The "Venerable Fulton J. Sheen" sounds quite right to me...

now that Pope Benedict XVI has moved the great archbishop and television star one step closer to sainthood!

He's being called the "first televangelist," but that doesn't capture in any accurate way what this man did during his shows.  He first and foremost taught what the great thinkers of the Western Tradition thought and challenged his audience to think and live better.

My "Live with Kelly!" Coast-to-Coast Co-Host Search Video Entry

Submitted Tuesday, 26 June 2012, 10:30 AM.

C'mon, Kelly, all I am saying is "Give me a chance."

Swimming in the deep end of the pool: a review of "Metamorphoses" at Playhouse on Park

Most Americans first learn about classical Greek and Roman mythology in elementary and/or middle school, and that exposure consists of learning the Greek and Latin names of the major Olympians and an episode or two about only the most familiar of those (i.e., Aphrodite/Venus almost always gets more curricular love, as it were, than Hestia/Vesta!).  Later in their educational careers, most students (I'm hoping) still encounter myths again through the drama of an Oedipus the King, Prometheus Bound, or Medea.


But the missing element in all of this exposure is the experience of raw power these myths have to convey the human experience (in all of its glorious and awful aspects).  Too often they are but quaint stories of unenlightened civilizations.  The achievement of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the remarkable First-Century BCE Latin epic "covering" the history of the world from creation to the apotheosis of Caesar, is that it explores that spectrum of humanity --- with wonderfully witty and frightening story-telling.


The superb production of Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of Ovid's  Metamorphoses, running at Playhouse on Park through Sunday, 1 July, captures this same mythic power using some better-known (Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Phaeton, and Midas) and lesser-known (Myrrha and Vertumnus) myths.  But so skillfully wrought are these ancient tales by the playwright, and so deftly directed by Sean Harris and acted by a multi-talented person ensemble**, that they seem as contemporary (or is it "timeless"?) as anything written yesterday.


The set, an elegant pool of water designed by Christopher Hoyt (together with lighting by Jen Philip, costumes by Erin Kacmarcik, and music by Richard Hollman), transports the audience to a place where anything can -- and does -- happen.


You owe it to yourself to take a nice long dip into our cultural past, our collective unconscious, and see who we are...still.

And tomorrow, when asked what you did last night, say, "I went to West Hartford...for the waters."


** In alphabetical order:

Amelia Randolph Campbell
David Goldman
Harrison Greene
Melissa Kaufman
Troy Peckham
Jillian Rorrer
Justin Sease
Quinn Warren
Eric Whitten
Ashley C. Williams


    

The Playlist from the "C'mon, Kelly Ripa, Give Gil An Audition" Acrostic Radio Program on "Frank, Gil, and Friends," 19 June 2012 on WFCS, 107.7 FM New Britain/Hartford

Come Blow Your Horn   Frank Sinatra
My Very Good Friend, the Milkman   Paul McCartney
On the Street Where You Live   Mel Torme
Nothing in Common   Frank Sinatra and Keeley Smith

Kelly   Woody Harrelson
Everybody Loves My Baby   Louis Armstrong
Looking for a Boy   Eartha Kitt
Life is So Peculiar   Frank Sinatra
Ya Better Stop   Frank Sinatra

Row Row Row   Matt Monro
I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)   The Proclaimers
Peach of a Pair   Russ Columbo
"A" You're Adorable   Perry Como

Grabtown Grapple   The Gramercy Five
I'm Learnin' My Latin   Gordon Jenkins
Vote for Mr. Rhythm   Ella Fitzgerald
East of the Sun   Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey

Good Man is Hard to Find   Frank Sinatra and Shelley Winters
I Get a Kick Out of You   Frank Sinatra
Life is For Livin'   Peggy Lee

All of Me   Frank Sinatra
Never Gonna Give You Up   Rick Astley

Aren't You Glad You're You   Rosemary Clooney
Until the Real Thing Comes Along   Frank Sinatra
Don't Pass Me By   The Beatles
I Can Do That   Sammy Davis, Jr.
Thou Swell   Frank Sinatra
I'm Keepin' Company   Rudy Vallee
Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'   Frank Sinatra
New York, New York   Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Jules Munshin

Top 5 Reasons Bears are Coming to New Britain

So, in the last couple of days, the Mayor's Office of New Britain, CT, posted its first-ever "Bear Alert" after sightings of bears on the west end, and a bear has been spotted and tranquilized in downtown New Britain.

See video here.

So, why are bears coming to New Britain?  Here are the top five reasons:

5.  For the waters.  (Check out that annual water quality report!)

4.  They're not sure what the hell a Rock Cat is either.

3.  Even the bears know that Central Connecticut State University is the best educational bargain in the state!

2.  EVERYBODY loves the Thomas Hart Benton murals at the New Britain Museum of American Art

1.  Being smarter than the average bear, they want to be first in line to use the new CTfastrac busway to Hartford!!

Bridgestone Tires to America: "Forget Texting While Driving....

...that's not nearly distracting or dangerous enough!" 

Do what pro golfer Fred Couples does in the latest (APPALLING!) Bridgestone tires commercial:

Put a golf ball on your dashboard and drive your car so you can make it go all around the perimeter of the cabin until you can knock it into one of your cup holders....looking at the ball (and not the road) as it makes every twist and turn.

Whose idea was this?  Ad agencies are MAD indeed.

In memory of the sad passing of Bob Welch...

...here are my top five dead rock star songs:

5) John Wesley harding's "Famous Man"
    (about John Lennon's murderer, Mark David Chapman)

4) John Darnielle's "Harlem Roulette"
    (about the last hours of Frankie Lymon...of "Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers")
    (Unreleased as far as I know but available on NPR's "Cabinet of Wonders," episode 2)

3) Paul Simon's "The Late Great Johnny Ace"
    (about Johnny Ace and John Lennon):

2) Dave Alvin and Tom Russell's "Haley's Comet"
    (about Bill Haley, of "Bill Haely and the Comets"):

1) Obviously, Don Mclean's "American Pie"

    (about Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper):

I just finished reading "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis...

...which I had wanted to read after seeing the film starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.  I can't say which I preferred because I liked parts of each greatly.

The film I found interesting, exciting, and oddly engaging...in that "Island of Misfit Toys" kind of way -- with Pitt as Rudolf, Hill as the Dentist Elf, and Hoffman as the Abominable.  It was, in short, a smart script that made the strategic elements of the Oakland A's financial constraint palpably felt.

The book grabbed me immediately because it opens with a look at the back story of Billy Beane, the General Manager of the A's and primary architect of "Moneyball" in action, which is not dealt with in any detail in the film.  In the film, we are shown elements of Beane's character (his explosive temper, his sense of being undereducated, etc.), but are never told why he's that way.  I liked the book for enlightening me on how the GM, whom I was predisposed to like from the film, ended up the way he was.  And it's a decidedly sad tale to tell.  But, while it's good to know and a great read, had the film script tried to tackle it, it would've killed the film.  So, nice bit of restraint/editing! 

Indeed, the film is just the last half of the book, and that half, while a good read, is simply not as lively as the film.  The other part of the book not included in the film is the history of Bill James and other stats guys who made the hidden numbers approach to baseball possible, something I had read about several years in Alan Schwarz's 2004 The Numbers Game.

I did like Lewis's absolutely brutal descriptions of the pre-Theo-Epstein Boston Red Sox, not to mention the shot he takes at George Will and his baseball books and columns, like Men at Work (1990) and Bunts (1997):

Professional baseball was happy to have intellectuals hanging around the clubhouse and the Commissioner's office and the GM's suite....Baseball offered acomfortable seat to polysyllabic wonders who quoted dead authors and b;lathered on about the poetry of motion.  These people dignified the game, like a bow tie.  (85)

But Lewis's new "Afterword" in the edition I read seems far too defensive and "Told-You-So-esque" for my taste.  We do understand why the baseball establishment would hate your book and Billy Beane, and we understand that because the rest of your fine book made the case vividly clear in a far more interesting way.  So, some restraint/editing needed here!

Anyway, a nice pairing the film and the book.  If I had to do it all over again, here's what I'd do:

Read Chapters 1-3, 5-8, and the Epilogue ("The Badger") and then watch the film.  

What's even more fun is to realize that all this stuff is still under discussion.

In this trio, my tap dancing most resembles George Burns' tapping....

...well, to be more precise, how George Burns would tap dance NOW.



These kindergartners better be learning proper citation methods too!

How silly are these goals (see below)? 

How about if we let kindergartners be kids?  In Kindergarten, let's begin to teach them how to learn and how to be in a classroom, and worry that they know the difference between "march," "strut," and "prance" -- not to mention how to RESEARCH -- a little later on.   

If we do, maybe (just maybe) more students will actually stay in school and will have mastered all the skills necessary to be active and effective citizens by the time we need them to have mastered them.

Let's stop worrying about creating "life-long learners". 

Let's stop having sophomores and juniors in high school take AP courses.

Let's tell elementary school students "Give us five good years," and middle school students, "Give us three good years," and high school students, "Give us four good years."  "And if you do that," we tell them, "you'll be ready to tackle anything you want to do: college, or a trade, or starting a family, or the military, or...."   

In short, I'd add "Ridiculously" to the beginning of the title of the article below.

 

 

from Courant.com

High Expectations For Kindergartners

 

Forty-two states, including Connecticut, and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core Standards, expecting kindergartners to master skills like these:

Write numbers 0 to 20. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral.

Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10.

For any number from 1 to 9, find the number that makes 10 when added to the given number.

Describe measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight.

Analyze and compare two- and three-dimensional shapes, in different sizes and orientations, using

informal language to describe their similarities, differences, parts and other attributes.

Identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic.

Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.

Participate in shared research and writing projects.

Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds.

Distinguish shades of meaning among verbs describing the same general action (e.g., walk, march, strut, prance) by acting out the meanings.

Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.

SOURCE: Children's Defense Fund   

[Editor's Note: This source begs the question: "Who's guarding the guardians?]