GSC: Week One Discussions

Over at my floor blog I am now publishing a weekly Game Show Challenge that my floormates (will hopefully) play, and this is their outlet to discuss the questions from that week.

'09-'10 denizens of BK4: discuss away.

Reflection on Summer

This is the last night in my own room for a long time.

But at least I won't be as sappy as I was last summer about it, now that I know what it's like. And besides, this summer was crazy good:

--I got a job, made a little money. I won't be flat broke when I go back to school. (Don't ask me to touch that check from that other little thing I did last January...that's for something bigger and better.)

--I made a difference in some kids' lives. As cliché as this sounds, it's probably true--teaching Korean, even though I myself am still learning, was a way to expose some kids to a culture they would otherwise not be exposed to. And even I learned something about myself in the process--although I may have seemed like a crotchety 42 year-old man with no soul, I still was deeply passionate about getting my point across.

--Made new friends, but kept the old. Well, a few of the old, in any event.

--I wrote my first good poem in a long while. (It was posted here, if you look back a couple of entries.) And I'm learning my first new classical piano piece in a long time...it's coming along alarmingly well, though we'll see when school starts.

--I could be good in the kitchen...if I only got off my lazy ass to get in the kitchen.

Most importantly to me, though...

--I saw people whom I haven't seen in years. No, this doesn't mean reconnecting over Facebook (though that's a nice surprise in and of itself, depending on who it is). I mean actual, face-to-face, heart-to-heart interaction. Yeah, I know, strange concept in this day and age, isn't it? There's something about actual physical contact, or sight, or whatever that emails definitely don't have, that Facebook tries to poorly replicate, that even pictures can't capture, but face-to-face, in-person encounters do. One person I saw, we were close friends when I used to live in Denver many, many, many, many years ago. We hadn't seen each other in FIFTEEN YEARS. Another person, I had kept in touch with lo these last two years. We hadn't seen each other for that amount of time, but it was a special reconnection for me. I just hate this impersonal barrier electronic communication sometimes raises--there are so many different vocal inflections that are lost over written text in an email. (Which is why I wanted to do podcasts to go along with my blog entries, but...that worked out really well, didn't it?)

But in short, it's been a wonderful, wonderful summer. Now I hope my brain isn't totally dysfunctional when I return to school.

BTNOLA, Come on Down!

Some photos from my recent game show short course at my summer job, where we played "The Price is Right" to wrap up the summer.

What pressure! What excitement!

Here's a happy contestant.

Playing a pricing game (for you PIR diehards out there, this was Money Game)

"Spinning" the Big Wheel

All lined up and raring to go in Contestants' Row!

In 140 Characters or Less:

I will never understand the appeal of #Twitter. #FB's status update gimmick can only go so far before it becomes repetitive. @Reader: Do yo

(Sorry, character limit cut me off.)

No, I'm not dead...

...just really, really busy, 'tis all. Haven't had much time to blog lately, and even then when I actually sit down to blog I don't have much inspiration. But I've got something good coming up in the next week--the first of the podcasts is in the works and coming soon! So stay tuned for that.

In the meantime:

--Mini-reunions are fun. Especially when they're totally unplanned until, literally, 8 or 9 hours beforehand.

--Getting inspiration to write is hard. Partially because (and this segues into my next point)...

--Finding time is even harder. We are such busy people in the world these days that we don't get to have little bits of time to ourselves.

--Podcasts are a pain to put together, I'm now remembering. Though the finished product is well worth it.

--More to come in the coming weeks...keep checking back!

Therapy, in 88 Keys

Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Chopin

Are more than likely rolling in their graves

As I lay out the melodies by hand

A rocky road, my hands make way to pave.

Come forth, dear fingers, play what's on the page,

And calm thy soul with music to attend

To days where grief strikes in this day and age,

These painful hours, the music strives to end.

One strong chord here, the pain begins to ease

The angsty strife cloud parteth for the sun.

One triad there, my frustration doth cease,

The piece concludes, the therapy is done.

As fingers mine doth burn with my resolve

Frustration hence my ears doth now absolve.

Emotional Release

Let me get this out of the way right now.

I'm not one for crying buckets. I've felt depressed as hell, sure, but through the worst of it all not a single tear leaked out of my eye. I went something like four straight years without shedding a tear, once.

Well, stop the presses, here's some breaking news.

I actually cried, dammit. I cried, at my job, over something that happened six years ago and that still shakes me to the core today.

My summer job involves teaching middle school students, for the uninitiated. Each morning we have a little something called "Morning Inspiration", and a different person each day is responsible for bringing something in that inspires them to be who they are, to teach the way they do. At first I had thought about bringing in Taylor Mali's poem Miracle Workers, which I thought seemed like a reasonable choice--the man's a poet and a teacher, and we the teachers are supposed to work miracles for these kids. But what emotional impact did it have on me?

The short (and correct) answer: none at all.

Then my mind flitted to that Korean saying I have posted in my classroom, "Ha myeon dwen da" (you can accomplish anything). I threw that out soon after, remembering how much my tae kwon do instructor used that phrase (and subsequently how irritating it got for me).

But then it hit me like a ton of bricks--the little voice in my head smacked me and shouted, "Hey, stupid, your grandpa wrote a freakin' book. Surely that counts for something!"

Sure as hell does.

The book, which was originally written in Korean, is titled (roughly translated) to "Do You Know What it Means to Fight For My Country?" It tells of my grandfather's experiences joining the Korean army at the age of 19, as well as actually fighting in the Korean War in the early '50s against impossible odds. I still can't read it, since I don't know enough Korean, but this is what my dad tells me.

But what inspired me so much about this book was this last bit: he fought, won, and lived to tell the tale 50 years later against impossible odds. My class is a pretty impossible group to manage--to teach some of them anything at all would be a pretty tall order. And my little blurb was that, if HE could triumph against impossible odds, so could we.

And then the floodgates opened.

This book was published only two months after my grandfather passed away 6 years ago on July 4, 2004.

Since that day, I've graduated high school, completed my first year of college, been in an a cappella group, played an incredibly difficult piano piece, performed in a couple of plays, and made a few thousand on another game show. I've also grown by half a foot and gone from a soprano to a bass in a couple of years.

Six years have passed, and all these things have happened. My grandfather was not present for a single one of them.

And it was all because of a fucking bike accident.

Sure, I cried a river at the funeral. But after that I never cried at all, not for four years straight. The time I finally snapped was at an acting camp--I suppose we were all being overdramatic about things, but knowing that I wouldn't be back to some amazing place ever again saddened me deeply. Grandpa got no tears from me for a long time. At least, until today.

Some people say they've "had a good cry" when they emerge from the bathroom, eyes puffy and nose clogged. For that time in between my crying spells--let's call it my "tear drought"--I could never understand how a crying session could be "good."

It's an emotional release. I've had many pent-up emotions over the years--times I wished I was able to cry, but never did--that my tears from today finally flushed out. It was these moments, these moments where others were crying when I wasn't, that made me feel less human. Was I just a stonefaced sonuvabitch who couldn't care less about your fucking problems and sob stories? Did I need the Tin Man to sell me a damn heart?

Well, no. At least I can make it rain, and let the plants grow in its wake.