M is for..........

M is for..........Music.

Last year I went all Inception for my M post. That is to say, I did an A-Z list of Movies for the A-Z Challenge. See what I'm sayin?

Levels.

That was actually a lot of fun, and I was going to do it again. Self-doubt reared its ugly head, and I thought I should do something different. My next idea was to write about Music and how it triggers Memory, but I couldn't resist and wound up exploring that theme in my post about the Jayhawks.

So then I had two ideas on the brain: music and doing another A-Z list for the A-Z Challenge. Thus, today I present a musical A-Z, all artists whose music elicits distinct and powerful memories.

A - Adele
B - Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce!
C - Clarence Clemons (it's all about the E Street)
D - Depeche Mode
E - Enya
F - Foo Fighters
G - Goo Goo Dolls
H - Hall & Oates
I - Indigo Girls
J - Jayhawks
K - Killers
L - Living Colour
M - Marley
N - Nirvana
O - Otis Redding
P - Prince
Q - Queen
R - Replacements
S - Springteen (The Boss deserves as many mentions as possible)
T - Thompson Twins
U - U2
V - Violent Femmes
W - Weezer
X - xx
Y - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (triple score!)
Z - Zeppelin

So tell me, who's your favorite on this list?

L is for..........

L is for..........Lombardi.

I grew up in Wisconsin, so it goes without saying that I'm a huge Green Bay Packers fan. As a child of the 70s and 80s there wasn't much to cheer about, the Packers were consistently terrible. My generation had no idea what it felt like to cheer for a winner. All we could do was listen to stories of the glory days, passed down from parents to children, stories of the Lombardi era, when the Green Bay Packers were the epitome of success, right up there with the New York Yankees.

When I was 16, we moved to Green Bay, about a mile down the street from Lambeau Field. When you live in Green Bay, Lombardi and the Packers are everywhere. My old high school is on Packerland Drive. My brother and sister both attended Lombardi Middle School. We drove Lombardi Avenue nearly every day. Lombardi may have died in 1970, but his legacy is still very much alive in Titletown.

Lombardi  became the head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers in 1959, winning Coach of the Year honors in his first season. In 9 seasons, Lombardi's Packers racked up a record of 105-35-6. The Packers reached the NFL Championship game in Lombardi's second season, the only time the Packers would lose a title game during his tenure. Lombardi famously promised his men they would never lose another title game, and he was true to his word. The Packers went on to win 5 of the next 7 NFL Championships, including the first two Super Bowls in 1966 and 1967. And that my friends is why they call it the Lombardi Trophy.

The Lombardi Trophy is a vagabond, making stops all over our glorious country, from Oakland to St. Louis to New York. Since 1967, the Lombardi Trophy has only made it home for brief stops, in 1996, and most recently 2010.

Who knows how long it will take for the Lombardi Trophy to make its way home again, but when it does, you can bet the ol' coach will be smiling down.

K is for..........

K is for...........Kiva.

A few years ago, we set up an account with Kiva, a non-profit organization that allows people to loan money to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Kiva works with regional microfinance institutions to distribute member donations. As of March 31, 2012, Kiva has loaned over $300,000,000 to small business owners all over the world, with 80.46% of all loans going to women. If you are interested in learning more, just click on the graphic to go to Kiva's website.

We have made 16 loans to small business owners all over the world. 11 have been paid back in full, 4 are ongoing, and one loan was refunded. We get an email every time a payment is made on an outstanding loan, and when there is enough in our account, we look for other people to loan the money.

We started with an initial donation of $150, all of which we loaned to Comfort Anima in Ghana to help her buy supplies for her store. As Comfort repaid the loan, we in turn, loaned that money to other entrepreneurs. I may be oversimplifying, but the way I look at it, our original $150 has become the $625 we have so far loaned through Kiva. As our loans are repaid, that number will continue to grow. We have enjoyed our involvement with Kiva, and as a family, we look forward to helping more people.

J is for..........

J is for..........Jayhawks.

The Jayhawks are one of my favorite bands. Their sound has been defined as alt-country, or Americana, and I suppose that will do. I would just say they're a great rock n' roll band. My girls have been listening to The Jayhawks since they were born, Hollywood Town Hall and Rainy Day Music, the kind of music I needed to share with my kids.

When I listen to The Jayhawks now, certain songs are like triggers, memories playing like my own personal music videos. My mind wanders back to the 8 years I lived in Minnesota: the friends, the shows, the breath in the air when you got in your car on a freezing winter night and as soon as you started the car The Jayhawks were.....there.

The Jayhawks take me back to that very first night in Minneapolis. It had been a long day of hauling and unpacking, and I needed some music and some beer. I took the first of many walks from my new apartment to The Uptown Bar and Grill. The Jayhawks were the band that night, and it was love at first sound.

The Jayhawks take me back to a deserted Kansas road, or was it Nebraska, or South Dakota, or New Mexico, somewhere with a perfect blue sky, one of our many road trips north during the summer. Quinn's singing, her little voice belting out "Save it for a Rainy Day," fills the car. I glance over my shoulder and Scout is looking out her window, and it could be me looking out that window, and I smile because I know she's making her own video.

The Jayhawks take me back to the night Meg and I saw Mark and Gary here in Tucson. We got to talk with Gary after the show, and when he signed a CD for the girls, he told us his favorite line from To Kill a Mockingbird: thus began our longest journey together. We had just used that very line to accompany a shadowbox of Scout's handprint.

All these memories come to me when I listen to The Jayhawks. The best music isn't just about nostalgia though. The best music goes on creating new memories no matter how old the songs are. Every time I listen to The Jayhawks, there are new memories in the making.

I is for..........

I is for..........Information.

I had an interesting conversation with my students last week. We were doing some prep work for the upcoming standardized reading test, going over practice questions provided by the state. One of the questions sparked an interesting conversation. I don't remember the exact wording, but basically, here's the question:

If you wanted to know what educational programs Sea World provides, which source would provide the most relevant information?

a) an atlas
b) a dictionary
c) a website
d) an encyclopedia

Most of the kids got this easily: the website, of course. I told the kids this question made me feel old. When I was in 8th grade, there were no websites. Hell, people didn't even have computers. That really blew the kids' minds. How did we live?

Now we walk around with computers in our phones and everything you want to know can be found on some website or other. All this has had me thinking about how I get my information, specifically how I stay informed about current events.

Traditional newspapers are just about a thing of the past. I can't remember the last time I read an article in an actual newspaper. We still have the paper delivered on the weekend, but that's just to get the coupons. I'm sure we won't need to do that much longer. I used to get a lot of my news from TV, CNN and the like, but I find myself doing that less and less. TV news is mostly commentary now, and I can't take all the talking heads passing off their opinions as news.

Nowadays my main source of information is Twitter. I follow my favorite newspapers and pick and choose from the constantly updating headlines. Instead of watching CNN, I follow on Twitter and only look at what's of interest. It's actually quite an effective filter. People are always posting links to interesting articles. Follow enough people on Twitter and you'll hit just about every opinion on anything going on in this great big world of ours.

A lot of people scoff at Twitter. Why do we need to know every waking thought of people we barely know, that kind of thing. And sure, a lot of people tweet minutia that even their closest friends and family don't want to hear about. All that crap is easy enough to avoid and filter out. Once you learn how to use Twitter effectively, it's a great tool for managing the tidal wave of information that modern life sends at us every day.

How do you get your information these days?

H is for..........

H is for..........Hodag.

If you ever have reason to be near Rhinelander, Wisconsin, keep an eye out for a hodag. Some would say the hodag is a mythical creature, kin to Sasquatch and the chupacabra.

The Rileys are believers though, and every summer when we drive through the area where the hodag is said to roam, our eyes scour the woods, hoping to spot the elusive beast.

The town of Rhinelander has embraced the hodag, so much so that the hodag is the high school mascot. The first time I heard of the hodag was when my high school played Rhinelander in the state basketball tournament. Only years later, when we drove through Rhinelander for the first time, did I appreciate the awesomeness that is the hodag.

A local author even has a cute series of children's books chronicling the adventures of Happy the Hodag. I'm sure you could google Happy the Hodag and get your hands on some if you'd like.

I think the hodag would make for a great monster in a campy horror flick, plucking off Wisconsin teens as they take to the woods to drink and whatnot. I'm kind of surprised they never did a hodag episode on the X-files. I mean, they had that chupacabra episode, and the hodag is way cooler than the chupacabra. Seriously, if they can do a reality show called Finding Bigfoot (which the Rileys fully support), where's the love for the hodag?

There are a couple hodag statues in Rhinelander, one in a little park by the McDonald's and one in front of the library. Last year we stopped to get some pictures with these statues, and that was fun and all. But on our way out of town, we all kept our eyes peeled.

G is for..........

G is for..........Ghana.

G is also for Guest. My wife had a unique experience that I thought would be interesting reading for A-Z. So without further ado, here's the better half.

I recently spent two weeks in Accra, Ghana, as part of the U.S. State Department’s Teachers for Global Classrooms program.  The program is designed to help teachers build a globally focused curricula and develop their students’ global competencies.  I had an incredible experience visiting schools and learning about the education and culture of Ghana. While two weeks in a country does not make me an expert by any means, I had some insights and experiences I thought I would organize by Gs.

Greetings:  A common greeting in Ghana is “akwaaba” which means welcome.  Many meetings with Ghanaians began with “You are welcome” to which I would reply “thank you.”  This flip of the order of these expressions at first gave me pause and then a new appreciation and understanding of words I take for granted.

Government: Ghana gained independence in 1963 from Great Britain and was the first African colony to do so. On March 6, 2012, the 55th anniversary of that bloodless revolution was celebrated across the country. The president, John Atta Mills spoke to thousands of Ghanaians in the capital.

The celebration also featured the branches of the military.  Throughout my stay in Ghana, I thought about how the military was featured as I was repeatedly told by taxi drivers, teachers, salesmen in markets that Ghana was the most peaceful country.  It was such a consistent message seemingly borne from horrific neighboring conflicts in Togo, Cote d’ Ivore, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Goats:  I saw a lot of goats in Ghana.  They were quite ever present in the city and in the country.  They would wander all over town, but I was told they would find their way home every day.  They were smallish goats, used for meat but not able to produce much milk.  On my last day in Ghana I saw goats eating grass and plants in the middle of a traffic wedge.  I don’t know if the photo does it justice.

Right after I took this photo I saw a hatchback taxi carrying two men in Muslim attire in the back seat.  Behind them in the storage space were two goats.  They were looking out the back window like they belonged there.   

Globalization:  I was very interested to see how Ghana fits into the increasingly interconnected global economy.  The school where I spent most of my time was in the port city of Tema, 16 miles from Accra.  Tema is the largest port in the country.  I was thrilled to get close to the actual port and blown away by the shipping containers, such a tangible sign of development and our globalized economy.

Additionally, the containers served as stores for countless shopkeepers throughout Accra, Cape Coast, and Tema.

Garbage:  Another sign of progress(?) and an increasingly globalized economy today has to be the increase in garbage.  As with many developing countries, there is an incredible garbage presence that closes in on living quarters and natural resources.

In Ghana, drinking water is packaged and sold in plastic pouches and sold all over.  One school I visited had started a recycling initiative with these pouches.

Grace & Gratitude:  My trip to Ghana left me with impressions of incredible beauty, resilience, and complexity.  I feel like this photo captures these impressions better than any words could.

F is for..........

F is for..........Fargo.

If you're planning a trip, you might want to check out Fargo, North Dakota.

See what I'm sayin? Who doesn't want to be a legend? All kidding aside, this may be the best ad I've ever seen.

I would love to regale you with stories about wild nights in Fargo, but I've actually never been there. No, F is for Fargo because Fargo is one of my favorite movies.

The movies have given us any number of great female characters, but for my money, Marge Gunderson is the best female character in cinema history. Not one of the best, THE best.

There it is, gauntlet thrown. I've got Marge Gunderson. Who you got for best female character in the movies?

E is for..........

E is for..........Education.

As a teacher, I can't help writing about education on the blog from time to time. I really do love teaching, and I try to focus on the positive aspects of education, the relationships and interactions with students that make teaching a uniquely rewarding experience.

This has been a tough year to focus on the positive. My school is under a lot of pressure to improve our standardized test scores. I have spent more time teaching to the test than I would like, but our current reality makes it unavoidable. This means I spend a lot of time teaching kids how to analyze the mood of obscure poetry or how to find common themes in folktales from Norway and Japan. Both worthy exercises I suppose, but not exactly riveting for kids. I don't have a problem with standardized tests, but I do think there is too much significance placed on them. Our society has decided that kids are essentially the sum of their test scores, no better or worse than their data. It bothers me that this doesn't bother more people.

We've gone from Bush's No Child Left Behind to Obama's Race to the Top. It is now the educational policy of the United States to have winners and losers. The game is standardized testing, and the losers will be stuck with all the crap minimum wage jobs our politicians talk about with such pride. And to the winners, well, the way things are going, most of them will be working minimum wage too.

The US collectively wrings its hands about our standing in the world, middling test scores a sign of our impending doom. Bullshit. I'm not saying the US educational system doesn't need to improve. Of course it does. It's strange to me that the public thinks politicians are more capable of improving schools than teachers. You know, the people who actually care about kids as human beings, not just as employees.

Bit of a rant here. Thoughts?

I promise I'll be more positive the next time I write about education.

D is for..........

D is for..........Desert.

I fell in love with the desert in 1997. Friends of mine were living in Tucson, and Meg and I came down to visit during Spring Break. By the time we left, we had Arizona teaching licenses.....just in case.

I remember Meg and I looking at each other one winter day, and there were no words necessary. We moved to the desert in 1999, and my love for the desert has only grown.

Sunsets are beautiful everywhere, but it's hard to beat a desert sunset. Tucson is in a valley, surrounded by mountains. I love the colors in the mountains as the sun sets. I wish I had a better picture, but my photography skills leave something to be desired. Somehow the colors seem different every time, each sunset painting its own unique picture (channeling my inner Bob Ross here).

The Sonoran Desert is the only place in the world with sahuaro cactus. I remember being in awe the first time I went over Gates Pass, sahuaros as far as the eye could see. The Sahuaro National Forest taught me that my Midwestern image of a forest was severely limited.  Sahuaros miraculously bloom in the heat of the desert summer and then bloat with monsoon rain. I feel fortunate to have a number of sahuaros in my yard, each green obelisk standing sentinel, arms infinitesimally growing to better protect us.

The desert is home to a unique array of animals. I'll never forget the first night I heard a pack of coyotes somewhere just beyond my backyard, a dissonant combination of yelping and laughter. Our yard attracts just about every type of desert animal you can imagine, from rattlesnakes to roadrunners. Our most frequent visitors are the javelinas. We see them all the time, but it never gets old. I mean, look at these guys!

I had a moment of grace recently. Standing in my backyard in the light of a full moon, the smell of citrus in the air, I knew it for sure. The desert is now in my skin.

C is for..........

C is for..........Cameron Crowe.

Cameron Crowe's movie career began in 1982, when he helped adapt his book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story into the seminal high school flick of the same name. There are so many great characters in Fast Times, but my favorite has to be Mr. Hand. He and Spicoli were a perfect team.

Crowe made his directorial debut in 1989 with Say Anything. Lloyd Dobbler is one of my all-time favorite movie characters, and arguably the best teenager in the history of cinema. There are so many great scenes in Say Anything, so much spot-on dialogue, but this scene epitomizes what Lloyd and the movie as a whole are all about.

My favorite Cameron Crowe movie is Jerry Maguire. Show me the money, you had me at hello, we all know the lines. My personal favorite: It was just a mission statement (thus the picture). Jerry Maguire quotes float around in my brain, ready at a moment's notice to spice up a conversation, or a late night text. Maybe the best thing I can say about Jerry Maguire is that it's one of those movies I can't turn off when I come across it while channel-flipping. No matter where it is, I'm in.

I highly recommend Crowe's latest movie, We Bought a Zoo. Matt Damon is great as a widower who buys a zoo to find meaning in his life and reconnect with his kids. I gotta say, I've been known to tear up during a movie every now and then, but man, this one really got me.

Any Cameron Crowe fans out there? What's your favorite Cameron Crowe movie?

B is for..........

B is for.......... Badger.

As an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin, I am proud to call myself a Badger. I love all things Bucky, and I could go on and on about the great times I had at Madison. These kinds of Badgers are everywhere, and I see them all the time.

No, this post has to be about a different kind of badger.

The real McCoy if you will. The summer after my freshman year in college, I worked at the Brown County Reforestation Camp. The place was basically a zoo, and would later officially become one. There were lots of animals when I worked there: bears, buffalo, monkeys, even a lion. One of my jobs was to clean the animal enclosures.

The only animal to give me a hard time was the badger. That thing was nasty. I'd get him in the little box with his food and go in to clean up. That guy would hiss at me something awful. He would rake his claws on the screen of that little cage, man, he wanted a piece of me. I'm not gonna lie, that thing scared the living hell out of me. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I lived in Wisconsin and all, but I'd never seen a badger before that summer. I had no idea they were so fierce. I've had the proper respect ever since.

A is for..........

First day of the A-Z Blogging Challenge. Here we go.

A is for..........Atticus.

Atticus Finch is one of the most famous characters in American literature. While he's not my favorite character in To Kill a Mockingbird, that would have to be Ms. Jean Louise, he's certainly a close second.

Atticus is one of those rare characters that transcends the page to become a symbol in popular culture. He is a symbol for courage in the face of injustice, for decency and honor. Compare someone to Atticus Finch, and most people know what you mean. It is high praise indeed.

I'm not sure there has ever been a better pairing of actor and character than Gregory Peck and Atticus Finch. I know Mr. Peck starred in numerous films, but to me, he will always be Atticus (definitely not the guy in The Omen).

I've had this picture of Peck/Atticus in my classroom for years, and kids are always asking about the old guy in the rocking chair. Without batting an eye, I say he's my grandpa.

They buy it every time.

Once I've had my fun, I set them straight, encouraging them to watch the movie. Heck, if they're feeling crazy, they might even want to read the book. Who knows, it might just change their life.

Getting Ready for A-Z

I thoroughly enjoyed doing the A-Z Blogging Challenge last April. There were well over 1000 participants last year, and it looks like there will be even more this year. I found some great writers to follow, and I look forward to finding more this year. 

I'm glad to see that many of the writers I found through last year's Challenge are back for more. Some of the best writing in the blogosphere happens during A-Z, and I can't wait to see what my favorite writers come up with this year. There's still time to get in on the fun, just click the big ol' badge and get yourself signed up.

I signed up a while ago, and my plan was to get a head start, have a bunch of posts ready to go. So far I've written A and B, with plans to write a bunch of posts this week. I'm sort of torn about the whole getting ahead of the game thing. Last year I wrote each post the day before, and the pressure of having a deadline seemed to work. Looking back, there were only a couple of posts that feel half-assed, and I'm proud of the whole thing as a body of work.

I thought about having a theme last year, but eventually decided to pick random topics. My first thought this year was to do a movie theme, but after much deliberation, I'm going random again. I'm sure movies will factor heavily, but in a random way. ifyouknowwhatimsayin.

There was a video challenge to create a buzz for this year's A-Z, and this is the winning entry from Rachel Morgan. If you haven't signed up already, watch this and catch the spirit.

On Motivation

Not to be all oxymoronic, but we had an interesting staff meeting last week. As a failing school, we are required to test our students at the end of each quarter. It's called Progress Monitoring. Our scores had been relatively flat through second quarter, so we decided to ramp it up for third quarter. A committee was formed to create an incentive program for the kids, and their recommendation was to do a raffle. Without going into the specifics, kids could earn raffle tickets by improving their scores in math and reading.

We analyzed data at our last staff meeting, and there were significant gains. The raffle was deemed a success, but one of my colleagues made an interesting point. She lamented that it took a raffle to get our students to perform. She wondered if we were doing our kids a disservice by using external rewards as motivation. Shouldn't they do their best on tests because it's the right thing to do?

The whole intrinsic vs. extrinsic thing.

Ideally, kids should want to do well on tests, or anything really, because success is it's own reward. Of course, as a failing school, success is often hard to come by. That was the idea with the raffle, to create that feeling of success before we take our state tests in April. While I agree with my colleague, I think the raffle was right for our particular situation.

All this has had me thinking about motivation in general. In the good ol' days, did kids work hard just because? Do the kids of today have to have some kind of reward, something concrete, to work hard? Is that even a bad thing? We live in a capitalist society after all. Maybe kids today are just more in tune with their culture. What's-in-it-for-me the only real motivation.

The funny thing is, I usually try not to pay much attention at staff meetings.   

My Kid Made Me Do It

I read The Hunger Games back in March of 2009 (I keep track of these things. It's sad, I know). I enjoyed it so much, I ordered a class set and read it with my students. I'd never seen kids so into a book.

My last two groups have loved the book as well. Even the kids who boast that they don't like reading can't deny it, they now have a favorite book.

Many of my students became obsessed, immediately devouring the rest of the series. They came to me, the one who turned them on to this incredible story. Surely I would talk to them, validate all the feelings they were having. They were dumbfounded when I told them I hadn't read Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

I'm not sure why, I just wasn't interested. Sequels in general just aren't my thing. When I heard about the movie, I figured Catching Fire and Mockingjay would follow, and that's how I'd get the rest of the story. Not a problem, that's how I did Harry Potter. Read the first one, waited for the movies.

Then my kid read The Hunger Games for her mother/daughter book club. She knocked out Catching Fire and Mockingjay, and has been bugging me ever since to read them. She's already flummoxed that I won't finish Harry Potter, so I gave in.

I read Catching Fire about a month ago. I wish I could say I loved it, but the truth is, Katniss got on my nerves. She sounded like a whiny teenager, "OMG, I have to fight for my life again? Why don't Gale and Peeta understand me?" I don't know, I wasn't buying it.

My kid is losing her mind about The Hunger Games movie. She bought a couple magazines that have Hunger Games posters to hang in her room. Her excitement reminds me of how I felt about the Stars Wars movies. That kind of excitement has to be honored, so I pushed through and read Mockingjay. I finished this weekend, and I could tell it meant a lot to Scout.

So even though Catching Fire and Mockingjay didn't do it for me, I'm glad I read them. I'm part of the club now.

How 'bout you? Are you a fan of the books? Looking forward to the movie?

From Ghana to Buffalo Wild Wings

The Rileys all left the house around 6:45 Saturday morning. I headed to a local park with the girls for a day of soccer, while Meg began her journey to Ghana.

Meg will be in Ghana for two weeks, part of a State Department program for teachers. She had to create a blog to document her experience, so if you're interested, check it out.

The soccer tournament was a lot of fun. I've been coaching Quinn's team all year, and this was the end of our season. We destroyed most of our competition this year, so we decided to play in the most competitive bracket. Our record was 0-2-2, but the girls played with such heart, I was incredibly proud. The teams we played have been together a lot longer than we have, but by this time next year, we'll be ready. 

We tied the team that won the tournament, the only team they didn't beat. After the game, their coach pulled Quinn aside and told her how impressed he was by her tenacity. The smile on Quinn's face was priceless. Quinn is much smaller than most of the girls she competes against, but she's fast and relentless. She will not be denied. It is simply pure joy to watch Quinn play soccer.

Scout's team struggled when they started the transition to club soccer, losing most of their games. In the last month you could see them improving, really coming together. They won a couple games and came close in a few others. They finished their season by winning this tournament, not losing a game. How awesome is it to see a group of girls continue to battle and be rewarded for their efforts? Uh, pretty awesome.

Then yesterday was Quinn's birthday. It doesn't seem possible, but my baby is 9. Quinn loves her some wings, so we ate at the Buffalo Wild Wings by the house. Quinn attacks wings the way she does opponents on the soccer field. It's pretty damn funny.

We used ipods to talk with Meg this morning, something called facetime. Scout knew about it. It's free, and it kind of blows my mind. Meg walked out to the street to give us a glimpse of her surroundings. Very cool.

So now it's almost the end of day four of my stint as a single parent. A lot of emotions these last four days. I am so happy that Meg is on such an amazing journey. But I miss her. Things aren't complete without her. My kids make me insanely proud. So many emotions, thoughts, ebbing and flowing. It's life. 

The Artist

I'm looking forward to the Oscars Sunday night. It feels like a foregone conclusion that The Artist is going to dominate, and that's fine with me. I saw it a couple weeks ago, and I've been thinking about it quite a bit ever since.

I've seen the word "charming" frequently used to describe The Artist, and that's spot-on, it is charming.

It's also a great metaphor for the times.

The protagonist of The Artist, George Valentin, is a silent film star when technological advancement turns his world upside down.

The film industry is facing a similar time of great change.

The digital revolution is changing a lot of things, and movies are not immune. I can see a day where the overwhelming majority of movies are released online, streamed immediately at home or on mobile devices, movie theaters a thing of the past, much like their drive-thru brethren. I'm not exactly sure how that might affect the economics of movies, but I have a feeling many people involved in film are unsure what the future holds for their industry.

The Artist perfectly captures that feeling of uncertainty. Taking the analogy even further, the digital world changes things for a lot of people. What are the jobs of the future going to be? And will there be one for me? George Valentin found a way to adapt, and that, to me, is the theme of The Artist. Despite huge changes, creative people will find a way to adapt.

So yes, The Artist is charming. And yes, Jean Dujardin is a fine dancer.

The Artist resonates for me because it comments on the future by showing us the past. That's not easy to do, in any art form.

LinSanity

I'm a huge sports fan. In my mind sports is a collection of stories. The athletes are the characters, good guys and villians (yes, Lebron, you) abound. Each game/series has exposition, rising action, a climax, and resolution. The settings of sporting events are incredibly varied and vibrant. Sports is filled with themes, many of them cliched to be sure, but it's hard to beat a good sports story.

The latest sports story to cross over into mainstream consciousness is that of Jeremy Lin. His meteoric rise is the stuff of fiction.

Lin played basketball at Harvard, so his future was always bright. He could have pursued any number of high-paying jobs, but his dream was to play in the NBA. No team felt he was good enough to be drafted, and while two teams gave him a shot, both cut him after brief stints. Jeremy Lin wasn't good enough for them. In fact, the team he stars for now, the New York Knicks, was reportedly going to cut him the day before he finally got a chance to start.

Lin is a trailblazer. I've been watching the NBA since I was a kid, and I can't remember a single Asian American player. Let's be honest, I bet there weren't a lot of people in the NBA taking the Asian guy from Harvard very seriously, yet another hurdle in Lin's journey to play basketball.

Lin has jumped all the hurdles, perseverance a prominent theme in his story. Lin has been ridiculous since entering the Knicks starting lineup, and he is now the toast of New York. Even Spike Lee approves.

I normally detest all New York teams, but last Friday night, I found myself on the edge of my seat as Lin battled Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. Then Tuesday night, Lin got me off the couch with a game-winning 3 in Toronto. For this year at least, consider me a Knicks fan. Lin's story is just too good to miss.

Madonna, Ferris, and oh yeah, a football game

For the third year in a row, the Super Bowl set a record for the most-watched TV show in U.S. history. Even though my Packers weren't playing, I was one of the record 111.3 million people who tuned in for the game. I didn't think the game was particularly well-played, and it didn't get very exciting until the last five minutes. Those five minutes were damn good though. Truth be told, I seriously dislike both teams (my mother taught me that hate is a wasted emotion), so I was more interested in the commercials.

A few commercials stood out for me. There was that one with the pug in red shoes racing the greyhounds. The pug blows away the competition, moonwalking across the finish line. I have no idea what product was being sold, but that dog cracked me up. I loved the Clint Eastwood commercial. Man, Clint's voice, that thing IS America. THE commercial of the night for me though was the Ferris commercial. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it. Did John Hughes roll over in his grave? or was it genius? If you haven't seen it, give it a look, and let me know what you think.

I wouldn't call myself a Madonna fan, although I did see her in concert in high school. I want to say it was 1987, Who's That Girl tour? I went with a couple friends, we drove to Alpine Valley in an orange Vega, there may have been a bottle of Jack Daniels involved. Front 42 opened, great show. I thought her half-time show started slowly, gathered strength, and "Like a Prayer" nailed the ending. My girls were excited to see LMFAO and Nicki Minaj. Good on ya Madonna, bringing the generations together. One of Madonna's guests, MIA, decided to spice things up by flipping the world the bird, and I'm pretty sure she dropped "shit" into her lyrics. Luckily my kids were oblivious.

I would have enjoyed Super Bowl Sunday a lot more if the Packers had been involved, but overall, not a bad way to spend a few hours. What were some of your SB highlights?