New Year’s has never really meant that much to me… because, I suspect, New Year’s for me always hits in September.

This January stuff is nice for a few days off and a change of weather (btw, in Los Angeles, the temp dropped to a frigid 62 this week inspiring all of us in Southern California to declare WTF?), but my life is synced to an academic calendar more than it is to anything else. I guess that’s why when the ball drops in Times Square, I am not one of those people with poppers and funny hats ready to dance in the streets of New York.

The rest of the world may be thinking WELCOME 2010 but for me, I am usually more concerned with finishing what is already in motion. I need to get my students back into the saddle and up to speed as quickly as I can. And then I need to make hay because January is a good month for teaching.

February, of course is gonna blaze by — especially since there are holidays that will take away time from an already short month — and before I know it March, the biggest, most beefy teaching month of the year, will be here.

March, btw, is where we make our money. Have a good March and you will have made some real inroads. Have a poor March and you will look back on the year with “Oh, what coulda been.”

See, this is how I think. The year ends in June, begins in September and only muggles really dance in the streets in January — cause they do not understand the true nature of the universe’s actual schedule.

David Letterman has made a fantastic living ruthlessly roasting people over their foibles. Their issues. Their own personal “affairs”.

And now the chickens are coming home to roost for him, aren’t they?

Now I am a fan of Dave. Or was. And I don’t want to be smarmy or display schadenfreude. I started watching him in 1985 when he was on from 12:30 – 1:30 and used to do bits like “Network Time Killers” which were literally designed to simply kill network time (cause the writers were on strike). The man has often been, imho, really funny.

Yet now the “hurt to his own family” caused by him sleeping with his staffers is the punch line of all punch lines and all his fellow comedians are… taking it easy on him?

I mean Leno dined on Bill Clinton’s affair for Clinton’s entire presidency… and he still does it. And Conan and all the rest of the comedigensia… they are practically giving Dave a free pass right now.

And why?

Cronyism.

If this were a Congressman, forget about it. Remember when Dave made all those sex jokes about Palin’s teenage daughter? Borderline out of bounds — maybe entirely out of bounds. I mean look, I’m no Palin fan but the sense of arrogance and entitlement shown by Dave to do sex jokes about other people’s kids while thinking he’s above the law, will never be discovered, is “of rank” to do material while simultaneously “behaving like” the people he is ridiculing is shocking.

If Dave were the CBS Network President who’d been schtupping staffers he’d be gone.

But Dave’s above the law, isn’t he? I mean he’s media savvy so he knows the mea culpa route works, he pokes a wee bit of non-scalding fun at himself as if to play, the “since I give it out, I gotta show I can take it, too” card, but does he ravage himself? Does he go for the jugular?

Do the other comedians show any teeth?

John Edwards, Bill Cosby, all those Congressmen in Florida, and countless others have literally been the butt of Dave’s jokes, his bread and butter, for years. Really, think about how many side-splitters Dave has made about all the extra-marital affairs.

Now think about being on the receiving end of those jokes and think about all the people who Dave has has made squirm, cry, weep, hurt, writhe and so on.

At least now we know why his fellow comedians don’t roast Dave the way they do other folks in the limelight. It’s cause they know he’s a real person with real feelings who is in real pain as a result of his own real shortcomings — and the women in this guy’s life are hurting bad as a result right now.

Great time to show a heart, huh comedy folks? (NOTE: A few folks did do some lukewarm Dave stuff but no one has really taken off the gloves on-air.)

For example, here’s Dave on Elliot Spitzer. Just on Elliot:

“Spitzer’s going be out of office, he’s going to be looking for a job, and I’m thinking, ‘Whoa, isn’t that what got him in trouble in the first place?’” –David Letterman

“Don’t kid yourself, ladies and gentlemen, this is serious. We’re having a lot fun here now, but it’s really serious. Eliot Spitzer could go to jail, he could go to prison, think about that. The former governor of New York could go to prison. And, well, that’ll be sex he won’t have to pay for.” –David Letterman

Here’s Dave on Palin’s teen daughter:
“There was one awkward moment during the seventh inning stretch. Her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

There are so many jokes Dave has made about other people having “illicit sex” that if someone were to post all of them, it would require a really thick, thick book to reprint all his little funnies.

Now maybe I am getting old but the humor of Dave from this point forward seems kinda as if it is going to live under a shadow of such immense hypocrisy that it’s not worth it to tune in for the “all is forgotten” laughs. As a teacher, as a parent, as a person living in a world of shrinking values, giving another pass to Dave simply because he knows how to crack a good joke, gets paid a lot of cash, or whatever really feels like just simple enabling.

He thought he was above the rules, he acted as if he was above the rules, his spineless peers give him a free pass on the whole matter and to let him just roll on as if life is normal proves that Dave knew best all along — he really is above the rules.

It’s good to be the King, right?

We all have our shortcomings and no one wants them held up to a microscope. But when you making a living doing it to other people, you gotta expect the tables being turned is fair play.

See, this is why my students need to be readers who can apply text-to-world critical thinking to our classroom and the world at large.

Take for example, the inimitable actor Woody Harrelson, most famous for being Woody on Cheers but also pretty well known for a heck of a lot of other quite solid — and not so solid — movies he’s done.

White Man Can’t Jump… big thumbs up!

Money Train… big thumbs down!

Anyway, Woody admits getting into a physical confrontation with a paparazzi a few days ago. But he had a good reason. And I quote…

“I quite understandably mistook [the photographer] for a zombie.”

Yep, he really said this. And he also said this…

“I wrapped a movie called ‘Zombieland,’ in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character,” Harrelson said in a statement issued Friday by his publicist.

Niiiicce!

Now if my students were actual readers of the news — any news; The NY Times, The AP wire, FOX or MTV (those last 2 are kinda the same) — they could build a text-to-world connection that could easily get them out of their homework for the night.

I mean if I had a kid come into my class and tell me that “…while scouring the Washington Post for the latest political insight into world economic fiduciary policy they ran across this brief but salient human interest story about Woody Harrelson and then — whodda thunk it — alien zombies ate their HW assignement and there was simply no way Mr. Alan that it could ever be replaced.

And so, I should give them full credit yet not require to see the actual work.”

I’d go for it.

Text-to-World connections. If only our kids could see how valuable what we perpetually advise really could be to their lives.

I just saw the best 30 minutes of television I have seen in years. A true 100% thumbs up. This show will open your eyes in so many ways to kids, poetry, literacy, multiculturalism, education and, dare I say it, hope for our future.

It’s HBO’s new season of Def Poetry Jam, the tv show by Russell Simmons. And this season, they are covering the work of youth poets. Specifically, they are are tracking the regional finals all across the country as a variety of teams make their claim to be the National Youth Poetry champs of Brave New Voices.

It’s off-the-charts in a way like you almost never, ever see on tee-vee. The first 5 minutes of the season begins with the New York team, a group of ferocious teenage poets who year in and year out bring heat like almost no other city in the nation. (I’ve been lucky enough to see them do their stuff in person a few times. The electricity is freakin’ crazy! If you are in New York, their outfit is run by one of the most cutting edge, sharpest poet/educators in the country right now, Micahel Cirelli, the executive director of Urban Word NYC. Look him up and bring this stuff to your kids — it’s unreal how many lives they are reaching right now under the radar. Well, not anymore.)

A sold out Aplollo theater in Harlem. A sold out San Francisco Opera House. A prime time show on HBO. For those of you who have lost faith in the next generation pull up a chair — these kids are doing stuff that’ll make your hair stand on edge.

I’ll say it again… YOU GOTTA WATCH THIS!!! When they said the revolution will not be televised, they had no idea that Russell Simmons was gonna catch glimpses of it and pipe it out for all of America to see on HBO.

Check it out! It’s available On Demand, it’ll be re-running all week and it’s also right here, right now, one click away.

Get comfy and be blown away.

I came to work today — the day after my grandmother died and I prepared to fly to New York to attend her funeral this weekend — because I wanted to make sure my affairs are in order and things go semi-smoothly for my students.

I am blogging right now because hanging a black curtain over my head and burying myself in a sad closet is the absolute last thing my grandmother would want me to do.

She was a person who understood “life goes on.” Dorothy Sitomer was an optimist. (She was also a pain in the ass but she knew it and had no problem with the idea of it, either. Sometimes God mixes chutzpah, bluntness and intelligence together in combustible combinations and forgets to sprinkle as much diplomacy as some of us down here thinks he ought to have. You’ve heard of bull in a china shop? Dorothy was the type of person who other bulls in the china shop feared.)

This may feel supremely trite to read but at times like this we are forced to recognize that life doesn’t go on forever. And as dorky as this sounds, the only way for me to go on is to pursue things which have genuine meaning to me. I often self-rationalize my almost work-a-holic nature as a by-product of simple zest and zeal. I love to teach. I love to write. I love to learn. I love to interact with people. (I also love to argue which is a weakness of mine because things have been known to fly out of my lips that are often really wrong, really stupid or really asinine. Some of you might have heard them before… LOL!)

At the end of the day though, I am comfortable in realizing that my work feeds my soul and as I look around the world of education, I realize its soul is starving right now for inspiration, leadership and positive action. That’s what this is all about. It’s why blogging at this moment makes sense to me and continuing to ferociously pursue the aims of getting rid of the buffoonish elements of our current schools (like scripted curriculum and boring textbooks) in order to bring about common sense, authentic solutions to our classrooms (like putting REAL BOOKS in the hands of our students and bringing project-based learning to the forefront of our methodology) is why I go on.

Somebody has to step up for our kids. Just like Dorothy once upon stepped up for me and taught me the value of knowing that, “No matter what happens, know that you have the strength, intelligence and courage to forge on. So get off your ass and go do it.”

What I believe is that we all have this same strength, intelligence and courage of which my grandmother spoke. The Book Jam is intended to be a tool which empowers many, many, many of us to apply it.

Thank you for joining me.

Michael Cirelli flew in from New York and for the past few days we’ve been hammering away at the creation of our super-secret, top-priority, no one knows about it, ultimate urban, supremely-stealth literacy weapon.

Okay, you got me. It’s BookJam #6 on the horizon… The Poetry Jam. Flat out, this thing is going to be off the charts!! If you are not familiar with Michael, you are missing out on knowing about the work of of one amazing guy in the world of contemporary poetry. And not only is he a GREAT writer and performer, he is one of the nation’s leading teachers in the world of teaching spoken word poetry to teens. Ever heard of Urban Word NYC? If not, you have no idea what kind of cool stuff the kids in our country are doing with words, ideas, books, and passion these days.

Michael Cirelli and Alan Sitomer already teamed up once — and this is what they created.

The Poetry Jam. We broke ground today big time today. Look for it in 2010. Once again, the best teaching I have ever done.

Go ‘head. Chime in on the ning. We need you.