and we thought, "Michael Jordan, Your Airness, why did you tell us the shoes were cool when they were so obviously not?" And then, after selling us the shoes, he went and became a baseball player, the very sport basketball fans were so adamantly against. It was then that my generation lost its faith in celebrity advertising forever.
(Never had a pair of Air Jordans, thought they and basketball were incredibly stupid, but I remember my friend Steve giving up on basketball altogether and making the switch to the Packers as his favourite sports team of all time because of the betrayal of Jordan. That's a lot of devotion in a ten year old.)
It becomes obvious to me I am writing to avoid writing.