So I'm a man of the 21st century, I'm technologically adept, I get my news from the web (and the Daily Show of course), and I even maintain a blog, as you can see. I love advances that allow all people to live more happily, live more full lives, participating in the world around them. I support this!!
I have heard for that last few years complaints from news organizations that getting one's news from the "blogsphere" is dangerous, since anyone can post anything they want to as fact, there's no checking of information or sources, and generally people throw up subjective crap all the time, in an attempt to further their own position or just out of naivete. This problem of course extends to the musings on personal web logs as well they say. I agreed with this statement as it is sound in logic and stands to reason, but I had never experienced first hand the phenomena.
I will name no names, I will take prisoners and not tell where they are, my lips are sealed, but suffice to say that in the past few days of perusing some blogs I have been a bit horrified. The arm-chair referee has given way in this century to the computer-chair scholar, dispensing lessons and advice about all sorts of topics they don't have the capacity to tackle. I have been reading with my jaw on the ground all morning, and something must be said.
I am in education for a living, and while I may be teaching "just" music lessons I am interested in education as a whole. A good free public education in this country is truly one of the things that has made it so great. The fact that support for that education system has been waning in recent decades is made oh too evident by much of the material floating the blogsphere, and the drivel unceasingly dripping from the mouth of our President (our PRESIDENT people!!!! who voted for this man?!?).
Listen to me. To be uneducated is not a good thing, no matter how you spin it. You are a valid and lovely human being, without a doubt, but it is not a good thing. We complain that people are "ignorant" when they hold beliefs that reason dictates are ridiculous, like say "gay people are of the devil and are destroying the moral fiber of this country". We can get away with complaining of that persons ignorance in that case, there is support from all us homos backing up the fact. But it is a dangerous game making the claim that someone else is stupid for something they say, they offend quickly and often become violent, and many times there is no group to support you any more.
But I am making that claim, right here, right now. People, we are being stupid. We're acting like idiots, we are allowing ourselves to remain uneducated and are making decisions that are bad. We are all products of our environments, without a doubt, and this country is letting us down in many ways. I am doing my part to help that, or at least I'll die trying. But we are also self-sufficient individuals, adults who can make decisions on our own. Pick up a book. Take a class. Start with the assumption that you know nothing, and then LEARN. Blathering idiocy has no place in the oval office, it has no place anywhere. Support your local schools, support your teachers, support your students. The world depends on it.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Monday, November 14, 2005
Would you like a charger with that?
I had a thought today, and it has me bothered. I am applying for graduate school conducting programs, and I must say this is not a fun thing to do. I'm applying to music conservatories, there are not a lot of good ones, and there are about 300 times more people applying than there are spots available. As any economist will tell you, that unfortunately takes the power out of the hands of the buyer (me) and puts it into the hands of the seller (The Big Music Schools). Supply and demand, and there's too much demand.
This has me worried, for a couple of reasons. First of all I don't like having to convince people that I'm worth their trouble. If they need convincing then I usually feel like they've already made up their mind about me and any more effort on my part would merely be shameful and fruitless ass kissing. While I'm all for many forms of ass kissing, the figurative version is not one I do.
Second is the fact that I have issues asking for more than I feel I deserve. Many of these schools, as with many other institutions in this country, are waiting for some of their prospective candidates to run up to them, do the aforementioned ass kissing for awhile, before they start politicing their way into the hearts and minds of those in power. I am not quite that type of person. I will send in my letter of introduction, my application, answer all questions leveled at me honestly and candidly, and wait for the system to do it's job, which is to provide a fair and balanced assertation of my qualifications as compared to, say, Suzi Wong from Manitoba who wants the same position as I do.
Perhaps I am too timid in all this. I don't demand too much for myself. I take what is given to me, if it is fair I am happy, if it's not fair I complain. A recent story to illustrate my point: I go into Verizon to get a new cell phone, where I must then buy a new charger, a car charger, and am offered about $100 more in other options, which I don't need, can't afford, but wouldn't mind having, but can't afford. While I am handing the clerk my debit card some smartly dressed woman also buying a new cell phone leads her sales rep to the "Wall O' Accessories" and says in a slightly jovial, but deadly serious voice "So, if I'm going to buy this phone from you, what are you going to give me for free?". Her clerk hands her a charger, a car charger, and about $100 more in other options, just as my clerk hands me back my now empty debit card.
Some may say, "Well get some balls man!! Ask and ye shall receive!! They're a big greedy company anyway, just there to take your money!! Get something out of them too!!" While this argument holds some appeal to me, since they are big and greedy, there to take my money, and I do want to get something more out of them, I can't quite make myself step over that line. That line that makes me in the end look just like them; like a big greedy consumer, out for all the free crap I can get, where I can stick it to them whenever I can. Where fairness is no longer the goal, where morality and subjectivity are indissoluble, and where my humanity is measured mainly by the amount still remaining on my debit card.
It is at this point that I look for solace in Karma, that cosmic righter of all wrongs. Perhaps that woman will be in a tragically ironic car accident while trying to plug in her new cell phone with her new free car charger, where she will be fine (I wouldn't wish bodily harm on anyone. Well.. there are a few people..) but her BMW will be wrecked and no one will give her a free one, and she will have to sell off her yacht to someone who low-balls her on it, and she realizes the error of her ways and founds the New Harvard School of Socially Responsible Economics, thus ushering in a new golden age of fiscal responsibility, fairness, and humanity.
I often dream big, but those dreams don't usually include the joy of me getting free crap from Verizon. Perhaps that where I'm going wrong...
Applying for graduate school is turning out much the same. I write to them in humility, imagining a level headed and fair response back to my inquiries. Something like, "Thank you for your interest, here is what we offer, here is what we would like you to do, here is what else we would like to know about you." Instead I have gotten this answer, "We are highly competitive here, our programs are for professionals, it's hard here." At this point Suzi may write back and say, "Wonderful! I'm a highly competitive person who loves being pitted against my fellow musicians in To-The-Death play offs. I love how condescending your second statement was, it will certainly drive off all those you deem to be "non-professional"!! I love hard things!!"
While I agree with her on point three, I'm not quite ready to state the other points. I'm not a wildly competitive person, and I didn't love the condescending second remark. I am a professional, I explained that in my introduction letter. Is teaching music full time not professional enough? Hmmm...
I tend to over think things ("Duh," you say, having read this far), and that is probably the case here. Everything will turn out as it will, I will do my end of the work, they will do theirs. I will stick to my morals, I will stick to respect for myself and these institutions. I will leave my fate up to Karma, and hope that perhaps Suzi decides accounting is really more her speed than music. Maybe she can get a job with Verizon, where she can then try to figure out why they're loosing so much money on their accessories...
This has me worried, for a couple of reasons. First of all I don't like having to convince people that I'm worth their trouble. If they need convincing then I usually feel like they've already made up their mind about me and any more effort on my part would merely be shameful and fruitless ass kissing. While I'm all for many forms of ass kissing, the figurative version is not one I do.
Second is the fact that I have issues asking for more than I feel I deserve. Many of these schools, as with many other institutions in this country, are waiting for some of their prospective candidates to run up to them, do the aforementioned ass kissing for awhile, before they start politicing their way into the hearts and minds of those in power. I am not quite that type of person. I will send in my letter of introduction, my application, answer all questions leveled at me honestly and candidly, and wait for the system to do it's job, which is to provide a fair and balanced assertation of my qualifications as compared to, say, Suzi Wong from Manitoba who wants the same position as I do.
Perhaps I am too timid in all this. I don't demand too much for myself. I take what is given to me, if it is fair I am happy, if it's not fair I complain. A recent story to illustrate my point: I go into Verizon to get a new cell phone, where I must then buy a new charger, a car charger, and am offered about $100 more in other options, which I don't need, can't afford, but wouldn't mind having, but can't afford. While I am handing the clerk my debit card some smartly dressed woman also buying a new cell phone leads her sales rep to the "Wall O' Accessories" and says in a slightly jovial, but deadly serious voice "So, if I'm going to buy this phone from you, what are you going to give me for free?". Her clerk hands her a charger, a car charger, and about $100 more in other options, just as my clerk hands me back my now empty debit card.
Some may say, "Well get some balls man!! Ask and ye shall receive!! They're a big greedy company anyway, just there to take your money!! Get something out of them too!!" While this argument holds some appeal to me, since they are big and greedy, there to take my money, and I do want to get something more out of them, I can't quite make myself step over that line. That line that makes me in the end look just like them; like a big greedy consumer, out for all the free crap I can get, where I can stick it to them whenever I can. Where fairness is no longer the goal, where morality and subjectivity are indissoluble, and where my humanity is measured mainly by the amount still remaining on my debit card.
It is at this point that I look for solace in Karma, that cosmic righter of all wrongs. Perhaps that woman will be in a tragically ironic car accident while trying to plug in her new cell phone with her new free car charger, where she will be fine (I wouldn't wish bodily harm on anyone. Well.. there are a few people..) but her BMW will be wrecked and no one will give her a free one, and she will have to sell off her yacht to someone who low-balls her on it, and she realizes the error of her ways and founds the New Harvard School of Socially Responsible Economics, thus ushering in a new golden age of fiscal responsibility, fairness, and humanity.
I often dream big, but those dreams don't usually include the joy of me getting free crap from Verizon. Perhaps that where I'm going wrong...
Applying for graduate school is turning out much the same. I write to them in humility, imagining a level headed and fair response back to my inquiries. Something like, "Thank you for your interest, here is what we offer, here is what we would like you to do, here is what else we would like to know about you." Instead I have gotten this answer, "We are highly competitive here, our programs are for professionals, it's hard here." At this point Suzi may write back and say, "Wonderful! I'm a highly competitive person who loves being pitted against my fellow musicians in To-The-Death play offs. I love how condescending your second statement was, it will certainly drive off all those you deem to be "non-professional"!! I love hard things!!"
While I agree with her on point three, I'm not quite ready to state the other points. I'm not a wildly competitive person, and I didn't love the condescending second remark. I am a professional, I explained that in my introduction letter. Is teaching music full time not professional enough? Hmmm...
I tend to over think things ("Duh," you say, having read this far), and that is probably the case here. Everything will turn out as it will, I will do my end of the work, they will do theirs. I will stick to my morals, I will stick to respect for myself and these institutions. I will leave my fate up to Karma, and hope that perhaps Suzi decides accounting is really more her speed than music. Maybe she can get a job with Verizon, where she can then try to figure out why they're loosing so much money on their accessories...
Saturday, November 12, 2005
To boldly go where no man and vulcan have gone before.
This just cracked me up and I needed to share.
All-Ages Kirk/Spock Archive
Everyone deserves love. Hopefully the Federation will allow them to marry.
Everyone deserves love. Hopefully the Federation will allow them to marry.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
There are worse things I could do....
Not often do I get days during the week where I have no obligations, where there isn't some lesson to teach or a party to schlep out show tunes for or a concert to hack my way through. Weekends are not imune either. Even two hours of work in a day requires a complete restructuring of plans, making sure that lunch with the friends you haven't seen in weeks doesn't run long or that you make it to the gym with enough time to actually break a sweat before you have to dash off to check on Becky's scales.
Today I had a real day off.
I will not go into how my day began, but suffice to say a certain friend on a certain Pacific Island and I have a strikingly similar way in which we think a day off like this should begin, and it did.
I then drug a hung over local friend of mine out for a delightful jaunt to HomoDepot for project supplies, then to Costco, aka Gay Bulk Mecca, where I purchased two huge and fabulous coffee table books, "Neoclassicism and Romanticism", and "Art of East Asia". And cheese. One must buy cheese at Costco. I think they must have the cow in the back churning out the stuff, the price is so low. After another hardware store trip for more fun supplies it was back home to blow things up for a bit and then take a little nap.
And then the fun began. The same friend from the prior shopping festivities was having a few people over for dinner, and I was invited along. We had stew that would have made Julia Childs chortle with delight, and enough wine to make her roar with approval. As I was sat, doubled over with laughter at the tales told at the dinner table, I was reminded why it's just too damn fabulous to be gay. We, as a people, can take just about any event in our lives and spin it into a fantastic tale of epic proportion over a few glasses of tasteful booze, and make even the most horrifying life-event into comedy the likes of which you've never experienced before in your life. I don't know if my tummy hurts now from too much food, too much wine, or too much laughing, but it was all fucking great.
Oh but it doesn't end there. Our host for the evening has a new favorite bar, the Crescent (pronounced cre-SAUnt of course, it's FRENCH!!!). The Crescent is, by all definitions, a dive bar, where the number of teeth in the heads is easily out-numbered by the cigarettes hanging from lips. It was Karaoke night tonight, and the microphone was presided over a drag queen that was the spitting image of the 50-year-old, male version of Blair from Facts of life. Just ponder that for a moment....
We all sang, including myself, who feels much more comfortable making music at a big stringed box instead of at a microphone. I sang "Hello Again" by Neil Diamond, the greatest of all booty call songs (listen to it, you'll know I'm right) and even got up to do a second song "There are worse things I could do..." from Grease, who's second line "..than go with a boy, or two" makes it all worth it. The bar was an indescribable mix of people, from the middle aged woman who had decided that shaving her head today would be a really good look (she sang "Friends in Low Places") to the duet of the wife-beater wearing straight guy and the homo who's trucker cap read "FUCK" in giant letters, to the pretty bartender-ess who served everyone like they were her family with a huge smile.
We're a crazy bunch, us gays. We'll take in anyone. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Your motivated, your rich, your rugged individualists. We come in all shapes and sizes, with every problem and joy in life. And we'll all get together on a Sunday night and sing terribly into a battered mic and not care a wit about any of it, and drink and laugh until we stumble home to write silly blogs. We may joke, we may bitch, but we're all in it together, shaved heads and toothless grins aside. The straights breed, which we certainly need to replenish our numbers, and a they do a multitude of other glorious things, but do they ever get together for nights such as this? Bless their hearts, but I'm not so sure they do.
So yay for the straights, but Fuck Yeah! for the gays.
Today I had a real day off.
I will not go into how my day began, but suffice to say a certain friend on a certain Pacific Island and I have a strikingly similar way in which we think a day off like this should begin, and it did.
I then drug a hung over local friend of mine out for a delightful jaunt to HomoDepot for project supplies, then to Costco, aka Gay Bulk Mecca, where I purchased two huge and fabulous coffee table books, "Neoclassicism and Romanticism", and "Art of East Asia". And cheese. One must buy cheese at Costco. I think they must have the cow in the back churning out the stuff, the price is so low. After another hardware store trip for more fun supplies it was back home to blow things up for a bit and then take a little nap.
And then the fun began. The same friend from the prior shopping festivities was having a few people over for dinner, and I was invited along. We had stew that would have made Julia Childs chortle with delight, and enough wine to make her roar with approval. As I was sat, doubled over with laughter at the tales told at the dinner table, I was reminded why it's just too damn fabulous to be gay. We, as a people, can take just about any event in our lives and spin it into a fantastic tale of epic proportion over a few glasses of tasteful booze, and make even the most horrifying life-event into comedy the likes of which you've never experienced before in your life. I don't know if my tummy hurts now from too much food, too much wine, or too much laughing, but it was all fucking great.
Oh but it doesn't end there. Our host for the evening has a new favorite bar, the Crescent (pronounced cre-SAUnt of course, it's FRENCH!!!). The Crescent is, by all definitions, a dive bar, where the number of teeth in the heads is easily out-numbered by the cigarettes hanging from lips. It was Karaoke night tonight, and the microphone was presided over a drag queen that was the spitting image of the 50-year-old, male version of Blair from Facts of life. Just ponder that for a moment....
We all sang, including myself, who feels much more comfortable making music at a big stringed box instead of at a microphone. I sang "Hello Again" by Neil Diamond, the greatest of all booty call songs (listen to it, you'll know I'm right) and even got up to do a second song "There are worse things I could do..." from Grease, who's second line "..than go with a boy, or two" makes it all worth it. The bar was an indescribable mix of people, from the middle aged woman who had decided that shaving her head today would be a really good look (she sang "Friends in Low Places") to the duet of the wife-beater wearing straight guy and the homo who's trucker cap read "FUCK" in giant letters, to the pretty bartender-ess who served everyone like they were her family with a huge smile.
We're a crazy bunch, us gays. We'll take in anyone. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Your motivated, your rich, your rugged individualists. We come in all shapes and sizes, with every problem and joy in life. And we'll all get together on a Sunday night and sing terribly into a battered mic and not care a wit about any of it, and drink and laugh until we stumble home to write silly blogs. We may joke, we may bitch, but we're all in it together, shaved heads and toothless grins aside. The straights breed, which we certainly need to replenish our numbers, and a they do a multitude of other glorious things, but do they ever get together for nights such as this? Bless their hearts, but I'm not so sure they do.
So yay for the straights, but Fuck Yeah! for the gays.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Halloween in Baghdad
A short, funny, and perhaps slightly terrifying Halloween story for you all out there. There are sorority girls involved, so the weak of constitution should perhaps move on to the next blog.
This past Saturday night was Adult Halloween. More specifically Gay Adult Halloween. We don't go door to door for candy (well, figuratively speaking perhaps, but that's beside the point) we go bar to bar for booze, and that always works out better on a Saturday night, as opposed to a Monday night, AKA this year's Kiddy Halloween. My Scary Gay Halloween started in an elevator.
I was on my way home from picking up last minute supplies for my costume and stepped into the shopping center parking garage elevator with two 20-ish, blond, dressed to the hilt, Paris Hilton-meets-Britney Spears sorority girls. There are 6 levels to this particular parking garage. Since numbers are no longer adequate to remember the floor you came from, they also color code them, name each level after a major world city, along with a picture representative of each location. The first level is Seattle, the next Hong Kong, etc etc down to Bangkok and Sydney. If you can't at this point find your level I think you are then considered too stupid to operate your car and it is confiscated, or if that's not the policy then it should be.
I was headed to Bangkok and the Girls where headed to Sydney. The discussion started even before the doors had closed, and went something like this.
Girl #1 "Sydney is cool, I wish I were there right now"
Girl #2 "Yeah"
#1 "It's way cooler than all these other ghetto places", gesturing to the other locations listed by the buttons. I am at this point just about to step out onto my floor, 5/Orange/Bangkok/Thai Buddha Statue Picture.
#2 "Yeah, totally. Bangkok.... isn't that where they've been dropping all the bombs in Iraq?"
I literally choke with laughter as I'm stepping off the elevator, reeling from what I've just heard.
#1 "Uh...", now confused, "I think that's Baghdad...." As the full force of this exchange hits me I double over laughing hysterically, the doors slide shut behind me, the girls still debating where the bombs are landing. I'm not sure that they even realized why I was laughing. I laughed until I nearly cried.
It was Straight Adult Halloween for the most part that night as well, perhaps they were just dressed up as Colossally Stupid and Achingly Slow for their costumes... but I somehow doubt it.
This past Saturday night was Adult Halloween. More specifically Gay Adult Halloween. We don't go door to door for candy (well, figuratively speaking perhaps, but that's beside the point) we go bar to bar for booze, and that always works out better on a Saturday night, as opposed to a Monday night, AKA this year's Kiddy Halloween. My Scary Gay Halloween started in an elevator.
I was on my way home from picking up last minute supplies for my costume and stepped into the shopping center parking garage elevator with two 20-ish, blond, dressed to the hilt, Paris Hilton-meets-Britney Spears sorority girls. There are 6 levels to this particular parking garage. Since numbers are no longer adequate to remember the floor you came from, they also color code them, name each level after a major world city, along with a picture representative of each location. The first level is Seattle, the next Hong Kong, etc etc down to Bangkok and Sydney. If you can't at this point find your level I think you are then considered too stupid to operate your car and it is confiscated, or if that's not the policy then it should be.
I was headed to Bangkok and the Girls where headed to Sydney. The discussion started even before the doors had closed, and went something like this.
Girl #1 "Sydney is cool, I wish I were there right now"
Girl #2 "Yeah"
#1 "It's way cooler than all these other ghetto places", gesturing to the other locations listed by the buttons. I am at this point just about to step out onto my floor, 5/Orange/Bangkok/Thai Buddha Statue Picture.
#2 "Yeah, totally. Bangkok.... isn't that where they've been dropping all the bombs in Iraq?"
I literally choke with laughter as I'm stepping off the elevator, reeling from what I've just heard.
#1 "Uh...", now confused, "I think that's Baghdad...." As the full force of this exchange hits me I double over laughing hysterically, the doors slide shut behind me, the girls still debating where the bombs are landing. I'm not sure that they even realized why I was laughing. I laughed until I nearly cried.
It was Straight Adult Halloween for the most part that night as well, perhaps they were just dressed up as Colossally Stupid and Achingly Slow for their costumes... but I somehow doubt it.
I want an umpa lumpa NOW daddy!!
I think most of us can agree that "reality" TV is a scourge upon our airwaves, with its contrived scenarios and crass drama based on the mixing of carefully selected bags of neurosis and emotional instabilities. There's little that is real about it, or perhaps what is truly scary is that in reality that is what we truly have become. I'd like to not believe that last though, so I avoid Unreality TV like the black death.
That being said, I have a confession. I have a guilty pleasure and I'm not ashamed to admit it (well, a little ashamed...). There is a subgenre of reality TV shows that I adore, that I seek out when I have the time and inclination, that I sit giddily to watch, not moving from the comfort of my couch for anything short of fire or Jake Gyllenhaal at my door.
I can't get enough "Supper Nanny" and "Nanny 911".
But let me tell you why.
As I have said before, I teach the music to the kids, in the form of private piano and clarinet lessons. I see about 45 of them each week, my youngest being 5 years old, through high school age, and a few adult students. I have a vested interest in their abilities to pay attention, to behave, to be intelligent and respectful little humans, and they are so very very often deeply lacking in all of these things. I find myself, at the ripe old age of 27 often saying to myself, and to others, "Kids these days...." It's sad, it makes me feel like a crotchety 80 year old.
But I implore you to watch a few episodes of one of these Nanny shows (either will do, they're nearly identical) and you may be singing the same tune. On one recent episode we all got to witness the kids of one family scream at, bite and then spit on(!) their mother as she tried to discipline them for their ridiculous behavior. The look on the Nanny 911's face was priceless; abject horror.
The Nannies stay for one week, trying to get the family back into shape, a feat which in the first 10 minutes of the show seems will certainly require divine intervention, or kiddy electro shock therapy. But the Nannies weave their magic of set boundaries, consistent discipline, and parent/child communication and always by the end of the week the kids have morphed from rabid pack animals out for blood and candy, to loving, respectful little human creatures. It's a sight to see, and it makes me want to hire one of these chicks to follow me around to my lessons for 2-3 weeks.
But I have made an error. So far I have made it seem as though "kids these days" are somehow flawed, that something has changed and the kiddies being squeezed out pop into this world in some way broken and incapable of paying attention or behaving. This is not the case. Kids are generally as they have always been, 90% a clean slate for their environment to write upon it what it will, 10% genes they can't avoid. That environment consists almost complete of their parents of course, and here we come to the crux of it. The Nannies work with the kids, but they work mostly with the parents. Never have I seen a show where it wasn't quite clear that the problems these kids are having stem directly from something insane the parents are doing, and never have I had a demonic student who didn't have Succubus and Satan for Mommy and Daddy.
I have a devious plan (as I usually do) to fix this crisis of Dirty Devil Children. When I become Commander of All Things, a roll I will assume in a few years I hope, after I pay off my credit cards and do some traveling, representative and informative episodes of Super Nanny 911 will be required viewing for all pregnant people and their partners. For after spawning, there will be troops of Super Nannies to follow up on you, a real 911 Nanny Help Line for you to call, and all through the land there will be happy and respectful children, not spitting and biting hellions. Parents everywhere will grow kids of quality again, like prize heirloom tomatoes, who will cure cancer and run for political office, and usher in a golden age of existence, all because of some English Nannies and their Naughty Circle.
And this music teacher will be a happy, contented man, who can say "Kids these days" with a smile instead of a groan.
That being said, I have a confession. I have a guilty pleasure and I'm not ashamed to admit it (well, a little ashamed...). There is a subgenre of reality TV shows that I adore, that I seek out when I have the time and inclination, that I sit giddily to watch, not moving from the comfort of my couch for anything short of fire or Jake Gyllenhaal at my door.
I can't get enough "Supper Nanny" and "Nanny 911".
But let me tell you why.
As I have said before, I teach the music to the kids, in the form of private piano and clarinet lessons. I see about 45 of them each week, my youngest being 5 years old, through high school age, and a few adult students. I have a vested interest in their abilities to pay attention, to behave, to be intelligent and respectful little humans, and they are so very very often deeply lacking in all of these things. I find myself, at the ripe old age of 27 often saying to myself, and to others, "Kids these days...." It's sad, it makes me feel like a crotchety 80 year old.
But I implore you to watch a few episodes of one of these Nanny shows (either will do, they're nearly identical) and you may be singing the same tune. On one recent episode we all got to witness the kids of one family scream at, bite and then spit on(!) their mother as she tried to discipline them for their ridiculous behavior. The look on the Nanny 911's face was priceless; abject horror.
The Nannies stay for one week, trying to get the family back into shape, a feat which in the first 10 minutes of the show seems will certainly require divine intervention, or kiddy electro shock therapy. But the Nannies weave their magic of set boundaries, consistent discipline, and parent/child communication and always by the end of the week the kids have morphed from rabid pack animals out for blood and candy, to loving, respectful little human creatures. It's a sight to see, and it makes me want to hire one of these chicks to follow me around to my lessons for 2-3 weeks.
But I have made an error. So far I have made it seem as though "kids these days" are somehow flawed, that something has changed and the kiddies being squeezed out pop into this world in some way broken and incapable of paying attention or behaving. This is not the case. Kids are generally as they have always been, 90% a clean slate for their environment to write upon it what it will, 10% genes they can't avoid. That environment consists almost complete of their parents of course, and here we come to the crux of it. The Nannies work with the kids, but they work mostly with the parents. Never have I seen a show where it wasn't quite clear that the problems these kids are having stem directly from something insane the parents are doing, and never have I had a demonic student who didn't have Succubus and Satan for Mommy and Daddy.
I have a devious plan (as I usually do) to fix this crisis of Dirty Devil Children. When I become Commander of All Things, a roll I will assume in a few years I hope, after I pay off my credit cards and do some traveling, representative and informative episodes of Super Nanny 911 will be required viewing for all pregnant people and their partners. For after spawning, there will be troops of Super Nannies to follow up on you, a real 911 Nanny Help Line for you to call, and all through the land there will be happy and respectful children, not spitting and biting hellions. Parents everywhere will grow kids of quality again, like prize heirloom tomatoes, who will cure cancer and run for political office, and usher in a golden age of existence, all because of some English Nannies and their Naughty Circle.
And this music teacher will be a happy, contented man, who can say "Kids these days" with a smile instead of a groan.
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