After the first WASC process presentation, a number of setbacks occurred. First, Aimee, Mary, and an assistant principal met with the WASC coordinators from our area, only to learn that since there had been such confusion over this new process, it was going to be altered to help some of the slower schools. We would have to suck it up, and make "an in-flight correction." Great. The second setback was evident when our fearless leader asked us to put together another presentation. It seemed that the staff really didn't know what was going on. Even though we had since moved on through steps four and five, creating responses and gathering evidence within our departments and discipline-specific groups, then meeting in focus groups to see how the school program was working according to the WASC criteria, the staff was still unclear as to what they were doing. They were following directions and creating a good report, she said, but they needed to understand the process better. She wanted, as she put it, "a visual" to make the concept clearer. Yeah, I got a visual for you.
Aimee and I sat down and thought hard. I came up with a metaphor of floating papers creating stacks that then would become the finished report. Aimee liked it. Plus, she wanted even more sights and sounds. Film and music. And I set to thinking. An educational film. But funny. No To Sir With Love here. Stand and Deliver? No. Too preachy. Fast Times at Ridgemont High? Cool... whoops, not available on laserdisc. ANIMAL HOUSE. Right. Perfect. We could even recast the film with members of our own staff. And I set off to work on it.
Creation of the text and graphics took days. Scanning in images from Animal House, for the staff re-casting took more days. Creating the HyperStudio buttons to drive the laserdisc player another day. But we still needed a visual. I kept bugging Aimee, who in turn bugged Mary, for an idea. One day, the three of us, laughing at the insanity of it all, said that this was a huge pile of shit.
Now that's a visual.
So Aimee convinced David Jones, art teacher extraordinaire (and good sport) to draw a heaping, steaming mound of dog shit. It was beautiful. But it wasn't enough. I asked David to then draw two flies, and put Aimee's and my faces on the flies...this way I could animate the flies to move around the pile of shit. We now had our visual.
For the staff re-casting of Animal House, Bruce Metcalf went out and took photos of the members of our faculty we wanted to use. The faculty members were unaware of our purposes. We were going to superimpose their faces onto the faces of the actors in the "meet the Dean" sequence, in which the members of the Delta House receive their grade point averages from the Dean. We had pictures of everyone except someone to be Bluto (John Belushi); this person would have to be a good sport since Bluto had pencils up his nose like a walrus, and we wanted something similar. I don't know how Aimee did it, but she convinced Joan Grey to take a picture with pencils up her nose (I learned later, she told our fearless leader it was my idea. Thanks, Aimee.).
We were set. The visuals were ready. We had a Top Ten list ready (including #10 "WASC is like a box of chocolates...you never know what brown thing you're going to bite", #5 "I just work here...the person you really want to talk to is Aimee Hamm", and number one [from Animal House]: "Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the fucking Peace Corps!"). The film clips were ready. The only thing missing was music. I had set up one graphic that read "The Road to March has turned into... The Highway to HELL!" And we had AC/DC cued up for that card, but what could we use to open the presentation?
I liked the idea of using the opening music of Pulp Fiction, the surf sounds of "Miserlou," to open the presentation, and I had the disc. The afternoon before the presentation, as the three of us were putting the final finishing touches on the presentation, I broke out the disc. We cranked it up. There was only one problem. Just before the opening of "Miserlou" there is a rather profane dialogue. We could cut that out when we used the piece but today we let it roll.
Did I say one problem? Make that two... just as the disc kicked in, the principal walked into the library to be greeted at volume ten with:
"If any of you fucking pricks move, I execute every motherfucking last one of you!"
She had come in to check on our progress, I think, worried about how professional her nostril shot had turned out. And now this.
"I certainly hope this isn't part of your presentation." And she walked out of the library.
Great.
The second presentation went well. But not great. Most of the staff was in no mood to be entertained, as if our sense of humor would be entertaining to most of the staff. Oh, well. So they didn’t laugh. At least more of the staff seemed clearer on the process.
Funny, though... Grey never asked for another presentation.
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