Slighcarp and Grimshaw

Forever-love for Agent Cooper notwithstanding, my heart is broken.

It is Regents week for New York State, which means testing, testing, testing for the kids and lounging about bitching and wisecracking for the teachers. My particular schedule yesterday kept me in the school until 7pm last night. It’s not natural for anyone to be still at a high school at 7pm unless it’s Friday night and the spring musical is up. I tell you this so you may understand that the aberrant nature of my evening is the only explanation I have for the strange and doleful death of Heath Ledger. I was standing in the special education office, waiting to hitch a ride across I-95 from my assistant principal, when Jeff texted me to tell me he has to write three lessons by today “oh and heath ledger is dead”.

We watched “10 Things I Hate About You” in memoriam last night. In an effort to bulk up our bullshit movies to just throw on anytime, we bought it a few months ago when we saw it at Borders for a mere nine dollars and change. I remember when that movie came out, amidst a glut of other “teen comedies.” But “10 Things I Hate About You” is not your average teen comedy. Perhaps this is why Mrs. Kelly herself saw it six times in the theater. Six times. In the theater. Just take that in for a moment. I went with her twice. That means between the two of us we spent at least $56 to see that movie in high school.

“10 Things I Hate About You” is pitch perfect in its execution of vulgarity. It is not gross-out humor from the school of “American Pie.” It is more the vulgar comedy that runs hourly through my brain and keeps me sane in the long hours of talking only to high school kids. It is the vulgar comedy of 35-year-olds writing what they would have said as high schoolers if they had been 35-year-old writers at the time. (This is, by the way, how the writers of “Buffy” describe the dialogue on that show.) And the flick wastes no time getting the ball rolling. Cameron arrives in the guidance counselor’s office and Ms. Perky, the guidance counselor, tells him by way of introduction and welcome, “I’m sure you won’t find Padua any different than your old schools. Same little asswipe shit-for-brains everywhere.” I love that line every time.

And of course, the glue that holds the film together, Heath Ledger as Patrick Verona. Patrick Verona who is direct from the mold of my perfect romantic hero. He is outstandingly beautiful, he makes smart reference to Bianca’s potentially “beer-flavored nipples,” he gives Cameron (lust, Joseph Gordon Levitt, post “Third Rock” and pre “Mysterious Skin”) beautiful advice to keep pursuing Bianca because he should never “let anyone ever make you feel like you don’t deserve what you want,” and the whole while the school thinks he is some barbarian who once ate a duck– “everything but the beak and feet.”

How can it be that Heath Ledger is dead by an overdose of OTC sleeping pills? How will my teenage heart recover? Perhaps I’ll watch “10 Things I Hate About You” again tonight. Or this morning as I grade finals and mini-papers.