Good luck

This morning a boy in my class walked up to my desk and said "Hey Mr. Ritchason, smell this" as he pushed a dirty key chain 2 inches from my nose. Refusing to take him up on his offer I pulled my head away instinctively. He said "My grandma gave this to me. It used to be her good luck charm." Realizing what a sweet momento it was I reached for it and saw that it was a promotional item for a casino in Mississippi. "She used to have her car keys on it until one day she crashed her car into a barn and totalled her car." Guess it didn't bring as much good luck as she would have hoped.

Letter from a rocket scientist

So this morning a girl in my class hands me a note from her mom. It read.....

"Mr. R - I have concerns about Vicki learning that Pluto is classified as a planet. In the last few years scientists have actually kicked it out of the planet club because its pattern of rotation is not the same as the rest of the planets in the solar system. Plus the scientists believe it is actually a broken piece of a larger planet like the moon is possibly a broken piece of the earth. It is hard to help her when what she is being taught is not what I learn in my GED class."

I mean c'mon already. I was kicked out of the Latin Club in high school and I never fully got over it. I can't imagine the insecurity issues that Pluto is nursing after being kicked out of the ultra exclusive Planet Club. Screw my Masters degree. Maybe I need to go back and get schooled for my GED.

The greatest invention of all time

Two weeks ago a man dropped by our house and changed my world forever. Now before your mind conjures up some bizarre Brokeback sequel I'll let you know that my excitement was over the cable guy. I finally jumped on the Tivo bandwagon and haven't left the house since. FX ran a Prison Break marathon and now I'm hooked. (I dare you to find a better two hour block of television than Fox's Monday night lineup of Prison Break and 24.) I love the ability to instantly rewind a live program and relive Katharine McPhee's frightened expression as she makes her way down to the bottom three. I haven't missed a single one of Rachael Ray's fifty-two different Food Network programs. I've been able to catch up on movies that I've put off for years (Wall Street, Backbeat, A Knight's Tale). I mean I'm even Tivo'ing things that I normally would channel surf right past (Brendan Fraser hosting a 2001 episode of SNL). There's no better feeling than falling asleep on the couch and not having to worry that you missed yet another side-splitting episode of The George Lopez Show.

Not your typical peanut butter and jelly sandwich

Each Wednesday I let my students stay in the classroom for lunch and watch the previous night's Idol telecast. Today Kaelob was opening his sack lunch and taking out its contents when he pulled out a red handkerchief. He look puzzled and I asked him why that was with his lunch. He let out a baffled "I don't know" as I asked him to come up to my desk. Upon closer inspection I realized that it wasn't a handkerchief but rather a pair of silk panties with a piece of paper safety-pinned to it. I snatched the unlikely item from Kaelob's hand and quickly stuffed them in one of the drawers of my desk. After a few minutes I took a peek (what man wouldn't?) and opened the attached note. It said "Sorry I've been so busy. I'll make it up to you tonight." I immediately burst out laughing, gaining the attention of the whole room. I just blamed it on yet another ridiculous Kevin Covais performance. I looked back over at Kaelob and he still looked perplexed, unable to eat. I walked over and asked him what was wrong and he told me he hated the meatloaf that was in his lunch and couldn't understand why his mom had packed it for him. Instantly it clicked as I realized he had gotten ahold of his dad's lunch instead. A smile crept across my face as I pictured a burly construction worker opening his lunch and pulling out a Lunchable and a cranberry juice box. I gave Kaelob $2 to go get a school lunch while I slipped the crimson thong back into the lunch sack. When he finished eating I just told him to put the sack back in his bookbag and take it back home to his mom. I would love to be a fly on the wall when she discovers her mistake tonight. Priceless.

Snow day

You would think that I was a little kid. I've been up ever since I got the phone call at 5:34 this morning that school was cancelled because of the six inches of snow we received overnight. I got to do all of those things I never have time to do in the morning. I drank a whole pot of coffee, ate a real breakfast that didn't consist of a Kudos bar, read the paper from front to back, and watched last night's Letterman. While Rachel was giving Ella a bath I walked across the street to vote in today's primary, identifying only three names on the ballot that even rang a bell. I mean McCullough sounds like a distinguished name for a judge so why not vote for him. Since Rachel had to work, Ella and I braved the elements and headed to Peoria. We rented a couple of movies (A History of Violence, The Squid and the Whale), grabbed a drink at Starbucks (venti vanilla latte), picked up a few necessities at the Bradley bookstore (hoodie, Sweet Sixteen t-shirt, Braves onesie), and bought a few items at Kroger (formula, baby food, cheese, Kleenex, hamburger buns, cookies, gummy worms). So now we're back home as Ella sleeps in her swing and I get ready to pop in a movie that most of you have never heard of. I could get used to this.

Scratch my March Madness predictions

So just yesterday I went out on a limb and predicted that 10th seeded Seton Hall would be the underdog team that went all the way to win the NCAA championship. Those dreams came to a screeching halt today after being crushed by Wichita State by a 20 point margin. Maybe I'll get it right next year.

Fearless March Madness predictions

There are many things that I can't do.

I can't change the oil in my car.
I can't cook a steak without charring it.
I can't walk into a darkened movie theater if the trailers are already running.
I can't read music.
I can't stay up to watch Letterman from beginning to end.
I can't stop illegally downloading and ripping off struggling artists like U2.
I can't run a mile without my inhaler.
I can't eat with chopsticks.
I can't draw anything other than sticks figures.
And I certainly can't make NCAA predictions. Granted I don't follow college basketball except for my beloved Bradley Braves. So when it comes to filling out my bracket each year it's a crapshoot. Basically I just go with the team that sounds most like a national champion and hope everything falls into place. So this year my final four comes down to Iowa, Gonzaga, Seton Hall, and Wisconsin Milwaukee with Seton Hall besting Gonzaga in the championship game. You heard it here folks.

Oscars by the minute

7:02 The first of many Brokeback jokes, but one that is actually funny with former hosts Billy Crystal and Chris Rock in a Montana tent, too "busy" to host the show.

7:26 The acceptance speech training video features some of the worst acting by Tom Hanks since The Ladykillers

7:27 During his awful green screen bit Ben Stiller remarking that the technology was blowing Spielberg's mind before cutting to a shot of the director in the audience mouthing "No it's not." C'mon Spielberg, lighten up. I sat through two of your less than stellar movies last year neither of which blew my mind.

7:34 As Dolly Parton sang Rachel commented "that song is crap." I guess I'll reconsider that summer vacation to Dollywood.

7:38 Dolly finishes and a shot of Felicity Huffman crying fills the screen. Is it because she was so moved by the performance or because the song was in fact crap?

7:47 Now Rachel is an intelligent woman but sometimes she says some less than scholarly things. For instance, Chicken Little was presenting the award for Best Animated Short Film. After the winner is announced she is taken aback when the trophy girl presents the Oscar and not Chicken Little himself. She thought it was a man in a costume. You gotta love her.

8:01 The winners of the Best Makeup award are announced and the Oscar should be revoked as the woman's pimples/herpes fill the screen as she's thanking her parents.

8:19 I've always found Terrence Howard to be of questionable sexuality but the diamond broche on his lapel seals the deal.

8:22 Tell the French to leave the stuffed penguins at home next time.

9:17 Three 6 Mafia take the stage to perform "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp," a song that originally was written for The Sound of Music.

9:30 George Clooney takes the stage and tells everyone to sit down. The problem is no one was standing up to begin with.

9:31 Why is the In Memoriam piece always a popularity contest to see who can get the most applause? The people are all dead. Sorry Ernest Lehman but you lost to Richard Pryor.

10:07 Note to future Best Director winners: If you win don't utter the most overused line from your film ala Ang Lee ("I don't know how to quit you") and James Cameron ("I'm the king of the world"). No one laughs. It just makes you look like a schmuck.

10:23 Crash wins Best Picture and gives hope to the fact that we'll be lucky enough to see Ludacris in another movie.

Random thoughts

.....So I chickened out telling a mom at parent/teacher conferences that her son needs to start wearing deodorant. I mean how do you tell a parent that her child makes the room smell like butt crack by 10:00 each morning.

.....When Oprah interviews people why does she always have to interject her two cents? We know that you were a poor black child in the South, yet I don't go around complaining that I was an anorexic looking asthmatic with awful hair when I was little.

.....I won several movie passes as part of an Oscar contest through the newspaper last year and still have two more to use by Saturday at a local theater. The problem is their lineup is less than Oscar-worthy. We have such soon-to-be AFI classics as Big Mama's House 2, Eight Below, and Doogal. I hope Rachel enjoy sCurious George.

.....We went out to dinner last night and sat Ella in the high chair at the end of the table. The 16 year old busboy walked by with a bucket of dirty dishes and banged her right in the head with it. Normally I'm a pretty calm, low key guy but c'mon. Needless to say we got our meal for free.

.....Why is the fact that Patrick Dempsey has dyslexia one of the top entertainment headlines? What next Guiliana? Sophia Bush has genital warts?

Is this a classroom or The Jerry Springer Show?

So just before lunch I was called down to one of the reading classrooms because one of my students had thrown a pencil across the room, refused to pick it up, and was scratching the crap out of the reading teacher. I get down there and try to calm her down but as I've learned this year once she's fired up there's no reasoning with her. I usually let her sit somewhere in the classroom or the hall to let her compose herself. I suggested this but the other teacher would have none of it as she crossed the girl's arms and held them behind her back. The principal is called and we are instructed to bring her down to the office. I ask her if she would walk down there herself on her two feet with me and she replies that she'll just run down the hall and I'll have to chase her. I call her bluff, she is released and sure enough I should have taken her at her word as she heads toward the kindergarten hallway. Using my obscenely long legs I catch her and have to carry her down to the office with the help of the reading teacher. I try to keep control of her rapidly kicking feet but not soon enough as she kicks me in the balls four times in rapid succession. So for the rest of the day I'll be speaking in a high pitch voice even more annoying than Dakota Fanning's. To make matters worse she proceeds to call the other teacher a fu***** bi***. Now she doesn't just say it to her. She screams it and almost in unison all of the classroom doors slam shut hoping to block out any more dialogue straight out of Reservoir Dogs. To make a long story short she finally makes it to the principal's office and knocks every single book off her bookshelf. So here I now sit eating a lukewarm Banquet pepperoni pizza microwave meal and trying to zone out to Sir Paul. But to the rest of you have a wonderful day.