I don't have any funny stories right now, but this just had me laughing in the Cal State Asshat library.

Thanks to Andrea, Judy, leafyleaf and seniorsenior for the math teacher love. You have done a service.

All I have time to do this week is point you to a funny-cause-it's-true comic from last week:

What the Germans do better than we do

If you ever had a great math teacher, please comment and describe him/her and any memorable classes/lessons/tricks/stunts from that course. (You don't need a login or anything -- just choose "Anonymous" and type the word you see on screen so I know you're not spam.)

I myself have never seen a great math teacher. I have seen some competent ones, but frankly, not many. I wonder: is it even possible to be a great math teacher if you've never seen one? I suppose that's a philosophical question up there with "Can you have a good marriage if you've never seen a good marriage?" and "Can you be a good parent if you've never seen good parenting?" I think it's possible, but difficult.

So show me what greatness looks like.

[If I don't get a single comment, I won't actually be surprised. As I've said, there is something wrong with math teachers, as a breed.]

Every time we try and see some theater in this town, something really weird goes down.

I have this coworker who moved away (from LA? to Atlanta?) to try and be an actress (you go figure this out). A while back, she emailed all her former work buddies to say the play she was in was going to be in LA, and she had six free tickets per week, so we were all welcome as long as we told her a date in advance. My schedule being what it is, I wasn't going to have time until the last night of the play, last night, but she said that was fine and she'd put us on the will-call list.

Googling the theater gave us nothing current, and she never told us the name of the play or what it was about, which might have been an early red flag as to the reliability of this plan.

But last night came, and we Googlemapped the place and headed to Wilshire Boulevard. Traffic was light, which was great, but the whole street was dead, which also made us wonder. We passed the 4500 block, which my coworker had told us the theater was on, and nothing. We passed a different theater with the wrong name. And in the 4300s (corresponding better to the Google Map) we found something with the right name, Scottish Rite, that wasn't a theater. Scottish Rite is a branch of the Freemasons. It was a big, stately looking building but it looked completely shut up.

We walked up and down the street for a few blocks, thinking maybe we'd missed something out the car window that we'd see on foot. No, but we saw the headquarters for the Korean Times, an Asian wedding videographer with part of a wedding party milling about, and a Methodist church with services in Tagalog, Spanish, English, and Korean. I called 411 and asked for the address of the Scottish Rite Theater, and she found only Scottish Rite Temples (two locations in LA).

Back at the Scottish Rite, we decided to just suck it up and explore around back, and hope not to become human sacrifices for some masonic ritual. We got into the parking lot and, not knowing what else to do, started striding purposefully towards what looked like an entrance. That's when the security guards perked up.

"Can I help you?"

"I hope so," said Rick, and explained the situation.

"This is the Scottish Rite theater, but there's no show tonight."

"Did it close yesterday?" I asked. This was one of my theories -- that my coworker had gotten the closing night date wrong.

"No, there was supposed to be some Russian show tonight, but it got cancelled."

We went around front and there were signs, in English and Russian, saying (at least I presume the Russian signs said the same thing) that the show had been cancelled "by Superior Court order."

By Superior Court order? What the hell kind of play was this? And what was my six-foot-tall, African-American coworker supposed to do in a Russian play? We returned to the car thoroughly confused.

Rick said this would have been a good time for Ashton Kutcher to jump out of the bushes and inform us we'd been punked.

Further Googling shows as of September 29, that mason hangout can't be leased for commercial purposes anymore. (Jeez, Ms. Former Coworker, thanks for letting me know). And the mystery play? In November, the show at that location was supposed to be Russian Cats Theater:

"30 cats! 2 dogs! and 6 clowns! Walking Tightropes! Death defying Balancing Acts! Dancing! Acrobatics! The international FAMILY smash hit from RUSSIA, the only entertainment of its kind in the world- features non-stop action by a group of talented felines performing original and astounding acrobatic feats, integrated into a non verbal, colorful and fun filled family show"

No, that wasn't it, though that would have been a hilarious punchline to the whole surreal experience. I don't know what the security guy meant, but what was scheduled for last night was a musical about foster children. Maybe the guy who wrote it was Russian?

The LA Times gives us the one zillionth example of profit over people in the US:

Destined for American kitchens, planks of birch and poplar plywood are stacked to the ceiling of a cavernous port warehouse. The wood, which arrived in California via a cargo ship, carries two labels: One proclaims "Made in China," while the other warns that it contains formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical.

Because formaldehyde wafts off the glues in this plywood, it is illegal to sell in many countries — even the one where it originated, China. But in the United States this wood is legal, and it is routinely crafted into cabinets and furniture.

As the European Union and other nations have tightened their environmental standards, mostly in the last two years, manufacturers — here and around the world — are selling goods to American consumers that fail to meet other nations' stringent laws for toxic chemicals.

Wood, toys, electronics, pesticides and cosmetics are among U.S. products that contain substances that are banned or restricted elsewhere, particularly in Europe and Japan, because they may raise the risk of cancer, alter hormones or cause reproductive or neurological damage.

Michael Wilson, a professor at UC Berkeley's Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, said the United States is becoming a "dumping ground" for consumer goods that are unwanted and illegal in much of the world.

[and buried later in the article...]
The air board estimates that one of every 10,000 Californians is at risk of contracting cancer from breathing average formaldehyde levels found in homes and offices.

Just quickly documenting that I have finally run the numbers on why my back-to-college experience has felt sooooo crowded.

Wesleyan: 2700 students
Cal State: 21,000 students

Wesleyan: 290 acres
Cal State: 375 acres (and probably a whole lot more of it is parking)

Worse yet, this campus has trees, grass, and no character, so (if you ignore that it's only 5% white) it feels like a an incredibly overcrowded New Jersey suburb. There's no escape.

From the "What Else Is New?" Department...

Starbucks is still trying to take over the world. Now it wants China, India, Egypt, Brazil, and Russia. Hey Starbucks, why don't you keep your grubby American fingers off other cultures and stick to giving people in the 'hood somewhere to hang out like you're good at?

The latest colossal waste of money by the party that's supposed to be "conservative:" 700 miles of fence.

Meanwhile, black immigrants from the Caribbean are doing better than either whites or African-Americans in Queens, NY.

I can't help feel like there is an important connection here, but I haven't had my coffee yet. But let's throw some questions out there:
a) are the pro-fence people secretly afraid that Mexicans are going to start doing better than white people? Right, they talk about Mexicans "taking over," but are they worried about more than just numbers? Hey, Jews started off in slums and now supposedly control the world (just ask Mel Gibson).
b) perhaps this is a pipe dream, but do you think there might be fewer social problems associated with Mexican/Central American immigrants (legal and not, since we don't know who's who) if we just fucking welcomed them already? (I mean, other than recruiting them for cheap labor. Big business is pretty welcoming of illegal immigrants already). Is maybe feeling unwanted part of why so many of them aren't participating in the American System as we know it? I'm not insane/naive enough to think that's the entire reason for, say, LA's dropout rate but when everyone from your country of origin/with your skin color/speaking your language is considered a blight on the American dream, are you gonna get a little bitter, a little resistent to coloring inside the lines? Or is it just a matter of time before we go back to point a) and they start using that immigrant grit to kick our asses at our own game?

Frighteningly, I think I need to listen to some more mainstream talk radio (which I did for a bit yesterday) to properly figure out the zeitgeist on this one. FYI, they really ARE literally talking about "Mexicans completely overrunning the country" if the fence doesn't go up, etc. And not a word about Iraq.

Oh yeah, my sense of poetry loves it when I am unmotivated to do homework that addresses the problem of unmotivated students. It's like holding a mirror up to a mirror.