Is it messed up that going to a multi-zillion dollar neighborhood once a week depresses me more than my daily visit to the barrio?
There are these people in Beverly Hills 90210 I see on Mondays. Originally, I was to help Sixth Grade Rich Girl and Seventh Grade Rich Girl with math. Sixth Grade Rich Girl was a beast: interrupted, ignored, gave attitude, asked me to do her homework for her, was generally snotty and mean. Apparently she was not used to being told such behavior is unacceptable, and apparently her father does whatever she tells him to, so I was not asked to see her again. No loss (for me).
I still see her sister, Seventh Grade Rich Girl, who is much nicer but somewhat annoying in that inevitable 90210 way. She asks me a lot of random questions, trying to wheedle fun facts and personal tidbits out of me. (How tall are you? How cold is it in New York? Where else do you teach? Really? EAST LA?! What do they wear? Do they have malls?) I know this is mostly a distraction ploy, but she does seem rather fascinated by the mellow middle-class chick who tells her not to worry so much about getting into a good high school. *eyeroll*
Right after the election, she asked me who I voted for. I knew from various propaganda around the property and from the Bush/Cheney sticker on her binder that I was going to give the "wrong" answer, so I thought of a way to stretch the truth and justify it -- after all, I might be the only liberal this kid talks to all year, so I'd better sound reasonable and not bash her daddy's idol. "Well, I wasn't really happy with either candidate [true], but I lived in Massachusetts for a long time [true], so I had a better idea of what John Kerry was really like than most people [true] because his campaign was pretty bad [true] so I was comfortable voting for him in the end [false]."
Dead silence.
"Just curious," she said, showing me the Bush/Cheney sticker.
"Hey," I said, "We can have a difference of opinion. This is America." Then I swallowed the rising vomit generated by that hollow tension-smoothing statement, and got back to math.
Then there's the issue of their sister, First Grade Rich Girl. Her dad makes me see her sometimes, and do things like make her count backwards from 20, or forwards by 2's or 5's. This is homework help any non-retarded parent could easily provide, but you get the feeling these parents don't do too much except indoctrinate.
(Case in point: First Grade Rich Girl once went on about how the housekeeper was "pretty smart for a Spanish person" because she could keep up with Girl's first-grade math. I explained that numbers work the same way in every language, and people who don't speak English aren't any less smart than we are necessarily, and she backed up her own argument by yelling loudly for water and being amused that the housekeeper didn't turn respond. Right, and incidentally, I'm sure these morally upstanding Bush voters checked her papers before hiring her, and are paying her the federally-mandated minimum wage...)
Anyway, First Grade Rich Girl is obviously very lonely, doing everything but clinging to me to prevent me from leaving each week. Tonight, she was very put out that I wouldn't stay to hear her read "Green Eggs and Ham" to me. I hate to drag out the poor-little-rich-girl cliche, but how sad, really, being a child in a mansion with no one to play with, getting effectively raised by someone who doesn't speak your native tongue. Get this kid a playgroup or something!
The only redeeming feature to this gig -- other than the fact that it's all fodder for the blog, my eventual memoirs, and perhaps next year's bad novel -- is that I wind up back in the car just in time to listen to Henry Rollins' radio show on the drive home. Now, blasting gansta rap or industrial music in 90210 is pretty good, but Henry Rollins is even better. He's the only DJ I can stand to hear talk for long periods of time, and he plays crazy shit from all over the genre map. Not just eclectic for the sake of eclecticism, every track is good. The website has an annotated playlist for each week's show, including tidbits like:
* "This is one of the many many great Cat Stevens songs. Do you remember when ol’ Cat was down with the fatwa issued against Salmon Rushdie? That made me want to smack this little singer-songwriter into the bottom of Lemmy’s gym bag. Jihad up on that bitch!"
* "I don’t know a damn thing about the singer, King Diamond besides the fact that he made me laugh my ass off when I saw him on MTV once talking about Satan. The make-up was great and you can’t help thinking what he would have done, looking like that walking through Brooklyn. Satan can’t help you in Red Hook."
* "It’s Miles Davis, critic boy! Kneel at his greatness, you overpaid underachieving swine!"
His on-air commentary is that amusing, too. (You can stream old shows. Yes!) I feel cooler just listening, cooler for living in a city that has a radio station that thought to hire Henry Rollins. And suddenly LA is somehow worth my while again.
There are these people in Beverly Hills 90210 I see on Mondays. Originally, I was to help Sixth Grade Rich Girl and Seventh Grade Rich Girl with math. Sixth Grade Rich Girl was a beast: interrupted, ignored, gave attitude, asked me to do her homework for her, was generally snotty and mean. Apparently she was not used to being told such behavior is unacceptable, and apparently her father does whatever she tells him to, so I was not asked to see her again. No loss (for me).
I still see her sister, Seventh Grade Rich Girl, who is much nicer but somewhat annoying in that inevitable 90210 way. She asks me a lot of random questions, trying to wheedle fun facts and personal tidbits out of me. (How tall are you? How cold is it in New York? Where else do you teach? Really? EAST LA?! What do they wear? Do they have malls?) I know this is mostly a distraction ploy, but she does seem rather fascinated by the mellow middle-class chick who tells her not to worry so much about getting into a good high school. *eyeroll*
Right after the election, she asked me who I voted for. I knew from various propaganda around the property and from the Bush/Cheney sticker on her binder that I was going to give the "wrong" answer, so I thought of a way to stretch the truth and justify it -- after all, I might be the only liberal this kid talks to all year, so I'd better sound reasonable and not bash her daddy's idol. "Well, I wasn't really happy with either candidate [true], but I lived in Massachusetts for a long time [true], so I had a better idea of what John Kerry was really like than most people [true] because his campaign was pretty bad [true] so I was comfortable voting for him in the end [false]."
Dead silence.
"Just curious," she said, showing me the Bush/Cheney sticker.
"Hey," I said, "We can have a difference of opinion. This is America." Then I swallowed the rising vomit generated by that hollow tension-smoothing statement, and got back to math.
Then there's the issue of their sister, First Grade Rich Girl. Her dad makes me see her sometimes, and do things like make her count backwards from 20, or forwards by 2's or 5's. This is homework help any non-retarded parent could easily provide, but you get the feeling these parents don't do too much except indoctrinate.
(Case in point: First Grade Rich Girl once went on about how the housekeeper was "pretty smart for a Spanish person" because she could keep up with Girl's first-grade math. I explained that numbers work the same way in every language, and people who don't speak English aren't any less smart than we are necessarily, and she backed up her own argument by yelling loudly for water and being amused that the housekeeper didn't turn respond. Right, and incidentally, I'm sure these morally upstanding Bush voters checked her papers before hiring her, and are paying her the federally-mandated minimum wage...)
Anyway, First Grade Rich Girl is obviously very lonely, doing everything but clinging to me to prevent me from leaving each week. Tonight, she was very put out that I wouldn't stay to hear her read "Green Eggs and Ham" to me. I hate to drag out the poor-little-rich-girl cliche, but how sad, really, being a child in a mansion with no one to play with, getting effectively raised by someone who doesn't speak your native tongue. Get this kid a playgroup or something!
The only redeeming feature to this gig -- other than the fact that it's all fodder for the blog, my eventual memoirs, and perhaps next year's bad novel -- is that I wind up back in the car just in time to listen to Henry Rollins' radio show on the drive home. Now, blasting gansta rap or industrial music in 90210 is pretty good, but Henry Rollins is even better. He's the only DJ I can stand to hear talk for long periods of time, and he plays crazy shit from all over the genre map. Not just eclectic for the sake of eclecticism, every track is good. The website has an annotated playlist for each week's show, including tidbits like:
* "This is one of the many many great Cat Stevens songs. Do you remember when ol’ Cat was down with the fatwa issued against Salmon Rushdie? That made me want to smack this little singer-songwriter into the bottom of Lemmy’s gym bag. Jihad up on that bitch!"
* "I don’t know a damn thing about the singer, King Diamond besides the fact that he made me laugh my ass off when I saw him on MTV once talking about Satan. The make-up was great and you can’t help thinking what he would have done, looking like that walking through Brooklyn. Satan can’t help you in Red Hook."
* "It’s Miles Davis, critic boy! Kneel at his greatness, you overpaid underachieving swine!"
His on-air commentary is that amusing, too. (You can stream old shows. Yes!) I feel cooler just listening, cooler for living in a city that has a radio station that thought to hire Henry Rollins. And suddenly LA is somehow worth my while again.
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