Via agent Janet Reid, whose taste in videos (even when she’s not sure what to call the thing video’d) is impeccable:
The poem, and I guess the performance, is by the poet (Taylor Mali) himself, although the video was put together by “student Robert Bruce.” As Mali’s site says:
I have no idea who he is (and he didn’t ask for permission), but what would you do when the result is so good?
Oh, I am so tempted but of course won’t say this is so “like, you know, totally” fantastic. I’ll just say it’s really great. Thanks for posting it. I’m sending it to my children.
I’ve posted it on facebook, ya know?
Oh geez. The recaptcha: sTupefy Mr.
That’s right. STUPIFY!
Squirrel: I’m sending it to my children.
That’s what I call a Paid Political Advertisement when The Missus does it: embedding of a “message” in an ostensibly social exchange. Heh.
marta: Much more civilized than a Cruciatus!
I saw Marta’s comment and for some strange reason, I thought of the character is Lil’ Abner called Stupifying Jones who was so beautiful that she merely stood still and guys were, like, stupefied into standing stock still–I presume until Mammy Yokum smacked them upside the haid! I really liked the poem and would love to know how to go about doing that with some of the things with which I’ve tinkered.
ReCaptcha: Beowulf trade how classic is that!
I love this! So much. It made me happy and made me laugh very hard.
And Jama Rattigan posted about Mali today, too, which is, like, you know, so weird! Like, the universe is telling me to get to know more of his, like, works.
I’m sending Jama over here now.
Jules sent me this on Facebook after listening to it here, and I, like, LOVE it more than, like, Paris Hilton’s dog, you know? Classic. I want everyone to hear this.
Jules & Jill (wasn’t that a Truffaut film?): I think my favorite phrases — apart from the ones delivered perfectly by the speaker — are “the bandwagon of my own uncertainty” and “the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since, like, a long time ago.”
And I’m so glad he walked the narrow line separating his point from the mutterings of an old fogey disturbed by These Kids Today. Which would have been so, y’know, not cool.
I’ll have to bop over to Jama’s LiveJournal to see what she’s got about him!
My first thought was that I must show this to my students when I teach freshmen composition. But then I stopped, and I realized that the ya-know-what-I-mean persona is one that I often adopt with my students as a way of connecting. And then I started to spiral into what could have been a deep contemplation of the contradictions of my teaching persona, both authority and ya-know-ing. But then I stopped. Too much thinking too deeply about an activity that I’m not currently engaged in.
[...] I also really liked this video of a Taylor Mali poem that John shared here this week (typography is by Ronnie Bruce) — and the resultant conversations about that [...]