Spirit Week Music T Friday: Formal "Police" Report

There's an unbloggable inside joke involved in today's post but since I can't write about that I'll discuss the shenanigans involved in trying to keep up with today's Spirit Week: Formal Friday festivities and reconcile it with the "Music T Friday" habit I'd started before the hiatus. To start with, I accessorized my t-shirt with my Parent-Teacher Interview suit:

Music T = check. Formal Friday = check.

And then I tried to pinpoint moments in my life soundtracked by The Police. I've always appreciated the fact that Sting started out as a teacher and I imagine Mr. Sumner would've been a fun guy, if a little distracted. The band's music has permeated so much culture that I was immediately able to snag several flashbulb memories associated with certain songs by The Police:

1) Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - Cupid "End of an Eros" (1998)

As I've met and become friends with more musicians, my understanding of the value of TV and film licensing of music for both monetary gain and exposure has deepened. As a television viewer, I appreciate the difference between a good song and the ideal song in pivotal scenes. At the end of episode 9 of the short-lived Jeremy Piven series, there is a mundane moment spun into love-match-making magic where a jaded and embittered cosmologist (that's space not make-up) turns to face his perfect mate under a spectacular canopy of an astrological observatory's laser show as this Police song cues. Over-the-top is under-rated. Moments like that one are what television and film were made for.

2) Roxanne - Moulin Rouge! (2001)

 

Because my parents' grasp of English was sketchy at best when they came to Canada, I heard a lot of music played as a kid with lyrics that went well over my head until I was older. (The best example of this is probably Cher's "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" which I tried to explain to my mother when I was in my 20s and Mom just wouldn't believe it.) I had heard Roxanne played multiple times throughout my life but the lyrics didn't hit home until the scene in Moulin Rouge! which, quite honestly, felt like it deviated from the central plot. I understand it was there to make Satine's circumstances clear (and to showcase some awesome dancing) but I've always felt it was a mis-step on Luhrmann's part.

3) Don't Stand So Close to Me - Glee "Ballads"

Like I said before, I figure Mr. Sumner would've been an ace teacher and the music video takes The Police back into a classroom to tell this Nabakov-esque story. And while I'm not a fan of Glee any longer, I was back in Season 1 and the mash-up of "Don't Stand" and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap's "Young Girl" was brilliant.

4) Message in A Bottle 

I've always loved the story of this song where one voice in the middle of nowhere receives a "hundred billion" responses. It's a bit of a metaphor for the social media of the world today. We are so used to instant responses today that it is unthinkable to have to wait a day (forget a year) for a reaction to confirm that we actually exist, that what we say and/or do matters. But we keep putting it out there, don't we?

Spirit Week: Colour Wars

Truth be told, I always get vestigial tremors of Miklowitz's "The War Between the Classes" when Colour Wars is declared for Spirit Week. No ranking involved here - each grade gets a colour assigned and on Colour Wars day, you wear the colour of your grade to see which grade has the most spirit. Teachers usually get neutral territory like black, white, or school colours (black & gold). We were given the option of black or white today. I went dark. And sparkly.

My Dreamgirls shirt should be a collectors' item, meaning that I should probably wear it less and with more care than I do. When the Jennifer Hudson movie opened in 2006, the studios promoted it by running it on a super limited "roadshow" release in three select cities - New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Being in Vancouver, I sent a proxy - my brother, who was whiling away his time as a paralegal in SF at the time. I bought the ticket, he attended and picked up the included souvenir lithograph and program that I coveted. Generous soul that he is, he bought me a t-shirt too. The lithograph is framed and hung in my upstairs hallway. The program is filed away safely with my Broadway and West End collection. And this t-shirt gets worn at least once a month.

Which brings me to the difficulty with dressing in all black. Like green, which the human eye can supposedly distinguish the most shades of any colour, black is hard to match and, counter-intuitively, easily clashes with itself. My well-worn black tee is tinged more grey than my cardigan which is tinged more "brown" than my slacks which are pinstriped black on black. Don't even get me started on my socks and boots. It's a good thing students barely register teachers as people, forget fashion plates.

To end on a Big Thought: this trivial clothing experiment supports a generalizable adage. Variety is good. Contrast is great. The more diversity we embrace, the stronger (and more interesting) we become. So maybe the fact that Vancouver's largest theatre company is currently staging Dreamgirls with a slightly un-Motown-looking ensemble should probably direct audiences to look for red-hot innovation rather than stone-cold imitation in this production.

Spirit Week: PJ Day

The spirit is definitely moving me this week. Today took some effort. Sure, PJ Day sounds convenient: Just roll out of bed and trudge into school in whatever you sleep in. Yeah, not so much when one typically sleeps in old (non-blog-worthy) t-shirts and lives a forty minute commute away from school. And even if one were to own a proper set of pajamas, wearing them on the bus with "outdoor" shoes (in my case, my trusty Blundstone boots) and a bigger-than-usual overcoat to disguise the fact your bottoms are leopard print cotton sweats makes for a rather self-conscious and uncomfortable trip - rather like, I figure, a flasher's first deliberate escapade.

My PJ bottoms actually are leopard-print cotton sweatpants (and my go-to slippers are zebra striped so I'm killing all sorts of fashion etiquette today) so, this morning, I changed out of my PJs, packed them in a bag with my housecoat and slippers, brought them to school and changed once I got here.

Check that: I wore the t-shirt top (pictured above) rather than changing altogether. But I wore a coat over it. And I drove. Like I said, effort.

As I mentioned yesterday, PJ Day is usually the most popular day of Spirit Week at this school. That being said, only about 1 in 5 students observes/participates/remembers it. I was considering it yesterday in preparation for today and wondering why I don't remember it being a thing at all in my high school years. I came up with a couple of explanations.

1) Context is important. Wearing your PJs to school in the BC Lower Mainland fall, winter, or spring is a very different thing than in Saskatchewan where the school year is best outlined as September, SNOW, or June. I remember the last day of Grade 8, also the last day of elementary school when one classmate, who lived across the street from the school set himself a goal to be back in bed at home after signing yearbooks and picking up his report card before the sheets had a chance to cool down. He still got dressed to come to school. And that was June.

2) The acceptability of PIP (PJs In Public) has grown. I blame this in part on Lululemon(TM) and the yoga gear fad. I'd have to consult with the fashion-minded frugalista Annabelle Hepburn to be certain but I'm pretty sure by 1990, leggings and the like had been deemed beyond passé (see? I can be French-esque too) but then lululemon athletica was founded in 1998 and by 2000, it was fashionable to wear unflattering, high-priced, patterned stretchy skin in place of trousers. And those who couldn't afford $60 - $100 for a pair of stripped-down stir-up pants could be forgiven for interpreting the sudden prevalence of über-casual dress on public transit and at the workplace as a tacit societal acceptance of a comfort-first approach to clothing.

3) Loss of privacy. This goes back to discourses on social media, common sense, the diminishing of the term "friend" and crowd-sourcing. When I was in high school, you held sleepovers with maybe a half-dozen of your close friends. They were the ones who got to meet your parents, annoy your siblings, chase your pets, hang out in your room/closet/basement (whatever), and watch movies/talk/crimp hair late into the night.  It was a fairly exclusive experience that could be shared second-hand at school the next week in discussions. It allowed for safe risk-taking, potential embarrassment that was understandably manageable because of the small number of witnesses. Nowadays, if sleep-overs do still happen, they are streamed, tweeted, shared, and updated so persistently, nothing is sacred or safe anymore. And, similar to the word "friend", "privacy" in this arena has become so de-valued that the approach has become extreme - either you share everything or you share nothing at all. ever. Neither is really healthy emotional development and both can be potentially problematic socially. 

To end where I started, PJs are a source of comfort in theory. I have my winter PJs - red fleece reindeer printed ones and seafoam green fuzzies that I refer to as my Muppet-skins - and a couple of sets of cotton coordinates that appeal to my humour (see today's) and my own personality (see today's). PJs may, in fact, in their natural state (ie. not-Spirit-Week requirement), be a source of truth for how we see ourselves. I believe we sleep best when we are at ease and there is some evidence that we learn best when at ease too. However, the jury's still out on how well teens learn while asleep.

Team Colours

Today is Jersey Day at the school for Spirit Week. I know, I know, I really pick and choose the days I participate. For example, tomorrow is "What Not To Wear" Day. The ambiguity of the name is a little scary when you think about it.  :S

Anyhow, my shirt is obviously not a jersey. It's a team tee I bought at Canadian Tire of all places. It is, however, my preferred Canucks logo ("The Flying Skate" '78-'97). Actual jerseys are costly investments to make. Especially in Vancouver. Especially if you want a hockey jersey. I went ahead and splurged years ago on a blue home Trevor Linden Canucks jersey but ended up selling it at a loss to a colleague since it was massively too big for me. Then, this September, best buddy Kerri came to visit Vancouver and brought my birthday parcel with her. Before handing it to me, she stated very clearly,"Don't worry. It wasn't expensive." With that enigmatic statement ringing in my ears, I dug in and found several little prezzies and, at the bottom, a classic WHITE home Captain Linden jersey. When I later showed another friend who knows the value of such things and asked him to guesstimate a price, he ballparked it at four or five hundred dollars. Kerri, clever deal hunter that she is, scooped it up (in mint condition, tags still attached) for $10.99 back home in Saskatoon. I swore that I wouldn't wear it (it's a perfect fit, btw) until the NHL dispute ended and the Canucks were playing again. So my beautiful jersey sits, neatly folded, tags still attached, in my dresser drawer waiting for the millionaires and billionaires in NYC to finish their ridiculous squabbling so that we can have our game back again and Rogers Arena can go back to gouging fans on ticket prices.

I could go on a tangent here about the strange psychology of the Canucks fandom but it's not a topic I relish. I like the game. I like having a team to cheer. I like that this city gets really invested in every Cup run. However, I still think that it's meant to be a fun pastime and when it stops being fun, I'm not interested in passing the time that way anymore.

Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Stompin' Tom Connors...