Friday, August 17, 2007

Chimpan A to Chimpan Z

The other night I had a dream. I know I know - you're shocked. But you know, I haven't really posted my dreams as of late. There has been nothing outstanding. Weird? Yes. But they have been so nebulous that they are too hard to conjure into a blog post.

This one isn't too weird. It just kind of came out of nowhere. So here we go:

I was sitting in the backseat of a car and Becky was in the front passenger seat. There were other people in the car, all seats taken, but the only one I remember was Ditto (I do not remember her seat positioning).

Becky is all excited saying she got gifts for us and rummages through some bag and pulls out copies of the book, Planet of the Apes. Dith was non-plussed. I was thrilled. I loved the book.

The dream went on into more of a memory from there. Me in 11th grade (I think) reading this for a literature course. Go figure. We read a number of books along these lines, by Orwell, Huxley & Shute (I loooooved On the Beach). I still struggle with calling 'PotA' to be "literature". But I'm not Dewey Decimal - so who am I to say?

Mr. Gavalinski was my teacher. He made Rip Taylor, Liberace and Paul Lynde look uber-butch. But he had a wedding ring, so I'm sure he was more like "Lyle: the Effeminate Heterosexual". NOT.

Naturally, with each selection we were assigned to read there was discussion, a paper or both. Mr. Gavalinski was what I always considered to be a cruel fag man. He took pleasure at other people's mistakes - especially the students. And that is really what you want out of your educators. He was like a fey(er) Professor Snape.

Oddly enough, in the dream/memory, I remember exactly where I sat in that class (first row - stage right, second to last seat from the back). I also remember how "Gav", as the students referred to him when he was not around, pulled a paper and made the student who wrote it read the entire thing aloud.

For the life of me, I do not remember who the student was. The poor guy had no idea what was coming. For that matter, neither did we. This was uncharted waters for this class. It soon became apparent to all but said student why this was done.

This guy didn't even read the Cliff Note version (if there is one), but opted to write his paper from the screenplay.

If you have ever read the book and seen the movie - you will know, except for being astronauts (French at that!) and apes, there is very little similarity between the two. That can be true of many film interpretations.

Hoots and hollers from the class were priceless and I sat there silently thanking some unnamed deity that it was not me being singled out for humiliation.

The kid wanted to stop reading - without knowing exactly why, as he still had no idea what exactly was going on - but as he was nearing the end, Gav made him finish. Suffice to say, in the book there is no Statue of Liberty buried up to her chest with the waves crashing against her open book. But the teacher had to rub that final bit of salt into the wound. The F that was inevitably coming wasn't going to be enough I guess.

Anyway - I have no idea where any of this came from. The dream part only lasted a few minutes if that. The scarring of high school - a lifetime


The image above is from a Simpsons when Troy McClure was attempting a comeback with a musical stage version of PotA. The song Dr. Zaius (sung to Falco's Amadeus) was priceless, as was the song that contains the title of this post. You must watch it when and if you get a chance.

1 comment:

rebecca said...

Is it a "picture" from a Simpsons episode on TV, Blobby, or a DIORAMA YOU MADE USING YOUR SIMPSONS CUT-OUT ACTION FIGURES AND THEN PHOTOGRAPHED??? Huh?

Admit it! ADMIT IT!