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!