Sports Night

Somehow during my first Aaron Sorkin phase, back in high school when my friend Caitlin doled out West Wing episodes with a stinginess to rival Scrooge - it took us FIVE YEARS to get through the show, you guys, and I know it’s eight seasons long but even so that shouldn’t take FIVE YEARS to watch - somehow, despite the fact that Caitlin kept me on a Sorkin starvation diet, I never watched Sorkin’s pre-West Wing TV show, Sports Night.

It was the laugh track. I watched the first episode and it had a laugh track and I was too horrified to go on.

What was I thinking? CLEARLY I WASN'T. Sports Night is made of so much win and I can’t believe I let my childish aversion to laugh tracks keep us apart for this long.

On the other hand, if I had watched it earlier then I wouldn't be able to discover it now, so. Clearly there are benefits to my former lunacy.

I just watched the episode where Casey told Dan he turned down Conan O'Brien's show because Casey wanted to do his show with Dan, never mind that show was on a tiny little regional network and Conan was CONAN. I saw this coming from the moment Dan asked if Casey knew what day it was (it had to be an anniversary, and what other anniversaries do they have?) BUT NONETHELESS. HEARTS IN MY EYES. Characters who make sacrifices for their friends are one of my bulletproof story kinks.

I want to be able to say that "X is my favorite character," except I love them all and couldn't make a choice. I love Dan for being ridiculous and wanting a goatee, and Isaac for smacking Dan down for comparing himself to Rosa Parks, and Natalie for being peppy and excitable and still really serious about her job, and Jeremy for being all geeky and awkward and knowing absolutely random things (“Today is the anniversary of Thespis’ death!”) and Dana for being so on top of everything.

(And yes. There’s a Dan and a Dana. Why have two characters with such similar names? Who knows?)

The only one I am not super fond of yet is Casey, partly because they keep dangling Casey/Dana at us, never mind that Dana made a really good argument for why they are a bad, bad match. But WHATEVER I will just pay attention to Jeremy and Natalie being awesome (both together and separately), and Natalie and Dana being friends, and, and, and EVERYTHING.

Adventures in poetry

From the office of small and possibly anal-retentive complaints: I use pre-written passages with the second-graders I work with, and some of those passages are poems, which I would really like except that the poems don't scan.

This doesn't trip up the slower kids - they're still having problems with the individual words, so they don't get a rhythm going when they read - but I have one girl who reads with great expression, and is on the cusp of reading fluently, and it messes her up.

Because she's adding words, or subtracting words, or changing whole lines so they match the rhythm. For instance. One of the poems has the line "Good for breakfast, snack, lunch, and dinner," which she read as "Good for breakfast, good for dinner."

Her version is so much better. Her version actually scans, and also has the repetition so essential to excellent nonsense rhymes.