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Spent the last couple of days doing those personally unrewarding but necessary things that one must do when one is beating the bushes for golden coin. Oh, and reading Barbara Vine’s The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy, which is very fine. Barbara Vine is also Ruth Rendell – I read somewhere that she’s ambidextrous, and writes the Rendell books with her right hand and the Vine books with her left. On oversized yellow legal pads, no doubt.
Also dealing with RTT who on Monday, while visiting the charter school in Ithaca he wants to attend, ducked out with his buddies at lunchtime to smoke pot, staggered back for fourth period and was promptly busted by one of the teachers. Apparently he was reeking.
The principal was very nice about it. “I’m not saying what you did was wrong, I’m saying it was inappropriate. And if you move into our school district, don’t let this deter you from applying to our school.”
Over my dead body.
I have just about fucking had it with RTT & this pot thing. To make matters worse because I guess he thinks he’s the noble outlaw hero of this movie he’s starring in, he took the fall for the kid who supplied the pot, said it was his pot.
I’m just thankful this happened in ultra-liberal Ithaca (whose assembly representative, Barbara Lifton, voted yes on yesterday’s gay marriage referendum) rather than a few miles down the road – which might as well be a road through Alabama as far punitive conservative values go.
Anyway, I ignored RTT for a day and then yesterday sat him down and told him that if he wanted any kind of freedom of movement at all he was going to have to allow himself to be pee-tested at random intervals. He screamed, he kicked, he hollered. But eventually he gave in.
Yes, pee tests are morally repugnant to me too but this is a kid who doesn’t seem to have the common sense God gave a goose. Gotta do what ya gotta do.
Also last night I forced him to sit through the entirety of River’s Edge -- thank you![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hotelsamurai -- that classic portrait of adolescent anomie and what one might call the triumph of synthetic over authentic experience. Film – loosely based on a real live murder that took place in Milpitas, California in 1981 – is about the reactions among a group of teenagers to the murder of one of its members by another one of its members. Crispin Glover is the best fucking cinematic speed freak fucking EVER although he seems to have disappeared after making this movie; Keanu Reeves, of course, went on to reprise the role of Matt in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (which one might call the inverse of River’s Edge.)
Each of the kids portrayed is chilling in his or her own way, but one monster really stands out – Matt’s 12 year old brother. Watching this kid on screen, you understand why Pol Pot and the monstrous regime of Sierra Leone recruited boy soldiers.
After the movie was over, I said to RTT, “I showed you this for a reason. Do you know the reason?”
He thought for a second. “Peer pressure.”
“Exactemente.”
“But if I saw somebody murdered, I’d go to the police right away –“
“Robin, this movie takes the concept of ‘peer pressure’ to its logical extreme. But you see how it works, right?”
“I guess,” he said. Unconvinced.
I guess you don't give up concretistic thinking till you hit 30.
Meanwhile I landed a small editing job. Very small. But hey! it’s something.
Also dealing with RTT who on Monday, while visiting the charter school in Ithaca he wants to attend, ducked out with his buddies at lunchtime to smoke pot, staggered back for fourth period and was promptly busted by one of the teachers. Apparently he was reeking.
The principal was very nice about it. “I’m not saying what you did was wrong, I’m saying it was inappropriate. And if you move into our school district, don’t let this deter you from applying to our school.”
Over my dead body.
I have just about fucking had it with RTT & this pot thing. To make matters worse because I guess he thinks he’s the noble outlaw hero of this movie he’s starring in, he took the fall for the kid who supplied the pot, said it was his pot.
I’m just thankful this happened in ultra-liberal Ithaca (whose assembly representative, Barbara Lifton, voted yes on yesterday’s gay marriage referendum) rather than a few miles down the road – which might as well be a road through Alabama as far punitive conservative values go.
Anyway, I ignored RTT for a day and then yesterday sat him down and told him that if he wanted any kind of freedom of movement at all he was going to have to allow himself to be pee-tested at random intervals. He screamed, he kicked, he hollered. But eventually he gave in.
Yes, pee tests are morally repugnant to me too but this is a kid who doesn’t seem to have the common sense God gave a goose. Gotta do what ya gotta do.
Also last night I forced him to sit through the entirety of River’s Edge -- thank you
hotelsamurai -- that classic portrait of adolescent anomie and what one might call the triumph of synthetic over authentic experience. Film – loosely based on a real live murder that took place in Milpitas, California in 1981 – is about the reactions among a group of teenagers to the murder of one of its members by another one of its members. Crispin Each of the kids portrayed is chilling in his or her own way, but one monster really stands out – Matt’s 12 year old brother. Watching this kid on screen, you understand why Pol Pot and the monstrous regime of Sierra Leone recruited boy soldiers.
After the movie was over, I said to RTT, “I showed you this for a reason. Do you know the reason?”
He thought for a second. “Peer pressure.”
“Exactemente.”
“But if I saw somebody murdered, I’d go to the police right away –“
“Robin, this movie takes the concept of ‘peer pressure’ to its logical extreme. But you see how it works, right?”
“I guess,” he said. Unconvinced.
I guess you don't give up concretistic thinking till you hit 30.
Meanwhile I landed a small editing job. Very small. But hey! it’s something.
