so awesome

Our brief musical interludes in today’s class consisted of the Temptation’s ‘My Girl,’ Herman’s Hermits ‘Henry the Eighth, I Am,’ … something by the Vogues, and ‘Saigon’ by SSgt. Barry Sadler.

*Henry the Eighth playing* “This shows you what’s the matter with my generation cause they just don’t make songs like this anymore, do they? C’mon guys, you missed your part! This is the cutting edge! This is number one in the Summer of 65. Second verse? Same as the first. Look, look at the depth of the lyrics. I mean, just the… meaning, just, ugh… Oh, now. The instrumental break. This is where they really showed their musical talents. *air guitars* Especially when you’re doing the base *air basses* It’s… // Me: It’s more advanced than ‘I Fought The Law’ // Yeah, that is definitely true. That’s on one of the CD’s, too. But, see, that’s not ’65 so we can’t play with that yet.”

“We’re seeing this via? CBS News. This war will be televised. This was will come into our homes. And when you start to get, at first, lots of news reports like this. See it as you know, like Boy Scout Camp extended, then you gotta lotta folks saying ‘yes, I want to go fight for the freedom of these people.’ Because that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a sanitized version of it. But one of the things you gotta realize is that we watched this. And, keep in mind, we did not have Twitter – though I heard this morning that apparently Miley Cyrus has stopped her Twitter site, so like half the country is now in deep mourning or whatever – but we don’t have Twitter, we don’t have the Internet. We had, in Baltimore, 2, 11, and 13. Channel 2, channel 11, channel 13, okay? We did not have News Talk Radio, okay? No, WBAL was the big station – it played music and Galen Fromm told us whether school was closed or not. It wasn’t this… saturation of information. We weren’t an information society of ‘I’ve gotta know. I don’t know what to do with the information once I got it, but I gotta know.’ ‘Oh my God, David Letterman was an adulterer.’ … Yeah. Alright? Surprise! Yeah! And the debate goes like this: ‘He’s an adulterer!’ versus ‘Yeah.’ But, wow, anyhow, we had channel 2, channel 11, and channel 13 – 5 on a good day from Washington. But that was it. So, if you wanted to get news? You didn’t have Fox and MSNBC, and CNN. I mean news was half hour from CBS and a half hour from local guys. Period. You had 6:30 and 7:00. You wanted to watch the news? 6:30, 7. Not… the Channel 2 News at 3 – And on our Channel 2 News at 4, we’ll tell you… What? Just tell me the story! Right? That’s all ya had.”

“And now, we have gone in and we have helped the ‘Rural Construction Team’, which is a group of folks from the capitol city of Vietnam, to go into these villages and protect them from the Viet Cong. And of course, we are protecting them, because these people from the Rural Construction Team have weapons and are working side by side with them in the rice fields. Now, my first question is… ‘What choice do they have!?’ I mean, do we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the folks in that village weren’t VC? No! And so the guy with the gun comes in and goes ‘we’re here to protect you.’ He’s got a gun. How ‘bout if we say ‘we don’t want no protection.’ ‘Oh, yes. We will protect you. Do you understand?’

“Back in the 90’s, a comedian. Green’s his name, I think. Tom? // Girl: Tom Green? // Tom Green, maybe, I dunno. Used to have real long hair… Anyhow, his dad… // Guy: Isn’t that the guy who was like… messin’ with the cows? // I… messin with the cows? What the… I don’t even. No! Rhodes! Rhodes! Tom Rhodes. Cows.. I don’t even wanna know. That’s more information than I wanna know. ‘Messin’ with the cows’. Okay. Stop. Rewind. Tom Rhodes.”
“Anyhow, this guy goes to Vietnam in the mid 90’s. His dad was a helicopter pilot and he wanted to see what the heck Vietnam was all about. And he sees this great scene of these folks in Ho Chi Minh City. They’ve got regular like Coke cans and Sprite cans, and what they’re doing is, with tin snips, they’re making like… Huey Helicopters and Jets and Tanks and little VW Bugs out of these soda cans. And entire family is sitting there making stuff out of Coke cans. And I use this in my Anthro classes all the time and I get folks going ‘Oh my god! Look at that. They’re just sitting there making stuff out of Coke cans!’ One person’s recycling is… another person’s Huey Helicopter. ‘Well, look at those poor people’ And I always have to say ‘Well, wait, stop! Hold the bus! You’ve got an entire family sitting around the table. Now here I am standing in a college classroom. My youngest daughter is getting ready to go the lunch. The older one still has a few more minutes of PE. And I have absolutely no idea where my wife is right now. Wouldn’t I rather spend the day with them? So these folks have what they need, what they want? Yet when we went in in ‘64, ‘65 we brought the Rural Construction Team. And said ‘Hi. We’re gonna go ahead and do things this way now.’”

And on a completely unrelated note, I had to ask him if he would recommend me for the Honor’s Program. I so called what he would say.

Me: Hey, I’m applying to the Honor’s Program and I was wondering if you would-
Prof: No. No way. I’m throwing it away right now.
Me: I didn’t think so.
Prof: I thought you were already in it.
Me: Not yet. I’m in the other one, Phi Theta Kappa.
Prof: Well, you’re getting into this one, too.

:D

Off to work tonight, getting Flu shot, too. Joy.

so awesome

Our brief musical interludes in today’s class consisted of the Temptation’s ‘My Girl,’ Herman’s Hermits ‘Henry the Eighth, I Am,’ … something by the Vogues, and ‘Saigon’ by SSgt. Barry Sadler.

*Henry the Eighth playing* “This shows you what’s the matter with my generation cause they just don’t make songs like this anymore, do they? C’mon guys, you missed your part! This is the cutting edge! This is number one in the Summer of 65. Second verse? Same as the first. Look, look at the depth of the lyrics. I mean, just the… meaning, just, ugh… Oh, now. The instrumental break. This is where they really showed their musical talents. *air guitars* Especially when you’re doing the base *air basses* It’s… // Me: It’s more advanced than ‘I Fought The Law’ // Yeah, that is definitely true. That’s on one of the CD’s, too. But, see, that’s not ’65 so we can’t play with that yet.”

“We’re seeing this via? CBS News. This war will be televised. This was will come into our homes. And when you start to get, at first, lots of news reports like this. See it as you know, like Boy Scout Camp extended, then you gotta lotta folks saying ‘yes, I want to go fight for the freedom of these people.’ Because that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a sanitized version of it. But one of the things you gotta realize is that we watched this. And, keep in mind, we did not have Twitter – though I heard this morning that apparently Miley Cyrus has stopped her Twitter site, so like half the country is now in deep mourning or whatever – but we don’t have Twitter, we don’t have the Internet. We had, in Baltimore, 2, 11, and 13. Channel 2, channel 11, channel 13, okay? We did not have News Talk Radio, okay? No, WBAL was the big station – it played music and Galen Fromm told us whether school was closed or not. It wasn’t this… saturation of information. We weren’t an information society of ‘I’ve gotta know. I don’t know what to do with the information once I got it, but I gotta know.’ ‘Oh my God, David Letterman was an adulterer.’ … Yeah. Alright? Surprise! Yeah! And the debate goes like this: ‘He’s an adulterer!’ versus ‘Yeah.’ But, wow, anyhow, we had channel 2, channel 11, and channel 13 – 5 on a good day from Washington. But that was it. So, if you wanted to get news? You didn’t have Fox and MSNBC, and CNN. I mean news was half hour from CBS and a half hour from local guys. Period. You had 6:30 and 7:00. You wanted to watch the news? 6:30, 7. Not… the Channel 2 News at 3 – And on our Channel 2 News at 4, we’ll tell you… What? Just tell me the story! Right? That’s all ya had.”

“And now, we have gone in and we have helped the ‘Rural Construction Team’, which is a group of folks from the capitol city of Vietnam, to go into these villages and protect them from the Viet Cong. And of course, we are protecting them, because these people from the Rural Construction Team have weapons and are working side by side with them in the rice fields. Now, my first question is… ‘What choice do they have!?’ I mean, do we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that the folks in that village weren’t VC? No! And so the guy with the gun comes in and goes ‘we’re here to protect you.’ He’s got a gun. How ‘bout if we say ‘we don’t want no protection.’ ‘Oh, yes. We will protect you. Do you understand?’

“Back in the 90’s, a comedian. Green’s his name, I think. Tom? // Girl: Tom Green? // Tom Green, maybe, I dunno. Used to have real long hair… Anyhow, his dad… // Guy: Isn’t that the guy who was like… messin’ with the cows? // I… messin with the cows? What the… I don’t even. No! Rhodes! Rhodes! Tom Rhodes. Cows.. I don’t even wanna know. That’s more information than I wanna know. ‘Messin’ with the cows’. Okay. Stop. Rewind. Tom Rhodes.”
“Anyhow, this guy goes to Vietnam in the mid 90’s. His dad was a helicopter pilot and he wanted to see what the heck Vietnam was all about. And he sees this great scene of these folks in Ho Chi Minh City. They’ve got regular like Coke cans and Sprite cans, and what they’re doing is, with tin snips, they’re making like… Huey Helicopters and Jets and Tanks and little VW Bugs out of these soda cans. And entire family is sitting there making stuff out of Coke cans. And I use this in my Anthro classes all the time and I get folks going ‘Oh my god! Look at that. They’re just sitting there making stuff out of Coke cans!’ One person’s recycling is… another person’s Huey Helicopter. ‘Well, look at those poor people’ And I always have to say ‘Well, wait, stop! Hold the bus! You’ve got an entire family sitting around the table. Now here I am standing in a college classroom. My youngest daughter is getting ready to go the lunch. The older one still has a few more minutes of PE. And I have absolutely no idea where my wife is right now. Wouldn’t I rather spend the day with them? So these folks have what they need, what they want? Yet when we went in in ‘64, ‘65 we brought the Rural Construction Team. And said ‘Hi. We’re gonna go ahead and do things this way now.’”

And on a completely unrelated note, I had to ask him if he would recommend me for the Honor’s Program. I so called what he would say.

Me: Hey, I’m applying to the Honor’s Program and I was wondering if you would-
Prof: No. No way. I’m throwing it away right now.
Me: I didn’t think so.
Prof: I thought you were already in it.
Me: Not yet. I’m in the other one, Phi Theta Kappa.
Prof: Well, you’re getting into this one, too.

:D

Off to work tonight, getting Flu shot, too. Joy.