I was wondering where the week went when I remembered where the week went: yearbooks and Fable.

Yearbooks came out this week, and the senior class has been a real asshole about it. This is the coolest book we've ever done and it looks great even though we had extra work to do this year and less time in which to do it. I had no seniors on my yearbook staff. Actually, scratch that - I had one senior who was responsible for the senior section who just disappeared along with the pictures halfway through the year. So the senior section is thin. I begged and pleaded with the senior class to give me some photos and they shrugged their shoulders. So now they're all pissy and spreading bad press about the book, which is making it difficult to sell.

So get ready. Class of 2011 seems to want a whole lot for nothing.

Anyhow, I also got a new XBox. Ours was stolen over a year ago, but we finally got a new one last weekend so I could start over with my character on Fable 2. This time I'm doing all the side shit and dyeing my hair and stuff, and I'm taking the relationship shit seriously. Like, sure, I could go buy a shitty house and marry the first villager who demands a ring, but fuck that. I want a guy who's going places like Sam the alchemist or Greg the bookseller: upstanding citizens of Albion. And I will buy a nice house in a nice part of town with my earnings. No sleeping in the Gypsy caravan for me.

I love games like Fable because you control the story. The first time through this game I married a nerdy dude, but he seemed unhappy, so I took him to his favorite place to try to cheer him up with a picnic. We were attacked by bandits, and while I ran off to kill them all he was stabbed to death. That was really sad. Like for a minute I was really broken up about that. I just wanted him to be happy, and I got him killed instead.

So I'm waiting a while before I get married this time. I want to be a responsible ass kicking wife and homeowner. Sure I like to raise the dead to slaughter my enemies, but that doesn't mean I don't have love to give.

I still can't be a bad guy, though. No matter how many of these role playing games I get into, I still can't be bad.

Man I am tired as hell.

Today is yearbook distribution day. I sent out invited to all seniors who preordered books and had them come to my room for a slide show. It was probably a hundred kids packed in there like sardines. And as usual, technical difficulties screwed us up. Six years I've done yearbooks, and six times the distribution has been all screwed up because something horrible went wrong at the last minute.

This time the slide show didn't work because the projector wouldn't recognize the computer it recognized just fine when we tested it yesterday. So we said "fuck it" and handed out books. That actually went pretty well. There are a few mistakes but there are always a few mistakes. It's too early to hear if people like it, but it looks like they do.

For some reason my editor is still trying to make the slide show work, two hours later. More power to that lovable little guy, but I think it's past the point where it matters.

The hardest part is fielding the eight thousand questions and comments from people right while you're in the middle of handing out books. My first time, in the middle of the horrible chaos I had created for myself, while all was going to hell and I was considering suicide as my only out, some dumbass kid decided to point out a typo on a random page. I almost changed my suicide plan to a murder plan.

After work today we all have meetings by department, so I get to write again. Maybe I'll have time to work on some pages from the script. At least I get to bring my yearbook and watch everybody make a fuss about how awesome it looks, unless they decide to point out typos, which they will because they're all English teachers.

I am a yearbook adviser and tomorrow is the day we submit the entire yearbook. In the past two years at this school, there was so much gone horribly wrong in general that nobody really gave the yearbook any thought. This year, however, things have stabilized and we're preordering books like gangbusters. Before, it was the kids who made my life hell because they just didn't give a shit. This year, the kids are absolutely fantastic and it's the adults who cause the problems. So here is an open letter to all the adults who have given shit to yearbook advisers this year.

Hey you.

Yeah you, the one who keeps making demands and refusing to cooperate.

Fuck you.

I have over 3,000 kids on three tracks to place on 152 pages. I also have to include about two dozen sports, a dozen clubs, student life, baby photos, and leave room for ads and an index. I have to do this using 2 - yes, asshole, TWO - cameras, neither of which is fancy enough to take photos in that gym that is apparently lit with 8 yellow 30 watt bulbs. I have 20 kids and 4 computers. And I have over 200 faculty members who all think that whatever it is they like to think about is the most important issue on campus ever.

I'll tell you what. You let me teach your JROTC how to drill. You let me show your chorus how to warble. You let me teach some goddamn AP calculus while you come over here and handle this shit. Because if you want to do my job, here you go. Let's trade. I'm sure your job is easy, right?

Here in yearbook class we do not glue pictures to pages and photocopy them. This is not a scrap book and it is not a 'zine. It's a goddamn book. That's why they call it a yearBOOK. It takes time and coordination and organization and talent and dedication to complete. And money. Did I mention the money?

I have no money. If I undersell the books, there is no money to pay for them. If I miss deadlines, there is no money to pay the overtime. So when you decide you don't feel like waiting five minutes for my clubs editor to take a picture of your silly little honor society, no I will not push our deadline two more weeks so you can reassemble your little band of nerds. Take the picture yourself and email it to me if it's that fucking important. Otherwise I'm deleting your shit and replacing it with something interesting to look at. Our deadline is tomorrow. You probably should have scheduled your picture back in December when the subject was first brought to your attention.

So in conclusion, here is what is going to happen. We are going to put this awesome book together and you are going to help in any way you can. And if you bitch about it, I'm still going to do your page the way the kids want to do it because it is THEIR book, not yours. It's not mine either. It's theirs. And this is about them. Remember the kids? This is not about a picture you like or a kid you want to prominently feature, and it is not about showing me or your students who's boss. This is about teaching kids how to design pages, take photos, write captions, run a committee. This is not about your little group, it's about representing the whole school, and if you give a shit about your kids you will make sure they are represented in the book by doing what I tell you to do. Because when it comes to year-end memories, I am the fucking boss. So show some fucking respect, shut up and hand over your pictures or next year you'll be relegated to a tiny photo in the index between X and Y.

Sincerely,

Your Yearbook Adviser.

Before I get to the business at hand, the one bedroom apartment right next door is vacant and will be available by the end of the month. It's on the third floor of an awesome building. I have a great landlord who gave me candy for Christmas and I can walk to Larchmont. Plus, there's actually plenty of available parking on the street and one space in the garage. I love my apartment.

So if any of you cats are looking for a place to live email me. I want somebody cool living next door. It would be awesome if it was a writer because if I have an idea I could just yell over to your balcony and we could brainstorm. Also, when my cat climbs over there to see what you're up to it wouldn't freak you out as much as it did the old neighbors when they woke up to find a strange cat sitting in their living room.

I think there's also a two bedroom vacant somewhere in the building.

Now. Yesterday I had to deal out a major conflict resolution in Yearbook. The main group of senior girls have spent months working on a book that follows a pop art theme. The book is full of bright colors and wacky pages and it looks really really cool. It's the most creative book I've yet been a part of and everybody was working and things were going well.

So the new semester began and I got three new students who don't like the pop art theme. And yesterday they decided to tell everybody what they thought. "I think we need to be more traditional," they said. "I don't think this looks very good."

1) It's not finished yet. Nothing looks good until it's finished but you have to look at the potential.
2) You just got here. Shut your pie hole until you know what you're talking about.
3) Our school is three years old and filled with immigrants and the children of immigrants and we're constantly in the news for our crazy behavior. We ain't some 50-year-old private school in a rich, white neighborhood. The traditional theme doesn't fit who we are.
4) We have one month left to finish this book we've been working on since July and you want to change the entire thing?

So I sat the whole class down yesterday and we had a big discussion. I thought we were going to have a major cat fight. "We don't want to change all of it," one girl said, "Just the senior section. We think it should be burgundy because that's our class color." (They decided on their class color three weeks ago.)

Yes. Andy Warhol often worked in burgundy.

So the girl who thinks she knows everything about art wants to take 30 pages of the book and make it burgundy while making the rest of the book bright pink and green. Yeah that will look awesome.

So I had to spend class yesterday holding back the girls who've been working on this idea all year while still pretending I respected the ideas of the new kids as I told them there was no way in hell we're making the changes they want. In the end we compromised. We'll make the seniors wear burgundy shirts in the senior class photo and the new kids will shut up and trust me and their fellow yearbook staff members.

I bet you never thought yearbook was this complicated or important to some people. Oh yes it is. I can't tell you how many shouting matches I've had over yearbooks in the past five years. I once had such a loud argument with the ROTC guy that the teacher next door had to come over and ask us to quiet down. He wanted to design the ROTC page himself and I told him that would not happen until he let me teach his class how to march.

When the yearbook came out he sent me a thank you / apology card.

If I can handle a 50-year-old soldier who has killed people in the Iraqi desert I think I can handle three know-it-all teenage girls.