Oral Hygiene/Moral Hygiene

One of my students has been absent this week because he knocked out his two front teeth on the weekend and has been having root canals ever since. He showed up today to ask if it would be ok if somebody else recorded his audio essay, since he now speaks with a hilarious lisp. I confessed that I had not anticipated extreme oral injuries when I designed the assignment. I said it would be ok as long as there was a good story behind his now toothless grin. He did not disappoint.

On the weekend he attended an unofficial event for participants in the Relay for Life. By "unofficial" I guess he means "one of my buddies had a party that was spatially and temporally proximate to the Relay for Life." One of the attractions of said party was "pudding wrestling" which involves people jumping in a tub of pudding and grabbing one another. In the words of my student "You could just watch, but I wanted to participate. The problem was, the guy hosting it decided to protect his floors by covering them with plastic. That was a really dumb idea." (Yes, THAT was the dumb idea.)

Let's do the math:
Pudding + plastic flooring = fall on your face and knock your teeth out

My student explained that he was perhaps intoxicated at the time, and after his pratfall his plan of action was to just put his teeth in a glass of milk and go to the hospital after the party was over. Fortunately, saner and less drunk heads prevailed, and he was transported to the ER. He explained further that all he was wearing at this point were a pair of shorts, i.e. no shirt, no shoes, but plenty of pudding and blood. The nurse asked "What happened to you?" His reply "Well, take a guess." I suppose that he thought the physical evidence made it obvious what he had been up to, not realizing that his appearance raised more questioned than it answered, and that the nurse was probably afraid to speculate.

Extreme Hold

I was out at the airport yesterday doing some aircraft maintenance for my flight club. After we finished, I went into the swanky terminal building to wash the grease off my hands and I noticed a basket of complimentary toiletries in the ladies' room. Most notable was the can of "extreme hold" hairspray - this makes good sense given the hair styles one sees in the South, but it also occurred to me that you would need the most extreme of extreme hold if you're flying this kind of aircraft:

Yum

This woman in period dress is eating a bag of pork rinds and drinking sarsaparilla. I think it's part of her costume.

They're here...

Today in class we were talking about Terminator 2, and I was drawing connections with other films by James Cameron. I asked the students "How many of you have seen Aliens?" One of the smart-asses at the back of the class said "You mean, like, real ones?" Har har.

Battle Ballet

Busby Berkeley, one of the greatest movie choreographers (best known for his geometric patterns made of women's bodies) got his start in the military.  It is no easy feat to coordinate the movements of hundreds of people in a way that actually accomplishes something.  

I had wondered to what extent the Civil War battle would be choreographed - it obviously wouldn't be a free-for-all, but who's calling the shots? The man at the loudspeaker who provided running commentary throughout the battle was good enough to explain that the officers on both sides decide what will happen in advance, but the troops are left in the dark.  This way, people have to actually give and receive orders, couriers have to sprint across the field with messages, spies have to sneak around and report on their findings, and so on.  The result was quite remarkable, with well-coordinated acts of simulated violence played out all over the landscape.  Every now and then a soldier would "die" (eliciting cheers from the crowd if a Yankee), falling to the ground in poses that ranged from the comical to the lyrical. I was impressed with the resolve of the "dead" who lay motionless in the mud for a full hour, as it had been raining hard all day and the field was full of cow pies.

In case you were wondering about the final result, the South lost.  Authenticity to the end.