That Time I Went to See the Hut Where an Author My Students Had Never Heard Of Once Lived

Close-up of bronze statue of Jack London created by artist Cedric Wentworth. (7/12/14)

Guess where. (7/12/14)

This past week, while working with my Advanced Placement juniors in the library on a research project about American Literary Movements, I asked one student if she had read The Call of the Wild. When she looked at me as if I had three eyes I followed up with "You've read works by Jack London before, haven't you?" To that she replied, "Who is Jack London?" It was at that point that I decided we would be reading The Call of the Wild by Jack London next, despite its present location on the district's seventh grade reading list (where it has been replaced by more Common Core friendly shorter texts as part of a prescribed curriculum).

Fortunately, I have a level of  flexibility as I am working from a curriculum that is more rigorous than the Common Core (College Board approved and all that) so I can detour slightly to insure students have read authors it's difficult to understand them graduating from high school without even a passing familiarity.

View from the road. (7/12/14)

Despite it having ended over three-and-a-half months ago, my summer trip to California is the photographic gift that continues to keep on giving. While driving home the day of "the London conversation," I recalled that my friend Jerry and I had visited a London-centric locale on my last day in California this past July. I also realized that pictures had been snapped that I hadn't really taken the time to process (it was the last day of an 8-day trip after all).

Jack London Square is one of Oakland’s most identifiable landmarks and a symbol of the city’s history as a seaport. It is also a popular entertainment and business destination on the waterfront of Oakland, California. It is named after hometown author Jack London, and is owned by the Port of Oakland. It was also our last stop before heading to the airport for my flight back East. Like many red-blooded American lads (or at least so I thought), I greatly enjoyed the Yukon adventures as a youth, so visiting the reconstruction of Jack London's Klondike Hut in Jack London Square was something of a thrill. Simple and unassuming, it was pretty neat to get a sense of the small scope from which such great adventures flowed.

Reconstruction of Jack London's Klondike Hut in Jack London Square. (7/12/14)

John Griffith "Jack" London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876–November 22, 1916) was born to Flora Wellman in San Francisco. Though he was raised in Oakland, and is a "Favorite Son," I'd never really associated London with California. Unlike John Steinbeck (though not quite a favorite son while alive, but the possibility of tourist dollars heals all wounds), I've always envisioned London in more frigid surroundings,  That is more a tribute to his writing and my imagination than fact, but that's how my mind always saw it.

These conflicting (mis)perceptions were made concrete by the presence of London's relocated Klondike hut on the beautiful Oakland waterfront. Creating an interesting dichotomy of visuals, the original cabin Jack London lived in in the Klondike, now rests on the California Waterfront amid palm trees. Certainly learning how to start a fire would not be nearly as life-saving as one might think in this environment...

Plaque directly outside the Klondike hut. (7/12/14)

A replica of Jack London's Klondike hut. (7/12/14)

Klondike hut, rear view. (7/12/14)

Bronze White Fang statue by Cedric Wentworth. (7/12/14)

Your's truly with White Fang. (7/12/14)

Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon is a historic bar in Jack London Square. It opened in 1883 in a building made from pieces of an old whaling ship. The floor is sharply tilted, resulting from pilings underneath shifting in the 1906 earthquake. During the 1920s, Alameda was a dry town. The Alameda ferry was nearby, making the bar a traveler’s last chance for a drink when going to Alameda (and first when vice-versa), it was renamed from J.M. Heinold’s Saloon. Though I attempted to get some pictures inside, poor lighting (and a weak photographer) hampered their being worthy of posting.

As a schoolboy in the late 1800s, Jack London studied at Heinold’s. Jack confided in owner John Heinold about his ambition to attend the University of California. Heinold loaned him tuition money, but Jack only lasted a year at university. He later returned to Heinold’s where he wrote his notes for The Sea Wolf and Call of the Wild. Heinold’s is referenced 17 times in John Barleycorn.

Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon. (7/12/14)

Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, front view. (7/12/14)

Bronze statue of Jack London created by artist Cedric Wentworth.(7/12/14)

Quite a few contemporary art pieces also liven up 
Jack London Square. (7/12/14)

Sources:
Oakland Wiki
Official Jack London Square Site

Word Wall Reflections

Regents 11 (left) and AP 11 updated word walls await the start of school.

In years past I have maintained a traditional word wall in my classroom. While some teachers use them to capture a full range of terms and ideas to be reinforced, I have attempted to instruct my classes employing the three-tier framework developed by Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown. In keeping with the concept of tiered vocabulary, my word wall has consisted of those that would exist on the third tier: low frequency terms and concepts specific to a domain. Given the courses I teach, terms on our class word wall consists of concepts and vocabulary specific to the crafts of writing or literary analysis. During years that I have taught more than one course/level, I would keep two, one on the front wall and another on the back.

Word wall from middle school math class from
Demonstration Classroom Sharing blog..

The tier 3 classroom word wall has been fairly effective in offering a permanent reminder of potentially high frequency words available for analysis of fiction and nonfiction. Where it has been less effective is in properly suggesting a sequence or order for consideration of related terms or ideas. In years past I have tried a variety of strategies, such as chunking, in an effort to suggest an organizational framework for "checking down" through the concepts for use in analyzing text.

One intended benefit to tiering is the ability to assist students in seeing the patters and relationships between words, and it is this skill that I have been hoping to better reinforce each year. I have tried a number of different organizers in an effort to model an appropriate through process, with a range of success and failure. Last February I some stumbled across the work of University of Arkansas professor David A. Jollieffe.

Jollieffe's Rhetorical Framework Diagram.

A college composition teacher, in addition to offering recommendations and strategies around developing inquiry-based composition instruction, Jolliefe also developed a framework (see image to right) which incorporates Aristotle's rhetorical triangle and implies a framework for analysis. This is most relevant to my students and I as Jollieffe has previously served as Chief Reader for the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Examination.

Last spring, my AP 11 classes and I used this diagram as a means of reviewing, in cooperation with their Tier 3 Rhetoric Cards, the terms and ideas that they would use to be successful on the exam in mid-May. It was at this point that I began to see the potential for using Jollieffe's framework as a conceptual basis for a reconfigured, structured word wall for my classes. I also could envision this as an effective way to organize concepts (of which there are fewer) for my Regents level course who are now using more rhetorical language as a way of addressing the Common Core.

My goal this school year is to use the strategies that have proven themselves effective in the past (cards, walls, checks) collaboratively with a Jollieffe framework word wall to fully reinforce for students a concrete process for literary analysis. To track our progress, follow my class blog, the Greece AthenaEUM.

Entertainment Archetypes

From page 47 of the November 8, 2013 issue of Entertainment Weekly.

It seems as though this year I have had literary archetypes on the brain.

This all started when reviewing potential titles for reading in AP 12 English this year (my first time with the course). To make the analysis of each piece more manageable for both myself and my students, I'll often look for some "connective tissue" between works that can be used as a gateway to deeper analysis. Given some of the potential titles (Beowulf, Frankenstein, The Hobbit, Macbeth, The Canterbury Tales), a the potential for using basic character and thematic archetypes beginning with Seamus Heaney's Beowulf and moving toward a deeper consideration of the Heroic Journey (with significant help from Joseph Campbell, naturally) with The Hobbit seemed a natural, if obvious, direction to go in.

While sitting at the doctor's office last week, I was pleased to come across some more modern examples of preliminary literary archetype analysis in a relatively recent issue of Entertainment Weekly. Not surprisingly, the cinematic Sauron (the big bad from The Lord of the Rings Trilogy that follows Tolkien's The Hobbit) makes an appearance.The brief grid also opens the possibility for legitimately sharing Toy Story 3 (courtesy of literary character Cathy Ames cinematic  ancestor Lotso) during a future flex class (just kidding... kind of)!

Why Flash Rhetoric Cards?

As a teacher, I realize each June that there is always something I can do to improve upon the quality of my instruction. Often these epiphanies do not result from personal reflection, but from the responses students give me on the blind surveys I periodically ask them to complete. The purpose of these surveys is to help me do a better job helping them, and this often has to do with tweaking existing processes or procedures so that they are more effective.

For many years now, I have required my Advanced Placement Language and Composition students to maintain a deck of flashcards which I call "Rhetoric Cards." This is by no means an original idea of mine, except that (at least initially) some students resist the task as they deem it elementary--at least in the context of a high school English class (his practice is very familiar to them in their foreign language studies). Once they poo-poo this strategy, I remind them that the purpose of the cards is not to promote the rote memorization of every vocabulary word but to have a tactile resource for relevant Tier 3 terminology at their disposal when reading or analysing text that they can go through. Given the thousand possible rhetoric terms that may turn up on the exam, I have chosen to focus on 100-120 that are most likely to occur or that (minimally) provide them the best opportunity to eliminate possible answer on multiple choice questions.

In my classes, we use the Rhetoric Deck as a tool for learning important Tier 3 terms. Tier 3 vocabulary consists of low-frequency words that occur in specific domains. Domains include subjects in school, hobbies, occupations, geographic regions, technology, weather, etc. Generally these terms and concepts are introduced when a specific need arises, such as learning "amino acid" during a chemistry lesson, or "litotes" in the study of rhetoric. Some common examples of the terms I required students to define and "card" during summer (in concert with reading Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs) include antithesis, tautology and decorum.

My epiphany around Rhetoric Card usage came when, last June, a few students suggested that the cards had a diminished value as the year progressed. While this can be seen as a positive (as students internalize the definition and application of the term/concept, they need the cards as a resource less), I was reminded that there are some students who never caught on to the task meaningfully in the first place. That is to say, some students failed in September to begin a deck and consequently never kept adding concepts and ideas as the class (and better students) progressed. In effort to maximize the potential value of this activity, I am committing this coming school year to insuring that I check them more frequently early on, and that as we move through the curriculum students and I physically interact with the cards more regularly through some term chunking and kinesthetic organizing.

Some interesting related articles:

• Are Flashcards an Effective Learning Tool? [Infographic]
• Highlighting Is a Waste of Time: The Best and Worst Learning Techniques by Annie Murphy Paul, TIME, January 9, 2013.

'Nuff Read: The Kite Runner

The summer assignment for The Kite Runner.

As a teacher, sometimes I am instructed (translation: directed) to teach certain books that, though I can see their merit, fail to capture my fancy and become a chore to read. Fortunately, that was not the case with the first required Advanced Placement Literature and Composition reading of the summer, one assigned by the other AP English 12 teacher, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Like many, I saw the movie adaptation released many years ago, and while I enjoyed it, there was little to motivate me to read the book following its conclusion. Now, a few years removed from that initial impression, and seeking to set a good example for my students in September, I hunkered down to read the book for myself.

I am very glad to report that The Kite Runner is an incredibly engrossing book that I struggled to put down. Two days later, having completed it, I find myself looking forward to reading the essay outlines that students will prepare in responses to the prompt above. (Students enrolled in AP Literature and Composition were given he assignment prior to summer break.) I also am curious to see which of the characters each student will choose to analyze in light of the prompt that requires them to "choose a character... who must contend with some aspect of the past, either personal or societal."

Because the characters in the book are much more well developed, I am curious to see if everyone makes the most obvious choice of either Amir and Hassan. The book develops more fully a number of characters who were either absent or underdeveloped in the film version. This will allow for a wider variety of choices--should students choose to accept the more challenging options. Ultimately, it would be a shame to appear as though one is relying on the motion picture rather than the book for information, wouldn't it?

Certainly the requirement of including "Quotations along with page numbers... in the outline," will insure that such short cuts are not taken--something I am confident the solid students I have worked with in the past would not do!

The Not-So-Secret Meaning of Typography

Last Wednesday during lunch, I went to the local town hall to apply for a passport. As I was checking the nameplates outside each office for the correct room I couldn't help but notice a very large tarpelin sign proclaiming that one group of offices was clearly under the auspices of "Cheryl Dinolfo, Monroe County Clerk."

What struck me most about the sign, other than the shear size of it, maybe 12' x 5', was the comparative fonts and type sizes used to communicate each piece of information. The typography (size and font of the type) of the lettering used to trumpet Ms. Dinolfo's involvement, as well as her title, was of a significantly larger point size than that of the other relevant information. In fact, Only the county seal was a hair larger than her name, and the information present on the seal was indecipherable from a distance.

One is about as likely to find visual evidence of this phenomena online as you are to find a real picture of a Sasquatch... eventually, after first googling a myriad of possible word chains with the intent of finding an image online, it became clear that without a photographic recon mission would  proving this the existence of this phenomena would be difficult.

Looking forward to The Amazing Spider-man 2 starring.... Maggie Brooks?!

Fortunately, in my community, this is "elephantitits-of-type" only employed by Ms. Dinolfo. I have also noted on a number of occasions that our Monroe County Executive, Maggie Brooks, also has a penchant for having her name and title presented in juxtaposition to the County Logo on signs in such away that the information to be quickly processed by passersby is her name first. The County's seal taking a subordinate role to all else. Surprisingly, as seen in the photo below, somehow her name was not larger than that of the companies being represented below.

Drivers are hard pressed to figure out just for whom Brooks work for.

Both Dinolfo and Brooks are seasoned local politicos, with even more veteran operatives, so this is most surely not a printing error that was made once and never corrected. As students' of rhetoric, my high school Advanced Language and Composition classes quickly realize the implications and message of this choice on the part of the messenger. Visual rhetoric consists in part of text so obviously visual that its visual nature and power is often invisible. This type size conundrum is also a great example of one of those things that consciously goes unnoticed by some, but is subconsciously meant to "say" or communicate a message.

So, is this intended to suggest that when looking for service such as passport applications that the key piece of information one should look for is Ms. DiNolfo's name and title? The use of a rhetorical question here is intended by yours truly to suggest strongly that you know perfectly well what is being implied, as well as which politician's ego is being stroked by seeing there name (and office) in "lights."

Maybe the meaning is not so secret (or subtle) after all...



The message from a Monroe County banner: I love New York, Maggie Brooks,
and Sports--in no specific order.

Sources: Purdue Online Writing Lab

Odd Inferences & Allusions: Life of Passion?

"One's ability to find meaning in literature is dependent on how broadly and deeply read he or she is." I often share this assertion while teaching high school English literature classes. When doing so, I invite my students to do as I do: always look for literary allusions in contemporary media. Like many, though, it very often takes viewing one "thing" (television show, movie, song, etceteras) in the light of another to make the connection, make the inference or spot the allusion.

For example, during this most recent Winter Recess, I took advantage of the time to catch up on reading, television viewing and going to the movies. Despite a wide array of "sources": comic books, novels, poetry, action films, reality television and flights of fantasy, some connections--and eventually allusions--presented themselves to me.



While Krishna may have a
universe in his mouth...

...can the same be said of
Jack Passion's beard?

First came reality television. Though often depicted in the very niche reality show Whisker Wars, as self-centered and egotistical, former full-beard World Champion and multi-media icon Jack Passion, strikes me as, is if nothing else, a literate individual. (Full disclosure: I identify myself as a fan of Passion's, much to my wife's dismay.) He often alludes to ideas or quotes, whether intentionally or not, in his sound bites. One such occurrence struck me during last week's second season finale of Whisker Wars on the IFC television network. During the course of one outburst of bravado, Passions asserts that "I have the universe on my chin." When I first heard it, I tweeted it to the inter-webs (and Passion, in turn, kindly re-tweeted it, too!), but gave it little thought beyond that online interaction.

At the same time, I had began reading Yann Matrel's Life of Pi, a novel I had long intended to take in, but had lacked either the time or access to a copy. This recess, I had both.

By no means the original source for the quote, there is a small exchange in the book (and as I later observed, the movie adaptation directed by Ang Lee), that touches on a story of Krishna, the eighth incarnation of Lord Vishnu, as a youth. The set-up for the story's telling (on pages 54-55 of the novel) is this: Krishna and his foster-mother Yashoda were in the garden together. One day Krishna, as usual, was playing in sand. During this act of play he swallows, or eats the sand/dirt/mud. Krishna, like any child, denies doing so. Mother Yashoda requests to look in Krishna's mouth to better discern whether he is telling the truth. Here is the heart of the "lesson" from a more formal telling of the anecdote "A Story of Young Krishna", which in the novel is recollected by Pi and in the film by his mother to him:

And the Lord [Krishna] who had become a human child out of sport, without any loss of His divine powers, now opened His rosebud mouth. She bent forward to peer more closely and lo! she felt herself to be whirling in space, lost in time, for inside the baby mouth was seen the whole universe of moving and unmoving creation, the earth and its mountains and oceans, the moon and the stars, and all the planets and regions. She was wonderstruck to see the land of Vraja and the village of Gokula, herself standing there with the child Krishna beside her with a wide-open mouth, and within that mouth another universe, and so on and on and on.

Within Krishna's mouth is the whole universe (in fact, universes), while in a bit of hyperbole, Passion asserts that his beard (which he has also famously compared to an exploding volcano of red lava) also contains a "universe." So, is this purported (by me) allusion to Krishna's tale a stretch on the part of the reader (once again, moi)? Maybe, but the connection is there nonetheless... though the emphasis may be rightly placed on "less." If  "One's ability to find meaning in literature is dependent on how broadly and deeply read he or she is," then these moments of connection are available for identification all around us, IF we can connect those dots resulting in a (marginally) reasonable inference!



From Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012).

Can High School Students "Write Like Poe"?

A clever point--put the task still must be attempted:)!

Just prior to the recent Thanksgiving Break, while in the midst of reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and following a review of Poe's "The Raven" and "Eldorado," my Advanced Placement Language and Composition classes embarked on a writing task I call Write Like Poe.

The task.

Like most teachers, I borrow or cherry-pick ideas and elements from other teachers online (I have found Web English Teacher to be a good source), and tweak them slightly to make them my own. This particular writing task is one I have assigned periodically over the last four years I have been teaching this course, and each year I am surprised by the quality of some of the pieces I receive. I am hoping this year will be no different.

The evaluative tool.

The Write Like Poe assignment is nothing earth shattering in it's design, it simply requires that students, after first reviewing American Romantic writers and their product, write a piece of their own utilizing some common strategies. With an emphasis on the Dark Romantics or American Gothics, students craft a piece in a modern context in such a way that the narrative poem or short story is consciously imbued with structural and content markers of Romanticism.

Not surprisingly, student success with this task is predicated on how well the instructor, in this case moi, facilitates the students background development so that they have (minimally) a superficial understanding of the key elements of American Romanticism. Some years I do a better job than others, and, often the quality of the student's product is the inherent feedback I need to let me know whether I have done enough.

Each year I raise the stakes slightly. In previous iterations of this assignment I have prescribed the use of (just which are the student's choice) specific figurative language strategies such as alliteration, simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, etceteras. This year, I have added the expectation that students utilize at least one of three more sophisticated rhetorical strategies we have observed in The Scarlet Letter: anaphora, asyndeton (or polysyndeton) and parallelism.

The initial draft I have used in years past does not include any of those rhetorical strategies, at least intentionally so, and as a result my own annual task is to revise my draft to include at least one of these elements just as I have assigned the students to. An added bonus would also be if I did a better job with rhythm and flow...

The teacher's example (with bonus messy scanner-glass effect).

The published drafts (final products) for a grade were submitted yesterday, so with the mood set just right, given the cool air, snow dusted, frozen earth and starry skies, I prepare to hunker down for what I am confident will be a weekend of reading some fabulous student efforts. My prediction is that the result will be clear evidence that (with a little help) students can get close to permitting an affirmative answer to the question posed in the post title...

Seen It (Again): A Bullet for the General (1966)

Welcome to my second "review" of  Damiano Damiani's A Bullet for the General. I first watched, and wrote about, this film back in January 2011 a time during which I had just been bitten by the Spaghetti Western bug. This morning, after reviewing essays written by my AP Language & Composition students, and in anticipation of the afternoon's cross-country running meet, I was inspired to rewatch the DVD with a slightly different "eye" and thought perhaps it warranted some updated commentary review. In class, we have been discussing the identification of literary and rhetorical concepts at work in the real world. With a deeper look it is fairly easy to connect the dots and see them active in the reel world, too.

DVD Cover.

A Bullet for the General (1966) (also known as Quien Sabe?), was among the earliest entries on my mental "must-see" list due primarily to two significant selling points: first, its having been being hailed by more than one critic as "one of of the greatest Spaghetti Westerns of all time," and secondly, the presence of the charismatic Italian actor Gian Maria Volonté, recognizable to American film goers from Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.


Damiani's film is the rare Spaghetti Western that is not really a "Western" at all, given its setting South of the border in Mexico. Truth is, Bullet falls more neatly into a subgenre of the Spaghetti Western it helped to start, the Zapata Western. "Zapata Western" is a nickname given to Spaghetti Westerns which were set in and around Mexico and dealt with overtly political themes.

The film happens to star one of my favorite genre actors, Gian Maria Volonté,  here playing Mexican guerrilla bandit/arms dealer, El Chuncho. As is nearly always the case, there is a twin archetypal silent gringo character, Bill Tate, played by Lou Castel, though more frequently referred to by other characters as either "Gringo" or "El Nino." The plot deals with the American agent of the Mexican government (Castel), intervening in the Mexican Revolution of 1913, by attempting to manipulate a bandit leader (Volonte) into helping him assassinate a revolutionary general. El Chuncho is aided by his brother, El Santo, a Mexican mercenary draped in monks robes, played by actor Klaus Kinski.

El Chuncho. El Nino. El Santo. If you're getting the sense that this film plays like some crazy Mexican Hogan's Heroes, with it's eclectic cast of characters--you are not far off. At a deeper level, the subversive intentions of Colonel Hogan's gang of political prisoner's is also reflected in the overall plot of the movie, too. Each actor performs their role with such relish, that one almost buys (at least I did) that maybe Damiani, who considered this a political film rather than a genre one, was really onto something... though his "message" is intermingled with just enough gore, gun fights and exploitation-style hi jinx to allow it to pass as a Spaghetti, or nascent Zapata, Western.

What made A Bullet for the General "political" in Damiani's eyes were the overt references to the ongoing Vietnam War. It is this analogy that makes the film (and its consideration) of special interest to myself, as an AP Composition teacher. Castel's character, El Nino, representative the CIA's interventions in Latin America, is somewhat symbolic of the United States presence in Vietnam. This subtext sets the tone for future sub genre entries, though just how much of the intended political meaning reached non-European shoes is debatable as film were re-edited for markets that might be offended by the (figurative) content. The turn at the end brings home the message and reveals Damiani's possible sympathies for the Vietnamese.

For a "legitimate," albeit spoiler-laden, review originally published during the film's American release in May 1969 check out this article from the New York Times here, or a review of the recent Blue Ray re-release from DVDActive.com here.

Learning About Diction from Dark Avengers

From Dark Avengers #176, written by Jeff Parker, pencils by Kev Walker and inks by Terry Pallot.

Most likely as a way of continue building an audience on the coat-tails of Marvel's The Avengers (2012) blockbuster status, Marvel Comics (at least to me) popular team book Thunderbolts recently underwent a name change to Dark Avengers. The twist or hook for this particular superhero team, since it's inception as Thunderbolts, is even more directly implied in its new name: the Dark Avengers; the team is comprised primarily of characters who are most well known as being villainous in the Marvel Comic universe.

At nearly the same point, one of the more eccentric characters in the book also went through a fairly significant character change; the previously mute Man-Thing went from being a silent partner who served as the team's trans dimensional transportation (it is a comic book after all!) to something of a relative chatterbox when he gained the ability to communicate verbally.

Authors may use how characters perceive one
another to contribute to characterization. 

The interesting nuance added to this most basic of skills, in keeping with Man-Thing's quirky nature and superhero skill set, is that when he does "speak," what is said is interpreted differently depending on who is listening and processing the dialogue. The "comic book logic" explains this ability as Man-Thing having learned X'zelzi'ohr--the Universal Language which is heard differently by individuals based on what is common to them. (Fanboy Note: Sound out phonetically "X'zelzi'ohr" to reveal the common sign off used by the universal creator of the Marvel Universe's in ending his classic Soapbox columns.)

Simply put, characterization is the way an author presents characters. In direct presentation, a character is described by the author, the narrator or the other characters. In indirect presentation, a character's traits are revealed by action and speech. It is in Parker's use of a seemingly minor characterization point that allows him to play with diction in a way that can be both humorous and revealing. Not only does the varied diction and syntax reveal the Man-Thing's ability to communicate differently to different characters, it also adds a layer of characterization of the recipient of said message. For example, in the caption to the left, Mr. Hyde (in the bowler) notes that Man-Thing is being "lurid" in his remarks, which suggests as much about how Hyde sees (hears) the world as it does to establish man-Things newly acquired ability. Like wise, the no-nonsense Ghost hears in a way that reflects his personal waste-free, focused outlook on life.

In a meta-way, my relationship as a reader with the comic book is no different than the other Dark Avengers interaction with Man-Thing (or your with what I have written: what we take away is related to what we bring to a piece. (This IS at the heart of rhetoric, too!)Though I am a little older now, than when I began reading comic books some 30(!) years ago, I am always surprised by what (without even realising it) what comics have taught me, and what my training as a reader and writer also allows me to bring to the comic book reading experience.

Excelsior!

Street Signs of the Times?

The corner of Canterbury and Westminster Roads in the Park Avenue neighborhood (8/2/12).

Recently I have noticed some subtle changes in my neighborhood. With a large local festival coming up this weekend, it's not surprising that streets are a little bit cleaner and lawns are slightly more well groomed. But who would have thought that new street signs were in order?

Over the past weeks, as I have walked the neighborhood early in the morning, I have noticed that slowly the street signs in the Park Avenue area have been changing over. The change to which I refer is not the annual application of "Yes, You Can Park Here" or "No, You May NOT Park Here" paper parking covers which (thankfully) guided visitors to making proper side of the street parking choices. I'm talking the actual signs which denote the street, as pictured in the photos above and below.


Guess what corner? Yup, Edgerton Street and Canterbury Road (8/2/12)

What peeked my curiosity about the new signs is that they represent a shift in presentation: rather than employing all capital letters (as was the case with the previously existing signage as in the pic at the top of the post above), the updated signs utilize both upper and lower case lettering. It seems that the aspect of the sign at issue may be the clarity of the font.

Following a number of searches on Google,  I was unable to find any information specific to the Rochester, NY area, but I did find an interesting New York Daily News article from 2010 about a similar signage change in New York City in which the change there was attributed to the bureaucracy's dissatisfaction with the font resulting in the appearance of all caps. On the surface it may appear a waste of money to make the change (a point inferred in the4 original headline), but the real reason appears a valid one. The actual reasoning behind the change is that "The Federal Highway Administration says the switch will improve safety because drivers identify the words more quickly when they're displayed that way - and can sooner return their eyes to the road."

So the clarity (or lack of clarity) of a street sign's font can be a contributing cause to automobile accidents? Given this logic the use of clear and easily "processable" signage is a matter both safety and aesthetics. If street signs are a method of communicating information (and they are), then the decision we make around font and legibility in smaller communiques (letters, essays, notes) is worth just a tiny bit of consideration, too!

NOT "Dolls"... "Action Figures!"

For some reason last week in AP Language and Composition class this past week, in an effort to be humorous, I used figurative language to suggest that one of my colleagues was a doll collector.  When the class laughed I feigned frustration that they as a group would find doll collecting to be less-than-cool as far as hobbies go... of course, what I knew that they didn't was that there is a moderately sized brown box in my own attic full of unopened dolls action figures.

"I bet you collect dolls!" blurted out one of my wards, aware of my penchant for comic book collecting. How people connect the two hobbies I'm unsure (although given that I do have both maybe the assumption is fair--and accurate).

"In fact, I do... but we collecotr's refer to them as action figures, NOT dolls!" I admitted as the students groaned in acknowledgement of how "silly" I can be--but at least it's not like have I haven't shared this secret in the past. I then added, "And I don't even take them out of their packaging play with them!"

The purchase of action figures is an area of comic book collectibles that I ventured into only briefly about six years ago. It started with both a fond reminiscence of the Mego Superhero "dolls" of my youth and the release of the first modern Fantastic Four (2005) movie, I film I had (at the time) been waiting my entire fanboy life to be made. With the film's release, the market was flooded with toys, games, figures, and other goodies (I still regret not buying Electronic Thing Hands) much of which I did sample by buying for either myself or my children.

This morning, I ventured into the crawl space and among the longboxes and holiday decorations I found and unearthed the box and, for the first time in maybe a year, pulled some of the figures (still in their original boxes) out. I figure that now when I can't think of anything to blog about, I'll reveal another of the seven or eight figures I have had stashed away. Though to be clear, when the new Lone Ranger movie is released (regardless of how bad it looks) I, in true fanboy form, will likely pick up a figure or two. Besides, the DC Universe Classic Jonah Hex figure (still in box) on my office bookshelf needs someone to chill with...

Alluding to Books While Left for Dead, Too

  WARNING: The above trailer contains gratuitous zombie killing!
Following my recent fascination with Walking Dead it seemed only natural to pick up one of the many zombie first person shooters available for the X-Box 360, and following an entirely too long conversation with the electronics department representative at Target, I settled on Left for Dead 2. My son, who had come shopping with me, reminded me that we had actually ha the game briefly on our house a few years ago (a friend of his had brought it over), but that must have been during my "I don't do first person shooter games" phase which I have thankfully (?) "grown" out of.

Left for Dead 2 is an entertaining game with some good old fashioned jump scares and a great potential for replayability. Though I had been lead to believe it was a gory, I did not find it very objectionable at all--it is after all a zombie survival game, so what is one to expect?

Like any high quality video game, Left for Dead 2 has an engaging narrative and fairly dynamic playable leads whose canned voice work avoided being too caricature-y despite the potential for such a thing given their diverse backgrounds: a middle aged African American professional male, a twenty something Southern good ol' boy, a twenty-something African-American woman, and a thirty something Caucasian male grifter. After a week of occasional play, there is still much to discover and I have yet to scratch the surface of the online potential match play.

Another interesting aspect of the game is the use of puns and wordplay in titling the achievements one can master during game play. For the uninitiated, "achievements" are "games-within-the-game" that players can accomplishments during the course of play. For example, if you revive ten other players using a defibrillator during match play who earn x amount of player points which are then added to your "Gamer Score." What is not unique is the presence of achievements (all games have them), but what is rather clever are the names of the achievement, some of which allude to other sources, such as books and historical figures.

In a previous post, I wrote about coming across a similar phenomena observed while playing Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption.

In Left 4 Dead 2 there are 65 possible achievements. Of those, the titles that appear to have been given some extra thought seem to fall into two types of allusions to works of literature and to musical works. While nearly all of them engage in some form of wordplay, it's just that these two groups that seem to have a literary bent.

An allusion is a reference to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature. Allusions are often indirect or brief references to well-known characters or events. Two titles in particular seemed to most obliviously intended to allude to literary works. Just why they were chosen, other than that they just sound "cool," requires digging a little deeper:

• "Crass Menagerie": Kill one of each Uncommon Infected. (Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie; pick any single (or all) of the main characters--Amanda, Tom and, most visibly, Laura--each of whom can be said to be "infected" with one malady or another. Though the setting of Williams' play is St. Louis, Amanda is referred to as a Southern belle.)
• "Confederacy of Crunches": Finish a campaign using only melee weapons. (A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; the setting of the game is Louisiana, and the author was born and grew up in New Orleans.)

A number of allusions to classic popular music titles are also made.

• "Bridge Over Trebled Slaughter": Cross the bridge finale in less than three minutes. (A Bridge Over Troubled Water was the fifth and final album recorded by Simon & Garfunkel; the allusion is fairly literal here given the achievement acquired.)
• "A Spittle Help From My Friends": As the Spitter, spit on a Survivor being choked by a Smoker. ("With a Little Help from my Friends"written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, released on The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. Other than being a clever play on words... nothing too deep here.)

As I reflect on what this means, the reality is that to many, these allusions mean nothing... sort of like when students get frustrate when the teacher (me) "sees" things in writing that they don't. What I try to remind them is as their own reading grows broader and deeper, they'll see things too--like literary nods and allusions in zombie video games!