Monday Morning...

i was called at about 6 AM today to go sub at a local high school just a mile or so down the street. the school is brand new and about two years old. it was too clean and for some reason being in places like that make me nervous. yeah, i'm weird sometimes. not that i like to live in filth and be all grunge like, but places with lots of white walls and white tiles make me feel captured and not able to breathe. oh, and i was also on about two hours of sleep. i wasn't planning on being called in to sub that day. well how wrong i was!!! i had to go to 711 and buy a five hour energy shot just to stay awake. i think i would have stayed awake anyway since i was really on my toes the entire time...

so, i had to watch about four class sessions. it wasn't hard to do. not much to complain about except for the third period american studies class. the students would not read aloud and kept on talking and disrupting. yeah, i had to keep telling them to be quiet. constantly... but still it didn't matter because i took many notes and got down to the bottom level of their behavior and left it all for their sick teacher to read whenever he gets back. at least i think that's what will happen. those students might take away the paper i left and there would be no proof what so ever as to the events that took place on monday morning october 26th 2009...

oh, and for the record, these poor kids could not read. at all!!! i had to help them several times when the paragraphs became too hard to read aloud. yeah, this wasn't going to work for me. despite all of this, i was reminded of my choices recently to go into the teaching world. it was almost based entirely on this matter at hand. these kids could not read. out of the six there, one could read good enough while the others sat by the wayside and just became statues of our ever present future leaders... okay, so i might be going overboard on this, but this is exactly what i want to help change.

i'm not to big on the word change since it is used to describe actions that never take place. when i do respect it however, it's when i know for a fact that change can happen. i know i can at least attempt my best to make such a change. i'm not tryin' to be Robin Williams from the Dead Poets Society and make everything magical because that is frankly not real. no teachers out there are like that. if there are they are just copying williams performance.

if i can help one student then i did something. in the words of Ian Mackaye, "at least i'm f****** trying!!! what the f*** have you done???" (yeah, sorry for those not so subtle words...) so despite this day of firsts, i still have the desire to teach. now teaching wasn't my first choice of future careers because back in the day i never had any at all. nope, not one. like i said before, i didn't expect to be alive at this age. and yeah, it's going to be a long road to take, but i think it will be one worth traveling. i have hope and you can't kill hope.

okay, so let's just forget for a minute of all the things i just said and instead check out some music real quick. this is a sort of new band. consisting of four twenty year old's who all met in a london college (they all do...) back in 2005, they slowly started to build up their own hype and much appreciated praise. yes, this group of young folks deserve the praise they get because they simply rock. they are called The XX.

i'm a big fan of minimalism. from the works of Philip Glass to the most recent Radiohead album, minimalism can work as a reminder that sometimes less is more and even less is even more. (huh, what???) you have here two guitarists, a bassist, and a kid on a beat machine acting as the drums. that's it. british rag NME listed this group at number 6 in their top 50 future artists to watch. everyone's favorite indie music alter site, pitchfork, gave the band high regards and even reviewed their debut album with an impressive (according to pitchfork standards...) 8.7.

to describe this band and their overall sound would do them injustice. i can't get it down without going into all the wild tangents on how so-and-so seem to be inspirations and such. if i was forced at gunpoint to say something of that nature i would ask you to take this with a grain of salt and then say something like, a little bit Depeche Mode and a little bit Joy Division and with some Interpol mixed with The Editors and then sprinkled with the trip-hop flavor of Burial and finally slowed down to a melodic pace and drowned out with some heavy cough syrup.

that really is a terrible way to describe them, but i tried my best under awful circumstances. you be the judge and listen for yourself. this band is hyped, but mostly over seas and a little bit here because of pitchfork which is how i actually came to discover them. that was pretty cool by the way. pitchfork got something right.

if they ever come here, which i think they have/are be sure to give them a shot and see their laid back show and groove along to the sounds of a band, who i think, take themselves and their music seriously. here is their only release so far. the self titled album XX.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?k0nonzjnmnm

the future is upon us in the form of kids who can't read...