Compare and Contrast: How the Song "Teenage Dirtbag" was made into a Choir Version to Advance a Documentary on Bullying in American Schools

"Teenage Dirtbag"
It's a rather heteronormative narrative - but I have a crush on this song - maybe because the song talks about "getting into tube socks" and references "Iron Maiden" - and its an elegy to unrequited love - with a twist at the end. This is to all the teenage dirtbags out there. Also - Wheatus's song was the song attached to the movie Loser - as you can see by the music video.

A couple of years ago I went to a professional development workshop on peer-to-peer bullying in American schools. The presenters screened the documentary film Bully. The opening song is a choir version of "Teenage Dirtbag". I immediately recognized it and I thought it was an apt song to cover the phenomenon of bullying as it relates to school life.

As a teacher, I often encounter bullying. What pains me the most about bullying is that often the targets of bullying are exceptional children, "the teenage dirtbags" that often go unnoticed.

Choral Version of "Teenage Dirtbag"
Watch the following choir version and hearken to the facts. We can be a voice for those who are tormented because they are gay, queer, brown, different, black, non-gender conforming, or just don't fit in (according to whatever social norms are popular right now). 

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"Completely Not Me" by Jenny Lewis

"Completely Not Me" by Jenny Lewis was the end credits for "Truth or Dare," the second episode of season three of Girls, the HBO TV show about young women who supposedly are struggling to make it in a world that is too much with us (a slick reference to William Wordsworth).

Drop it Low for Fourth of July

My favorite video - drop it low, y'all!

Far East Movement Like a G6 (with MS Paint)

Like a G6 Literal Interpretation:

There is something about the silly lyrics of dance floor hip hop that just makes me go Ha Ha.

How many literal interpretations did you notice?

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credits: LiteralMSPaint

Video Repost: "No Man Is an Island" Recited with Music by Joan Baez from her Album Baptism

A clip from Joan Baez's "John Donne" piece from her album Baptism sets the foreground for the arrival of a northbound G train entering the station at 4th avenue-9th street on the IND crosstown / Culver line in Brooklyn, New York.

Here is the text:

No man is an island
Entire of itself
Every man is a piece of the continent
A part of the main
...

Any man's death diminishes me
For I am involved in mankind
Never send to know
For whom the bell tolls
It tolls for thee

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Travellin' Thru

Travellin' Thru (Dolly Parton)

Well I can't tell you where I'm going, I'm not sure of where I've been
But I know I must keep travelin' till my road comes to an end
I'm out here on my journey, trying to make the most of it
I'm a puzzle, I must figure out where all my pieces fit

Like a poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home
Where that is no one can tell me, am I doomed to ever roam
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' on

Questions I have many, answers but a few
But we're here to learn, the spirit burns, to know the greater truth
We've all been crucified and they nailed Jesus to the tree
And when I'm born again, you're gonna see a change in me

God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain
Redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain
Oh sweet Jesus if you're listening, keep me ever close to you
As I'm stumblin', tumblin', wonderin', as I'm travelin' thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru

Oh sometimes the road is rugged, and it's hard to travel on
But holdin' to each other, we don't have to walk alone
When everything is broken, we can mend it if we try
We can make a world of difference, if we want to we can fly

Goodbye little children, goodnight you handsome men
Farewell to all you ladies and to all who knew me when
And I hope I'll see you down the road, you meant more than I knew
As I was travelin', travelin', travelin', travelin', travelin' thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin'
Drifting like a floating boat and roaming like the wind
Oh give me some direction lord, let me lean on you
As I'm travelin', travelin', travelin', thru

I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru
I'm just travelin', travelin', travelin', I'm just travelin' thru

Like the poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song
I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find my own way home
Oh sweet Jesus if you're out there, keep me ever close to you
As I'm travelin', travelin', travelin', as I'm travelin' thru

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Source: Stanley, Ralph, and Duncan Tucker. Transamerica: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. S.l.: Nettwerk Productions, 2006. Sound recording.

Cinema Paradiso: The Best Ending in a Film

One of the best endings in cinematic history is Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988).

First, There is the Film's Score
     The score by Ennio Morricone is the most moving cinematic piece ever produced for the silver screen. The music is deliberately made to induce emotions, and I think it adds to this movie's overall sympathetic tone.
Second, There is the Film's Meta-ending 
     To fully appreciate the ending, one has to watch the entire movie. The last scene is a kind-of-love-letter to cinema itself. As a boy, the protagonist, Totò, befriends his hometown's cinema projectionist, Alfredo. In this small skirt of a town in rural Italy, the Catholic Church has considerable sway over what her parishioners can watch at the local cinema. The parish priest personally censors the films on view and directs Alfredo to edit out any scenes that depict kissing. At the end of the movie, Alfredo, who has since died, and Totò, who has become a famous movie director, there is a discovery. Can you guess what it is? The discovery becomes the movie's final scene. And it brought me to tears. If there is such a thing as poignancy without sentimentality, it's this film.  

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Video: Free Music for the Masses

A video taken in the Union Square subway station of musical performers in New York City.

 

A troupe performs in the public concourse at 14th Street Union Square station.

Location:Union Square, New York, NY

Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Plato's Theory of Bisexuality

Read about how the song "Origin of Love" from the musical movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a primer on Plato's theory of bisexuality.

image credit: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Freud uses the myth of the three human figures (taken from Plato’s Symposium) to illustrate the human instinct to return to a former state, which he calls the death drive, which, as seen by the myth, is fueled by the libido of desire.

“‘The original human nature was not like the present, but different. In the first place, the sexes were originally three in number, not two as they are now; there was man, woman, and the union of the two.’ Everything about these primaeval men was double: they had four hands and four feet, two faces, two privy parts, and so on. Eventually Zeus decided to cut these men in two .... After the division had been made, ‘the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one.’” (Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 69-70).

In the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hedwig uses the same myth to inspire a song she calls “The Origin of Love.” 

Feel inspired? Use the lesson plan I added to the TpT catalog.

Lyrics from “Origins of Love”

Video: Train Enters the Station at 14th Street Union Square

With accompaniment by Joan Baez, "Old Welsh Song" from the album Baptism

---

Manhattan-bound Local 6 Train enters the station at 14th Street Union Square Station in New York City. Notice the curvature of the tracks. People are visible both on the platform and on the mezzanine level. At a brief moment, one can see the train's motorman through the car window. Union Square Station services subway lines L, N, Q, R, 4, 5, and 6 trains and is situated directly below Union Square Park. The Soundtrack is Joan Baez's lyric piece, "Old Welsh Song." 

I take with me where I go
A pen and a golden bowl
Poet and beggar step in my shoes,
Or a prince in a purple shawl.
I bring with me when I return
To the house that my father's hands made,
A crooning bird on a chrystal bough and,
O, a sad, sad word!  

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Video Games Live: PBS Station in Louisiana Films a Live Symphonic Orchestra Feature Music from Popular Video Games

At the Pontchartrain Center in Metairie, Louisiana PBS is filming a live symphonic overture of famous video games, like Super Mario and Legend of Zelda by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. I attended the event with friends and was greeted by a student. Wow.

Location:Horseshoe Rd,Kenner,United States

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News Report: Was it Dolly Parton New Year's Eve?

One Night in the French Quarter
While out last night in the French Quarter, my friend Dana and I saw Dolly Parton perform

Can the Real Dolly Parton Please Stand Up?

at Napoleon's Itch. It was completely a coincidence. We had just left the OZ (with its unabashed showcase of flesh) to go to Napoleon's Itch and there she was in her voluptuous glory. The small bar barely could fit fifty people. Everyone was clamoring to get Dolly's attention. At one point some Mary called out, "I love you, Dolly!" and she responded, "I love you too but I told you to wait for me in the truck"! She sang the duet "Islands in the Stream" with the bartender (he was no Kenny Rogers but it was funny). I wish she would have sung "Travellin' Thru". I think she sang for forty-five minutes. And then she left backstage as quickly as she had appeared.
Figuring Out Whether It Was Dolly or Not
Dana told me that Dolly is friends with the guy who owns the bar which is why we were feted with such amazing grace. I was so happy to see Dolly that I just had to write this down in a blog. When I was a kid I used to listen to "9 to 5" over and over again. Seeing her last night was a great way to celebrate New Year's Eve.

Addenda: I found this article (now archived) from the Times Picayune that states Dolly sang for Mardi Gras too. But, further digging on the internet I found reportage that said it was not Dolly but a look-alike performer, Sandy Vee Anderson.

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Journal Entry on Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. 

- Virginia Woolf

The first realization, in hindsight, that I was not a part of nature, but rather of culture, was when I first assumed that I was a boy and not a girl. At some point in my development culture assigned me the gender of male and I, for the most part, accepted the sign. But, signs, as we know, do not always point to something that is really real, rather, they sometimes merely point — which is an oddity, if you think about it, because we expect a sign to point to something. Real, that is. And when I say the word “something” (or the word “real”) I mean a metaphysical something. This metaphysical something - that for millennia was assumed and presupposed until Ferdinand de Saussure came along and said: No, I don’t think so — there is no referent in language -- language does not point to a something. So does my gender point to something real about my sex or is it just a sign that really leads to nowhere in particular? I would have to say that signs do point to something, but I would hazard a guess that it is not an A = A equation. Rather an A = “A” equation. And when it does point to something, at least something we perceive to be rooted in the real, we cherish those rare moments; we stand back and gasp -- and call that experience Aesthetics. I call it the art of the “awe”. We stand in awe. Like Orlando, in Virginia Woolf's gender-bending novel, standing up after a long trance: always a woman and at this point a man (or a woman). She is not perturbed when she stands up and find herself a man, or a woman, in fact, she is nonplussed. Woolf puts no words in Orlando’s mouth but rather describes the situation as if Orlando is waking up for her morning ablutions or walking her Seleuchi hound. Ordinary events, really (I can hear Woolf chuckling): “It is enough for us to state the simple fact; Orlando was a man till the age of thirty; when he became a woman and has remained so ever since (p. 139). She doesn’t explain anything, as if she has to give a reason why Orlando is now a woman and not a man. We merely stand in awe. Woolf states: “Let other pens treat of sex and sexuality” (p. 139). I guess I am one of those other pens.

In reading the biography of Orlando, I have to step back and wonder what sign indicates who we really are. I usually have taken signs for granted, a given — signposts to help guide me in this strange land (1). Take de Saussure’s tree, for example. The sign for tree seems easy enough, but the sign for “me” is more difficult to get a hold of, despite the omnipresence of our bodies — we can’t escape ourselves, yet we remain indefinitely perplexed by our very selves (2). Especially if we have been disrupted somewhere along the way. Abuse. Violence. These traumas can either be signs of grace or asphyxiation. The signs no longer work. Or grace seeps in and we can see again. The signs that clue us into our gender are based on assumptions about what it means (how it is comprehensible) to own a phallus between your legs or a pair of scissors on your lap (tongue in cheek). These assumptions either become whole or fractured.

Gender is not only a lesson in anatomy – yes, certain physical features of our anatomy, so we are told, designate us as male or female — but there are other dynamics at play here. Either you are a male or a female? It seems easy enough, but already, before the child even leaves the mother’s womb, the infant is beset with the problem of sex and gender. Gender presents a host of possibilities, many of them rife with problems. Just think of all the restrictions that gender places on us (that Orlando seems to be liberated from, miraculously enough).

If you have a penis you cannot speak of shopping with the same reckless abandon as you would if you have a vagina. The who-has-what is culturally conditioned. Orlando can play (and did) both gender sides. Case study: A boy playfully applies his mother’s lipstick when no one is looking (see the film, Billy Elliot or L.I.E.) or a girl dodges her father’s resistance and joins the boxing league, despite the opposition. A father tentatively embraces his son after his ex-wife drops him off. Why is it that these gender roles are so fixed in culture? I know the question is hopeless, but I ask it indefatigably.

Gender remains a cultural construct, while sex is a hazy reminder of our once intimate link with nature. Now that we have shaken off nature, any idea of a utopian society in the feigned vein of a Rousseau (or even Plato) have fallen by the wayside. We are products of culture, and thus, depending on our cultural milieu, must endure certain gender roles that society places on us. I guess we could fight it but I am not going to risk the humiliation of wearing a dress to class with burgundy lipstick. Maybe Orlando can wake up one day, a different gender and amiably stride into her new role – but, I must confess, I don’t think I could do that. The gender roles are too much ingrained in me. Yeah, some gender constructs I can elide easily enough — like the idea of blue and pink as being exclusively male or female -- so that they no longer serve as signs of gender, but rather remain as spectrums in the rainbow of light No matter what we do to fight it, I feel, the legacy of the west remains, placing ideas in opposition (form and matter, good and evil, black and white) as if the tension between the two will actually produce something that is knowledgeable and meaningful. We are so binary about the whole thing. I hate that.

As a boy, I am sure (because Lacan assures me (3)), I looked in a mirror and saw an image reflecting back that I assumed was a whole image of me, even though it was a misrecognized image, incomplete, a partial imago of the real me, flabby, infantile and totally dependent on mum and pop. And I am sure, completely self-involved — more than I am now! Somewhere along the way, I looked in the mirror, butt-naked — like Orlando — and was gendered. Not solely by me. But by my parents. TV. Et Cetera. I was male. I am a male. I was wondering? Especially after a few beers. Will I wake up one day and find myself changed? Orlando had no qualms about her sex: there was no doubt about his sex (pg 1) but she is two-gendered in the novel. It makes for awkward pronoun usage because you don’t know if you should use masculine or feminine pronouns to describe her. In the novel, it is not problematic at all because the narrative is progressive. Woolf brilliantly avoids any grammatical ambiguity although the text remains rather ambiguous. Or is it androgynous?

There is a song by the Crash Test Dummies called “Androgynous”:

Here comes Dick, he's wearing a skirt
Here comes Jane you know she's sportin' a chain
Same hair, a revolution
Same build, evolution
Tomorrow who's gonna fuss?
And they love each other so, androgynous
Closer than you know, love each other so, androgynous

We'll don't get him wrong, and don't get him mad
He might be a father but he sure aint a dad
And she don't need the advice that is sent to her
She's happy the way she looks, she's happy with her gender
And they love each other so, androgynous
Closer than you know, love each other so, androgynous

Mirror image, see no damage, see no evil at all
Cupie dolls and urine stalls will be laughed at
The way you're laughed at now

Something meets boy and something meets girl
They both look the same they're overjoyed in this world
Same hair revolution
Unisex evolution
Tomorrow who's gonna fuss?

And tomorrow Dick is wearing pants,
Tomorrow Jane is wearing a dress
Future outcasts and they don't last
And today people dress the way that they please
The way they tried to do in the last centuries

And they love each other so, androgynous
Closer than you know, love each other so, androgynous. 

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________________

(1) I stole this from the title of Walker Percy’s posthumous collection of essays Signposts in a Strange Land.

(2) Percy wrote about that too in his book, Lost in the Cosmos. He describes two phenomena that I can remember: walking by a mirror in a department store and not knowing who that person was you just walked past, so you back up and see and startled to discover it was your reflection in the mirror. Or why is it that when you look at a photo, for instance, a family portrait, the first person you seek out is yourself?

(3) See Lacan's writings on the subject in “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience”

Poem: "Car Stereo"

Dvořák strums his fingers on the dashboard,
a melodic lilt to the tune of lips.

Bells ring successively, a resonant thud that
dispels the cold (morning), an evocation
of circles in disturbed coffee,
stained Styrofoam forgets about the lingering smell.
Empty cans shift near the axles by my feet.
I stoop to catch one before the exposed tram
wheel slices my hand from my wrist,
(my body parts would’ve been strewn there. music dissonant)

as Praha descends and ascends,
sucker green-licked traffic lights,
the handicap tick, tick, ticking –
A.I. good Samaritans –
and Rita stares as Brahms plays on her RCA;

she massages her left leg, her mind returns to plans,
abuse and peanut butter –
Olivia coos: astonishment over the frigidity
of her utilitarian security
belt.

Dvořák strums his fingers on Praha
like the rhythm of the Communist-planned subway.
The dashboard’s littered with defunct bills -
theatre tickets, plastic, Aspercreme, and hosiery –
the lusty (morning), an evocation of
lingering dichondra. The music is a chorus
of malcontent girls and boys.

The car stereo statics, shifts
to the arrangement of cobblestones.

The music is a chorus of digested notes,
garbled eruptions, masticated syncopation,
uniform stares.

Rita’s listless, schizoid hands fixed
on the vinyl seat cover, fixed
on unfinished plans.
The security belt
warms Olivia’s skin; Blue emits from the tracks; 

Dvořák drives by

thinking of sex and royal fudge
as we all sit and relax,
trammeled by the astonishment of evocation,
snow collecting, rotting – a wolf in the thicket,
the tolls of Saint Vitus evoke in my ears.

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Image Source: © 2001 Zachary Morrison