rockin' random

*Mr W.'s funeral is Wednesday afternoon. It's right at the start of my lab but I have a very good lab TA that I can turn loose on the students for the day (and she already agreed to do it, so I'm good there).

*Classes started today. Too early to make an assessment yet but the fact that I had several students apologize for being late (they couldn't find the building, which I do understand - we're kind of hard to find if you're not super familiar with campus) and also had students laughing at some of the droll/funny things I said, so that's a good sign.

*It TOTALLY makes my day to be referred to as "lovely Ricki" on Ken's blog. Even if it's just because I know more about the Coasters than probably any member of Gen X should know. (And less about Modern English and INXS, and the other bands I "should" know to be a right-thinking member of the New Wave Generation)

* Actually, I should comment more on that - I got obsessed by early R and B and doo-wop and rock when I was in high school. I mean, I used to STUDY the recordings - play them over and over, try to catch every word, try to figure out how the instrumentations worked (and I am not at all musical. I used to play the clarinet but I had such a sourpuss of an orchestra teacher when I was a freshman in high school that I totally gave it up). I LOVED them. They amused me greatly, and I was awed by the vocal harmonizations (I still love the Everly Brothers - their stuff is just so beautiful, when you listen to the harmony.)

I used to save up my meager (seriously: I got like $3 a week when I was in HIGH SCHOOL. I could add another $2.50 to that a week if I mowed my parents' lawn in the summer. And their lawn was like almost an acre) allowance and used it to buy tapes of the different bands and artists I liked. (And I used to buy the really cheap-ass tapes that you could get at like Gold Circle. And a lot of times they were "original artists" tapes (but NOT "original recordings"), so it was like some horrible recording that three of the original Platters made in like 1972 at some supper club. I always got mad about that and eventually became much more knowing as a consumer.

I did buy the first four volumes of the wonderful Atlantic R and B compilation when it came out (I can't remember if there were more than 4 volumes but I tend to lose interest in rock after about 1967). I used to listen to those almost obsessively.

You have to understand - this was the mid to late 80s, which was actually a pretty conformist time, at least, a pretty conformist time to be a teenager (or so I found - yes, there were the various cliques of the jocks and the burnouts and the weird New Wave people but within a clique, the rules were as strict as any cloistered monastery's). I didn't fit in with any of the cliques - I guess the closest I fit in with (not that I wanted to) was the Nerds, because I was a good student and was generally a "good girl" and I listened to classical music (at least, when I wasn't listening to Ben E. King or the Crickets)

I had given up a few years prior on "fitting in." But for a brief and miserable period, I had tried to be, more-or-less, a "normal" pre-teen. One of the things I did (which makes me squirm with embarrassment now to think of it) was that I used to force myself to listen to the local top 40 station ('Member Top 40?) because it was what "normal" kids liked and I needed to listen to it to be something more "normal."

Never mind that I thought most Top 40 was drek. (Yes, at one time I knew all the words to "Angel in the Centerfold." Ugh. That's some brain real-estate I'd like to "flip")

I finally gave it up when three things coincided:

1. I realized I'd never be "really" popular because I neither had the money for, nor were my parents willing to buy for me, the Jordache jeans ('Member Jordache jeans?) and Lacoste shirts that were the necessary trappings of popularhood at my junior high. (I had one pair of Lee jeans, which were on the fringes of "normal" and I was very careful with them - didn't want them to wear out too fast. I also had, among the other off-brand pairs, a pair of Wrangler jeans. When I wore them to school, the kids started calling me - oh, so imaginatively - "Wrangler" as a way of teasing me.

holy crap, kids at my school were as cruel as they were uncreative. And it makes me both angry and sad to think that I cried over them calling me that.)

2. I finally said something along the lines of "forget this mess" and changed the dial on my radio over to WCLV instead of the lame top-40 station, which I have since forgotten (WGLC, maybe? Not WMMS; even I respected WMMS even if I didn't like their music)

3. My parents enrolled me in a private high school where most of the kids were "boarding students" from other communities. This meant that I was essentially starting over with a new group of kids - many of whom had been subject to the same shunning as I was at their junior high schools.

I won't say I was POPULAR, but at least I was no longer tormented. And I did make some good friends, including a girl who was crazy into swing jazz the way I was crazy into early rock and r-n-b. And it's always easier to be an oddball if there's someone else who's willing to be an oddball with you.

But anyway. I never dreamed that 20 years later my knowledge of rock bands of the 50s and 60s would earn me the respect of someone I've never actually met in person. The internet is a strange and wonderful thing.

*It may backfire (because too many of them may be hipped to the scheme), but I'm doing that "Should dihydrogen monoxide be banned" bit with the general bio kids tomorrow, as sort of a critical-thinking exercise - you know, list some of the dangers of "dihydrogen monoxide":

* Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
* Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
* Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
* DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
* Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
* Contributes to soil erosion.
* Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
* Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
* Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
* Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
* Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
* Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
* Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.


...and then ask them whether they think the chemical should be banned or not.

(For those of you playing along at home who may have forgotten your basic chemistry, dihydrogen monoxide is 2 hydrogens and one oxygen....H2O....)

I do have a backup ice-breaker exercise in case too many of them have been exposed.

I like doing these little things at the start of class - finding some kind of "gee whiz" thing that's related to the day's topic and using that as a starting point. (I'm also going to make the simple pH indicator from red cabbage juice and also do the acid-base reactions with vinegar and baking soda and water and baking powder (and point out that in baking powder, you have both an acid and a base and the water just activates the reaction).

Often when I bring in cooking things it gets a few people "hooked" that might not be otherwise.