Two quick TV notes...

1) Entire Walking Dead Writing Staff Fired. I really like this show, but yeah, lots of times, the writing (in terms of dialogue especially) is awful. It's just strange that there might be no writing staff next season. Yikes.

2) I really need someone to be watching Dexter this season so we can talk about it at length. This last episode has completely gotten under my skin.

That is all...back to work I go!

Still an awful idea...

I've blogged about this before, but a new Buffy movie without Joss is an awful idea.

"The Envoy"

"The Envoy"

Jane Hirschfield

 

One day in that room, a small rat.   

Two days later, a snake.

Who, seeing me enter,

whipped the long stripe of his   

body under the bed,

then curled like a docile house-pet.

I don’t know how either came or left.   

Later, the flashlight found nothing.

For a year I watched

as something—terror? happiness? grief?—

entered and then left my body.

Not knowing how it came in,   

Not knowing how it went out.

It hung where words could not reach it.   

It slept where light could not go.

Its scent was neither snake nor rat,   

neither sensualist nor ascetic.

There are openings in our lives   

of which we know nothing.

Through them

the belled herds travel at will,

long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.

"My bad side is as bad as my pleasant side is pleasant."

This poor guy. Dude, I've been there.

Pause

This is the first Saturday in months that I haven't had to get up early or be somewhere. I slept in a bit (although that's harder to do these days--my automatic wake-up time has gotten much earlier in the past few years), ran an errand or two, and then headed to my office on campus to get some work done. But then, since there's a big football game today and a ton of other stuff going on, I couldn't find a parking spot. (That never happens.) I thought, "Okay, I guess I'll go home." So here I am, sitting at home on a Saturday, watching some TV, reading a bit (for fun!), and just relaxing. Gotta say, it feels good. I have some work to get to later--grading, more reading, a small research/writing project to get started on--and I will, but for now, it's quite nice to hit the pause button. I need to remind myself that that's what weekends are for.

An hour of TV bliss...

So I'm not an Oprah fanatic, but I am so glad I remembered to DVR today's episode, featuring the cast of The Sound of Music. (I blogged about the episode when it was first announced.) It was the perfect way to unwind after a long day. Now I want to watch the whole movie. No time, though. I'll have to settle for listening to the soundtrack tomorrow.

"For My Dog, Who Listens to All My Poems"

I am finally making progress on my SAMLA paper. I'm already thinking of one of the final steps before any conference: the multiple practice readings I'll perform for my always-captive-at-home audience, Bing and Wes. For as long as I've been going to conferences, this has been my ritual: a at least few days before the conference, I'll print out a copy of the paper, set the timer on the microwave, plop down on the kitchen floor and start reading. The oddness of this situation--I don't normally sit on the kitchen floor (and I don't know why I originally picked this location), and I don't often talk uninterrupted for 15-20 minutes to an invisible audience--always draws Bing and Wesley to the scene. They watch, pretty darn captivated, sometimes meowing at me as if to say, "Are you talking to us? 'Cause we're right here..."

So I am reminded of this poem by Cathy Smith Bowers, which Andrew Sullivan recently linked to on his blog.

How entranced, each time, she sits there,
her eyes, I swear,
filling with tears
at her master's

inimitable brilliance. It's
clear to me what's
bounding through her
head: The greatest,

yet, of all the generations!
My husband says
she's just waiting
for her rations.

Bing and Wes aren't quite this earnest (well, Wesley might be while Bing might just indeed be "waiting for his rations"), but God bless 'em, they really do seem to listen with something that looks a heck of a lot like interest and (sometimes) appreciation. Yes, I know that's not really what's going on, but it's awfully nice to imagine that it might be. 

Yeah, that's not a word...

I'm up in my office at 4:30 on a Sunday, after already having quite a busy day. I should be on my way home, but I thought, "Let me just send out that last email...that one that has to go to the whole department." So I wrote it, proofread it, made some brief changes, and was just about to hit send when I thought, "Hmmm, better make that subject heading a bit clearer. Let me add, 'Please announce to your students.'"

Should have done a bit more proofreading. "Accounce," one of the words I actually added, isn't a word at all, and spell-check doesn't check subject headings (why not, I wonder?). So there it is--flying towards the in-box of every English colleague on campus, with a glaring typo in the very first word.

Lovely. Just lovely. The moral of the story? Just go home.

True story...

As I work on  my SAMLA paper, these words seem so very appropriate:

“To participate in the critical discourse on Hawthorne is to step into a fast-rushing stream, crowded with fishermen of varying orientations, all in hot pursuit of a specimen that, no matter how many times it is caught, always ends up back in the water. Thus the sport of Hawthorne criticism has its pleasures and short-lived rewards, but perhaps the most characteristic aspect of the catch has not been its flesh, but its slipperiness, the accompanying sense that the canonical ‘big one’ always gets away. Textually well-supported arguments, often diametrically opposed--we might want to call them studied and elaborate fish stories--are advanced with great regularity, but only seem to incite further discourse. The famously ambiguous Hawthorne has maintained his claim on critical attention by just this capacity of his work to sustain widely disparate readings.”

Seriously. Sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode. 

Citation:

Onderdonk, Todd. “The Marble Mother: Hawthorne’s Iconographies of the Feminine.” Studies in American Fiction 31.1 (2003): 73-100. MLA International Bibliography. Web 26 April 2010.

So long, Freddy!

My dad emailed me yesterday to let me know that "Freddy Sez," a fixture at Yankee Stadium, has died. Sad news, indeed. Once he let my mom bang his pot with his spoon. (That sounds way dirtier than it should.) Anyway, it's been a year of big losses for the Yanks: Bob Sheppard, the Boss, and now Freddy. Here's hoping the boys in pinstripes can pull themselves together and get back into this series with Texas, as #28 would be a great tribute to these guys.

TV Girl Power...

Two links that made me happy today, as I slogged through midterm grading:

1) It's the 25th anniversary of She-Ra. I still have my action figures in my parents' attic (who freely intermingled with my brother's He-Man figures). She-Ra rocked. She also inspired some of my earliest feminist thoughts, including this question: "How come He-Man can appear in 'very special' episodes of She-Ra, but she doesn't get to cross over to his show?" Seriously.

2) It's the 10th anniversary of the first episode of Gilmore Girls. I will admit that I didn't start watching this show until about the third season (and then frantically caught up one summer as I was dissertating), but what a show! I miss it still.

Links...

It's Writer-in-Residence week here at Shepherd and I've got major assignments due in every one of my classes. And my parents are coming this weekend. So long story short, I have just about zero time for anything else, but I did want to just post a few interesting links:

1) Oprah will reunite the cast of The Sound of Music. I love love love this! The Sound of Music is my sentimental favorite movie. I even like reading/grading to the soundtrack. Can't wait!

2) Maybe lots of people knew about this, but somehow yesterday I stumbled across this old (1950) Time magazine article. Kind of mind-boggling to think of Congress policing Hollywood morality. Actually, I am sure plenty self-righteous folks in Congress today would think this is a good idea. By the way, my mom was named after Ingrid Bergman, but she was born before this scandal. I wonder if my grandparents would have made the same decision post-scandal.

3) Lots of folks are talking about this piece: "Tragedy at the Virginia Quarterly Review."

4) Some good people got arrested for non-violent protests against mountain-top removal earlier this week, including Jason Howard, who I met last year when he visited Shepherd with Silas House.(In the photo, Jason is the first person on the left, and Silas is the third.) Thoreau would be proud of them. And so am I.

5) Someone needs to see this movie with me. I'll pay. I'll even buy you popcorn AND candy AND a soda. And I don't even do that for my niece when I take her to the movies. Seriously, this thing looks like so much fun.

6) "When Your Infant is Secretly Famous in Japan." To quote South Park, "Simpsons already did it!"



7) And yeah, this O'Keefe dude is a total douche. And a pervert, too. Loser.

Bad aunt...

I feel like a lousy aunt (or tante, more appropriately) because today is my niece Olivia's birthday. And I forgot to call her. Completely forgot. For the first time since she's been a part of our family, I didn't talk to her on her birthday. I only realized my mistake at 10:30 tonight...and immediately let out a string of not very nice words.

I suppose it didn't help that I had another long day at work: there by 8:00 a.m. and getting home at almost 8:00 p.m. It was a day of back-to-back meetings and classes--and barely any time to answer emails, eat lunch, even use the bathroom. Still, I should have made time for that phone call.

Anyway, maybe her mom will show her this blog entry and help her read this part: Olivia is one of the coolest kids on the planet. She's funny and always full of joy and embodies the phrase "a zest for life." She's smart as a whip--so much so that she continually impresses her parents and the rest of us. And she's amazingly sweet and kind. I've never seen her do something mean. Think about that--how many kids can you say that about? I always have a smile on my face after talking to her. Plus, she can perform (singing and dancing) the entire score of Mama Mia. Not bad, right?

Happy 7th birthday, Olivia!

How dry has it been?

Answer: bad enough in my county for our governor to declare a drought disaster. Just ask my lawn... But lawns aren't really that important. The effects on our poor farmers are much more dramatic. We got just a bit of rain on (really) early Sunday morning and it actually woke me up--even though the windows were closed. That's how unusual the sound of rainfall is around here.

My awesome job

I know I complain sometimes (or a lot!) about certain aspects of my job, but I also must admit, it's a great gig. On a day like today, I sometimes do feel like it's one of the best jobs on earth. Here's why: it's a crazy busy day--class, meetings, observations of adjunct classes, grading--but earlier this afternoon, a couple of current students and one recent graduate stopped by my office to say hello and to give me a little gift the recent grad (Anna) had picked up for me: this book. Pretty cool, right? And it was totally on my amazon.com wish list! Clearly, these students know I love me some Emily Dickinson, but I am absolutely touched by the idea that Anna would see the book in the store, think of me, and buy it. They also assured me that she got a good deal. (Apparently they were all at Borders together.) Sounds like they also know that I love a bargain and worry about their post-graduate economic status.

So, yeah, my job rocks. I love that I can say that, especially when so many people can't. Makes me feel very blessed and lucky.