A Memorable Teacher

In my elementary school, kids feared Mr. Lessig.  He was the authority figure.  No matter how loud the cafeteria was, as soon as kids spotted him walking into the room, the whole place went quiet.  If you were oblivious to the silence around you and continued to talk or goof off, you would soon hear yourself being addressed by this white-haired, gray-suit wearing man, whose most visible physical characteristic was little skin growths that dangled near his eyes.  And heaven help you if you left something on your plate.  Then, you'd hear one of the most recognizable catch-phrases in the school fall from his lips:

"Try it!  You'll like it.  And so will I."

In all my years of schooling, no one commanded respect like Mr. Lessig.  No one, not even school principals, possessed his authority.  Part of it could have been how young we were--you tend to fear and respect your elders more before you hit adolescence.  But part of it was that aura that he cultivated--that of a strict disciplinarian, who wouldn't take crap from anybody.  And if you gave him any crap, you'd find yourself spending recess in his classroom, copying out several pages from the dictionary.

In fifth grade, I had Mr. Lessig for math.  My ability in math has always hinged on who is teaching it.  Fifth grade was the first year that I did really well in that subject, and the first year that I really enjoyed math, yet I don't remember much of what I learned that year.  What I do remember reveals a different Mr. Lessig from the one that could silence a cafeteria full of rowdy kids.

Each classroom at my elementary school had two doors: one led from the hallway to the room, one led from the room to the outside.  On warm days, the outside door was left open, which often let in wasps (they also came in through open windows, since none of the windows had screens in them).  In the springtime, when the weather was nice, gym classes had to walk past Mr. Lessig's windows in order to get from the gym to the softball field.  One time, some of the kids walking by were a little too boisterous, so Mr. Lessig stood in the doorway, yelling at those students who were either talking too loudly, or running.  As the group continued by, he saw a kid trying to play a blade of grass by cupping it in his hands.  After the kid had tried unsuccessfully to make the blade vibrate with noise, Mr. Lessig yelled at him, "Hey! Kid! Come here!"  He then picked up a strand of grass and showed the kid how to play it, though he also had trouble making a noise.  That's right: this disciplinarian was holding up math class so that he could teach a kid, who wasn't one of his students, how to play a blade of grass properly.

Another time, I had a cold.  In the strict world of elementary school, we not only had to ask the teacher if we had to go to the bathroom, we had to ask him or her if we wanted to get up for any reason, including grabbing a tissue from his or her desk.  I was quite shy as a child and so feared asking Mr. Lessig if I could get up and blow my nose, despite having to sniff a lot to prevent snot from dripping onto my math book.  As Mr. Lessig walked by my desk, he stopped.  In his hand was a tissue.

If Mr. Lessig's math class was the first time I did well in math, it was also the first class in which I failed a quiz (or it might have been a class assignment).  Our punishment was that we had to copy a word and its definition out of the dictionary.  In fact, copying pages out of the dictionary was Mr. Lessig's unique brand of punishment.  I forget what the word was, but I remember that it was something related to our failure (like, if we had failed to listen, the word would have been "listen.")  So, that night, I picked up a dictionary and wrote out the definition at home.  I found out during recess on Thursday of the following week that we were supposed to be in Mr. Lessig's room at that moment, copying out the dictionary definition several times. I was horrified to think what would happen to me, but I wasn't about to go in and cut my recess short, just because I had misunderstood the specifics of my punishment.

Well, nothing happened to me.  Either he forgot that I was supposed to be writing those definitions on that day, or he let it go.  To this day, I'm not sure which scenario is correct.

The last story I have of Mr. Lessig involves my two best friends in elementary school.  One of them was being a jerk to me on the playground, so the other one fought him right before the whistle sounded, signaling the end of recess.  I left, not wanting to get involved in a fight.  Of course, the first class after recess was math.  As the students came in, details about what had happened on the playground emerged, especially after Mr. Lessig noticed that Matt, my friend who had fought on my behalf, was absent.  The students knew general details about the fight and its aftermath (such as Matt being in the principal's office at that moment), but not the underlying cause.  For my part, I remained silent.  Several minutes later, when Matt came into the room, Mr. Lessig got the whole story (in increments) from him, including the fact that he had fought on my behalf (not that I had asked him to).

I should mention that I was a tall and skinny kid, and while Matt was tougher than me, he was several inches shorter.  At the time, too, Matt wore glasses, while I did not.

Anyway, the class laughed when they heard he had been fighting for me, while Mr. Lessig wondered aloud why I needed Matt's protection, since I was bigger than he was (which I think was accentuated by one of his perfectly-timed stares and deadpan delivery).  I remember my face got red, but I also remember that Mr. Lessig didn't dwell on the story once it was out in the open, though I could tell it amused him.  We went from the story to our math lesson for the day, and he never mentioned it again.

Mr. Lessig died during my junior year in high school.  He wasn't that old when he died, but he had been a heavy smoker (I'm pretty sure the paper listed him dying at 57, but that can't be right, unless smoking really had aged him--67 seems more likely, though I haven't been able to track down his obituary to confirm this detail).

Many of the students who went to my elementary school have a Mr. Lessig story.  What's interesting is how affectionate these stories are.  Even the kids he made eat their vegetables, even the kids he made copy whole pages out of the dictionary, don't have anything bad to say about him.  And although I was fortunate enough to be taught by many good teachers, from elementary school through college, I never had one that was so iconic.  Everyone knew who Mr. Lessig was, even if they never have him as a teacher.  Ironic, then, that his reputation rested on the least of his qualities.  And that, of all the things he taught me, math was the least important.

My Favorite Movies: King Kong

The climactic battle

The first movie I ever rented (and on VHS, at that) was King Kong.  If you're wondering which version I'm talking about, then you're thinking of the wrong one.  To me, there is only one.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to buy a newly restored and remastered DVD version (well, new as of 2006), which is certainly much clearer than my old VHS version was.  The main reason I bought it was to revisit a movie that I loved, and that has strong ties to my movie watching days as a child, but the main reason I saw it last night was to make sure that the scene where Kong undresses Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) was kept intact (hey, I like my movies uncut).  It was, but what I also noticed were snatches of dialogue and (because of the better picture) screen images that I hadn't noticed before, or that hit me anew with their power.  In its remastered form, the first appearance of Kong is still one of the scariest and greatest scenes in all of cinema, and it's one of many.  That's one reason why, despite having one of the worst love confession scenes ever (Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones might have been worse), and acting that isn't anything special (minus Wray's lungs--yep, she was the original scream queen), this film has withstood the test of time.

The plot follows a famous movie director named Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), who leads an expedition to a mysterious island to make his next picture.  Unfortunately, his leading lady (Wray) is kidnapped by the tribesman as a gift for a mysterious deity that they worship called "Kong."  Many men, including Denham and First Mate Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), who has fallen in love with Ann, trek deep into the island in the hopes of rescuing her.

One could be cynical and say that this movie is all about special effects, and, to a large extent, it is, but it's also about great shots.  Notice how, when Kong first appears, we don't see his face right away, as he's looking down at some trees that he's destroying.  Instead, what we notice is his size.  When we do see his face, it's with teeth bared, and then comes the first closeup shot of his head which, to my surprise, gave me the creeps.  I haven't felt that way about the opening shot since the first time I saw it, and I was much younger then.  Other great scenes (in chronological order) include the log scene, the fight with the T-Rex, the gate scene, the train scene, and--of course--the climactic battle atop the Empire State Building.  That's five excellent scenes, plus his first appearance makes six (and that's not including some great scenes early in the movie, including the boat's approach to the island in the fog).  All done with stop motion animation and puppetry.  Even today, the effects hold up, despite and because of their fakeness, much more so than questionable computer animation will generations hence.

This brings up another point: King Kong was remade twice, once in the seventies with Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange, and then a true-to-the-original remake with Adrien Brody and Naomi Watts.  All better actors than Cabot and Wray (minus Wray's formidable screaming), and the Peter Jackson version (the newest one) contains the latest special effects.  So why, then, do people still prefer this somewhat clunky version from 1933, myself included?  The answer, I think, would save us from any more special editions or new, computer-generated remakes of great films.

We love movies for two reasons.  The first time we see a movie, we love it because of how it makes us feel.  When we see a movie years later, we love it because we remember how it made us feel that first time, and how it continues to make us feel.  Change part of a film, and you change our relationship with it.  It would be like watching an old movie of yourself, but instead of acting foolish, armed only with the knowledge you had as a child, you act intelligent, armed with the knowledge you have now.  Less embarrassing to watch, perhaps, but you wouldn't want to watch it again and again, because movies are meant to be timeless while evoking a specific period in time.  I want to see Star Wars the way I saw it when I was a child, because the movie carries with it part of my childhood.  The Special Editions may be what Lucas wanted, but they are not what I originally saw.  They are not the same films.  So even though, by all accounts, Peter Jackson made a version of King Kong that was better than the original, it is the original to which I shall return again and again (being over an hour shorter than Jackson's version helps, too).  To be fair, he remade the film as an act of love, but the greater act of love would have been to leave the movie alone, just as we most honor the people we love by accepting them as they are, instead of trying to change them for the better.

Note: I have not seen the Peter Jackson version of King Kong.  Part of the reason why is because I feel no urgent need to see a three-hour version of a movie that I enjoyed so much in its original one hour forty-five minute incarnation.  While I do hope to see the film at some point, I know that even if it's the best movie I've ever seen, it will not replace the area in my heart reserved for the original, for the reasons I've discussed above.

An Afternoon with Rieko Matsuura

Most of you reading this post have no idea who Rieko Matsuura is.  If I had not gone to Japan, I would have no idea who Rieko Matsuura is.  In fact, even now, I only know that she is a Japanese writer in her early fifties who wrote a scandalous book back in 1993 about a girl whose big toe turns into a penis.  The book in question was a landmark book in terms of dealing with sexuality in Japanese literature, much as Joyce's Ulysses was a landmark book in terms of dealing with all of human experience, including sex.  And, like that book, some people in Japan labeled The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P (its translated title) as little more than pornography, or they tried to categorize it as lesbian literature (which Matsuura-san says she doesn't mind, though it ignores what she was trying to do).  Until I read the book myself, I cannot comment on it (and yes, I will be commenting on it at some point, so look for that review in a few months), though I can comment that Matsuura-san is interested in why sex is always at the center of relationships, and often writes about nonsexual relationships that are just as fulfilling as sexual ones (like masters and their pets in Kenshin, though the dog in question was a woman who wanted to be a dog, and who chose the woman she wanted to be her owner).

Rieko Matsuura looks like a normal Japanese housewife.  In fact, she is probably a normal person.  Like most Japanese women, she looks much younger than she is, and despite being somewhat attractive, would not stand out in a crowd of people.  Also, she either speaks very little English, or (like me with Japanese) is embarrassed to make the attempt beyond a few words.

The lecture consisted of her speaking in Japanese, followed by a translator speaking her words in English.  Then she read from the original book (a real treat, since how many times do you get to hear something not written in English spoken in its original language?), followed by Michael Emmerich reading the same passage from his translation, which came out just last year (and is the first--and, so far, only--of Matsuura-san's novels to be translated into English).  The assembled panel then asked her some questions, followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask questions.  I wanted to ask her about her views of how sex is handled in Japanese literature today, especially among female writers (like Amy Yamada, who has also been denounced for the way she uses sex in her novels and short stories), and what she thinks of this resurgence of female authors in Japan (unlike Western countries, Japan has had a strong tradition of female storytellers, going back to at least the Heian Period, which is when Lady Murasaki wrote The Tale of Genji).  I didn't, even though it would have been a perfect follow-up to an earlier question about sexuality in Edo Period literature.

I also almost won a door prize: a signed copy of the book (Matsuura-san drew number 24; I had number 23).  Instead, I bought a copy and had her sign it.  I should have tried some Japanese with her, but I didn't.  And, when she was trying to find a scrap of paper so that I could write my name down (she couldn't quite catch my pronunciation), I could have just taken a business card out of my wallet.  Stupid.  Or, as the Japanese would say, ばか (baka).

Anyway, I got my book, I will be reading it soon, and I'll let you all know what I think.  I even plan on taking notes.  This event is just another reason why I love this city, and hope that I can continue to support myself living here.  Otherwise, it's back to Connecticut I go, with much less money than when I left.

Here's the book on Amazon, where you can pay a lot less for it than I did, sans signature:http://www.amazon.com/Apprenticeship-Big-Toe-Novel/dp/4770031165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267581871&sr=1-1