Going Through Withdrawals

This week, largely because of financial concerns, I had to make the very difficult decision of withdrawing from the credential program for this semester. My head has simply not been in the game over the last month or so, and it has been causing problems for me in the classroom and beyond. I decided that it might be better for me to finish the program later, in the fall.

This was not an easy decision, and I'm still going back and forth about whether or not it was the right decision to make. I feel pretty good about it at this time, though. That might all change, though, if I don't get the substitute teaching gigs I am planning on using to support myself for the time being.

I haven't sworn off the program entirely. I fully intend to go back and finish my credential next year. I just feel as if I need to focus on some other things for the time being. I don't really have all that much more to say about this. As I said, it was an extremely difficult decision to make, and I'm not yet sure if it was the right one.

In other news, I had a fairly active weekend, going out on the town with a different woman each night. Each of these were, more or less, just friendly outings, so don't go labeling me a player just yet. On Friday night, I went to see The Passion of the Christ in Pasadena with Attractive Woman number one. I thought the film was quite good, albeit extremely violent. And Mel Gibson did take a few artistic licenses with some elements of the story.

All the fears that this movie might somehow spark a resurgence in anti-Semitism are quite unfounded. Jews in the film were portrayed in both a positive and negative light. There are heroic Jews as well as despicable Jews in this film. Further, unlike the European passion plays from years past, this film embraces the fact that Christ and his disciples were Jews themselves.

This film is not a piece of anti-Semitic propaganda crafted by Leni Riefenstahl. It does not blame all Jews for the death of Christ and even does quite an excellent job of portraying the idea that the crucifixion was a fate that Christ willingly endured.

On Saturday night, I hit the town once more...this time with Attractive Woman number two. We went to have dinner at the Red Lion Tavern in Silver Lake, and then headed over to Universal City, where we took the subway to Hollywood. We strolled along the Walk of Fame and watched the hundreds of little worker bees frantically putting together the last minute touches for the Oscars at the Kodak Theater. Hollywood Boulevard was completely closed to all traffic for at least four blocks, and, aside from the workers, the area was a veritable ghost town.

So, tonight was the Oscars. I generally don't watch awards shows because I find them to be so incredibly boring. This year was no exception, and the ceremony rolled right along without me paying it the slightest bit of attention. This year, I had even fewer reasons to watch, as I consider Billy Crystal to be one of the most thoroughly unfunny people ever to have existed. (Case in point...what the hell was up with all that "You look marvelous!" schtick back in the day? There was absolutely nothing funny about that routine.)

So, as usual, I just checked the results on line when I got home this evening. It was pretty much as I expected it would be. I would have liked to have seen Bill Murray win, though. Granted I never saw Lost in Translation. It's just that I think he was robbed when the Academy failed to nominate him for his performance as Peter Venkman.