This summer concert lineup is going to drain my bank account

My dad just tells me, "Oh hey, I heard Coldplay is at Darien Lake in June!" and is confused when instead of jumping up and down, I say, "what the hell."

Sure, I'm excited that I get to see one of my favorite bands live at a very convenient location, but I'm kind of angry because this summer, I'm going to spend ridiculous amounts of money.

I just went to see Dropkick Murphys, which cost me 40 + 55 for the train. 95 extremely well-spent dollars.

Here are the other events that might be stealing my funds this year:

March 23rd - Ben Folds at Waterstreet (with jim... and Meholick!)

April 26 - Third Eye Blind at Brockport (they're at canisius april 19th too)

April 29 - OAR at RIT (also at Fredonia May 2nd, I believe)

May 27th - Dave Matthews Band at Darien Lake

June 1st - Coldplay at DLake

June 12 & 13 - DMB at Saratoga Springs

Warped Tour at DLake - I'll go if Flogging Molly is there, but Less Than Jake and Big D & the Kids Table are on the tour too! :]

Allman Brothers come around every year, I can't imagine they wouldn't play in the area this summer. Obviously going to hit that up with my dad.

You might be saying, well, Molly, no one is forcing you to go to any of these concerts! While this is true, if I decide not to go and don't buy tickets, by the time the concert rolls around, I'll be sitting home alone, bored and wishing I went.

To justify this spending spree, I have been working since I was 15 and saving every penny. I'll work this summer too (but not at the town pool, which is closed this summer :[ ) and so I think I deserve this. It'll be worth it.

Respect Crowe

About a month ago, word started getting around school that Pat Crowe, the 12th grade English and AP English teacher, was going to be teaching 9th and 10th grade next year, and not by choice. After 38 years at LeRoy, administration is apparently trying to coax him into retirement, because they have to pay him so much since he has been there so long. These actions are finding strong opposition from one student-created website, four facebook groups, and about 520 facebook users, spaning two generations.

Anyone to graduate from LeRoy in the last 38 years will gladly tell you how awesome and kickass Mr. Crowe is. He runs out in the halls screaming "THE KING IS DEAD" to help us better understand Shakespeare; he has us make posters expressing our extreme hatred of Lady MacBeth; he shows us a plethora of great movies, some of which aren't even book we read, but are extemely relevent. He chooses topics that any high school senior would think is interesting - criminology, Helter Skelter, Sociopaths. I was personally elated that we got to watch two Liz Taylor movies so far this year.

I think that students really like about Mr. Crowe is that he treats us like adults. He doesn't talk down to us, something that teachers do all too often. He'll joke around with us, and he'll take us seroiusly too. I think that having Mr. Crowe senior year helps get us ready for whatever is next because we feel like adults in his classroom, and therefore start acting like adults.

Administration would certainly be putting the needs of their students aside if they were to follow through with this. While Mrs. Brotherton is certainly a fine teacher, most agree that the younger grades are her forte. Having Mr. Crowe's class senior year is a blessing that students at leroy have had for 38 years, and that's something that money should never play a part in. True, in this recession, schools are going to have to look at their budgets with a stricter eye, but their most experienced teaching staff should certainly not be the first thing to go.

Green 17

And so it begins, St. Patrick's...Month.

For me, this time of year rivals Christmas. For the next two and a half weeks, I'll probably wear green everyday, sometimes in excess and with awkward amounts of gaudy, plastic jewelry. I will listen exclusively to the Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, The Pogues, The Tossers, The Dubliners, and so on. On the front of our house, we'll hang a nice big Irish flag along with a light-up shamrock. On weekends, I'll rent the great Irish-American movies of our time: the Departed, Boondock Saints, Gangs of NY. Trips to McDonalds will be more frequent than not for those curiously delicious (and now low-fat!) Shamrock Shakes. Next week I'm shippin' up to Albany to see the Murphys themselves, which should be a riot. Finally, on the 14th, I'm running Johnny's Runnin' of the Green race in Rochester: five miles of crazy irish runners with a few kilted gentlemen (who probably lost a bet or something) and a small number of leprechauns who sing "wild rover" for the entire race.

You're probably thinking one of two things. Either, "Wow! Your family is really authentic and must have just stepped off the boat!" or "Wow, you're a bunch of hypocrites that think you are Irish." The latter is absolutely true. While, yes, we do contain Irish blood, and perfer those around us to be well-aware of it, my family is really what some would call "plastic paddys". An actual Irishman might be disgusted at how we think we are "Irish" just because we put shamrocks all over the place and listen to "50 Irish Drinking Songs" all weekend. We might be slightly out-of-touch with the motherland and more wrapped up in the commercial Irish-American culture... but today in America, it's hard to be involved in any type of heritage, and it's rare to find an opportunity to celebrate European ethnicity. So, although it might be some level of "fake", we take culture and heritage where we can find it, and I think that's something worth celebrating.

Check out my March Playlist! Although I have loads upon loads of Irish Drinking Songs I could use, I opted for a more subtly Irish list... with some Irish-American artists, or some Irish-pop groups, like my favorites, the Cranberries :]

Hip Hop?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/19/steele-gop-needs-hip-hop-makeover/

GOP Chair Michael Steele the other day suggested a makeover for the party: "We need messengers to really capture that region - young, Hispanic, black, a cross section ... We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles. But we want to apply them to urban-surburban hip-hop settings."

It was rather painful to watch him last night on DL Hughely as he struggled to explain his goal: to make the Republican party more popular in urban areas as well as with minorities. A respectable goal, but perhaps one better achieved without the use of "hip hop". What I think is so sad about this is that he's assuming that hip hop is the best way to make something urban, as if hip hop is the only thing that stands for all that is urban. It's like watching your grandmother use slang while texting in an attempt to be cool. Good try, but kind of depressing.

My Uneducated Generation

This year, I've been paying more attention to the news and becoming much more interested in politics. With last year's historic presidential election and our current economic state, it seems like a good time to start understanding politics and economics. After all, my generation is already screwed, as all of today's problems are so conveniently being dumped on us.(1)

I can't help but notice not only the apathy, but the ignorance of kids (or perhaps, young adults) of my age. My class will be graduating this year, going off to college, the military, or joining the work force; the males have to sign up for the draft; we have to learn to do taxes, to use credit, to buy cars. We're being forced into the real world and beginning to think that maybe we should try to get some sort of understanding on how these things work.

What I find really appalling is how little we are taught about government in school. We take "social studies" all our lives, which we are lead to believe is a mixture social sciences - geography, sociology, history, politics - when it's pretty much just history. Granted, it's easier to teach young kids historical events than the social trends and forces behind them. In high school, we take two years of Global History, two years of American History and Government, and finally Participation In Government (PIG) for half a year, and Economics for the other half of senior year.

PIG and Economics are horribly insulting classes. Reading the textbook takes me back to the days of NSYNC* and War Heads; it's literally written at a 5th grade level. Most of the quizzes I (and I believe a majority of my class) could probably ace with no preparation whatsoever. Earlier this week, we spent an ENTIRE PERIOD learning to organize a checkbook. I understand that it's a basic skill that is essential to life after graduation, but I feel like this time could have been made a little more worthwhile. We do bring up current events often, which I think is wonderful, because that's the only time when we actually learn about politics.

History is important, there is no denying that. We can learn from successes and failures of the past, and it so often influences our future actions. However, history is useless if we cannot apply it to current times and current problems. It's great to learn about trickle-down and pump-priming economics, but if you don't learn about how they are being used today as well, it does no good. It also bothers me that we spend so much time learning about political parties of the past - we spent weeks on the Progressive Era - yet today's political parties and their platforms remain an undiscussed blur until our senior year, when we speak about them for about a day. Our social studies courses seem to have a cut-off point, after which everything is assumed to be self-taught, things that we should "just know". And our teachers spend so much time and energy preparing us for our Regents Exam, that they don't exactly have extra time to discuss recent politics just for the sake of it. Afterall, the amount Obama's stimulus isn't going to be on our final. Why speak of it?

I believe that we are horribly uneducated in the area of politics, and the result is misinformed, even uninformed, single-issue voters (or, future voters), who are extremely influenced by peer pressure. We are never presented with the actual foundations and basic ideals of any political parties, so we only concern ourselves with the issues everyone knows about: abortion, gun control, the death penalty, the war in iraq. If we're Catholic outdoorsmen we figure we should be republican; if we are peace-loving hippies we should probably be democrats. We then proceed to support whatever our given party happens to be, without feeling any need for further explaination.

I think that our classes could definitely stay the way they are: world history, american history & gov't, but they need a stronger twist of government. Key concepts MUST be linked to today's current issues. While it's challenging to place such current events on a Regents exam, it could be in the form of a thematic essay question, perhaps asking a student to relate a given concept to a current event in American politics. However it's done, I think it's clear that my generation needs to be able to make their own political and economic decisions, because we're going to be faced with more problems than anyone before us.

(1) Rather ironic that the age group that may have won the election for Obama is the generation that will spend their lives paying off his stimulus bill.

The End of an Era

Goodbye, structured running. While I'm thrilled to be free from the confines of the high school hallways, of horrible speed workouts on bad days, of two hours of practice everyday... I'm also every so slightly sad to say goodbye to everything track (and xc) has given me.

Without track, I would not be friends with about 40% of those I hold dear... or maybe more. Jack and Jake have been there since I started, and the thought of never stretching out with them again, as miniscule as it sounds, is really hard for me to comprehend. When I started xc, I didn't even like running; I hated it. Obviously this has changed, and that chance I took back in 9th grade has grown into something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Coach L has taught me so much about running and health, but also about working hard and helping the team. I've spent practically every afternoon for the last four years with him, whether I wanted to or not. Simply put, I'll miss Coach and his life lessons.

This certainly isn't an end to running, though. As cliche as it sounds, this is the beginning. Track and XC have taught me how to run smart, while loving the sport for all it is. Now I get to run independently - on my own schedule and my own judgement. I'll still race - St. Paddy's Day race is coming up soon! - but definitely not too often and not very seriously. I've paid so much to this sport, and now I've graduated, and I get to enjoy all the great things about it. Never again will I be locked up in the high school halls. The world is my track.

Nevermind the Plunge

I didn't even get past the prologe.

I'm just going to watch the movies. Actually, why even watch the movies? I do not feel a real gap in my life without being a LOTR fan. I'm doing pretty well without it.

I do, however, need to find another novel to read. One that does not force me to refer to the extremely complex map in the beginning after every sentance.