(RE-POST FROM 5/22/11) Fast and Not As Furious As I Should Be

In honor the sixth Fast and Furious iteration opening this weekend, I am rerunning a post from two years ago when Fast Five came out. Enjoy!

I believe my IQ dropped significantly after Friday night. My husband convinced to see Fast Five, the fifth installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise. In truth, it didn't take much persuasion. He even gave me the choice between Pirates and Fast Five, but, alas, I chose the latter. And I'm not even sure why.

Maybe it's because I have (sadly) seen all of the other Fast and Furious movies, and I had some neurotic impulse to complete the cycle. Perhaps I thought if I saw something extremely masculine, Dan would be more likely to take me to Jane Eyre on my birthday in a couple of weeks. Or it could have been some unexplained void that only sweaty versions (and I mean, dripping off the body like molasses) of Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and the Rock could fill. (There - how do you men like being treated like some objectified piece of meat?)

I was also just plain curious. The film, unlike its predecessors, has been garnering critical acclaim with high scores on both Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. (What is the world coming to when a car-racing movie - sequel number five, no less - scores higher than Water for Elephants?)

Vin Diesel was quoted in Time as saying, "I wouldn't be surprised if there is some Oscar talk around this."

Ummm . . . okay.

I don't know that testosterone-laden stare downs qualify a movie as Oscar-worthy.

Every time beefy Vin Diesel donned an especially intense mien and made a comment like, "Change of plans" or "Big mistake," my husband, Dan, would lean over and whisper, "Now that's an Oscar-worthy performance."

Nonetheless, the Fast and Furious movies have always been one of my guilty pleasures as contradictory to my nature as that may seem.

I've never enjoyed such a blatantly sexist set of films in my life. We're talking scantily clad women galore with lots of cleavage . . . and not just in the pectoral region. Even the weapon-wielding token female characters, who are apparently the male characters' equals in toughness, use their sexuality to get the job done. And the ratio of women (supposedly with brains, but that's debatable) to men on the Fast Five crew is about 2:9.

And the line that elicited the most laughs?

"Sexy legs, baby girl. What time do they open?"

The response?

"They open at the same time I pull this trigger (she pulls a gun on him). Want me to open them?"

Throughout my two-hour swashbuckling theater experience, I found myself wondering how much carbon was emitted into the air during the making of this movie. Every time the characters smashed a vehicle through a building or took out a bank or a concrete wall, I thought, "Who is going to clean up that mess?" And this was a source of great anxiety for me during the film because of some irrational fear of mine that I, in fact, would be the one cleaning up everything in the end.

I don't make it a habit to go to movies where the audience members interact with what is happening on screen. But during this flick, there was an outburst of (most definitely male) hoots and hollers every time there was an explosion or a fast-moving car making hairpin turns.

"But did you like the movie?" Dan asked me as we exited the theater.

I said I really enjoyed it, especially the heist story, "But don't tell anyone; it might ruin my reputation as a self-sufficient, chauvinist-hating feminist."

"I did get a little bored during car chase scenes," I added, "but I guess those were to be expected."

"Duh. It's a car movie."



(These are a few of the cars from The Fast and the Furious film franchise. They were on display at Universal Studios in Orlando when we visited in 2004.)

End of the Year Funnies

In April, school morale was slipping, and I wrote "Focusing on the Funny Stuff" in an effort to make it through the rest of my year. I am happy to say that I have almost made it, and I am still in pretty good spirits. Turns out, focusing on kids and the hilarious things they say and do is the medicine for the spring blahs.

So here are a few more anecdotes that will be getting me through these final nine days:

Pasta Dancing
A couple of weeks ago, I taught my second graders how to salsa, and it was a huge hit with both the boys and the girls. Ever since, the kids have asked to salsa dance at least once per class.

One little boy asked, "Are we going to do pasta today?"

"Pasta?"

"You know, the pasta dance?"

"I think he means 'salsa' dancing," another kid translated.

Who's the Boss?
For teacher appreciation week, the whole faculty received sheriff badges. I wore mine in all of my classes. During the afternoon kindergarten, there was a dispute between two of the kids.

"My mom says I'm the boss," one little girl said to another boy.

"But you have to sit on that dot!" the boy said.

I approached the two squabblers.

"My mom says I'm the boss," the little girl reiterated to me.

"See this sheriff badge?" I pointed to my shirt. "That means I'm the boss."

The kids stared blankly at me and sat down.

Have You Ever Seen a . . .
I was singing "Down by the Bay" with my first graders on Friday. The students were supposed to generate rhymes for the final phrase (i.e. "Have you ever seen a whale with a polka-dotted tail?").

"Have you ever seen a ninja . . . " one little guy started.

"I don't know if you're going to be able to come up with a rhyme for ninja, dude," I said.

". . . wearing a finja?"

All of the kids giggled.

"That's a good nonsense rhyme, but let's see if we can come up with real words."

I called on a boy raising his hand, hoping for a reboot with a completely new set of words.

"Have you ever seen a ninja wearing a ban-ninja?" he said without hesitation.

"That's not a word either," a girl said.

"Ban-ninja, huh? What's a ban-ninja?" I asked.

"I think it's a type of sweater," the boy stated somberly.

"Or maybe it's a banana ninja," said the kid who had originally started the ninja-rhyme discussion.

And just like that, I was in the middle of an AT&T commercial.

For more tales from this past school year, check out the following posts:
"How I Survived the First Week of School"
"How I Really Survive My School Year"
"When the Utopia Ends"
"Dan Goes to Choir Festival"


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American Idiot . . . in Boise?

Until a few weeks ago, this blog post was originally going to be about how American Idiot would never come to Boise. This idea started to formulate after I saw the show on tour in Seattle last June. Dan and I had already seen it while it was still on Broadway in New York. We figured it would never come to Boise, so when we saw it was going to be in Seattle last summer, we decided to head west.

Then I saw Rock of Ages in Boise earlier this year, and I started thinking about my blog post again.

"That was kind of edgy for Boise," I said. "Do you think that bodes well for American Idiot or Spring Awakening coming here on tour sometime?"

"It was edgy in a thirteen-year-old bathroom sex humor way," Dan pointed out. "I think Boise's okay with that."

So I had resigned myself to the fact that edginess with mullets (Rock of Ages) was more acceptable to Boise audiences than a commentary on the lack of sex education in the lives of our youth (Spring Awakening) or religious satire (Book of Mormon) or post-9/11 criticism of George W. Bush and the Iraq War (American Idiot). Yes, Avenue Q had come to Boise a few years ago, and it had a simulated sex scene . . . but with puppets.

After Avenue Q, it seemed like we started getting a lot of My Fair Lady and Fiddler on the Roof. It was like Boise was scared back into wearing the chastity belt again. Don't get me wrong. I still love the classics. I'm a musical theater nut. But I think my husband said it best when he commented on a middle-aged couple in front of us who stayed seated during the American Idiot curtain call in Seattle.

"People should like American Idiot," Dan said. "At least it has something to say. Most musicals don't have anything to say."

Then, just as I was getting ready to write this post, I heard that American Idiot was, in fact, coming to Boise - as a season extra - for only one night.

"Maybe it's start!" I said to Dan after jumping around the living room. "Maybe there's still hope for the Spring Awakenings and Book of Mormons and Next to Normals in Boise, Idaho!"

"I don't know . . ." Dan said.

"We said that about American Idiot four weeks ago."

"Green Day's pretty popular though," he said.

I paused.

"Are you sure you want to see it a third time?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said without hesitation. "We need to buy tickets so they will know there is support in Boise for edgier shows."

You know, those shows that have something to say.

St. James Theater in New York, our first American Idiot experience with the original Broadway cast

After seeing American Idiot, for the second time, on tour in Seattle

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In Remembrance . . .

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Matthew 5:4

People say all the time that they remember in astonishing detail where they were when they heard about the Kennedy assassination or the Twin Towers or the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. . . .

I will never forget where I was fifteen years ago when I heard about the brutal rape and murder of Kay Lynn Jackson.

I had just returned to my dorm room after cramming for a Music History I test at the Student Union. It was 1998, and I didn't own a cellphone. The Internet was not the twenty-four hour hotbed of news that it is now. I came home to several urgent messages on my voice mail. Kay had been raped and murdered on the Greenbelt. She was a friend from church, from my twenty-somethings Sunday School class.

I will never forget where I was on Wednesday, May 1, 2013 when I heard that her killer had been found. I was in my classroom, teaching a folk dance, La Raspa, to twenty-plus second graders. A colleague walked in with his iPad.

"I just thought you might want to see this," he said, showing me the breaking news article that had been published just moments before.

I know my friend Jenness, Kay's roommate and best friend, will never forget where she was when she heard the news.

"I was sitting in a nap room with kids still awake, and I had to cover my mouth so that I didn’t sob out loud," she wrote in a recent blog post.

Kay's family will probably never forget either.

People don't know what to say in the case of tragedy.

One colleague asked me what my stance was on the death penalty. And instead of waiting for me to formulate a thoughtful response, he used my hesitation as an excuse to explain to me why he was pro capital punishment.

I also heard someone say, "Now if only they could do to him what he did to her . . ." For some reason, that made me feel very bad.

People said to me, "That's good news!" and "Yay, police!" all of which might have been true to an extent, but I didn't feel like celebrating.

My initial reaction was "It's over . . . " and something hit me like the exhaustion I experienced after my mother took her last breath, and my brother and I sat in chairs on opposite sides of her body, staring at each other, motionless and emotionless.

I read Jenness' blog the next day and was comforted to know that other people's feelings were mixed as well, "Today I heard words I thought I would never hear … Kay’s murderer has been found. These words sent me into an emotional tailspin. I didn’t know what to think or feel."

When the media contacted me, the first thing I was asked was, "How do you feel?"

It was one of the hardest questions I have ever had to answer.

It's hard to explain what you're feeling when you're numb. Kay's death on Palm Sunday, April 5, 1998 was traumatic for everyone involved. I went a little crazy. I was twenty, living away from home, walking distance from where the crime had taken place. Relief, bittersweet, shock . . . those were the first words that popped into my head.

As I have been connecting with others on Facebook these past couple of days, I realized we had been thinking about Kay recently. Over Easter weekend, I had just been talking to my sister-in-law about the case. At the end of March, Jenness wrote a poignant piece entitled "15 Years Later." Our minister mentioned her in a sermon a few weeks ago.

And then the news broke on Wednesday, May 1.

Throughout the day, I eventually encountered people who understood that the solving of this crime was a reminder of a very dark time.

"There's no justice in a case like this," one of my coworkers said.

Some of my students - always perceptive - had heard my sound bite on the news and said, "It's . . . so sad" and "I'm really sorry about your friend."

"It was a long time ago," I lied. This week, fifteen years ago was just yesterday.

A fellow music teacher, who had also been a college friend, said, "It's hard to know what to feel about that, isn't it?" I broke down sobbing on her shoulder. She put her arms around me. "I think I remember holding you like this fifteen years ago."

In 1998, a few days after Kay's death, I was walking across campus with a friend.

"Sometimes life just doesn't make sense," he said.

It doesn't.

We are scattered, all of us twenty-somethings who are now thirty-somethings, with families and/or careers of our own. Some live in other parts of Idaho or in other states. We have moved on because that's what life does in fifteen years. It moves on. But we will always be connected by this tragic event.

"Many times I have heard my mother say forgiveness is not for the person you are forgiving. It is for you . . . How can you move forward in life if you choose to hold onto the past?" - Jenness Johnston

To the family and friends of Kay Lynn Jackson, may you find resolution, comfort, and rest.

To Kay 

(as written for her funeral)

In loving memory, April 10, 1998

I know why it rained that day

When the Heavens opened

And God gather you in His arms,

A tiny droplet escaped from His eye.

And Angel upon Angel as they viewed

Your beautiful soul wept for humanity.

And their tears fell through

Heaven’s gates and showered

our hearts on Earth

so that we may be cleansed.

For the rain was different

that day, a gentle sunny rain,

a signal to us that you are okay.

And though I’ll never know why

you were taken, at least . . .

I know why it rained that day.

All references to A Journal of the Everyday, a blog by Jenness Johnston, used with permission.