One hundred ten days before it happens, Miles is kicked out of class for the first time, bonds more with his new group of friends, and the situation with Kevin gets more confrontational. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Looking For Alaska.
one hundred ten days before
I can’t say that I’ve ever been thrown out of class before. I once dramatically stormed out of a classroom with a few students my freshman year because our professor was gross and disgusting and wouldn’t stop hitting on the girls in class. I don’t think he taught at Cal State Long Beach after that, though I can’t be too sure. However, there’s not much I feel sympathetic about here when Miles is kicked out of Dr. Hyde’s class for daydreaming. Yes, daydreaming happens; long before I went to college, I was caught doing the same thing and I understood how annoying that was for teachers to have to deal with. I don’t actually think Green’s trying to show us how much he totally understands what vicious fascists teachers are; instead, it seems pretty obvious to me that he is painting these characters as being rather petty and vindictive about something they’re clearly in the wrong for.
Well, maybe not initially. Miles was daydreaming, but it was technically on-topic??? RIGHT??? Either way, the incident is embarrassing enough for Miles, who doesn’t put up a fight when Dr. Hyde asks him and Alaska to leave class. It’s Alaska who vocalizes her discontent with him, and…look, it’s not my favorite thing she does. Hardly at all, actually. I think she’s rude about it, and her insistence that Dr. Hyde can’t be a genius because he’s not an artist is ludicrous. But I also think that’s the point: Green is not trying to make her perfect. It’s just that through the eyes of Miles, she is everything he wants. That is more important, I think, because we have the luxury of oversight. I think Alaska’s flaws might also play a larger role in the story later.
For now, Miles spends more time with his three new friends, who take him to their group’s smoking hole out in the woods. There’s no need for me to discuss the intricacies of an impromptu rap battle (though I do have friends who do this and they are so goddamn good at it); what I take away from this is that Miles is slowly becoming part of this group himself. He makes a comment here that he generally just listens to what the group says, and I think any of us who have joined an already-existing social group or group of friends can understand how this works. Obviously, it depends on just how social a person is. If I feel left out or I feel like I can’t contribute anything worthwhile to a conversation, I take the same approach as Miles did here. However, if the environment is right and there is something I can offer, I can get past my social anxiety and make an effort to be a part of things. (Make no mistake: it does take me a lot to get past that anxiety, though I am getting better at it these days!)
Perhaps Miles being part of this group is just a practical thing; he’s the one who got stuck with The Colonel as a roommate. I can accept that, but I believe there’s something more to Miles than we’ve seen, and at least Alaska and The Colonel can see this. I’m not sure about Takumi yet, though; I don’t feel like I really know him.
“Why do you smoke so damn fast?” I asked.
She looked at me and smiled widely, and such a wide smile on her narrow face might have looked goofy were it not for the unimpeachably elegant green in her eyes. She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, “Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.”
WELL, OKAY. THAT’S NICE.
one hundred nine days before
Oh, school sports. I had an interesting relationship to them. I’ve always been pretty physical; I started running long distance in junior high, and I loved volleyball. (Small side story: I currently have the school record at Loma Vista Middle School for highest consecutive serves in a game: 45. YEAH WE WON ALL THREE GAMES 15-0. BOOYAH. Then I got to high school and guys weren’t allowed on the volleyball team–until after the year I graduated. BIGOTS.) I still run a few days a week and do long distance cycling; I get a good hike in a couple times a month, too. And despite loving all of this? I generally loathed the culture that came with high school sports. I was fortunate enough that my high school track and cross country teams really didn’t experience much of this, but I tried to do swim and soccer and I couldn’t handle the intensity of the coaches, the parents (UGH THE PARENTS) and the violently competitive nature of the entire thing.
What I didn’t like was that no other sports aside from cross country or track were fun. There was no room for pranks, for well-timed jokes, for camaraderie, for being friends. Everything was so ruthless and planned out. Add on top of that a healthy dose of hyper-masculine absurdity and homophobia and it was an utter disaster.
I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn’t hate people who watched or played them.
This is my life motto. Okay, it’s not. It’s a bit too hardline and ridiculous for me. I just don’t like all the bullshit that comes with sports. I once say two parents beat the shit out of each other because their sons weren’t playing well. THEY WERE ON THE SAME TEAM. I saw a teacher give a student a passing grade on an exam so he could play in that week’s game–and this was in front of the whole class. Literally! I once thought, long ago, that those were stereotypes, but then I saw it in action. (Though that’s not to say there isn’t a stereotype, but sports culture has a lot of problems in it.)
All this is a way for me to say that I wish I had as much fun at high school games as The Colonel and his classmates do. Our football team was good for a year or two, but those years I wasn’t allowed out of the house to go watch games. Both my track team and cross country team were damn good all four years, but who cares about those sports? We got some of the least funding and support from our school, despite consistently winning. By the time I could see games after school, our team was pretty terrible, and watching your team lose isn’t fun. Perhaps we weren’t a creative bunch, either, because we certainly didn’t have extremely complex call-and-response cheers meant to completely distract the other team. (And the silence technique is RATHER BRILLIANT.)
Kevin decides in this chapter to take what was an uncomfortable situation and escalate it by trying to make a truce with the Colonel. I think that this is going to be a huge, significant moment for Miles in relation to his friends: he’s won the respect of the Colonel with his unique interest in the last words of famous people. In this case, it’s here that Miles uses this (and a nice bit of sarcasm) to reject Kevin’s offer for a truce. A truce! What nerve Kevin must have. Unless, that is, he’s right, and The Colonel really did rat out Marya and Paul. I still don’t believe he would; it doesn’t even make sense. I’m interested to see how Kevin came to believe this. For now, though, I’ll just appreciate this:
The opposing team’s cheerleaders tried to answer our cheers with “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire! Hell is in your future if you give in to desire,” but we could always do them one better.
WHY DO I BELIEVE THIS IS AN ANECDOTAL DETAIL AND NOT FICTIONAL AT ALL. Bless this book.
Hey, I was on the cross country and track teams in high school too! I left football to my brother, where of course he got horribly injured (I was very impressed to learn once that he had been walking around for a week after one bad hit, and then learned his leg was broken). On the plus side, he got to play with Jyles Tucker, who's now in the pros. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyles_Tucker
I always got the impression Alaska didn’t actually care about Miles’ !!right to daydream!! I always kind of figured she just put up a fuss so she could get kicked out of class to hang with him.
On another note, yes unappreciated cross-country teams forever. Our football team lost every single game but one one year, and despite being pretty much the worst-performing sport, still got all the attention at rallies, all the cheerleaders, all the fans, and (and this was what rankled) all the funding. Which was the most irritating thing ever, since cross-country was the only sport whose fundraiser actually raised any funds, and every year we would have to sit and watch all the money we had raised pour into the football team’s budget, who (as far as we could tell) used it to sit around and have the Sports Medicine class wait on them hand and foot with Gatorade.
Unfortunately for the football team, the field they practice and played on was surrounded by our cross-country track. So we basically made life hell for them all that year- we stole most of their Gatorade, fanned out to block the track when they were running laps, took every opportunity to do our strides and stretches right in the middle of their practice space, and made loud, unoriginal jokes about them in their hearing.
Eventually we got to keep enough of our budget to go get ice cream courtesy of the school’s money (which we had raised) a couple times a season.
No lie, their cheers are my favorite part of this entire book so far. And for the record, my little cousins go to a Christian school and I am beyond sure that that "Hell is in your future if you give into desire" chant is fact-based.
I like that you acknowledged that John Green is not making Alaska 'perfect' but it is Pudge that is seeing her as 'perfect' because THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT.
Also, as a former cheerleader at a Christian highschooler, I can definitely vouch for ridiculous chants like that. I've heard cheers like "We've got Jesus, yes we do!" or "He died for you! He died for me! Shout with joy! Shout with glee!" way too often…
I fully support taunting the opposing basketball team (and the refs. Especially the refs.) The Colonel's drive to get tossed from games makes for an admirable hobby, and he is now okay in my book. And do they not play soccer in the fall there? It seems like a ripe opportunity for more hooliganism.
My high school wasn't a sports stand-out either, though we had a good football team for about a year (it felt like the world no longer made sense.)
And so, a debate on Manic Pixie Dream Girls.
I've seen a lot of debate about this trope, and why people don't like it. I get it. They can be rather….overwhelming. I think one of the major problems is people think they're unrealistic. They are uncommon in real life. That said, one of my best friends is one, and she's so similar to Alaska, its terrifying. The not giving a fuck, the smoking, the flippant remarks about life, switching from hot and cold, going on incredibly opinionated spiels that are impossible to argue against…I love her, but it can be frustrating.
Like, that thing about how people who aren't artists can't be geniuses; completely ignoring the validity of whole groups of people. Those who've stood up for human rights, those that have discovered amazing things; those people were geniuses, too. Somehow, though, I think that trying to debate that point with Alaska wouldn't end well. She'd probably just disregard all your points, no matter how well reasoned, and become condescending, before you finally moved onto a different topic for both of your sakes.
Eh, sports. I don't like sports either, but mostly that because I have horrific asthma and I die if I have to run for any extended points in time. Thankfully, I've never seen anything like that kind of twisted favourism. Sports was big at my school, but not tied to grades; basically, you could keep on your team as long as you liked. If you were failing classes, it was your own responsibility to do something about them. I never really saw things get ugly or confrontational, either. That said, I just cannot get excited or interested in them. They're boring to me.
I loved Cougar Town's take on the trope, with Jennifer Aniston's kooky therapist turning out to be a nut who thinks her dog talks to her.
Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.
This is my ….ok, my second favorite quote in this book. It's really morbid, and small, and unimportant, but I think it gives the biggest insight into Alaska's character that we have so far. I don't see it as being a depressed statement, or an "emo" statement, or a suicidal statement or any of that. I just see it as a vision of how Alaska lives her life…. constantly on the edge, riding that line as hard as she can.
Also, I have it written on a sticky note above my desk because I think it is a beautiful fragment of writing.
This is a general mod post in light of a conversation that happened yesterday. We've noticed that there appear to be quite a few new people around, as there usually are whenever Mark starts a new project, and we would like to remind them all to review the site rules and spoiler policy. You won't be banned for a first offense, so don't worry about that, but it's nevertheless a good idea to familiarize yourself with it all.
If you spot what you feel is someone else violating those rules, please make use of the Report button to notify a mod. You won't be identified as the reporter unless you choose to include your username in the message, so don't worry – it's completely anonymous. There's usually at least one mod lurking about, and we can help: we will address concerns in threads, and we have the power to delete offending comments, and/or edit them to remove or rot13 any spoilers. We're here to help, don't hesitate to call on us.
dont CALL them because THAT WOULD BE CREEPY.
also mods are your best friends because they are all wonderful people
oh and spectralbovine rhymes a lot
oh and they all have the best arsenal of GIFs this side of the Internet
wait does the Internet have sides
which side are we on
THE GOOD SIDE OF IT OBVIOUSLY.
Or the dark side. 'Cause I hear they have cookies. And that would be nice.
mmmmm cookies
BECKY I WENT TO YOUR ETSY
THAT BOOK SCULPTURE
HOLY SHIT THAT IS AMAZING
OH MY GOD MARK THANK YOU.
You would be excited to know that right now I am doing a commissioned book sculpture out of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban of THE WHOMPING WILLOW. AND IT WILL BE AWESOME.
And also I'm doing one of the Hunger Games, for fun. I WILL POST PICTURES OF BOTH WHEN I AM DONE because I feel like both of them are relevant to you!!
I took a look at your etsy, and those are amazing! I can't wait to see the Whomping Willow!
right right right????
omg how do i go about commissioning one. oh god could you do one of one of the giant sap trees from The Amber Spyglass because I would weep forever if you could.
wait how do you even mail that sort of thing
Giant sap trees. Lets see…. we could do trees with the wheels propped at the base of them! Probably doable. Or another image from them….hmmm. I'd have to think about it! It's super easy to commission one, just an email conversation over etsy and paypal!
Mailing them….IS HARD. hahaha. I pretty much take them into a shipping store, hold it up, and say, "THIS NEEDS TO GET TO THIS PLACE JUST LIKE THIS " and they do their magic!
The awesome side.
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<img src="http://i51.tinypic.com/191s8y.gif" alt="There are no spoilers in Mark Sing Se">
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HELGA!
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god i need to start watching Miranda.
Yes Mark. Yes you do.
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*crosses Miranda off surprise project list*
(I was talking to myself today while I was driving, and said "Tuesday" and it sounded like when Miranda said it, then I started imitating that bit and amusing myself in a way that would probably make Miranda proud. I regret nothing.)
*sings* What have you done today to make you feel proud?
Hahaha I didn't even think of that! A+
damn, I was hoping it was your surprise over at Mark Watches
but yes, YOU MUST WATCH IT
The most popular and winningest sports at my high school: cross-country and Ultimate. (Do not call it Ultimate Frisbee or Wham-O will come and destroy your crops and salt the earth. The sport is played with a disc.) Football and basketball were afterthoughts. And we had about four cheerleaders and no marching band. Good times!
I can see a lot of similarities to my (very small) university sports teams, if I'm honest. The football team isn't even allowed to play in the national university league this year because they're actually just that bad. And yet everybody still goes to see them play their friendly matches and the cheer-leading team still avidly supports them, while the poor newly established Rugby team, who actually have won trophies and everything bless them, are more or less ignored. I just don't get it. Then again I'm sort of at a loss when it comes to sports in general I guess, so it might just be me.
Oh, and I absolutely adore rap battles. Seriously <3
My university's football team should probably be banned from playing because they're terrible. I think I'll write the NCAA about that.
I don't know about your school, but football is usually the money-making sport at universities. Others, like mine, might be dominated by basketball, but those two are the largest revenue streams, and get the most attention because of it, especially if the athletics department has to fund itself (through ticket sales, broadcast rights, donations, concessions, licensing and other goods for sale, and those damned student activity fees.) Your rugby team might be good, but it probably won't make the university a lot of money, especially if it's new, so it sadly goes ignored.
youtube.com/nicepeter epic rap battles of history 🙂
The intensity of school sports is why I don't like trying out for them (another reason is because 50 million laps around a soccer field is impossible for me and does not show off my goalie skills one bit). I tried out 2 years in high school and didnt make it, the third year i was asked if I wanted to join because the JV team needed more players. Everytime I let a goal in I felt so bad and I wasnt really friends with anyone on the team to help me shake it off. It was easier with my local community team, it was serious business but it was also intended to be fun.
Since I still want to play at college, and I don't have enough friends to play any pick-up games, I decided to sign up for a gym class and it has actually been a blast. I don't know the group as well as I knew my community teams (Even though the teams were different every year we had all been playing together for so long that I could know where anyone would be without looking for them sometimes) but its a regular thing and it is fun.
I may change my mind about club sports if my school ever gets around to forming a Quidditch team and joining the League though.
My high school doesn't have any sports teams. Not a single one. We don't even have an official school mascot. Hell, we don't even have a gymnasium.
I'm so glad that you made the comment about Alaska's flaws. Miles isn't actually seeing Alaska. He's seeing what he wants her to be, what he imagines her to be. It's such an important distinction. She's an ideal rather than a real person in his eyes.
I've always wished I was athletic. In fifth and sixth grade I always tried out for the track team, but I was never fast enough or jumped far enough. Group sports like softball and basketball confused me because I never knew how to read what was going on when we would play in gym class.
My high school was a football school to the Nth degree. They won the state championship the year after I graduated and at least one player from that team went on to play pro. My sophomore year I went to every single home game and some of the away games. I was completely obsessed. By senior year I just went if there was nothing else to do on a Friday night or some of my friends and I would go for a little bit after half time (you didn't have to pay) to kill time before going to a movie or concert or something. And well, my crush and most of my friends were in the band that year, so I'd ogle him.
1. Their cheer makes me think of the Our Lady of Angels fire. D:
2. If I was going to generalize, I would completely agree with Miles. Completely.
3. Sokka's haiku battle in the Tales of BaSingSe. Anyone?
That made me regret the fact that we didn't have any school teams. Public schools just tend to torture you with PE twice a week. I hate playing any sort of sport, particularly the ones involving balls. The fear of getting hit in the head with one when you wear glasses and have zero coordination is very great indeed.
But I do enjoy watching sports, even when the players suck. Lord knows our national football (soccer) team sucked for many years before we regained our long-lost famed reputation. I just love suffering during a game, not knowing how it's going to end but desperately wanting to win. There's something about really supporting a team that's really satisfying.
Anyway, I'm starting to feel like devouring the book whole in one sitting, which is usually a good sign when I'm reading new books. I'm going to need massive amounts of self-restraint to stop myself.
I would never smoke to die. I think that there are cheaper, faster, more potent, and more pleasant ways to kill yourself. Who the hell would want to die of lung cancer?
I never got to hear wonderful cheers like that. I went to a Christian school K-6 but the junior high cheerleaders didn't really do anything. I'd be surprised if they actually knew any cheers.
I was never really into sports in high school, although I enjoyed when we did our tennis unit and I was pretty good at catching frisbees in Ultimate Frisbee, and I'm pretty average at volleyball? Anyway, I didn't like the "big" sports. It was only about four years ago when I started college that I got into football, and now it seems my only wish in life is for the Bears to win the Superbowl. what. what has happened to me what have i been reduced to (cutler please make your broken thumb heal faster please kthnx ilu)
V guvax Nynfxn’f synjf zvtug nyfb cynl n ynetre ebyr va gur fgbel yngre.
LBH GUVAX. Bu Znex, arire cercnerq.
—
I like that Alaska stands up for Miles in this chapter and intentionally gets kicked out with him. I think maybe she knew it'd feel awful for him and thought he should have a friend.
Look, I have ADHD. I stare out the window all the time. I would do crossword puzzles in class if they'd let me. It is very, very difficult for me to just sit and listen and do nothing else. My brain is moving too fast and the surface-part of my brain needs something to chew on so the deeper-part can actually listen to what someone is saying. So no, I don't have a lot of love for what this professor does. I understand that some people are like that. But not all of us are pros at paying attention and never daydreaming ever.
I'm getting more eerie parallels from this chapter. My college, Simon's Rock, was also named after a feature in the thick woods surrounding the campus. In this case, yes, it was a giant rock. Like, the size of a small house. Apparently, before the woods grew up there, you could see the whole expanse of land that the college is on, so they named the college after that because of seeing things from a certain perspective, or something. Now, the rock is hidden in the woods, but it's still a good place to go if you want to get away from the campus and just think. I still remember learning the three different paths that led to it, each of varying length and pathiness. Sometimes you weren't sure you were on the right path or on the path at all, but then you'd see the rock up ahead and realize you were right all along.
And look, here's me on the rock!
Another parallel is, we had ridiculous cheers EXACTLY LIKE CULVER CREEK DOES. Our school was such crap at sports, but we were great at making up cheers. My college is affiliated with a larger college, and the president, Leon Botstein, is technically president of both colleges, so when we played against them we had the cheer "We are swiss and you are cheddar / Leon Botstein likes us better!"
I also, for some weird reason, was part of a dance team that would do ridiculous dances to "support" the teams. Really we wanted an excuse to dance around to silly pop music, I think. It was pretty fun.
I LOL'd at what the Colonel said about them always beating the deaf-and-blind school. The one school we always beat was the one for the developmentally disabled. Seriously, it's like John Green went to my college.
"You're adorable. Too bad I love my boyfriend." It's easy to hate Alaska for saying shit like this, but I WAS her for a while, before I learned how not to be an asshole in relationships. So I feel that I know what it's like and what kinds of things make her that way. I can't hate her because I understand her.
(But not the "I smoke to die" stuff. I was never like that.)
I love Takumi's rap, it reminds me of Sokka's haiku battle.
That photograph of you on the rock – how did you get to the top? Any clever climbing required? 🙂
I am fascinated by the story of you storming out. Sounds epic!
Also comets can lead with their tails – if they are moving towards the sun.
I always had fun at football games…but I was in the band and we were just playing music and doing the half-time show. XD But marching band was awesome and it didn't matter if our team lost (which they usually did) because I had fun freezing with my bandmates.
I do not like sports though. I played rec soccer up until 9th grade but that was the extent of my sports playing.