So I remembered what I was so amped to blog about last night...

But first... I interviewed today at another school, and it was an eye-opening experience. Sure, the math classes were still dry and formal and not very open-ended or progressive or exciting, but at least they were orderly, and, unlike my two schools so far, no student said to me, "Mister, why would you want to teach here?" It even felt like a vacation, even though I wasn't fully charming, and I think the most shriveled teacher of seven in the interview room was whispering about my overgesticulating hands, but all in all it was nice to see kids getting along and doing work, even if they still dont' quite understand what's going on. One thing's for sure--if I tried to teach a lesson at my school about the male reproductive system at my school, I wouldn't get past "scrotum." So we'll see, and at the very least I've managed to steal materials that our school could use for its internal procedures. The sad thing is, we used to be almost like sister schools. Or something.

I was amused because they were discussing the virtues of city life versus farm life, and they seemed way off in some ways--I would have taken notes for Skaren if I could have--apparently there is no technology in the countryside, despite the fresh food and cleaner air... The teacher made it sound like the entire world has industrialized and lives in this glamour, while of course neglecting the suburban lifestyle altogether. It'd odd, this conflation of urbanization with industrialization--as if horseshit doesn't also smell.

But what I wanted to blog about were the bits of A Beautiful Mind which I saw last night. It illustrates the problem with math movies in many ways: everything is reduced to schematic but brilliant nonsense and literalized into pretty glowing lights. This of course is not to say that it wouldn't make for nice fiction or a compelling psychological thriller on the order of Gothika outside of it all (regardless of the actual facts), but to make the story derivative and parasitical on lived experience is cheap. But apparently, it's OK to be schizo if you're: (a) white (b) tenured (c) married (d) a fucking genius. That's nice to know.