lost, sick, weathered

First things first. Tonight LOST follows up last week's satisfying season premiere with a new episode to obsess over. As usual, EW has a great pre-episode article that doesn't give away any secrets but reviews pieces of LOST mythology that pertain to tonight's episode. The article also features an interview with Jorge "Hurley" Garcia. (If you're keeping score, Hurley happens to be my favorite castaway now that Charlie's moved on to that big Driveshaft gig in the sky.)

Today I've lost my voice. No, I don't mean I have writer's block. I mean my throat is beyond hoarse to the point that I can only speak in a whisper. The odd part is that, other than the hoarseness, I'm fine. In fact, I worked out this morning before coming to the office. I've had a mild cold the past two days that I think I've fought off with oranges, tea with honey from my sister's bees, and many glasses of water. But the throat problem remains.

Probably fortuitous, then, that the Michigan Campus Compact (a service learning organization) conference in Mt. Pleasant has been canceled. I was scheduled to give a presentation tomorrow morning on our service learning efforts at UM-Dearborn...and getting to Central Michigan U. for the presentation would have entailed leaving home at 5:30 a.m. Today I'm conferencing one-on-one with Comp 99 students most of the afternoon and tonight Nicole and I have a Berkley Democrats meeting, so I wouldn't mind sleeping past 5:30 tomorrow.

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Listening to: SSM: Break Your Arm for Evolution
Reading: Composition 099 first drafts
Watching: duh, LOST (tonight, that is)
Awaiting: the return of my voice

fiction watch, part two

Alice Sebold's The Almost Moon received awful reviews upon its release a few months back. See, for instance, the scathing NYTimes piece which calls the novel "emotionally and intellectually incoherent" as well as "banal" and "ludicrous" (the obligatory words of a negative review in the Times), all before getting to this one-two punch:

There’s no plot in this novel. It’s all free disassociation. “The Almost Moon” is really like one very long MySpace page. Sebold isn’t imagining people and events; she’s just making stuff up as she goes along...The real shame is that “Reading Alice Sebold” isn’t listed in the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” After you’ve finished this insult to the lumber industry, your health care provider won’t cover your search for a cure.

Ouch. Critic Lee Siegel sounds like he wanted to start some kind of literary version of a Biggie-Tupac beef. Alas no such beef transpired. And the Times' fighting words didn't scare me off, either, as I finally got around to reading Sebold's poorly received third book.

Sebold once again begins a book with an act of graphic violence. Her memoir Lucky (an unflinching work of non-fiction that I've taught several times) begins with a painstaking, nearly unreadable account of her rape. Her debut novel Lovely Bones--whose nearly universal accolades partially explain critics' vitriol for her new book--starts out with the rape and murder of the fourteen-year-old protagonist.

In the first chapter (actually the first sentence) of The Almost Moon, the middle-aged, troubled, narcissist Helen smothers her elderly mother to death. This is Sebold's trope. Dispense with the gory and the graphic and then get down to business. Sebold is interested not so much in trauma as much as trauma's aftermath. The little girl at the center of Lovely Bones watches from heaven as her own gruesome death impacts her classmates, her family, her neighborhood, and her killer. In Lucky , she narrates the two decades during which she and her loved ones cycled recursively and chaotically through various stages of grief regarding her rape.

The Almost Moon has a much more surreal feel than her earlier books. Much more surreal, even, than a little girl looking down from heaven. Helen does one inconceivable, absurd act after the other. Many of these acts, including seducing her best friend's son, appear gratuitous and pulpy and over-the-top, and I can see why critics may not have approved. This doesn't seem like the work of a well-respected MFA graduate and Oprah guest. The present action careens wildly.

Meanwhile, Helen flashes back to key moments in her relationship with her mother, offering a not-so-subtle (nothing in this novel is subtle) psychoanalytic rationale for the scene-one matricide. I won't give away what transpires in these explanatory sequences, as they form the emotional center (!) of the paradoxically center-less book.

As with Sebold's other books, readers burn through The Almost Moon quickly. I read it in two sittings, which is unlike me. I suspect even the most vitriolic critics fell victim to the novel's poisonous readability. I loved the gonzo present action and thought that Helen's madness made sense. The novel--narrated by Helen herself--is mad because Helen is mad, despite her steely moments. I admire how Sebold finds Helen's voice and then allows her to speak no matter how blue her disassociative notions sound to us.

The flashbacks were a bit heavy-handed in their facilitation of Sebold's metaphors (Helen is a nude model because, you see, number one she's angry at her mom for giving her a body complex, and, number two, she's naked before us on the page...get it?). Like I said, subtlety is no where to be found here. The book is flawed and struggles to match the unabashed, total pathos of Lovely Bones. But it's a novel that sticks to its vision and voice.

one day of the war

Wednesday randomness

Jack Lessenberry has written a compelling op-ed on the mayor's text message scandal, a call for his resignation:

What few seem to realize is that this is not about sex.
Kwame Kilpatrick, for all I care, could have carnal knowledge of an Allis-Chalmers combine, if he paid for it. He could have had all the little girly-girls service him that he wanted. And if he paid for the rooms and broke no laws and did it on his own time, it might be disgusting or morally wrong, but it's not the public's
business.
Abraham Lincoln once, on being told that Ulysses Grant was a drunk, asked what kind of whiskey he drank so that he could send a case to his less successful generals. No, this isn't about sex.
That's the giggle factor. What it is about is lying under oath, committing a felony and destroying people's careers and wasting millions of a poor city's money to cover his own personal mess up.
You cannot get around that. You cannot survive that, if the rule of law makes any sense.

Amen to that. As Detroit cut curbside garbage pick-up and other "non-essential services," shut down firehouses, and watched the Big Three exit stage left, Kilpatrick settled a whistleblower case for $9 million of the city's money so that the cops suing the city wouldn't testify and reveal his affair with his chief of staff. His family already knew about the affair, according to his own statement, which means his children watched him on the news as he lied under oath. His chief has already resigned, he's the subject of a criminal inquiry into his alleged perjury, but his aides snickered (!) when asked if the mayor would consider stepping down. He'll speak tonight at his church and the whole metropolitan area will watch. Most of us will be sad.

...Speaking of sad, how fast did this ugliness turn uglier? By now, the composition studies community has finished buzzing about The Chronicle's latest ill-informed "analysis" of the teaching of writing. One of the paper's columnists listed titles of papers given at our national conference and used those titles as evidence of the discipline's lack of "legitimacy." How dare they engage with the social context of language use instead of sticking to "basic writing" (a disciplinary term the author doesn't understand) and expect to be taken seriously?

At first, the online responses echoed the responses in the composition studies blogosphere and on comp studies professional listservs. Later responses, though, seem to suggest that somebody rallied the troops and shifted the tide of opinion: writing courses don't teach students to write or think, nobody on campus respects writing teachers, writing courses indoctrinate, blah, blah, blah. Should have known the conversation would go nowhere.

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Listening to: The Go: Whatcha Doin' (1999); Detroit talk radio
Reading: The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold; Doing Emotion: Rhetoric, Writing, Teaching by Laura Micciche; a boatload of short stories by my English 323 students
Watching: The "Lost" recap show; Mayor Kilpatrick's address (not this second, obviously, but I think both are on tonight)
Awaiting: The new episode of "Lost," of course.

ivy league

So I'm watching "The Good Shepherd," the Matt Damon thriller about the early history of the C.I.A. and the film's version of life in the ivy league (circa 1939) fascinates me. Rich boys, foppish one minute, full of swagger and a macho awareness of their cultural capital the next. The film highlights these kids reading a lot of modernist poetry, putting on productions of HMS Pinafore, singing tunes in four-part harmony. Did life at Harvard and Yale really look like this seventy years ago?

Does ivy league life look like this now? Pop culture representations seem to construct this version of the ivies. The Harvard class reunion from "Good Will Hunting," where cliques seem to congregate around the barbershop quartets the respective alums belonged to. The ivy-league-educated staffers on "The West Wing," who all obsess over Gilbert and Sullivan.

Anybody out there have any first-hand accounts of whether life at the ivies consists of the future senators and Simpsons writers singing a capella and talking about Pirates of Penzance? Or is this just the impression Aaron Sorkin and Matt Damon WANT us to have?

fiction watch

Last night I finished Diary of a Bad Year, J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, and found myself looking beyond some of the self-indulgence that turned me off initially. Coetzee tells the story of a reclusive and somewhat lecherous old writer (a novelist and retired academic) who hires a young woman named Anya to type his latest manuscript, a collection of hyper-erudite musings on, well, the world. Senor C, Coetzee's how-autobiographical-is-he? protagonist, tackles everything from the war in Iraq to Bach's unmatched genius. Any given page of the novel is divided into three sections: a snippet of Senor C's manuscript, the writer's first-person narration of the "story," and finally Anya's version of events. Senor C is a little bit Humbert Humbert, a little bit Coetzee (obviously), and a little bit of the professor who taught the first Brit Lit survey you took as an undegraduate, which presents intriguing possibilities. But the three narrative threads--the novel's hokey conceit--keep the narrative from exploring all of these possibilities. It's probably cliche to suggest a later novel from an iconic writer reads like a draft, but that's exactly the impression I had, particularly in the early chapters.

But Coetzee redeems the story in its second half, when he allows a plot to materialize. Anya's lover, an eager young businessman named Alan, hatches a plot to rip off Senor C. Alan brings some humor. I especially liked Alan's defense of his scheme; he feels Senor C's fortunes are wasting away in low-interest accounts, which Alan finds sinful. I haven't given away anything significant and I'd recommend the novel, even with its flaws, as a somewhat interesting, self-aware critique of academic critique. One of the central ironies involves Senor C's focus on the macro-dangers of global capitalism while remaining clueless about the micro-danger of the capitalist who lives in his building.

what doesn't kill me...

The voices of Kipatrick's detractors grow louder and louder. See, for instance, the letters-to-the-editor in Detroit's two papers, the News and Free Press. Mostly opposition. Calls to resign. Calls for prosecution. A few from the city. Many more from the suburbs.

The irony is that this vocal opposition makes prosecution LESS likely. Will prosecutors bring perjury charges? Depends in large part on whether they think a conviction is likely. If (and it's a big IF) the text messages are real and if they were obtained legally, then perjury seems very easy to establish. But it comes down to likelihood of conviction. Will a jury in the city convict the mayor, as suburbanites call loudly for that conviction?

The racial divide. The city-suburb divide. The grandest of Detroit's narratives. Kilpatrick, like Coleman Young, successfully uses negative criticism from the suburbs to bolster support. Echoes of Clinton. Republicans calling for Clinton's removal from office ended up looking petty, personal, and conspiratorial.

some quick observations of press coverage

The scandal is ubiquitous. Hallway conversations. Dinner conversations. And, of course, the media. Local NPR affiliates, of course, feign restraint. Commercial media makes no pretenses about its obsession. Some quick notes:

• Reporters get "meta" very quickly, covering not only the story, but the fact that they are covering the story. A radio host this a.m. says with certainty that this is the biggest story in Detroit since the Malice Green story fifteen years ago.
• The search for a cool name. One columnist posits "blackberry gate" as a good choice.
• Race, race, and more race. Kilpatrick's "hip hop mayor" nickname is brought out. White pundits talk about how "they" voted for him and "they" deserve" him. Of course this emphasis on race (the racist tropes of the media, etc.) allows Kilpatrick (who cares not about how the media sees him--that's a losing battle) to frame the whole scandal as another personal attack on him, the hometown hero.
• Media outlets try to distinguish themselves. Again, NPR in particular sees itself above the fray. But even the popular press points to supposedly seamier outlets. The Free Press headlines a sidebar "Blogs gorge on mayoral message scandal." Ah, so BLOGS are gorging themselves. Unlike the commercial press?
• Alliteration. Tawdry texting tales.

texts, lies, and videotape

So, yet another scandal for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. He has survived allegations of wild parties at the mayoral mansion, keeping an expensive entourage, killing strippers, taking spa trips with cronies on the city's dime, on and on.

Now, the biggie. Local press obtained 14,000 text messages that allegedly prove Kilpatrick and his chief of staff purjured themselves. Two cops had sued the city, claiming they were dismissed for threatening to whistle-blow in an investigation of Kilpatrick's security detail--an investigation that would have exposed an affair between Kilpatrick and his chief.

Under oath, Kilpatrick swore unequivocally that he never had an affair with the chief and that he did not fire the cops. The 14,000 text messages include some pretty clear indications of an affair ("I want another night...at the Residence Inn! You made me feel so good that night") and that Mayor and chief made the decision to fire the cops.

Naturally, the press goes wild. The whole city drips with the gory details. Obviously, the sex sells, and this story--which is about consensual but adulterous workplace sex and the lies under oath that followed--breaks a decade, almost to the day, of the publication of the first Monica Lewinksy stories.

But the technology angle is as flashy as the sex. There's a record, somewhere, of every key stroke we make. News reports review the ins and outs of the Freedom of Information Act provisions that gave the press access to these text messages (made from a city-owned device). One of the investigative reporters highlights the sidebar pieces the paper's "tech guy" will surely do during the scandal's fallout. A caller to talk radio this morning says he works for a major cell phone provider and that homeland security mandates they back-up their customers' every text message, every call, every photograph, every voicemail and maintain tapes for the feds to access on demand.

Remarkably, on the same day Detroiters learn of a story about thousands and thousands of six-year-old text messages resurfacing in their entirety, the White House reports that its tech people have not been able to access archives of White House emails from December 03 and January 04, the period when weapons inspectors concluded the absence of WMDs in Iraq. Go figure. Oh, and preservation of west wing emails is required under the Presidential Records Act. Alas, no sex in that particular scandal, so the story will probably receive little attention before disappearing like those emails.

great new blog

Well, new to me anyway. Thanks to Motor City Rocks for the link to a blog affiliated with It Came From Detroit, a great indie documentary about the rock scene in the city, circa turn of the milennium. Looks like outtakes from the ICFD film itself, as well as videos from the bands featured therein. Good stuff. Already they have footage from SSM, Soledad Brothers, and other acts that are well worth checking out. Hope the folks over there continue to maintain and update the site. I also hope they release the film on DVD. As far as I know, it's not yet available. They may be shopping for a distributor, since as far as I know it's only been shown at a couple festivals and the Detroit Film Theatre down at the D.I.A. (where I saw it).

why my e-mail inbox runneth over

• nominations for various CCCC positions...keep 'em coming folks
  
• ideas from my fellow Peace & Justice Committee members for the "Elections 2008" series we're planning at our church
• unsigned messages--my secret pet peeve--from students (my car broke down, what did I miss yesterday?, when did I sign up to workshop my story?) whose email addresses (worldofwarcraftdude1990@freeemailservice.com) don't exactly give away their identities

equal time?

Don't let anybody tell you I never say anything nice about the presidential candidates from the right side of the aisle...

That Huckabee fellow knows a little something about good Detroit music. Veteran rock critic Susan Whitall points out the old boy's apparent affinity for the Funk Brothers. Right on.

the middle of the MLK weekend

I do a pretty good job staying mindful of what a friggin' awesome job I have. And this term, thanks in part to my pre-tenure course release, I find myself able to concentrate on 1) my two groups of students and the interesting things they are writing and 2) the civic engagement teacher-research I'm doing. Oh yeah, and that tenure portfolio too.

And yet, like many others who refuse to be workaholics, I love weekends when I can break away even from work that brings much, much pleasure. Friday night, after a particularly long meeting, I managed to work out before leaving campus. Nicole and I ate at a new burger place here in Berkley (mediocre food) and then caught a late showing of Juno, which was as funny and beautiful as the accolades indicate. Maybe moreso. I loved this film. Saturday morning we drove down to Sylvania, OH., and saw my nephew Tony perform at a high school speech competition, doing a one-man noir version of Juluis Ceasar (sample humor: "gimme a Martinus, barkeep" "you mean Martini?" "if I wanted two, I'd tell you").

After a little house-cleaning back home, I made a simple tomato sauce with lots of garlic, basil, and red pepper flakes; some whole wheat pasta; and faux meatballs with eggplant (frozen from my dad's garden), Italian breadcrumbs, and much parmesan cheese. Nothing is as relaxing as cooking. My friend Jason came over for dinner and we talked about seminary memories for hours. Today went to mass, then out to lunch with the crew from church.

I'm going to relent and do a little paper grading this afternoon and evening (and also start Coetzee's new book "Diary of a Bad Year" fresh from the library shelves), because tomorrow is Martin Luther King Service Day on campus. Nicole and I will join a group of students at one of the soup kitchens downtown for a morning of work, followed by an afternoon program on MLK back at school. Nice chance for faculty-student interaction. Then to my sister Anna's to hang with my parents who are coming for a quick visit.

Schoolwork? It'll be there on Tuesday morning.

getting my ya-ya's out

The Rolling Stones will release a live album in two months, presumably because at this point they only have about two dozen live records in their catalogue. Not to mention umpteen "hits" compilations that slice and dice their career every which way (the London years, the Decca years, 40 Licks, the Mick Taylor years, 64-71, 77-83, our uneven Reagan-Thatcher years, Hits We Wrote While Shooting Up in Barbados). Not to mention vast networks of bootlegs. Not to mention youtube footage of that trainwreck at the Super Bowl in Detroit a few years back.

Out of fairness, their forthcoming platter is the soundtrack to a Martin Scorsese concert film--don't get me started on their many concert docs from the disturbing Altamont footage to this cheesy "imax experience" I saw when I was like 19--which very well might rock, a la The Last Waltz.

But can the new record possibly be anywhere near as good as this? Those shows from the year of my birth were amazing and the "Happy Birthday Nicky" discs capture freewheeling, drunken abandon. It's hard to imagine a time when the Stones didn't feel obliged to play "Satisfaction" every night. You get Mick Taylor. You get a setlist heavy on Exile on Main Street tracks. You get the bluesier second night, where they trot out "Love In Vain." Tight.

vote

Berkley, Michigan. 7:30 this morning.


No signs outside. No campaigners in sight. No lines. No stickers for voters. The polls had been opened for thirty minutes and I was the seventh voter.


NPR reports that pollsters expect less than a twenty percent turn-out today in Michigan. The four inches of snow on the ground should keep that number lower even than expected.


A sitting president with record-low approval ratings. A mortgage crisis in the state. Auto industry in shambles. A wartime election, with candidates promising everything from "immediate" withdrawl to one-hundred years of occupation and many points in between. Age of oldest Supreme Court justice: 87.


Less than twenty percent?

do you--DO!--feel like I do?

The Detroit Free Press conducted a strange poll in anticipation of tomorrow state primary, asking primary voters how they would "feel" if candidate x were to win the presidency come November. Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton elicited some of the strongest responses.

Nearly four out of five people, 79%, who plan to vote in Tuesday's Republican primary said they would feel "not so good" or "terrible" if Clinton is elected.

Clinton evoked a similarly strong response from Democratic voters, with 36% saying they would feel "pretty good," and 32% saying they would feel "ecstatic," if she is elected.

Unlike many, I kind of like Hillary Clinton on a personal level. I just think she has a deplorable record in the senate and fine it fairly bizarre that any progressives would back a candidate who twice voted for the Patriot Act. Though not one of the choices in the poll, I'd feel "better" if she were elected in November and perhaps "worried," given that Clinton's stance on issues has been so strongly shaped by popular opinion.

I worry that this poll represents another instance of the media's intense focus on likeability and the disproportionate and sexist attention given to H.C.'s "do you like her?" factor. The problem, for me, with this focus is that it deflects attention from that senate record. Not unlike how the focus on our current president's verbal foils and anti-intellectual stance distracts from his frightening ideas.

questions

• Why has every orange I've bought this winter been so lousy?
• Why has nobody seemed to question the age discimination of Homeland Security's new REAL ID act, which mandates new rules for driver's licenses issued to those born after Dec. 1, 1964? The ACLU is rightly critiquing the sharing of personal information that's going to happen now, but where's the resistance to the age issue? What, nobody over 44 is a terrorist or con artist?
• Where did my free time go?
• Why is the deadline for WPA grants on Monday?
• Why is my over-enrolled creative writing class in the smallest room on campus?

from the morning workout

Been doing an hour on the cardio machines every morning this week. Must keep up this habit. This a.m. on the i-pod:

• One Way Ticket-Aretha Franklin (Spirit in the Dark)
• I'm Not There-The Band (Basement Tapes)
• D.T. Shadows-Fleshtones (Beautiful Light)
• Far Gone and Out-Jesus and Mary Chain
• Lord Anthony-Belle & Sebastian (Dear Catastrophe Waitress)
• Pam Berry-The Shins (Wincing the Night Away)
• Life in Prison-The Byrds (Sweethearts of the Rodeo)
• Heart of the City-Jay Z (Blueprint)
• Since You're Gone-The Cars (Greatest Hits)
• Bomb the Twist-The 5678s
• You Still Believe in Me-The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds)
• Damaged Goods-Gang of Four (Entertainment)
• Galang-M.I.A.
• Not Dark Yet-Bob Dylan (Time Out of Mind)
• Country Feedback-R.E.M. (In Time)
• Lonesome You Lonesome Me-Boogieman Smash (Crowned 7")
• Ain't To Be Played With-Big Maybelle (Complete Okeh Sessions)
• Zealots-Fugees (The Score)
• Kingdom Come-Jay Z (Kingdom Come)
• Rock Me Baby-Etta James

Lyric that most resonated as I thought about tenure process came from Jay-Z: "I don't want much/f*** I drive a nice car/some nice cooked food/some nice clean drawers."

MT on Michigan primaries

This week's editorial in the Metro Times suggests voting for Kucinich in the Michigan primary is the only option for folks on the left. Because the Michigan Democratic party violated the national party's charter by moving the primary up to January 15, the Obama and Edwards campaigns both pulled out. So Clinton's a virtual lock. As further punishment for the charter violation, Michigan delegates don't get a vote at the national convention. All this means translates into the major candidates from the party 1) ignoring Michigan until August, and 2) having no pressing reason to address the state's reeling economy or the collapse of the Big 3 until, you guessed it, August.

The editorial frames a Kucinich vote as a do-no-harm vote: send a message to the party--without any of the guilt of voting for a candidate who allegedly isn't viable. The piece reads:

The way News Hits sees it, this is a perfect opportunity for progressives in Michigan to make a statement without taking any risk. And the way to do that is to vote for Kucinich.

He — not Clinton — is the one who opposed our disastrous invasion of Iraq from the outset. Clinton can claim she was conned by the Bush administration's deceptions, but Kucinich was exposed to the same smoke and saw through it.

Kucinich — not Clinton — is the one calling for immediate troop withdrawal. And he's the one seeking the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, demanding that they be held accountable for the damage they've done to this country and its Constitution.

Kucinich — not Clinton — is the one proposing a single-payer, government-run health care system similar to those in place in every other industrialized nation.

And the piece doesn't even get very far into Clinton's senate record: supporting the Patriot Act, supporting the Patriot Act's renewal (when it was starting to lose popularity), getting involved with non-issue garbage like hearings on video games. Go Dennis!

discipline

Right now I'm reviewing two separate articles for two separate journals and both articles take lots of risks with form, tone, and diction. Both pieces are quite interesting and original, in part because of the risks. And yet I find myself slipping into "policing" mode in my responses--urging the respective writers to re-think *some* of the flourishes that distract. Okay, finding that balance is key when playing with narrative/voice/and such, but I'm trying to resist pushing the 'discipline.' The last thing I want to do is shut down that element of play.

campaigning

Another great post from Carrie Brownstein, NPR blogger extraordinaire. Brownstein offers her meandering take on campaign music, outlining how politicians can strip not only edge but also point-of-view from music by co-opting songs for campaign appearances. She refers of course to Bill Clinton's effective use of "Don't Stop" and the bi-partisan ubiquity of U2, and then gets to this interesting piece:

Yet what do we expect from Presidential candidates? I mean, above everything else, do they have to have good taste in music? No, it's certainly not a requirement. In fact, maybe the less the candidates get nearer to our own tastes, the better. How strange, for instance, if Spoon's "The Way We Get By" was the soundtrack to Hillary Clinton's stump speech. And the further the candidates' beliefs get from our own, the less we want to know that they might actually share our cultural tastes. Like if "The Greatest" by Catpower accompanied Mitt Romney wherever he went.

Well, frankly, I woud kind of like a president to share my affinity for, say, The Dirtbombs. I wouldn't use pop culture sensibility to decide what candidate to support (at least consciously), but I'd find if awfully reassuring. Michael Stipe and Natalie Merchant performing duets at Bill Clinton's inauguration fifteen years ago felt as hopeful as hearing the Clintons talk about universal health care (so much for that one).

Brownstein also asks what tunes we think the candidates SHOULD use. Here are my picks:
Barack Obama = "Gut Feeling" by Devo
Dennis Kucinich = "Underdog" by The Dirtbombs or "One Man Revolution" by Nightwatchman
Hillary Clinton = "Only" by Nine Inch Nails or "Means to an End" by Joy Division
John Edwards = "Here Comes Your Man" by The Pixies or "Sue Me" from Guys and Dolls
Bill Richardson = "Second Best" by Dolly Parton (perfect for a vp hopeful)

Hyatt this morning

who wants another week of break?

Me, that's who.

Starting to get those tasks checked off my list, and here it is the Friday before classes resume. I'm putting finishing touches on the syllabi, which makes me eager to get into the classroom, but oh the things I could do with another wide-open week. "Stop Your Sobbing" by The Pretenders just popped up on itunes. No joke.

Exciting to see Obama take Iowa. I hadn't watched a long stretch of CNN in a long time, but I watched and listened last night after his win as he mostly went through his stump speech:

At this defining moment, we cannot wait any longer for universal health care. We cannot wait to fix our schools. We cannot wait for good jobs, and living wages, and pensions we can count on. We cannot wait to halt global warming, and we cannot wait to end this war in Iraq.

All the pundits contrasted Obama's pathos with the more reserved and platform-oriented content of Huckabee's post-caucus victory address. I was starting to doze, so I can't remember which pundit compared Obama's message--curb partisan bitterness and affect changes for common good--with what she saw as the gist of Hillary Clinton's sad, post-Iowa speech: I should be president. Spot-on observation, I thought. Speaking of H/C's appearance at the podium, boy did Bill Clinton ever look sad about the loss.

tenure, part two

Day two of working on the tenure portfolio. Some observations:

• The university-wide format does not always allow for easy articulation of the work of humanists. I can see how some of the categories that represent the work of scientists can cause anxiety. I have nothing to put under patents, licensures, synergistic activities (the example given in the tenure guidelines literature: "developed a methodology for modeling and analysis of system robustness"... err, I haven't done that), or technical reviews. Does that make me look weak? Conversely, I find myself relegating some work--writing entries for encyclopedias, chairing the 4Cs nominating committee--to "other" sections.
• One requirement in the teaching section involves creating a table showing enrollment in all of your classes. When you teach writing classes with low caps, your record looks lightweight next to, say, a psychologist who teaches big lecture courses. Further, involvement in interdisciplinary programs like first-year seminars, women's studies, honors, and the m.a. in liberal studies further lowers your "numbers."
• Stuff you did before you got to your current institution doesn't matter very much. I'm sure this varies school-to-school, but around here, it's all about what you've done while on faculty at UMD, particularly in research and publication. I get the rationale: show that you can be a good academic in your present climate; your publications "brand" your present institution (Professor X is on faculty at university Y). Seems to me, though, that *ongoing* contributions also matter, especially for faculty hired at the advanced assistant level.

tenure

Today I've started assembling my tenure portfolio. The process strikes me as less cumbersome than many make it out to be. Make copies of publications. Write some reflective pieces that discuss how said publications connect. Write a bit about what you think you've contributed to your field. Gather all the syllabi and a sample of assignment sheets you've used over the years. Synthesize student evaluations.

Okay, there IS a good amount of paperwork involved. And a part of me thinks that right now I *could* be working on an article or getting ready to teach next week. Overall, though, it's kind of nice to look back at professional accomplishments and to take some time to recognize connections and even, gasp!, coherence among things I've written, courses I've taught, and projects I've worked on.

I've sometimes heard comments like "I couldn't do anything that year, I was going up for tenure," or "Don't sign on for any committee work while you're putting together your tenure dossier." Not sure I fully understand those comments. I certainly see how the red tape gets irritating and I definitely relate to the ever-present anxiety, but so far it's been kind of enjoyable.

Similarly, a big discussion went down on WPA-L last week about how writing a dissertation is allegedly a painful, alienating thing. And I've known some people who did have a bad experience for various reasons. Happily, though, a few folks suggested that they were NOT "bothered" by the process of dissertating. Refreshing to hear a few people speak positively. I see the tenure portfolio in the same light as the dissertation and wonder why there is so much dissatisfaction.

tasty

Like so many others, the new year, for me, brings a healthier eating resolution. More exercising and less coffee drinking, too. Stressed about the upcoming tenure process? Drink a pot of coffee. Feeling down? Eat (a lot of) something. Must stop doing that.

Luckily I made limoncello pasta LAST week. Oh, is this ever delicious. My brother has taken to making limoncello, the Italian "digestivo" typically made from lemon zest and sugar and grain alcohol (he uses vodka instead), and gave us a bottle for Christmas. Here's what I did. While boiling a pound of bowties, I mixed in a big bowl equal parts limoncello and cream (about 1/2 cup of each), a couple tablespoons of butter, a pinch of kosher salt and a couple pinches of dried parsley. After pasta cooked, I drained, tossed in bowl with other ingredients, and added a bunch of parmesan cheese (a couple cups). Excellent stuff.

Not going to be eating more for a good while though. Happy 2008, ya'll.

2007

In less than eight hours, 2007 becomes 2008. The self-indulgent nature of blogging requires something in the way of round-ups and lists. Such round-ups acknowledge how pop culture constructs us and elevate the "best stuff" to their rightful (lofty) places. We make these lists and will our judgments to a kind of public relevance. Things that matter to me become things that matter, period. Anyway, a requirement's a requirement, so here goes. No numbers this year.

Films that mattered...

->"Sweeney Todd" and "Once." Two superb musicals. I took more pleasure from "Sweeney Todd" than I did from any other movie this year. Checking out Sweeney at the theater was a classic "communal" experience. So many wonderful geek communities converged: Sondheim fans, Tim Burton fans, kids with crushes on Johnny Depp, goths, and so on. Everything about Sweeney was cool, especially Depp's glam rock-esque delivery. "Once," a romance about friendship, bucked so many expectations. The two protagonists allow themselves to fall so deeply into a hodgepodge of empathy and passion and agape that they can only express in the music they create together. What a toughing representation of collaboration and creativity.

->"Superbad" and "Knocked Up." Believe the hype. Judd Apatow and his creative team deserve all of their accolades. I hope the success of these two raunchy comedies leads kids to DVDs of Apatow's series "Freaks and Geeks," the always hilarious tv show that argued that a VERY thin line separates rebels and nerds. Much of the brilliance comes from how damn funny actors like Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Leslie Mann are in their respective roles. But the writing is the real star of the show. Somehow, both scripts capture pathos alongside raunch.

->"I'm Not There." Another musical, this one less accessible and probably less rewarding. I can see why some dismiss "I'm Not There" as a clever stunt, but the film left me feeling warm for some reason. Warm, perhaps, for the great body of music that Bob Dylan has given the world. Warm, perhaps, for Bob Dylan the artist who--the film seems to suggest--by this point in time is more an "artist" than a "person" even. No film, whether documentary of fiction, can know a person, so this film concerns itself more with letting our blurry understanding of Dylan be blurry. I can't explain how something so blurry could leave me warm and I guess that's the achievement of "I'm Not There."

->"Grindhouse." Like essentially all of the films I've listed so far, "Grindhouse" devotes itself to a vision and sticks to it until the bitter end. I can't believe the DVD splits up the two features that comprise the theatrical version of Grindhouse. The beauty was that Grindhouse created an entire experience: a double feature, fake previews, fake commercials, fake missing reels, fake flaws and imperfections. But nothing's fake about how cool the car chase is in "Death Proof," Quentin Tarantino's half of the double feature. Awesome stuff. If you missed at the theater, you're out of luck.

Music that mattered...

->M.I.A. "Kala." Man, what is this? Is it hip hop? Is it leftist propaganda? Is it post-colonial theory? Is it grime? Is it techno? Is it punk rock? Is it bubblegum? Is it dance pop? A little bit of this, a little of that. My favorite record of the year. M.I.A. samples or recreates lyrical flourishes and riffs from The Clash, The Pixies, and The Modern Lovers on "Kala," moving between so many genres you can't keep up. There's absolutely no coherence here. A chaotic, "punk" musical experience. M.I.A. is a young Sri Lankan woman who mixes radical politics with a pop sensibility. You get the sense that people will be talking about "Kala" more in twenty years than they did in 2007. Super, super cool.

-> The "I'm Not There" soundtrack. Like "Kala," this moves all over the place. Unlike "Kala" (and the film with which this record is a tie-in), it's a remarkably coherent experience. Mostly, this soundtrack features contemporary indie artists covering Dylan songs, some classic, some obscure. This is a recipe for disaster. Dylan's catalog is very familiar, frequently covered, hard to approach, and superior to virtually all artists who try to capture it. "Covers albums" tend to suck. What a surprise, then, that the majority of the tracks on "I'm Not There" have something to offer. The rockers work especially well: Sonic Youth doing the title track, Yo La Tengo doing "I Wanna Be Your Lover," Karen O from Yeah Yeah Yeahs doing "Highway 61." I also really like the contributions from Stephen Malkmus of Pavement fame. Malkmus belts out a pretty faithful version of "Maggie' Farm" and does his slacker-Beefheartesque-drawl thing on "Can't Leave Her Behind" and "Ballad of a Thin Man." It's no Slanthed&Enchanted, but sweet nonetheless. Only a few missteps, like including a version of "All Along the Watchtower." Nobody needs another version of this song. I also don't get the appeal of Anthony and the Johnsons in general, so his rendition of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" earns the skip button in my book. Finally, Sufjan Stevens (another artist who seems boring to me) allows his "Ring Them Bells" (a song I really like) to adopt an annoying sideshow-calliope effect at the end. Only three missteps on two busy discs of great songs made fresh.

->Jay-Z. "Roc Boys." The "American Gangster" album was good, though slightly uneven, so I'll give the nod to my favorite track from the record. The great soul sample--Jay Z calls it "black superhero music"--creates a 70s vibe. One of the happiest, catchiest hip hop tracks in a long while. Clevel lyrics allow Jay Z's famed "flow" ability to shine, but it's really all about the horns in that sample. Repetition. If you haven't heard this song, find it on youtube and enjoy!

->The Muldoons. Live Shows around Detroit. The most fun you'll have at a rock show in Detroit. Two pre-teen boys playing punk guitar while their dad drums (oh yeah, and he used to play in bands with Jack White and knows just about everybody in the Detroit scene). These kids are what live music is all about: sweating, doing Stooges covers, and trying out moves you've seen your favorite rockstars do. On the latter, the two young lads do windmills, slides...if their allowances were more generous, you get the sense they'd smash their axes at the ends of shows. I've said it before and I'll say it again: one of the great things about the Muldoons in concert is that you needn't feel like you have to front. Sure, there are young hipster types in the crowd, but the frontman's aunts and uncles are there too. So just go be yourself and enjoy great Detroit rock and roll.

year of the musical

Maybe we'll remember 2007 as a year when an unjust and belatedly unpopular war continued to rage. The year of the Virginia Tech killings. A year when few could deny the ravaging effects of de-industrialization in places like Detroit. A year when hawkish, pro-war Democrats bucked it out with each other to challenge one of the "meet the new boss..." white dudes from the GOP. Dark times. And dark times call for pop culture that might be escapist or might just be a big old shiny mirror reflecting the bleak landscape. Yes, the musical.

Was 2007 the year of the musical? Enjoyable and odd films like "Hairspray" (camp at the megaplex) and "Once" (try a little indie tenderness) saw success. I haven't seen "Dewey Cox" or "Across the Universe" yet, but they both appear to offer fresh takes on the painfully familiar: the biopic genre and the Beatles legacy, respectively. And of course the brilliant "I'm Not There," a relentlessly strange personal essay about various versions of Bob Dylan. The only remotely negative thing I can say about "I'm Not There" is that Cate Blanchett's complete embodiment of Dylan in '65 is so good that it ends up overshadowing the rest of the film.

The greatest Year of the Musical artifact of all is Tim Burton's film version of "Sweeney Todd." For those not in the know, Sweeney Todd tells the story of a wronged barber in Victorian London who kills his customers and sends the corpses downstairs where his landlady uses them to make meat pies for her cafe. I could write about the funny and dark brilliance of Sondheim's Sweeney songs. I could reminisce about my high school's production of Sweeney in which I was Beadle Bamford, played in the film by Timothy Spall, aka Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter films. I could say something about how Burton and Johnny Depp collaborate to create an entire universe every time they make a movie. Instead, let me say that Burton's version of Sweeney Todd looks at revenge and hate and blood and the dark corners of the soul.

Any adaptation of Sweeney must meditate on desperation, but Burton's version is decidedly light on the comic flourishes (not that Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't bring the funny as Perelli, not that a song like "A Little Priest"--about eating meat pies made of dead clergymen--has lost any of its humor) and heavy on gruesome murder. In a movie, you can get a much closer look at throats being slit than you can watching a play from a balcony. Burton includes a sequence in which we see one bloody killing after another. A musical montage like you've never seen--one in which each body falls to the basement with an unforgettable thud. The whole film is a dark, nihilistic vision. Absolutely beautiful. Johnny Depp famously used Keith Richards as a hallmark for his role in the Pirate movies. Here, he uses Johnny Rotten, looking around with a sneer and a set of bad teeth at a London whose poverty bores him. This is a musical for an era of pre-emptive war and senseless bloodshed and urban blight.

meme

This looks fun and what with heading home to Youngstown tonight, not sure if I'll be blogging much this coming week.

YEAR IN REVIEW
Jan: Tillie Olsen possessed an enormous amount of conviction.
Feb: Detroit: shiny, sleek, and metallic.
March: It's snowing again.
April: In this advanced writing course we will study how activists, community organizers, politicians, religious leaders, and everyday citizens use language to fight for social change. (This elicited a comment from someone selling bongs)
May: Okay, sometimes I'm a bit slow.
June: I've been reading the poet Tess Gallagher's memoir about her late husband Raymond Carver.
July: Growing up, I don't recall doing many patriotic things.
Aug: Talk about a well-deserved award.
Sept: Why does it bug me that the popular press is using words like "fallout" to describe responses to Appalachian State beating the University of Michigan?
Oct: I've probably blogged this thought seven or eight times before, but I'll say it again.
Nov: Wow, haven't blogged in a whole week.
Dec: i work at a diner

will the real prof please stand up?

After turning in grades this morning, I realized how different the two courses I taught this term were. One class had a substantial community service component and philosophically was rooted in a Frerian, critical consciousness, materialist pedagogy. Students completed project-based work with the agency where we worked. The production of text (brochures, executive reports, legislative action plans, etc.) was key--rhetoric as a practice and a civic obligation.

The other course--also an upper-level writing course--took a less public view of language production. We read several whole texts including Alice Sebold's memoir Lucky as well as shorter non-fiction pieces (Sarah Vowell, student work from previous terms) and used writing as a way to engage generatively with those texts. We kept writer's notebooks. We devoted class time to various "pre-writing" tasks and to open-ended discussions of course texts.

Common bonds between the two classes include revision (duh), rejection of the notion that "the essay" rules, (we used multiple genres), and production over consumption (problem- or purpose-driven writing instead of analysis for its own sake). There are some core things that stay constant.

But despite these commonalities and constants, the classes seem to come from different theoretical worlds. I realize that various courses I teach on a term-to-term basis have differences that go beyond just "approach." Sometimes I use blogs. Sometimes "Detroit" serves as a course theme and learning laboratory. Sometimes we read a lot of books. Sometimes we use a pretty traditional "writing workshop" model.

After ten years of teaching (many of those as a grad student--I'm young damn it) I realize that I'm still trying on different versions of process, different versions of student-centeredness, different versions of the whole performance of teaching.

tv round-up

Okay, it's crunch time. Grading papers (almost done!), writing four letters of recommendation, meeting with our service learning partners for end-of-semester wrap-up conversations, hosting party tomorrow night for English Language Studies faculty (I'm making Indian food). What better time than now for a round-up of recent tv consumption?

Big Love. Nicole and I ran into a friend at a Christmas party two weeks ago who we hadn't seen since the same party last year. Good guy. We talked to him much of the night and he couldn't say enough good things about this series which centers on the domestic life of a polygamist and his three wives. We promptly netflix'd the first season and we've already seen five episodes. Like other acclaimed cable shows (Weeds, Sopranos), Big Love highlights the "criminal" and "eccentric" taking place in the most mundane of settings: suburbia. The drug dealing soccer mom. The mafioso who pulls out his hair raising teens, drives an SUV, and goes to therapy. Crime as quirk. Crime not as resistance to bourgeois life but rather as alternate route to success in that bourgois sphere. In Big Love, we gaze upon the upwardly mobile Bill Paxton as the same kind of every-suburbanite.

So the way Big Love tweaks suburban life (and the thin line between mainstream- and counter-culture) is nothing new. More interesting, though, is how the show presents the family's suburban life as a kind of pioneering. Viewers contrast the polygamist family at the heart of the narrative (their comfortable, consumerist lifestyle) with the cult-like encampment (their ascetic, "simple" lives) where the Paxton character and one of his wives grew up. Both lifestyles involve this pioneering ethos: masculine values, work ethic and bootstraps mythology, and westward expansion. The polygamist encampment literally cuts into the western landscape with cabins and tents. Likewise, images of the "Mountain West" loom behind the subdivision where Paxton lives. It's no coincidence that hunting has already figured into the show's plotline. Or that the show references Mormonism's history as a "pioneer" culture. Oh, and Big Love is outstanding, from the pitch-perfect setting to the outstanding performances, especially from Chloe Sevigny who shines as the manipulative, credit-card-loving "middle bride" with a pedigree. Highly recommended.

Biggest Loser. Love-hate relationship with this one. Very few reality shows appeal to me. I don't see them as a sign of the apocalypse or anything, they mostly just aren't my thermos of chai. But the whole weight-loss subgenre is interesting and I watched most of this season of Biggest Loser, wincing most of the way. Okay, I guess one reason I like the show is that I've been fat my whole life. So there's that. Cliche as the sentiment might be, it's good to see a show with men and women of size (and who aren't "funny fat"--see, for example, the usually-male protagonist of many a working-class sitcom). And in 2004, I lost 100 pounds, mainly because 1) I wanted to avoid the heart problems that run in my family, 2) Nicole and I had just gotten life insurance and I weighed enough to up the cost of our policy significantly, and 3) I saw/see the writing on the wall that medical coverage is becoming a privelege in this country and am convinced that there will be portions of my adult life during which I don't have access to medical care, thus a desire to avoid chronic health problems. So I've got an identification with the process of losing weight, too. (Full disclosure: I've gained about 20 pounds back in the last two years.)

And it's an enjoyable show: the human drama, the genuinely interesting contestants, the wacky trainers. Why the wincing? Mainly because "fatness" on the show is a tragedy. A colossal tragedy. It would be nice if just one contestant would say "I've got a rewarding professional life and have been fat my whole life." Or, God forbid, "I think I'm a physically attractive human being and need to lose weight for health reasons." No. Most contestants express little other than pain: I want to be good looking for the first time in my life, I'm embarrassed by my appearance, etc. I don't doubt the sincerity. I recognize that this trauma gives the show it's dramatic trajectory. I can even identify with the struggles (dealing with airplane seats and such). But why no balance? Why no ambivalence? Why no acknowledgment that fatness doesn't preclude professional and personal happiness?

The show wants to put itself on a pedestal when it comes to "good health" (and, by extension, good morals). Family values entertainment. The show that saves marriages and saves lives. How about the waterloading? A practice that involves a contestant who for a number of reasons is safe from getting voted off drinking a couple gallons of water before weigh-in to protect a vulnerable teammate from elimination. Some contestants found the practice to be a sneaky strategy. But nobody--including the trainers--mentioned the health risks such a practice poses. And on last night's finale, one of the "final four" contestants--a professional woman who frequently referred to her teaching career during the season--alluded to having moved to L.A. because she couldn't adjust to life "back home" after her experience on the show. Returning to real life (from the round-the-clock trainers and dieticians one lives with during the competition) seems to have led to a kind of withdrawal and/or depression. No mention of the students who greeted this woman at her welcome home party. No mention of how this abrupt move would impact her professional life.

The laboratory the show sets up isn't sustainable. In this contestant's case, the contrived setting seems to have led to unreasonable expectations (contestants routinely lose double digits of pounds each week). I keep saying "seems" because you never know how editing is constantly manipulating contestants' stories in order to create narratives of trauma, redeption, etc. And, of course, the weight loss itself is a competition, one that fails to account for different body types, compositions, and other factors. For instance, it's no coincidence that a woman has never won the show.

Okay, didn't intend to go on that long. A lot of critique from somebody who watched the show all season long. Like I said, the drama entertains, but, like other reality shows, Biggest Loser is a limited and limiting representation of a complex human situation that is too proud of its own good intentions to problematize itself. I'm reminded of that home make-over show (you know the one, it's got the spiky-haired dude serving as the hyperactive, almost manic host), which never contends with root causes of poverty or contextualizes, well, anything. Is there something wrong with a society in which a disabled Iraq war veteran can't afford to have a ramp put in front of his house? There's no time to ask such a question as the dude's crew turns home improvement into a Mountain Dew, extreme sports commercial. And if you ask such a question, you're not being part of the solution. Pick up a hammer and shut up. Biggest Loser serves a similar anti-activist, anti-critique function. Don't question the industries that profit from people hating their own bodies. Pick up a 100-calorie packet of crackers and shut up.

oh those lists

I'm almost done with revisions to the conclusion I'm writing for an edited collection on the rhetoric of social movements. I've blogged before about how unsatisfying the revision process feels. I love the energy I feel when I write first drafts. Composing rocks my world. Putting brand new ideas and words on the page...THAT is what I absolutely love about writing. Revision can feel slow and plodding and, well, necessary. Luckily, I've got questions from the editors and peer reviewers guiding the work, and I can see the clarity improving and, paradoxically, the ideas growing more complicated. But I miss the adrenaline rush of the first draft.

So I pause and do other things. Partly this clears the head. Partly this is procrastination, pure and simple. I pause the revision and make a list of things I need to do. Some of the things are things that will take fifteen minutes (uploading latest round of interviews with service learning students and e-mailing them to research assistant, registering for RSA). Some of the things will take up a healthy chunk of the break (prepare presentation for Campus Compact conference, assemble materials for tenure portfolio, write syllabi for winter term). The list has 29 items on it. Sheeeet!

PSA

Via here.

upcoming rock and roll shows

...that I don't want to miss:
December 15, The Muldoons at Donovan's
December 27, The Muldoons at St. Andrew's Hall
January 27, Supersuckers at the Magic Bag
February 16, The Dirtbombs at the Magic Stick

If I don't write them down here, I'll forget.

imagination

I've been conducting interviews with service learning students who spent the term working with a residential foster care facility in Detroit. One event that the students have been referencing over and over again in the interviews: a group of foster kids pretending to look for time capsules and buried treasure in the gardens behind the facility. On a Saturday morning, a group of the students and I were working with several of the foster kids prepping the gardens for the winter (the facility is a Greening of Detroit site and home to one of GofD's urban gardening programs). Just a moment in which kids used their imaginations, but also a moment of hope, a moment of play, a moment that my students are now reflecting on as life-affirming. Not a moment that erases the material realities of residents, but something that's still meaningful, especially for students for whom emotional discourse is a big part of how they talk about civic engagement.

(x-listed in rhetoric of civic engagement)

do puns make yacht rock more desirable?

Yacht Rock: "the highly polished brand of soft rock that emanated from Southern California during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In part, the term relates to the stereotype of the yuppie yacht owner, enjoying champagne and smooth music while out for a sail" (from Wikipedia).

From an e-mail sent to UM-Dearborn employees:

“I Heard It Through The Grape Vine” that Michael McDonald is “Takin’ It To The Streets” at Orchestra Hall in the Max M. Fisher Music Center on Tuesday December 11 at 8:00 pm

U OF M DEARBORN FACULTY AND STAFF and their families and friends may purchase discount tickets.

Michael McDonald of Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers fame will bring his Blue-eyed soul to the Orchestra Hall stage for your holiday enjoyment. McDonald and his ensemble will perform many of his hits plus holiday favorites.

Regular Tickets Prices for this concert are $45.00 to $65.00

Which begs the question: Michael Mcdonald has an emsemble? I'll probably pass. Or, rather, I'll enjoy the "Sweet Freedom" of doing something else on the 11th, even if it means I'm "On My Own" that night. For instance, if there's a movie playing that looks good, "Yah Mo Be There."

eight crazy nights in Jersey

A favorite topic of bad talk radio here in the motor city is "things you want to do before you die." Every few months those wacky morning drive-time jocks pull out this nugget and take calls from dudes who want to skydive or visit every Major League Baseball park in a single season or play eighteen holes with Tiger Woods.

Me, I'd like to experience, just once, Yo La Tengo's annual eight-night Hanukkah celebration at Maxwell's in Hoboken. That's right, all eight nights, live and in person. Of course on any two given consecutive nights, Yo La Tengo offers setlists so surprising, spontaneous, and varied that they make the Grateful Dead look like Hannah Montana. I've seen the band cover Devo and Fleetwood Mac, segue from twenty-minute psychedelic jams to ninety-second punk anthems, and take audience requests that span the group's deep catalogue of originals.

But by all accounts, the Hannukah concerts showcase the band's most sublime sides. They wear costumes. They cook up theme sets (the other night they put together an homage to great Jewish punk songwriters). They bring along guests (Sun Ra! Fred Armisen! Marc Arm of Mudhoney fame!).

Sorry Tiger Woods, I'll pass on the eighteen holes in favor of eight crazy nights with Yo La Tengo. Maybe someday when I'm living a life of leisure (read: if I ever have a fall sabbatical and hence am not knee-keep in student papers come Hannukah time) I'll make it happen.

a poem for Tuesday

From High Adventures in the Great Outdoors by Henry Rollins:

i work at a diner
i don't hate this job
i don't hate anything
i don't know my name
i'm faceless
i look at them
they look at me
i heard about myself in a
bruce springsteen song
i am no one
i am faceless
i don't know what to do
i come here and then i go home
i feel so blank today
am i here?
do i exist?
help me
i am turning to wood.

bloggy moves

Maybe inspired by Massumi's exhortations to let go and get stupid, in my last post I 1) wrote in a fake question-and-answer format, and 2) referred to myself in the third person. In a way these are both blog moves. Not quite blog conventions, but blog moves.

The question-and-answer acts as a close cousin to the 'Frequently Asked Questions,' the idea being that the text itself anticipates and imitates the role of the reader. You have questions. Let me give voice to those questions and then answer them. It's at once a writer-based (presumptuous to know the readers' concerns, to speak for them, and then actually to speak the concerns) and reader-based (let me think about what the reader needs) move.

Referring to oneself in third person. Maybe the most irritating rhetorical move ever! But it's kind of cool to think about who we are when we refer to ourselves in such a way. I'm me but I'm someone else too. I'm a fiction. Sounds a lot like a blog persona.

I don't know how often I do bloggy things--rhetorically speaking--on my blog. I mean I link to news stories and youtube and wikipedia, use subject lines like "Tuesday roundup" or "Friday miscelaneous," but overall I think I'm often guilty of just taking how I normally write in other settings and pasting that mode into a blog. Today I'll write as if I'm writing an entry in a journal. Tomorrow I'll write as if I'm e-mailing a friend about a film I just saw. The next day I'll write as if I'm writing a book review for Teaching English in the Two-Year College. Etc. After 3.5 years of blogging, I'm not sure blogging represents, for me, any kind of coherent, repeatable, or name-able process. Not sure it should.

Likewise, I've never gotten into a lot of the familiar typographical bloggy things:
--The use of strikethrough text to reveal one's snarkyness by pretending one has resisted the urge to snark it up. Rosie O'Donnell is a gasbag has differing opinions. Of course this technique mirrors the old-school practice of crossing something out. And this is a feature in most word processing programs, so obviously not new to blogs. Just used to death there. And used in more of a signifyin' way. I'm snarky; I'm not snarky.
--The use of the word "Um" to express disagreement or point out contradictions and hypocrisies. Rush Limbaugh accuses the Clinton camp of being soft on drugs. Um, hello pain pill incident. I see this on listservs quite a bit too. Um, if you read my message you'll see I never called you an imbecile...
--The excessive use of the word "seriously" a la characters on Grey's Anatomy. I guess you can never have too many ways to express incredulity. Referring to yourself in the third person. Seriously? You can substitute the word "really" if you wish to be less sarcastic. Corn flakes for dinner. Really?
--The use of the verb "fisk." I hate this word (which refers to refuting an argument, point-by-point), though the etymology is interesting (see link). I'm going to fisk that editorial, which is chock full of fallacies. Like Fred Willard in Best in Show says of shih tzus, "that name just rolls off the tongue."

this guy's funny

Q: How can you tell when Bill's working on/under a deadline for a book chapter, gathering last round of data from this term's service learning students, starting to plan his tenure portfolio, reading Big Stacks of Student Papers, trying to understand Brian Massumi, and trying to find time to start this year's Christmas baking?

A: When his blogging doesn't really generate new content so much as link to other things he thinks are amusing and interesting.

Q: How can you tell when his posts are chock full of aforementioned links?

A: When the subject lines all have "this" in the title: this is sad, chew on this, this guy's funny.

Q: Enough with the meta. Who, praytell, is funny?

A: Whoever is responsible for this self-explanatory blog: Since I Started Listening to Jazz.

Q: Do you realize what a long set-up that was to link to some snarky blog?

A: Hey, it's Bill's blog. Keep your critiques to yourself.

this is sad

I just saw the news that Kevin DuBrow of the glam-metal band Quiet Riot is dead at only 52. CNN reports that they were the first metal band to have an album chart at number one. (Really? That Kiss live record didn't top the charts in the 70s?)

Quiet Riot is a reminder that so-called 80s hair metal probably wouldn't be the critically-derided genre it quickly became in grunge's wake 1) had the first wave of such bands (Motley Crue, Quiet Riot) not inspired so many imitators, and 2) had the bands not looked quite so silly, and 3) had the sound not adopted so much studio sheen.

80s Hair metal (the ultimate whipping boy of critics) is basically 70s glam (the ultimate object of affection of critics). Does Quiet Riot's breakout record sound all that different from the first New York Dolls record? Okay, Quiet Riot lacked a guitar player as innovative and distinct as Johnny Thunders and a frontman as memorable as David Johansen. But my point is that one is a critical darling and the other is a critical joke. Bands like Quiet Riot took both aesthetic (guitar-driven garage rock) and ethos (sleaze) from the Dolls as well as T.Rex, AC/DC, Joan Jett, Mott the Hoople, Kiss, the Runaways, Alice Cooper, and Suzi Quatro.

Early hair metal had a sense of humor and a sense of fashion. Early hair metal appreciated that pop music relies on good melodies. Early hair metal took cues from solid antecedents like Brit Invasion groups and 60s girl groups and of course protopunk 70s glam bands. Early hair metal kept lyrical content pretty simple: parties, love, sex, rebellion, giving the finger to the man. Early hair metal was a world that Italian-Americans seemed to rule...so shout out to my fellow sons of Italy!

They just got too popular and became too ubiquitous (the fault of MTV?) to maintain after-the-fact credibility. Too bad, because some of it's just good-time rock music. I mean Bowie and Kiss were huge in the 70s, but there weren't dozens and dozens of Bowies and Kisses. That's the best way I can explain the huge credibility gap. Too many imitators in the MTV kitchen spoiled that soup, I guess.

But there's that studio sheen thing, too. Eventually, the 80s incarnation took itself too seriously. I mean in the 70s Alice Cooper and Bowie both got pretty high-concept and their lyrics went beyond the simple garage themes. But they maintained humor. In the 80s, not so much. In '83, you had Quiet Riot doing Slade covers and rocking out. Awesome. By the end of the decade, you had White Lion doing power ballads and taking themselves way too seriously. Yikes.

But you know what, my fellow readers of Pitchfork? Hair metal lives. My new brother-in-law (he married my wife's little sister the day after Thanksgiving...first wedding reception I ever attended where the dj played THREE (!) Bon Scott-era AC/DC songs) and his friends love it. The shows go on, though at smaller clubs, mostly in working-class white suburban areas.

Anyway, I'm sorry this genre doesn't get more respect. And I'm even sorrier that loved ones lost a young guy who should have had more life left in him.

chew on this...

"Take joy in your digressions. Because that is where the unexpected arises...If you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime. You have to be willing to surprise yourself writing things you didn't think you thought. Letting examples burgeon requires using inattention as a writing tool. You have to let yourself get so caught up in the flow of your writing that it ceases at moments to be recognizable to you as your own. This means you have to be prepared for failure, for with inattention comes risk: of silliness or even outbreaks of stupidity. But perhaps in order to write experimentally, you have to be writing to 'affirm' even your own stupidity. Embracing one's own stupidity is not the prevailing academic posture..." --Brian Massumi

Right now I'm in the middle of three different books: _Giving_ by Bill Clinton, _The Golden Compass_ by Phillip Pullman (highly recommended by my friend Steve Climer--not to mention anything the Catholic League condemns must have some merit!), and _Parables of the Virtual_ by Massumi. Today I spent a lot of the day reading the latter. I went to this book because all-of-a-sudden Massumi recommendations and references were flying (from a colleague at my institution, from the blogosphere, from Works Cited pages of stuff I was reading) and also because I'm working on a project in conjunction with my service-learning courses (trying to focus on the teacher-scholar model my school preaches) that seeks to theorize students' emotional investment in / attachment to the rhetoric of volunteerism. It's a text that's proven helpful already...and I'm just starting to understand its assumptions and its vocabulary.

The above quotation is itself a digression, but it also, well, "belongs" there, as a statement of methodology, as a defense of interdisciplinary "poaching," as an acknowledgment that such co-opting necessarily re-vises and "gets it wrong," and as an implicit claim that the aforementioned "wrong"-ness is what gives the humanities its ability to say something that matters. Err, by means of saying something stupid, silly, inattentive, rooted in non sequitor, derivative. I'd like to re-vise Massumi in the ways he advocates and get wrong his theory of the potential of unqualified, pre-discursive feelings, so as to say something (something stupid?) about how my students "feel" civic duty. Hope that I can.

love to eat turkey on thanksgiving

Why is Thanksgiving my favorite holiday? Probably because the day centers on eating. But also because COOKING is so important to Thanksgiving. Two activities that I love. Aside from watching the Lions, telling half-truths about the conquest of North America, and, you know, being thankful, this holiday is all about food. How cool is that? I'll be cooking for a crowd tomorrow--I especially like the dishes that, for us, are unique to this one day: pumpkin squares, frozen cranberry, and sweet potato souffle. Don't forget to make time to listen to Burroughs' Thanksgiving Prayer, introduced to me by Professor Culik like fifteen (!) years ago.

this i believe

Last Friday Bruce Ballenger spoke here in motown at a regional teaching of composition forum put on by a big textbook publisher. He had a lot of useful things to say about how we teach argumentation. In particular, I appreciated a questionnaire he shared that he uses with his students when he introduces research-based writing assignments. These ten questions get at how and why we do research. I'd like to use a version of this with my civic literacy class in the coming weeks.

For each question, the student answers on a 1-5 scale, 1 meaning "strongly agree" and 5 meaning "strongly disagree.

Ballenger had workshop attendees use the 1-5 scale, answering in one column for what we think, and in a separate column for what most of our students think. This activity led to a good discussion of our own perceived gulfs between students and ourselves. Here are the questions.

1. There’s a big difference between facts and opinions.
2. Most of what you read in books is true.
3. Stories that don’t have an ending or clear conclusions are very good stories.
4. Everybody is entitled to his or her own opinion and you can’t say that one opinion is better than another.
5. Most problems have one best solution no matter how difficult they are.
6. How much you get out of school depends on the quality of the teacher.
7. Most words have one clear meaning.
8. When I study I look for specific facts.
9. People who challenge authority are over-confident.
10. Scientists can ultimately get to the truth.

what?

What could have been the best Saturday Night Live in ages won't air this weekend. Michael Cera of Superbad and Arrested Development fame hosts and Yo La Tengo serves as the musical guest. Ah well, shout out to the cast, MC, and YLT for supporting the striking writers.

wpa grants

Anybody out there have any luck with wpa (Council of Writing Program Administrators) grants in the past? I've never submitted a proposal for one and I'm wondering if anyone has any tips. Two UMD colleagues and I plan to write one this year to help fund some work we plan to do in the 'Civic Engagement' sections of first-year comp we're piloting next year.

lyrics clarified

Every music fan has those moments where you realize you've always misunderstood a particular lyric. I like to call those discoveries the "oh, THAT'S what they're saying" moments. I had one yesterday on the treadmill, listening to Dr. Dre's The Chronic. On the opening track, Dre and Snoop Dogg diss Dre's former bandmate, the diminutive, now-deceased Eazy-E, and Eazy-E's svengali manager Jerry Heller. I always heard the line as something like "f--- Mr. Wankertatoo, aka Jerry and Eazy." But now I think the line is "f--- Mr. Rourke and Tatoo, aka Jerry and Eazy," as in the two characters on Fantasy Island. Because Eazy was short. And I guess his manager must look like Ricardo Montalban, or own a mysterious island frequented by celebrities from the 70s. Maybe Dre's saying that the manager makes all his clients dreams come true? But then, that's not so much of a diss.

Incidentally the last such moment also involved a rap song: Jay Z's "Izzo," where Jay sings, "I beat them charges like Rocky." You know, because Rocky beats his opponents? I always thought he was saying "I beat them charges like Rodney." I'm not sure who I thought Rodney was, but there you have it.

How about you? Any lyrics that you misunderstood for a long time and then had a eureka moment of your own?

winter wheat

On Saturday, a group from our writing program made the trek down to Bowling Green for Winter Wheat, an annual festival of writing sponsored by Mid-American Review. Individual sessions seemed uneven in quality, but I attribute that in part to the fact that I'm on the outside of most festival-goers (a lot of recent MFAs). But, as I still write poetry regularly and short stories occasionally and teach creative writing nearly every term, I figured the event would be appealing. My literary tastes diverge greatly from "MFA fiction," work that has a deliberate, self-consciously "good" quality. I like some literary fiction (Jonathan Franzen, say, or Wendell Mayo, who did a reading at WW), but I also love pulpy stuff like Detroit's own Elmore Leonard and of course the adolescent lit genre. And the party line at Winter Wheat certainly supported the "literary" stuff.

One session that stood out in quality and usefulness: 'Writing and Researching Your Family.' A lot of my poetry tells familial stories and the piece I wrote on my great-grandfather taught me more (about class, about Burke, about my family, about how to write an article) than I've learned from a writing project in a long time, so I was very interested in this workshop.

One presenter used genograms to describe the ways that she made sense of various family traumas. The presenter was researching her mother, who spent a long time in prison, and most relatives were unwilling to talk about the subject. She borrowed the concept of genograms from pyschotherapy and, literally, mapped familial relationships using the symbolism of the genogram. Genograms lay out genealogies in ways that articulate emotional relationships between family members. Using different kinds of connecting lines and different colors, genograms account for harmony and love as well as various types of abuse, neglect, and hostility. They are a tool of therapy, but also can be a tool of invention. Has anyone in rhet/comp written about this?

I plan to use genograms in my advanced creative writing course next term. I've never taught the advanced course before and I hoped to find ways to go beyond the tired "character profile" assignment (useful in the intro course, but a bit, well, cheesy). As my students begin to work on fiction projects, the genogram might allow them to create round characters but, more importantly, to think through ways that those round characters interact with others. You can map out non-familial relationships, too, after all.





From Wikipedia,

A genogram can contain a wealth of information on the families represented. It will not only show you the names of people who belong to your family lineage, but how these relatives relate to each other. For example, a genogram will not only tell you that your uncle Paul and his wife Lily have three children, but that their eldest child was sent to boarding school, that their middle child is always in conflict with her mother, that their youngest has juvenile diabetes, that Uncle Paul suffered from depression, was an alcoholic, and a philosopher, while Aunt Lily has not spoken to her brother for years, has breast cancer and has a history of quitting her jobs.

cool list

Taking a break from the chapter I'm working on at Caribou today, I surfed this most intriguing list. The Top Ten Most Important Singles in Detroit History, assembled by Dirtbombs drummer and Metro Times music writer Ben Blackwell. Check it out, and listen to the great music assembled therein.

underdog

Who can't relate to this song--one of Sly Stone's best lyrics ever--sometimes? Here are the Dirtbombs performing the Family Stone classic.

Even if you're never right
They get uptight when you get too bright
Cause you might start thinking too much...
I know how it feels when you know you're real
But every other time
You get up and get a raw deal...
I know how it feels
For people to stop, turn around and stare
So go right, don't rate me
I don't mind
I'm the underdog

Brownstein on the Ramones

NPR's All Songs Considered now hosts what looks to be a funny and quirky blog, Monitor Mix, maintained by Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney. The defunct Sleater-Kinney played Pacific Northwest punk but, like the much more famous Pearl Jam did earlier and bands like My Morning Jacket did later, they simultaneously wore classic rock influences on their flannel sleeves. And like the early 90s riot grrrl bands that came before them and The Gossip who came after them, progressive, feminist, queer, and body-positive politics played a big role in their lyrical content, on-stage personas, and overall ethos. They proceeded The Gories and preceeded the White Stripes and, once again, The Gossip, in consciously eschewing a bass guitar.

Sleater-Kinney, if I may make a Klosterman-esque pronouncement, were the prototypical mid-period band. Take any definitive Sleater-Kinney characteristic and you can point to a band that shared that trait a few years earlier and a band that shared the same trait a few years later. That's not to say Sleater-Kinney were overly derivative or unoriginal. In my assessment, they referenced arena rock with more verve than Pearl Jam, for instance. They knew how to improve upon flourishes. Plus, they rocked.

Sleater-Kinney's great song was the self-explanatory "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone," which you can see the band performing a decade ago at CBGB's by following the link. And now Brownstein has blogged about her affinity for the Ramones. So I guess all has come full circle. Brownstein describes losing touch with the simplicity of the band as she moved on to more sophisticated musical tastes:

How had I forgotten about The Ramones? I own nearly all of their albums, I might even consider them one of my favorite bands, but I rarely listen to them. Suddenly this oversight, this forgetfulness, felt disastrous. I think of The Ramones as a starter band, one you have to know, one you have to love, one you have to discover in order for them to lead you elsewhere. But then you go further away and sometimes you forget to ever go back. You find post-punk, you listen to Wire, Gang of Four, The Slits, you find reggae and dub. Then you embrace classic rock, first ironically, maybe at a karaoke bar, and then for real. F*ck this straight-forward punk sh*t, give me prog and wanky solos and post-rock, and soon nothing is valid that comes in under five minutes. When friends or prospective dates ask you your musical tastes, you can't just say, "The Stones" or "The Clash", you have to say the name of the last Ethiopiques CD you bought, or you mention Captain Beefheart, Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, Candi Staton, Bert Jansch, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, a side project of Wilco but not actually Wilco, the list goes on and on. Really? Really these are our favorite bands? The ones that got us out of bed in the morning on a sunless day?

We all have gateway drugs, no? Not just musical gateways either. In junior high, I loved the paranoid novels of Robert Cormier, especially the horrifying I am the Cheese. And a few years later, classics of dystopic fiction floated my boat (how many times did I read Brave New World?) For me, the definitive musical gateways of my adolescence were R.E.M. and The Smiths. You read interviews and start to chase down stated influences (Pylon, New York Dolls, Gang of Four). And when you get older, as Brownstein suggests, you chase down more cache. And like Brownstein says regarding the Ramones, I own all the albums by the Smiths and R.E.M. Do I listen to them often? Not lately, no. If, say, a student asks me about bands I like, I usually talk about an older band that I discovered later on ("you gotta hear the X-Ray Spex, Kraftwerk, Roxy Music") or a newer band ("The Muldoons are the rocking-est band in Detroit right now"). Less frequently do I talk about, to borrow Brownstein's phrase, "the ones that got us out of bed in the morning on a sunless day."

What has provided the soundtrack for unpacking boxes at my new place? Madonna's "Immaculate Collection," The Kinks' "Village Green Preservation Society," and Chesterfield Kings' "Mindbending Sounds of the CKs." That Madonna record is perhaps the best Greatest Hits collection ever. Cool value? Cache? Prolly not. I really like the sad and nostalgic songs on the Kinks great concept album "Village Green" and "Picture Book" makes me laugh every time I hear the line about "your fat old uncle Charlie, out cruising with his friends." The Chesterfield Kings are an outstanding garage revivalist outfit that's been around for a few decades trying to sound like the pre-Jimmy Page Yardbirds. I saw them open for New York Dolls last year and genuinely thought their cat-like singer was going to fall to his death from the rafters he had climbed onto at St. Andrews Hall. Musical tastes that span the obscure as well as the mainstream, the iconic as well as the ironic, freshen the sometimes-stale world. But why do we forget the gateways? If it's in order to seek out cool obsessions we've just discovered, then great. If it's a cache grab, too bad. More unpacking to do tonight and I'm going to listen to Fables of the Reconstruction and Meat Is Murder.

normalcy, writing

Nice to be getting back to a fairly normal routine. Today I worked on email for about two hours, catching up on communication with students regarding their current assignments, and pouring through messages regarding several committees I'm on. Usually I pride myself on quick replies--this past week, not so much. But I'm back.

Then, a few hours of work on the conclusion I'm writing to an edited collection that a few friends of mine from grad school are putting together on the rhetoric of social movements. The book, which looks to be very useful, uses lenses (communication theories) a bit different than my usual perspectives (neo-Marxist, critical, social constructivist, etc.) to look at issues close to my heart: community/civic engagement initiatives, the class dynamics of group organizing, and much more. In fact, I spent a couple months over the summer re-reading Hauser on vernacular rhetorics and looking for the first time at lots of current research on social movements in communication studies. Nice to move beyond comfort zones.

...But I think the newness--to me--of some of the concepts showed in my writing, and now I find myself re-writing, re-thinking, and re-envisioning what I had hoped my conclusion would "do." I wanted to push at the individual chapters of the book and frame them as moments of class consciousness and intersectional identity construction. Though the editors were pleased, the book's peer reviewers, rightly I think, saw the chapter as focusing on issues of class in ways that shut down other possibilities. So I'm trying to do better and it's slow going. Me agonizing over global concerns and writerly choices is probably a good sign.

Looked over a ms. in progress for my colleague M. Started communication with a big name scholar (to be named later when and if things come to fruition) we hope to bring to our university next term for a few events. Judged a writing competition for the lit mag on our campus. The normal busy-ness, which feels good.

I hope to finish up in the next few hours and get out of here (i.e., Caribou) in time to whip up some chili. If I can get the tv and dvd hooked up in our new place, maybe a netflix selection tonight, too.

check in

Again with the sporadic blogging. I probably don't have a coherent point to make, but a check-in nonetheless. We had a great crew help us move. About a dozen family members and friends lifting heavy stuff for us. Thanks y'all. Matt brought the Chicken Shack (tm) truck which helped tremendously and the greasy mural on the side had my dad's mouth watering from the moment he pulled up. Matt and my brother-in-law Mike lifted the nine-thousand-pound entertainment center from hell, thank the stars. Some (like my friend Jim) worked fast to finish before Michigan-MSU kick-off, so we benefitted from that motivation too. My mom made an outstanding white chili to feed the troops and my sister contributed vegetarian burgers made of ground chickpeas, fava beans, Italian breadcrumbs, and who knows what else. Kind of a cross between boca burgers and falafel. Delish! Even post-op, Anna's got mad kitchen skills. (Even a story about moving becomes a story about food...I've got problems.)

And our new king-sized bed, our new-house splurge, was delivered on the same day. We only own a few pieces of "new" furniture--most of our stuff is a combination of hand-me-downs and auction finds: my grandma D's old bedroom set, the huge old oak library table from an Ohio flea market that I use as a desk in my home office, etc. But the joys of a king-sized bed are legion, especially for a big guy like me. Though maybe the sound nights of sleep have as much to do with the aforementioned heavy labor. I'll be glad if years pass before I pick up another paint brush. And I don't care if all the great institutions of higher ed come knocking on my door (fat chance)...I ain't moving for a good while. Most of all, though, it's good to be in Berkley, where Nicole grew up. N. is flexible as hell ("you want to go to grad school 2,000 miles away in Tucson? okay, let's do it! you want to take a job in rural and right-wing southwest Ohio where I'll need to sit for another bar exam? you betcha!") and has always wanted to return to her old stomping grounds.

Oh yeah, everybody wants to know about Hyatt the pug's transition also. He too has gotten some good shut-eye on the aforementioned king-size. He likes the greyhound next-door, who seems real gentle and easy-going (just like Hyatt). He doesn't miss Elvis and Diva, the cats who live next-door to our old place who somehow never took much of a shine to him (everybody takes a shine to H.) but he does miss the vigilant but friendly Guard Kitty down the block. With his eyes, he's going to need some time to get used to the sliding glass doors in our backroom, which he's thrice ran into thinking he had a clear path to the backyard...like a bird that flys into a window. We need to either put up a visible blockade or just let them get dirty. Knowing us, probably the latter.

One more thing. Stuff that's now in walking distance:
--a 7-11
--my in-laws' house
--Amici's Pizza
--a bowling alley
--a park with big recycling bins
--the home of the aforementioned Jim, my sophomore year roommate
--alas, no Caribou Coffee (can't win 'em all)

caffeine

Wow, haven't blogged in a whole week. I'm still alive but dragging a bit after painting three bedrooms at the new house. Got a big coffee on the way to campus this morning. Once we're settled in I'm kicking caffeine again. Anyway, back to the house...the walls and the wood floors are both shiny and waiting for move-in day, which is Saturday. A generous crew of friends and family--including brother-in-law-to-be and his humongous Chicken Shack (tm) truck--have volunteered to help shlep (sp?) boxes and furniture. Now we need to get Old Place packed in the next 48 hours.

Last night we handed out candy on the front porch. Nicole dressed as a ghost and I dressed as a sloppy guy who had spent the whole day painting. Our pals K&P came over and brought their four-year-old who took the new neighborhood for all it was worth. We met some nice neighbors, including several other young couples. Today, back to the OTHER grind. I've got a handful of papers left to mark and some further prep work to do before class this afternoon. Then Civic Engagement is having its Community Action Summit where some of our service learning partners are giving presentations, followed by some of the students (including two from my Civic Literacies course) in our new cohort of sl courses speaking on their collaborative projects. Good stuff. Wonder if they'll have diet coke?, he thinks, nervously twitching.

So aside from some drowsiness and a budding caffeine problem that must be kicked come mid-month, things are good. Regular blogging, and pics of new house, to follow.