Today is the Worst Day of the Rest of Your Life

So, not only Darren McGavin, but Don Knotts and Dennis Weaver and now Jack Wild (although he kind of creeped me out on H.R. Pufnstuf. Honestly, he was hardly a lost little boy. He was 25 or something at the time, wasn't he?). The New York Times obit for Don Knotts is fantastic ("You know, you're a funny little son of a bitch").

So Writing 122 was better than expected, since I wasn't the only one answering questions in class this time (which is good because I had a bad, bad headache) and I found out one of my classmates works at "Paintball Palace" and that's very cool, but the next class was Italian.

Yesterday Signora asked us to write a paragraph describing what was going on in a cartoon of a soccer game between Milan and Juventus. I put down an amusing little story about how Patrick Viera (former Arsenal, but now Juventus) ran the ball down field and scored a GOLLLLLLLLLLL. She emailed me back with the following (and this is all):
MOLTO BENE!! I JUMPED ON MY CHAIR TOO WHEN HE MADE THE GOL!

That's not the way it came out in class when she used it as an example, in Powerpoint ... with colors.

First instead of having the ball and running toward the goal (sta avendo la palla e sta correndo al gol) she said it should be kick the ball to the goal (tirando al gol -- tirare is not a word in the vocabulary list we were given for the assignment; it's also not in our book glossary because I looked for it). Well that takes out running. I had the coach shouting "SCORE SCORE (l'allenatore sta dicendo "SEGNARE! SEGNARE!") until she pointed out that the coach was standing next to cartoon players in different shirts than the one with the ball (a detail that hardly matters; you might as well point out that the cartoon player with the ball was white and Viera is not) so she said that he was actually shouting at the goalie to "PARA! PARA!" (I assume it means to block, however it is not on the vocabulary list). I say Viera shoots and scores and the crowd cheers and the squad kisses Viera. She points out that the referee is blowing a whistle because one of the cartoon players must be off-side (no Italian translation in our book -- no vocabulary for "blows a whistle" either), which means Viera doesn't score, the crowd does not cheer and no one kisses Viera.

Bene?

After class I spent 10 minutes crying in the ladies' room like a 3rd grader.