Comments (0)

By Mark D, November 26, 2011 9:42 pm

(Sorry about the lack of posts after saying I was back. My laptop cord broke so I wasn’t able to post anything. I should be back now.)

So for my Senior year I was forced to take two electives, and both the electives I wanted rejected me. I amazingly wasn’t allowed into AP Political Sciences due to falling asleep and being bored with the teacher when I had him for AP US History the year before. I also wanted into Drama, but the one young hot female teacher in the school was teaching it and suddenly the whole football team had an interest in drama.

So in the end I took Criminology (I liked watching cops) and Art (it was easy). Art was a part of my block of classes, meaning I had the same 4 classes with the same 20 or so kids. It was also at the end of the day, after our free period. Yes, in a genius move of schedule making they gave us the next to last period of the day free. Since the teacher was cool, he started excusing people who wanted to skip the class. So after the first month there were 7 of us left in the class. One day he even asked the last of us why we kept coming back, and it was cause 5 of us had detention every day.

So in a story I’ll get to another day or got to before, I can’t remember, I ended up transferring to a new school. In my stupidity I didn’t realize that they didn’t have a rule about being forced to take two electives, so I could have dropped both those classes. Instead I got to go to the Art class with a teacher who was known as Special K. They also had multiple English classes, so I got to take drama. Since they didn’t have criminology the woman doing my transfer decided that sociology sounded the same and was close enough. She seriously said this with me right there.

The two important classes are sociology and drama. It ended up they were both taught by the same teacher, the Doc. The Doc was a complete throwback to the 50s and had never really evolved with the times. After insulting us multiple times about how we weren’t ready for college and how great college was and we didn’t deserve it, I flustered him by asking him why he wasn’t teaching in College. It ends up he was so conservative that no college would take him back anymore. He was also obsessed with Cowboys, to the point that his lesson plan consisted of comparing everything to cowboys.

That was a treat, compared to his drama class. It was the most boring, dull, lecturing class on drama I ever had. He started writing so many ridiculous notes that he would full two boards (our class was designed to face either board) and sometimes go back to the first and start writing more. I remember none of what he wrote, and thankfully about halfway through the year I realized how pointless it was to write all these notes and stopped. I wouldn’t call it so much a class as just plan out torture.

We also butted heads multiple times during the year, especially in sociology. Oh and I should mention that I had him for back to back classes in first and second period. I was ready to stab my eardrums after sitting through his classes. They only seemed to make the day go on longer. So at the end of the year, I finally had enough. On the next to last day of school I started arguing with him during the first five minutes of class and got tossed out. I did the same thing in second period and got tossed.

So this was great because he was obviously deluded if he thought I was going to stay after school for detention. Speaking of which the following morning the dean checked with me and mentioned I had missed detention. She also asked if I was going to go to the detention I had that afternoon. Sure, I was going to show up to detention on the final day of school! What was she smoking? So I went through my plan of getting thrown out of both his classes again. During sociology I said “Yippie Kay Yay, Mother Fucker” as I left and got a huge laugh out of the class.

Unfortunately I ran into the principal who was not only curious what I was doing out of class, but why he had a 3 page letter from my art teacher. I should also mention that he was bald and his head had this bulging vein which was at an all time high chance of exploding. You see that’s a story for another day. High School was fun.

Comments (0)

By Mark D, June 16, 2011 6:57 pm

Although I did go to a lot of different schools. I could never last more then 4 years at a school. So for clarity it’s the school I went through from 4th to 8th grade. Apparently the attendance had gotten so bad that they had merged some of the classes. I have almost nothing but horrible memories about the place. The teachers almost all hated me, and since I got there half way through, I never endeared myself to the people I went there with. I actually checked my facebook and there’s all of 2 people on it that I know from that school.

It was great seeing some of the teachers that really hated me crying in the pictures. When I joined the school there was 5 or 6 of us who joined it the same year from the same public school. We had a Sister the first year, who basically HATED everyone that had transferred in. Within two years there was only two of us left. That same Sister went on to become the Principal of the school. She was probably part of the reason the school went under, she was always so evil. From everything I heard from my friend who had a brother that went there after him and said it was even worse.

The funny thing is, I know people who are crying over this because their kids aren’t going to be able to go to that shithole of a school. Seriously, this one girl I graduated with it was like the family tradition to go to school there. It wasn’t just the people in her close family either, it was her aunts, uncles and cousins too. Considering she just had a kid, I really think she is crying that her kid can’t go to the school.

Some people just care too much. Does it really matter what school you send your kids to? At the point that your crying about a school closing, maybe you should take a good hard look at your life. Maybe it’s time to get up and move and try living somewhere else. I think moving away from Staten Island was the best idea I ever had. Too expensive to live there, nowhere to rent, traffic everywhere. It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. I don’t think I’ve understand the importance of staying in one area your whole life. At some point don’t you just wonder what’s out there in the rest of the world? Is spending a few years in college enough to make up for wanting to maybe live and see a few more places? People are weird.

Comments (6)

By Mark D, February 9, 2011 11:11 pm

Republican Chris Lee, a congressman from Western NY, has announced his resignation today. In the end, it really isn’t that surprising. Republicans time and again brag about being the Family Values party, about being anti-homosexual, yet it seems like they are the most likely to either cheat on their family or be gay. The best part about Chris Lee getting busted is that he actually said his real name in emails with woman on craigslist. That’s right, a congressperson got busted by responding to ads on craigslist.

Although he still doesn’t take the cake. Vito Fossella probably does. See, Vito got busted on drunk driving charges while driving in Virginia. The interesting thing was that he has a staff and a driver, so why he was driving himself around was odd. Then it came out that he was having an extramarital affair with the woman who he had bail him out. The icing on the cake? He also had a 3 year old child with the woman. Of course Fossella was someone who consistently ran on the “Family Values” line.

I guess in the end these guys cheat because it would be so risque to get a divorce. They have to keep up appearances because it’s more important to them to keep getting elected then to do whats right for their family. If you get to that point that you feel like you have to cheat, you should take a step back and take stock. Your hurting your family, your kids, and people you know for your own gain. In the end it’s almost always going to be discovered and people are going to sense something is off. In the end whenever you cheat you are stealing from your family.

But once again, these are people to whom it is more important to keep up appearances then to actually admit they might be wrong. It’s why the government is run so badly, because in the end its not about running the government well, it’s about keeping up appearances for constituents. It’s about getting that pointless earmark or pork barrel so you can say you got something for them instead of standing for whats right. It’s an overall bigger issue which needs to be fixed, but never will until the Republicans and Democrats lose power. Until then it will be a desperate attempt to keep the status quo until it can no longer even be maintained. But by that point the status quo will be set so low that anyone can reach it.

Comments (0)

By Mark D, November 5, 2010 11:02 pm

So my favorite area Pizzeria ended up being bought out, and I’m not really a fan of the new people. It got me to thinking of growing up, and for a really Italian neighborhood in NYC we really didn’t have  that many Pizza places in the area. The main one, called Nunzio’s, had been around since the beginning of time. It looked like a relic of the 50′s surrounded by newer buildings. But it was good and popular. There was also LaRocca’s Italian Ices and Pizza.

You see the problem was that Nunzio’s was too popular. There was always a huge wait for anything. LaRocca’s was a bit better, but it was closed in the winter and tended to get long lines too. So there would always be one or two pizzerias that would come and go. That is until LaRocca’s decided to go year round. Between the two of them they put just about everyone in the area out of business. I never did like LaRocca’s though, the family that owned it were a bunch of douches to the Nth degree.

So it ended up that we were always trying to find new places to get pizza from as the old ones closed. The funniest thing growing up was that a Little Caesar’s actually opened up half a block away from Nunzio’s. Needless to say they got lucky because the first few months Nunzio’s was closed for repair, but as soon as Nunzio’s re-opened Little Caesar’s was a ghost town.

LaRocca’s saving grace was the Italian Ices. Otherwise it would have went down the same as everyone else in the area did. Although I am always surprised that more people didn’t add Italian Ices to their menu wit the success LaRocca’s had. It was so painful to wait in that line forever and then find out that the flavor you wanted. That happened far too often. Dam you people and your love of Mint Chocolate Chip!

There was also Goodfella’s Pizza, not in my area but close enough for pickup. They’ve won a whole bunch of awards, but I have no idea why. Their plain pizza was horrible. I hate when places use a ton of sauce and just put Islands of cheese in it. Supposedly their specialty pizzas won the awards, but if you can’t get a plain pizza right your a jerkoff. That and everyone I knew who actually had pizza there on a regular basis had horrible taste in pizza.

So every year or two there would be a place I liked, and eventually it would run out of business. It was funny because you could tell how desperate a place was by how much they loved you when you came in. Some of these places you could have mistaken me for the second coming of christ. I still say they had good pizza, just horrible location. A lot of independent places went out of business while I was growing up. It’s so annoying having to find another place with good food. So few places get it right.

Comments (3)

By Mark D, October 13, 2010 12:43 am

Ahhh, the wonderful Monsignor Farrell High School. Easily one of the most overrated institutions on Staten Island, but a very much underrated prison. I spent three years at Monsignor Farrell, three years of my life that I wish I could have back. There’s a lot of things in my life that I believe might have scarred me or caused my rather interesting personality, but top of that list would have to be my time spent in Farrell. In fairness it was probably a stupid decision on my part, I liked Moore Catholic High School better, but they didn’t have a football team. Also all the asshole guys from my middle school went to Farrell.

So where do the problems begin and end with Monsignor Farrell High School? The Vice Principal or Assistant Principal Lawrence Musanti. You see, Mr Musanti is a retired NYC Police Officer. Retired police officers are allowed to hold jobs and still receive their pensions. So Lawrence Musanti went around hiring all his retired cop buddies to be deans and even teachers, but mostly deans. So that means that every student at Monsignor Farrell got the joy of being treated like a criminal. Every time you went to the Deans office it became an interrogation with a good cop / bad cop mentality between the Deans. The former cops who taught were just as fun, as they made it their #1 point not to educate, but to try to catch people who cheated.

Even more fun is that while I was there, Lawrence Musanti picked up checks not just for being assistant principal, but he also made himself (since he was in charge of hiring) the Varsity Coach of not only the Baseball and Basketball teams, but even the Ice Hockey team. He was picking up checks for coaching all three teams while he was also the Assistant Principal. No one even questioned it back then, but at least now according to the Monsignor Farrell website he is no longer coaching those three teams.

I can not in words explain the fun of interrogation by the Deans. One time they claimed that I was vandalizing school property, and scribbled with one of my pens next to the vandalized area. The ink matched, but thankfully I was able to point out that the only pens I had on me were pens sold in the school store so it wasn’t exactly damning evidence. Time and again the Deans would question you and ask your side of the story, and then tell you how your view/explanation was wrong. It never mattered what you said, the Deans always had it right and you were wrong.

At the same time the Deans and Lawrence Musanti turned a blind eye to all the trouble the athletes were causing. Most of them never got in trouble for what they did, let alone be told that their stories were wrong. Unless of course the team happened to suck. In my Junior year the Basketball team was godawful, and one day we came in to find out that 6 members of the team had been expelled for some minor prank. It was never a question of what the prank was, but more an unspoken word that if the team sucked, you could expect to get your special privileges revoked.

I’ll never forget my final day at the school. One of the Deans looked at me and said “Mr D, it looks like your on your way of being the first senior kicked out”. All I could think of was how I just didn’t want to be there anymore. It wasn’t a threat to kick me out, it was the best thing they could do for me was to get me out of that prison. When I got home that day I told my parents that was it, I wasn’t going back there. They weren’t going to hang over my head the next 3 quarters of the school year that they were going to kick me out. When my parents showed up and told them this they begged for me to stay (my parents had paid my tuition, which couldn’t be refunded but could be transferred to my brother) and to show up to give the school one more chance. Mr Musanti, the Deans and even the Principal who rarely did anything were there that day with my parents.

In the end I transferred to Moore Catholic, and had a kick ass senior year except for a few oddities. I really can’t recommend enough Moore Catholic as shoulder and heads above Monsignor Farrell. If you find yourself in a choice between the two, definitely pick Moore Catholic. You don’t get treated like criminals, the teachers actually care, and it’s just a lot more of a fun environment.