Fire in the Twilight

Just finished an anthology of writers on John Hughes' 80's output called (what else?) Don't You Forget About Me. The editor is local, and I'd seen the book first at the MFA bookstore. Not quite ready to lay down the $16 (despite the back cover looking like a VHS tape--nice touch!), I picked up a copy at my town library, and promptly started thinking about how to pitch a John Hughes frosh seminar...

But then I lurch back to high school: Why did Ferris Bueller bug me so much? (Not as much as everyone in St. Elmo's Fire [1985], but still!) Why didn't Duckie get Andie? How did I manage to get Jennifer Anderson to go to prom with me--was it the floor tickets I had for the Simple Minds concert?

Then I fast-forward to my first-ever paper from graduate school: a textual analysis of Pretty in Pink (1986). And he still agreed to be on my thesis committee! Hmmm: I wonder if the world could use another academic article on Molly Ringwald?

What are the films kids are watching right now that they'll look back with wistful embarrassment in 20 years' time?

Blog as I say--not as I blog!

What is it about deadlines that compels us to procrastinate until they loom before us in all their angst-ridden glory?  I'm not sure how many new leaves I've promised to turn over, but I guess this is another one... Besides, in reality I should be raking those leaves on my front lawn, right?  Ah well.  In an attempt to jump start the conversation, let's pull out an old trick--what showed up on "random" on the iPod whilst beginning to rake said leaves this afternoon?

• "Safar," Le Trio Joubran  Instrumentalist trio that all play the oud.  Saw these guys at Lotus Fest in Bloomington in the middle of the decade, and Loreta & I plopped down the $15 for a disc after seeing their most excellent performance (in an acoustically beneficial church, as I recall).
• "Bright Mississippi," Thelonious Monk  My buddy Adam was always ahead of the curve on things like getting hip to jazz.  Monk, Miles, Coltrane.... I'm pretty sure he taped me my first copies of all those guys.  And what did I give him in return?  Gary Numan outtakes?!
• "Mussolini vs. Stalin," Gogol Bordello  If you haven't seen Everything is Illuminated (2005) yet, it's time to take care of that.  Eugene Hutz, singer/songwriter of the Bordellos, plays a key part in the film, which our pal Lois set us up to see.  However, it was my time as a DJ at WFHB that got me hip to this band.  Nothing like being a DJ to have an amazing infusion of music and experiences, no doubt.  
• "All You Need is Love," The Beatles  Magical Mystery Tour (1967) was one of those albums I nicked from my parents' collection when I was four, taking it upstairs to play over and over and over on my plastic Fisher Price record player.  Ironically, my 215 class referenced this song in their newscast they shot this past Wednesday.  Like, weird.
• "Tu mano mergyte," Omega  Classic throwaway Lith-pop.  The the guy lists off all the different ways he and his girl are a matched set (You're my little sun, I'm your little sunbeam, You're my little little heart, I'm your little kiss, etc.).  In Lithuanian, though, it sounds really nice--the lyrics are a litany of diminutives that carry a cumulative humor and tenderness.  Even if you don't understand the words, you can feel the flow:

• "War," Bob Marley & The Wailers  Man!  Go back and listen to the lyrics here--it'll stop you cold.  Marley was nothing more than a cliche to me in high school, and I slowly warmed to him in college.  Only in recent years am I filling out his back-catalogue.  Better late than never?
• "Medley: The Loner/Cinnamon Girl/Down By the River," Neil Young  4 Way Street (1971) was another of those albums I ran off with when I was four, and this track is an extra on the CD issue of that double-live from CSNY.  I actually got my dad a replacement vinyl copy for the one I destroyed some three decades previous.  Remind me again why I passed on getting tickets to see Neil the last time he was in town?!
• "Strange Apparition," Beck  In which the Beckster does a pretty mean Rolling Stones impersonation that is most certainly meant to be heard on headphones.  Maybe not while raking leaves, but definitely on headphones.
• "Archives of Pain," Manic Street Preachers  The last album recorded with Richey James before he plain vanished (suicide is presumed).  If The Holy Bible (1994) isn't the biggest downer you've ever heard, I want to hear what tops it.  Commercial failure, total genius.  I remember sitting in a cafe in Klaipeda (Lithuania) reading the lyric sheet for the first time, jaw ajar.
• "Fio Maravilha," Toquinho/Jorge Ben  As Talking Heads wound down, David Byrne began putting together world-music compilations for Warner Bros.  The first he did was Beleza Tropical (1989), which I turned around and taped from my dad.  Hmmm--seems like there's a pattern here.

What's on your playlist these days?  What memories come to mind as you listen?  And perhaps most important, how many more snow-free weekends do we have this fall?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Still a work in progress...

A special hello to 399 folks reading the blog for the first time.... A new semester, a new captive audience!  I look forward to reading stuff from you all.

This is going to be a quick post, seeing as I am shooting out announcements to all my classes via Blackboard before slowly working my way to Logan and beyond, but I wanted to get something new up here after yesterday's class.  I'd asked the class to talk a little about music they just hated, which makes me ponder just what I would identify here...

I'm thinking back to my dorm freshman year, and the "old guys at the end of the hall" (they were sophomores) who insisted on playing f**king Steve Miller Band every f**king weekend night as they doused themselves with Polo cologne and engaged in the Gustavus ritual of the "pre-party."  I never really thought about Steve Miller much one way or another before that year--I guess there were songs on the classic rock radio station rotation, but it just washed over me--not anything I would ever seek out.

Well, it found me, I kid you not.

The funny thing is that, now with 20+ years of hindsight, I hear SMB, remember Co-Ed (the nickname of the dorm, the first on campus to house both boys and girls in the same building--hot stuff for us Lutherans), and actually feeling nostalgic about the whole thing.

If I step outside myself, it seems ridiculous.  But subjectively, that experience was part of the whole college thing that year.  Of course, this was the year I pissed off my roommate by putting up a questionable Bangles poster ("Girls can't rock!" he more questionably sputtered) and attending the previously lamented David Bowie "Never Let Me Down" concert.

Bad taste?  There was probably plenty to go around.  

Wait--that's end of the summer?!

Holey moley, how'd that happen? I was just sorting out this vacation thing....

Some random notes as we move into Labor Day weekend:

Raymond Williams, an early theorist of television, was jolted into writing while stuck in a Florida hotel, watching US TV from his British perspective--and being totally flummoxed at how the whole deal was going down. I felt a similar shock at getting cable installed (first time in five years). The biggest new toy is "on demand" (no, still no DVR). Not only can I find movies from 20 years ago (Back to School, anyone?), I can score music videos from 30 years ago ("Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" features MJ's real nose, I was reminded).  The upshot is being able to watch things like Obama's speech or M*A*S*H reruns, but man there's a lot of crud on TV.  (How did ultimate cage pummeling become our national sport?)

Facebook has already moved beyond being a reunion machine to a virtual door collage.  Who makes all these different add-ons?  And what information am I giving away each time I sign up for things like Packer Fan Forum or Virtual Bookshelf or whatever?  Minimalism is clearly not a virtue for the Facebookers....

Wi-fi saved our butts for the first few weeks of our new home... but once it blinked out for a few days, it was time to pony up.  The whole reason we have cable at all (see above) is that 1. the cable company is the only DSL provider in our town, and 2. TV w/ internet was like $7 more than internet alone.  For the first year, of course.  Unless they are having some kind of price war with Verizon, I think cable will be a one-year deal....But I'll still have YouTube!

This blog will be even more musically focused than normal (?!) this semester, as my only blogging class will be my COMM 399 course, "Popular Music, Communication & Culture."  I'm going to be using YouTube to organize videos that go along with readings, and will post a link for easy access from this blog.  That reminds me: gotta find some good Celine Dion concert footage!  (The early 33 1/3 book on Let's Talk About Love will be a good litmus test for all of us!)

10 years, 7 moves!

This is a little off topic, but with the house closing today I've been doing a little thinking about the notion of "home" (can you guess the musical cue?)...  In particular, I started thinking about the number of different places I've lived--and the number of different places from/to which I've moved! For my last post from 72 Union, I want to turn back the clock: the moves of the past ten years.

#1: From Seduva to Bloomington, 1998 Leaving Lithuania after 1 1/2 years as an English teacher, and starting my Ph.D. program in Indiana. I moved from the bendrabutis across from the high school to a garage apartment walking distance from the university.  I hauled back my life from Europe and set up shop again in the Midwestern USA.  Loreta & I were married during the tenure at North Lincoln (yes, she sobbed seeing the sight of this place, and there were not tears of joy, I assure you).

#2: From North Lincoln to Orchard Glenn, 2000 Our lease ran out Summer 2000, and we had a fellowship in Lithuania after I passed exams.  The net result was some vagrancy (cat sitting!  Lois' basement!) that got us to a place on Bloomie's west side for a few months.  We managed to squirrel away some stuff at Loreta & Vit's until returning from LT.

#3: From Orchard Glenn to Vilnius, 2000 I think I had additional stuff stored in my departmental office (books and such), as we went for about nine months to live a charmed life walking distance from Old Town.  We may never live this rich again.  We lived pretty minimally, although the apartment we rented was furnished.  We blew out the Belorussian stove almost immediately, thus eating a lot of boiled stuff that year.

#4: From Vilnius to Bloomington, 2001 Back to Bloomie only weeks before 9/11--the culture shock was big enough before Sept. 11, thanks.  Two years on South Lincoln, blocks from Loreta's work, and an easy bike ride for me to school.  This place had some interesting storage nooks, which got the best of us soon enough.  I did follow-up research in LT in Summer 2002, and it was so hot that Loreta swore we were outta there once the lease was up .

#5: From South Lincoln to Steeplechase, 2003 Air conditioning!  A pool!  (After our car got dinged, and we raised hell) a garage!  The only way we could make this really work was with the aforementioned car, although we did our share of public transportation from South Sare Road as well.  We actually lived there longer than anywhere else, other than our parents' homes, come to think of it.

#6: From Bloomington to Bridgewater, 2006 Dissertation defended!  My brother and Loreta's sister get married (not to each other)!  First trip to LT in years!  A bona fide professorship!  2006 was awfully good to us.  This was a hair-raising move, though--we contracted with a truck to drive our stuff across the country, but first the truck had to be able to park.  I wonder how the new saplings and lawn are doing there at Steeplechase.  IU buddies helped us out the door, and IU buddies helped us unpack in Massachusetts.  Hoosier pride!

#7: From Bridgewater to Sandwich, 2008 So today we're signing papers on our new house, and tomorrow we're moving in.  This time around we're driving ourselves, although it's more than an in-town move.  And this time we've got BSC buddies pitching in, for which we're eternally grateful.  As I look around: bags and boxes.  And more boxes.  And chairs from Indiana that Loreta bought down the road--go figure.  

We're hoping it will be some time before I feel the need to write a "moving post."  Cue cheesy Motley Crue!

Summer "Vacation"

Well my friends, Summer I is in the books (more or less--a little editing left to do for the 220 short), and it's time to look forward to the next two months or so. Three major projects for the next two months... bear with me, and you'll get your Go-Go's payoff here in a minute....

1. The Book Proposal. A whole lot of sound and fury these past two years, but I really want to make this happen. My problem is that on top of the idea of turning the dissertation into a book, I have at least two other book ideas percolating at the same time. Typical! Ideas come exponentially, but the follow-through is linear. Still, to have a proposal out by Labor Day would be huge. It's time.

2. The Preps. No less than three new classes for the fall, including COMM 221 (Foundations of Communication Studies), COMM 290 (Videography) and COMM 399 (Popular Music, Communication & Culture). The Central Asian Cinema course for the spring is lurking in the background as well. A lot of new material to cover!

3. The Move. Looking to close on a house at the end of the month, so the third big project is packing up in Bridgewater and getting everything over to Sandwich in one piece. Anyone into hauling appliances around S.E. Massachusetts?

And as promised--cue Belinda!

Facebook (finally!)

Summer 2008--Dateline Bridgewater:

After two solid years of cajoling, NP finally got me to sign up for Facebook. Even though I teach aspects of new media in my theory course, I've been reticent to get into either MySpace or Facebook. It seemed to me like going to a club where all my students would hang out--"who's the creepy old guy?", y'know?

But ok--I'm in. And frankly I owe NP a thank-you for allowing me some pretty fast-moving reconnecting. To whit, here are a few of the folks I've reconnected with just this week:

DD went to another high school in Tucson, but we became friends through our church youth group ("Does Facebook have an OSLC page?" I find myself wondering). Actually, among DD's hijinks in HS was to dress up like a substitute teacher and pop up in the halls of RHS, just to say hey. Can you imagine this happening post-Columbine?....

SJ was in my "sister section" of my frosh dorm @ GAC. We were also in the alternative "CII" curriculum track together, which meant we got to go to a monastery in North Dakota, puzzle over Plato's Cave ad nauseam, and such. I just found out she's a newlywed!....

IE lived down the hall from me during my "semester abroad" @ UEA. The look is markedly different (a function of living in Sweden?), but the mischievous grin is absolutely the same. Does he still do the arm-flail when "Ride on Time" comes on?....

MFC & I were @ IU together those first years of CMCL, w/ offices in The Attic of what we subsequently learned was a literally diseased building. After getting her MA, she's been in China for eight years teaching EFL....And looking to go back to grad school for that come the fall (after the Olympics?)....

These were all folks that, for a time, were an integral part of my everyday life. At least at this early stage, it feels like Facebook is a reunion machine. As a professor, though, joining Facebook has allowed me to stumble on a philosophical / pedagogical question: Should professors and students be (Facebook) friends? I'd be curious to know your thoughts!

George Carlin (1937-2008), R.I.P.

Seven dirty words...anybody?



Of course the beauty of grassroots production is that we're able to bypass TV, which still would bleep out all the naughty bits. Here on the blogosphere we at least get to hear the routine normally and share it amongst fellow travelers. Fucking FCC.

With Carlin's passing, I think back to the Vietnam era, and the TV war coverage then versus what we have now. Don't you think if networks had access to the horrors of war in Iraq or Afghanistan, and were allowed to (gasp!) show American flag-draped coffins coming home, that our activities abroad would have been, erm, curtailed? Maybe that's wishful thinking, but damn. Fuck the Bush Administration.

NPR is running a series on parents who've meet at "Section 60," the area in Arlington National Cemetery where soldiers from Iraq & Afghanistan are buried. It's moving stuff--part one was today (Monday), and not sure how many more days they'll do, but at least tomorrow. Fuck commercial radio.

If you've not seen this yet, spend a few minutes by clicking on this interactive from the NY Times. Then come back for a Monty Python palate cleaner, below.

4-3-2: a must-see

Just watched one of the best films I've seen in some time--also one of the hardest films to watch in some time. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (2007) was the last of the "big three" Romanian films of recent years to make it to DVD (after The Death of Mr. Lazarescu [2005] and 12:08, East of Bucharest [2006]).  4-3-2 won the Palm d'Or @ Cannes 2007, and deservedly so.  It's wrenching, it's heartbreaking.  It's the real deal.

Technically, the film is actually reminiscent of our Danish friends from Dogme95 (e.g., The Celebration [1998] and The Idiots [1998]): long takes, handheld, no music soundtrack, etc.  The DVD extras are quite nice, including extended interviews w/ the director and the cinematographer.  Also, there's a short documentary about taking the film on the road to show in provincial Romanian towns that no longer have a dedicated cinema in which to watch these films.

In light of my current research on Lithuania, I'm arguing that--at least from an audience perspective--Lithuanian "national cinema" was only viable while Lithuania was not a nation-state, but rather a republic of the USSR.  Conversely, after re-independence, Lithuanian national cinema has collapsed.  In the Romanian case, this collapse of the audience is also clearly happening... And yet we've seen some amazing, world-class films come from there in the past few years.  What lessons can Baltic filmmakers take from the Romanian case?

Below, I've posted the trailer for the film (now out on DVD).  Do yourself a favor and see 4 Months...  But be forewarned: it's a bitter pill.

Beatles! Beatles everywhere!

I note with a mix of amusement, bemusement, mock-horror, and mirth that at least 33% of current 396 blogs now host Beatles songs! Having just screened Across the Universe (2007) this morning, it is apparently my constitutional duty to post this Eddie Izzard outtake as Mr. Kite.....



I go back and forth on the film. Every generation can and should rediscover the Beatles, and if this film does the trick then I'm all for it. Lord knows when I was in college, there were any number of house versions of Fab Four tunes (check the 1991 Candy Flip cover of "Strawberry Fields," below...the song Shawn's blogged quiz says most fits my personality type--go figure), and that was a way to reconnect after playing (out) the catalogue in earlier years....

More than anything else I got frustrated with the 1:1 correlations thrown out there one after the other, demanding I think them clever. Yes, it's dear Prudence, and yes she came in through the bathroom window. JoJo is here, as is Sexy Sadie, Jude, Lucy, and even lovely Rita (albeit a contortionist, no longer a meter maid). Sadie = Janis, JoJo = Jimi, Jude = John. The Hair sequence is here, the Abbey Road roof gig is here, and on and on. And that's what makes the Izzard sequence a relative breath of fresh air for me--controlled chaos.

As far as Beatles updates / mashups / you-pick-'ems go, on the whole I'd still give the nod to the George Martin Love (2006) project's fusion of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Within You, Without You" (neither of which appeared in Universe). Mind you, I have no stake in the video--but the audio mash-up is spot-on brilliant:



Now with the Beatles edging out Gary Numan in the blog charts (at an inexplicably close 3-2 margin) let's see if other folks chime in?

As a PS, here are the aforementioned Flippers, doing their best Happy Mondays vs Paul Oakenfold impression. THIS, kids, is the kind of stuff your professors were clubbing to in college. Scary, no?



See also: Danielle Dax, "Tomorrow Never Knows"; The Dream Academy, "Love." And for a different flavor, track down Sonic Youth's blistering cover of "Within You Without You"

Madonna vs Gogol Bordello

Bloomie in full effect! Last night I dreamt of the Farmers' Market....




I'm sneaking in this Pokemon as well in a tribute to Vilnis, who was kind enough to introduce us to the wide world of Pokemon. According to a test I found on the web, this is the Pokemon that most closely resembles my personality. Make of it what you will.....

Safe zones, Summer I, RSS feeds....

The management @ Some Assembly Required is proud to announce that this blog is now a certified safe zone!  If you have any questions or concerns as part of the GLBTA community, have any questions or concerns regarding GLBTA issues, or have a good lead for another outfielder for my fantasy baseball team, please feel free to contact me!....

Summer I started today, and Opening Day for my two courses are tomorrow: COMM 220 (Intro to Mass Communication) and COMM 396 (Mass Communication Theory & Research).  After this semester, the term "mass communication" will be little more than a foil for the term "media studies," which personally makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.  Both classes will be blogging, so I am hoping to get a little traffic from BSC folks (though I LOVE LOVE LOVE hearing from friends and family far afield, make no mistake!).  This is the second summer I've had students blog--I'm looking forward to getting feedback from new cohorts.  And, of course, it's always a blast for me to read what you all are doing as well--I love how I can click on your response to me and see your own blog.  (Geez, I sound all saucer-eyed, but it's a beautiful thing!)...

 Finally, check the RSS feeds I've installed on the bottom of the blog.  I will try to add different stuff as I go this term, but with AABS coming up this week, it is indeed right and salutary that we have feeds from both the English-language weekly The Baltic Times and the Lithuanian daily Lietuvos rytas.  Ask me how to add RSS feeds to your blog or webpage (hint: painfully simple)!

The past between them

Truth...and reconciliation? Why would children of Holocaust survivors and children of Nazi perpetrators come together to explore "the past between them"? Here's a video from CBS circa 1992 on such a meeting at Harvard University--it just popped up on the H-Net listserv thanks to Mona Sue Weissmark of Northwestern University.

Sorry that the video isn't loading--follow the link!

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4079008n

"Could you describe the RUCKUS, sir?"

This fall my COMM 399 course on popular music is going to be using the legal download service RUCKUS--currently available for free for BSC students, $8.99 / month for faculty. It'll serve as a shared music database for the course, meaning I won't have to force my students to buy a CD of Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love--the 33 1/3rd book will have to suffice!

I got the service up and running for myself yesterday, and so far find myself gravitating to a) albums / songs I already own, but have "locked up" in box currently in our storage room, like Tindersticks or b) obscure remixes from bands I've liked for 25 years, like Talk Talk. So far not a whole lot of exploration, but a lot of aural "comfort food."

It makes grading finals go down a little bit easier, dig?

Blogging about blogs!

My goodness, how did it get to be a week before graduation? I vaguely remember this buzz in my ear saying that Spring Break was almost over, and now here we are with two days of finals left. How did that happen?!?

So with the end of 396 this spring, I've completed a year-long experiment in requiring blogs from students. Feedback has been mixed to mostly positive--and I figure even for folks who aren't at all into it, they're able to speak from experience now. It's been a worthy experiment, tied to Henry Jenkins' book Convergence Culture, which talks about convergence as something that's happening in audiences as much or more than in hardware (hence his term "black box fallacy" to describe the PS3, the iPhone, or what have you).

I'd be curious to hear from 396ers on this--what's your take on this blogging thing? Was it valuable to have an alternative venue for working through your thoughts and ideas regarding media studies? Did it give you any added sense of "community" in 396 or beyond? And hey: anyone continuing after the course? (Let me know, and I'll link you as an alum on my site--feel free to do the same!)

With finals winding down (yeah right, 25 research papers are due in 42 hrs 28 min) I'm hoping to get back on the blogging wagon. In the meantime, here's what NOT to do for your video blog:

Sox, McMillan, and blogging about blogs

Another 6 a.m. start for the Red Sox, allowing my to serenade my wife with the "1-800-54-GIANT" jingle while she showered this morning (complete with my Supremes-wannabe shimmy...don't ask). Things were pretty much sealed with a 3-run homer by Emil Brown (still available on the waiver wire, fantasy players!), so the collection of folks getting their cars serviced at the local Toyota dealership glumly watched the 9th on the beautiful wall-mounted flat-screen that we were all helping to pay for (several times over, I'm sure)....

I regret not pushing the Terry McMillan talk, which took place last night @ BSC, harder than I did for my students (a la Spike Lee). I myself hadn't read anything by her before she was announced as this semester's "Presidential Speaker," and even now I'm only 2/3rds of the way through her second novel, Disappearing Acts (1989). McMillan was not only engaging, she was riveting. She read from a work in progress (which she promises will be unrecognizable when it finally is published) that is a sequel to her best-seller Waiting to Exhale (1992). It definitely pushed me to read that next, and look for the follow-up when it arrives (in 2009?).....



Finally, I've set up a new list on the sidebar to go along with what I'm currently watching, listening to, and reading. I'm offering up links to several other blogs--both academics working in media studies, and former students of mine that have continued their blog writing. So far I only have two up: Bob Rehak is an old classmate who now teaches outside of Philadelphia, and Tim Haber is a 396 alum doing a semester abroad in New Zealand. Check them out!

24-Hour Party People!

7:30 a.m. Boston time. 4th inning of Opening Day, and the Sox are down 2-0. Dice-K gave up a homer his first batter back in Japan--oops! How bizarre to be listening to live baseball before my morning class. Reminds me of listening to NFL playoff games on shortwave in Lithuania. Space and time, my friends. Space and time.

4:30 a.m. Tucson time. Just got off the phone with mom, who got dad finally admitted to the hospital, after waiting in the ER for hours as a preventative measure (long story for another time)....So it's already today in Boston, but I'm apparently in "tomorrow" as far as mom is concerned....But she hasn't slept yet tonight....this past night...whatever....so it's all a little confusing.

Back to grading...let's go Sox!

What I Did On My Vacation

Grade a lot, really.

But that doesn't make for such a hot blog entry, so let's talk movies. I got to see a couple big Oscar winners, and pulled off a "Dina" yesterday.

The "Dina"? My advisor from UT days, Dina Iordanova, told me once that at that stage of my academic career I should be watching two features a day to get me up to speed. At the time, I was trying to fill huge gaps in my Central European cinema experience. These days, I just feel like I'm scrambling to fill huge gaps everywhere. That's what education is supposed to do, right? Help you know what you don't know?

Last night was a double-feature for today's COMM 371 (Global Cinema) class: Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love (2000). Both are beautiful, achingly sad films--just the thing for students on spring break! Whoops.

(GRATUITOUS ASIDE: My senior year, spring break was a road trip with the Gustie hordes to South Padre, TX. Somehow there on the beach I was reading both Children of the Arbat for Russian/Soviet history and The Cider House Rules for Curriculum II Senior Sem. Both great books--but lugging them around in hardcover because I got them out of the library rather than buying the paperbacks was not the best idea if mine that week. It was also not the worst--I kid you not.)

From Netflix, we got in No Country For Old Men (2007), which got the Best Picture Oscar last month. Man, talk about brutal. The nice thing about watching films at home is that sometimes when things get to be too much, you can just hit pause and walk away. We actually broke the film up: two viewings over three nights, taking a night off between, thank you very much. Javier Bardem was awesome as the baddie--but after working with Charles Ramírez Berg's book Latino Images in Film in COMM 300 (Media, Minorities, & Cultural Diversity), I can't help but see him as the latest incarnation of the bordertown bandito. *sigh*

Finally, The Counterfeiters (2006), the Foreign-Language Oscar winner from Austria (see previous blog entry on COMM 371's successful "collective intelligence" pick of this film to win--especially you COMM 396 folks reading Jenkins!). I would like to go on record to say that I was wrong to think it was going to be so very apologetic--the film was gritty and even brutal at times, but in the right ways (I got a particular shock from a scene set at a quarry camp outside Saltzberg we'd visited as a family back in '98).

I'd double-dog-dared my 371 students to go see a foreign-language film in the theater this past week, after their midterm exam. I did my bit, darn it. There's no way I could rally to see the complete Berlin Alexanderplatz (all 15 hours or whatever!) Easter weekend, so this was a good compromise.

So now spring break is over...the final push for graduation begins!

Spring Break Shenanigans

So what is it about breaks that make you do silly things you wouldn't bother doing otherwise?

Case in point: D & D monster tournaments over Thanksgiving back in junior high (watch out for the werebear!).....Or questionable road trips to Texas or Florida.....Or....

Going through a spindle of burned discs to see what's buried there?! I think it had to have been junior high the last time I consciously tried to listen to everything I owned straight through. Nothing so silly here, but I'm still working my way through a lot of goodies. Here's what I've stumbled across on a random spindle in the past four days or so:

BLACK BOX: Dreamland
EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL: Like the Deserts Miss the Rain
MILES DAVIS: Kind of Blue
MILES DAVIS: Birth of the Cool
MILES DAVIS: Sketches of Spain
KEANE: Hopes and Fears
GARY NUMAN: Exile
V/A: Maloney Wants a Drink (St. Paddy's mix!)
JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO: Double Fantasy
ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO: Thirteen Years
SHAKIRA: Fijacacion Oral

Hmmmm--that was a bit of a Miles kick I was on yesterday....Now where's ON THE CORNER when you need it?!

Thank You Brett

When the news came through yesterday that Brett Favre had announced his retirement, I had a strange mix of regret, happiness, and nostalgia. Patriots fans, take note: some day Tom Brady will retire too, and you'll be left to ponder all the memories.

Me? I remember watching the Packers beat the Lions for their first playoff win in forever while studying in Austin. I think I was at a bowling alley with Philip, the best friend I ever had who also liked the Cowboys. (Yes, also the ONLY friend I ever had who liked the Cowboys.) I remember the fall/winter of '95-'96, living back in Tucson, driving every Sunday to watch the Packers at the Oldfather Inn on the Northwest side. I remember trying to not pay too much attention to the 1996 Packers/Cowboys NFC championship game while celebrating Adam & Yael's wedding (it was better that way).

I remember rooting for the Packers with a roomful of purple in St. Paul (I think we lost the battle, but won the war that year...). I remember being home in Tucson before leaving for Lithuania, watching the Packers win the Super Bowl over You Know Who (right, kids?).

While teaching in Lithuania that next winter, I remember listening to the '98 NFC championship game on shortwave radio (a win) and avoiding the Super Bowl altogether for some reason (a loss).

The next decade has had highs and lows, and this last season had both. The win in the snow over Seattle! The awful interception in overtime against New York. Sitting in the Bridgewater 99 bar, clutching my beer a little too hard. A sick, sad, resigned feeling. The truth is that there's a lot more of that kind of feeling than the other, come the end of the season.

And now Favre has retired. I was quietly hoping he would as early as two years ago--not because I thought he was "done," but because I wanted him to be able to walk when he's 65....On some level, I'm part of the reason why professional football players end up hobbled, or worse--sacrificing their bodies for (eye-popping) salaries. On some level, I feel responsible, and I didn't want to be responsible for a hobbled Brett Favre.

So I'm sad that he retired, because this year was so much better than expected, the best in years. Yet I'm glad that he's getting out on his terms, rather than in Aikman-like agony.

Everyone should have their favorite team win it all once--everything else is just gravy (Pats fans needed a reminder of this on their not-so-inevitable march to a perfect record and a fourth championship this decade). In '97, that's exactly what Packers fans got. It was gloriously brilliant--the memory of watching the game with my Dad (who was in Wisconsin for the Lombardi years) is something we'll always have.

I never got to see Favre play in person, but I got to enjoy his play on TV for over a dozen years. All those "did-you-see-that?!" moments, like this one, in his last win at Lambeau:



At the risk of getting really sappy, thank you Brett.

Now get in there, Aaron Rodgers!

March Madness!

Snow turns to sleet turns to rain....and today there's sun and we're all supposed to pretend that none of that weather earlier this weekend ever happened. I am soooooooo ready for spring.

Which leads me to today's topic. Part of what got me through this latest bout of my when-will-winter-end blues was listening to the Red Sox play the Twins on Friday night. Baseball on the radio--all is right in the universe!

I think I'm going to sign up for the MLB audio package again this year--for $15, you get audio streams of all baseball games, including archived stuff. The video streams are a little rich for my blood, and I'll be fine with the audio. This way I keep tabs on the Twins, the Indians, and (let's be honest) my fantasy baseball players all around the country.

There's a comment starter for you: anyone play fantasy baseball? With whom, and for how long? I will announce another baseball-related retro-frenzy in this space here shortly, but in the meantime, here's Tommy Lasorda doing his darndest to be a role model to all the kiddies out there!

Head vs. Heart: Counterfitters or Katyn?

HEAD: Now that the Global Cinema class has spoken on their thoughts for the foreign-language Oscar, it's my turn.

HEART: Our turn!

HEAD: Ok, our turn.  But I'm not so sure about this mind/body dichotomy.  Does Descartes know you nicked his blog password?

HEART: Erm....right.  So let's see what the collective intelligence of COMM 371 has to say about Sunday, and we'll throw in our two cents too.

HEAD: First off, nobody's buying Beaufort, which was actually Israel's second choice for their national pick.  I just realized that each and every film nominated this year centers around war.  Sign of the times?

HEART: Afraid so.  The Russian film 12 got two votes--I have to say that I really hope this film doesn't win.  I want to see the film a lot, but having a bunch of Russians sitting around in a Chechyn gymnasium to decide this case (we get it, folks, we get it) is more than I can stomach.

HEAD: Don't you think the 12 Angry Men angle helps it more than it hurts?  But I think that's negated by the fact that Mikhalkov already won one of these in the mid-'90s--Burnt by the Sun is a great film, by the way.

HEART: Then we have a tie--two films that got 2 1/2 votes.  Mongol is a Kazak film on Genghis Khan--we're going to be seeing a lot more films from Central Asia @ BSC in the next year (thanks Soros!), and a win here would be a nice catapult.

HEAD: But...even though this is the foreign-language category, don't you think this is a bit too....erm....foreign for US audiences?  

HEART: And the other film at 2 1/2 is Katyn, the latest from Andrzej Wajda.  We watched several films of his in 430 last semester (Ashes & Diamonds, Man of Marble) and the latter is screening this week for 371.  Did you know that Wajda won a lifetime achievement Oscar several years back, but has never won the foreign-language Oscar?  Here's the chance to right that wrong before he's dead.

HEAD: But they've already done the right thing with that lifetime achievement award--I think they're going to go elsewhere....to The Counterfeiters, to be specific.  Collective intelligence points to the Austrians to win, albeit narrowly at 3 votes.  You've got the WWII angle like Katyn, but it targets Nazis instead of Soviets (always a better Oscar strategy).

HEART: Do we get to talk about the crowds in Vienna welcoming Hitler with open arms upon annexation?  Or do we talk about how we were all victims of Nazism?  I'm afraid it's the latter, and it's depressing.  My vote is for Katyn.

HEAD: And I'm saying The Counterfeiters takes home the trophy.  In the end, I just hope these nominees make their way to Boston-area screens sometime this year--or at least get to f**king Netflix.

HEART:  Peace out.  Tune in Sunday!

Persepolis gets my vote!

Seems to me that the foreign films that have gotten the most buzz / traction this past year (Golden Door, 4 Months..., Persepolis) have unsurprisingly all gotten passed over for the foreign language Oscar. Maybe that's how it should be, as often films get catapulted into our consciousness as "Oscar-nominated" or even "Oscar-winning," and we've already sorted these out. And Persepolis is nominated for best animated feature (what are the odds?!?). So.

My COMM 371 (Global Cinema) students are weighing in on who they think will (or should) get the Oscar on Sunday--I have committed to sorting out my guess / vote by then, too, so look for that later in the week. In the meantime, though....three cheers for Persepolis, which Lorka & I got to see this afternoon. The film is adapted from a graphic novel via animation--I'm embedding a teaser here:



Don't worry--the film has subtitles in US theaters. But what I love about this clip is how American popular culture circulating globally becomes fodder for youthful rebellion....although to placate the Old Lady Morality Police (circa early 80's Iran), the young girl tries to pass Michael Jackson off as Malcolm X. Priceless!

Spike delivers, students out in force!

Spike Lee took the BSC stage by storm last night--in a Giants Super Bowl sweatshirt! Spike was enjoying giving Pats fans the business--still on a high from the game the other week. (Want to relive the nightmare? Check this out, and note the gentleman in the Strahan jersey--WARNING: CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO MIGHT STILL BUM OUT PATS FANS.)



We got the nonsense taken care of early, and spent the vast majority of the time talking either politics or film...I wonder how many students might have been nudged to register as a result of last night?

It was fascinating to hear themes coming up in classes this term being worked through in this public forum: race and politics, how to get into filmmaking, the evolution of Malcolm X, stereotyping, the importance of pre-production strategic planning....and yes, even Spygate!

We had a lot of solid questions from the community (including several current and former students of mine, he said proudly), and a great turnout overall. In fact, the turnout by my students was phenomenal: nearly two out of three students in my five classes this semester (64.8%) will be receiving their extra credit for being there last night.

Spike Lee showing up to talk on a Wednesday night? My friends, that's what a college education is all about. Brilliant.

Gratuitous mix lists!

It's getting close to 20 years ago, but at one time I too was a senior in college. Trying to sort out my senior seminar, going to NCUR (got Ray Bradbury's autograph!), spring break in Texas, ignoring the job market come May, the whole bit. Anyhow, I came came across a mixtape (D90, go!) I made that final spring at Gustavus, circa 1991. Here's the "set list":

*****SIDE A*****
"Soon"--My Bloody Valentine
"Fall"--The Darling Buds
"Dennis & Lois"--Happy Mondays
"Opportunity"--The Charlatans
"Been Caught Stealing"--Jane's Addiction
"International Bright Young Thing"--Jesus Jones
"Harold & Joe"--The Cure
"Sweetness & Light"--Lush
"Heaven or Las Vegas"--Cocteau Twins
"Bloodline"--Ultra Vivid Scene
*****SIDE B*****
"What is Love?"--Deee-Light
"Pro-Gen"--Shamen
"Tomorrow Never Knows"--Danielle Dax
"One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing"--A.C. Marias
"Of These, Hope"--Peter Gabriel
"Paper Dolls"--Innocence Mission
"Night & Day"--U2
"Love"--The Dream Academy
"Looking for Atlantis"--Prefab Sprout
"Been There Done That"--Brian Eno / John Cale
"The Moon in the Man"--David J
"Disappearer"--Sonic Youth

Geez, that was long. My idea was to post a list I did last month to compare and contrast, but why don't I let you all join in? What sets have you done recently? Or for that matter, in the distant past? Is this microphone on?

BTW, my email inbox is winning. I don't even want to run the numbers. It's sad.

Spike Lee: Coolin' that s**t out!

In case you haven't heard yet, Spike Lee is going to be on BSC campus on Wednesday, Feb. 13th, at 7 pm.  Tickets are free but need to be picked up at the Info Booth @ the RCC.  If you're in one of my classes this semester, you'll be hearing about it for sure--extra credit even!  Like Da Mayor says: always do the right thing. In my COMM 300 class, we are revisiting Malcolm X (1992), but any student can go get the link for the digitized stream for Do the Right Thing (1989) at the Circulation Desk @ Maxwell, and watch that on your laptop (ditto Malcolm X).

Here's a gratuitous list of another half-dozen additional Spike Lee films you'd be well to check out--preferably before the filmmaker arrives on campus (nothing like an informed Q & A session, that's all I'm saying). I bet you could come up with your own list of six different titles...In fact, drop me a comment and build on this:

1. When the Levees Broke (2006) A four-hour documentary on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Incredibly hard to think that it was only 2 1/2 years ago....But it has to have felt like several lifetimes for those whose lives have been directly affected. His most recent full-length project, originally produced for HBO, and now out on DVD.

2. Inside Man (2006) This film was widely praised as a throwback to Classical Hollywood caper films--I kind of think some critics loved it so much because it didn't have the stamp of a Spike Lee film. Or so they say. Taut and full of momentum, this is his most recent film to get wide theatrical release.

3. Bamboozled (2000) A scathing critique of media representation of race, and our complicity with it in any number of capacities. Sure, the plot goes off the rails in the final reel, but still: a number of jaw-dropping moments, including a heartbreaking historical montage.

4. Clockers (1995) I remember seeing this one in the theater multiple times, thinking how Lee was taking his work to a new level of thoughtfulness and introspection. This is a story of circumstance and what one man does to try to write his own ticket....to Arizona.

5. 25th Hour (2002) This was one of the first cinematic reckonings with 9/11 that I remember--and still one of the most poignant.

6. Michael Jordan Nike Campaign Run a web search and you're bound to find some examples out there. Lee brought his "Mars Blackman" character that he developed in his NYU diploma film / theatrical debutShe's Gotta Have It (1986), and paired it with the generation's most iconic sports personality. It's gotta be the shoes!

The 8-bit Scene (or, behind the curve yet again!)

So the crew @ WBIM were kind enough to give me this hilarious compilation of 8-bit covers of Kraftwerk songs last semester called 8-Bit Operators (2007)....I have made public my deep affection for Kraftwerk in classes, conversation, and even a previous blog entry (see the Archive). It's a nice compliment in my collection to the compilation Trans-Slovenia Express (1994), which of course is a set of Slovene artists doing songs like "We Are The Robots" and such. 'FHB used the disc to make a series of station promos before I finally was allowed to abscond with it to my office....

If you're scratching your head going, "Erm, 8-bit?" think of the bleeps and pops you used to get with those 1st-Gen home gaming systems (Atari or Intellivision, anyone?). These systems were going into homes right around the time that Kraftwerk was coming out with records like Computer World (1981). (True fact: I had to read and write about an article in a science magazine for 8th grade science w/ Ms. Guptil, and I managed to get by with writing about a review for Computer World in a computer magazine....Then biked to Park Mall and picked up the record, much to the befuddlement of my Motley Crue-listening friends)....

8-bit seems like a pretty funny / cool mode to work in: using the aural landscape of the early home computing age, ripping it out of original context and re-processing it in all of its lo-fi glory. What a cool idea, I thought to myself. Then, thinking a little more, I realized I had students back in Bloomie two-plus years ago that were already way hip to 8-bit.

The course was "Production as Criticism," and we used Dogme95 as our problematic. For the final project, and in the spirit of Dogma, students had to draft a set of rules / constraints that they agreed to work under--the idea being that contraints can potentially invigorate ideas and creativity through problem solving. Anyhow....

One set of students did a project that looks for anything like a role play game you might have found on your Apple II, called In The Year 20XX (2006). You can cut & paste this link into your browser to see the film (note that the hero is uncoincidentally named Lars):

http://www.archive.org/details/In_The_Year_20XX

Long story short: guess who is behind the curve yet again? But you know, you could die trying and still never have a chance. The fun of teaching is enabling folks to do stuff you would never think up yourself, and see them learn/grow doing it.

Priceless.

Trolling the "used" bins @ Newbury Comics

The thrill of the $3.99 used CD continues....that's about as much as I can budget myself with a clean conscience to mine the depths of my '80s music cravings. This week? Peter Murphy's first solo effort after the Bauhaus meltdown, Should the World Fail to Fall Apart (1986). Somewhere I have a D90 cassette dub of this that I made off vinyl from the Minneapolis Public Library...."Canvas Beauty" is going to show up on some compilation discs this year, I kid you not.

Here's another guy named Peter Murphy who (spoiler alert!) flubs his chance at glory. Troll YouTube for the other one.



Inbox Reduction Resolution 2008
YEAR TO DATE: Yahoo: -20% BSC: +6%

The post-commencement fizz

Here's a gratuitous pic of three Commies from before the ceremony. Who's that stiff-looking guy on the left?!

I'm a little off-topic today, but not by much--I just want to reflect a bit on the accomplishments of the Class of 2008 (January edition!) whose graduation was last night.

Successfully navigating your way through college is not an easy task--there are any number of ways to get sidetracked, waylaid, or otherwise disposed (and no, we're not going to get into biographical specifics on this, thanks). My point is that completing your BA is a big deal, and something worth celebrating. Commencement is literally a rite of passage, and I was glad to see so many proud students (and even prouder parents, friends, etc.) last night.

Commencement, as the keynote speaker said (in his perhaps-a-tad-too-long-kinda-sorta speech), is also literally a beginning rather than simply an ending. It's true: for the Class of 2008, today is the first day of the rest of their lives....I heard great things that our Comm grads are already plugged into, and future plans being hatched. It's exciting!

And it's a good reminder that any one class, or even the accomplishment of completing a degree, is part of the broader and deeper life-journey that we're all on....As I used to say a whole lot more often, "It's all good." True, that.

Another RIP blog entry

This isn't good--one of my last entries of the fall/winter was regarding the murder of South African reggae artist Lucky Dube (see the archive for the post + a video). This week I'm sad to report not only the death of US actor Heath Ledger (perhaps most known from Brokeback Mountain and most recently in the Todd Haines Dylan antibiopic I'm Not There), but also Belizean singer and world music star Andy Palacio.

Palacio is the lesser known of the two, but well worth a listen. This past weekend I picked up the most recent issue of Songlines magazine, which pegged his album Watina as #2 in their "Best Albums 2007" survey (you can hear samples of his work at www.myspace.com/andypalacio). His body of work, recording and otherwise, recently garnered him the honor of being named UNESCO's 40th Artist for Peace. He was only 47.



IRR: BSC=389 (+6.6%/sem.); Yahoo=107 (+7.0%/sem.)

New Year's Resolutions (I know, I know)

I know what you're thinking, and you're right: new year's resolutions can be pretty lame. Personally, I think what makes them lame is that, if you're not careful, they can really set you up to fail. And who needs that?

Still, there's something to be said for the symbolic attempt to consciously vector one's life in positive directions....even if it IS doomed! And in a public forum, no less. Wait--who thought this was a good idea?

Of the New Year's resolutions I made this year, at least three are applicable here:

1) I hereby resolve to regularly blog once again. I figure if I can write 3x/week here, that's pretty good. Not coincidentally, my father is on a similar 3x/week kind of schedule, albeit not exactly of his own choosing. So if I can manage to have a new post for him every time he logs on for a post-Nadine's read, I'd be a happy camper. And if I'm blogging more, it puts me in a better spot to cajole my students to do the same (are you listening, gang?)....

2) I hereby resolve to get that darned book proposal out. My advisors in graduate school always framed our dissertations as "the first draft of your first book." Ok, then. I love the fact that BSC values teaching so highly, but both myself and the college would like to see some action on the research front beyond conferences and such. Fair enough. For the book to fly, the book proposal has to sing--how's that for a mixed metaphor? So that needs to happen asap, if not sooner. No pressure....

3) I hereby resolve to weed, prune, and ultimately drastically reduce my email inboxes. I'll track the progress of what I lovingly refer to as the "Inbox Reduction Resolution of 2008" (hereafter "IRR'08") through the spring semester....or at least until it gets annoying and/or boring. I'd love to hear your strategies on this--or if you even think this is a problem. For the record, I'm going into this with 365 emails in my Yahoo a/c, and an even 100 in my BSC a/c.

Item last: found two Rainer discs I didn't have, thanks to my friend Ryan who has succeeded in transplanting himself from Bloomie to the Old Pueblo this past year. Maybe more on that next week, but in the meantime here's a clip of him doing "Life Is Fine" on British TV....Enjoy.