What movie was that guy in?

So… I am currently teaching at Black Hawk College’s College for Kids program. It’s my third year of teaching three sections of Theatre Arts to a bunch of “I’m-too-cool-to-really-participate-so-I-am-going-to-pretend-like-I-don’t-have-a-real-personality” junior high kids. 80% of the time I thoroughly enjoy my job and the other 20% I really, really, really feel life would be better if I were to have strong addiction to heroin or some other drug that, if busted, would lock me away for years. Alone.

(Don’t worry, I am getting to the actually point of the story…)

Alas, here I am… with no drug addiction (well, not heroin anyway) and sometimes it amazes me how un-cultured these teens really are…

In my first class…
In the midst of one of my favorite improv games (Black Bart), I yelled out, “Ok, you’re all Tom Cruise! Go!” They all stopped laughing, talking, and said… said… “Who’s that?” I was shocked. Shocked. I had no freakin’ idea what to say to that. This ended in a 15 minute discussion about who he was and finally someone goes, “Oh, he’s that old guy from ‘War of the Worlds.’ ” I honestly could not believe that these kids, who knew every single actor from “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Jeepers Creepers,” and “John Tucker Must Die,” did not even know the name. What the hell…

In my third class…
The game was “Party Guest.” Simple idea: one person (the host) goes out into the hall, three are chosen as the “guests.” Each is given a personality to work with and it is their job to accurately portray said personality so that they can be named by the host. For this one guy the class chose “Jim Carrey,” which I thought was bold choice. It’s easy to perform, should be no problem for this kid. Wrong. This kid had no idea who he was. Unbelievable. About 10 minutes later, he discovered that he had seen half of “Bruce Almighty” once. So Sad…

Same class. Same guy. Same game.

After we discovered he could not even begin to act Jim Carrey, I decided to give him someone he’d surely know. Michael Jackson. I said it, and his reply was “I don’t know what movie that guy is in.” Oh boy. The King of Pop. Shafted by a 12 year old…. which is ironic because usually little boys love Michael!

Awkward yet classic…

(For this next line, put on pretentious actor voice)
How I do weep for our future.

It’s not a good time.