Ebaby! Blog

Every month or so, the cast gets together to make lesson videos. We call this a cast session.

We had a session a couple of nights ago at a mellow and supposedly haunted pizza joint near the office. Amanda knows one of the owners and emailed to ask if we could film there. He didn’t reply, but we figured it would be cool.

But after about one video we got kicked out. I guess video cameras anger the ghosts. As we walked down the street looking for a new location, I suggested we stop outside another mellow local business so we could recreate a scene that happened in real life.

I commonly flip coins and roll dice to make decisions. Ever since Devan saw No Country for Old Men, this freaks her out, because apparently the killer in the movie does something similar (I am the only person in America who hasn’t seen it yet). We recorded a lesson on the movie a few months ago, but one of the microphones was accidentally off, so I figured we’d do it again.

We started setting up to film a quick video at an outdoor table. Now, this bar happens to be frequented by bike messengers. And bike messengers are usually good folk. I interviewed one the other day. Anyway, a stocky messenger came out of the bar and started looking at us a little funny. Mason asked him if we were blocking access to his bike. He said no and continued to stare.

“It’s not a joke, you know, this is what we do,” he said out of nowhere.

“Oh we’re just making videos that help people learn English. Nothing to do with bike messengers,” I said.

“This is bike messenger territory.”

I laughed.

“Oh you think that’s funny?”

I laughed some more. I mean, I expected him to say he was joking at any minute.
“Just keep laughing!” He yelled.

“I just don’t understand what we’re arguing about,” I laughed. ‘Cause, really, I didn’t, and it was quite silly.

“Why don’t you just go back where you came from?”

Now, noticing a Canadian flag patch on his jacket, and perhaps a hint of a Canadian accent, I dropped the wise-guy line, “OK, we’ll go back to Canada.”

“Say that again.” Dead serious.

“Um, we’re from Canada?” Then he mumbled some expletives and went back inside. We shot the scene, but I was in such a hurry to get out of there that I forgot to hit stop on the recorder at the end before I turned it off, which causes the audio to get erased. Mason’s going to check if the audio from the camera might be good enough, but my guess is that we’re going to have record a third lesson on No Country for Old Men. Oh well, that one was probably a little rushed for ESL students anyway.

Mason said if I had gotten in a fight he would have filmed it. I told him that was the right thing to do.

It’s no big secret that rhymes help people remember things. Kids can learn using nursery rhymes, so why not ESL students too? Perhaps that’s what EnglishToday had in mind when they set out to produce a series of video limericks to help you learn English.

It’s a valiant attempt, but rhyming is harder than you think. Sure you’ve got “right, tight; lefty loosie” useful mnemonic devises, but rhymes aren’t usually that convenient. You commonly have to compromise meaning or word choice pretty heavily in order to get the job done.

This limerick about Maggie the Millipede is one of the best ones. I had to double check if it was already an existing limerick, but I think it’s original.

Some of the limerick videos are just this very, very British man talking into the camera in funny hats, which is pretty endearing. They did a good job of structuring these for YouTube. The meat of the video (the limerick), is at the beginning and there’s a bunch of silly stuff afterward in case you want to keep watching.

The only problem here is that the limerick is almost a tongue twister and is actually pretty tough to follow (Is “nobbled” a common word in the UK? I had to look it up. Spell check doesn’t even recognize it as a word.). This one about a three legged cat is pretty tough as far as English vocab goes as well. But the extras after the limerick are hilarious. I burst out laughing when clip art started landing on the cat’s back near the end.

So last week on the soap opera, Mason and Amanda finally got together. We spent three months dragging out the idea that she liked him and he wouldn’t notice her. But apparently that just wasn’t long enough for one incredibly patient Chinese member.

Of course there were many comments saying “Oh! How romantic!” and stuff like that. But you know what? I have to agree with this wise opinion instead.

May I only pray that all the real life Amanda’s of my life and men like me find this blog. But if they don’t, a couple of comments on a lesson about spooning reminds us that we always have one special lady in our lives…

Well, I’m not quite there yet. Apparently I have a couple of other options from fans I won with the wedding video.

That last one is particularly encouraging since I just found out that I am, in fact, going to China. More details about that later. But I’m already planning how I’ll impress the ladies there. I’ll amaze them with my powers to make the mundane interesting. A couple of minds seem completely blown by my lesson on losing your phone.

Well, that about wraps it up for this edition of best comments, so I leave you with the will-you-be-my-friend comment of the week. This one is sort of an Ebaby! inside joke which will be especially funny to regular users.

If you don’t fill out your profile, your name is a black non-link on the site. A lot of these non-links don’t realize they are non-links who can’t be messaged and go around asking for people add them. This one apparently missed an opportunity by just a few minutes…

Like two trains passing in the night…