Inexplicable TV Review: HS Newspaper Storytime, The Tense Americans

Before I start with the spoilers, a short story – Once upon a time, I was the advisor for a high school newspaper at Chariho, which I graduated from in 2002. In January 2013, The Americans debuted on FX. At the time, one of students on the newspaper staff was learning Russian and had an interest in Russian culture. I knew the basic premise of the show but hadn’t seen it, so I helpfully suggested, “Oh, hey, you should try watching this show!”

Uh, whoops. A couple weeks later, I followed up and asked her about it, and she essentially said, “Uh, yeah Mr. Greenwell, it was good but REALLY raunchy.” A couple weeks after that, I finally watched the show myself. The very first scene of the show has Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) seducing an FBI informant, and the first couple episodes has Philip (Matthew Rhys) listening to Elizabeth making the sex on someone.

So, from this, I learned a valuable lesson – Don’t ever recommend shows without screening them first. Especially to high school kids. Anyway, on spoiler-filled Americans talk!

A family photo, kind of.

Warning: Spoilers follow for the current and past seasons of The Americans. Like for real, don’t read this if you’re honestly concerned about the fate of certain characters.

No show makes me feel a combination of dread and tension on a weekly basis like The Americans, which follows two deeply embedded Russian spies (Russell and Rhys) living in the United States as a family, complete with two U.S.-born children. Holly Taylor as Paige, the Jennings’ teenage daughter, essentially becomes a third lead as the show goes on, with Noah Emmerich as the Jennings' next-door-neighbor who works for the FBI. There is a sense of unease throughout most of the episodes, and the show almost perfectly allows the tension to simmer and build, before periodic blow-offs.

The fourth season just finished, culminating with the FBI capturing a rogue biological scientist, William, helping the Russians. However, before he dies, he tells the FBI agents interrogating him about the existence of the deep cover agents posing as a normal American family, which will seemingly setup the hunt for the Jennings in the final two seasons.

Speaking of William, he’s played by Dylan Baker, and he’s one of many supporting actors who are just incredible on The Americans. While Russell, Rhys and Taylor do the majority of the heavy lifting on the show, their work is always strengthened by the actors they play against.

The best of the best is Frank Langella as Gabriel, the KGB handler for the Jennings. He was their original handler, and the third handler in the shows’ four seasons, because of how exhausting and dangerous the work is. In his interactions with the Jennings, you can feel the weariness on his part – He’s getting too old for this shit, in true Lethal Weapon style. Margo Martindale played the Jennings’ first handle with a different sort of intensity – She was a true believer, and at times, so devoted to Russia that she put them in danger. And, she’s the one who gets to tell them that the Center – spy central control, basically – wants Paige to become an agent as well.

As the show has continued, the Jennings’ house of cards has grown higher and higher. There are now multiple ways they could be exposed as spies, ranging from the Asian couple Elizabeth broke up during an operation, to the FBI have composite sketches of Philip in various disguises, to Paige telling her pastor in a moment of anger that her parents are spies. The show is still only in 1984, which makes it unlikely that there is a “happily ever after” moment in play with the fall of the Soviet Union, and its part of why that sense of dread hangs over the Jennings family.  

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Many humble apologies my fine shopkeep!

Sorry about this, my dear, dear readers. I feel like I have betrayed you, my family, with such a belated entry. However, I was busy finishing up a high school newspaper all of yesterday and today; I'm the adviser for the endeavor. I will try to do two posts tomorrow, one at 11 a.m. and one at 7 p.m., as penance.

The Howdy Doody test pattern is from this site.

EDIT: Scratch these plans. One super long TV entry for 7! And the peasants rejoiced. I'll try to sneak in a news post if I can.

The oddness of saying hello

I've lately run into the issue of not knowing whether or not I should acknowledge that I know someone. If that sounds complicated, I'm sorry, because it kind of is in my mind as well.

Let me provide some background information - I'm pretty good at remembering names and faces. In fact, it's only happened about three times in my entire life that I've met someone and they've said something to the effect of, "Oh we've already met." If I actually shake hands with someone and introduce myself, there is a 99.9 percent chance I will remember them at a future date. Heck, I normally remember even casual stuff like former college and high school classmates.

Therefore, I'm at loss at what to do at the local Taco Bell. See, there are at least two kids I went to high school with who work there, but I'm always reluctant to acknowledge this fact. We're all now 25, so I imagine this isn't where they hoped to be; I felt similar shame when I was laid off this past year and when I worked at Dunkin' Donuts when I was 23. Also, I wasn't really friends with either one in high school - One I never talked to, and one I knew better in elementary school.

Because of this, I'm reluctant to be all like, "Hey we both went to Chariho! How is life?" Since they are the ones working, I've always thought that if they wanted to bring this fact up, they would. They both always do the sort of double-take of recognition when they see me, so I assume they know we all went there. Also, I don't think high school was a super fun time for them, so I wouldn't really want to be the one to initiate that conversation.

Dear Miss Manners, what is the proper etiquette in this situation? Also, the picture of her was taken from this site.

Recycling My Past: Kiss vs. Jewel

This is exactly what it looks like.

I originally wrote this in April 2007, in an attempt to set a record for the longest column ever printed in URI's campus newspaper, the Cigar. Although there was no real way for me to check, I'm pretty sure I did, since the piece was 3,001 words. If you want to punish yourself, you can read it here. This entry is a combination of that piece with some added detail.

I'm going to tell another story about things my friends and I did in the past. Back when I was a freshman in 2002, my friend Pat was invited to a party his cousin Jen was having at her house in Newport. She went to Salve Regina, and Pat brought me along, and our two other friends, Eric and Jeff.

For some reason, even though most of us had cars, we took our friend Chris' car. I don't know why we did this, since our friend Jeff couldn't really drive stick that well, and he was driving. We also got kind of lost on the way there. Three of us were from South County, and one was from Vermont, so really, you can't fault us for not knowing Newport, it being a whole 30 minutes away from where we grew up.

I'm regrouping though: This was the first "college party" that most of us had been to, so we played it cool for the most part. You know, we had a few beers, played some Taboo, didn't get too Wild and Crazy Kids. (Yeah, that's right, I just used that TV show name as an adjective, want to fight about it?)

As the party started to break up, Pat and Eric got into an argument with Jen's boyfriend, Ian, with Jen's friends Betsy, Kate and Erica egging them on. The argument was about who was better, Kiss or Jewel.

Reflecting back upon the argument, it is now obvious to me that it is something we have all pondered in our short time on this Earth. Keep in mind, this was before Jewel went bat-S crazy and tried to become a pop diva, and also before Gene Simmons started hosting a reality TV show that revealed he was a kind-of normal dad.

As Pat and Eric came up with reasons why Jewel was better, Ian came up with what he considered the ultimate counter to their arguments. "You can be buried in a Kiss coffin, does Jewel have coffins?"

Side note: Kiss no longer sells coffins, unfortunately. The band sold the Kiss Kasket from 2001 to 2006 for low, low price of $4,700. On the plus side, the band did autograph it before shipping out a unit.

Once Ian brought up the coffin issue, the argument slowly petered out, although it is still hotly debated to this day. For what it's worth, while I was intentionally on the side of Jewel, I have become a bigger Kiss fan as time goes on. Jewel really only had that one stellar album, which had come out around the time of this argument, whereas Kiss has an entire catalog of different music that is still worth listening to. Their greatest hits and singles collection CDs has a whole bunch of music you don't even realize is theirs.

After that, we left the party, and an unnamed member of our crew demanded that we stop at Newport Jai Alai (back when it still had jai alai) to pee in some shrubs. We concluded the night with some grub from IHOP, which was utterly fantastic at 2 a.m.

How The Sausage Is Made: Substitute Teaching

The second part of a multi-part series going over the insides and outsides of various jobs I've had...

First, to answer a common question when people find out that I, of all people, am a substitute teacher: You don't need much to do it in Rhode Island. The only requirement to get the permit from the state is $25 and a bachelor's degree in anything.

From there, requirements vary from district to district, but almost none require an education degree. (The one exception, I believe, is Cranston, but they also pay $120 a day, vs. $75 for most of the state.) Most districts want three letters of recommendation, your past work experience, a cover letter and a clean background check. I technically had “teaching experience” anyway because I worked as a college teaching assistant, but I get the feeling that it wasn't a big determining factor.

Once the paperwork all goes through, most schools work via a substitute assignment system, AESOP. Basically, you get assignments in two ways:

1) Logging on to your computer and checking for unfulfilled substitutions. This is the easiest method, except that it normally only works for really long-range stuff. i.e. If it's March, you might see a bunch of dates up for grabs in June, and who knows what you'll have going on then? I was always reluctant to snatch a ton of these in case I found a full-time gig in the meantime.

2) Via an automated telephone message. Typically, they would call between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., and offer you an assignment, telling you the school (high, middle or elementary), the subject and the time frame (half or full day). This was how I got most of my assignments, since most of the permanent teachers and the school secretaries wouldn't put in the day-off requests until that day of school, meaning you'd get the call later.

The district I was at was big enough that I could work five days a week almost whenever I wanted, which was good, because I needed the money. I would usually work four days a week, and then try to leave one day free (normally Mondays, since there were less subs this day anyway) to do things like mailing out resumes and job applications.

Enough about the boring stuff, the juicy info – Watching kids. The term “substitute teaching” is a fairly loose definition, especially the second part, because you are hardly ever actually teaching. I probably did it between 50 and 100 days, and I taught an actual lesson a single class. Luckily, it was something I was qualified in – English for 7th graders.

The vast majority of classes, you are either having kids do a worksheet or quiz, read or watch a movie (less than you'd think for this option, though). My typical “bribe” thing was letting them talk for the last 10 minutes of class, if they had been good.

Most would talk throughout class anyway, which brings me to the main gripe about substitute teaching – You are a low-paid babysitter. Elementary school kids behave fine (and they're wicked cute), but they're not doing heavy-lifting educationally anyway. Also, being a male teacher normally amazed the kids I was around. This might just be an isolated thing, but there was normally one full-time male teacher per elementary school I subbed at, so I get the feeling that simple difference gave me some extra authority for no good reason.

Of the age groups, middle school is by far the most difficult. The kids are all just starting to hit puberty and becoming hellions, and there is a ton of bravado mixed in with that childlike innocence from elementary schools. As an example, I would get asked by punk 13-year-olds about whether I had a girlfriend or if I had had sex. Lovely, lovely stuff, really gentlemanly, even.

The high school kids at least would be subtle jerks, meaning that I could normally outwit them, since I do have a college degree and all that. Instead of being obsessed with letting the entire class know about their illicit dealings, like the middle school kids, the high school kids would normally just stick to their own groups and sometimes like slip their grand plans for wealth via selling pot. (One kid told me he was going to be a drug kingpin like Tony Montaya, to which I quipped, “You realizes he dies at the end of that movie, right? That's not exactly someone you should be trying to emulate.” He didn't have a good answer for that.)

Eventually, I learned that the best way to deal with A-hole kids was to use the cliche from sitcoms when someone goes to prison – Make a mark early by sending the shittiest kid out of the room, and the rest of the class falls in line. Otherwise, you can let a small group of two to five kids prevent the other 20 from getting anything done. Establishing consequences for actions worked far better for me than trying to reason. Also, contrary to cliche, I never got spitballs thrown at me, or a “Kick Me!” sign attached to my back.

This post sounds rather negative, but I should add that there were plenty of good kids I ran into, at the middle and high school levels, during my five months substitute teaching. One fifth grader even drew me a picture in art class, and while I think this was more because she was bored than an endorsement of me, I'll still hang it up when I do get a permanent place. It's a nice little reminder.

The life and death and life of a small bird

Hey Snuffy, it's storytime! Let me tell you about the time some kid hit me on the way to work..."

One day I hit a bird with my car, but it lived. (That would be a one-sentence summation of a story that I'm about to make about a thousand words longer, so if you want the short version, there it is. If you want the long version, well, keep going.)

Back in high school and again during a college summer, I worked at Dunkin' Donuts, which was a mixed bag. I hated working around coffee so much - the stores are so small and the brewing almost constant, meaning the scent eventually burrows under your skin and into your nose for days at a time. I also gained a ridiculous amount of weight because of the "free" donuts and bagels ("free" because we just took them).

But the plus side was a surprisingly decent wage - minimum wage plus tips meant I would make around $150 to $450 in a week - and some good people working there. In case you forgot, this entry was originally about a miraculous bird, and I'm steering the conversation right back there with my talk of good people at Dunkin' Donuts.

One such good person was my neighbor Bethany, who also went to high school with me. She's a year or two younger, and outside of a random art class, I don't think our paths ever crossed in high school. But our parents were friendly at the time, and she started working at Dunkins, so she would often bum a ride to there and to school with me in the mornings.

At this point in time, my Car Coolness Cuotient (see what I did there?) was impossibly low. I mean, I loved my car, because it only had 37,000 miles or so on it, but absolutely no one else should have, and for good reason. It was a 1986 Plymouth / Chrysler Reliant [left]. Yes, that's right, I don't even know the make, because it would switch depending on what mechanic was looking at it. Worse, it was tan, and it had plenty of dents in it. It only had a couple redeeming qualities - bench seats in the back and front, a CD player that I installed that kind of worked before the button got jammed, and it almost never broke down. It also had a cool nickname - The Relizzy.

However, because I was slightly older than some of my other friends, we did do some riding around in it, and it meant Bethany would get a ride into work with me. As we were passing by the bus company on Switch Road, I was doing my usual 55 to 65 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone, because as usual, it was going to be a razor thin margin between "late" and "too late" to work. ("Late" is within five minutes, "too late" is more than five.)

If I recall correctly, I didn't even see the bird - Bethany screeched out and told me to stop, because she was convinced that I hit a bird. She finally guilted me into it, saying that it could be dying on the side of the road. I am a sucker for cute animals. (Fuck cows, they're delicious.)

Anyway, I turned around and drove back to roughly where it happened, and pulled aside so that Bethany could look for the thing. I was shocked when she came back with it in her hands. It was like a bizarre spoof of the Monty Python Flying Circus parrot sketch, as Bethany said it was still alive, but barely breathing; I think it was a sparrow or something else small, since it fit in her hands, and she is a small person.

As previously mentioned, we were late for work and possibly now too late, so I had to speed off with the bird in my car, as Bethany held it. We get about five minutes down the road, on Main Street in Hope Valley by the bank and post office, when Bethany yelps and I just see a blur streak across my face. I yelped, and I believe I almost hit a car on the other side of the road, before the thoughts connected in my head - Hey, that fucking thing just flew out the window!

So, that is my story about a bird. p.s. I think the bird may have shit on my car or on Bethany's hands, but I can't remember for sure.