Entries this day: Tachikawa kill_bill reliable twitchell's_essay

Tachikawa

4:49pm JST Friday 24 April 2009 (day 14275)

Came out to Tachikawa around 11am, where Bob and I did data entry for all the names and business cards we got at the JMW pre-launch party two days ago. We made the 2nd floor of a Beastie-Boys-famous donut shop be our office space, and just as we were leaving, an employee came up and gave us free donuts.

"Well, I guess that means they don't plan to kick us out..."

I had Mark (from ELF Co-op in Tachikawa) meet us on his way back in to ELF; we hung out for spaghetti and they talked shop, at the end of which Mark got Bob an interview with a local guy who has a cram-school for Japanese students.

Perfecto!

kill bill

12:35am JST Saturday 25 April 2009 (day 14276)

Tonight Ani invited all her peeps to join her at Gonpachi, the restaurant after which _The House of Blue Leaves_ (?) fight scene in Kill Bill was modeled. As we took pictures, Roger informed me of the shocking news that the scene wasn't actually filmed in the restaurant.

Dang.

Ah well, we got lotsa hilarious pictures, including a video with premature ending as Ani's camera ran out of memory. Dang.

Before the restaurant, we hung out from 8pm at A297 bar in Roppongi, where several peeps came out, including DJ James, DJ Dwane Wayne, Will from PB 58, Ry, Ben, Roger, and I think one more person whom I've forgotten, plus a Jon Lynch doppelganger lurking around on his cell phone.

Conversation featured Dwane's belief that the media has mocked up the story about the guy from Smap being arrested for being naked in a park. The story just doesn't add up: he says he doesn't remember, so the story must be coming from the girl in the taxi who says they dropped him off in the park, which happens to be next to the building where he lives.

He was crazy-drunk at the time, so it makes no sense that they would drop him off in the park. They woulda dropped him off at his building so he could go home and sleep.

Before A297, Ani and I met up around 6:30pm, and chilled down by the marble bean-cave-nest, in which Ani climbed to get what will hopefully be pictures for an upcoming album.

Around 10pm, Roger, Ani, and I headed to Gonpachi, where I left her umbrella hanging outside as we went inside after taking several pictures. Dinner was slow but delicioso, and we were joined after a bit by Alex (who we met at the first JMW meeting we attended on Monday) and Yale, who places people in jobs in the financial industry.

I didn't have U-Cow, but got some funny pictures anyway.

Hilarious mascara rivers as we tried to get Ani to do her best impression of Japanese food programs where people are so amazed at how delicious the food is.

Thanks to Roger and Ani who paid the lion's share of the food and the taxi to Shibuya. They are headed to Shinjuku for more drinkin', and I'm on the train home (in Tamagawa now).

Interesting! The train signs are not working. Like it doesn't say where the train is located now.

reliable

Hey Kimmi Bebbi

I quite enjoyed the essay; thanks for sending!  It helps me to see dear Twitchell as a person; I was
one who got pissed at her for "giving me" an F (one page, carefully crafted, is enough to summarize
Alex Haley's _Roots_), and getting in trouble for playing with Lynda Smith's hair in class.

ANYWAY, I like knowing that Karen played bad cop...   That doesn't mean she *was* the bad cop.

Thank you for your hard work behind the scenes.

>  written by Twitchell about the "good old" days of rah rah-dom.


Yesterday, I tried to explain when one can use "good old" as an adjective.  "It can refer to a
person, place, thing, or time period... and it basically means 'reliable,' but not necessarily in
the sense that it worked, but just that it was there, for a long period of time," I said.

"What does 'reliable' mean?" she asked.

Hmmm.

   xoxox
   - Rob!

-- 
Freestyle art and healing
rob[]robnugen.com

twitchell's essay

By Karen Twitchell, my World History/Government instructor from high school:

I'll Trade You One Auburn Haired Assistant for a Better Bus: or Pimping Kimm Carter for Fun and Profit

Friday, April 17, 2009 at 12:50pm

I am still thinking about my days in Tomball as a cheerleading coach. Please do not misunderstand; I
also actually taught government classes and I was darn good at it (not to brag too much). But as in
all things mid-80's to early 90's in small Town Texas, football was life and life was football. I
believe that is why I adore the television show "Friday Night Lights." Those of you NOT from Texas
look at it as a great drama with super characters. It is that indeed; however, it is based on huge
kernels of truth woven into the fabric of Texas life. You could take the mythical town of Dillon,
Texas and its Panthers and rename it Tomball, Texas and the Cougars. Please do not misread this as a
criticism. I love the television show and I loved my experience in that small town. My main focus,
as I was paid handsomely to be focused, was in creating a top tier cheerleading program that would
complement the athletic program. (Administration words, not mine.) I will write more later on the
good points of this attitude and my criticism of this attitude. I will also write later about the
great "girls" I worked with over the twelve years I coached there. But today, while things are on my
mind, I want to talk about an unsung heroine that helped vault my girls and myself to the top.

Every successful coach becomes successful for many reasons. One of the primary factors that
determine a head coach's success is the person(s) who they entrust with their building programs, the
junior varsity coaches. When I first arrived in Tomball in 1982, I had no junior varsity
assistance. There were junior high cheerleaders, but they were a rag tag group of come one, come
all. Very little skills were needed to participate and that lack of skill sets followed them to the
high school where popularity was everything. Once I realized that the administration was dead
serious about creating a top notch program, I had to come up with a plan to start at the seventh
grade level to start building skills. The district actually found a willing and experienced seventh
grade science teacher who wanted to do cheerleading and she took over the Tomball Junior High
Squad. That group would forever live in infamy as the "Chicken Legs" because they were these tiny
and/or tall and thin girls with the skinniest legs on the planet. They would travel up through the
ranks together and would create the corps of the two national championship squads during their
junior and senior years in high school. Needless to say, this junior high coach carried her end of
the bargain.

At the same time that we created a junior high program, Tomball ISD split the ninth grade onto a
separate campus from the top three grades. These students would be housed across town and have their
own separate athletic teams, etc. Now, we then needed to find a ninth grade/junior varsity
coach. Serendipity would have it that one of the FEW single teachers at THS, Kimm Carter, was sent
to the Ninth Grade campus to teach English. Kimm had just finished her student teaching at THS and
was wildly popular because frankly she was the youngest teacher in the department, in the high
school, very pretty, and just downright funny. Ninth grade girls wanted to be like her and ninth
grade boys wanted....?????? Kimm also happened to rent the apartment attached to my house in
Tomball. So, as history would have it, I promised to never raise her rent, promised many free meals,
and anything else I could come up with, if Kimm would sponsor the ninth grade cheerleaders. Please
note: Kimm is an academic wunderkind. She speaks French, reads esoteric literature that I don't even
understand the titles, can do higher level math, and can relate to students like no one I have ever
known. So with visions of chicken piccatta (her fave at the time) and low rent swirling in her head,
she said "Yes." That was the greatest sale I have made to anyone.

Immediately, Kimm's pride kicked in. Much like my early days of sponsoring vs. coaching, she was NOT
about to let "her girls" look bad in front of "my girls." She attended practices of the varsity and
began the practice of becoming my constant companion on all road trips dealing with the
cheerleaders. The only thing she did not do was attend summer camp with me, but she did have camp
for her girls. Kimm's first and second squads were the original "Chicken Legs." They had some good
basic skills and would get stronger under her guidance. They had NO choice. She held practices every
afternoon. She did basic strength training with them, they ran around the track for stamina, she
drilled cheers until their ears bled, and then once per week, all six would pack into her blue 1984
Blue Toyota Corolla to go to gymnastics. They would fly down the road to the same gym where the "big
girls" trained listening to Bon Jovi's " Livin' on a Prayer" LOUD, laughing, and loving every bit of
spending time with "Carter." She was never Miss Carter. That's saved for the old ladies. They loved
her. She got them and never lost patience with their 13 years old hormonal selves. They would
literally fall out of the Toyota being typical ninth graders. Somehow with Carter, in tow, such
things as practice were made a bit more tolerable.

As the varsity program kicked into tense competitive mode and the "Chicken Legs" moved up the cheer
food chain, Carter became invaluable to me. As in all programs that are in the public eye and highly
scrutinized, some of the girls on these squads did not care for me as their coach. I had to be the
really mean "bad cop." I could not tolerate much indecision, hesitancy, laziness, or basic
instantaneous stupidity that is common to many teenagers. These girls tolerated me because they knew
I was the best coach to do what they wanted to do, but personally, I just pissed some of them
off. Carter became their confidant and their "priest." And, because she was such an in-tune teacher
with her tenth grade English students, she was privy to information long before it got to me. We
tried to maintain as high standards as possible in regards to school and personal behavior. We
monitored grades and checked in with teachers at least twice per month. However, teenagers have
secret lives...all of them do. Those that were close to me personally would share their doubts, parent
troubles, teacher issues, etc. However, had the other girls not had Carter, I believe we might have
lost them to these secret lives. I am not being dramatic, just truthful. Kimm and I were like
parents. We had our roles with the 12 children we were raising. At times, she dealt with individual
issues without my knowing. Those girls had to step up and straighten up or she would tell me what
was happening. She was the parent they could go to when they believed I had treated them too harshly
or unfairly. When the issues were serious, we stood together as one unit. God! We were good at this.

On the lighter side, Kimm rode on every dang yellow bus under every condition possible for about 12
years. She was in charge of the "Parker Farms." These were the new first year cheerleaders who would
tell you they were the "slaves" of the squad. They loaded and unloaded busses took my chair back and
forth, got ice before the trip, and on and on. [This is another entire essay of hilarity waiting to
be written.] Right as the groups were loading I would hear from the hill at the back door of the
school, "Parker Farms load up!" After playing loading foreman, she would be the one to check the
proper placement of ponytails and bows. Trust me; these are huge issues in the world of
cheerleading. We wore ponytails like gymnasts do...slick and tight. These girls were getting free
facelifts and did not need them. She could wield a can of that really cheap hairspray like a pro in
a bad hair salon. They would line up obediently for their check. And, boy, could she cut fingernails
that were too long and they would not even whimper. I call her the Drill Sergeant to my
commander. Think of a pretty Marine drill instructor. That's Carter. We sat for endless hours on
cold hard bleachers in these smaller than Tomball towns. We sat through heat, humidity, and sewage
on the field (ugh), and even sat through the beginnings of a major hurricane. We ate bad road trip
food on the bus and got home at midnight. Those are stories for another time. Trust me. They are
funny and will be told later.

When we went to Nationals that is when she earned her combat ribbons. One cannot imagine the chaos
that surrounds a national even like this. Thousands of cheerleaders descended on Nashville,
Tennessee including our twelve. Kimm was the one whose main job it was to keep me in control. At
this point, she turned the girls over to others who assisted us in these endeavors. She waited on me
hand and foot. She made sure that every question was answered even before I asked it. I know that
the single funniest and strangest incident was the night we could have died. We always kept our
girls in hotels away from the main hustle so they could concentrate. In this one nice hotel we went
through our nightly rituals of bed check and re-check. I could not sleep, as usual, and as my
roommate it was Kimm's job to stay up with me As the night progressed we occupied ourselves as all
high school coaches of cheerleading in Texas, we gustily sang Broadway show tunes. We both ate the
great fare of all road trips, Cheetoes, Diet Something or Other, and something horribly sweet. We
both began complaining about severe headaches and quickly put in on the back of no sleep, bad food
choices, and nervousness. We did our nationals thing, winning, got on the plane, and went home. The
next week Kimm came tearing out of her apartment with news that in that SAME hotel, in the SAME sets
of rooms, four people had died of carbon monoxide poisoning from the swimming pool! Holy Air Batman!
She and I were cheerleading death camp survivors. We would be friends forever. At a later date, I
will write more about Carter and her role as a cheerleading coach. For now, let me say that she
allowed me to "pimp her out" for busses and other upgrades and made my life both personally and
professionally so much better. Thanks Carter from all the "girls" you mentored (and guys too in
English class), and me...your Old Commander-in-Cheer!