Most of you who have been reading my blog awhile know that I teach an advanced drawing class to High School kids, 15-17, once a week at an ‘Arts’ school. I’ve been doing this for over 3 years now and nearly every week I go through some type of inner battle - I either loving teaching, or hate it. In the end, at least most of the time, I convince myself it’s "in the trenches" experience with today’s youth (or as Tony Danza would say ‘yout’) – listening and talking with them is a real eye-opener preparing me for when my daughter gets older. And also learning new things about their view of the world as I work full-time in the entertainment industry creating stuff for them and their younger siblings. Oh and sometimes I even get some really talented kid, extremely motivated, who moves on to some ivy league of Art Schools (not the kind that only require you to draw a Pirate or Turtle and show up with a fat check.)
So recently while the kids were doing portraits of each other; I was critiquing art and said something like “I pity the fool!”. All of the kids looked at me like I was on crack, not for making odd comments (I do that all the time) but the blank looks told me they didn’t know who I was referencing. When I said, “don’t you guys know who Mr. T is? You know big black dude, "B.A.", with gold chains, Mohawk, jean vest….’The T’??…(silence).... He fought Rocky!?” – they all gave me blank stares. A minute went by and one of the kids raised his hand – “Is he a rapper?”
It then dawned on me that moment that I’m old. Really old, and I’m not even 35 yet. So old that these kids probably don’t even get any reference to “George Glass”, “What Chou Talkin’ bout”, “Whoa!” or possibly even “Screech”. I remember teachers growing up making references to old shows like “Kojack”, and "Rhoda", sure they were “old people” shows like “Murder She Wrote”, but I at least I heard of them.
These kids haven’t and when you think about it, on average they were born around 1991 (I still have clothes in my closet from 1991!)
But instead of getting ‘all-weird’ about it, I’m looking at this from a different point of view - I’m still making my 80’s references because I don’t care. These kids can go home and ask their aging parents. Or they can look it up in the Dictionary or Encyclopedia Britannica.
Freakin' A!!! Could It Be More Obvious That OJ Did It??Have you heard about this? O.J. Simpson is doing that interview talking about “how he would have committed” the murders of Nicole and her friend. This has to be the sickest thing I’ve heard in a long time; I literally became angry when I read this. I can’t even believe this guy has the nerve or Fox for even considering this! If I were the family of Nicole or Goldman I seriously would be making O.J.’s life hell – nobody would be living a life of luxury if this happened to my family.
I remember being a juror at the downtown L.A. criminal courthouse in 1998 (a murder trial, where a black woman murderer her 3 year old son) and the defense attorney had the audacity to tell us jurors that we should “remember that the L.A.P.D. has a history of fabricating evidence against colored people” and then made a lot of references to O.J.’s case (duh, diversion from the murder?). I was literally disgusted! And I wasn’t the only one, two older black women in the jury room were horrified saying, “she was trying to pull a Johnny Cochran” and thought the defense attorney should be sent to prison, or live with O.J.