Test: 1-2-Sibalant

On occassion, the brightest students at my school select a French song to begin our semi-weekly (or bi-weekly) English broadcasts.

I do not so much "moderate" these broadcasts (otherwise called "English Time with Mr. Elie"--pronounced "Eh-ree") since a moderator would filter content in a way that I do not. Like any good producer, I am more of a curator guiding the general direction of the twenty-minute radio-show while allowing the students to choose music and movies.

Each week, I curate two twenty-minute long broadcasts over my school's P.A. system. There are about 36 students who are paired-off in couples of one older student and one younger one. I did not do the pairing, and I suppose "Chuckles" created the pairings with the intent of older students modeling behavior and diligence for the younger students; however, the younger students have not yet realized the lameness or the completely self-mocking nature of "English Time with Mr. Elie." This means that the younger students are, more so than the older students, conscientious about practicing their parts, about mastering new vocabulary, and about really infusing emotion into their lines. The older students tend to arrive barely on-time (if at all), and they often mispronounce words without a care for my soft-voiced corrections--soft-voiced so as not to be heard on the microphones.

A typical script will be two pages of one-sentence lines constituting playful banter about a theme like "pets" or "favorite holidays." I write myself into the script at two parts: one part offers a few sentences that summarize the whole point of the topic and offers a new colloquial expression, and another part is my bass notes in the three-part chorus of a final sign-off "goodbye."

I tend to write a few thinly veiled but deeply sardonic jokes that mock the premise of the broadcast. The children and my colleagues never catch these jokes; so they are nerdy self-indulgences that get me through my post-lunch-time-nap malaise that coincides with "English Time." And when I say "the premise of the broadcast," I mean to say that I am nearly 100% confident that no-one actually listens to the broadcast and that I am definitely 100% confident that no-one understands the broadcast. Still, "Chuckles" insists I continue broadcasts as they are. So I turn to mocking the broadcast itself and other Chinese attempts to integrate Western culture (and me) into modern China. Here's an example:

Kitty: Do you think they get Chinese music in America?
Toby: I don't know. I wonder if they like Kenny G.
Kitty: Oh! His song about tea is so good.

I am a fair jester and--as evidenced by my daily donning of waijiao clown bow ties--am as self-effacing as externally mocking. I write jokes at my own expense.

Lilly: What kind of films do you think Mr. Elie likes?
Danny: I bet he likes romances.
Lilly: Yeah. His bow ties make him seem like such a softy.

Excerpt from an upcoming stop motion production

The only time I can remember any student laughing at a joke I wrote was when I had aforementioned Kitty recite the popular Chinese joke: "Oh my Lady Gaga." In order to vaguely understand this joke (and vaguely is as close to understanding as you could possibly get), you must recite the line as if you were to say "Oh my god" but allow the "a's" of "Gaga" round a little more to nearly "o" pronunciation. The fourth grader laughed so hard that another student had to read her next line, which was a transition into the broadcast's song break.

Each broadcast has a song break and a televised cartoon break--more on the latter later. The songs are beyond irritating when one is still groggy from a nap and is drinking Nescafe (diluted with condensed milk so as to taste like coffee-flavored-ice-cream coffee). Chinese children with high-pitched voices sing American folk songs (cue "Here We Go Looby-Loo") over sacarine synthesizers. I cannot find my favorite song online, but it is called "Coconut"; the entire song is a five-minute repetition of a rhythmic spelling of "coconut." Occasionally, the mousey-childrens' voices will hit a bridge and hit a monotone flat note: "Coconut coconut coconut coconut oooooooooooooooh coconut...c-o-c-o..."

Serenity now.

During the ten-minute cartoon break, I used to screen Disney movies with Chinese subtitles. "Chuckles" insisted this was too complicated for the children, so he bought a set of English education DVDs. Each DVD has a few vignettes acted out by computer generated animals with annoyingly pitched voices. Recently, the entire school watched a drunk chicken wish unfortunately sober and terribly annoyed cows and frogs happy holidays. I found it nerve-rackingly inappropriate, but this was the only broadcast that elicited a pat-on-the-back from my otherwise incognito headmaster.

And so, on with the show--despite my hesitations and our cultural confusions--and on with the "shallow fairly obvious observations."

One of my four third-grade classes

Books, Music, Movies, T.V.: The Suburbs by The Arcade Fire, "Norway" by Beach House, "Yeah 3x" by Chris Brown, "Same China Day" by Gold Panda, "Al Otro Lado del Rio" by Jorge Drexler, "Fired" by Ben Folds, "Tenderoni" by Chromeo, "Halo" cover by Harper Blynn (see below, thanks H!). 30 Rock, Rome, Avatar the Last Airbender.