:: Dillondesk -- the blog of LCD ::
Weblog for a teacher of English, lover of Peeps, Tori, Ben, the Beatles, TV, movies, and Star Wars.
:: a child of the 80's looks at the world through Smurf-colored glasses -- a blog by calvin dillon :: bloghome
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:: Saturday, August 06, 2005 ::
:: Calvin 10:13 PM [+] ::
I was admonished by my wife because I have only blogged once this week.
The week was wonderful -- Tuesday and Wednesday were uneventful except for busiedly preparing for students and helping others get ready too.
I took a little bit more of a leadership role in the department, running a meeting for teachers teaching the Intensive Reading Class (there are five of us) and I made sure they all had copies of a pretest they could use with their students.
On Wednesday, I was treated to a cake at school, because my friends Liz and Michail have birthdays that bookended mine (Liz on the 3rd, me on the 4th, and Michail on the 5th). It was really nice for people to be thoughtful like that. I got a great keychain from a second year teacher -- neat Star Wars thing that rotates the symbols of the Rebellion and the Empire.
I had a great time meeting my 83 youngsters on Thursday, and things went quite smoothly. We played with PowerPoint and cultural literacy on Friday, after doing a very successful book pass (I had 27 reluctant readers check books out from me).
Thursday night was great -- went to the In-Laws' house for Roast Beast and presents -- including pocket handkerchiefs to mop my sodden brow, volumes 7 and 10 of the Sandman, a Crossword Puzzle Dictionary and...a 20 Gb iPod Photo. Woo hoo! All of the songs on my computer in the palm of my hand! Even Podcasts from Leo Laporte: my tech guru from Screen Savers whose voice has been absent from my life for over a year! It even has games, a calendar, a vCard reader and the ability to build playlists on the go. I can't wait to get the rest of our Tori on iTunes so I can get ready for the show next week!
Today was pretty WONDERFUL as well, because Joe is here and got to have pizza with me after having spent the previous day at the Warped Tour in St. Pete. We are now being treated to the X-Games Live on ESPN.
I got up at 5:00am this morning and graded everything, and then I reread volume 5: A Game of You. That is one great graphic novel.
Tonight I received American Gods and Good Omens, also by Neil Gaiman. I am closing in on a complete Gaiman library. Two more volumes of the Sandman, the two Death graphic novels, and assorted others should round things out.
I have been recording Joss Whedon's "Firefly" and "Battlestar Galactica" on Fridays and watching them on Sundays, and I got caught up with my daily Tribune crosswords today (I did the first in 3 minutes, the second in five).
I am going to choose a book to bed down with now and go get in bed -- 5:00am was a long time ago. I think I will rip Tori in the morning. That is a sentence I never anticipated typing.
Happy Saturday!
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:: Monday, August 01, 2005 ::
:: Calvin 5:48 PM [+] ::
Well, for a Monday, today was WONDERFUL.
I got up early and drove to a different high school to present for English teachers the books I read over the summer and ways to do booktalks.
The day started off okay, despite a wrong turn off Florida, putting me in the wrong direction on Busch Blvd which took ten minutes to rectify because of TERRIBLE traffic. I said hello to my compatriots from school and skipped the keynote because I was presenting.
We (I presented with two others)did a solid job. I even had someone stop me in the grocery store after the presentation to say she really enjoyed it (especially my section -- woohoo).
I also met a really cool guy who is the newspaper sponsor and creative writing teacher at the school. He used to go to Gaither and really has some cool things going on in his room.
I remembered to buy my brother's present before his birthday and that is all taken care of, and I am almost ready for school to start with two days left!
Hope everyone else is doing equally well.
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:: Sunday, July 31, 2005 ::
:: Calvin 9:38 AM [+] ::
Star Wars - New York Times
Nice little collection of Star Wars stuff on the New York Times Website. It is neat to go back and read Maslin and Canby's words on the OT (Original Trilogy).
In other SW news this week, Luke and Vader's sabers went for $318,600.00 collectively, making that a huge chunk of the money raised in the Profiles in History auction.
Also sold were Radar's teddy bear from MASH ($11,800), Indy's leather jacket from the Last Crusade ($94,400), Yoda's cane ($51,500), the signpost from the MASH set ($29,500), Luke's flight suit from ANH ($70,080), and his severed hand from ESB ($23,600).
Right now, according to boxofficemojo.com, RotS stands a #8 inthe all-time domestic gross rankings, with $376,507,594 as of last week. That means 3 of the top 3 are Star Wars films (EPs I and IV did better) and all but one of the remaining films are actually genre films (ET, Spider-Man, Shrek 2, and Return of the King).
On the comics2film note, Joel Silver said he will NOT edit out scenes of the bombing of London's railway system from V for Vendetta, depite the recent attacks. David Lloyd, the artist on the Alan Moore graphic novel who has a producer credit on the film, said "a movie such as this one is important to try and understand what leads people to terrorism." Good for them. The story DOES have important things to say about terrorism, and I was a little shocked that they were going ahead in this day and age with a story about a repressive totalitarian regime that uses protection of its citizenry as an excuse to erode personal freedoms. Good for them.
On the "Interweb is a cool thing" note, you should check out two fan film sites if you haven't already. One is for the upcoming Superman Returns flick (due next summer) and one is for Jackson's King Kong (due in November). The Supes site is http://www.bluetights.net/, and is featuring a video set diary starring the director and the effects crew. The structure of the vignettes CLOSELY resembles the content we had to PAY Lucas for on Hyperspace, and they are already up to the 20th entry with the film almost a YEAR away (June 30, 2006). We see raw animatic footage, polished scenes, and the flying effects apparatus. It has a large fan community with film art and links to fan sites, and is doing a great job of creating buzz without being foul-mouthed hooligans like Moriarty and Harry Knowles over at AICN. (http://www.aintitcool.com/).
The Kong site (http://www.kongisking.net/index.shtml) is produced by the team who gave us http://www.theonering.net/index.shtml, the site that really gave the fanboys power over the development of a film.
Not to be outdone, SW fans have a few cool sites of their own, the leaders being http://theforce.net/, http://www.blueharvest.net/, and one of my favorites -- the Keeper of the Holocron's blog. Leland Chee is a Lucasfilm employee in charge of the massive continuity database called the Holocron that keeps track of all developments in the Star Wars universe and cross-references them so that continuity is, well, continuous.
That's about it -- time for breakfast and floor cleaning. Students return in four days (on my birthday - I can't believe I will have been at work for over a week before I even GET to my birthday -- this county needsto push things back a little before we are in school in JULY!!!) -- this should be fun.
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