The Great Leap Forward

Group 87 - A career in dada processing - Tracks 3 and 4.

03. Group 87 - The mask maker

04. Group 87 - The apple bites back

National Lampoon takes on Michael Richards.

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while - the lost episode of Seinfeld.

[Courtesy of The Huffington Post.]

Some random '80s videos.

Haven't trolled YouTube in a while, so here are a few treats I stumbled across. I don't know who this guy Rubellan is, but he is nice with the obscure '80s videos.

"Stay" - The Blue Nile (different mix! a beautiful song)

"Spin your partner" - Love Tractor

"I say nothing" - Voice of the Beehive

"Counting the beat" - The Swingers

"I could be happy" - Altered Images

"Treason" - The Teardrop Explodes

"Primitive painters" - Felt

Group 87 - A career in dada processing - Tracks 1 and 2.

Here's one that you probably missed. Group 87 was not big in its day, but I remember playing this album during my days at WRPI. Dada was the second of two albums they released. It was a little different from what I was used to playing back then, but I liked synthesizers and that was good enough for me.

01. Group 87 - Postcards from the volcano

02. Group 87 - Pleasure in progress

Here's an article celebrating the reissue of G87's first album on CD.

A little background on Mark Isham, who was in the band. Here's his website.

Dada sells in the $30s at Amazon.

All Over The Place - HomegrownRadioNJ.com - 17 Nov 2006 (#30)

No show this past week due to the holidays. AOTP returns for a four-week stretch starting December 1. In the meantime, enjoy a slightly stale show.

AOTP - Nov 17 - Part 1 [80 min - start to Verbow]

AOTP - Nov 17 - Part 2 [80 min - The Spinanes to Wall of Voodoo]

Single Gun Theory	Fall	Flow, river of my soul	Nettwerk/I.R.S.	12:53 AM
Robert Palmer	You are in my system	12"	Island	12:47 AM
Wall of Voodoo	Ring of fire	The Index masters	Restless/Index	12:42 AM
Joe Henry	Monkey	Fuse	Mammoth	12:38 AM
Sparklehorse	Shade and honey	The playlist - Oct 2006	Uncut Magazine	12:34 AM
Stereolab	We're not adult orientated	The groop played space age batchelor pad music	Too Pure/American	12:24 AM
Brookville	Hey you hang on	Life in the shade	Unfiltered	12:18 AM
Maximo Park	A year of doubt	Missing songs	Warp	12:16 AM
Maximo Park	Apply some pressure	A certain trigger	Warp	12:13 AM
Crooked Still	Come on in my kitchen	Shaken by a low sound	Signature Sounds	12:04 AM
The Duhks	The trooper and the maid	Your daughters & your sons	Sugar Hill	12:01 AM
The Band	Stage fright	The last waltz	Warner Bros./Rhino	11:57 PM
Jim Croce	I got a name	Photographs and memories	Atlantic	11:54 PM
Elton John	Jack rabbit	Goodbye yellow brick road	Island/Mercury/Rocket	11:53 PM
The Raspberries	Go all the way	The Raspberries	Capitol	11:47 PM
The Brothers Johnson	I'll be good to you	7"	A&M	11:44 PM
Elton John	Honky cat	Greatest hits	Polydor	11:39 PM
The O'Jays	Love train	Love train: The best of the O'Jays	Philadelphia International/Epic	11:36 PM
Shirley and Company	Shame, shame, shame	7"	Vibration	11:32 PM
The Spinanes	Sunday	Manos	Sub Pop	11:27 PM
The Posies	Solar sister	Frosting on the beater	DGC	11:23 PM
Verbow	Execution of a jester	Chronicles	550/Epic	11:20 PM
Nicky Wire	I killed the zeitgeist	The playlist - Oct 2006	Uncut Magazine	11:17 PM
The Three O'Clock	Jet fighter	Sixteen tambourines	Frontier	11:07 PM
Imus in the Morning	1200 hamburgers to go	1200 hamburgers to go	RCA	11:05 PM
Sting	Fortress around your heart	Dream of the blue turtles	A&M	11:00 PM
Slowdive	Alison	Souvlaki	SBK/Creation	10:57 PM
John Williams	Close Encounters of the Third Kind	7"	Arista	10:55 PM
Placebo	Every you every me	Once more with feeling	Virgin	10:48 PM
New Fast Automatic Daffodils	Partial	Pigeonhole	Mute	10:42 PM
Liars	Mr you're on fire Mr	They threw us all in a trench and stuck a monument on top	Blast First	10:39 PM
The Twilight Singers	I'm ready	The Playlist - Oct 2006	Uncut Magazine	10:36 PM
The Wolfgang Press	Shut that door	Bird wood cage	4AD	10:28 PM
Tears For Fears	The working hour	Songs from the big chair	Mercury	10:22 PM
Ultravox	White china	Lament	EMI	10:18 PM
Captain Sensible	Wot	Just can't get enough, volume 8	Rhino	10:15 PM
Yellow Magic Orchestra	Cue	Kyoretsu na rhythm	Restless	10:11 PM
Yes	Future times/Rejoice	Tormato	Atlantic	10:02 PM

We're not the only bad school.

Here's an article from yesterday's NYT. It was written by Samuel G. Freedman, who is a professor at Columbia and writes the occasional article about education.

Brooklyn Principal’s Leadership Turns Many Teachers and Students Into Critics

This month, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg delivered the keynote address to a conference of philanthropists at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark. He took the opportunity to extol his administration’s efforts to reform the New York City school system. And he singled out the Leadership Academy, a $77 million program intended to develop new principals, calling it “a huge success.”

Closer to home, at Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, there may be some difference of opinion. There, a graduate of the academy, Jolanta Rohloff, has managed in well under two years as principal to antagonize a large number of students, teachers and alumni. The ill will, she says, is a result of her efforts to improve a troubled school.

Ms. Rohloff has dismantled the school’s program for gifted students and pushed scores of recent immigrants into English-only classes that they say they cannot understand. She has reduced students’ grades in classes based on their marks on Regents tests, provoking several formal grievances by teachers whose original grades were overruled. She has made a series of provocative statements, including one comparing Lafayette to a Nazi death camp.

The list of complaints goes on to include having a student mural painted over and distributing textbooks two months into the term.

A common theme emerges in all, which is the view by Ms. Rohloff’s many critics that she is an abrasive, autocratic leader, bent on imposing her agenda and intolerant of dissent.

Funny thing is, our principal also graduated from the much-lauded Leadership Academy and she don''t know shit about leading.

Day 54: Unsatisfactory, on the ropes.

I got my write-up on my observation from a month ago. Sure enough, I received an "unsatisfactory" rating. I'd go into more detail about it, but I gave my copy to my chapter leader so we can come up with some sort of rebuttal.  I will be posting it here in the near future.

We just had Parents' Night. About 35-40% of my students failed math. Many others barely passed with a 65. I met about 25 parents. I wish I could say it did some good, but to be honest, a number of the students are acting worse now than before the meeting. And the AP wants to know why I'm not calling parents.

My failure to engage these students in any meaningful learning stems from the larger problems in the school, the culture of lawlessness that pervades our institution. Students will act out and know that they will not be punished for it in any significant way. In the last three days, I have witnessed the following:

* Students from my class throwing books out of a fourth floor window. The books almost hit some special education students who were playing below. The school's security staff was involved. Three students punished. Their punishment? Not allowed to eat lunch in the cafeteria for one whole week.

* A girl gets hit in the face with a thrown binder. The student who threw it intended to hit someone else with it. She insisted that she did nothing wrong because she didn't mean to hit the girl. Thrower was referred to guidance counselor - no punishment given. The girl who go hit with the binder was hit in the face with a book the next day. She refused medical treatment both times.

* Mentioned in an earlier post: Our SAVE (Schools Against a Violent Environment) room used for in-school suspensions was left unattended with students inside who were wilding.

Our regional union leader was in our school yesterday meeting with the principal. He informed her that any student who threatens a teacher needs to be automatically suspended. The student who threatened me (and, it turns out, two other staff members!) still walks our halls. He just turned 15. The student who sexually harassed me (he asked if my wife had "nice puppies" and "nice junk", and then went on to imply that I had sex with another teacher) needs, by law, to be automatically suspended. He is 13. He still walks the halls of our school.

So what happens now? The adminsitration is under siege. Rumors of an adminsitration-wide housecleaning (the principal and both assistant principals) come to us from the other schools in the building. I need the housecleaning to happen. One more bad evaluation for me, and out comes Shitty School. I've had it. I'm sick of being put on the spot over and over again. I will not be held solely responsible for a badly-run school any longer.

Turkeys.

Can't believe it's Thanksgiving already. Christmas soon to follow - we'll have Kyle for a whole week, which will be nice. I've been told that the school year starts to pick up speed after Christmas, and that won't bother me a bit. I've been thinking about Episode 6 of Shitty School - I'm no closer to releasing anything, but I have dirt - lots of it. Administration gets more incompetent and idiotic every day. Today I discovered that our SAVE (Schools Against a Violent Environment) room, which is used for in-school suspensions, was at one point completely unsupervised by adults, so kids had free run of the room and were out in the hallway. Yeah, discipline - it just isn't happening at our school.

I've been giving it some thought. Why should any of this be secret? I do, after all, work in a public school, paid for by various taxes, taxes that you and I pay (city, state, and federal). Why shouldn't the things that I see be publicized? Why can't there be complete transparency into public school systems? This weekend, I'm probably going to prep the SS blog. There's a story I'm dying to tell. You wouldn't believe it, but it all really happened. It's still happening. I tell people what goes on in my school and they are horrified. And we don't have the worst school in NYC, not by any stretch.

O Positive - Only breathing/Cloud factory - Tracks 9-11.

09. O Positive - Walk away Renee

10. O Positive - Pictures

11. O Positive - Up, up, up

And that concludes O Positive for the second time.

O Positive - Only breathing/Cloud factory - Tracks 6-8.

06. O Positive - Not enough

07. O Positive - Weight of days

08. O Positive - Tied