...blogging is not dead...

Three Things

2012-01-27T11:34:00.003-05:00

1. For the first time since graduate school, I'm teaching MWF classes. Hello Friday. After three weeks, my sense is that Friday morning is great for freewriting and discussions, not as great for peer review and other more regimented tasks. Today, among other things, my two classes included: watching a youtube video of Patti Smith covering Adele, a discussion of Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Arabic Coffee," and a discussion with a young woman about her name happening to be the name of a city in Lebanon and a tasty dish often eaten at funerals or during Ashura. Believe it or not, we were focused (mostly). For the first time this term, I wasn't wearing jeans nor slippers.

2. I love goodreads.com and wish I would've joined sooner. Great place to track books you have read, are reading, and plan to read.

3. Naomi Shihab Nye visited Ann Arbor this week and I had the pleasure of going to both a reading and a lecture. Also, got (another) autograph. [I love signed books!] She has such an amazing presence at readings in particular and she shared some of the poems from her new book, Transfer, that use lines from her late father's journals as titles and use her dad's point-of-view. Quite beautiful. Definitely one of my all-time favorite poets.

Hunger Games Trilogy

2012-01-22T16:56:00.002-05:00

I would have loved these books even more if they existed in 1987. The fourteen-year-old me loved Stephen King's "Bachman books" which strike me as the most obvious antecedents. The best Bachman book, "The Long Walk," centers on a futuristic America where oppressed young citizens elect to take part in a marathon walk where the last person standing wins a lottery and all the losers face death by firing squad. Oh how I loved this story. The Hunger Games books have a similar conceit: dystopian society in which a reality tv competition pits teens against one another in a fight to the death. I don't want to say more about the plot because you should read these books before the first film adaptation comes out this March. They're quite compelling and I admired how damn dark they were too. Relentlessly dark at times. The third book, "Mockingjay," dragged a bit, but the first two--total page-turners.

Tuesday Tuesday

2012-01-17T11:13:00.003-05:00

So I'm thinking of joining Weight Watchers. We have a group on campus and it's cheap. One of the challenges (and they are legion!) is that a lot of good Lebanese food adds up quickly in terms of points despite all the health benefits. Olive oil and lebneh are examples. Both have calories and (good) fat so the point value is high. I just hate the idea of turning to food that's actually less healthful just because it's lower in points. But then I think of the health benefits of weighing less. I know that the answer here is to eat much less olive oil and lebneh, in addition to other healthy foods.

Have a rare morning today to work on my research/writing. (So why am I blogging then?) Then it's off to campus for a meeting, class prep, a panel discussion on All American Muslim, and a work-out. Livin' the dream.

Surely a post is coming about The Hunger Games. I'm mid-way through the third and final book in the series and I'm loving these novels in a big way.

youtube, archives, fandom

2012-01-16T19:40:00.003-05:00

Did you know that users upload forty-eight hours of video per minute to youtube? This shouldn't amaze me given the fact that youtube has permeated nearly every facet of society. Still, think about that. Forty-eight hours of footage. Every minute.

This got me thinking about the volume and diversity of live music that is available. Putting aside music videos, promos, and other "professional" clips (if such a thing can even be said to exist), consider for a second the accessibility of live footage of your favorite band. You can't go to a rock show and not see dozens of people filming a song or two. I imagine this is true for most genres. Grateful Dead fans famously (audio) taped and traded shows for decades. Official live albums--again, were talking audio here--were especially trendy during the arena rock 70s (Kiss, J. Geils, Frampton, The Who, Cheap Trick, Bob Seger, and others created iconic road records) and attracted even casual fans who approached the live album as a kind of greatest hits. And of course bootleg live records also circulated, especially among hardcore fans.

But youtube provides aural and visual representations of live music, mostly fan created. I wonder if record companies, (some) bands, Live Nation, Ticketmaster, et al, will eventually create more corporate sanctioned "channels" and crack down on amateur bootlegs. For now at least, much of youtube belongs to fandom. Like live albums in the 70s, I see the live music on youtube as walking the line between appealing to casual and hardcore fans. The casual fan can search for a single track and find it in seconds. The hardcore fan can search for a particular song at a particular show or make note of different versions of the same song over some particular period of time. Jay-Z and Kanye West seemed to nod at this phenomenon when they performed multiple versions of "N****s in Paris" at shows on their recent tour.

Another parallel. Like those who bought a live album or bootleg in the 70s or 80s, fans today who surf youtube can appreciate the mythology a band creates by its choice of covers. Springsteen saluted 60s r&b and garage rock by covering Mitch Ryder, for instance, and buying a Springsteen bootleg a generation or two ago was an education in his influences. Want to see Weezer doing "Pumped Up Kicks" last year? Want to see Green Day do AC/DC? Youtube's got you covered. Have at it.

What's surprising, though, is how much pre-youtube and pre-camera phone live music is out there, and it's archived for our pleasure. I was too young to see The Clash in person but I can see them via youtube in their early days in London all the way up to when they opened for The Who in '82. I've always been fascinated by the infamous '72 tour where The Rolling Stones (with--sorry Ron Wood--the great Mick Taylor on second guitar, showing off cool new songs from "Exile on Main St," and supported by Stevie Wonder!) destroyed hotel rooms, did a lot of heroin, and reportedly blew minds on the stage. And now I can watch Keith play Happy a year before I was even born.

I can find clips of the night I saw Neil Young in Cleveland in '93 and ended up with a minor misdemeanor citation from Cuyahoga County. I can find clips of the first rock concert I ever attended (10,000 Maniacs). I don't mean the same band during the same tour, I mean the exact show. I can even find clips of local bands from Youngstown, Ohio, circa early 90s. And I don't remember anybody ever having a video camera at Cedar's or The Penguin Pub, but the clips are there. Couple that nostalgic ability to re-see with the archive that is setlist.fm, much less trafficked but in my mind an equally addictive site for the hardcore music fan, and you've got quite a record of your sordid past. If you haven't been to setlist.fm, it's function should be pretty self-explanatory. It's a wiki that houses the setlists performed by popular music performers. What exactly did Neil Young play that night I saw him twenty years ago? The answer's right here.

I know that Patton Oswalt and others have commented on the internet taking away the magic of the search by putting what used to be obscure right in front of us. But I like the idea of preservation of the minute details we obsess over. Accessibility doesn't take away the obsession, and it certainly doesn't take away the magic. (I don't see Oswalt liking comics any less.) In a way these archives keep us honest: The Stones didn't play a three-hour set of Motown covers in '72. And nobody claims it's the same as being there. I'd have loved to see The Clash opening up for the Pistols on the Anarchy Tour but I was three years old. Seeing it on youtube's not the same thing obviously. But I can access the archives, feed my fandom, and be honest (oh yeah, they didn't play very well).

Recent Reading

2012-01-02T13:48:00.003-05:00

The joys of break are the joys of reading for pleasure. I devoured Life, the Keith Richards memoir, and got a kick from not only the Brit dialect but also the lingo of swinging London. Richards tosses in plenty of instances of "baby" and groovy sounding sentence fragments too. He uses these fragments to underline, sometimes stating the obvious (a stand-alone like "Wild" might follow an anecdote that absolutely is) and sometime editorializing (often his comments critique Mick Jagger's ego and love of fame). You get the obligatory stories of heavy drug use, but you also get a sense of Keith's deep, deep love of music and musicians. Wild baby.

Also read the somewhat mediocre Geraldine Brooks novel People of the Book. I loved the premise--a researcher and rare-books expert tracing the history of a sacred, centuries-old Jewish text through Europe. Also loved the recurring theme of "conviviality," the togetherness invoked by stories of Christians, Jews, and Muslims interacting together (15th Century Spain! 20th Century Bosnia! Palestine! Australia!). It's a globetrotting, time-traveling narrative and the good, bad, lovely, and ugly of the interaction of Big Western Faiths comes up thematically and drives the plot too. While the historical chapters popped, the present action sometimes tried too hard to combine pulpy action and romance with the more heady themes. DaVinci Code for the New York Review of Books set. Good but not great.

grading playlist

2011-12-13T10:15:00.002-05:00

Due in part to the fact that I spent over half of 2011 out of the country, I didn't listen to enough new music to compile any type of "best of" list. But I do have an enjoyable collection of (mostly) 2011 tunes to keep me company while I grade portfolios during the next few days. If you haven't heard any of these, download them from your favorite legal music source.

1. "East Harlem" by Beirut. Catchy, lilting melodies from a band I decided to sample because of the band name, although they aren't Lebanese. Their 2011 record is pretty good but this is the highlight.

2. "Lonely Boy" by The Black Keys. In 2002 or so, when The White Stripes and Strokes peaked in popularity, this would have been a HUGE hit. Bigger sound than their earlier stuff yet still loyal to that simple, garage aesthetic.

3. "Black Rabbit" by Pujol. Great rock and roll song that deserved to be bigger. Why didn't this get any buzz on avclub, pithfork, et al?

4. "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele. It says something about the lousy state of pop music that when "Rolling in the Deep" comes on the radio, you instantly notice what a beautifully written song it is. But Adele's not just great from a craft and composition perspective. Her voice is lovely and unique and she doesn't feel the need to turn every song into some octave exercise. She gives "Rolling in the Deep" subtlety and nuance.

5. "Otis" by Kanye West and Jay Z. I'll just pick one song from the awesome "Watch the Throne" collaboration. Why not make it the big single? The lyrics couldn't be shallower (gist: we are really, really rich), but the Otis Redding sample is brilliant.

6. "What Can I Do?" by Black Belles. This band killed at the inaugural MI-Fest in September. Band members all dress in black and wear witch hats yet their show somehow worked in the middle of the day (I'm reminded of seeing Ministry play an afternoon slot at Lollapalooza twenty years ago). 60's girl group sound meets riot girl punk.

7. "F*** You" by Cee Lo. I think this is technically from 2010, but I didn't pay attention until Motley Crue tossed in a cover (mashed up with their own, similarly themed "Don't Go Away Mad") at their Detroit show this past summer. Lyrics are completely over the top and the tune is totally addictive.

8. "Forget You" by the Muppets. An all-chicken version of the Cee Lo song from the new Muppet movie. Smartest part of the movie. Repeated listens do NOT get old. Love it.

9. "Future Starts Slow" and "DNA" by the Kills. One of my favorite bands. They get points for sheer consistency--all of their records have been good including the 2011 release "Blood Pressures" (which is getting no end-of-year love). These two tracks show off the drum machine / rock guitar / brooding vocals that form the trinity of the Kills' aesthetic. PS: the band put on an outstanding show in Columbus in July.

10. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by the Muppets. Second greatest moment in the movie. A barbershop quarter version of the Nirvana classic, complete with Beeker deliving the "libido" line, among others. Also stays fresh upon repeated listens.

what have I been reading?

2011-11-17T13:22:00.002-05:00

Join the Club, by NYTimes' Tina Rosenberg, which I'm reading with my first-year comp students. Rosenberg posits the "social cure" as an effective strategy for social change, telling loads of stories of successful organizing where the success stemmed directly from the social capital gained by a sense of community. Rosenberg argues that peer pressure represents positive potential. Pretty good stuff.

Also reading various texts about Shi'a in Lebanon and Hezbollah specifically. The best has been Max Weiss' In the Shadow of Sectarianism, though I also made my way through Zahera Harb's Channels of Resistance in Lebanon and Eitan Azani's Hezbollah: The Story of the Party of God, the latter providing really useful context but succumbing to significant bias in its discussion of the contemporary situation in "the south." Been doing some extra reading to add to what I'm learning in the Lebanese history class I've been auditing and, ultimately, trying to contextualize my understanding of Mleeta (the "Hezbollah museum"), which I've been trying to write about (may turn into an article).

Doc on Afghanistan

2011-11-17T07:35:00.002-05:00

This film screened on campus yesterday. "Where Soldiers Come From" follows the lives of several young men from the U.P. who join the National Guard, deploy to Afghanistan, and then return to their civilian lives changed. Might be the best documentary I've ever seen. All I can say is please, please, please watch it. PBS is streaming the movie for free. Follow the link.

Steinbeck

2011-11-16T17:20:00.003-05:00

Tonight is "Working-Class Rhetoric" night in my MALS (master's in liberal studies) seminar and we're reading luminaries like Eugene Debs, John Steinbeck, and Jane Addams. Here's a nice taste of Steinbeck, from his essay "Starvation Under the Orange Trees"

If you buy a farm horse and only feed him when you work him, the horse will die. No one complains of the necessity of feeding the horse when he is not working. But we complain about feeding the men and women who work our lands. Is it possible that this state is so stupid, so vicious and so greedy that it cannot feed and clothe the men and women who help to make it the richest area in the world? Must the hunger become anger and the anger fury before anything will be done?

Pittsburgh

2011-11-16T12:37:00.002-05:00

In addition to spending a few days in beautiful Youngstown, OH., I had the pleasure of visiting Pittsburgh's "strip district" for the first time this past weekend. The district houses Pittsburgh's version of Little Italy, a non-residential area packed with Italian delis, bakeries, and import stores. Among other things, Nicole, my parents, and I got some most excellent prosciutto and bread. I always forget that Pittsburgh's less than ninety minutes away from Youngstown. Must make the strip district a regular destination, next time with a side trip to the Andy Warhol gallery.

What's Wrong with All-American Muslim?

2011-11-15T13:07:00.003-05:00

TLC's new reality tv show revolves around a group of Muslims who live in Dearborn, Michigan, where I happen to teach. Aside from making money without having to pay writers and actors, TLC seems to want to offer honest, interesting portrayals of Muslims to counter the predictable, ugly stereotypes the media often reproduces. The producers managed to find representatives of the community who practice the religion differently, but have so far missed lots of opportunities.

Let's start with "the community." The group the show seeks to represent is somewhat ambiguous. American Muslims in general? Not exactly, because the show is in many way *about* Dearborn and its unique dynamics. And the show seems to focus, implicitly at least, on Arab Muslims in order to engage with the cultural-religious-ethnic enclave here. That's fine; certainly the program has no obligations to represent the totality of American Islam. Indeed, looking at the intersections of religion, culture, and ethnicity could be really interesting. So, then, why do the show's personalities all seem so homogenous? Most of the stars are Shi'a from South Lebanon, which in some ways makes sense because that particular group is so prevalent, visible, and active in Dearborn. Seems like a missed opportunity, though, given the Yemeni, Palestinian, and Iraqi Muslims who live here too. All the characters seem very upwardly mobile, too. If you want to engage with religious, cultural, and ethnic intersections, broaden the scope.

The program also doesn't provide much context. Maybe this will happen in later episodes. So far, the show hasn't told us anything about Dearborn's history. No mention of the city's history of racism and segregation ("Keep Dearborn Clean"), for instance. Maybe the reality tv genre simply can't make room for this kind of context, but why not show the city's evolution from segregated white community to ethnic enclave? Likewise, aside from high school football players mentioning briefly the racist taunts of opposing teams, there was no mention of post-9/11 Islamaphobia. The show doesn't have to "go negative" per se, but barely mentioning this seems to me like missing context. Perhaps the show wants to tread lightly in order to connect to as wide an audience as possible, but, sheesh, if the show is about honest representations, than tell the truth.

Somewhat related to the context or lack thereof, how come there was no mention whatsoever of the old country? I don't think I heard the words "immigrant," "Lebanon," or certainly "South Lebanon" during the whole episode, aside from one woman saying that her husband "comes from the same village." If the show is exploring cultural identity and how religion and ethnicity intersect, than surely this will eventually come up. Given South Lebanon's especially contentious relationship with Israel, will mentioning context more explicitly be acceptable? Will anyone say something like, "My family comes from Bint Jbeil"? And is that desirable? I'm speaking as an outsider--neither Arab nor Muslim--so my perspective is necessarily limited.

Also, speaking of shout-outs, how about a mention of U of M Dearborn?

CSA

2011-11-11T07:42:00.002-05:00

CSA: The Confederate States of America is not as shocking a film as it thinks it is. CSA imagines how the contemporary world might look if the South had won the American Civil War. Interesting premise, though the premise doesn't really go anywhere.

[spoiler alert...] What does the film imagine as the consequences of a Confederate victory? Slavery is legalized throughout the land. Abe Lincoln dons blackface, is taken into hiding by Harriet Tubman, and eventually is captured and exiled to Canada. The Confederate States colonize much of Latin America. South Africa becomes their chief ally. The late nineteenth century? Pretty much manifest destiny on steroids.

Clever and intriguing but once you know the premise, you pretty much have experienced the film. I will say that the narrative structure is smart and effective. CSA takes the form of a British documentary airing on a Confederate tv station for the first time, complete with commercial breaks. The commercials are brilliant.

Zinn

2011-11-10T12:13:00.003-05:00

The great historian Howard Zinn writes about his recollections of dropping napalm on a German-occupied French village at the end of WWII. He says the allies were essentially waiting for Germany to surrender at that point and that dropping the napalm was fundamentally unnecessary. He recalls getting the orders from commanding officers and then, along with his fellow pilots, carrying out the orders.

After his honorable discharge, his GI Bill-funded education, and the beginning of his distinguished career as a teacher and activist, Zinn concluded that war was unjust and looked back with honesty at his involvement in that injustice. He says when he thinks of getting those orders, he can understand why many fail to act when challenged or faced with an opportunity to take a stand. It's hard, for one thing. It causes us pain, discomfort, and loss.

I think of this as I read accounts of the molestation and rape scandal at Penn State. A coach who runs an outreach program for at-risk children commits rape. He's a powerful and influential man. Janitors and graduate assistants catch him in the act, hem and haw, and eventually tell others at the University. Nobody calls the police. The abuse continues. The inaction of the growing network of individuals who knew but did nothing is stunning. Taking that stand might have been hard, might have hurt one's career, might have resulted in losing a friend or losing one's standing.

But it would have been the right thing to do.

Collaboration

2011-11-07T14:35:00.002-05:00

In the process of getting the partnership between the writing programs at UMD (where I teach) and AUB (where I worked while on a Fulbright in the Middle East last year) solidified. We are linking eight classes next semester. Students in these classes will partner with students abroad and interview one another and get acquainted via various online media (Skype, Facebook, etc) and ultimately write "literacy profiles" of one another. It's great fun and a chance for the teachers and students alike to meet up and learn some things about reading and writing in different social, cultural, and national contexts. Currently writing several grants to get the partnership some needed funding. Also working on IRB approval, an online space where all the student writing will be housed, and a million other things connected to making the project meaningful and maybe sustainable and scalable. Meantime, Margaret, my UMD colleague, and I are writing up a report of the pilot version of this partnership we tried out while I was at AUB. We've given several presentations about what we did (linking our two classes in Fall 2010) and we're working on an article version. I've not collaborated much in the past and, while working with others is in some ways slower and involves much more communication, this is a social way to operate.

Taqwacore

2011-11-06T15:46:00.002-05:00

Taqwacore = Islamic punk rock

But here's the interesting part. The genre didn't really exist until Michael Muhammad Knight wrote a novel called The Taqwacores, which one scholar calls "The Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims." Nearly ten years old, that novel inspired the birth of a small but meaningful youth movement, primarily in North America, of Muslim teenagers interested in adopting the rebellious pose of punk rock while maintaining staunchly Islamic identities. The word "taqwa" means something like piety or faith. Taqwacore bands popped up, writing and performing songs about Islam and using a hardcore punk musical aesthetic.

On Thursday night, UM-Dearborn screened the film version of The Taqwacores, directed by Eyad Zahra, who graciously answered questions after the screening. I encouraged my students to attend and about six or seven of them did. The film follows young Yousef, a Pakistani-American college student who moves into a house inhabited by devotees of taqwacore. Yousef is pious and conservative whereas his new housemates engage in all manner of "haram" (immoral) behavior and challenge Yousef's assumptions about what a good Muslim is. His new mates represent a range of Islamic ideologies. One woman, for instance, wears a full burka covered with punk rock patches and espouses a sexually liberated version of feminism. One is an openly gay man. One loves punk music but believes in a very traditional version of Islam, with men and women socializing separately.

Zahra shot the film with hand-held cameras in a rickety looking house in Cleveland. The movie's as lively and chaotic as the music at its center. At times, the story tries too hard to shock the audience (several scenes are sexually explicit, for instance) but overall it's a challenging and nuanced story that definitely got my students talking. We chatted in the hallway afterward and one student told me our conversation was better than the movie (which he found offensive--but, again, it inspired him to think and talk). I appreciated the range of characters in the film. And in a way, The Taqwacores reminded me of Kevin Smith's Dogma, which is deeply irreverent but takes Catholicism seriously and rolls up its sleeves and engages with church teaching. The Taqwacores did that for Islam, showing, for example, how this group of young people question their beliefs while maintaining their faiths, identities, and even traditions (turning Friday prayer, for instance, into a rotating sharing session in which each member of the community talks about what Islam means to them). They pray, although the call to prayer is played on an electric guitar, sounding a bit like Jimi Hendrix's rendition of the National Anthem. And the film has a sense of humor too. Band names include Hezbollah and the opening credits roll as a song called "Sharia Law in the U.S.A." (can you guess which Sex Pistols song this tune references?) plays on the soundtrack.

I'm awaiting response papers from my students who chose to attend (it was optional) but I'm curious to see how they connect the film to the short story collection we read, Halal Pork by Cihaan Kaan, which also uses an avant garde aesthetic to try to capture the complexities of young, American muslims in the post-9/11 decade.

Hating on Studio 60

2011-10-27T11:53:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite distractions, I mean websites, avclub.com, has turned bashing Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip into a zen art form. Their latest critique makes some valid points but I still do not get the level of vitriol toward this well-meaning program. Directed and largely written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame, the program followed the exploits of the producers, writers, and stars of a fictionalized version of Saturday Night Live.

Sorkin turned liberal presidential staffers into minor deities in West Wing and he attempts to do the same thing to comedians in Studio 60. Writing an amusing sketch doesn't quite have the same gravitas as running a country, though, so I can see why many didn't find the latter program compelling. The Studio 60 characters were unapologetically leftists and at times sanctimonious. Think Alan Alda on MASH. I saw the show as a kind of an extension of West Wing and--on both shows--found the larger-than-life intelligence and work ethic that the characters projected to be inspired. I love being a writer and teacher but I don't have the hyperbolic dedication of the fictional characters in Sorkin's universes. His shows are pastiches of dedication, every character a walking hyperbole, many of them voicing Sorkin's political views as they walk!

So I can see the somehwat limited appeal. AV Club's latest critique raises the question of why the show's critics are so vocal even four years after its cancellation (it's one of those one-season wonders, premiering the same season as the similarly premised/titled 30 Rock, which has a totally different tone), but the piece doesn't do much to answer that question. Instead, it reviews all that is problematic about the show:

In premise and execution, Studio 60 was a work of unbearable, overweening arrogance. It began with making the lead character of Matt Albie both a clear Sorkin surrogate and a writer so ridiculously romanticized even M. Night Shyamalan might say, “Get over yourself, dude. You’re a fucking writer, not Jesus’ younger brother, the one God really likes.” Albie isn’t just a principled, gifted writer; he’s a man who gets out of bed every morning aching to making a stand. He’s admired by men and irresistible to women who run the gamut from a Maureen Dowd surrogate played by Christine Lahti to the high-end skanks of the Rockettes. Even with a head full of bad chemicals and a belly full of pills, he’s able to single-handedly write a peerless work of transcendent social and political satire everyone in the known universe will be talking about around the water cooler Monday morning. Writing 90 minutes of new comedy every week is a Herculean endeavor for even the most gifted writing staff; now imagine 90 minutes of brilliant comedy emerging anew weekly from the mind of but a single man! On pills, even! And with the kind of problems you would not believe! As I write this, I realize that that this is not a man I’m writing about. This is a God. Oh sure, this man-God has an ego. Wouldn’t you?

The piece goes on to call out the show's self-congratulatory tone, its failure to live up to the promise of its brilliant pilot (in which a producer of the show goes rogue during a live broadcast and rants about the dumbing down of pop culture), its caricatures of conservative Christians, preachy dialogue, its failure to live up the "show don't tell" dictum, and its mishandling of race and war and 9/11. Quite a list of critiques. And, frankly, I can't refute most of these. Because even moreso than West Wing (often called "porn for liberals"), Studio 60 offered a fantastical, affective viewing experience for members of the left. The stakes were comically (so to speak) high for these characters because they just believe so strongly in their worldview (secular, progressive, civil libertarian, humanistic, etc.) and, yes, the dialogue verged on propaganda because these characters did not exist divorced from their own ideologies. I also love the way both Sorkin shows dealt with the writing process. Here are a great set of representations who recognize what good writing can do.

So anyway, I still don't get the level of vitriol, which doesn't come from conservative blogs, etc., which I imagine could care less about a failed tv program from 2006-2007. It comes from pop culture obsessives like AV Club writers. I suppose in part they want pop culture to be better: I love, therefore I criticize. But why the historical memory regarding Studio 60? Even with all the problematic aspects of the show, I'd expect indifference from non-fans, not hatred.

Wilco

2011-09-26T12:04:00.001-04:00

"It makes no difference to me/how they cried all over overseas/If it's dark in the poor places tonight/I'm not going outside."
-Wilco, Poor Places

Monday Misc.

2011-09-26T11:11:00.002-04:00

Strange and unfocused day today. It's mid-morning and I've read the news, gotten some reading done, answered a few emails, and written two letters of recommendation. I have a mid-day meeting on campus, after which I plan to work out, write, and study some Arabic.

Hung out with our pals Jim and Janice this weekend. They came over and we watched Verlander miss his chance to win 25 regular-season games (bummer!). Various family members were in town to help Anna and company harvest honey from the bees. Mass Sunday morning. Sleeping past 6:00 am. Nice times, though I continue to have some residual, post-Lebanon blueness.

Shout out to Tony taking the GRE today. And to Gia the pug who's staying with us for the week. Time for an early lunch.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

2011-09-22T11:19:00.006-04:00

Too many words have been written about R.E.M. in their thirty-one years as a band and their one day of retirement. Even before mainstream success, they made for great copy in the alt press. Media coverage of the band actually created some of the important narratives of (indie) rock: artistic integrity, credibility, resisting the imperative to "sell out," reluctance and liberal guilt in the face of success, the transition from indie label to major label. R.E.M. pioneered these now-ubiquitous narratives. Ditto the fan narratives: I knew them before you did. I discovered the band early on. Their early stuff is great. Ditto the idea of a gateway band. Just as kids today discover Dylan and the blues through Jack White, kids in the 80s and 90s found Television, Velvet Underground, and Mission of Burma through R.E.M. Without R.E.M., there's no Kurt Cobain telling his fans they can't like both him and Axl Rose. There's no Eddie Vedder retreating from the media gaze and retooling Pearl Jam as journeymen instead of buzz-band. There's also no "modern rock" format on your FM dial. If it weren't for R.E.M.'s string of I.R.S. records, there would be no fan-boy worship of Sub Pop and Third Man.

Like thousands of other nerds (not indie rock nerds...nerds) in 1986 or so, R.E.M. made sense to me and around the time that "Document" came out, they became my favorite band. In junior high, Jack Kerouac's book "On the Road," the notion of going off to seminary, and the music of R.E.M. (and to a lesser extent The Smiths, Dead Kennedys, and 10,000 Maniacs) created this odd and incongruous universe that seemed so anti-establishment. A fourteen-year-old needs a favorite band. My college roommate Jim and I saw R.E.M. three times on the "Monster" tour--in Auburn Hills, East Lansing, and Ann Arbor. By that time (post "Man on the Moon," "Losing My Religion," and "Everybody Hurts"...the big three), they were big enough to play three Michigan shows on the same tour...and with opening acts like Wilco, Radiohead, and Patti Smith! The last R.E.M. show I saw was on the Vote For Change tour in support of John Kerry in 2004--a show in Cleveland with Bruce Springsteen, Bright Eyes, and John Fogerty. They all came out to jam on a finale of "Born to Run," "People Have the Power," and "(What's So Funny Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding?" Michael Stipe and Springsteen trading verses on "Born to Run" was a good moment.

All of that is well and good, but says little about the music itself. Much of R.E.M.'s catalogue is unfuckwithable rock and roll. It's jangly, artsy, punky, melodic, evocative, and illusive. Just for the hell of it, a dozen great R.E.M tracks:

1. Life and How to Live It (1985's "Fables of the Reconstruction)**
2. Begin the Begin (1986's "Life's Rich Pageant")
3. Rockville (1984's "Reckoning")
4. What's the Frequency Kenneth? (1995's "Monster")
5. Finest Worksong (1987's "Document")
6. I Believe (1986's "Life's Rich Pageant")
7. Harborcoat (1984's "Reckoning")
8. Radio Free Europe (1981 single)
9. Feeling Gravity's Pull (1985's "Fables of the Reconstruction")
10. Lotus (1998's "Up")
11. So Fast So Numb (1996's "New Adventures in Hi-Fi")
12. Man-Sized Wreath (2008's "Accelerate")

And a few live covers to find on youtube: See No Evil (orig. by Television), Crazy (orig. by Pylon), Superman (orig. by The Clique), Strange (orig. by Wire)

UPDATE: **Upon further reflection, I feel the need to add the following assertion about my list's number one: the lines "if I write a book it will be called Life and How to Live It" represent the best closing lines of a rock and roll song, ever.

UPDATE #2
Two nice links from salon.com
A series of remembrances of the band.
An essay about the band's influence.

MI Fest

2011-09-18T21:30:00.002-04:00

Nothing beats great live music, especially when it's close to home on a sunny, cool Autumn day. Tony and Alice--my second eldest nephew and his girlfriend--drove up from Ohio to enjoy the inaugural festival and after late-morning sustenance from Dearborn's Sajouna (jibnee!) we headed west past Ann Arbor (no time to stop and cheer for the Wolverines) and got to the Michigan Speedway just in time for the Black Belles, a garage punk quartet whose members seem to aim for a witch aesthetic. Known mainly for backing up Stephen Colbert on the single "Charlene," the Belles kicked it without any Comedy Central cameos and somehow managed to make white make-up and tall black hats make sense in the context of an outdoor festival. I got the sense their aesthetic was a bit more geared toward a smoky bar after midnight. But they rocked, so, you know, kudos to them. They also circulated with fans afterward, made possible by a pretty low turnout. That early in the day I'm sure there weren't more than a few thousand people, max, and only a couple dozen at the second stage, where we camped out until nearly sundown.

Other acts who, like the Belles, are on Jack White's Third Man Records dominated the second stage. Black Milk, an excellent Detroit hip hop artist, was undeterred by his status as the only rapper in the house and had a very nice set, making me sorry I never discovered his stuff until he put out a single on Third Man. Must seek out his earlier stuff. Pujol and Jeff the Brotherhood both do a scruffy, stripped down rock act--more the kind of band you'd expect Jack White to produce--and seemed to be having as much fun as the crowd. White seems to have fostered a real family vibe at Third Man and the camraderie came across from the tiny stage. The Speedway facilities are not huge, which was a plus, as you could wander freely to your car for snacks and water and be back to the stage area in a few minutes. Did I mention how great the weather was? Sunny enough that my ears were red when I woke up this morning, but chilly by the time the sun went down.

Speaking of sundown, we ventured over to the main stage in time for the Romantics ("What I Like About You"), straight outta Hamtramck, Michigan, who broke out a Kinks cover in addition to the British Invasion-esque songs of their own, including, of course "Talking In Your Sleep," which benefited from the lack of the 1980s sheen of the recorded version. Did they close with "What I Like About You"? Of course. Did 40-somethings dance nostalgically on the lawn? Of course. As Sheryl Crow was taking the stage, a young woman smelling of the venue's expensive inexpensive beer, came over, told us we seemed cool (which I thought she was going to follow up with an invitation to "party") and handed over three VIP bracelets. Thank you, kind intoxicated girl, if you are out there.

The VIP area had free drinks but the line was too long so we headed toward the stage and got really close to Sheryl Crow. I'm not a fan or anything, but hearing her upbeat tunes up close was pretty cool. She kept saying we were in Detroit and referring to her friendship with Kid Rock, who I thought might join her for a duet or two. He didn't. She broke into a nice version of "Stuck in the Middle With You" at one point and had a really strong backing band. And the age-diverse crowd had a good time. Thanks for coming to Michigan Sra. Crow. We were about two hours from Detroit, but close enough. Really, her music isn't really my speed, but she's got really top notch pipes. Actually, much like hearing the Romantics, I appreciated her voice live, divorced from the production of her records.

Okay, after her set we worked our way close to the stage. A lot of the 40-plus crowd headed for the parking lot, leaving behind some huge Jack White fans. Really. Around us, I heard people comment on roadies who they knew from the White Stripes days. Wow. The Raconteurs, the second of White's three beloved bands, headlined the show and really killed it. I mean, they know how to please a crowd. The band has five amazing musicians when you include the keyboardist with whom they tour. They played much of their two records and the crowd sung along. Guitarists White and Brendan Benson both do a Zeppelin-esque thing--lots of solos, lots of shredding. Like a lot of the Third Man acts of the second stage, you got the sense they were having a fabulously good time on the stage. They played "Old Enough," my favorite Raconteurs track, so I was a happy audience member. Jack White's relatives sat in rows on stage left, rocking out, apparently (the local press reported) after traveling in his tour bus from Detroit. That Jack White. Whatta guy. When the family came out, I commented to Tony and Alice that maybe the older woman in the yellow jacket might not want to sit right next to the amps. A guy in front of me turned around and said "That's mom," so I figured, well, Jack White's mom probably knows better than anybody here that it's about to get loud. It did. Fitting for a guy who's become one of the definitive icons of Detroit rock and roll to close the day. Despite some hiccups last week, the MI Fest acquitted itself as a worthy event that I hope becomes an annual Fall tradition.

Ahlan wa Sahlan

2011-09-16T09:36:00.003-04:00

Winding down after the second week of Fall classes, I realize that keeping up is going to be a challenge. Keeping up with the paper load, keeping up with the writing I plan to get done, keeping up with my Arabic. What's the routine look like? Something like this:

Mondays are writing days. I'm in the middle of several writing projects connected to the work I did in Lebanon and don't want to lose any momentum.

Tuesdays/Thursdays are campus days. Teach two sections of Comp 105 in the morning, followed the Arabic 101 class I'm taking, followed by office hours, followed by the Lebanese History class I'm taking. **By "taking," I mean sitting in.

Wednesdays are semi-campus days. Work out on campus, spend much of the day grading papers and doing class prep, teach my grad class in the evening.

Fridays are wild cards. Spend at least part of the day writing, though often I have various meetings and commitments on campus.

Every day: find an hour or so to work on the Arabic. I'd like to make time to blog, too, and post some updates here about the writing projects in particular, but also some rants about trying to learn Arabic. Stay tuned...

A Post-Lebanon Post

2011-08-27T12:43:00.002-04:00

I'm definitely crashing. Summer teaching began a few days after we got back from the Middle East, leaving no time for sadness or anything else. Now that the summer term has ended, the funk has begun. Beirut, I miss you. AUB campus, I miss you. Snack Faisal, I miss you and your zatar pies. Two-dollar bus to Saida, I miss you. Justicia friends, AUB friends, and Nissrine, I miss you. The rush and the difficulty of living abroad, I miss you. Hiking in the mountains, I miss you. Walking on the Corniche, I miss you. Tiny cups of coffee, I miss you. Little old mustachioed men who sell coffee, I miss you.

JUST KIDS

2011-08-25T11:57:00.002-04:00

Patti Smith's new memoir Just Kids reminds me a bit of Bob Dylan's pseudo-autobiography Chronicles because Smith, like Dylan, transcends the "celebrity autobiography" genre so beautifully. Just Kids is a prose-poem to her lean early years in New York City, a love-letter to her lifelong friend Robert Mapplethorpe, and an argument that art saves lives and makes lives. In case you don't know, Patti Smith is a writer, photographer, and musician best known for the punk rock records she made in the late 1970s. But anyone with even a passing interest in art, music, New York City, and/or la vie boheme ought to read Just Kids which is such a deeply humane piece of work, an artist's memoir that somehow NEVER slips into pretentiousness. So glad I've finally gotten around to reading this.

Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

2011-08-24T11:24:00.002-04:00

Almost every morning, I've been taking a walk through Berkley, Michigan, where I live. In addition to a handful of "No Soliciting" signs and one that proclaims "Support Israel" (how much more support can we possibly give?), my favorite frontyard message has got to be "Fair Warning: We Have Dogs." I like the simple, declarative syntax, but also the tone, which suggests We don't give a shit if our dogs hurt you and we sincerely hope this sign shields us from any resulting litigation.

People love their property in my 'hood. Not just their houses, but the land too. They spray chemicals on their lawns, use who knows how many gallons of water not on edible plants but rather on grass, and use these edger things to make shallow pits along "their" parts of the sidewalk. Many prefer their grass to be the color of a football field, or the Brady Brunch backyard. A couple across the street once put down some type of sod only to call the company right back to take up the rolls of grass and lay down another type.

Not having grown up in suburbia, a lot of the aesthetic and lifestyle preferences are lost on me. In fact, things like the edgers completely mystify me. I want to make some kind of link between the obsession with the lawns and the disinterest in socializing with others in the neighborhood, but I suppose I am just as much at fault for the fact that I only know the people who live in the two houses on either side of me and the guy whose backyard butts up against my backyard. All perfectly nice people. But I don't know anybody else on the block. I knew more people who lived on my block in Beirut, and I didn't even speak the same language as many of them. Of course I could make more of an effort too but I just wonder at what point the conversation will turn to the subject of grass.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Saj

2011-08-11T14:45:00.003-04:00

At lost last, we fired up the saj last night. Thank goodness our nephew Tony--who happened to be visiting Lebanon when we bought the saj--talked me into the larger size. Can one's saj ever be too large? No.

This dome-shaped cooking surface, shown above in my sister's garage, connects to a gas tank like a bbq and is used for cooking bread. In Lebanon, the saj is essential to the street food scene. There it's used to make manoushe (a pizza of sorts usually topped with either zaatar and olive oil or cheese) or a thinner flat bread that's topped with most anything: meats, veggies, you name it. We had much fun last night, and enjoyed some tasty khobz, made in my sister's kitchen aid (I want one), and then done on the saj with swiss chard, zaatar, olives, and much, much more.

Strong Verbs

2011-08-11T10:42:00.003-04:00

As I read student work this morning, I find myself urging students to use stronger verbs. "Construct sentences around present-tense action verbs," I write in the margins. Action verbs represent the aspect of "good writing" I spend the most time teaching all the while seeing only a fair amount of change in drafts of papers. I wonder if the action verb plays a lesser role than I imagine in contemporary discourse and the genres, electronic and otherwise, that students encounter on a daily basis. Do lessons on the "action verb" represent an old-school (outmoded), Strunk & White mentality? I ask not because I feel any less affinity for crisp verbs but rather because I get the sense that the written language that fills the days of my students (presumably with lots of "is" and "was") effectively trumps the language I advocate. And perhaps that means these particular lessons may not connect to the realities of the contemporary world. On the other hand, maybe the real world, not me, needs to change.

Kills Show

2011-08-10T12:18:00.003-04:00

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of rocking out to a live show by The Kills, one of my favorite bands. If you don't know the band, well then you should. A male-female duo with an arsenal of drum machines and a whole lot of swagger, The Kills are hard to classify. Dance-punk? Close enough. You should also know that their singer Alison Mosshart (who also fronts the Jack White band Dead Weather) likes to prowl around the stage staring down audience members. So seeing them live is quite the experience. Judging by Saturday's concert, Mosshart seems to have mellowed a bit. Maybe being in a more popular band with Jack White does that to a person. I've seen The Kills a few times before and at past shows she really had the intimidation in full effect. Less so on Saturday.

Having said that, the music itself was just as intense as before, despite some minor sound glitches. They played much of their newest album "Blood Pressures" (their best, says I) and a few old favorites like Fried My Little Brains. One thing that comes through in their live shows is their ability to be noisy and aggressive without sacrificing melody. The comparisons with the White Stripes (two band members! no bass! Captain Beefheart covers!) never made much sense, but as they embrace the drum machine and sound effects more and more, they continue to push at the boundaries of what "garage rock" can mean. Fun. Thanks to my nephew Tony for hosting me in Columbus and letting me crash on his sofa. 37 years young and I can still sleep on a piece of furniture trash-picked from a sorority lawn.

Eleanor Josaitis

2011-08-09T09:23:00.002-04:00

Detroit lost a legend this morning. Eleanor Josaitis, the great civil rights activist and co-founder of Focus:HOPE, died at age 79. Most Detroiters know Focus:HOPE as a high-tech training center where disadvantaged men and women receive not only vo-tech certification but also (in partnership with various local universities) engineering degrees. But the place remains a multi-purpose service center that works toward justice--and never shies away from using words like "justice."

Fr. Art McGovern, my ethics professor back during my undergrad years, brought Josaitis to class to speak about her work and Fr. McGovern also took students to various Focus:HOPE events. Those were galvanizing experiences. When I edited the campus features magazine, I put Josaitis on the cover of my first issue. The Detroit riots inspired Josaitis to move from the suburbs to the city (her mother tried to sue her for custody of her children after Josaitis moved to Detroit) and dedicate her life to racial and economic justice. Racists sent her hate mail. She called those notes "love letters." A couple years ago I heard her speak and she read excerpts from those love letters like they were badges of honor.

Free Friday

2011-08-05T12:06:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty sure this is the first "at home" Friday since I got back to the U.S. Cedar Point with the nephews. Youngstown for last weekend's family get-together. Lunch meeting on campus. Always something happening on Fridays...until today. So I got up bright and early and cleaned the kitchen, then went outside and worked on the front lawn. Having not grown up in the suburbs, the whole 'manicure your lawn' pretty much eludes me and consequently our grass is less green, less uniform, and less edged than most houses on our block. Oh well. But I succumbed a bit and did some weeding (the sidewalk cracks in front of our house must be the most fertile soil ever), watering, and general, well, manicuring. I have some school-related e-mailing and c-tooling to do and then I think I'll tackle the garage.

Malcolm McLaren - Fans (1984)

2011-08-04T11:00:00.000-04:00

I've had this on heavy i-tunes rotation. I came across Malcolm McLaren's solo album "Fans" on vinyl at a little shop in Hamtramck a few years back. Best known as the manager of the Sex Pistols, McLaren (RIP) combines opera and hip hop on the record. It's campy, odd, and you can dance to it. I had never heard of the record before and was happy to make the discovery.

The Cure - Catch (1990)

2011-08-03T14:11:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite Cure songs.

The Limits of 'Access'

2011-08-02T10:46:00.003-04:00

I'm becoming re-accustomed to teaching at a U.S. commuter university after teaching "traditional" students in Lebanon for a year. I have two summer classes and I like getting to know the students and learning about their interests through their writing. Students with families and full-time jobs, as well as transfer students, are heavily represented in these two classes. In Lebanon, success at university was the number one priority of my students, who largely focused on doing their families proud by making good grades and preparing for a profession like medicine.

At UM-Dearborn, earning a living and caring for one's family often take priority over school--for obvious, good reasons. Campuses like mine that market themselves as accessible and flexible have made accommodations: more summer classes, more online classes, more evening and weekend classes, easier transfer process. While I fully support these moves toward accessibility, I also think that students learn more and learn better when university work takes a more central role in their lives. Taking eighteen credit hours while working two jobs is admirable, and necessary for some students. For some students, though, this type of lifestyle leads to the need to miss a few classes, come late to a few more, and miss out on the time to reflect and make new knowledge part of their consciousness.

I hesitate to say this because I in no way want to imply that I don't like working with our student body or that I regret my post-Fulbright re-entry into the UM-Dearborn community. Nor do I mean to put the students in Lebanon (nor "traditional" American students) on a pedestal. And I hope I'm not (only) speaking from a place of ego and insult (you mean taking care of your sick daughter is more important than this article I've given you?). I just wonder if we do enough to balance the moves toward access with a fostering of certain core academic habits, some of which demand that we slow down, take time, and make time to think.

Kanye West Monster Muppet Remix

2011-07-27T10:30:00.000-04:00

Watch the Throne

2011-07-27T10:11:00.002-04:00

How about this show? Jay-Z and Kanye West are performing as a duo at the Palace of Auburn Hill in September. I've never seen Kanye live but Jay-Z's free show at Cobo Hall in 2008--a get-out-the-Obama-vote event--stands out as one of the best concert experiences of my life. J and K plan to release a collaborative, long-talked-about record called "Watch the Throne" next month. I've avoided the snippets and leaks, preferring to wait until the whole thing is available (August 8). Expectations couldn't be higher, due not only to the quality of the individual output of the two artists, but also due to their past collaborations: Kanye got his start producing Jay-Z's classic record "The Blueprint." Have they rapped together? Um, yeah. Does Roc Boys ring a bell? How about Monster?

Live from New York

2011-07-25T14:01:00.003-04:00

This weekend I devoured the book Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. For the pop culture enthusiast, this is the ultimate stay up past bedtime (and, in my case, don't get those student papers graded) tome. Shales and Miller include plenty of gossip and talk to virtually every living writer and cast member (Eddie Murphy refused to participate) about the drugs, the politics, the music, the rivalries, and the attempt to maintain a countercultural ethos in the face of success. But aside from the juicy stories about cocaine, the text also has so much to say about the relationship that SNL has established with its audience. I liked learning that Chevy Chase--the closest the book has to a villain--turned down Animal House because of his rivalry with Belushi and his disinterest in doing what he saw as an ensemble comedy when he could be a leading man in Foul Play instead. But I liked even more the opportunity to recall my own history with the show. That's the genius of the book: the ability to entertain the part of you interested in the salacious details, the part of you interested in a cultural history of the 70s-through the present, and the part of you that wants to connect your own story with the story of a pop culture behemoth.

My brother Steve had an SNL record with skits from the first cast and as a little kid, say eight or nine years old, I loved a lot of movies with people I knew were SNL people: "Meatballs" with Bill Murray, "Foul Play" with Chevy Chase, that kind of thing. So by the time I could convince my body to stay up late enough to watch the show, I did. I remember watching Eddie Murphy in the Gumby assassination skits, and the bit where Tim Kazurinky is married to the chimp. I must have been ten years old. I can remember my older brother and sister coming home (they were college age then) and I was just kind of chilling out with SNL. An essential ritual. Years later, I went off to seminary at age 14 and most of the priests were sort of vaguely left-leaning, and they were that generation that saw SNL as something radical, so ordering pizza and staying up to watch SNL was encouraged. The "Wayne's World" years, although my favorite skit back then was Sprockets. A bunch of Catholic teen-aged boys living away from home, contemplating the priesthood, and the show was, once again, a ritual (in a lifestyle and a belief system full or rituals).

First year of college, my friend Jason and I were seeing some bands play at Grounds Coffeehouse one Saturday night and I remember walking through Detroit to get home, me and Jason, trying to make the opening of SNL. That was the night Sinead O'Connor tore up the picture of the Pope. There we were, in the front room of a home where Catholic missionaries lived, watching this shocking thing. After college, first year of grad school, I was earning some extra money cleaning the Youngstown YMCA, working nights, and I remember watching the Christmas episode of SNL in one of the workout rooms while mopping the floors: Molly Shannon sniffing her underarms as the Catholic schoolgirl. Depressing job, but there was that ritual, that constant. I can't believe people don't watch SNL, that people didn't grow up with this crazy, occasionally smart program. The cliche is how the quality varies year to year, cast to cast, a theme this book tackles of course, but even during down years, nothing captures the moment quite like SNL. Yeah, I wish the show still did the avant garde stuff they did during the 70s (look, Sun Ra is on this week!), but I still set the DVR.

Shales and Miller have somehow created a book that does about eight things at once, not the least of which is appealing personally and affectively to the obsessive fan. Check it out folks.

Revisionist History

2011-07-19T10:33:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Pop Matters for publishing my essay about hair metal's punk roots.

De Stijl

2011-07-13T12:54:00.001-04:00

Thanks to The Rumpus for publishing my essay about the White Stripes.

Small Conferences

2011-07-12T17:46:00.003-04:00

Every spring my field puts on a big conference that attracts thousands of scholars of rhetoric and writing. Most years I attend and many years (i.e., when my proposal gets the thumbs-up), I give a paper. Typically, I also go listen to lots of other papers, go out to dinner at least once or twice with my friends from graduate school, attend parties sponsored by textbook publishers ("enjoy free drinks and finger food and, by the way, please make your students by our stuff"), meet with the rest of the editorial staff of a journal whose board I sit on, attend a breakfast for writing program administrators, attend my graduate program's annual party, and collect free stuff from the publisher's display area.

Right now I'm sitting in the airport in State College, Pennsylvania, having just attended a much more intimate gathering of colleagues. I gave a paper based on the research I was conducting in Beirut. I listened to other papers. But know what else? I met a boatload of people I never met before. I connected with senior scholars. I had a lot of conversations and took a lot of notes and got a lot of ideas. There's a perennial conversation about whether my field's big conference has gotten too big and outgrown its usefulness. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but the thing is, I don't go so far as to say the big gig isn't useful mainly because I like seeing old friends. As far as a professional experience, the small conference is where it's at. And Penn State does a great job putting on a small conference.

"I just don't get the appeal"

2011-07-07T10:41:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about pop culture since I got back to the U.S., a place no doubt consumed with consuming. Surrounded by the music I listen to on my laptop (Nas and The Kills yesterday) while I work and the "Big Love Season 4" discs Nicole and I have been watching in the evening, I experience both connection and disconnection when I walk into my classes and lead discussions with my students about mass culture. We are all critics and consumers. We critique and we consume.

And while I am interested in how the stuff I like shapes me, I'm also curious about why particular pop culture artifacts do absolutely nothing for me. I just don't get the appeal. A few examples:

video games
tv shows about judges (Judge Judy, People's Court, etc)
hockey
Kid Rock
Lord of the Rings
celebrity reality shows (e.g., Kardashians)

By acknowledging two of these non-affinities, I run the risk of having my Michigan residency revoked. Fun fact: you can get kicked out of Oakland County for disliking Kid Rock and hockey. But there it is. I've got to be honest. If the pop culture we love paints our backgrounds, than how about the artifacts we just don't "get"? In what distant but so-close (too close) galleries do they reside?

The Top Five I.R.S.-Era R.E.M. Music Videos

2011-07-06T12:30:00.001-04:00

The Top Five I.R.S.-Era R.E.M. Music Videos

Over at PopMatters, A.J. Ramirez shares five great aural and visual moments from REM's classic I.R.S. years. One could quibble with the exclusion of Radio Free Europe, but why bother? Those early REM albums influenced the junior high me as much as novels like On the Road and The Stand did. REM made music for those of us shaped not only by family and religion and school but also by books and films and records. See also Patton Oswalt's essay (from this book) about working as a movie projectionist, which he "soundtracks" with REM's Fables album.

The New Pornographers - Moves

2011-07-06T12:24:00.000-04:00

When the dream became reality, reality got rocked.

Summer Teaching Etc.

2011-07-05T14:55:00.003-04:00

My summer mini-semester began today. A whole semester crammed into six weeks. I have a section of first-year writing and a section of advanced exposition, so I have four relatively full days in the classrooms per week. I have my students following an ongoing news story of their choosing and writing about how the press covers the issue. Luckily, only a few seem to have chosen the Casey Anthony verdict.

In addition to teaching, playing with my new computer (a MacBook Pro) has occupied my hours. Took me a long time to get around to switching to the Mac. Bit of a learning curve, but mostly the machine has been a pleasure to use. First things on my new i-Tunes account? The new Kills album, Blood Pressures, which is outstanding. Also, "Monster" by Kanye West and a Motley Crue compilation. Looking forward to figuring out iPhoto and iDVD.

This weekend, I'm off to the Penn State Rhetoric Conference to give a paper. Hope to see a lot of colleagues and friends. But I can't believe I'm getting on a plane so soon after the neverending Beirut-to-Detroit trip last week.

Non-Academic Reading Part Three

2011-07-01T11:00:00.003-04:00

While overseas this past year, I logged here and here some of the things I read. Given the mystical nature of the number of three, why not post a third list?

--Nujood Ali with Delphine Minoui, I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced
--Margeurite van Gueldermalsen, Married to a Bedouin
--Mahmoud Darwish, The Music of Human Flesh

Aging Rock Stars

2011-06-30T12:03:00.003-04:00

On one hand, it's odd to see--as I did last night with my friends Jim and Janice--the members of Motley Crue take the stage amid massive pyrotechnics and proceed to bang their heads. On the other hand, what are they going to do, become accountants? I don't know if I realized that bands still go so far over the top. The Crue (now that I've seen them live, I can use the shorthand) brings out go-go dancers, shoots off fireworks, and keeps the dry ice industry in business. They play every single they've ever released ("We're going to play your favorite songs," singer Vince Neil announced), along with anachronistic-seeming drum and guitar solos. Drummer, reality tv star, and celebrity sex tape impresario Tommy Lee's drum kit is strapped to a roller coaster track that spins in a loop so he can play upside down. You can't look away.

Until you see Motley Crue live, you forget about the depth of their catalogue. They played hits for two hours. You also forget about the quality of their early tracks. "Shout at the Devil" is unimpeachable. Unlike an indie rock show, a Motley Crue concert focuses on entertainment and pleasure. Period. You can't help but have fun. The only moment of irony occurs during the montage of crowd photos that plays like a slide show on the big screen behind the band late in the show. Dudes flashing devil horns. Women showing cleavage. (Mostly) 40-something fans drinking in the parking lot. All during a song called "Too Young To Fall In Love." Priceless.

Two bands opened the show. Poison, slightly more "hair metal" and slightly less edgy than the headliners, did a short set, predictably heavy on familiar singles like "Talk Dirty to Me." When singer Bret Michaels--Tommy Lee's colleague in the world of reality tv--announced a song from their new album, fans were kind enough to eschew verbal disappointment. The song ended up being a cover of "We're An American Band." The evening opened with a thirty-minute set from 70s legends the New York Dolls, who no doubt influenced both of the more famous bands that played. I've seen the Dolls several times but enjoyed hearing classics like "Pills" and "Personality Crisis." The Dolls brought a little rock critic credibility to the evening and in some ways were an odd fit ("Strange to have a punk band open the show," Janice observed) but fit right in with the glam ethos of the Crue in particular.

Patti Smith Group - Pale Blue Eyes/Louie Louie

2011-06-07T11:50:00.000-04:00

R.E.M. - See No Evil (1985)

2011-06-07T11:22:00.001-04:00

Radiohead - Just (Live at Reading Festival 1994)

2011-06-07T11:13:00.000-04:00

White Stripes, RIP

2011-02-24T03:54:00.002-05:00

My roomate in college liked a Detroit band called Goober & The Peas, so we used to go see them play their odd country/punk around town. They had a rotating roster, but for a while their drummer was a kid younger than us. A couple years later he switched to guitar and changed his name to Jack White. After I grew up, his band, The White Stripes, got me re-invested in new music. By the late 90s, I was married and spending my time getting a PhD, not listening to bands. Plus, rock and roll seemed pretty boring anyway. Linkin Park, that kind of thing.

I lived in Tucson then, but read the Detroit papers online, and they were starting to talk about this band that played Captain Beefheart covers and had hokey elements like dressing in red and white. Their sense of fun knocked me over, hokey or not. I listened to "De Stijl," their best in my opinion, on repeat while helping my friend Hung tow a 1940 Cadillac from New Orleans to Los Angeles around Christmas, 2001. We drove a huge red dumptruck and when it was my turn to drive and Hung's turn to sleep, Hung had to get us to an entrance ramp and point us in the right direction because I was pretty shaky when it came to making turns in that monster. That's what I think of when I hear "Hello Operator" and "You're Pretty Good Lookin for a Girl." Towing a 1940 Caddy across Texas--a pretty good video for the old-fashioned music.

Nicole and I saw them live in Tucson, at the Hotel Congress, in early 2002, while I was finishing up my dissertation. There were lots of kids at the show. Not college kids, little kids. I felt kind of creepy, a 20-something among all these middle-schoolers getting dropped off by their parents. They opened with "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" and the guitar was impossibly loud and sweaty. No setlist. Jack would just nod at Meg and she'd know what he meant. When they quieted down for "We're Gonna Be Friends," with all those young kids there, miles from Washington where our country was getting ready to go to war with half the Middle East, that was a totally unironic, tender moment. Seems like a week or two later, they were being played on the radio, alongside crap, and they were on the MTV awards show doing "Fell In Love With A Girl."

We moved to Southwest Ohio a few months later for my first professor job--speaking of growing up--and, 2002, 2003, those were the final years of the independent Oxford, Ohio, radio station WOXY. And WOXY had good final years: The White Stripes were in heavy rotation, plus Gossip (before they became a dance band), Sleater Kinney, the local band The Greenhornes, Bloc Party, The Kills when they first started up, Flaming Lips and Wilco had popular records then, the British punk band the Libertines. I taught a lot of English majors during those years and we were listening to the same music. Lots of good English major music during 02-03. And the Stripes were the gateway to a lot of their friends' bands in Detroit: the Dirtbombs, the Detroit Cobras, the Electric 6, and a long list of others. Those bands had their fifteen minutes, and now they continue to make fun and energetic, non-hipster music on a smaller stage. Nicole and I saw the Stripes one more time, probably in early 2003 in Cincinnati. More popular now, still playing the same songs, and no less committed to that vision of a guitar, drums, and voice.

I didn't like "Elephant," "Get Behind Me Satan," and "Icky Thump" quite as much as their first records. Sure, songs like "Seven Nation Army" and "Blue Orchid" became anthems, but they no longer sounded like the only songs of their kind. Mainly, I guess, because everybody else was imitating Jack White. And the band was name-dropped in the movie School of Rock. And Metallica covered "Seven Nation Army." And they band shared a stage with Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Like Nirvana ten years earlier, the band represented a weird moment when something from the underground takes a peak at the sunlight. And that's not a bad thing, because more people get to partake in something real.

The band broke up a few weeks back and that's a shame. Listening to their music reminded me that just because I'm married and have a real job doesn't mean I have to grow up.

Non-Academic Reading

2010-12-15T08:46:00.003-05:00

Anybody still reading this blog? I've mostly moved blog operations over to Beirut Bill, my travel blog about the year I am spending in the Middle East. I hope if you are reading this, you'll also check out and bookmark the Beirut blog, where I post at least a few times a week.

Anyway, here's a post that has little to do with my life and work abroad. A list of non-academic stuff I've read since leaving the U.S.

-Edward Said, Out of Place (Said's memoir)
-Leila Ahmed, A Border Passage: From Cairo to America A Woman's Journey (also memoir)
-Stephen King, Just After Sunset (a hit or miss short story collection--the hits are really good and the misses are few)
-Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile
-Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia
-Agatha Christie, Murder is Easy
-Emma Donoghue, Room (loved this novel very much)
-Misc. poems from Jim Daniels' Blessing the House, Naomi Shihab Nye's Words Under the Words, Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab-American Poetry, and Michael Dennison's Hamra Noir (I tend to read around in these)

other pastures

2010-08-30T19:05:00.002-04:00

Here is a link to my new blog. I'll tell the story of my year abroad on the new site, so bookmark the page, become a "follower" of the new blog, leave me comments, and stay in touch while I'm in Lebanon. I'll be posting pictures and keeping the new site updated on a regular basis.

Also, Nicole will tell her stories too, so keep her site bookmarked as well: Nicole Abroad

vacation

2010-08-11T11:21:00.003-04:00

What a couple of weeks. In the midst of Lebanon preparations, got to enjoy what felt like a real summer. My nephew Tony came to Detroit for a few days and we hiked the Dequinder Pass, ate some of Detroit's finest offerings (Tomatoes Apizza, Priya, the taco trucks in Mexicantown), and caught the Dead Weather's amazing, loud, high energy concert. The band takes the stage to one of my favorite songs on the p.a. and then pretty much rocks through its entire catalogue. Not many indie bands have the musicianship of the Dead Weather, especially the vocal chops of Alison Mosshart. Great time.

Then, down to West Virginia to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary. They rented a cabin and we enjoyed about five days of loads and loads of fun. Board games and huge family meals in the cabin, a ton of swimming and hiking, and a trivia game about life in 1960, when the happy couple married. My brother, sister, and I went together on a collaborative present (new stone steps for the front porch at their house), which was more of a hit than a comemmorative plate or something would have been. Despite losing electricity for half a day, the trip was just about perfect. Most days included a long hike in the morning, swimming through most of the afternoon, a visit to the gym in the everning, and a short walk in the evening, so it was kind of like "The Biggest Loser" but with lots of carbs in the cabin.

On the way from West Virginia to Columbus--where we were dropping off Tony at his University--we had a blowout on the highway. With six nieces and nephews on board. Luckily nobody was hurt. We were pulling off the freeway when the tire blew, thank God, but had we been going full speed...yikes. A quick change and a visit to Sears for a new tire had us back on the road. Lots of adventures, pictures, and memories.

teaching at AUB

2010-07-22T17:31:00.002-04:00

Looks like in the Fall I'll be teaching a graduate course, Issues in Composition, and a section of Advanced Academic English.

2010-07-22T17:28:00.004-04:00

Kahlil Gibran, from The Prophet:

The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.

For, to stay, though the hours burn in the night, is to freeze and crystallize and be bound in a mould.

still more randomness

2010-07-20T16:55:00.002-04:00

Well, I'm officially on "leave" as of July 1. And I've been working a lot of "half days" during the past two weeks, so I definitely feel like something's different in my work life. A big part of my summer work now that my summer one teaching is done is working with a team of faculty putting together our bid to gain the Carnegie "Community Engaged Campus" Classification. Quite a process--data gathering, narrative writing, etc. Today several members of the team and I attended a workshop in Lansing to get tips on putting the bid together. Useful. I'm also spending a few days here and there grading placement essays. And of course trying to put two writing projects to bed before the departure (early September). So the work goes on.

I've spent a few weekends in Youngstown. Good to spend time with the family since I'll be missing them next year. My mom and dad are on "vacation" from their pizza-making duties at their church and, to their credit, they've got the wanderlust and are making the drive to Michigan more frequently than they've done in years. Good job guys! Only two weeks until their big 50th anniversary camping trip. My siblings and I, our families, and my folks are all going to a cabin in West Virginia, which pretty much is the kind of thing we've NEVER done, which makes the trip all the more exciting. Should be lots of hiking, swimming, and of course (since we're talking about the DeGenaros here) cooking. Can't wait. Right before that, my nephew Tony's coming up to Detroit for a few days of fun, the centerpiece of which is our second annual Dead Weather show.

And of course the bulk of my time and energy seems to be devoted to Lebanon prep. I read a really good history of the country (The Making of Modern Lebanon) and re-read The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, along with a couple tour books about travel in the region. I have a few more books (mostly history, and some stuff about the nation's place in Middle East politics) checked out of the library and hope to continue on my crash course in all things Lebanon. And I'm listening to a little 'Arabic in 60 Minutes' while at the gym too, hoping to avoid completely embarassing myself when I try to ask for a shawarma sandwich. I have a good lead on a rental in a residential Shi'ite neighborhood about 2 kilometers from the University. Cheaper than Hamra (the built up area along the sea, where AUB is), and we're thinking it might be more interesting not to live on top of the hustle and bustle (and Starbucks!) of the college. I'm told you can walk to campus in fifteen minutes or take a "service" car for less than two bucks. Sounds do-able.

red tape

2010-07-14T13:03:00.002-04:00

So I'm on the phone with the Lebanese Consulate and we're chatting in English about visas. The person on the other end of the line seems extremely impatient and annoyed as I ask what I think are entirely reasonable questions. The call has an overall grumpy quality until I say "shukran" (thank you) and then the whole tone changes. The woman issues an amused chuckle, a reaction no doubt to my Arabic pronunciation, and becomes friendly.

At several points during Fulbright orientation, presenters suggested that a little bit of Arabic works wonders and that native speakers tend to have a lot of respect for Americas who at least try to speak the language. True enough. Plus, if my non-native pronunciation can provide a little comic relief in a bureaucratic setting, than I'm glad to be of service. Fulbrighters are supposed to be ambassadors, after all. If you think my "thank you" is something, you should hear my "Can I have a falafel sandwich please?*"

*oreedoo falafel, minfudluck

yum

2010-07-09T16:23:00.002-04:00

Made pizza dough today. 2 teaspoons of yeast in 1 1/2 cups of warm water until it bubbles, then add about 3 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of cornmeal. Worked the dough for a while, then covered it with about a tablespoon of olive oil and let it rise for a few hours. Sprinkled some cornmeal on an ungreased cookie sheet and pushed out the dough into a circle (more or less). Spooned a bunch of pesto onto the dough, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and baked for twenty minutes. Wow, did it taste good. Must make dough more often.

unwelcome return

2010-07-09T08:49:00.002-04:00

Yesterday evening I had the first serious migraine I've had in months. Not as bad as last summer, but bad enough. I popped a couple tramadols and closed my eyes in our guest bedroom (the one with the blinds that totally block the light) for an hour or so. Got up, walked around, headache went away. Sometimes I love western medicine despite its profiteering!

Feeling a migraine coming on is scary. I start to worry that it'll be Summer '09 Part 2. And worrying certainly doesn't help the situation. Luckily a little relaxation, darkness, and pharmaceutical assistance all conspire to stave off a full-blown attack. Thank God.

chapters

2010-07-08T15:13:00.004-04:00

I really hope to finish things before leaving for Lebanon in September. Seems like an obvious transitional moment, and I'd love to find myself in a scenario where most of my overseas work is new work. Insert your favorite "start a new chapter"-ish cliche here.

Today I'm going over data I gathered in some of my service learning classes with plans to incorporate some of the data into the "affective dimensions of sl" article I've been revising for nearly half a year. The data will help the article move beyond a theoretical piece, and help me create a revision consistent with reviewer suggestions. In what was perhaps an overly ambitious plan, I had figured I'd write the theory piece, than a more data-driven piece. Now, makes more sense to synthesize the two--partly to meet the journal's expectations, partly in the interest in finally getting the ideas out there, partly because I'm going to Lebanon in two months (see paragraph #1), but mostly because I think the article will be more tangible and maybe even more interesting.

Got a pretty positive response to a creative nonfiction piece I wrote about my Grandpa's WW2 letters. Looks like that piece might end up seeing the light of day as well. Another piece I hope to finalize pre-Middle East.

Will be happily handing off the keys to the service learning office very soon. In the meantime, I'm part of a working group this summer applying to have our campus gain a Carnegie, "Civic Engagement" Classification. This will likely be the final thing I do as SL coordinator, which has been rewarding on many levels and yet in some ways reinforced to me that I don't particularly aspire to be an administrator.

And now, the non-sequitur. Did I mention that the ass-kicking Detroit Tigers aren't the only things that are hot right now in the motor city? Hot as in the 90s. Hot as in much humidity. Moments ago the rain began to fall and I'm thanking my stars I won't have to drag out the hose tonight and once again water the garden. The plants are hot, and thirsty too.

DC

2010-07-07T20:39:00.002-04:00

Fulbright orientation in D.C. was useful and informative. A representative from the State Department's security team gave a lecture on staying safe in the Middle East--a lot of commonsensical stuff, including tips on avoiding identity theft, not looking like a high roller, varying one's daily routine, etc. Also had a video conference call with staff from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, who filled the Lebanon contingent (four of us) in on some details regarding visas and travel.

Made time to have some fun in the city. Dinner at Ben's Chili Bowl, made famous by great chili dogs as well as a mention in Kwame Kilpatrick's notorious text messages (and, subsequently, Jon Stewart's R.Kelly-esque parody of the Kilpatrick scandal: "Ben's Chili Bowl, a place for love"). Walked the monuments after dark, rode the Metro, took in several Smithsonians and the surprisingly cool Postal Museum (great place...check it out sometime). Was terribly disappointed by ACKC, a "cocoa bar" and chocolate shop that sounded great. Prices were ridiculous, even by D.C. standards, service was awful, and the goodies tasted mediocre. Avoid.

Stopped in Youngstown on the way down and the way back and got to enjoy a nice 4th of July picnic in the hometown. Fun.

old school movie night

2010-06-29T09:19:00.002-04:00

The joys of the drive-in. Poor sound quality; poor picture quality; cars (and an RV!) pulling in and out, in and out, all night; gross bathrooms. Nicole and I joined Anna, Mazin, and the kids, at Dearborn's own Ford/Wyoming drive-in Saturday night. It was great fun. We took the cap off of our truck and filled the back with blankets and pillows and brought loads of food (including the grape leaves leftover from the last day of classes). We saw the "Karate Kid" remake and "Grown Ups" and both were mediocre. But the night itself? Very, very fun.

In other news, off to Youngstown in a few hours, to spend the night, and then tomorrow morning, on to Washington D.C. for Fulbright orientation. I hope to know a whole lot more after orientation. Right now I have so many questions regarding next year. I have a couple fresh legal pads and I'm ready to learn. Also hope to network with the other Mideast Grantees for many reasons, one of which is to make friends and then have places to stay when we visit other cities in the region (Aman, Petra, Damascus, etc.)!

Yesterday I turned in grades for Summer I term. I'll miss the kids (had a great creative writing class) but will be relieved to have a few months out of the classroom before departing for Lebanon. In the next few hours, I want to go to the gym, pack, cut the grass, water the garden, give the house a quick cleaning. Better start ticking things off the list...

more randomness

2010-06-24T13:36:00.004-04:00

Too much happening to devote a post to one subject alone. Today the summer one term ends. I'm collecting final portfolios from the creative writers and the comp106-ers. I love these students but I'm glad to say farewell so I can try to wrap up a few writing projects and prepare for Lebanon. I made stuffed grape leaves and pasta salad for the students and many of them are bringing treats, so we'll end in style.

Yesterday in addition to rolling grape leaves, I did the 6.2 mile hike at Stoney Creek. I've really been enjoying outdoor exercise. Something about working out sans the artificial gym air and the smell of other people's sweat feels like, well, summer. I was late putting air in my bike tires this summer, but I've now gone for a couple nice rides as well.

For any family members out there thinking about visiting Beirut next year, get a copy of this book, The Globetrotter Travel Guide: Lebanon. Really thorough and informative. Lots of neat photos too. I found a used copy online that was only a few bucks. But it's worth paying full price.

Alright, I'm off to start reading that student work.

catching up

2010-06-22T15:53:00.002-04:00

Haven't blogged in some time due to summer teaching, the garden, Lebanon preparations, and miscellaneous summer activities. I'm in my final week of the summer term and while I love to teach, I can't wait to finish up for the year. Summer I starts almost immediately as winter term is ending, which means no rest for the wicked. I collect final portfolios from all my students on Thursday, then a weekend of reading/grading, and, at last, fin. No more UM-Dearborn students until Fall, 2011.

Parsley's off to a sluggish start, but otherwise herbs are plentiful. I made pesto with my basil, a couple cloves of garlic, a handful of almonds, olive oil, and parmesan. Delicious on chops and boca burgers. Haven't gotten around to picking any mint yet. Wow, did I overdo it on the mint plants! But the mint combines nicely with lemon balm which grows along the side of the house, so I foresee some fruity salads this weekend.

Following leads on housing in Beirut. Expensive, but interesting. For instance, one place that sounds nice comes with the free use of a skooter. Okay, I guess, but maybe not so much with the rental costs higher than our mortgage. A few friends and friends-of-friends are inquiring for us, too, so we'll see what develops. In the meantime, I'm anxious to check out some of the ruins and Maronite sites in Lebanon, which look amazing.

Had a nice weekend in Burlington, Ontario, for the birthday part of Nicole's 95-year-old aunt. Nice get-together, and a fun city as well. Happened to visit during a street fair, so being out and about in the evening was jolly. They have good gelato there, so luckily the hotel had a great pool and gym on site. Been working out almost every day and managed to keep with it while in Canada.

belated concert review

2010-06-11T09:43:00.003-04:00

About three weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see the Buzzcocks perform at St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit. Hipsters often spurn reunion shows, dismissing the bands as past-their-prime and greedy. But who ever said punk rockers can't have grey hair and beer bellies? Especially if they can still bring the noise.

And speaking of bringing the noise, I never realized that the Buzzcocks had a Public Enemy aesthetic. Let me explain, Pete Shelley--he with the aforementioned grey locks and paunch--sings most of the songs. You know his trebley voice from "What Do I Get?," "Ever Fallen In Love," et al. Doesn't do stage banter. For a first-wave punk, he's downright stoic. A couple feet to his right, though, is Steve Diggle, the band's hypeman, Flava Flav to Shelley's Chuck D. Diggle does the pogo, taunts the crowd like a middle-aged Sid Vicious, encourages dancing, and sings the band's more anti-authoritarian numbers, like "Autonomy."

The band played its first two albums sequentially. This has become a fad, especially at summer festivals. A band will come out and play its canonical record in its entirety (think: Sonic Youth doing Daydream Nation or the Pixies doing Doolittle). Even Springsteen did this recently, so it's a movement that goes beyond just punk and indie types. Strange move for the Buzzcocks, though, who I always think of as one of thee quintessential "singles" bands. In fact, Singles Going Steady, the band's compilation of its first eight, late-70s A- and B-sides, is its must-own, no filler record, hands down.

But it worked. They flew through those records too. The crowd never stopped dancing on that rainy Detroit night. A lot of 30- and 40-somethings, of course, and a lot of mohawks, but I was happy to see a good number of kids who knew all the words to "I Don't Mind" and "Love You More." They played the two albums with much energy and then left the stage, most of the familiar hits yet unperformed. They encored, and did all the big numbers, and it somehow didn't feel obligatory. Actually, it was a perfect cap to a really good show, a rousing, sing-along of a finish, with their signature "Orgasm Addict" closing the set. You knew this was the band that pretty much invented the notion of pop-punk, and if you were a glass half-empty person, you walked out blaming them for all the shitty bands they inspired. But most of us left smiling, happy for all the two-minute masterpieces the Buzzcocks gave to the world of rock and roll.

random bits

2010-06-10T15:24:00.002-04:00

Too distracted to write anything coherent, so I'll give some general updates.

Yesterday, came home to discover a bee box on the front porch. A present? A warning? A sign from the heavens? Could it be that someone just left the thing at the wrong house, that the box was meant for a beekeeping neighbor but ended up on our stoop accidentally? No, turns out that some bee person in nearby Royal Oak borrowed it from Anna who gave the person our address so that the Royal Oak person didn't have to drive all the way down to Anna's to return it. Mystery solved. But it would have been quite a coincidence to end up with a random bee box? "Here you go, Mazin, we found a bee box for you on our front stoop."
This weekend, my friend Lew is visiting from Youngstown and we are seeing not one but two Tigers games. I definitely anticipate some hiking too. Can't wait.
Last night Nicole and saw Rhoda Janzen give a reading at Borders. We picked up her memoir afterward and I look forward to reading it. Janzen, a "worldly" college prof and poet and ex-model, goes home to her Mennonite family after a traumatic year. The memoir narrates her homecoming as well as the traumatic events that led up to the homecoming. Reading was funny.
Preparing for the Fulbright is as hectic as it is exciting. While I'm away next year, my Dean's office is going to supplement my "stipend," thank goodness. Good to feel supported. Even better to avoid defaulting on one's mortgage. Still working out details about my work within my host school's English Department, as well as about housing and transportation and such. Details forthcoming. Eventually, I'll probably switch over to a "Year in Lebanon"-type blog and put this one to rest after six years.

this is an example...

2010-06-04T09:21:00.003-04:00

of how awesome my sister's blog is. She should get a book deal like Julie from the Julia Child book/movie. Or a reality show.

let me see if I can sound like Andy Rooney or that guy who used to write the "Monday Moanin' Mind" column in the Free Press

2010-06-04T09:06:00.004-04:00

The Fulbright folks love paperwork. I had my physical the other day and am hoping the doctor's office has mailed the proper form to Washington. Nicole has her physical next week so I need to print the spouse medical form for her to take to Dr. Sharma. I've filled out my request for an Academic Leave and it's ready to give to my Dean, but not until I get the submittal form (yes, that's what it's called) from my Department. The request form and submittal form must be attached to one another. I'm waiting to receive my housing forms from my host school in Beirut. Just received an email with a registration form for the orientation I must attend in Washington next month. I'd like to drive instead of flying there but first I must submit an approval form to travel by car instead of plane, then afterward download the mileage reimbursement forms. Forthcoming, forms to continue my university benefits during my leave, paperwork telling Fulbright where to deposit my checks, and a couple visa applications. Did I mention Nicole and I need to draw up a lease so we can sublet house?

let's get physical

2010-06-02T16:04:00.002-04:00

Today I got a physical. In order to receive officially my Fulbright grant for next year, I must first receive medial clearance. Thus, the physical. Before today, I knew I had a bit of anxiety, migraines (bad last year, now very much under control thanks to meds), and that's about it as far as health problems. The Fulbright people provide a form that asks dozens of questions about family medical history and general wellness, and asks the doctor to conduct a whole battery of tests and such and then sign. I'll be in a major city with hospitals and such (Beirut), whereas some Fulbrighters find themselves in remote locales. So I understand why the form needs to be thorough.

Anyhow, physical went well. Good blood pressure, good EKG results, a strong heart. But as I'm killing time in examination room I happen to look at the BMI chart. Body mass index, which uses height and weight to determine, frankly, how fat a person is. I won't get into numbers, but let's just say my BMI is very bad. That's putting it mildly. I could lose a lot of weight and my BMI would go from very bad to bad. The BMI does nothing to distinguish between fat and muscle. The BMI doesn't take into account how often one exercises (I do cardio at least three times a week--usually more), or what kind of food one eats (I eat too much food, but it's very healthy food) or anything else aside from two numbers, height and weight. That's the sole data the measurement uses.

In the corner of the BMI chart, the logo of a corporate sponsor. The sponsor? A manufacturer of an artificial sweetener. There's a big surprise. A carcinogen-manufacturer telling me I'm unhealthy. Pot, kettle, black.

worth a second look

2010-05-20T10:21:00.002-04:00

Four years after its initial run, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" is a blip on the proverbial pop culture radar. A famous flop. One and done...one season that is. A much hyped, self-serious dramedy overshadowed by Tiny Fey's "Thirty Rock," which premiered the same season.

Like Fey's successful sitcom, "Studio 60" is about the staff of a sketch comedy show that draws so heavily on "Saturday Night Live" lore that you can barely call the show-within-a-show fictional. "Studio 60" came from the same creative team as "The West Wing." Most notably, both shows were created by the writer Aaron Sorkin, who has always had a brilliant ear for smart dialogue. Sorkin loves to stage smart, earnest, liberals talking with one another. This talent served "The West Wing"--about the hard-working, erudite, overeducated, progressive people who run the free world--very well and the show was a hit. "Studio 60"--about the hard-working, erudite, overeducated, progressive people who run a comedy show--had less gravitas (in the minds of many) than a show about a fictional president and thus bombed.

In 2006, audiences went for the slapsticky, self-reflexive of "Thirty Rock" while rejecting "Studio 60," preferring self-aware over self-righteous. Sorkin also wrote the film "A Few Good Men." He likes to have his characters give speeches (remember Jack Nicholson telling Tom Cruise about how the Marines do the jobs that the elite don't like to talk about at cocktail parties?) and have Big Emotional Moments ("you can't handle the truth!"). Seemed kinda silly to watch a guy writing goofy jokes think he's the savior of the western world.

But here's the thing. I'm crazy about the show. For the first time since it aired, I'm rewatching the program (thanks, netflix) and getting a lot out of the dialogue and the great relationships. I like shows about people who are really smart and really hard working. Sorry. The show centers of the writers, performers, and producers of the show but also the network brass. Everybody has loads of wit. Their conversations are hilarious but also reveal that they aren't ashamed of their knowledge. Okay, they (like the show itself) can occasionally be a tad pretentious. But funny and smart? Great combination. And like "The West Wing," loyalty is a big theme. Matt Albie (Chandler from "Friends") and Danny Tripp (Josh from "The West Wing") have this intense, admirable friendship.

I'm liberal and have loved "Saturday Night Live" since middle school, so Aaron Sorkin pretty much wrote this show for me. I can see why its appeal is limited. But as I rewatch, I can't get over how damn compelling the show is. Wes Mendell having his nervous breakdown on live tv, ranting ("Network" style) about the dumbing down of the U.S. media. Comedienne Harriet Hays reconciling her conservative Christianity with her work on a show that loves to knock conservative Christians down a peg or two. Tom Jeter--the goofy star of the show-within-a-show--who refuses to use his war hero brother to get out of a speeding ticket. Lots of great moments. But I'm not surprised it didn't last. A real case of television for one.

2010-05-14T13:56:00.000-04:00

C-Tools

2010-05-14T09:59:00.002-04:00

Workshopping has gotten off to a strong start in the Advanced Creative Writing course I'm teaching this summer. For the first time, I'm having students post works-in-progress to C-Tools (instead of bringing in hard copies to distribute). So far I like the switch, aside from several students who posted files in formats I've never even heard of and which my computer could not read. Glitches come with the territory, I suppose. Passing out hard copies kind of slowed things down and tended to cause all kinds of confusion, especially when three or four pieces were circulating. On C-Tools, I created a folder for each class period ("Poems for May 13," etc.) so a student can just upload a piece to the appopriate folder and everybody else can access it there. I'm probably like five years late on this move. Oh well.

"Secret Code"

2010-05-14T09:56:00.002-04:00

Go here to listen to a new song by The Dirtbombs. A catchy summertime tune. I hope they release song in some kind of physical form, or make it available on i-tunes.

catching up

2010-05-11T14:49:00.002-04:00

Sitting in office hours. I just got out of my first three-hour class of the day. One more to go. Today opens the first summer term and for the second consecutive summer I've got two classes: a section of first-year comp and a section of advanced creative writing. A lot of contact hours, but the time passes quickly on most days. I hate, hate, hate the "get writing out of the way" mindset which leads some students to summer sections of comp, but I'm excited about the projects I'm asking students to do.

Last night I wrote a poem. Tonight we'll workshop the piece in my creative writing class--a kind of practice round, and proof to my students that I'll put my own work out there just like I'm asking them to do. For the first time I'm using C-Tools as our space for distributing poems and stories for workshopping. Hope it's a glitch-free experience. The poem's about the Great Migraine of 09. I had a relatively small headache yesterday (bad enough that I had to break out the tramadol, but it went away quickly). Can't help but fret a little bit, as we near the anniversary of GM09's onset. Stay away, stay away, stay away.

Speaking of writing, I've started to write a piece (more or less a "narrative essay") about my Grandpa D (see previous post with excerpt of a wartime letter of his). Trying to write about his personality while also writing about some of the letters he wrote during the war. I'm excited enough about the piece that I think I'm committed to regular writing even during the intensive summer term. Hopefully I'll workshop the piece with my students in a few weeks too.

Good weekend. Another Cinco de Mayo party. Pinata was a success (i.e., I didn't get seriously inujured). Improvised "fried ice cream" cake was a success. Next year I think we'll skip the quesadillas, as I spent the first half of the party making the blasted things. Going to stick to stuff that's ready to roll out before the party gets started. Great time, though, despite the cold and the rain.

Still waiting on final word from the Fulbright people. I sent in my materials ELEVEN MONTHS AGO. Latest communication (two weeks ago) alerted me that I have "finalist" status and should block off dates of orientation in Washington DC in case I'm selected. It would be nice to know whether or not I'm leaving the country in a few months! Come on. I have no patience.

Alright, off to prep for CW class and maybe grab a veggie sub from the U.C.

dinner and a movie

2010-05-07T10:33:00.004-04:00

March 20, 1946
Island of Leyte, Philippines
from a letter from Bill to Margaret DeGenaro

My grandpa wrote this after four years in the Army, sitting on a beach in the Philippines about six months after the war ended. Along with thousands of other soldiers, he was waiting--"21 of us in a ten-man tent"--for space to become available on a transport. Note: grandma and grandpa grew up speaking a dialect that usually left off the last syllable of Italian words..."pasta fasool," "raggaz," etc.

I got a hold of a package of spaggets, tomatoes, and some sort of meat. I mixed the tomatoes and meat in my mess gear and let it boil down for about 20 minutes. We picked up a gal. can and in it I cooked the spagget. I didn’t know if its because I haven’t ate any for some time but it sure tasted good. Not only my self but the other fellows agreed. You really would of got a laugh seeing me around the fire stirring and tasting the spaggets to get them just right. That going to be your job soon. Tonight Roy Rogers is on and I'll see my last movie on these islands. Stevie should be seeing it with me.

weekend wrap-up

2010-05-02T19:45:00.002-04:00

On Friday evening I commented that I felt like hibernating. Not sleeping, hibernating. As in going into a cave and just enjoying the quiet darkness. Must have something to do with the end of a long semester. Or maybe I'm getting anti-social. Nicole and I went to Anna and Mazin's for a nice, lowkey picnic that night. We ate delicious kabobs, walked to the back of the pasture to check on the bees, laughed at miscelaneous facebook pictures with the kids, and ended up borrowing Mazin's tiller.

Saturday ended up being the lazy day I needed. Watched a few episodes of "Mad Men" (I'm late getting on the wagon--about midway through Season 1 right now). I love the dialogue. For me, that's the element of the show that really captures that these guys are 1) smooth, and 2) trying really hard to BE smooth. Their words seem forced, but only because the characters are men who choose words carefully. In case you somehow don't know the show's premise, "Mad Men" centers on an advertising firm in 1960 Manhattan and takes a sometimes funny and sometimes depressing look at the "isms" of the Baby Boom era. At times the show underlines the period details a little bit too heavy handedly (though, to be fair, I think that's the show's aesthetic): look at how much they smoke, look at all the red meat and liquor, look how sexist they all are.

Nicole and I crossed the bridge to Canada and cruised around Windsor, then crossed back into Michigan, ate in Mexicantown, and picked upa few things for our Cinco de Mayo party next weekend. It had stormed so I had a great excuse for not using the tiller I had borrowed. Thank God for lazy days.

This morning we got up early to go to our Peace and Justice meeting at church, then went to Mass. Nicole opted for a nap while I read the Free Press and did the crossword while listening to the Tigers kick some ass. Cleaned the basement, and then made a big salad with mint, lemon balm, and fresh parsley. Tomorrow, back to writing and syllabus writing (summer 1 starts in a week!), but for now, lovin' the weekend.

cutting services to Detroit's homeless

2010-04-26T11:36:00.002-04:00

One of the most important programs that NSO (Neighborhood Service Organization) administers is Project Helping Hands, which offers Detroit's homeless mental health and substance abuse counseling as well as transportation to appropriate facilities, all via its unique mobile outreach unit. As many of you know, NSO is not just a great service learning partner with UM-Dearborn, but also an agency whose work I admire deeply and support however I can.

Massive budgets cuts, to the tune of $21 Million, are forcing NSO to cut ties with Project Helping Hands and cease offering this vital service. NSO is asking for supporters to come to a press conference on Wednesday morning at PHH HQ (3523 Cass Ave, at the corner of MLK Blvd.), 10:00 sharp. I can't say enough about the amazing work that this organiation does. They are asking for community support on Wednesday. See this letter from NSO CEO Sheila Clay for further details.

Born Free

2010-04-26T11:19:00.003-04:00

This video is surely going to ignite loads of controversy. Which is a good and bad thing. Good, because the piece offers provocative and raw commentary on our collective attitudes toward immigration. Bad because "controversy" becomes the story and can obscure the ideas that inform the piece.

I didn't imbed the video here because of the graphic violence. Don't watch if you don't wish to see some disturbing images of what appears to be a government raid on a home full of red-headed young men.

Oh yeah, the piece is the music video for M.I.A.'s new single "Born Free," which quotes Suicide's punk classic "Ghost Rider." The song itself boasts a lot of M.I.A.'s signature flourishes: a nod to punk rock (past "quotations" in her work include The Clash, Pixies, and Modern Lovers), a minimalist techno beat, and lyrics that suggest radical politics.

The video begins circulating just this morning, days after Arizona's fascistic immigration bill passes. If you can stomach the violence, watch the video then decide what you are going to do to respond to Arizona's assault on civil liberties.

gym

2010-04-20T20:40:00.003-04:00

Good to be back at the gym. I had a few minor migraines and more than a few papers to grade this past week so I didn't get to work out much. Excuses, excuses. Even though I was getting some exercise working in the back yard, nothing fully takes the place of a sustained workout at the gym. I'm going to try to get there each day this week. I know I'll feel better if I do.

debbie

2010-04-19T18:04:00.001-04:00

Debbie Downer @ Yahoo! Video

!

2010-04-19T13:27:00.003-04:00

Next week the Public Safety office on my campus will host an instructional session on "what to do in the case of a shooter" at the University.

Record Store Day

2010-04-17T15:32:00.003-04:00

My kind of holiday. Each year, independent record stores celebrate the joy of discovering new music in public places where fans and afficionados actually, you know, talk to each other. The stores give away cookies and offer huge discounts. Today is RSD and I celebrated by going to several indie stores in and around the motor city and buying stuff. What did I get?

On CD, I got re-issues of Michigan proto-punk bands Death and The Rationals. Death was an African-American trio from Detroit who decided to make a hard rock record after listening to the MC5. The result was 1975's "For the Whole World to See," a psychedelic, politically engaged, loud piece of work. The Rationals, a 60s band from Ann Arbor, has some renown because they have a song on the original "Nuggets" garage rock compilation. The band put out a bunch of singles, never really hit it big, played famous shows with Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, the MC5, the Yardbirds, Ted Nugest, and Al Green. I got the massive, 34-song anthology "Think Rational," which I think has like every song they ever recorded and/or performed.

On vinyl, I got copies of Aretha Franklin's "This Girl's in Love With You," the first two studio albums by Generation X, and a strange-looking concept album by Malcolm McLaren (Sex Pistols svengali who died last week) called "Fans" (which puts original lyrics by McLaren to opera music). Just try to find Malcolm McLaren solo albums at Best Buy!

Happy Record Store Day peeps.

Friday's obligatory miscelaneous entry

2010-04-16T10:24:00.002-04:00

I've been blogging semi-regularly for the last month or so, and I'm amazed at how "retro" blogs feel. Like listening to .38 Special 8-tracks or playing Atari 2600. How quickly we move on to the next thing. Twitter. Facebook. Will they be gone in a few years? Less? I like the ease of sharing youtube videos, posting links (though facebook makes this even easier), and moving back and forth between serious posts, silly posts, and all points in between. Blogs. Still cool after all these (five or six) years.

Had the pleasure of giving a talk in Ann Arbor on Wednesday. The English Department there has a reading group in "language and rhetorical studies" and they had looked at a piece I published in Rhetoric Review a few years back and invited me to talk with them. Wow, do they have a great cohort of graduate students. I learned a lot. Not sure why I don't go to Ann Arbor more often. Good place.

Still working to clear bushes and brush out of the beds around the perimeter of our backyard. Our goal is to have all edible stuff planted by the end of May. Mostly herbs, but some veggies and berries too. I'll still put in the "big" garden next to the garage (eggplant, cucumbers, squash, peppers, etc.) and we'll certainly do tomatoes in pots, but I'm excited to pull the overgrown stuff that had taken over these beds something fierce.

Last year, due to the Great Migraine of 09, I did very little in the yard. This year, wait and see! Hopefully the joint will be looking good before the annual cinco de mayo party, coming up in a few weeks.

Speaking of GM09, I have a follow-up with the neurologist this afternoon. Cross fingers for me. I hope I don't have to get back on the meds--it's been nice this past month not loading up on depacote everyday after a year of taking the stuff.

Nicole's going to Canada this weekend with her law school friends, so I'm a bachelor for a few days. A little writing, a little karaoke tomorrow night, and definitely MUST get through the stack of papers that need grading.

5-10-15-20

2010-04-15T10:04:00.009-04:00

I don't read Pitchfork as regularly as I used to, but I still enjoy how the 5-10-15-20 feature asks artists to take an inventory of music they loved at five, ten, fifteen, etc., years old. An interesting way to narrate your life. Give it a try.

Age Five
I can't say for sure if I was five years old or not, but I clearly remember the two Beatles anthologies, 1962-66, and most especially 1967-1970, always being in the house, circa the late '70s. I think my brother Steve and/or my sister Anna had the records, but I seem to recall checking them out of Hubbard Public Library over and over again too, and listening to side one of the "blue album," which opens with Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, and Sgt. Pepper. Most of the blue album consists of psychedelic songs from the "Sgt. Pepper" and "Magical Mystery Tour" records. Pretty awesome stuff for a five-year-old. After all, most of the songs sound like cartoons. Really good cartoons, that is.

I should also give props to Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle, which I did a pretty mean version of in my kindergarten Christmas show. The same nuns who taught me that song were responsible for my inability to say the Hail Mary or make the Sign of the Cross without an Italian accent until I was like nine.

Age Ten
At ten, the word "Sandanista" meant two things to me: somebody my Aunt Minnie gave money to (who is this person and why is my lefty great-aunt sending her cash?), and the record of the same name by the Clash. Sure, I dug Rock the Casbah (from the better-selling "Combat Rock"), but Police on my Back from the massive "Sandanista!"...that was the premier tune by the band, in my ten-year-old opinion. A record so great, its title needed an exclamation point. Years later, "in the basement of her mother's house, she once taped the first three sides of Sandanista! for my car" would be the best lyrics The Barenaked Ladies would ever write.
Age Fifteen
Is there a better age for listening to rock and roll music? I think in tenth grade I listened to Lou Reed's "New York" album a lot, along with Dead Milkmen's "Eat Your Paisley," the first Cowboy Junkies record, oh, and 10,000 Maniacs, who I saw play in Cleveland with Tim Finn of Split Enz as the opening act. I can remember Natalie Merchant singing a beautiful a capella cover of The Beatles's "She Loves You" on the Nautica Stage, in the middle of the Flats, a breeze floating in from the river. I can't think of a better memory of live music.

Age Twenty
1993 was a good year to be a music-lover in Detroit. 89-X, which is now a mostly awful "hard" alt-rock station with only five or six songs in rotation, was in its prime. The station broadcast from across the river in Windsor, ON., so they were less inclined to censor song lyrics. Oh, and you could see rock shows for fifteen or twenty bucks. The Lemonheads. Matthew Sweet. The Beastie Boys (playing instruments at Cobo Hall!). Redd Kross. Too bad I never saw Nirvana. Surely they must have played Detroit a bunch of times during that year or two stretch.

I can recall my friend Hung getting packages of Vietnamese food from his family and eating squid jerkey and drinking beer in his room while listening to the hip hop station ("Detroit's strong songs"...is that station still around?). Ice Cube's Good Day and the Dr. Dre Chronic songs (classics) were in heavy rotation, along with I Got A Man and Back to the Hotel (classics? not so much).

I loved the digable planets back then, too. The "reachin (a new refutation of time and space)" record was amazing. I still listen to that CD all the time. What is it...poetry, jazz, spoken word, alt-rap, stoner music, new age philosophy? Yes.

Age Twenty-Five
The year before I got married. I moved to Tucson by myself (Nicole was finishing her last year of law school in Michigan) to start my Ph.D. program at U of Arizona. Go Wildcats. I think I listened to the Pixies and the first Patti Smith album quite a bit in my crappy Los Altos Village apartment (one block from the grocery store that many a fellow grad student dubbed "ghetto Fry's"). A lot of new music was pretty bad in 1998 (horrible post-grunge bands and Nirvana rip-offs). Plus, I spent that first year really geeking out in my program, reading classical rhetoric for days on end and setting up a literacy project on the Rez as part of a community literacy practicum I was in. Consequently, I don't recall buying any new releases except for "Stunt," the Barenaked Ladies's big album. I liked the melancholy songs like Call and Answer and In the Car (with the aforementioned reference to the Clash), a good soundtrack for missing Nicole, the midwest, and family. I remember listening to Yaqui Deer Songs on the Rez. And of course mariachi music every time somebody from out of town would visit craving good Mexican food.

Age Thirty
I taught at Miami University during the last years of woxy, the great indie radio station out of Oxford, Ohio. 2002 and 2003 saw some really great stuff get airplay on woxy: tunes from Wilco's magnificent "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," early stuff by The Kills and The Libertines, Yoshimi by the Flaming Lips. The Gossip (see the band's awesome leader Beth Ditto, left) had a couple songs on woxy, too, and I credit the station with introducing me to the band before they started playing dance music. I mean, they're still good, but they were a straight-up punk band in 2003 and woxy used to spin Jason's Basement, Don't Make Waves, and Arkansas Heat. Great stuff.

Age Thirty-Five
Back in Detroit. Teaching at UM-Dearborn, putting together my tenure portfolio, enjoying the pre-migraine year of 2008. During the not-so-distant-past-of-08, I really liked the song styings of Santogold (speaking of Gossip's merging of punk and dance-pop), Dengue Fever (especially the sublime "Sober Driver"--see link), and, lest I appear to have totally succumbed to NPR-rock, Detroit's own SSM. The latter rocked out at Detroit's Taste Fest that year. We saw them because you couldn't get anywhere near the stage where George Clinton was playing, and they were crazy-good, emphasis on the "crazy" and the "good."

Maybe I'll update this when I have another seven entries to add. I hope each will be filled with good rock and roll music that takes me to the places and the people and the flavors and the fun. Rock on...

a different lifestyle

2010-04-12T10:40:00.002-04:00

I always try to count my blessings regarding my job. I know a lot of my colleagues don't seem to agree with me, but I maintain that being an academic is a great, great life. I can't imagine a career that would allow more agency and discretionary time. The vast majority of my hours are my own. I have (many) commitments--witness last Friday where I sat in meetings from 8:30 until 5:00--but most of them are of my own making. I write. I spend time with students. I teach. I work on projects I care about.

I've been thinking a lot about what constitutes a good life, inspired in part by the last night of Arabic class last week. My teacher spent a lot of time during the term talking about culture and lifestyle and sharing with the class stories about growing up in Lebanon. Last Thursday she described worklife in Lebanon. She said that like most workers there, she would finish the workday by 2:00 or so, come home and eat a big lunch with her family and then nap for 2-3 hours. Every day. The family would get up by 5:30-ish, have coffee or tea, do homework or housework for a little while and then socialize all evening--sit in the garage or walk along the sea, maybe grab a falafel from one of the tents set up all over the place.

She remains in awe of the long hours most U.S.Americans work. Of course life isn't perfect anywhere and certainly Lebanon--the place my teacher was describing--is a place with lots and lots of problems of its own. I'm just saying think about how many hours most people in this culture spend at the "office," commuting to work and from work and between multiple jobs, and doing work they've brought home with them. How much healthier would we be (individually and collectively) if we radically reconsidered and restructured our day-to-day life? I can be a highstrung person, but I'm "working" on it, and I have made concerted efforts to create and maintain a lifestyle that resists dominant norms about how we are allegedly supposed to live. I know that most people don't have that luxury. How can we change the culture? How can we build capacity for more resistance? Because that's what I think the current moment calls for: resistance. What if we spent more time reading, listening to music, socializing with people we care about, taking walks, lifting up others who need us, and doing other stuff that has nothing to do with making or spending money?

wrap-up

2010-04-11T21:50:00.003-04:00

What a weekend. After a Friday of uninterrupted campus meetings (8:30-5:00...which felt a little too much like a regular job!), Nicole and I spent the evening at Anna's drinking tea and helping Laila--soon to be a Wayne State freshperson--fill out orientation paperwork. Saturday was all about the manual labor. In the morning, some pals from church and I helped a friend move.

By the time I got home, the sun had come out and the Tigers were beating up on the Indians, so I made like the guy I was named after (Grandpa D, of course) and took the radio outside to listen to the game while doing yardwork. Nicole came home and we got most of the beds around the perimeter of our backyard cleared out. No more bushes and shrubs. The beds are going to be all herbs, all the time. If it ain't edible, it's not going in. We're almost ready to till. Due to the great migraine of 2009, we did little planting last year. This summer's going to be a big gardening year, I can feel it. Nicole's parents and miscelaneous siblings came over on Saturday night and we ate outside, made a fire, and stayed up too late.

This a.m. the Peace and Justice group at church met (they approved the letter of protest I wrote to Catholic Charities on behalf of Gesu P&J), followed by Mass, followed by a great lunch at El Barzon with our friends K and P and their kids. I hadn't eaten the posole there in several visits, so a nice bowl was long overdue. Due to the previous night's late late fire and the early Peace and Justice meeting, a nap was ALSO overdue. So Nicole and I enjoyed a snooze this afternoon. Tonight I (FINALLY) did a little school work and made a big pot of m'juderah with lots of onions and olive oil.

Felt good to take advantage of some awesome Spring weather and spend time with good people. I have a crapload of schoolwork to do tomorrow, but I wouldn't change anything about the weekend. By the way, speaking of leading a good life, read this great article from the Times about a home food group in Italy. Reading the piece is as pleasant as eating one of the meals described therein.

RapeLay

2010-04-08T10:24:00.002-04:00

I don't enjoy video games very much. I liked to play Atari during middle school (Megamania and Circus Atari were favorites) but pretty much grew disinterested before high school. I certainly never saw any appeal in the more advanced game systems, which always seemed complicated to the point of absurdity. When you reach the eleventh brick past the third yellow mushroom, press A and B at the same time, then arrow left, then A again, hold down B for 7 seconds, then go punch the mushroom until it turns into a butterfly, hit the pause button, go to the Sega website to get the cheatcode that tells you how to mount the butterfly, fly the thing to Xanadu and select the bronze sword... Huh? Writing my dissertation was easier than mastering some of these games.

So I always feel hesitant to critique, say, the violent content of video games. I figure that to do so would be biased at best (easy to critique something you don't enjoy) and hypocritical at worst (I listen to plenty of music that some would consider offensive). I have a different affective relationship with video games. I have essentially NO relationship with them. On the other hand, I have an affinity for, say, gangsta rap, punk rock, mafia films, Family Guy, Richard Pryor, and lots of other stuff that's bad for me.

What to do with a video game like RapeLay.

The object of the game: to stalk the woman who fired you and get your revenge by raping her and raping her female relatives. Are first-person video games different from other first-person forms of expression. First-person is a literary device, right? "I'm a cop killer," Ice T sang, and raised the ire of the Fraternal Order of Police, numerous religious groups, and, um, Charlton Heston. But the "I" refers to a fictional narrator, right? That song came out when I was in twelfth grade and I thought it was brilliant. It remains an artifact with much to teach us about race, violence, and urban unrest in 1992 L.A. In creative writing courses, I have taught the poem "The Rapist's Villanelle," a chilling piece of work that similarly uses first-person narration as a storytelling device. Should we give video games, including "first-person shooters," the same artistic license? Should we draw a line between first-person shooters and first-person revenge/rape fantasies?

Not surprisingly, activist organizations have called for the game to be banned. I find RapeLay disgusting and have no interest in playing it. Part of me thinks, rape is a global phenomenon that represents the worst possible disregard for the humanity and dignity of others, a tool of war, a tool of oppression, a tool of class warfare (regions where men rape women of higher castes in order to make them marry-able), a tool of domestic violence. That part of me says, what can possibly redeem such a game? Given the social context, the pervasiveness of sexual violence, why should this game be on the shelves? But another part of me says the keyword in "I have no interest in playing it" is interest. Turn the channel, don't play, don't download it, ignore it.

"Stop"

2010-04-07T14:18:00.001-04:00

what you eat

2010-04-07T12:25:00.002-04:00

An intriguing story from yesterday's New York Times. Posting pictures of everything one eats has become a popular trend on blogs and social networking sites. The Times story opens with an anecdote about a scientist in California who has photographed every meal, every snack, every morsel he has eaten during the past five years. Imagine, once you have made the commitment to shoot and post everything you eat, how this practice would discipline you. Do I really want to buy that gas station Honey Bun? Imagine, too, the archive that would be created. What if our great-grandparents had kept such a visual record?

going rogue

2010-04-01T14:49:00.003-04:00

Here's a statement that will surprise nobody: I'm not a fan of Sarah Palin. Beyond her dangerous politics, her behavior has been bizarre ever since she gained a national profile. Really...she's in favor of expanding the Patriot Act's reach? You want tax dollars to fund keeping track of what library books I read AND you maintain that your anti-big government? That's what I mean by dangerous AND bizarre. Plus, refusing to say what newspapers she likes to read, professing her dedication to public service and then quitting her job as governor to become a tv personality, and creating cute graphics of democrats in rifle crosshairs. These things are indicative of her character but in equal part they absolutely demolish her credibility. She raises p.r. disasters to a zen art.

Today's reports about her new tv show are especially odd. Apparently her show, "Real American Stories" (because, you know, some Americans are real and some aren't, wink wink), recycles old news clips of celebrities doing nice things. Yes, by the way, she left her job as governor for that. Anyway, that radical leftist Toby Keith--he of the "let's put a boot in bin Laden's ass" fame--has taken offense at the show making old footage look like new footage. Also, rapper LL Cool J was set to be featured on the show and his people issued a statement saying essentially the same thing Toby Keith had said: nobody got my permission or even told me about this and I'm surprised. Nothing incendiary, right? Palin's network responded to LL:

"'Real American Stories' features uplifting tales about overcoming adversity and we believe Mr. Smith’s interview fit that criteria," a Fox News spokesperson told CNN. "However, as it appears that Mr. Smith does not want to be associated with a program that could serve as an inspiration to others, we are cutting his interview from the special and wish him the best with his fledgling acting career."

Classy. First of all, "fledgling"? Isn't he on one of the highest rated shows on network tv? Second of all, why respond so vehemently to his relatively innocuous statement? Where's the response to Toby Keith, who, um, just happens to be a white conservative? In the name of being fair and balanced, I hope Palin's people treat Keith the same way.

radio

2010-03-31T08:48:00.003-04:00

During a story about how cash-strapped police forces are issuing more tickets during the recession, an NPR newsreader this a.m. made a joke about cops asking drivers if they know how fast the deficit is growing. Which brings me to an important point: NPR is not funny (except for that "Wait Don't Tell Me" gameshow). Whenever NPR reporters try to be funny, they end up sounding like the "Delicious Dish" hosts (they of "Schwetty Balls" fame, who live on the edge by tossing a handful of walnuts into their scone recipes) on Saturday Night Live: vaguely erudite and very milktoast. Love you, WDET, but not so much with the funny.

delays

2010-03-29T09:43:00.003-04:00

Is it a case of laziness? Writer's block? The shock of having no papers to grade today? For thirty minutes I have been trying to begin the day's writing. My plan is to spend half my workday hammering away at an article, a piece I care about deeply, a piece I have been working on for some time. I have a very positive 'revise and resubmit' letter from a good journal, so why can't I get started? I have specific suggestions from reviewers, some messy notes toward revision, and motivation. Smokey's sleeping on my office futon. And I know that with 4-5 hours, I can, theoretically, do quite a bit. What do you do on days like this?

"Certificates" are the new Minors

2010-03-25T08:24:00.003-04:00

Yesterday the Composition and Rhetoric faculty hosted an open house for students interested in our new Writing Certificate program. I wasn't sure how many people we would show up but, perhaps due to the presence of free food, we had a great turn-out. Mostly literature, psychology, and early childhood education majors--all of whom expressed a great deal of interest in pursuing the Certificate program in addition to their majors.

Mostly the event provided a chance to socialize, great in and of itself given that there aren't enough opportunities for meaningful faculty-student interaction outside of the classroom (service learning initiatives represent one such opportunity). I managed to talk to just about every student who showed up and was happy that "writing" meant something to each. The history major who writes fantasy fiction. The guy interested in teaching writing at the college level. The psychology student who has no interest in clinical work but wishes to do research. I like the "certificate" model, with its combination of flexible classroom work and practicum. If yesterday's open house was any indication, the model is also attractive to our students.

veggie burgers

2010-03-24T12:40:00.002-04:00

For lunch I made a batch of veggie burgers. Ate a couple for lunch. Put the rest in the fridge. Is there a cheaper, healthier food? This is one of the best food preps I've stolen from Anna in ages...and I steal cooking ideas from her constantly. Here's what I put in today:

-1 can of black beans, drained well
-1 stalk of celery
-1 carrot
-1 onion
-a handful of mushrooms
-1 egg
-a cup of oats
-a cup of Italian seasoned brad crumbs
-kosher salt, pepper, cumin, and dried parsley

Blend in food processor, form patties, place on cookie sheet sprayed sprayed with pam, bake for 30 minutes at 400 degree. This made twelve burgers, no joke. No need for a bun. You've got your protein, grain, and vegetable all in one neat package. A little bit of good mustard is the only side dish you need.

You could add or substitute fresh parsley, wheat germ (I didn't have any at home, but this was delicious in Anna's version last week), dab of olive oil, garlic, lemon, eggplant, most any type of squash, garbanzos, walnuts, flaxseeds, peas, tofu, sea salt, broccoli, and about anything else you've got in the kitchen.

Writer-in-Chief

2010-03-23T14:57:00.002-04:00

This image is making the rounds on facebook. No matter what our differences are regarding health care reform, can we all agree that this is a great representation of what writing and revision look like?

food revolution

2010-03-22T09:43:00.002-04:00

I caught most of 'Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution' last night. The new "reality" show tries to project the ethos of a socially aware documentary, and even succeeds sometimes. Oliver goes to Huntington, West Virginia, to try to start a "grassroots" campaign to eat healthier foods. Oliver, a British celeb-chef, is obvisiously an outsider and the fact that he's brought along cameras from a major tv network in part negates the whole notion of "grassroots."

And yet he does aim for genuine capacity building among both families and institutions (much of the action centers on Oliver's work with staff at a local school cafeteria). The show offers an interesting representation of outsider-insider relationships as well as the priveleged and working classes. Oliver sometimes comes across as snarky, calling cafeteria staff members "lunch ladies," a term that makes them bristle. And the camera definitely focuses heavily on their ho-hum reaction to all the processed foods they serve, playing "clueless" looks for laughs and adding wacky music that underlines what they don't know about health.

But give the show points for acknowledging there's a broader context for why the meals they serve are both carb-intensive and processed (horrific looking pizza and chicken nuggets seem to be in heavy rotation on the menu). We encounter USDA guidelines that mandate multiple starches. Sadly, that broader context so far has mostly consisted of 'the government' and not the private interests that profit from screwed-up standards in all kinds of ways. No mention of the corn industry, big junk food companies that make dough from sugar and salt addictions, or the equally problematic diet biz that then swoops in and makes people feel shitty about themselves. I don't think the USDA spends as much advertising on ABC compared to Burger King and Slim Fast.

What of the amount of food that's wasted? I also credit Oliver for monitoring what kids throw away: their scoops of canned fruit and the two celery sticks that sometimes come with their meals. (related question: how come this district isn't recycling those plastic milk cartons?) Rightly, Oliver points out in his narration that these are tax dollars getting scraped into the garbage bins. For three decades, my dad brought home for his chickens and pigs all the food scraps from the elementary school where he taught. Are there no farmers in and around Huntington, West Virginia, who could use the slop?

I'm going to give the show a chance and keep an eye on the show's attitude toward workers, waste, and profiteers. This one could go either way.

employment opportunity: Service Learning Director at UM-Dearborn

2010-03-22T08:56:00.002-04:00

We're hiring a full-time non-tenure-track academic to direct our growing service learning program. The lecturer will teach two classes in his/her "home" discipline and lead professional development initiatives around service learning at UM-Dearborn, which is a great place to work. It's an opportunity to help community-based teaching and learning become an integral part of a diverse campus. Email me with questions - billdeg at umd dot umich dot edu

--

Director, University of Michigan Dearborn Academic Service Learning Center

The director assumes leadership of the new UM-Dearborn Academic Service Learning Center (formerly the Civic Engagement Project) and reports directly to the provost. In addition to teaching two courses per academic year in his/her discipline, this Lecturer III will serve as the primary resource for service learning across the campus and administer academic programming around community-based teaching/learning. While this is a new position, civic engagement/academic service learning has been a formal component of the undergraduate experience for five years. With the hiring of a director, the scope and depth of these efforts will be broadened.

To apply, please send a letter of interest and your curriculum vitae to William DeGenaro, Search Committee Chair, Department of Language, Culture, and Communication, CASL, 4901 Evergreen Rd, Dearborn, Michigan 48128. Apply by: May 1, 2010.

Food Love

2010-03-11T09:05:00.003-05:00

Yesterday we watched these videos with the Living Stones folks (see yesterday's post). Will Allen is a fascinating figure and has deservedly become a celebrity thanks to his work at Growing Power. He even won a MacArthur Genius Grant.

Here are Parts 2 and 3. Don't miss the segment on their worm bins!

community partners

2010-03-10T17:34:00.002-05:00

Amal (the Vista who works in our service learning office) and I had a great meeting with a new community partner today. 'Living Stones Community' partners with Michigan Corrections to provide job training for recently released convicts, especially ex-cons in Washtenaw County where the number of colleges (particularly U of Michigan and Eastern Michigan) has led to much competition for jobs and, by extension, a higher recidivism rate. Folks re-entering society have fewer options there and often return to lives of crime. So Living Stones offers such individuals the chance to learn how to grow and market fresh foods. The organization is part of the urban farming movement which has picked up much steam in southeast Michigan. They want to work with our students; Amal and I are going to make it happen.

In a day pretty much devoted to the Civic Engagement Project (sorry English 327 students clamoring for your graded papers--you'll have to wait until next week), I also met with the Provost to finalize plans for the hiring of a dedicated service learning director. We have been lobbying for such a position for several years and it's finally going to happen. Director duties have been assumed by faculty members (most recently me) operating with course releases, Vista volunteers, nickles, dimes, and even some twine. Next year, that will not be the case. Stay tuned here and on facebook for information on this long-awaited job search.

working-class literature

2010-03-09T10:46:00.002-05:00

Sherry Linkon** of Youngstown State's Center for Working-Class Studies has a thoughtful post about why studying working-class culture and literature matters. Linkon rightly suggests that "the working class is getting larger and more frustrated" and issues a call for renewed commitment to scholarship, especially in light of the economic conditions in our nation.

Blogs like the YSU Center's also serve as a place to *sustain* such scholarship and move academic discussions beyond realms like academic journals. The aforementioned piece links to my blog and a post I wrote while working on an article about my great-grandfather's poetry as an expression of working-class ambivalence and identification. I'm proud of that article, which is one of the better things I've written and likely helped me get tenure. But I'm frustrated that I had some good conversations with colleagues and received some nice emails upon its publication...and then moved on to the next project.

Academic communities need more resources and sites like the Center for Working-Class Studies' blog, where (academic) discussions can become broader and involve more individuals and last longer. Funny timing for Linkon's post. I'm giving an invited talk in Ann Arbor next month where I'll be talking about the research I did on my great-grandfather. And having recently looked at a series of lettrers and poems that my grandfather on the other side of the family wrote during WWII, I'm thinking about the possibility of more familial writing.

Coincidences like this remind me of the need to return to ideas that matter and find new and better ways of talking about those ideas. And ideas that matter start with things that mean something to us personally.

**Professor Linkon--speaking of the convergence of the personal and the academic--co-wrote a great book called Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown that models smart and engaging analysis of place. The church where I grew up (St. Anthony's, on the north side of Youngstown, which is likely closing this year) figures prominently in the book. Last week during Spring Break I was happy to see copies of Steeltown USA for sale at Jimmy's Bakery, a great Italian cafe and specialty store run by a family I grew up with at St. Anthony's.

Oscars

2010-03-08T10:40:00.002-05:00

I enjoyed watching the Academy Awards last night and thought "Precious" and "The Hurt Locker" deserved the awards they took home. Some of the images in "Precious" certainly verge on racist caricature, but the story and the very real characters therein are honest and disturbing. I only wish the actress who played Precious, Gabourey Sidibe, could have taken the best actress award. She was riveting, moreso than Sandra Bullock, who seems like a perfectly nice person who chooses poor or mediocre films. Meanwhile, I'm a big "Hurt Locker" fan so I was glad to see the suspense and compelling characterizations result in a best picture win.

Random thoughts after watching the show. Does James Cameron really take himself that seriously? Dude, you directed "Terminator 2" and "True Lies." Get over yourself. Smile a little.

I could say the same thing about George Clooney, inserting a reference to his role in latter-day "Facts of Life." Why was he glaring at the camera all night? Was that an act? If so, I don't get the joke.

Oprah said some beautiful things about Sidibe, but it seemed a little patronizing that every other best actor/best actress nominee was introduced by a co-star, while the only young, African-American nominee gets the "Cinderella story" treatment.

Did they really introduce Sarah Jessica Parker by calling her a "clothes horse"? Maybe the meanest joke of the night.

Nice tribute to John Hughes. Jon Cryer, Matthew Broderick, and most of the cast of "The Breakfast Club" turned out for a loving homage. Roger Ebert called this one of the most memorable Oscar moments in recent history, and I tend to agree. Nothing wrong with saluting the person responsible for at least a half dozen films that meant a lot to people. Even in a room full of too much self-importance, evidence that distinctions between high and low art are completely meaningless.

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