Casablanca Spoiler
License Exams and Blood Sports
A few months ago, Stick and I went to play games at Bill and Andrea’s house. Andrea had just taken her MTELs in chemistry, and after a few much-needed drinks, she cheerfully insisted to everyone in the room that Denmark and Holland are the same country. I giggled and pointed out that Denmark is the land of Number The Stars and Holland of Hans Brinkle. Those who don’t immediately tie children’s books and geography backed up my facts, but gave Andrea the benefit of the four-drink doubt.
I realized after my exam on Saturday that it wasn’t the martinis that fried her brain. It was the MTELs.
I was told to arrive at 7:45, and when I showed up at 7:46 there was already a line across the parking lot. If you want to teach high school in Massachussetts, you need to get a bachelor’s degree, pass the literacy MTELs and the subject exam in your chosen field, and then get certified as a teacher. So everyone who wants to become a teacher needs to take this exam.
“No cell phones,” one of the security officers said when I made it inside. “Put your bag in the car. No cell phones,”
I blinked. There was nothing in any of my paperwork that said backpacks were illegal, and besides, there’s a woman walking in with a bag right now.
“Thassa purse. No backpacks,” Can you blame me for having an Animal Farm moment? One strap good, two straps bad.
I tried to explain that Stick’s mother had dropped me off on her way to work, so I had no car in which to leave my illicit backpack (I even pointed to “parking is limited at your testing site” on my MTEL assignment letter). Eventually, I was given pained permission to leave my bag with the woman at the table marked “MTELs Bag Check”. It’s a lot like airport security, only once I proved that I wasn’t carrying anything contraband, I didn’t get to board a plane, only get into a new line.
This was the proper-identification line. This line moved even more slowly, with lost-wallet and didn’t-know-you-needed-multiple-IDs stories. I felt a little better about being the non-driving freak. By the time I made it to the front, I reached for my wallet and was waved through. “Good luck on your exam. Next!”
There was a woman who surrended her cell phone in the testing room (“But no one told me I couldn’t have it!” she insisted to an unamused proctor), and a guy who had brought all twenty-eight forms of ID and no pencil.
The literacy portion was surprisingly hard. A lot of spelling questions involving that silly I before E rule. You know the one I mean? I before C, except after C or when sounded like A as in neighbor or sleigh, or from a French loan word in which case all bets are off, take it up with William The Conqueror, kid. But I think I recovered some points with my masterful use of the semicolon.
The English literature section was miserable. You remember the stupid crap we all had to sit through in high school English? This poem exemplifies the themes of romanticism because… Reader-response criticism is important because… It’s hundred questions and two essays on that. Yuck. At least I got out of the exam early (at 4:30 instead of 6 PM), and Stick came to get me.
I think I need to call Andrea and apologize. She just made a minor geography error, but I think in my post-MTELs brain freeze, I agreed to play Blood Bowl with Stick.
Posted in Books, New York City
Tagged Books, Chinese life, driving, games, LOST, New York City, Stick
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Princess Maker
I’m a little insulted by the top ten girlfriend-friendly games list on www.1up.com. It’s a good concept, girls tend to like like different games than boys do, and there are a bunch of great games that girls love. The Sims, Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights have a favorable talking:fighting ratio. The Sims did make number one on 1up’s list, but rest of the games listed are for non-gamers with low standards and very little attention span. Especially Centipede. If you really loved me, you’d let me play Nibbles on your TI-85.
And how did Princess Maker fail to make the list of simple games targeted to girls? This game comes from Japan, where preteen girls are a bigger segment of the gaming market. This might be because the American games for this demographic are along the lines of Super Model Barbie.
The story is set in a pseudo-medieval fantasy kingdom. You play as the victor in a epic battle against the dark lord, now retired from combat and the adoptive father of a baby girl. The goddess Venus appears in a cloud of light, ok, in a King’s Quest-era speech box, and gives you the baby and tells you to raise the girl to be healthy, attractive, good-natured and smart. You send her to school, art and dance lessons, etiquette class, assign her chores, take her on vacations, etc. Although you are trying to increase her stats, the random events in the game like competitions or potential suitors, keep Princess Maker from being a repetitive leveling game.
With proper training, your little princess can become quite an accomplished mage or swordswoman, and venture outside the city looking for monsters and dragons to fight.(See above regarding “pseudo-medieval fantasy kingdom”) The combats are bloodless, although I can’t tell whether that’s intentionally keeping the game girl-friendly or a function of the ancient graphics.
There’s a not-so-subtle message not-so-cleverly embedded in Princess Maker about the fine balance between attractive and slutty. It’s not a good theme for preteen girls, but it’s a message they’ll get from hundreds of sources more important that a videogame. And your princess can also be happy and successful by excelling at academics or fencing or dancing or another skill.
At the end of the game, when your princess turns eighteen, you receive a letter from her, telling you about her life. Some of my princesses ended up happily single, some married nice boys from good families (yes, that’s the description, and no, that doesn’t bother me. I’m half-Jewish), one ran off with my butler (apparently I had a butler) and I finally got one to marry the prince. Oh yeah, that’s the goal of the game. One princess was unhappy since she had no children (I’m not entirely sure where I failed as a father).
I’m not sure if I enjoyed Princess Maker so much because it was like playing dolls or because it reminded me of the Laura Bow mysteries and the King’s Quest games. And for the record, I got my copy of Princess Maker 2 from a male friend, after hearing two other college guys talking about how awesome it is.
Coming up next: I once cross-gamed and played Mr. Pac-Man.
Posted in Game Reviews, Western Mass
Tagged awesome, Eric, Game Reviews, games, gaming, lessons, random, Sims, why's it gotta be pink?
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Wanna See My Spaceship?
Stick has sworn to watch the next six million, forty-seven thousand, three hundred and ninety-two bad Star Wars prequels in the hopes that one of them will be half as good as Return Of the Jedi. Speaking of trilogies that won’t quit, we went to see The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy this weekend.
The characters have the same names as Adams’ did, and the backdrop is clearly the HHGTTG world. The plot is similar in that it involves mayhem and the destruction of the Earth. Since I’ve just summarized almost every sci-fi story in existance, it’s time for some name-dropping.
Mos Def as Ford Prefect is brilliant, he would have made a Star Wars prequel worth watching. Zaphod Beeblebrox is well-cast and well-costumed but the extra-head gag should have stayed on the radio. In a film full of really good Muppets, there’s no reason for his extra appendages to look so goofy and so low-budget. Alan Rickman, also known as Professor Snape, is the bitter and depressed voice of Marvin the paranoid android. Bill Nighy, known to Anglophile dorks as Phillip from Shawn Of the Dead, is an amusing Slartibartfast, and Stephen Fry (author of The Hippopotamus and other novels) is the all-important Book. The visual component for the book’s sections are a bunch of psuedo science-museum-y animations (think of the frog-DNA bit from Jurassic Park). Not brilliant, but Fry sounds a lot like Peter Jones, the original voice of the guide on the BBC radio plays, and the guide sections are pure Adams genius.
There’s something off with the timing in this movie. Scenes that are marginally funny are dragged out until they aren’t, and many memorable Adams jokes are cut. The spaceship doors sigh as they open and close, but this is never explained. Eddie and Marvin don’t get nearly enough screen time and there’s way too much of Arthur making moon eyes at Trillian. Still, the improbability scenes are fun in a Yellow Submarine kind of way, and the new dialogue, like “Zaphod, buttons are not toys!” or Arthur’s “Leave this one to me, I’m British and we’ve very good at queuing.” is pretty good. And the sperm whale monologue, here in all it’s guilty glory.
Stick would like me to take back what I said at Team America and admit that I was wrong, he was right, and vomiting can be funny.
Some parts of the movie could be disjointed to those who haven’t read the book(s) or taken me along to narrate (I have the radio plays on cassette, the audiobooks on MP3, Starship Titanic for the PC, and all five books in the trilogy, and, yes, I caught the part when Zaphod starts to call Ford “!X”, and no, I don’t get out much, why do you ask?).
The film ends with all that covert Trillian-and-Arthur chemistry becoming overt, and Zaphod’s inexplicable hookup with a the Galactic Vice President. I half expected Ford and Marvin to pair off for a perfectly Hollywooded ending, but fortunately Ford just suggested that they pop over to Milliway’s for a bite to eat.
Posted in Books, Western Mass
Tagged Android, BBC, Books, British, Eric, sci-fi, Stick
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The Amherst Horror
Last night, I talked Kristine into going to see The Amityville Horror with me. I’ve seen the original, and I was so scared that afterwards I made my then-boyfriend walk me to the bathroom and stand outside the door in case the ghosts tried to get me. Sadly, the new version isn’t as scary, but it’s ten times grosser. (Kristine gives the maggots a ten out of ten for realism.)
I’m not sure if I’m qualified to discuss a horror film. The worst cinematic scare I’ve ever had is from Sex and the City. Stop laughing, I’m serious! The scene when Natasha is running down the stairs after Carrie and she falls face first and breaks her tooth, ouch, my front tooth hurts just typing it. I was shaken up for hours after watching it.
It was scarier than the first eight minutes of Silence of the Lambs (Stick says it was only seven but I really made it a full eight minutes before I dove under the blankets and begged him to shut it off) or even Full Metal Jacket because I don’t spend a lot of time with convicted serial killers and I’m not in a war zone. But running down the stairs? I do that every day! And that’s the reason the original Amityville was so terrifying. The protagonists weren’t dared to sleep in a haunted house, they were just making dinner, reading a novel, putting the kids to bed, etc. The house terrorized them while they were going about their daily activities, which is a million times scarier than let’s-spend-the-night-in-the-graveyard movies.
One terrifying moment in the new Amityville is when the innocent, colorful fridge magnet rearrange themselves into a murderous message. When the message is gone a moment later, Kathy Lutz says “Must have been seeing things,” and goes back to her job of standing aimlessly at the kitchen window (she does that a lot). This is the point when I would be saying something more like “GEORGE! THAT’S NOT FUNNY! YOU’RE A JERK!” The advantage to my plan is that I’d soon be divorced and living in a tiny but unhaunted apartment with my three kids, which would protect me from the angry house.
Since I’ve been distracted even from good movies by a shirtless man, I won’t make too much of the fact that Ryan Reynolds’ abs stole the show. I was kind of annoyed when one of the corpses popped up in front of him, but fortunately that didn’t happen too often. And there was one scene when he’s getting out of the water… into the haunted boathouse, but still. I was really glad I was with Kristine for my inappropriate drooling. I have never seen Stick, in his Perfect Boyfriend-icity, check out another girl and so I feel a bit guilty when I suffer from a certain type of whiplash that sometimes affects mere mortals like me.
The film has one moment of comedy gold, when a new scene opens with a weird shot of the babysitter’s tongue, it seems she’s having a seizure and is possessed by the house spirit! But it turns out to be just a Gene Simmons impression.
Posted in North Carolina
Tagged cary, Chinese life, Kristine, movies, North Carolina, reading, Stick
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A Visit to the Blinking Doctor
Today I went to the optometrist. I’ve done this about once a year, since before I knew that “eye doctor” was two words. (which was YEARS before I realized the same is true about “Tappan Zee”) I’ve had glasses since I was two. My mom tells me that there was a point when I didn’t wear glasses every waking moment, and there are multiple photographs of my un-spectacled toddler face, but I don’t remember that time. I do remember a time when I could find my glasses without wearing my glasses. (Those were the days.)
It’s now been over twenty years since my mom first told me that I’d grow out of my optometrist hatred.
But I haven’t.
I would rather take the GREs than have my eyes examined.
I would rather drive to take the GREs than have my eyes examined.
I would rather drive Stick’s car to take the GREs than have my eyes examined. Even if the GREs were on the Pike. And if I had to parallel park at the end of it.
Going to the optometrist is a miserable experience. I’m one of those weird, twisted people who doesn’t like being poked in the eyes. I don’t wear contact lenses, and I firmly believe there is a special place in hell for eye doctors who say “But you have such a pretty face! Why do you have to hide it with glasses?”
It’s right next to the special hell for the assistants who say “Look at the picture! Focus on the balloon! And don’t blink!” when I don’t see a slide of a hot-air balloon rising majestically over the horizon. I see blue on top, a red dot and green. Like a Rothko in cyan, maroon and hooker’s green.
While we’re on the subject, isn’t “Don’t blink!” the dumbest injunction ever? Of course I’m going to blink! I blink even when people aren’t shining lights and dropping solutions into my eyes! That’s what eyes do when they’re not happy, they blink. And I’m not happy.
I really think when you ask someone to read letters from a chart, you should start with the top line, so they feel happy that they can read the first two lines, and not from the bottom. Because I start feeling dumb the fourth and fifth time I have to say that I still can’t read it. Also, if you don’t want people to guess futhark runes or Greek, you shouldn’t make your letters look so much like futhark runes or Greek.
And yet, this annual torture definately beats the alternative (which is to bump my face on the walls a lot).
Posted in New York City
Tagged Chinese life, glasses, greek, letters, New York City, Stick
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Who’s On First For Classicists
“Do you want to go to Elektra with me?” I asked Stick, “It’s at HCC,”
“Sure,” Stick said. “What’s the lecture about?”
“You took Greek drama, you know what it’s about!”
“No, I never heard about a lecture at HCC!”
“You never heard of Elektra?”
I am sad to report that we went back and forth like this for an embarrassingly long time.
Edit: Must add that today is the founding of Rome, or the Greatest Boyfriend Ever will think that I’m totally useless at remembering holidays.
Posted in New York City
Tagged Chinese life, classicists, greek, New York City, Rome, Stick
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Dinner In Sterling
Mama Hoffmann: And our new Pope is named Benedict the 16th…
Dad Hoffmann: *sings Benny and the Jets*
Mama Hoffmann: Oh, thanks honey, now every time the Pope is on the news I’m going to think of a flamboyently gay pianist with ridiculous clothes.
Dad Hoffmann: Don’t be silly, he probably doesn’t even play piano.
Dear Prince Charles,
10 out of 10 for marrying two chicks with classical names. But two women named for sworn virgins? Come on, man.
Just a thought.
Meg
Canterbury Tales
A girl in my Chaucer class turned to me and said, “I hated our reading this weekend! All those long, rambling descriptions, and nothing actually happened! I tried, but I just couldn’t finish the Squire’s Tale!”
“That’s ok,” said a boy sitting behind us, “Chaucer couldn’t either.”
