Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

Hallowed Happyween

I literally cannot believe that it has been a month since my last post. I'm still doing the same things as before. Nothing stands out as worth the effort to chronicle in extreme detail . . . Well, it does, but frankly, I haven't got the time. It makes me sad. Nevertheless, I remain determined to keep this blog alive . . . much like continuing to visit and talk to a comatose person in the hope that they can hear you, not knowing whether they will wake up again.

But enough of my buoyant optimism. I write this from the House of Gallagher after a long, relaxing day of Halloween-inspired recreation. I have carved a pumpkin into a zombie and eaten a great deal of candy, but mostly I watched movies. My Halloween movie marathon consisted of:

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Zombie Nightmare
The Mummy (1932)
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Corpse Bride
Carrie

And, because nothing you do while pursuing a Master's degree can really be for no reason, my excuse for this particular indulgence is preparation for next semester. In order to complete my film minor, I plan to take a course on "The Horror Film" in the Spring. I'll likely be trying to tie it in with my own research by way of Southern Gothic (that is, hillbilly horror films like Deliverance).

Speaking of my own research, I tentatively have a thesis director. Which means that someone besides myself is now invested in the fact that I will get this done. And that is far scarier than anything I've seen today.

Facebook Blogging

So lack of time and general laziness have prompted me to substitute a link on Facebook for more substantial blogging here. As a result, my poor blog is looking a bit abandoned.

It's not that I have nothing to say. Quite the opposite, actually. I have so much that I could talk about, and so little time to do so, that nothing gets said. I'm teaching two sections of freshman composition this semester, and taking a course outside the department in Contemporary Film Theory and an independent study inside the department in Theology and Film (as you may have surmised if you've been watching Moviegoings). There are plenty of other things going on as well, but this isn't a full-fledged post . . . just a word of explanation.

In closing, check out my movie list for Theology and Film:

Amadeus
Jesus of Montreal
The Last Temptation of Christ
Children of Men
Pan's Labyrinth
A Man for All Seasons
The Mission
Babette's Feast
Lars and the Real Girl
The Apostle
Wise Blood
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Unforgiven
In Bruges

KA-BOOM!

I'm not sure what the tone of this post will be. I'm feeling a bit babbly right now. My spring semester, and first year of grad school, officially ended on Saturday morning at 6:30am when I sent in my final paper. I spent a few days slowly recovering from the shock (well, mostly the lack of sleep) and now I have three weeks of summer until I begin my next class. My mind is literally exploding with the possibilities.

After successfully completing 6 hours last semester, I rather boldly decided to take 9 this spring. There were a few reasons for this. Among them: I had an opportunity to take an independent study in Southern Lit, and I grabbed it, but there were also two other classes offered that I wanted/needed. In order to become a TA, I need 18 hours. Taking 9 this spring plus 3 this summer makes me eligible. Teaching is a much bigger time-drain than being a research assistant, so while this was my opportunity to rack up the necessary hours, it was also probably my last chance to speed up the process this way.

My independent study consisted of me sitting in on a senior-level undergrad course (every MWF at 1:25), and doing some extra writing (about 40 pages worth) and reading (about 4 books worth, on top of the 8 required for the course). We read Poe* (which was an odd beginning, but which came back to "haunt" us with every subsequent text), Charles Chesnutt, Faulkner*, O'Connor*, Welty, Beth Henley, and Ernest J. Gaines. I also read Tennessee Williams. I put an asterisk by everything I'd read before, so there was definitely some good new material there. I particularly enjoyed my first experience with Welty, and I'd put her Losing Battles second on a list of essential southern novels, behind only Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom.

My Tuesday afternoon class was Literary Criticism with Dr. Ferretter, who is a fantastic prof and really knows his stuff. His book, Towards a Christian Literary Theory is near the top of my summer reading list. We dug into the theory, but the course was not as frustrating or incomprehensible as it could have been because class was mostly dedicated to deciphering and responding to the readings. We covered all the major theories, and the first part of class each week following was dedicated to individual student presentations which put the theory into practice, i.e. a structuralist analysis of Star Trek: Next Gen and Battlestar Galactica episodes, or Disney's Mulan and Monty Python and the Holy Grail read via queer theory.

I presented third, so mine was out of the way early (but not too early). I was assigned deconstruction, so I talked about the American arm of the movement and then used an old standby as my illustrative text: "This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin. The critical aspect worked even better this time, if possible, than it did last time. I had to write three 10-12 page critical essays for the class, as well. I did a structuralist analysis of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, a Freudian reading of Dr. Strangelove (which you may have seen over on Moviegoings), and used postcolonial theory to critique Hollywood's vision of the Civil Rights movement in the South. That last was the paper I referred to at the beginning of this post.

Finally, on Thursdays I had a religion and literature seminar on theodicy, or the problem of evil and suffering. The topic definitely intrigues me, but I took it mainly because the course texts involved novels as well as films, and because the professor is the only member of the department (as far as I know) with an academic interest in film. I really enjoyed the course, as it exposed me to all sorts of things I hadn't encountered before, and because my classmates were all brilliant and we had fantastic discussions every single week.

My favorite novel of the semester, and one of my new favorites of all time, was assigned in this class: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I highly recommend it to all and sundry, etc. It is definitely a must-read, a beautiful book. My work for this class consisted of two presentations and a 10-12 page paper. I did my theological presentation (which involved someone explaining a text that only they had read to the rest of the class each week) on N.T. Wright's Evil and the Justice of God, and for my teaching presentation I led the class discussion on Chinatown, which was a blast. Finally, for my paper, I explored the various manifestations of evil in seven examples of film noir, including Chinatown. I expect to have that backposted to Moviegoings in a few days.

Anyway, all that to say . . . it was a fun semester, and also a successful one (as I can say with full confidence now that grades are in). I had a great deal more to say about my specific plans for the summer, including the unfortunate saga of my summer class enrollment and the rather happier story of my fall schedule, but I'll save that for now and put this up. The overwhelming number of possibilities that suddenly open up when one basically goes from 0 to 100% free time (particularly for only a few weeks) have temporarily shortened my attention span, and I'm off to work on something else.

President Obama

Well, it's over. The race has been called, an overwhelming victory for Barack Obama. McCain has given his concession speech and walked gracefully off the stage with that woman. I would like to take this opportunity to wish Gov. Palin a safe flight home to Alaska, where I hope she will have the sense to remain.

Seriously, though, this is a really really big deal. No matter how you feel about the new president-elect, take a moment to reflect on this milestone. The last time a 3rd party carried any electoral votes was in 1968, when George Wallace won 5 southern states on an anti-desegregation platform. 40 years later, there is a black man in the White House. Try to be proud of it, because it is worth being proud of. Be proud because, if nothing else, we have collectively chosen our president out of hope rather than out of fear. The hope may be misplaced, but the fear was certainly misguided.

Even more importantly, though, I would like to take this moment to offer some advice to McCain voters. Don't spend the next four years (or even the next four days) weeping and gnashing your teeth. Get over it, and get over it fast. There's nothing to be afraid of, and there never was. (And I would like to point out that, Palin aside, I was never really concerned by the idea of a McCain presidency.)

In fact, we could even make a deal. You try really hard not to go ape about an Obama presidency, and I will do my best not to laugh at you (at least not out loud) when all of your outrageous predictions for the next four years fail to come about. Whaddya say?

Fully-Functioning Pastime

I felt it was probably worth noting that just a few days ago marked five years of blogging for me. Paradoxically, it's always something of a surprise when an idle pastime performs as intended and one suddenly becomes aware that time has, indeed, passed. Sitting at my keyboard on the far side of those years, I find myself at a bit of a loss at the prospect of contemplating any sort of comprehensive retrospective.

I certainly don't need to recap the time that has passed. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of my readers remember them as well as I do. They've been very good years, on the whole. In any case, the use of phrases like "the far side" is a historiographical fallacy which implies that I have reached the end of something, when I'm really just pausing to make a mark *somewhere* on an unfinished timeline on which I am walking backward.

I'm still as addicted as ever to this nebulous, unquantifiable "thing" that blogging is, and I would like to think that I'm better at it now (whatever that means) than I was when I began. More relevant, perhaps, would be a consideration of what sort of effect, if any, the process has had on me. In a very general way, I believe that blogging has improved various qualities of my writing. Perhaps in other ways the nature of the form itself has reinforced or resulted in bad writing habits . . . but I don't think so. In fact, I believe the very nature of the beast has steered me in a generally positive direction.

In one respect, blogging has probably been a negative force; that is, as a creative drain. Blogging is a tempting distraction from other writing endeavors. Every minute spent crafting a line of ruminations about my blogging experience (and surely blogging about blogging is one of the ultimates in self-indulgent hipster navel-gazing) is a minute not spent on more serious fiction or non-fiction projects. That, of course, is part of the appeal, but it can hardly be called beneficial. How many volumes of unpublishable, self-absorbed dreck have I penned and posted in five years?

However, in my attempt at a moment of unpretentious honesty, I have probably overstated the case. Let's talk about the positives for a moment. Several things spring immediately to mind. For instance, to turn that last observation on its head, blogging has shown me that I can, indeed, write book-length quantities of material. Laying considerations of quality aside for a moment, discovering the ability to fill that kind of space is a daunting obstacle to have overcome, particularly for someone as lazy and often unmotivated as myself.

Furthermore, blogging often fosters creativity in that it allows me the opportunity for virtually-infinite experimentation with what works and what doesn't. What sounds good? What do I take the most pride in, looking back, and what was forgotten almost immediately? Where did the latter go wrong, and the former go right? Revision, where necessary, is simple, and input and feedback are easy to come by.

Chief among the benefits, though, is that blogging has given me a definite audience, in some form. Writing for an audience, even an incorporeal one populated in part by various aspects of myself, necessitates certain things: intentionality, a pressing desire to inform and/or entertain, and an effort at quality of composition (stylistically, grammatically, etc.). Above all, one is forced to attempt to express oneself as clearly as possible, or not at all.

The lessons I learned here, I have taken and applied with confidence in virtually every area of my life, be it academic or otherwise, with excellent results. This is perhaps most notable (at least I hope it will prove so) in the launching of my second, more topical, and (dare I say) commercially-minded blogging venture a year and a half ago. Moviegoings continues to grow in readership and exposure, provide me with both a motivation to expand my knowledge and expertise in the subject and an outlet for my interest in it, and open up thrilling new opportunities that I'm excited about pursuing.

Here's to five more years . . .

Snowdrifts

So, approximately three weeks into graduate studies, I've figured something out by way of a vivid image that hit me (literally . . . more on that in a moment) at the end of my Research and Bibliographic Methods class today.

Imagine someone hanging around inside the house who decides to walk down to the corner store and pick up . . . oh, say, a degree. His friends warn him to be sure and "watch out for the snow," so he bundles up for blizzard weather and departs. Stepping off his front porch, he pauses and looks around him. There is no snow on the ground, but a few very fine white flakes are drifting down here and there. Confused, he unwraps his scarf and has his jacket halfway off . . . and that is when he is caught completely off-guard. Up on the roof, a mischievous snow-elf shakes loose a large snowdrift which lands on our hero with a perfunctory ploompf, burying him up to the eyeballs in frozen water molecules.

It seems that graduate school is not like navigating a blizzard, i.e. forging one's way through a constant, blindingly-abrasive barrage of work. It's more like walking under a series of eaves and being trailed by a snow-elf who occasionally glomps you with a snowdrift, then leaves you to frantically dig your way out and try to move forward a few steps before it can find another one to dislodge.

Watch out for the snow.

Absent Much?

How have I not posted in 2 months? Well, you start to write something up, and then you put it off, and then more stuff happens, and it starts to pile up and free time isn't as easy to come by as it once was, before you were working at the library (even though it's only part-time), and you're still pretending to keep up with your movie blog (oh, yeah, that's still on, by the way) and doing summer-y type things and . . . this sentence has got to end somewhere, how about here?

So, yeah, the last few months are a bit blurry. I'm still working 22 hours a week at the library, and that's going well-ish. I don't care for the hours (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, all day Friday, and Sunday afternoons), but they could be worse, I suppose. Being back on the front lines of customer service (and a free service at that) has renewed my faith in human stupidity, but I'll hold off on sharing specific stories for now. When I harp on the subject, some of you get the mistaken impression that I'm bitter about it (or maybe it's just that I must be harboring a desperate bitterness and cynicism for thinking such horrible things about my fellow man).

In lieu of that, allow me to pass on this link. Warning: Shockingly NSFW language . . . but so funny. And for the record, no, I have not yet posted here. But I've been sorely tempted. Maybe if I had any sort of internet access at work. *grumble, grumble*

Pretty soon after I started, I rearranged my schedule to steal away to West Texas and see the family for a few days. Everyone was there at the same time, at least for a few hours (Brett arrived late from Austin . . . or I arrived early, depending on who you ask) for Ian's 16th birthday. Other June activities included a visit to Longview to see the Scholls before they picked up and left the state for good (or so they think), and visits with the Gallaghers, etc. And I saw the greatest animated movie ever (WALL-E), which you should definitely go see.

July started with a bang and a trip to Kilgore for the Texas Shakespeare Festival, attended by the Wheelers, the Gallaghers, the Barbours (Geoffrey and parents, before you go jumping to conclusions) and the Randy. I was only able to attend 3 of the 4 performances because of having to work on Sunday (much hate), but I saw "The Royal Hunt of the Sun" (an early play by the guy who wrote "Amadeus") on Thursday night, "1776" on Friday night (the 4th!), and "Julius Caesar" (sort of) on Saturday night. I had to miss "Twelfth Night," and I'd rather not talk about it.

"The Royal Hunt of the Sun" was a very interesting play, though the pacing dragged in spots. On the surface, it's about Pizarro and the conquest of the Incan empire, but it shares many themes with "Amadeus" as well. When Pizarro is forced to hold the Incan king (and god incarnate) during the second act, the two form a bizarre friendship. Atahualpa leads Pizarro to the distressing realization that he lost his faith in Christianity a long time ago, only to replace the void with . . . himself. As the parallels between Atahualpa and Christ build towards the climax, the play raises all sorts of interesting questions about the fine (non-existent?) line between faith and madness.

"1776" was an excellent production. The musical talent was top-notch, the orchestra was great, and, of course, it's just a really fun show. You'd have to work pretty hard to screw it up. We all enjoyed it immensely. "Julius Caesar" was . . . let's say "interpreted" in a way that, from where I was sitting (just a few rows back from the stage) defied explanation. Some elements really worked; others, not so much. It started off looking like an '80s music video (yes, they Rick Rolled Caesar . . . don't click that link!), shifted to '40s noir in the middle section, then went all Matrix at the end. But it's a great play, and you can't keep good material down.

The following weekend involved a 24-hour train ride from Longview to Joliet, Illinois with Rachel and Wilson to attend the Moore wedding. It was a unique, but not entirely unpleasant, experience. And I'm talking about the trip, not the nuptials. Scholl has part of the low-down on all of those shenanigans up on his blog, so I'll leave the rest of that admittedly monumental task in his *ahem* "capable" hands. Maybe someday his account will arrive at the actual day of the wedding. I, for one, would love to know how that all went down (but that's another story). We got back to Waco on Monday evening. That weekend, Randy and the Gallaghers came for a visit and we went to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, so that was fun.

Anyway, it's late and it's technically August now and I have to work all day tomorrow, so I'll bring this rather unsatisfactory report to a close. That's the bare-bones account of my summer (which isn't yet over, actually). Still, this post has got to end somewhere, how about here?

A Pair of Essays

Oh, I guess I should say something here . . . for those of you who are not yet aware, I got accepted into the Baylor English MA program on Thursday. I'll be starting in the fall with 6 hours of classes (not yet nailed down) and a research assistantship. So that's cool . . . I'm very excited and looking forward to preparing myself (and stocking up on "fun") during the next few months.

Anyway, that really should be its own post and I should make another post for this (things are sparse enough around here already). But nevermind that . . . here are 2 cool items worth reading.

The first is the best graduation speech I've ever encountered. It begins thusly: "Members of the faculty, parents, guests, and graduates, have no fear. I am well aware that on a day of such high excitement, what you require, first and foremost, of any speaker is brevity. I shall not fail you in this respect. There are exactly eighty-five sentences in my speech, four of which you have just heard." And then it goes on to ask the question, "Are you an Athenian or a Visigoth?"

The second is an essay by Jeffrey Overstreet entitled "The Eagles Are Coming!" It examines the affirmation of hope in fairy tales and fantasy.

Enjoy.

Back At It

Ugh. I had a post mostly done about why I haven't posted lately and what I've been up to in the meantime, but . . . somehow I didn't save it while I was typing it. And then I stood up to turn on the light, and a bulb blew out and tripped the breaker and half of my house lost power. Do I want to start over and rewrite it all? Not so much.

Quick summary:

Went to California for 2 weeks over the holidays. Did many things. Watched all 10 Star Trek movies in 7 days with Rachel and her parents (I got them for Christmas). I also got seasons 2 and 3 of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and I got Rachel the complete I Love Lucy. Gallagher also got me a demotivator mug (awesome) and I had the "Politically-Correct War" card game in my stocking (hilarious). And there were some other things. I won't bore you further with the details.

Moviegoings has sucked up a lot of my blogging energy, inspiring me with more writing projects than I had expected. All of my blogging energy in California went that direction, 7 entries while I was gone as I availed myself of the independent theaters in nearby Santa Cruz to get a jump on movies that aren't (or weren't at the time) in wider release.

Meanwhile, Moviegoings and I were also accepted into the Faith and Film Critics Circle, which I'm very excited about . . . and just in time to participate in the voting for their "Best of 2007" nominations. Stay tuned for that . . . And speaking of being excited, I've got those back-to-back conferences coming up in February and I'll hopefully have heard from Baylor by March. I settled on the relationship between The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and the work of Flannery O'Connor as my topic, although it remains largely unwritten.

That covers mostly everything that I'm of a mind to talk about in this quick rehash of a longer rehash of my recent activities. I have at least a few more posts lined up for the near future, though. Scout's honor.

Full Plate

It's all downhill until Christmas now . . . and that means acceleration. With my application to Baylor (for next fall) submitted, it's time to get some other things out of the way. Right now, foremost in my mind is the South Central Conference on Christianity and Literature. It's being held at LeTourneau, February 21-23 (a week after I present my Longview Race Riot paper at the East Texas Historical meeting in Tyler). I've been aware of the conference for the better part of a year, but it was an awfully long way away and I pushed it out of my head entirely when we moved to Waco.

Well, when I visited the Baylor campus two weeks ago, I saw a poster announcing it, and I immediately felt that I should present there (if at all possible). Of course, the deadline for proposals is December 8th, and I still don't know what to present on, so there's that . . . but I want to make this happen. At the moment I'm pursuing a few trains of thought regarding either a discussion of the symbolism in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood or the relationship between O'Connor's writing and two recent films starring Tommy Lee Jones (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and No Country for Old Men). I'm not sure how welcome the latter topic would be, but I'm mulling it over nonetheless.

In addition to that, I'm hard at work on a Hitchcock-related project for Moviegoings that'll involve a book-length amount of writing. I've acquired a large number of resources for this project and dumped a lot of time and energy into it already, so I'm feeling some pressure to get something substantial on paper . . . plus I'm really into the idea. I'd also like to continue my King Arthur film project. I got Camelot in from Netflix last week, but the disc was cracked, so I'll probably end up putting that off until after Christmas.

Sure, I know it's personal stuff and technically less important than conference papers and the like, but it's a big deal to me that I continue to develop this sort of thing. Oh, and I've renewed my efforts to get Moviegoings into the Faith and Film Critics Circle, so that's all part of it too. I'm very excited to join their ongoing efforts, and if it works out that'll push me to redouble my efforts on that blog in terms of quality and quantity.

All of these writing projects (where my real passion lies) are in addition to just general life stuff . . . keeping the house clean, helping Rachel with stuff, paying the bills, and all the other stuff that has to be kept track of. That and now getting ready for Christmas . . . I've never had to be in charge of preparing a house to be left alone for 2 weeks. Gotta find something to do with the cats and get the mail and newspaper stopped for the interim, etc. I should find a job, too, but chances for that are slim until after the holidays, what with going to California and all. It's gonna be a roller-coaster.

I know there's more I'm not thinking to mention, but that'll do to fill my mind for now. All that little stuff aside, though, seriously, I need to write, write quickly, and write well in the days ahead. Focus, Wheeler. Focus.

Turkey Time Again

Rachel and I made our now-traditional pilgrimage to Lubbock for Thanksgiving, with her brother Daniel this time. Thanks to a prior promise, we went to see Enchanted on Wednesday before Daniel arrived from Longview (even though I had just discovered No Country for Old Men is now out here . . . Curses! have to wait until tomorrow). Between one thing and another, we didn't get off until after 7, which was several hours later than I had hoped.

Nevertheless, the drive was largely uneventful (though dark) until my right front tire blew out rather violently at about 11:30. Rude awakening for Rachel and Daniel, that . . . Happily (in an unhappy way) this was my 3rd tire change in the past 2 months, and with help it didn't even matter that it was pitch black outside. We were back on the road in less than 10 minutes and arrived in Southland without further incident.

We got to Lubbock in time to drop my truck off at Wal-Mart before lunch. The Thanksgiving meal was yummy, as required by law, and the afternoon was passed divertingly with much hilarious playing of CatchPhrase. We decided to return to Southland for the night, since my grandparents there were going to be at a football game on Friday evening. We watched my new copy of A Passage to India with my Grandma on Friday afternoon before driving back to Lubbock. I love that movie.

My grandparents in Lubbock taught us a cool game called Texas Canasta, and Rachel and I got brutally trashed by Daniel and my granddad. After we were done, they gave us the cards and a copy of the rules so that we could spread the game wheresoe'er we went. We headed out on Saturday at around 1:00 so we could meet Becca and Gallagher back in Waco by evening.

We all arrived around the same time and got Bush's Chicken, then played TC and watched The Office late into the night. Ah, yes . . . The Office (American series). Rachel and I have been watching that ever since I discovered I could stream it off of Netflix. We've seen the first 3 seasons . . . not sure how I'm going to catch up on season 4, but the writer's strike has put that on hold anyway. In the meantime, it's time to start the British version.

Meanwhile, we'd planned to go to Sunday school this morning, but we were too tired, so we slept in instead. It made for a somewhat relaxing end to a largely relaxing weekend . . . I, of course, didn't need the relaxation. But Rachel did. Unfortunately for my blog, relaxing is boring . . . sorry.

Books for Sale

This weekend was the annual Waco Library sale, a four-day event that was held just across the street from me. I went, and it was awesome! The basic run-down: Children's books are priced anywhere from $.50 to $1.50, mass-market paperbacks go for $1, and hardbacks and trade paperbacks are $1.50. A few specific books are individually priced in the Collector's Corner.

The first day is Thursday, and you have to pay $5 to get in. The last day is Sunday, and they charge $8 per bag of books (the brown paper grocery kind). The sale is housed in a big double display building on the fairgrounds . . . they hand out maps at the door so you can find your way around.

I went and bought my ticket when the window opened at 8am, then walked home until opening time at 10. Consequently I was one of the first people in the door. I brought along a fold-out crate on wheels, and was handed three grocery bags at the door. Attendants roamed the buildings with wooden carts, ready to retrieve sacks and take them to the holding area if you didn't want to carry too much around . . . I didn't need it thanks to my crate. I walked out of there 3 hours later with almost 90 books, many in mint condition. Today I went back, with Rachel this time, and we left with almost twice as many. What a steal. I had to go buy a new bookcase just to have somewhere to put them all.

I am pleased.

Free Donuts

So, like, I took Rachel to school this morning, and then I wanted some donuts for breakfast. Well, I noticed a Daylight Donuts not far from my house the other day, so I decided to swing by on the way back and pick up a few. I walk in and head up to the counter and start perusing the merchandise, and the lady behind the counter walks over.

"We're not actually open yet, but we're letting people come in and get some of the samples. Were you just wanting a few donuts for yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, well, we've got whatever you see out on display."

"Ummm . . . okay. I'll have a couple of those glazed twisty donuts."

*donuts are bagged and handed to me* "Alright, here you go. We'll be officially opened for business tomorrow! Have a nice day."

*my hand is in my pocket, on my wallet* "Wait, so . . . I don't have to . . . That's it?"

"Yeah. They're free. Enjoy your donuts."

"Sweet! Thanks." Gotta go back there once they're open . . . Rock on.

Anyway, Rachel and I visited Longview this weekend and went to the Shreveport Opera with Becca, Randy, Daniel Gallagher and Daniel Gullman. By the way, that's Little Danny G. and Big Danny G., in case conversations get confusing . . . I mean we could just go with Gallagher and Daniel, but then Becca of course calls them both Daniel, and then people aren't sure that you aren't doing the same thing and . . . bad mojo.

Back on topic. The Shreveport Opera was doing "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" which is actually a Stephen Sondheim musical. Sondheim was responsible for "West Side Story," which I hate, but he also wrote "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," which is awesome. "Sweeney Todd" was somewhere in-between, at least as performed in Shreveport.

The musical is based on a character that originated in British "penny dreadfuls" of the 19th century. A barber named Benjamin Barker is packed off to Australia by a crooked judge so that said judge can steal his wife. He escapes and returns 15 years later, now under the name Sweeney Todd, to find that his wife poisoned herself after being raped by the judge and his daughter (an infant at the time) has become the judge's ward. He sets up shop as a barber in his old digs above a meat pie shop owned by Mrs. Lovett (worst meat pies in London) and begins to plot his revenge. Before long, however, he pretty much loses his mind and slits the throat of anyone who comes in for a shave. Mrs. Lovett has fallen for him, and she is the brains behind the body disposal: They bake the victims into her meat pies, which suddenly become very popular.

It's very dark comedy at its lightest (but also quite funny), and at its darkest you might feel like throwing yourself off the balcony. Everyone goes crazy or kills someone else or both, and everyone dies. The lighter moments included Sweeney trying out his sweet chair set-up: He slits the throat (they had blood spurting and everything), swivels the chair sideways, and pulls a crank. This slides the body out of the chair and through a trapdoor in the floor, where it goes down a chute and comes out in the bakehouse.

I thought the lead was poorly cast . . . his voice was too deep, and it often seemed melodramatic when it should have just been dramatic. Mrs. Lovett was awesome, though. The music was very discordant in places, but I felt that they were adding their own bits in here and there and they were also having a lot of trouble with the sound system. That probably contributed. Also, they went all "experimental" on us and tried to combine live stage performance with "cinematography," i.e. projecting backgrounds onto a screen behind the stage for extra effect. It worked in places, but overall I found it extremely distracting and a bit cheesy. And, last but not least, the supertitles pretty much sucked.

Nevertheless, I saw a lot of potential there for excitement about the forthcoming movie version directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter. That'll be sweet. Meanwhile, check out this clip from a production that had Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett. This song is rather long, but also extremely funny. It's the first act finale. Enjoy.

Back Online

Okay, it's time to bring this puppy back to life. You may have noticed that Moviegoings has been stirring a bit lately, so it was only a matter of time before I returned to my personal blog and brought it back up to speed. I've left a lot of time in the dust since I stopped posting regularly. Let's see . . . where were we? Rachel was hired to teach 1st grade in Waco . . . I quit my library job . . . We got a house:

It's been an eventful couple of months, to be sure. Randy, the Scholls, Gallagher and Becca helped us move back in August and then Rachel's school year started. The less said about that right now, the better. I really need to get her to blog (carefully) about it sometime. We'll see. Now . . . what's happened since August . . .?

Ashley came to visit us the weekend after the move and we adopted 2 cats. Here they are, sitting in our living room with us:

The one Rachel is holding is Dickens and the one I'm holding is Shaw. I wanted Simon and Garfunkel, but Rachel didn't go for it. *sigh* Randy came the next weekend to visit the kitties . . . and also us. We stayed up most of the night watching half a season of Dr. Who. Good stuff.

About a week and a half after that, word came down the pipe that my father-in-law's well drilling rig was ready to be transported from Marquez, TX to Aptos, CA, so I loaded up the truck and sallied forth. I was gone from September 19th to the 29th, traveling over 4000 miles. For slightly less than half of that journey I was dragging a trailer that technically was probably a bit much for my truck to handle. Going faster than 55 mph was generally not an option. If I hit an uphill slope I was lucky if I could top before I dropped below 25. During the remainder of the trip, once I dumped the trailer, I was hauling a load of bamboo back to Texas. It didn't slow me down noticeably, but it did stick out of the back of my truck about 12 feet.

Here's a map of my route (click to enlarge):

The blue pauses represent overnight stops, while the yellows were brief stops for gas and/or food. Starting from Waco in the bottom right corner:

1. First stop for the night at my grandparents' house in Southland, TX. Need to be up and on the road by 6:30 or so to make it to Uncle Doug's house in Chino Valley, AZ.

2. After about 10 hours of driving, I pull off the interstate at Joseph City, AZ for one last fill up before the final leg to Doug's house. As I come to rest at a stop sign on the access road, I hear a very nasty noise from the back and pull off to the side of the road. The portion of my bumper to which the trailer is hitched has snapped off on the left side and is dragging on the ground. I'm going nowhere.

3. After semi-frantic calls in all directions (and locking my keys in my truck) I manage to have myself towed to nearby Winslow. My truck will be fixed in the morning and hopefully I will be back on the road. Needing to keep moving, but loathe to miss my visit with Doug, I persuade him to come with me for a portion of the rest of the trip. He will fly home from Denver, once we get that far. The only problem: He wants to fly out of Colorado on Tuesday morning and I am currently broken down in Arizona on Thursday night. We buy the ticket.

4. I finally leave Winslow and pick up Doug at a gas station in Ash Fork, AZ before continuing on to California. We expect to reach Martinez's house in Riverside by 8 or 9.

5. It's nearly 9:00 and we still have at least an hour to go. We are driving through the middle of the desert . . . there is nothing around, but in the distance we can see the glow of one of the largest cities in the world. Doug is at the wheel. Suddenly, the lights on the dashboard go out. A few seconds later, we realize that we have lost our tail lights and trailer lights as well. Brake lights and signal lights also appear to be non-functional. We exit the interstate as quickly as possible, pull out the flashlight, and start probing. It is very cold. Doug eventually discovers that the grounding wire to the trailer has come loose and has shorted out one or more fuses. I call Martinez. Doug jury-rigs a fix for the wire, finds the busted fuse, and replaces it with a spare. We are back on the road with full lights a little over an hour later.

6. It is nearly midnight as we turn onto Martinez's street. We hit a bump and all of our lights go out again. Martinez and I drag Doug out from under the truck and make him go to bed. We have a lovely breakfast Saturday morning and then go to work. It seems that approximately 15 things have gone wrong with the lights and wiring on the truck and trailer, all at the same time. I am amazed that we had lights at all for the final leg of our journey. Finding all of the problems and rectifying them takes most of the day (not counting a lunch break for my first visit to In-N-Out . . . yum). We even have to go buy a brand new tail light for the trailer. Finally we bid Martinez farewell and hit the road in the early evening.

7. We reach Aptos at around 2 in the morning and go to bed. I seem to have picked up the cold Rachel had before I left. Guess I'd better pass that on to Doug. We go to church the next morning and then hang out all afternoon . . . get the well set up . . . chat . . . watch a few episodes of Dr. Who. Good times. All too soon it is Monday morning and the pickup is loaded for the return trip. I would like to stay longer, but we have a plane to catch. It is 10 in the morning and we have approximately 26 hours until Doug's plane leaves Denver.

7a. After making good time through San Francisco and Sacramento, Doug talks me into a brief detour to Lake Tahoe on the CA-NV border. It is absolutely gorgeous. We cross into Nevada late in the afternoon.

7b. Northern Nevada turns out to be pretty empty. In fact, no one really seems to live anywhere along our route between Reno, NV and Cheyenne, WY. The sun sets just as we pass Winnemucca, NV, Doug takes over the wheel, and our long night begins. Note: Battle Mountain, NV is not nearly as exciting as its name implies.

7c. We stop for gas in Elko, NV and I take over again. It's not terribly late yet, but it will be before the tank is empty again. By about midnight I've crossed into Utah. It is very dark, but I can definitely see the salt flats stretched out on either side of the highway. They practically glow in the dark. They also give me nothing to look at, and sleep becomes very difficult to fight. I drive right by the shore of the Great Salt Lake at nearly 2 in the morning, but I can't really see it.

7d. We stop for gas in Salt Lake City. I tried to get to Temple Square, but I didn't want to lose the highway and it was time for Doug to drive. The gas station doesn't have a bathroom, so we find a Denny's and use their's. Doug and I are panhandled three times in the space of 10 minutes in downtown Salt Lake City. I sleep fairly well, asking Doug periodically if he's staying awake okay.

7e. We stop for gas at about 4:30 in Wamsutter, WY. Doug claims he has no idea when we crossed into Wyoming, but it was apparently hours ago. He can't keep it on the road anymore, so I take another turn. We are passing through the heart of the Rockies, nearing the northernmost point on our route (Rawlins, WY), and it is ridiculously cold.

7f. The sun peeks over the horizon at last as we drive through Laramie, WY. We have traveled nearly 750 miles since it went down. We stop for gas and breakfast at McDonald's in Cheyenne at about 7:30 before beginning the final push to Denver. The scenery is gorgeous and I regret missing so much of Wyoming during the night.

8. We reach the Denver airport shortly after 9:00. Doug has plenty of time to spare. We say our goodbyes and he goes to wait in the terminal while I proceed for my last hour down to Colorado Springs where my friend Andy lives.

9. I reach Andy's house before 11:00. I have been on the road for over 24 hours and have traveled over 1400 miles. I discover that the distance (as the car drives) from San Francisco to New York City is only 2900 miles, and I realize that Doug and I have just driven halfway across the country in a single go. I am tired, but satisfied, but the lack of rest has done no good for my cold. I relax at Andy's all day Wednesday and Thursday, recovering for my last two days of travel. I haven't seen Andy in a few years. We watch movies, visit Barnes & Noble, and generally let the good times roll.

10. I leave early Friday morning and drive back to Lubbock to spend the night with my other grandparents . . . but I won't be here long. Rachel has been ready for me to be home for several days, despite a visit from Gallagher and Becca the weekend I was in California. I leave bright and early Saturday morning for the last few hours of driving, stopping briefly in Southland to return some stuff I borrowed from my grandparents there (like that super-handy flashlight I mentioned in #5).

11. It is approximately 2:00 in the afternoon and I am a mere 60 miles from home driving down highway 6. It is pretty, but remote. I haven't had cell phone signal in over an hour, but I suddenly notice a single bar, so I call Rachel to let her know where I am. I have just enough time to tell her where I am when I lose the signal again. 30 seconds later, my front left tire shreds itself and I pull off to the side to assess. I retrieve the larger fragments from a few hundred yards back and stick them in the bed of the truck, then begin the onerous task of unloading enough stuff to let me get at my jack and lug wrench. After a very tiresome hour of work, I have successfully installed a very shady-looking donut tire. I decide I'd better take it slow the rest of the way.

12. At nearly 5:00, I finally pull up next to my driveway and walk inside. It was an exciting trip and I saw lots of new places, did several things I've never done before, and visited good friends along the way. But I sha'n't be doing it again anytime soon.

Meanwhile, I went to see Martinez's brother Brian perform with with the Baylor Jazz Ensemble a few weeks ago (it was really great!), and Brett and Holly (who are now living in Austin) came to visit us weekend before last. I have plans for the next 2 weekends, and Thanksgiving isn't long after that . . . time is flying right along. And that's the latest from Waco. It's good to be back.

Jose Angel ("Chepe")

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My thoughts are in Guatemala today as I mull over the sad events there, detailed above. I guess I've known Chepe for at least 10 years, during which he was good friends with my brother Ian. Those two, along with Chepe's younger brother Juan, were thick as thieves. When I left for college he, like Ian, was still just a kid. I haven't even seen him in nearly two years, but I heard wonderful things about how he was growing and maturing.

How very sad this is. I wish I could be there with everyone. But I am very grateful for all of the people that, as always, are doing so much for my family there and my extended orphanage family. And that's all I have to say. Please pray for Juan, for Ian, for my parents, and for everyone else down there.

Housed

10 days and 2 trips to Waco later, we have a house. Rachel's dad came out to help us hunt one down last Wednesday. By Friday we had found one we liked and sealed the deal. We closed and took full possession yesterday. Rachel will be heading back tomorrow to start teacher training on Monday. That's the short version of the story.

The house has three bedrooms and one bathroom, and it's around 1350 square feet. There's living room, kitchen, dining room, and utility room . . . and an extra room that used to be the garage. It'll make a decent study/guest bedroom. The driveway is flanked by two large pecan trees which provide a great deal of shade. The backyard is reasonably large and completely surrounded by large bushes (totally private). The back door opens onto a covered deck and there are two sheds for gardening tools and storage and whatnot.

Oh, and we got most of the furniture that was in the house for a very reasonable sum: washer (almost new) and dryer, a twin bed, a double bed, a king-size bed, a couch, 2 recliners, 4 dressers, a desk, a couple TVs, a dining room table and chairs, and other sundries. This was an estate sale, and the sellers had no use for the things and no real desire to try to get rid of it all piece by piece. We can't use everything they left (so many beds!), but it was convenient to buy it as a package and we may make a little money back in the course of getting rid of whatever we don't need.

The only thing that didn't come with the house was a refrigerator (the oven, also almost new, came with the house). My parents helped us get one, which will be delivered and installed on Monday or Tuesday. Cable, internet and phone will be hooked up on Thursday. The house is located pretty close to the center of Waco. Rachel's school is about an 11-minute drive away, and few places in town will take longer than 15 minutes to get to (so that's cool).

All in all, I'm rather pleased.

And speaking of being pleased, Bank of America sucks. In order to pay for the house at closing, we had to get a certified check rather than the personal check Rachel's dad left. Well, there are no BofAs in Longview, so Rachel went to the one in Tyler on Tuesday to deposit the check her dad left her in her BofA account. But she had to wait and return the next day to get a certified check . . . reasonable enough, we'd just swing by on our way to Waco.

Well, we swung by alright, and then hung there for a good hour while the lady that was waiting on Rachel accomplished exactly nothing. It seems her brain had a small conniption or something and she told the system we wanted cash instead of a check. Well, what in the hell would we do with almost $50,000 in cash?! Honestly. Then, she couldn't reverse it. It turns out that Bank of America in Texas has no actual connection with Bank of America in California. It's like they're two different banks which coincidentally share a name and logo. So she just ditched Rachel and left her standing for a good 45 minutes and more while she tried to figure out how to fix her screw-up . . . all to no avail.

We left, having wasted over an hour, in the hopes of trying again in Waco on Thursday. Well, we had a few things to take care of on Thursday . . . dropping off the trailer of stuff we hauled out there, shopping for a fridge, and so on, and between one thing and another, we didn't get to the Bank until about 3:15. They were closed. They close at 3:00. I mean, I'm lazy, but . . . open at 9 and close at 3? What is that crap? Another day down the drain.

So we go in first thing Friday morning ready to open fire (or set fire, or whatever else might be required) and they tell us they can't give us the check until the bank in California opened (that's right, a 4-hour window during which business can be conducted involving the west coast . . . assuming they don't close the bank for lunch from 12 to 2 or something). Rather than punch them in the collective face, we went to find breakfast and returned at 11.

Another wait in line . . . another long disappearance . . . "I need 4 picture IDs" "Here, take them . . . may you slice open your arteries on them." . . . More waiting . . . more standing . . . Wait, here she comes! "I'm sorry, your signature doesn't match." "What?! But that's my signature!" "Well, it doesn't match, and my supervisor won't clear it." "But this is definitely me! You're holding four pieces of identification in your hand." "Well, I'm sorry, but it just doesn't match." "I opened an account here when I was 9 years old . . . my signature may have changed a little." "My supervisor won't . . ."
"Can we talk to her?" Another line, another wait . . . "Yeah, the signatures don't match." "I was 9." "Well, it's just different and I can't clear it." "Here," Rachel scrawls out her name as written by her 9-year old self and shoves it under the lady's nose. *tone of mild surprise* "Well, look at that! It matches!" May the unholy gods of capitalism rain stabbity-death upon your foul institution, pig-brained witch.

And that wasn't all. The title company also needed to know whether the other check that Rachel's dad wrote had cleared. That's all, nothing more. The check was deposited by them on Monday, and they just wanted to know if it had gone through. BofA refused to comment. They wouldn't tell us. They wouldn't tell the title company. They wouldn't tell the title company's bank. They might have told Rachel's dad, but he is in Mexico and not able to ask just at present. Oh, and the drama goes on. Today Rachel's credit card is suddenly inoperable due to "insufficient funds." Surprise, surprise . . . an internet investigation of the account reveals that the cost of the house was removed from her account, not once, but twice. Ohhh, heads are going to roll (I wish).

I had been thinking of opening an account with Bank of America when we got to Waco because we need a new bank and I know they have many locations, and Rachel has had her own account with them for some time, and so forth. Well, forget that. If they were the last bank on earth, I think I'd choose to do business with the loose brick in the back corner of my fireplace instead.

We discovered Thursday that Waco approved a $4,000 raise in teacher salaries on Wednesday evening (Huzzah!). We also finally found time on Thursday afternoon to go meet Rachel's principal and see the school where she'll be teaching. I thought it looked rather nice. Her classroom is right next-door to the library.

We spent most of Friday (when we weren't closing and arm-wrestling the stupid frigging bank) setting up Rachel's classroom. So. Much. Stuff. About a dozen bookcases, several tables, 26 desks, 5 computers, and more books and supplies than you can shake a stick at all make for a rather chaotic scene.

We spent a good while trying to figure out how it should go, with Rachel diagramming on the white board while I shuffled furniture around, and eventually it started to fall into place. We wasted a lot of time cleaning out some cabinets that were actually screwed into the wall . . . but she needed that stuff out so she could sort through it anyway. Rachel met a few of the other teachers as they came and went. It turns out that most of the teachers in her hallway are first-years.

I got the computers set up so I could look at them. They're all Macs, and seem to be somewhat older. I couldn't tell exactly how old . . . possibly as old as 10 years, but maybe no more than 4. They were all set to dates "earlier than 1973" when I turned them on, which prompted errors. Two of them wouldn't allow me to mess with the date, but the one that would was set to 1/1/1904 before I fixed it.

I couldn't get into Rachel's computer when I booted it up . . . the password hint was "school mascot." Seems kinda dumb to have your password be something every student in school would know. I wandered the hallways for a few minutes trying to figure it out and was only able to ascertain that the mascot is a jackrabbit (or similar animal) of some kind, but not what the wretched creature's name is.

We returned to Longview late on Friday, tired but with much business accomplished. If all proceeds as smoothly (sic) as it has thus far, we will be safely ensconced in our new environs approximately two weeks from today and I can get to work on everything that comes next.

Pardon My Glee

By this time next month, Rachel and I will be gone from Longview. We are moving away. Rachel interviewed over the phone for a teaching position on Sunday evening and they offered her the job the next day. She'll be teaching first grade in Waco, starting in just a few weeks. I'm drowning in details just at present, but I'm very excited about the change.

I gave notice at work this morning (August 20th will be my last day). That's one hurdle. We still have to break our lease, buy out our cable contract, leave a forwarding address, find a forwarding address, change everything to the new address, close out our bank account, pack up all of our junk, and haul it three hours away . . . and a hundred million other things I haven't thought of yet. And all of this must be done on a very precisely-timed but as-yet-undecided timetable. Rachel will have to be in Waco on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 17th, and then again from the 21st through the 24th (that's my birthday!) before the school year starts the following week. It's all kind of making my head spin, but in a good way.

After a few months of complete uncertainty about what the next few years were going to look like, it's great to have a direction that I'm happy with. Once things get settled, I'll start looking for a part-time job (there are 2 openings at the library there . . . that's a start), and I'll apply to Baylor's graduate program. With luck I can start working on a masters in English lit in the spring. I hadn't dared to hope that I might be within reach of a suitable program for maybe two more years, so I'm thrilled at the opportunity (to say the least). Now the hard part: Getting accepted and earning the degree.

Meanwhile, Waco is a pretty nice city with lots of stuff to do: scads of museums and historical sites, a zoo, a riverwalk, symphony, opera, and more live stage events than you can shake a stick at (I count 4 distinct theater groups with their own production seasons). And if that gets boring (ha!), Dallas is an hour and a half to the north and Austin is an hour and a half to the south. Plus, I keep threatening to try and get some papers published. Maybe I can get on that now. I'm almost out of time if I want to use it as CV padding for grad school applicationing.

Anyway . . . all that aside: Huzzah!

P.S. Nobody's happier about this than Rachel. She just called me from her "last day" at the hated Michael's job. She went in today determined to give them two weeks' notice, despite my misgivings as to whether they deserved it, and found that they had already cut half of her hours for this week and (sure enough) would now be withholding her hours from next week since she's leaving anyway. So this is her last day.

Turns out the money-grubbing, penny-pinching, brown-nosing, fat-cat, scum-sucking, puppy-drowning low-lifes over at corporate headquarters noticed that one of the managers gave out too many hours last week and they're making her pay them back by giving out fewer than the normal allotment this week. Fewer hours . . . and Rachel's already been given a paltry 5 or less for the past few weeks.

Oh, but she does get to keep the apron. Thanks for nothing and die in a fire, corporate f***ing America. That's right, capitalists are lousy, no-good bastards. I said it, and I'm not sorry. Drowning in raw sewage is too good for them and a napalm bath is too quick. The only reason they're still around is because no one's found a horrible enough way to kill them all off yet. Someday . . .

Hot Off the Press

I am sitting here staring in wonder at five brand-new copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows all ready for release when we open tomorrow morning. Most of my fellow employees haven't noticed, but a few are almost too giddy to work. I'm having a little trouble myself, and I get off at 1:00.

One of them is on reserve for me.

Shakespeare Bash 2007

What a delightful weekend this was: an unbeatable combination of friends, frivolity and food such as I rarely experience now that we've all graduated and scattered. The Texas Shakespeare Festival is running all month in Kilgore, and we settled on this past weekend as our time to go. In town for the event (at various times, in some cases) were myself and Rachel, Scholl and Anna, Randy, Wilson, Gallagher, Barbour, Ashley, Paige, Barbour's mom, and Wilson's family. The festival presented Othello, Man of La Mancha, Much Ado About Nothing and Amadeus for our infinite enjoyment. On Friday evening we pulled in from the four corners of everywhere (alright, mostly Texas) to the congregation point of Buffet City (Chinese) in Kilgore before adjourning to the performance of Othello.

After the rather oppressive rendering of Macbeth a few years ago and the uneven quality of last year's Coriolanus (the play itself, not its interpretation by the company), I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy this year's tragedy, but it was quite good. Good sign #1 was that Othello would be played by a black actor (you'd think that would be a given, but . . .). The actors did well playing up the light elements of the first 3 acts, and it also helps that Iago is probably Shakespeare's most compelling villain. The slow pace of the final acts was alleviated by very strong performances from the leads.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and it was greeted by various levels of enjoyment. I largely liked it, particularly in contrast to the awful 4th film, despite a few minor quibbles. I'll stick a review up on Moviegoings soon. As a litmus test of coherence, Ashley said she rather enjoyed it having only read the first book and caught random pieces (out of order) of the first 3 movies.

Saturday night was the musical (after an interlude for Anna's yummy lasagna). I do not care for Man of La Mancha very much, although I do enjoy several of the songs. I find it entirely too preachy in all the wrong directions. In any case, this was certainly the weakest of the 4 we saw this weekend, thanks in part to the weak voice of the lead. I was particularly worried at first when I could barely make out what he was singing, but when Sancho nearly bowled us over with the strength of his voice I was at least glad we'd be able to hear the other performers.

There were some excellent singers up there, but Cervantes was not one of them. I don't want to be mean, but he positively butchered the crescendo of "The Impossible Dream." I should also note that the musical is vastly superior on-stage than it is in the movie version. Keeping the story spun by Miguel de Cervantes grounded firmly in the imagination of the prisoners in the dungeon is a strength that is totally ruined by the film's hijacking it into dreary reality.

Sunday lunch was at Joe's, and then we were off to the races. Much Ado started at 2:00, and it was magnificent. No matter what else you may have to say about the Texas Shakespeare Festival, you cannot deny that they know comedy. Hilarious, total crowd-pleaser. They hammed it up something fierce in all the right directions. Benedick was amazing. Dogberry was amazing. Don John was amazing (albeit difficult to look at . . . that awful awful mullet wig). The timing was fantastic and the improvised stage directions were grand (Shakespeare being notably sparse on that front). This play is the first I've really been tempted to buy a copy of from them.

After a brief consultation, we headed to Chili's for dinner, and then returned for the 7:30 performance of Amadeus. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect . . . I didn't know that the movie (one of my favorites) was based on a stage play, for instance, or to what extent. The long and the short of it is, I was blown away. The fact is, I've only been to a few dozen professional stage productions in my life, and precious little modern drama, but this was by far the most intense experience I've had in a live setting. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the movie and what it has to say about music and the source of art. While the movie gives more time to Mozart himself, the play never loses sight of Salieri's obsession. Everything is seen through his eyes (and narration). Outrageously good.

I can't help but reflect, though, that the performance would have been better without the audience. The guy behind me guffawed like a middle-schooler every time Mozart said a naughty word. And I don't mean just a chuckle . . . I mean ridiculously prolonged gurgling that lasted far longer than even a reasonably funny joke should have allowed. A man on the very front row (we were on the 2nd) decided after 2 hours and 50 minutes (counting the 20 minute intermission) that he just couldn't possibly wait one more second and "snuck" out less than 10 minutes before the end, jarring a microphone on the way out. I'm sure the DVD people were thrilled with him.

And, most egregious by far, some pribbling tickle-brained clotpole didn't turn their kriffing cell phone off, and it went off during the final minutes . . . three freaking times. Unbelievable. Unjustifiable. Unforgivable. Frog-march the stupid sot to the nearest body of water and send his phone to sleep with da fishes. Oh, if only.

Thus ended the Texas Shakespeare Festival. I spent Monday with Wilson and Paige, meeting them in the liberal arts offices at about 10:30 (hardly anyone was there) before retiring to my apartment (where Rachel was waiting) to watch The History Boys. We broke halfway through for lunch with Randy and the Scholls at El Sombrero. Later in the afternoon, we headed back to the Scholls' place and chatted for awhile before accompanying Wilson to the train station.

We were surprised there by Dr. J, who had rushed over to catch Wilson on his way out (miscommunication had prevented contact earlier). Wilson's train was going to be an hour and a half late, so we ditched him there to return to business as usual in Longview. It was fun while it lasted.

A Week Out West

Being much in need of vacation and a change of scenery, Rachel and I ventured to the Lubbock area last week (where they have no scenery) and chilled for a few days. I stayed up far too late on Sunday night, packing and preparing for a week away from home. Then Rachel drove me to work Monday morning so that she could finish getting everything ready and then pick me up from work and head straight for Dallas. I skipped my lunch hour so I could get off at 5 instead of 6.

It was a flawless plan, but for one thing (and I'm taking my life in my hands by telling you this): It foolishly relied on Rachel being both focused and punctual. I called her several times throughout the day to keep her on task and remind her of the little things that needed doing: turn off the AC, turn off all the lights, water your bamboo, check mail, grab my bags off of that one chair, etc. She was industrious. She was on track. She had it in the bag. Then she remembered the clearance sale at Michael's (90% off!) and something inside her snapped. She had to swing by, if only briefly, on her way to pick me up.

It was, by then, nearly 5:00, and so we conferred. She would drive to Michael's and quickly buy a few things that she'd had her eye on. I would walk to Burger King and get some dinner. She would then quickly join me, get her food to go, and we would be on our way. It wasn't a flawless plan, but it was a good plan . . . except that it still relied very foolishly on Rachel's punctuality and focus.

Well, I was unavoidably detained and I didn't actually leave the library until almost 5:25. Right before I walked out the door, I called Rachel . . . she was just pulling into Michael's. And so I set out, arriving at Burger King 10 minutes later after a not-unpleasant stroll. No sign of Rachel as yet, of course.

I ordered a combo meal. I got my drink. My number was called. I sat down to eat and popped open my book. I read several pages and finished my fries. I read a few more pages and sipped my drink. I read some more pages and chewed through a few bites of burger. I read some more and polished off half of the burger. After every period in this paragraph, I'm looking up, I'm glancing around, peering out various windows, hoping for a glimpse of my red truck pulling in from some direction or another. It doesn't appear.

I have no watch. I have no phone. I don't know how long I've been here, but it's been a long time. To make a long story short . . . I wrapped up the remains of my burger and walked towards the front door, hoping to spot a pay phone and figure out what could possibly have kept her (hopefully nothing of a tragic nature). About halfway to the door, I saw her pull in. She looked very sorry. It was 6:05. She'd forgotten that I was waiting for her . . . We drove out of Longview by 6:30 as I wondered why, exactly, I had skipped lunch.

Despite an inauspicious beginning, the drive to Dallas was pleasant, as was the drive to Lubbock with Ashley the following day. We were out of Dallas by about 9:30 and made it to my grandma's house in time for a late lunch. I read liberally (but not too liberally, due to the general squeamishness of half of my audience) from 5 People Who Died During Sex and 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists along the way.

We slacked off for the rest of the day, of course, and made use of the two Netflix I had brought along. First, I introduced Ashley to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, much to Ian's disgust ("That's the stupidest movie ever!"). My cousin Lucas was not such a Philistine ("No it's not, it's brilliant!"). Ashley was more appreciative than expected. I was struck once again by the fact that this is literally the best King Arthur movie ever made, both in terms of entertainment value and faithfulness to the spirit of the original legends and stories.

My parents pulled in with Micah a little later, and Brett and Holly came over not long after that. Micah, of course, was immediately absorbed in attacking his brand-new Mac laptop and playing with it at length. Brett, meanwhile, showed me his laptop and we talked movies, etc. After much socializing and dinner and whatnot, I made everyone watch "Shakespeare Abridged" (which I also brought with me). I particularly wanted Micah and my Grandma to see it. Good stuff, that.

Wednesday (the 4th) I pretty much got straight up and went to the park in Slaton where 4th of July festivities are held. There are various and sundry activities, most of which I ignore. They include, but are not limited to: a dunk tank, a game involving opposing fire hoses and a large ball hanging from a wire in the middle, various foodstuffs, an auction, and a concert. Of course, we spent all of our time there during the "country" portion of the concert and left just as they were starting in on "classic rock." Grrr. We also arrived just in time for all the food to run out, so we picked up lunch from Sonic and sat around jawing in the shade of a large tree . . . where I was consumed alive by a swarm of mosquitos!

No joke . . . I noticed that there were a lot of them buzzing around at some point and suddenly discovered that someone had brought Off, so I sprayed it liberally around, but by then it was apparently too late. I didn't notice until later that evening, but I was bitten worse than anyone . . . about 2 dozen bites around my left ankle alone (there are still small scars). Most of my lower half was one large, excruciating itch for the next 2 or 3 days, but I managed to ignore it mostly after the first night.

Anyway, after we packed up from the park, I visited a fireworks stand with my brothers, Rachel, and Holly. I had a budget of $60 (generously donated by my absent granddad and my dad), and Brett bought some of his own. We left with a sizeable pile and went home to wait out the remaining hours of daylight. Brett talked me into popping in Apocalypto which we watched until my other cousins arrived (about 15 minutes before the end).

After dinner, sunset was still a few hours away and arguing about the war in Iraq wasn't going to be any better than sitting and listening ot its virtues extolled (yes, some people still think it was a good idea, that things are going well, and that America Can Do No Wrong). Clearly, ultimate frisbee was called for. We started with a game of catch among four until enough people gathered, and wound up playing 6 on 6 for a good hour.

My team got trashed, mostly because we dropped all the really awful passes we threw while the other team caught all the really awful passes they threw. Also, Micah can apparently jump 3 times his own height, which makes passing to him much easier (and it came in useful every time the frisbee went onto the roof). And then fireworks. Things didn't quiet down until late, so that was it for the 4th.

I knocked out the rest of Apocalypto when I got up, and I was favorably impressed. It was much better than I expected. We were going to leave just after lunch to spend a large chunk of the day in Lubbock, but there was a very violent storm and we stayed in and watched The Importance of Being Earnest before leaving to see Ratatouille (my second time, review up on Moviegoings). It was just as good the second time as the first. Dinner at CiCi's finished the outing.

On Friday, Rachel demanded that we watch some of my Grandma's cartoons, starting with The Fox and the Hound (one of Disney's weaker entries, IMO, at least before their really awful period a few years ago). In any case, we were interrupted halfway through by an offer to visit Old Mill Trade Days, a local . . . shopping event of some sort. I passed. Rachel went with Ashley and my Grandma. I spent a few hours blasting Micah through the undead campaign on WarCraft III, cuz he's a mite squeamish. While I did that, Rachel had time to go and return (with many wondrous things acquired for very cheap), finish The Fox and the Hound, and watch Babe.

After dinner, I put on Citizen Kane since I was somehow the only one in the entire house who had ever seen it. Hard to say how it was received, overall. I know Rachel and Ian were bored to tears. Micah, Ashley and Lucas endured it well enough. My dad wandered in after about 20 minutes and promptly fell asleep, but that's no surprise. Citizen Kane is a great movie, but it won't exactly keep you on the edge of your seat. After everybody else went to bed, Rachel, Ashley and I watched the first half of Rent. (Ashley, never having seen it, had difficulty following the stage version.)

Saturday was extremely uneventful. I played through Frozen Throne and finished the book I was working on (Reduced Shakespeare by Austin Tichenor and Reed Martin of "Shakespeare Abridged" . . . a hilarious, but scholarly, look at all things Shakespearean). Rachel wandered off Lubbock-ward with Ashley. My mom took Micah back to camp (where he is working this summer), and returned with the latest version of Pride and Prejudice, which we didn't watch all the way through before everyone else went to bed . . . so we just finished Rent.

We pulled out Sunday morning for a very uneventful drive to Dallas, during which I read a sizable chunk of Stephen Prothero's American Jesus: How the Son of God Became an American Icon, a fascinating and engagingly-written piece of cultural history which I am rather enjoying. Prothero is an excellent writer, and he is a very fair and objective writer as well. Plenty of witty observation, no cheap shots. We pulled into Ashley's house by around 3 and jawed for a few hours before speeding back to Longview, where I found Hell House waiting. If you want to see something scarier and more disquieting than Jesus Camp (why?), then this is your documentary.

And that brings my vacation to a successful conclusion.

Save the Date

I have been married 13 months today. That's hardly a blogworthy occurrence. I expect to be married for many more months, and I would have to be very hard up for material indeed to note the passing of the 5th day of every month. There's nothing particularly notable about 13 months unless you believe it is ill-omened, in which case it might be better to let it pass, unnoticed and unmentioned.

The only reason I mention it at all, actually, is as a sort of introduction to a unique discovery Rachel and I made last night. She was unpacking a box and stumbled across an old paper that she wanted me to look at. I recognized it immediately. I've probably recounted somewhere around here that (despite having "seen her around" before and sharing various mutual friends) the first time I ever actually interacted with Rachel was when she IM'd me at about three in the morning during finals week to ask me to come edit a paper she had written for Spanish class. (I believe I have also recounted elsewhere my frustration that this constituted an inadvertant and entirely unjustified vindication of my dad's advice on picking up girls.)

Anyway, as you may have guessed, this was that very paper: a rough account in pidgin Spanish (I exaggerate, of course) of her visit to a local Spanish-speaking church, blanketed liberally with my corrections in pencil. Well do I remember berating her for attempting to, like, translate slang idioms directly into, like, Spanish and, like, sprinkling them conversationally throughout her formal paper (just so).

What neither of us had realized, however, and what we both noticed at the same time, was the date nestled portentously in the top-left corner of the page: May 5th, 2004. Two years to the day before I married her.

Pardon My Disappearance

So I started work at the library one year ago today. That was the minimum amount of time I wanted to be here. It's good work, and I am content to continue, but I need to be on the lookout for new opportunities nonetheless. Being a librarian won't pay for a LeTourneau education (well, not before 2027, anyway). I'll be taking the THEA later this month, I think, and then I'll see about taking the scaryleap into the ESC Region VII teacher certification program.

Well, is it that it's scary . . . or just distasteful? Perhaps I'd best not think too much about that. It's a means to an end that will provide some valuable experience along the way, if all goes well. That's the most I can expect. Meanwhile, my personal endeavours remain a meaningful focus, as you've no doubt noticed in the RSS feed to the right (I was so proud that I figured that out all by myself . . . pathetic).

Right now one of my greatest sources of gratification is a return to recreational reading. Having moved just a bit farther away from work than before, and with Rachel working most days, I have started staying at work during my lunch hour. That's at least another book and change a week than I had before. Truth to tell, my recreational reading had dropped off scandalously since . . . well, probably at least Christmas of my senior year (about 18 months ago). I read a lot, certainly, but it consisted of skimming chapters or online essays . . . nothing concrete and measurable that I could put on my booklist. Since the move I've gone through the following:

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

This is all part of the zombie kick I've mentioned in passing once or twice. This was a fantastic book on so many levels, a real page-turner. I guess it's hard to explain the appeal if it is not immediately apparent from the title, but this was a very well-written, thorough vision of the ultimate apocalyptic global event.

The Moviegoer

Yeah, I picked it up and read it. Figured I'd better since I kind of named a blog after it. Great piece of Southern literature here, but also a deep exploration of what life is all about. Walker Percy was a Christian existentialist, so yeah . . . this was pretty interesting. It was also entertaining, full of great little quotes, occasionally humorous, and pleasantly thin.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu

This delightful anthology is a sort of companion volume to the magnificent Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. The stories are set in a wide range of time periods, from the time of John Uskglass to the setting of the original book, and each mimics the literary style of the period in which it was "written." This alone is a fascinating exercise, but the stories themselves are also full of the wit and imagination that readers of the original book will expect from this author. I just hope she is far from done with her alternate history of England and Faerie.

The Children of Hurin

I'm actually just over halfway through with this one, but I'm loving it. The first several pages are very tough going (cf. the first chapter of The Silmarillion), but then things clear up quite well. If you've ever liked Tolkien, this is certainly a must-read. I love me a good epic tragedy.

Madame Bovary

This is another one I'm in the midst of working on . . . I'm about 2/3 of the way through it. It was rather dull at first, but I'm beginning to understand the acclaim a bit. Once I finish it, I really need to return to Reading Lolita in Tehran. I first read that book in 2005, before I'd read most of the works it discussed. Now that I've read all of them, it's time for another visit.

And speaking of things that need to be read, next up in my queue is Children of Men, and then maybe Wicked. After that . . . well, we'll see. No shortage of books to be read, and that long hiatus did nothing to shorten my reading list.

Meanwhile, I've read a few books to Rachel, using that as an excuse to work my way back through some old favorites that I haven't read in years. We finished The Phantom Tollbooth a few weeks ago and now we're working on Watership Down (a great book which is no way about submarines).

Well, this didn't start out as a reading update, but I suppose that's as good a thing for it to be as anything else. This is shaping up to be a good summer, and I'm sure there will be some actual eventfulness to write about before too long.

Moving On

A disquieting thought came to me the other day. With 5 years of virtually continuous residence on the LeTourneau University campus, I have spent over 20% of my life here. LeTourneau has occupied, for better or worse, a very special place in my life, and I've been here a long time (at least for me). I experienced a lot of firsts at LeTourneau, most significantly "First Home-Away-from-Home."

But all things must come to an end, and yesterday I drove off of campus as a resident for the last time. All of my friends are already gone, so there isn't much left . . . that helps. There are so many memories here. This was my home. Still, it's awfully nice to know that I'm only leaving a place behind. All of the people associated with that place (well, except for a few professors) are still part of my life (thanks, in part, to the internet).

I spent two years on the second floor of Pennsylvania Hall. Then, the summer after my sophomore year (2004), I moved into the Ice Cave (apartment 12A) with roommates that I got to choose (for once). I lived there until I got married last year, and spent my final year in Apartment 1D . . . with another roommate that I chose.

The new place is a rather smaller apartment in Towne Oaks (about halfway to Wal-mart on Eastman, for those familiar with the lay of the land). The door of the apartment opens into a horizontal entry space with a closet to the right and the rest of the apartment to the left. The first room you enter is the living room/dining room extravaganza . . . by far our largest room. If you turn left you will be in our living room area, with its 3 couches, recliner and TV tucked into the corner. If you turn right you will walk by the designated office space, with 2 computer desks and 3 bookcases.

As you walk by my desk towards the back, an immediate right will take you into another closet . . . oh, wait, that's our kitchen. Moving on, you'll walk straight into a hallway. On the left is the closet with the hot water heater and fuse box. On the right is the bathroom, which is larger than the kitchen (even if you took out the refrigerator, stove, and cabinets). And, of course, straight ahead is the bedroom, which has two rather large closets. I'd probably have more details, but obviously things are still in a bit of a mess so I don't know what the final product will look like. I might put up some pictures someday, but don't hold your breath.

We've rented a 5X10 storage unit to help out with the clutter effect, so I'll be moving stuff in there for the next few days. And speaking of moving, many thanks to Gallagher and the Scholls for that very long Saturday, without which relocation from point A to point B would not have been even remotely possible. I spent Friday packing and cleaning, Saturday moving, and Sunday unpacking and cleaning. Monday was reserved for various and sundry errands and more unpacking. My computer is currently on the fritz and I won't have internet until (supposedly) Wednesday. We'll see how that works out. Meanwhile, I need to go crash or something.

Sheer Madness

What a crazy week. I knew things were gonna be nuts when it started, with everyone but me having more free time and all of us very aware that they'd be gone in a few days. Doug, Barbour, Randy and I struggled to catch up on Heroes before they left. Oh, and I stayed up way too late at least twice watching zombie movies with Randy (hopefully more on that on Moviegoings sometime soon). In this case, that meant getting done with all that stuff by Thursday, but only I knew that the real reason for that deadline was a surprise visitor.

As I recall, Martinez first floated the idea of visiting on graduation weekend about a year ago. By fall he had officially decided to come, and I was the only one who knew about it. With each passing month . . . then week . . . then day, it became more difficult not to say anything. Of course, I finally clued Rachel in well in advance, and that was where the dam almost broke. But she narrowly managed to keep it quiet until the moment arrived at long last.

I tried to arrange for as many people as possible to be in our apartment when he walked in, which worked fairly well. What didn't work so well was the almost 2 hour delay in the flight from Dallas due to "weather problems." I was reluctantly preparing myself for a drive to Dallas when he finally got to lift off. What was so silly was that the rain was never coming down harder than a drizzle in Longview, and by the time Martinez landed there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the sun was shining and most of the water had already dried up. I even had groceries in the back of my truck.

Anyway, festivities lasted far into the evening, and then Rachel and I watched Idiocracy for, like, the 3rd time with Martinez and Barbour. Naturally, we went to bed quite late . . . only to be up before 9:00 the next morning. Martinez had an 8:30 appointment with Dr. C, and Rachel and I joined him a bit late so we could say hello. Then we wandered through the faculty offices and greeted Dr. Watson before Rachel and Paige headed for the Senior breakfast.

With that done, we headed over to the Ice Cave and spent most of Friday socializing amidst packing and moving and whatnot. Lunch transpired at Double Dave's, followed by the purchase of no fewer than 18 tickets for a later showing of Spider-man 3 (the usual crowd was augmented by the Barbours and the Sharptons).

Friday night, of course, was the Senior banquet, where we were joined by everyone (Gullmans, friends, etc.) . . . except Uncle Doug. It seemed longer than last year . . . probably because I didn't have anything to do. I think everyone I knew that was there went up at least once. Rachel got a medal for graduating cum laude, and was very pleased and proud.

After the banquet finally ended, we futzed around a bit, changed into more comfortable clothing, and headed out to get to the theater a bit early. We arrived 30 minutes before it started, and the line to the door had already stretched to the exit, wrapped around on itself and crawled halfway back up the hall. As it turned out, though, we arrived at the perfect time. The line began to move seconds after we joined it, flowed directly into the theater, and left open a large section of seating . . . which was still a bit too small for everyone to be together. But we did save about a dozen seats in a pretty good spot.

I didn't think about it at the time, but the experience was very similar to one I had almost exactly 5 years ago: Sitting in a theater in Honduras watching Spider-man with a group of people I knew I probably wouldn't see again for a very long time (if ever). In a nutshell, the friends were older, but the movie wasn't as good (review up on Moviegoings).

There was, however, one truly iconic moment. At the climax, as Spidey enters the final cataclysmic battle, he lands in a dead run directly in front of an enormous CGI American flag. I can't remember now whether the movie stopped for a moment, or went into slow motion, or simply moved at normal speed . . . but the image of exploitative jingoism is seared into my brain. As fast as the image was interpreted, my reflexes cranked my head directly to the right, where Randy was sitting on the other side of Rachel. He was choking and gagging rather violently, having unwisely taken a sip of his drink just before the image appeared. It was priceless.

Anyway, after the movie, Martinez, Doug, Barbour and I played Super Smash Bros. in the Ice Cave until almost three in the morning and then turned in. I got up to drive Rachel to graduation prep at about 8:15 and then crashed again until Becca and Gallagher dropped by at about 9:45. Graduation started on schedule and proceeded as usual. It turned out to be more about Dr. Austin than it was about the graduates. Oh, well. They all got their degrees.

Bud's big speech was interrupted by a medical emergency . . . someone collapsed and the crowd seemed rather rattled. Before the ambulance showed up they called for a glaucometer (sp?) and I ran MoM Gullman's over. They already had one by the time I got there, and the subject inquestion looked to me like he needed a priest more than a glaucometer. There were people crying and lots of grim looks. An ambulance showed up, but it left awhile later without its sirens going. There were rumors of dehydration floating around, and I assume the guy was okay.

Everyone was quite punctual to our traditional post-ceremony gathering . . . except for Uncle Doug. He had forgotten his ID and couldn't pick his diploma up without it. So he ran to the Ice Cave on the opposite corner of campus. When he got there, of course, he was feeling a bit icky, so he took a quick shower and changed into more comfortable clothes before running back . . . only to discover that he had left the receipt for turning in his robe in his other pants. Foolish, foolish Uncle Doug.

After the after-parties I went to look at houses with Rachel and her dad, then we helped Jon move out of his dorm room. Then we packed Rachel and her mother off to dinner and I spent the evening playing Super Smash Bros. with Barbour, Martinez, Doug and Randy. I had expected to be up rather late, but my eyes wouldn't stay open anymore by 10:30, so I crashed. We saw Gallagher and the Gullmans off the next morning, and then Martinez and I watched an MST3K, for old times' sake The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy!).

And then, as the day wound down, the good-byes began in earnest. Rachel and I saw Martinez to his plane, and Doug pulled out of town a few hours later. Barbour, after a brief detour, popped in momentarily on Monday evening before taking off. By Tuesday morning, it was back down to the Wheelers and the Scholls. Randy will be back from New York this weekend, and Gallagher will be coming to help us move.

Oh, yeah . . . there's that. No time to mope about how empty it is, we're moving to a new apartment off-campus. Things will continue to be crazy until almost June. Time to get packing.

Admit One

"My time at the paper may be coming to the end, but the internet isn't going anywhere." This thought vaguely occurred to me somewhere around the beginning of April. I've appreciated the YellowJacket even more this past year as an excuse to go see and write about movies. I do that plenty on my blog, too, of course, but for some reason I don't like doing it exclusively.

Well, to make a long story short (or I will ramble on ad nauseum about the development of my thought processes), I have a new blog. I'm not abandoning the old blog, by any means. This will be here for the foreseeable future, and I don't intend to post any less on it than I do now. Meanwhile, I expect to post between 2 and 4 times a week (on average) on the new site. My plan is to refrain from duplicating content as of when I got the new site up and running . . . I'm not going to double-post.

The new blog is "Moviegoings," and the subheading is "Your One-Way Ticket to Fabulous Fun for the Whole Family!"

Just kidding. It's actually: "The Search for Truth, Beauty & Meaning in the Movies." In reality it is probably both more and less than that. However, rather than attempt to explain further here, I had probably best direct you to this, the site's introductory page. That quote at the top is from The Moviegoer by Walker Percy . . . which I really need to finish reading sometime.

You'll find that I have my entire list of movies-watched available, with all relevant posts cross-referenced, a growing list of links to the movie-related sites I frequent, and the beginnings of a "treatise" that I can direct people to if and when anything like the previously mentioned tiff should arise again. I've already got some brand-new content up during the past two weeks as I was putting it together, so go check it out.

The purpose of "Moviegoings," beyond what I've stated there, is to have a somewhat professional-looking topical blog where I do my best to consistently post at my highest level of writing ability. This blog has been (and will continue to be) my sandbox. Hopefully "Moviegoings" will be an edifice of some sort.

Incidentally, there are a lot of great writers that read my blog right now, and I know that many of you have a glancing interest in this topic as well from time to time. In my ongoing search for fresh content, I would be more than happy (thrilled, in fact) to post guest submissions in the form of movie-related essays or reviews . . . with, of course, the slight caveat that I reserve the right to reject out of hand anything that I don't feel fits with my personal vision for "Moviegoings" and you aren't allowed to be offended about it. Seriously, though, consult with me anytime if you've got something. And, yes, I allow pseudonyms if that's your thing.

A Spot of Bother

A few months ago I watched with amusement and admiration as Peter Chattaway and Jefferey Overstreet responded to attacks on how they review films, both secular and Christian. Less than a month after that, the reviews that Randy and I write for the YellowJacket came under heavy fire in the form of a series of increasingly angry e-mails from a LeTourneau professor to our editors (and cc'd to the Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs).

The e-mails arrived just in time for spring break, and as they singled me out specifically multiple times for comment (Randy was pointedly ignored throughout the exchange, even though we wrote the reviews and responded to the e-mails together) we were given free reign to defend ourselves. There were three e-mails to respond to, and they got successively longer and more high-pitched (for lack of a better term).

At this point, the less I discuss them, the better. I am still infuriated and deeply upset when I think through the whole thing. Randy and I worked on a response for several days, with help and input from a few of our friends. We wanted it to be reasonable, respectful and above-reproach, and when we finally sent it off it seemed like our best chance to start a dialogue.

The response we got was a blow-off. Randy was again ignored, and the professor claimed to have no interest in talking to me (as a graduate), but preferred to talk to "current members of the YellowJacket staff." To have the gall to attack me multiple times in such a highly accusatory fashion and then say "I don't care to hear what you have to say" . . . well, I had to struggle to get beyond just seeing red. The overall response was extremely high-handed and holier-than-thou, and obviously not in the least interested in an honest discussion. There was an assumption that any argument I made was automatically invalid within the context of LeTourneau's community of "adolescents" who "smell of hormones."

In fact, the tone of the entire correspondence, while indicative of an admirable compassion for students (credit where credit is due), was even more indicative of a total lack of respect for them. These words were from someone speaking to children, someone who expected to be listened to and obeyed, not someone who was genuinely interested in opening up a topic for mature discussion between adults.

The feeling I get sometimes about having this kind of dialogue outside of the Church or Christian community is that some Christians feel we should be presenting a united front. So, can we discuss it amongst ourselves? Heavens, no! This is supposed to be a Safe Environment. It's full of weaker brothers. Even we even so much as talk about this stuff, you'll have them stumbling left and right.

Randy and I talked with our editors and decided to end the correspondence there, as this individual was obviously not deserving of the effort and feeling we were wasting in a fruitless discussion. The editors, in a move that I personally felt was rather too kind (although it was also motivated by concerns regarding space), printed only the initial, somewhat sane, letter that had been written to them. I have little doubt that, had the student body caught wind of the tone of later letters, the response might have been vociferous and decidedly unkind.

I, meanwhile, requested and received permission to write an editorial about offensive content in the movies and a responsible approach to it. This was not intended in any way as a response to the letters to the editor . . . I had already responded to those. Rather, I felt that if there were any validity to the concerns about the impact of our movie reviews on the LeTourneau community, this would be my "word to the wise" for anyone who might be troubled. I was slightly dismayed when my editorial was presented as a "counterpoint" to the printed letter, particularly since I knew how the professor who wrote the letter would take it, but I was glad to have the message out there.

Since the publication date, I have received no word from this professor (although I more than half-expected an angry e-mail in my inbox the day after). However, I have gotten word from multiple sources that the new plan of attack is to malign the paper from the safety of the classroom, where dissent is unlikely and easily managed. That sounds like an abuse of authority to me, but I'm not really up on professorial ethics. Well, two can play at that game. I, at least, shall have the decency not to name names, and the comment section is, as always, open. My time at the paper may be coming to the end, but the internet isn't going anywhere.

Meet Gappy

Until today, I don't think I even knew that I had this list, but I've checked something off of it anyway. It's my "Things Not on My 'Things To Do Before I Die'" List. Apparently, one of those things was "Dress up like a giant cartoon recycle bin named 'Gappy' and mingle with a group of Longview children," and I can positively say that I've done it. Allow me to explain.

Today, St. Patrick's Day, was "Super Science Saturday" here at the library. It is a hectic morning for the children's librarians at the best of times, but this morning there were a record 30 kids, and the usual 4 staff members involved in the activities unexpectedly dropped to 2. Today's topic had something to do with recycling, and so of course the plan was for "Gappy" the city's recycling mascot (I don't know. Please don't ask.) to put in an appearance. The suit resides in our break room, and somebody needed to wear it. I happened to be at the top of the short list of possible volunteers, and (being a good sport) I reluctantly agreed to step in to those extra-large shoes. For the children.

At about 10:45, one of the children's librarians helped me into the thing so I could make my strange debut. The costume consists of the following: A blue shirt with long sleeves and straps at the wrists that hook around your fingers; a pair of blue sweatpants with straps at the ankles to hook under your feet and a pair of red shorts that go over the sweatpants; extra-large cartoonish red-and-white gloves; a giant pair of red-and-white felt tennis shoes, with laces and everything.

And then there's the pièce de résistance, of course. The body is a big, blue recycle bin with big cartoon eyes, a round nose, and a huge, open-mouth smile. The holes for the arms are in the front, under the mouth. Protruding from the top is a random assortment of actual garbage . . . pardon me, recyclables (and advertising opportunities): a Domino's pizza box, Diet Coke container, box of Rice Krispies, KFC tub, etc. This large, unwieldy mass is lifted above one's head and lowered down over one (the inside is completely empty except for two padded "crossbeams" that bring the costume to rest on the wearer's shoulders). Your arms come out through the correct holes and have hands added to them, and you are ready to go.

I am apparently slightly better coordinated than the people who generally wear the costume . . . It was expected that I would need to pretty much be led by the hand, but this was not the case. The gigantic (and rather loosely-fitting) shoes took a few steps to master, but my vision wasn't as bad as I expected. Moving around was chiefly a matter of discovering what sort of clearance I was capable of and turning sideways when necessary. Happily, Gappy is a mute, communicating only through body language and gestures.

Our route to the large room where such activities take place led out of the break room, past the administrative offices, through the children's section, and past the circulation desk and the narrows of the security measures at the entrance. The first person I saw (passing through the children's section) was a very small Hispanic girl, maybe two or three years of age, weeping openly. This would have been a somewhat disheartening beginning, except that I had noticed her crying when I went back to put the costume on in the first place, and so did not feel responsible. In fact, we paused as her mother brought her over, and after a few uncertain moments, she smiled and returned my wave. We proceeded without incident.

When my presence was announced to the roomful of children and their parents, the greeting was effusive. I moved forward slowly, feeling a bit disoriented by the level of activity in the room and the small knots of children edging in. Those that were smiling seemed to me to have a strangely feral glint in their eyes. My waving grew more frantic, and I threw in a little friendly bobbing. I felt ready to shake some hands . . . and then I discovered a problem.

I don't know how many of you have observed this, but children are short. The average child in that room passed completely out of my range of vision when they got within about five feet of me. I could feel them clustering in close . . . were they hugging me? tugging at my hand? punching me? attempting to climb my legs? I had no idea. I reached out blindly to pat heads and shake hands, and fumbled around a bit. I was touching someone, somewhere, but I had no idea who or how. The thickness of the costume made it impossible to tell. I decided I should stop before something bad happened, and I started sticking exclusively to gestures and waves.

I could hear fairly well, because kids are loud. After the initial rush a few boys started dancing around me in circles. One wanted me to "throw him in the trash" (he asked me this several times, and would go away for a few minutes only to return and renew his request). I don't know if he meant that he wanted to be stuffed into the nearest waste receptacle or perched atop my costume. Either would have been amusing enough, but neither was particularly feasible.

A hearty-looking lad (okay, he was fat) wanted me to give him something to eat, presumably out of the bounty he observed atop my head. My arms didn't even extend out of the costume as far as the elbow, so I couldn't have obliged him anyway. But I did helpfully point out a box of graham crackers on a nearby table.

Soon, the crowd dissipated a bit and I was able to move about the room freely. I have a strong feeling that there was a mischievous imp following very closely behind me during most of the time I was there, but I couldn't have turned fast enough to see anyway, so I ignored the feeling. I waved and bobbed all over that room . . . had my picture taken with a kid twice (his mom accidentally deleted the first shot out of her cell phone). A little girl with a hard-to-resist gap-tooth grin wanted me to come see her little brother. The brother proved to be an infant who was sitting with his parents against the far wall. I wandered over, and her dad called me "a brave soul."

I was probably only there for 15 to 20 minutes . . . and then I waved goodbye and clomped back to the break room to transform back into myself. I was starting to sweat in that thing, and I had an itch in the middle of my back that needed attention. I hope I didn't do too well . . . they might want me again.

Collecting Oscar

I've had something, a bit of an informal undertaking if you will, taking shape slowly somewhere in the back of my mind for some time now. During the past week and a half or so, that shaping has built and accelerated rapidly into a full-blown project to which I expect to devote my resources and a fair portion of the free time that I have. I don't want to overstate things . . . I'm not going all-out. But it seemed like a fun thing to do, so I'm going to do it for as long as I care to and as much as I feel like.

Of course, I discussed here my plans to watch the Best Picture winner and other nominees for this year and write down my impressions. Then, somewhere between receiving Babel from Netflix and watching The Departed this weekend, my plan to someday mark all of history's Academy Award for Best Picture films off of my "to see" list went from vague ambition to active pursuit. And naturally I'll want to blog the experience.

If you pay attention to that sort of thing, you'll already have noticed that I've grabbed an Oscar-winner here and there (as the opportunity arose) over the course of the past semester and a half. I picked up the pace in the last month, and in-between waiting for this year's nominees to come in from Netflix I had accrued quite a little pile from the library. Plus, I own several myself.

On the day The Departed arrived, I started counting and discovered that I had 20 Best Picture winners sitting in my apartment. Bright and early Monday morning, I started combing shelves and nearly doubled that. I was further inspired by this fun feature from Rotten Tomatoes. Pretty cool. I then used Netflix to easily check off which films I had already seen and which I was still lacking.

Meanwhile, I fiddled with my Netflix queue and had 22 more winners lined up at the top (they were all already on there, but a lot of them had clumped near the bottom). That covers over 75% of the total, right there. A few more should be coming back in over the next few weeks. There are a handful that I have both seen before and would probably be too much trouble to bring back in that I may not bother to re-watch (I've seen Gladiator and The Sting several times, and I just saw American Beauty, for instance). On the other hand, depending on the breaks, I will try to re-view as many as possible.

Because this was in part an exercise to see how many I could easily bring together under one roof, I grabbed several that I've seen just in the past weeks and months (All Quiet on the Western Front, Bridge on the River Kwai, All About Eve, Ordinary People, etc.). These I probably also will not rewatch unless I feel that I didn't "soak them up" effectively. Read: okay, maybe I will. On the other hand, Rachel might go for my jugular if I try to watch The English Patient again. Hmmm . . . Tied with the above for "lowest priority."

As for the rest: There are 36 Best Picture winners that I've never seen at all, nearly half from before 1950. They obviously have top priority, and include Patton, Rocky, Tom Jones, Titanic, Dances with Wolves, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, In the Heat of the Night, and Million Dollar Baby. Needless to say, I'm more anxious to see some of these than others.

Then there is the mid-level priority: movies that I've seen before, but haven't seen since I started keeping track. These range from A Man for All Seasons and Chariots of Fire, which I'd want to rewatch anyway, to Ben-Hur, Gone with the Wind, and Lawrence of Arabia, which I'm still kicking myself about. I watched those almost right before I started the movielist, and while I don't necessarily object to watching all of them again, that kind of time is hard to come by when you want it all in one lump sum.

Nevertheless, it's been long enough for most of these that they deserve a rewatch before I write anything about them, and I want them on the list anyway. Oh, yeah, there are also a few that I saw some time ago and loathed. In all fairness, they get a rewatch . . . The two that come to mind are On the Waterfront and Gigi.

And, finally, there are the ones I've seen within the past few years, possibly more than once, that I'm always willing to see again: My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, both parts of The Godfather, Schindler's List, Amadeus, even Return of the King. However, since I've seen them so many times, and I own most of them, they may have to wait awhile before I get to them.

If you're around and you'd like to join me for any of the watching, let me know. I'll try to keep you up-to-date on what and when. And, hey, if you're not around, join me anyway long-distance. You might be able to get ahold of a fair number of the candidates yourself. It'll be fun.

A Very Silly Thing To Do

Ohhh, I was so irresponsible last night. But it sure was fun. Midnight, you see, marked the release of "The Burning Crusade," the long awaited expansion to World of WarCraft. There has been a great deal of anticipation building up around this release amongst the group of friends that I play with, and by the 15th we were all quite excited. I, for one, have never pre-ordered anything in my life . . . I just figure I'll go out and get whatever it is I want at some point after it comes out (one can generally count on Wal-mart). However, as the time grew closer and closer and the buzz built to a fever pitch, I began to grow worried about my prospects of acquiring it in a timely fashion.

I had to go to Wal-mart yesterday afternoon anyway, and I took a look around to see if there was any indication of a midnight release. There was nothing. Not a sign, or a poster, or a little label on a shelf . . . Ominous silence. At that moment I decided I'd rather not drag myself out to Wal-mart alone at midnight just to be disappointed by empty shelves. I resolved to stay at home, content myself with the original game for one last evening, and hop out there sometime during the morning to do the deed. (I work today from 12pm-9pm.)

As the usual evening's questing wore on, people began to talk about their midnight plans. Randy and Barbour (who had no preorders) would be joining Scholl (who had two) at a games store where Scholl has "connections." I invited myself, unable to face the prospect of everyone else in the game ditching me to explore the new content, but agreed to hover at the bottom of the priority list in case a shortage should occur. I wouldn't have minded going home empty-handed at that point . . . it was the going alone and coming back with nothing alone that bothered me. Rachel reluctantly stayed behind to finish her homework.

We arrived at the store with over a half hour to spare and found that it was (of course) already crowded with the pre-order crowd. I have seldom been less proud to be seen in public . . . it was like showing up on opening day of a Star Wars movie. The couple in front of us (who won the "costume contest" which I had been unaware of) were decked to the hilt. The woman came as a rather hideous Undead Mage. She accepted her prize with a hearty Horde battle cry, the Alliance monkeys behind me began to grumble, and I began to fear that we might be caught directly in the middle of a violent and ugly geek altercation. Her consort (or whatever) was dressed in some sort of vaguely game-related piratey get-up . . . with tight, black leather pants, a thin white shirt, and a sword. I could have done without having those pants in front of me for half an hour.

Side note: Certain readers who might in all other respects be disgusted with this post, may be proud to hear that "the rule" of refraining from WarCraft discussions in public held firm, even though we were surrounded by players and about to buy a copy of the game.

Anyway, to make a long (and by now rather boring, no doubt) story short, we waited until all the pre-orders had been filled and then stepped forward with bated breath. Barbour, in front of me, got a lecture on the virtues of pre-ordering and was told that he had gotten in just under the wire, and I braced myself for disappointment.

"I didn't pre-order, either," I ventured next, and received a dirty look and a growl of disapproval before the clerk dove for a copy. My voice barely audible now, I timidly mumbled, "Could I . . . have . . . two? Please?" Cursing the day on which my lousy, non-pre-ordering lungs first drew breath, she fetched me a second copy. I breathed freely again. Had I returned home with only a single "Burning Crusade," I knew quite well whose computer it would be installed on.

We rushed back with our shiny green boxes in our hot little hands, and set to work installing. My computer, in its wisdom, decided it did not want me to play right away. I spent 90 minutes navigating errors, bugs, and general slowness, with some help from Scholl and from Rachel's computer, and finally at about 2 in the morning, I was in!

Rachel ran a few quick quests with me before trundling off to bed, but I wasn't even remotely tired. So much to see, so much to do . . . Five hours and more later, I had visited three zones in Outland and the new zones in Azeroth, played extensively with the new playable races, created a brand new level 5 Draenai Shaman and a brand new level 3 Blood Elf Warlock (the Blood Elf explored more and quested less, for he was alone), and generally concluded that I was not disappointed at all. I helped Rachel get ready for her first class, fed her breakfast, drove her to the education building, and went home to crash for three and a half hours.

I haven't stayed up all night gaming in a very long time. It was just as fun as I remembered . . . but I don't know if I'll ever do it again. For the clueless non-players who are still reading, this post is effectively over. You may go back to your lives feeling superior. A few thoughts:

-My first order of business upon returning home will be to scrape, beg, borrow, and steal every cent I can lay my hands to get my main an epic mount. Everyone else has one, even Rachel, and I am not exploring the vast reaches of Outland trailing somewhere far in the wake of the rest of my party.

-I was immediately struck by the large number of very high heights, without any sort of safety railings, that exist in the new content, even in the capital cities. I experienced the danger of this first-hand last night when I plummeted into a ravine and landed on a very unhappy 63 elite. The fall didn't quite kill me, but the orc was more than happy to finish the job. I can't wait for flight form.

-Blizzard's art department has outdone itself. Truly. Almost every location in the new content is many times more beautiful and stunning than anything in the old.

Filmchat

Randy got me The Film Snob Dictionary for Christmas. That's hilarious. He wins. It also reminds me of something . . . It's that time again; time for the trimester report on the best films I saw during the last (approximately) 4-month period. I don't think whittling things down to a top 10 has been this difficult since that very first summer (2004), when I watched 137 films. Since the end of August I've seen "only" 58, but statistically they've been rather good.

While I've occasionally been forced to dip into the 92-93% types to fill up the full ten, this time there are over a dozen in the high 90s alone, with several deserving entries in the 94-95% range which will simply have to be left out of the final count. Heartbreaking. On the positive side, I have begun a list (based on my record) of movies I'd like to own. Current most coveted is A Passage to India, chiefly because I've begun to look for it specifically every time I walk into a store that sells DVDs and I have yet to find it. Eventually I shall tire of this game and buy it online, but for now I'm enjoying the thrill of the chase.

I discovered an interesting anomaly between two of the films I watched last month (which I shall go ahead and note here, since neither is in the running for a top spot). Oliver! won the 1968 Oscar for Best Picture (rather undeservedly in my opinion, but the competition was thin) and is (to date) the last G-rated film to have carried off that award. I, for one, am sure that there are very good reasons for that, but anyway . . . The very next year, Best Picture went to Midnight Cowboy, the first (and only) X-rated film to win said award. That film, incidentally, I did feel to be most deserving of its recognition, chiefly thanks to its lead actors. I was horrified to discover that Best Actor that year went to John Wayne for True Grit. Dustin Hoffman was surely most grievously robbed, to say nothing of Jon Voight.

Yeah, okay. I'll stop stalling. Let's get to it:

-Water

-Chinatown

-Gattaca

-North by Northwest

-Stranger Than Fiction

-Tsotsi

-Big Night

-Dead Man Walking

-Joyeux Noël

-The Green Mile

I rather sorely neglected to discuss the films we saw at the Kilgore Film Festival, probably because Randy and I reviewed them all for the YellowJacket (a veritable tour de force it was). There were some really great ones . . . all of them actually, with the exception of Woody Allen's boorish schtick. Water was indisputably the best (although my personal favorite was Wordplay, I have to say . . . more on that later). Incredibly moving, great cinematography and locations, magnificent performances and score, and the plot faked me out completely at least three times. I really need to check out the rest of Deepa Mehta's elemental trilogy (Earth and Fire) one of these days.

Chinatown, North by Northwest, and Stranger Than Fiction, and Joyeux Noël I have discussed before. Chinatown is a seriously worthy noir film, which felt (to me, anyway) very much like a bridge between two very different eras of filmmaking. Alfred Hitchcock . . . one of his best . . . always worth a look. Stranger Than Fiction, the most charming, likeable 2006 release I've seen yet. I hope to see it snag some Oscar nominations. Joyeux Noël, I repeat, best Christmas movie I've ever seen. You have to get it and see it . . . and don't tell me you can't. My brother tells me he even found it in Guatemala.

I have now seen Gattaca probably half a dozen times, and my enjoyment grows with each viewing. Every time I watch it, I think it can't be as good as I remember, and it's always better. It represents a flawless marriage of several rather disparate concepts, producing a retro-futuristic blend of stylish mystery and drama. There is film noir, there is the genetic dystopia of Brave New World, there is more than a hint of Isaac Asimov's fabulous robot mysteries . . . and so much more.

Tsotsi is a shocking story of unexpected redemption. I think I may have mentioned my affinity to the well-done redemption story once or twice before. This one was so excellent that it went directly onto that syllabus I was composing shortly thereafter, neatly saving me from having to insert a more controversial entry like Pulp Fiction or The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Tsotsi won the Best Foreign Film Oscar last year, and it certainly had it coming.

Dead Man Walking and The Green Mile certainly don't belong together, since they are almost nothing alike . . . but they both center around death row and feature a less than benevolent view of capital punishment. The former is a focused statement of that position, while the latter's politics are more incidental to its story. But they're both really good. I first saw Dead Man Walking in my Bible class during my senior year in high school, and at that time (perhaps not surprisingly) it failed to make the same impression as it did when I rewatched it last semester. In fact, I barely remembered having seen it. Not so this time. Very impacting.

The Green Mile I saw my freshman year of college, and I've had the urge to rewatch it several times since. I finally sat down and did it while packing to return to Texas. The deliberate, measured way in which this great movie sets up its story and characters before allowing them to unfold their little drama before us is truly impressive. This film is almost as good as its more grounded cousin (by the same author and the same director, and with some similar elements), The Shawshank Redemption.

I have saved the most exhilirating for last: Big Night, the story of two brothers (played by the hilarious and gifted Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci, who also directs) whose newly opened Italian restaurant is floundering because their customers are gastronomic philistines. A friend (and rival) with a highly successful set-up just down the road offers them one last chance to keep the place open: the attendance of a big-name celebrity at a no-holds-barred feast to be prepared by them and served at their restaurant, with full press coverage.

Big Night is an absolute joy to watch from first to last. Every performance, every scene, is a priceless gem. I didn't think a "food movie" could ever top Babette's Feast (another favorite), but this one does. There are so many magnificent moments leading up to the title event, as Primo (Shalhoub) berates his ignorant patrons and clumsily woos the local florist and Segundo (Tucci) juggles two very different women (representative of his cultural confusion), a steady relationship with an adoring American girl who wants him to settle down with her, and a passionate, illicit affair with an Italian mistress who calls him back to his roots and threatens his plans for stability.

But once the festivities begin, the film truly (and I mean truly) pulls out all the stops and just goes crazy. I won't say anymore about that, because I wouldn't want to give anything away . . . but the very last scene, with no dialogue or cutting, is pure and perfect cinema to the core.

Now, maybe this sets a bad precedent, but I have to do it. It was the only way I could talk myself into cutting a few of these off the top ten.

Honorable Mention:

-Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

I saw this one twice. It's just so wildly original; a movie about making a movie about a book about writing a book . . . pure comic genius.

-Taxi Driver

I read somewhere that a prominent movie critic declared at the end of the '70s that it had been the worst decade in film history. Well, first of all, the man had obviously not yet encountered the 1980s (which were the worst years in film history, their dubious lone contribution being the establishment, but not invention, of the summer blockbuster). Second, I can hardly believe that anyone would make such a statement about the decade that produced both Godfather movies, Apocalypse Now, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Fiddler on the Roof, The Sting, and even Star Wars (to name just a few). It was quite possibly the best decade for American film, and arguably the most important since the introduction of the "talkie" in the late 1920s.

Well, that was kind of irrelevant. All that to say . . . Taxi Driver is both an important part of the milieu of 70s film, and a disturbingly sympathetic experience inside the mind of a sociopath. And also a really good movie.

-Little Miss Sunshine

I've had a lot of enjoyment for indie films ever since I saw Garden State about two years ago. It was distributed by Fox Searchlight, which finds some of the best stuff . . . among them, last year's Little Miss Sunshine. It is an extremely fun movie that I saw with Rachel and Randy and we reviewed for the YellowJacket. The great cast includes Alan Arkin, Greg Kinnear, and Steve Carrell, and it is part of a growing sub-genre of recent quirky (that's the key adjective) movies about families (but definitely not for families) moving from dysfunctional bickering to warmth and fellowship.

-Wordplay

Best documentary I've ever seen (besides Night and Fog, which is in a whole different class); interesting, entertaining, informative, innovative, hilarious . . . who knew an hour-and-a-half of crossword puzzles could be so manic and riveting?

-The Prestige

I had a very hard time deciding between this and Stranger Than Fiction, and I'm not sure I could explain what made me go with the latter. Regardless, this is right up there among the best releases of 2006 with its brilliant cast, chilling Victorian atmosphere, dark and suspenseful plot, dizzying narrative technique, and Twilight Zone-esque flair. A must-see movie that I'd love to see receive some Oscar attention, but its chances are probably not as good as Stranger Than Fiction's, sadly.

-The Mission

I was amazed by this movie, but even more than that I was amazed that no one had ever gotten me to watch it. Is it possible that Christians don't realize this movie exists? It is a story of Christian love, grace, and redemption amidst the violence, evil, and greed of the world that tells its story with honesty and recognizes the hope and light that lie even in apparent defeat and darkness, and all with a PG rating. But you won't find it in a Christian bookstore, and I've never once heard it mentioned amidst all the talk of Hollywood's anti-religious bias . . . and that is something that I simply do not understand.

And that's it for now . . . my mega-movie update of the past few months. Maybe one of these days I'll have the time to devote to keeping up with writing thoughts on these fantastic films as I'm watching them. Novel concept, that.

Oh, and one last thing: the title of this post was cribbed from this excellent blog, which Mr. Wilson introduced me to some months ago. Check it out.

Re-assessing

This struck me as an interesting idea, so I thought I'd give it a shot, even though I have a few in common (sort of). Give the original post and the comments a look-see. They're pretty worthwhile.

Citizen Kane
I might as well start by getting this one out of the way. Allow me to quote myself: "I'm the kind of person who can watch a movie and appreciate it immensely on the technical level, but still not enjoy it, or think it is an exceptional movie." That statement is no longer true. I am now almost incapable of disliking a well-made movie. I wrote that almost three years ago, here. I think that even as I was composing that post, I knew how silly it was. Perhaps I haven't done a complete 180 on Citizen Kane in one sense, but I have developed a very deep appreciation of it that wasn't there before. In terms of pure artistry, I no longer judge a movie based on its chosen subject. I still think that The Godfather should be the #1 film on that list, but Citizen Kane's spot in the top ten is well-deserved. Dang, I need to see that movie again. I really do.

Dr. Strangelove
I first saw this film the summer before I came to college, and I was baffled (to say the least). I didn't hate it, or even deeply dislike it, I just didn't get it. The movie was one big "Huh? Why?" It didn't help that I was the oldest person in the room, and everyone else would rather have been watching the other movie we had on hand (Danny Kaye's hilarious The Court Jester). Since then I've probably seen it 7 or 8 times, each with increased enjoyment. I realized the last time I watched it that Strangelove is probably one of the few movies that I could record my own commentary track for, and easily fill up the entire film with a steady stream of trivia, history, and analysis. If I could keep from laughing, anyway. I tend to spend most of Strangelove doubled over, even now.

Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Let's track back the other direction, shall we? I was 15 years old when the first Star Wars prequel came out, and it had only been 2 years since I saw the first Star Wars movie. I was still climbing toward the peak of my fanaticism for the franchise. Phantom Menace came out on May 19th in the United States, but didn't come out until late June in Guatemala. We came to Texas that summer on around June 17th . . . in other words, I had to wait a ridiculously long time to see one of the most anticipated movies ever. I had remained scrupulously spoiler-free, with the exception of about 500 viewings of the video recording I had of the trailer.

From the moment the lights went down, I was enraptured. I adored every frame of that movie. I believe it jumped immediately to the number 2 spot on my hierarchy of Star Wars movies (The Empire Strikes Back remained and remains unsurpassed). Suffice to say that Phantom has not fared so well as Empire as time goes on. By the time Attack of the Clones came out in 2002, my loyalty was shaky, and when Revenge of the Sith (which I've still only seen once) was released three years after that, I had long since fallen off the prequel bandwagon. I don't hate Episode I (all of the prequels have their moments . . . the final one is pretty good . . . and there are just too many happy memories associated with Star Wars for me to despise them), but I do hate certain portions of it, and I don't harbor any illusions about its quality.

I'm sure I could (and will) think of more movies to write about here, but I'm very tired right now and it's nearly time for me to get ready to fly to California this afternoon. Respond with your own changes of opinion, if you can think of any. I'm interested to know what you come up with.

The Wheelers Take a Short Holiday

My grandparents generously flew me and Rachel out to Lubbock for Thanksgiving this year for what definitely felt like much needed vacation time, hence my brief absence of the last week and change. The first part of last week was crazy, getting everything ready to go and generally sprinting towards four and a half days of blessed relief. I worked Sunday afternoon so that I could leave early Wednesday and get to Dallas in time to make our flight out of Love Field.

We left Longview at 3:00 (a hair later than I had hoped, but not too bad) to make a 6:50 flight, and listened to my current audiobook endeavor (The Last Juror by John Grisham) along the way. We got to Love Field at 5:30 with what I felt was a reasonably comfortable margin (I had already checked us in online). Venturing inside we discovered our flight was delayed until 7:30, which was far more than we needed. Neither of us was hungry, and I took a nap until it was almost time for our plane to depart. We were met at the airport by my granddad, who took us to get some food at Taco Bell. Brett and his girlfriend (Holly) arrived at my grandparents' house soon after we did to visit for a few minutes before bedtime.

Thanksgiving Day was very nice . . . sleeping in, lots of yummy food, lots of family, some games, a movie or two, etc. Brett had to work that evening (he is a manager at Hollywood Video) so we went by to visit him during his break, stopping to buy some candy and soda along the way (I needed caffeine . . . always conspicuously absent from my grandmother's house). Brett apprised us of a sale on previously-viewed movies, and sweetened the deal by throwing in his employee discount, so we browsed the collection and came away with 7 titles:

A Mighty Wind (VHS, $1)
Hoodwinked
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Rent
Everything Is Illuminated
Good Night, and Good Luck
Junebug

I was particularly pleased to add that last to my collection, having resolved several months ago that I would buy it. To this shiny pile I later added Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief from the bargain shelf at Hasting's (thus bringing my Hitch collection up to an even two dozen, with a mere 6 titles left to acquire).

My grandma picked us up on Friday morning and we spent a very enjoyable day with her, with delicious Mexican food for dinner (lest turkey grow tiresome). Brett and Holly were present once again, and I watched a movie with Brett while Holly and Rachel gabbed in another room. We returned to Lubbock on Saturday after lunch just in time for me to meet Brett, Holly and one of Brett's apartment-mates for the matinee showing of Borat.

On the subject of that movie I have a great deal to say, but I shall confine my remarks to this: In setting out to ostensibly lampoon, parody, satirize, and otherwise ridicule American bigotry and intolerance for the amusement (presumably) of a more enlightened public, Sacha Baron Cohen has succeeded in three things.

First, he has created a character and dragged him through situations that only an audience which is either bigoted or is callously unaffected by racism and discrimination will find consistently funny.

Second, in his search for wanton bigots (of which I'm sure there are still more than a few left in our country) he has somehow managed to find almost exclusively tolerant, hospitable, genuinely nice people who go far farther out of their way than I would to tolerate "Borat's" belligerent, cruel attempts to offend them.

Third, of the few outrageous reactions that Cohen manages to wrench forcefully from his victims (because, racists or not, everyone who has scenes with Cohen are victims themselves), almost all are the result of repeated actions by "Borat" which are far past the lines sanity and good taste. In short, he has proved that, if pushed hard enough and long enough, most people do have a breaking point. Fascinating.

This is not to say that every moment of this film is a failure. I can think of one scene (really only one) that succeeded rather well. It got me to laugh from time to time. But then, some of the situations are staged and some are not (with no differentiating between them), so it's hardly playing fair at any point. By and large, a cataclysmic effort. I don't understand what is wrong with the critics on this one, except that perhaps they are afraid to criticize what is ostensibly satire for fear of appearing to "not get it."

Anyway, enough about that. I had a fun evening back at my grandparents' house and we ate lunch at IHOP (much to Rachel's delight) before dashing to the airport to make our 2:00 flight back to Dallas. The drive back to Longview was (of course) even more peaceful than the drive to Dallas, and I felt rested and ready for the short haul to Christmas. Rachel, well . . . She still has lots of major projects and whatnot. But I'm sure she'll manage.

A Trip to the Bookstore

Books-a-Million had a one-day sale today, 20% off everything in the store. Naturally I was there. My only goal upon arrival was to be sure and leave with Lemony Snicket's 13th book in the Series of Unfortunate Events: The End. I wasn't sure what else I might wish to acquire. After browsing for quite some time, I decided it would be worth my while to beef up ye olde Southern literature library. I got:

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe - This is the novel that pretty much kicked off the Southern Literary Renaissance in 1929 (not counting the groundwork laid by the Fugitive Poets, of course).

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren - It has been called the greatest novel ever written about American politics, and its author has a list of credentials longer than my arm. He was our country's first Poet Laureate and won 3 Pulitzer Prizes. He was also one of the four central members of the Fugitive-Agrarians (mentioned above). Should be a good book, methinks.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy - This one is from a later period, a thin volume which one the National Book Award in 1961. Percy is a Christian Existentialist, and his books are supposed to be more than a little humorous.

Jubilee by Margaret Walker - Published in 1966, this is a historical novel by a black author. Its action takes place during the same period as Gone With the Wind and its heroine resembles Scarlett O'Hara . . . except that she is half black. The story is based on the author's own family history.

Collected Stories by William Faulkner - I thought about getting either Sanctuary or Light in August, but I had a brain freeze and couldn't remember which one I already own. Upon arriving home, I soon discovered that I own both. Sweet.

Now, if I could just sit down and finish Wise Blood and Pale Fire.

A Tribute to The Elfin Ethicist

I was both shocked and saddened today to learn that my good friend Jonathan Wilson has decided to discontinue his blog of some years, "The Elfin Ethicist." His gravitas, his humor and his many high-quality contributions to our little circle of blogs will be sorely missed for as long as he exiles himself from self-publication. I happened to be talking with him when I discovered this, so of course my first impulse was to tell him how I felt personally. My second was to leave a few words of my own on his final post. And my third was to "relive" Wilson's blogging years, as it were, and to compile a few memories and old favorites here as a sort of tribute.

This marks yet another transition in our slow departure from The College Years. I've wondered over the past few months if my residence on campus this year is prolonging the agony of parting, like tearing a band-aid slowly off of a wound. But I'm not ready to let go just yet, and there are too many good friends still here for me to even begin to regret. Meanwhile, Wilson's decision feels like just one more connection severed between us and those wonderful times.

I'm not actually certain when Wilson started blogging. I believe it was during the summer (perhaps spring) of 2003, months before he encouraged me to do the same. For a more precise date I would need to ask one of the older bloggers (one of the Scholls, or even Wilson himself). His blog began, as many of ours did, at a blogspot address, and that original content has since been taken down.

The current Wilson archives begin in the spring of 2004 . . . the historian in me is horrified by the gap. And speaking of horrifying gaps, as I trolled through said archives I quickly noticed definite gaps where further posts have been culled from the published ranks (I have vague memories of Wilson doing this, I had simply forgotten). In particular I felt rather keenly the loss of a comparative essay on Secondhand Lions, Big Fish and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which I have revisited and even shared numerous times since its original publication. Where is that essay, Mr. Wilson?

Ah, well.

The following anthology is not meant to be comprehensive, or to really capture "the essence of The Ethicist" in any particular form. They were simply entries that jumped out at me as I scanned the past few years. I hope they will be revisited and enjoyed as such.

Quotations I & II

These two entries really brought the memories flowing back. Our "Quotation Booklet" days were always so much fun, and Wilson's inclusion of some of our finest gems was one of the highlights of blogrolling in its time.

The Yiddish Project

Remember this? Anyone? Such a mechaieh. Halevai, such hulien, such fun. I could just plotz.

A day in the life of Stupid Penguin

Wilson's unique version of stress relief sometimes resulted in some really great creative efforts involving nothing more than some free time, a camera and a few friends (along with the occasional prop).

Whatever is excellent, part I

Whatever is excellent, part II

When it comes to being a "Culture Warrior," Bill O'Reilly hasn't got the first clue. This sort of thing is where it's at, and I've always appreciated Wilson's ability to articulate the positions we share.

A recent call to Dr. Laura

Speaking of great creative efforts, I'm still not sure what inspired this hilarious exercise. Sheer whimsy. A true classic.

Spring Break Open Thread 2005

I'm sure everyone remembers these little rule-breaking games. They always wiled away the breaks very nicely. I won one at some point. I don't really remember which. Anna and Ma Hoyt took the prizes on this one.

The first duty of a doctor

In the absence of that excellent essay I mentioned earlier, I present another excellent film journal . . . Wilson's mid-summer encounter with Ingmar Bergman.

Either/or

Another of Wilson's occasional recurring games (often cribbed from other sources, of course, but shared liberally nonetheless). I always liked this sort of thing.

In search of reform

Mmm. Such youthful idealism . . . ode to a Lost Cause.

First-person pronouns

A plea for growing up

Far be it from me to resurrect controversy, but I'm still rather attached to both of these posts, despite the firestorms of flaming they provoked. In addition to the fact that they gave me a chance to really think about and discuss something I felt strongly about (I always relish the opportunity), I think these discussions really taught all of us a lot about having a good discussion. I know they helped me a lot, at any rate. I credit these posts with the civil, productive nature of discussions on my own blog in recent months. Oh, be sure and jump to the bottom of the comments on that first post for good times . . .

Always greener

Ah, World. A consistent source of inspiration in the culture war. Posts like this were the reason I was pleased to discover that Wilson's mother has recently renewed his subscription to that publication.

History Carnival XXIV

Wilson was our reliable source for the History Carnival every time it rolled around with historical goodies for people of all persuasions. The one he presided over himself was particularly excellent, I must say. And I remember fondly the fun resources he brought in amidst his research and preparation, as well.

My quest for the Holy Grail

I recall trouble breathing when I first read over this journal for our Grail quest class last semester. Months later, it is still good for several chuckles and a few guffaws, and I doubt it will diminish any with age.

The Great Longview Marketing Tour

Another one of those creative bursts with good friends and a digital camera. We'd been planning this one for years, but the urgency of imminent parting finally made it happen.

Reading List

I wouldn't want to have a tribute without including a "Reading List:" Wilson's occasional submission of some of his best finds during his Daily Reading of the Internet.

How to write tendentious history

Wilson generates some pretty great lists when inspiration strikes. And they're didactic as well as entertaining.

Jonathan W. Wilson

Not from Wilson's blog at all, I thought it might be appropriate to conclude with Leatherwood's glowing commendation of Wilson himself.

Wilson, when you get the urge to start blogging again, be it tomorrow, next year, or even further down the road, don't hesitate just because I've thrown up a tribute for you. After over three years of running a top-notch blog that has enriched us all, you had one coming anyway.

Cheers.

The Hitchcockian Way

I have adored Hitchcock movies for so long, I can't even remember which one I saw first . . . probably North by Northwest. That's certainly the one I've seen the most. I've had different favorites at different times: the aforementioned North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Psycho, Rear Window . . . By this point I couldn't really name a favorite, maybe just point to a few that aren't it.

When Andy moved to Guatemala with his family in 1997, old suspense movies and radio shows were just one of many things we both enjoyed. And, of course, Hitchcock's movies and television programs figured prominently in many an evening's entertainment (along with the likes of Wait Until Dark, Dead Ringer, The Bad Seed, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and anything with Vincent Price).

I believe it was the summer of 2001, which I spent in Colorado Springs with Andy, when AFI aired their "Top 100 Movie Thrills" TV special. We ate it up, and decided on the spot to watch every single one of the top 100 (that we hadn't both already seen). 9 of those movies were Hitchcock films, and I believe Rebecca, Notorious, Stage Fright, Psycho and Vertigo were among the Hitch movies I saw for the first time that summer. Other notables included The Manchurian Candidate, Gaslight and Laura. I actually don't think we covered a lot of ground as far as that list was concerned, between one thing and another, but that is neither here nor there.

It has long been my ambition to own every movie that Hitchcock ever made, but for a long time my goal was even more basic than that. I wanted to at least watch every single Hitchcock movie. The lack of either a civilized cable service or well-stocked video stores in a third-world country made that difficult enough at the outset, and Hitchcock films have been depressingly slow to be released on DVD.

Plus, there are just so many of them, it doesn't make sense to buy them unless one is buying in bulk. And here we encounter another failing of "Hitchcock on DVD" availability: the incredibly poor selection of so-called "Essential Hitchcock" collector sets. Few if any of these since the inception of DVD has included more than one or two Hitch movies made after his first big success in 1935, and the bulk of the set is inevitably rounded out with the ones you've never heard of.

I forgot to mention earlier that somewhere along the line I saw one of Hitchcock's pre-break-out films, Sabotage, and Oh, brother! My ambition vis-a-vis Hitchcock films thinned out at that point to a desire to see/own all of his more or less well known stuff beginning (with a few notable exceptions) in the post-1940 era.

Anyhow, the point of my rambling here is this: Everyone in circulation has to take turns writing a contribution to the monthly newsletter, and I signed up for the month of October with mystery/suspense as a general topic. I probably don't even need to tell you what I decided to write about . . . my article appears beneath the fold.

Well, researching and writing about Hitchcock got me thinking again about my old desire to own more of his films, and I started hunting around on Amazon.com for good collections. An evening of poking and prodding revealed an offer I couldn't refuse, and (with Rachel's unexpected blessing) I bought two collections with a total of 23 Hitchcocks between them at about $5.50 a film. Score.

They are: Foreign Correspondent (1940), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Rope (1948), Stage Fright (1950), Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1953), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), The Trouble with Harry (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), Torn Curtain (1966), Topaz (1969), Frenzy (1972), Family Plot (1976)

Of these 23 I have seen 13 (most only once). A quick perusal of the list reveals that there are a mere 7 remaining Hitchcock movies that I wish to own, and shall hopefully acquire at my leisure as opportunity allows: The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Rebecca (1940), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946) and To Catch a Thief (1955). Of these, I have never seen The 39 Steps or Lifeboat, but I am particularly anxious to see the latter.

Five of the above seven (not Lifeboat or To Catch a Thief) were released in a set by the Criterion Collection in 2003. They originally sold for $124.95. I'm not sure if they can still be acquired at list price or not, but as near as I can tell they cannot be purchased now for anything less than $200 . . . and prices range as high as $700. I have seen all but one of these movies and I find it hard to believe that they are so rare and hard to come by as to be worth such exorbitant amounts. Nevertheless, Criterion is the shiz when it comes to movies, and it is somewhat infuriating to see most of the remaining titles I seek packaged so neatly and priced so far out of reach . . . especially after paying so little for the other (many undoubtedly better) films.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling about that for now . . . drop beneath the fold and enjoy the article. I had a lot of fun researching and writing it, and I got to do it while I was at work, so it was just generally a good afternoon.

He was born the son of a greengrocer in London’s East End at the turn of the last century, but by the mid-1930s he was well on his way to achieving worldwide fame and popularity as one of history’s most influential film directors. Alfred Hitchcock (b. 1899 – d. 1980) revolutionized, popularized and legitimized the suspense thriller during a career in motion pictures and television that spanned more than five decades.

The best part about Hitchcock’s films is that, while they are tense, exciting, and full of surprises, they are also smart, thought-provoking, and loaded with intriguing insights into the human psyche. His movies feature a recurring motif of fractured identity. For instance, the main character of Rebecca has no name of her own. We never learn who she is at the beginning of the film, and she soon marries widower Maxim de Winter and becomes only “the Second Mrs. de Winter” for the duration of the story. In Vertigo, private detective Scottie Ferguson loses his grip on reality when his inability to face his deepest fear results in personal tragedy. Notorious has the daughter of a Nazi saboteur infiltrating a group of her father’s friends as a double agent. And in North by Northwest, Roger Thornhill is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies and mistaken for a murderer by the police at the same time.

Deeper themes aside, Hitchcock’s movies are also just a lot of fun to watch. He once said, “Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake.” Hitch (as his friends called him) had a bone-dry sense of humor (he suggested that his tombstone read “This is what we do to bad little boys.”) and a penchant for practical jokes.

The great director made brief cameo appearances in every single one of the 62 movies he made between 1927 and the end of his career in 1976. In one film, he walks out of a pet store with a few dogs. In another, he wrestles a large cello case onto a train. In yet another, he rushes up to board a bus only to have the doors slammed in his face. In a few, he appears only in photographs. Hitch always tried to insert these amusing appearances as early in the film as possible, because he knew that savvy fans would be watching for him and he didn’t want to distract too much from the story.

During his long and illustrious career he worked with some of the brightest stars in Hollywood. His leading men included Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Paul Newman, and Sean Connery. Among the great actresses he directed are Joan Fontaine, Ingrid Bergman, Doris Day, Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, Kim Novak, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, and Julie Andrews. Gentleman or not, Hitch clearly preferred blondes.

Despite directing an Oscar-winning performance (Joan Fontaine in Suspicion) and 1940’s winner of “Best Picture” (for Rebecca, awarded to producer David O. Selznick), Hitchcock himself won almost no awards for his incredible efforts. Throughout his lifetime he was nominated for 6 Oscars, 3 awards at the Cannes Film Festival, 6 awards from the Directors Guild of America, 2 Emmys, and 2 Golden Globes. Of those, the only award he actually collected was a Golden Globe for his TV show “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” Nevertheless, his movies continue to startle and delight a large audience even today, more than 25 years after his death.

For more information about Hitchcock, have a look at one of our biographies about him (you’ll find him sandwiched, rather unfortunately, between Emperor Hirohito and Adolf Hitler back in the Biographies Section). Kids interested in a good mystery can read one of several books in the series endorsed and inspired by the man himself: Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, located in the Junior Series section. And, of course, be sure to check out one of the classic movies he directed (our collection is listed below). I personally recommend Rear Window and North by Northwest as perhaps the best of a good bunch. Whether you’ve seen them many times before or you’re just getting started, a Hitchcock film is sure to please.

The 39 Steps (1935) DVD, Rebecca (1940) VHS, Suspicion (1941) DVD, Notorious (1946) VHS, Rope (1948) DVD, Strangers on a Train (1951) DVD, Dial M for Murder (1954) DVD, Rear Window (1954) DVD & VHS, To Catch a Thief (1955) VHS, The Trouble with Harry (1955) DVD, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) DVD, Vertigo (1958) DVD & VHS, North by Northwest (1959) DVD & VHS, Psycho (1960) DVD & VHS, The Birds (1963) DVD, Topaz (1969) VHS

The Semester That Started Without Me

Thanks to everyone who participated for a satisfying and lively discussion. All of you have given me things to think about, and I hope I've returned the favor to at least some of you. My apologies to those readers who are bored by such ramblings.

Keeping up with the debate has sucked up all of my blog time . . . in fact, all of my writing time for the past few weeks. I had intended to be well into an independent paper by now, having slowly siphoned the materials for it out of the library as they became available. Alas, the paper sits at only 3 pages thus far, with what I hope is a decent introduction built around my attempts at a concise thesis for what could prove to be a fairly broad topic. Precisely how broad it will be is entirely dependent on what I do with the next 3 pages or so, I think. If it is any good, I will publish it here. If I have any doubts about that, I can assure you that some of you will be reading it anyway . . . You probably know who you are.

Meanwhile, the last month of summer passed with very little of particular interest. Rachel got easy A's in both of her online classes, despite the lack of motivation generally attendant upon survey-level coursework "taught" by adjuncts during the summer. My utter disgust for Comp courses (which I never had to take) has deepened considerably.

More recently there is the joy attendant upon friends and (in my case) family trickling slowly back to school . . . accompanied now by the suddenly keen awareness of the absence of those who won't be back. They've done pretty well about keeping in touch so far, though. Ashley is only a few hours away and has promised to visit regularly (she's working for a tutoring service in the Dallas area, for anyone who was unaware). Audra is back, of course, and her younger brother Brendon is starting this year as well . . . as is Rachel's sister Rebecca. I now have an unprecedented five family members hanging about the LeTourneau campus. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

And, of course, I just had a birthday . . . Last Thursday. I am 23. I suppose this would be the perfect opportunity to describe how the incoming freshmen make me feel like a relic . . . but that would imply that I feel old. And as I have pointed out more than once in the past week, I'll never feel old as long as Uncle Doug is around.

Until Monday the 21st it appeared that I would be having to work late on my birthday, which was very sad, but I wound up being able to get off an hour early instead, which made me very happy. Rachel made me yummy things, and I celebrated my birthday sporadically in various ways with various people over the course of a few days (not a bad way to do things, really).

Let's see . . . What else did I do this summer? Rachel and should both have new level 60s sometime this week . . . *steps lightly around further discussion of World of WarCraft* My reading has been both sporadic and erratic. A great deal of breadth, but very little depth. I have completed perhaps three books, but I have dabbled in dozens. Any number of interesting-looking books come through my hands, and I just have to poke around inside. Sometimes a fascinating volume catches my eye as I am handing it across the counter to someone who is about to whisk it away for three weeks. But it's okay . . . I'm in charge of reserves. I just put a hold on it for myself, and some morning I walk into work and it's sitting on my desk.

And, of course, I watched movies . . . I see no reason to change my top ten system just because I'm not in school anymore. Three lists a year seems to work pretty well. However, I may eventually be whittling down the length of the list. As time goes on, I not only watch fewer movies (and, really, there's no way I could keep up the original pace: 135+ movies in a single summer versus some 45 this summer) but I watch fewer good movies. As I exhaust my supply of movies I know are good, it becomes more difficult to pick out an instant hit. This is really a shame because in the early days I had to exclude some truly deserving movies from the top ten, and now there are some on the lists that perhaps are not as deserving as the nature of the list would imply. Be that as it may, I still saw some pretty good stuff this summer, and here is the list of my favorites:

-Junebug

-Man on Fire

-The Right Stuff

-Baby Doll

-Anne of Green Gables

-Reservoir Dogs

-Syriana

-House of Sand and Fog

-Swimming With Sharks

-Double Indemnity

I had seen three of these movies before: The Right Stuff, Anne of Green Gables, and Double Indemnity. I consider the latter to be among the greatest noir films ever made, starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and the legendary Edward G. Robinson, all playing against type. It is a taut thriller, building up to the perfect murder, then following through as it all slowly unravels. It was finally released on DVD just last Tuesday, and I secured a copy "for my birthday" after scouring Longview to find it.

Undoubtedly my favorite new discovery of the summer was Junebug. I watched it three times. It is a hilarious but quiet indy flick about Yankee woman in charge of acquisitions for an Outsider art gallery who marries a Georgia boy and finally gets a chance to meet his quirky (but typically Southern) family when she travels South to woo an artistic prodigy. Anyone who has lived in the South should see it . . . it is full of people and scenes that you know quite well, lovingly brought to life on film.

Baby Doll was another Southern piece: a controversial, highly-volatile film, and the only work Tennessee Williams penned directly for the screen. It was a strangely fascinating movie, and its effect grew on me more and more as I thought it over afterwards. Most people would probably hate it for one reason or another, I suppose, but I thought it was quite riveting. It should hold an honored place in any Production Code marathon (a concept I've discussed before).

Finally, House of Sand and Fog was another surprising find . . . featuring some of the most powerful performances I've seen on film. Ben Kingsley is truly an amazing actor, and really the entire rest of the cast was great as well. The movie is a real downer (it made Rachel start sobbing, which did not bode well) but it is also incredibly moving. It features a very sobering illustration of the destructive power of good intentions and cultural gaps that still exist in even the most enlightened societies.

The Joy of Four Plays

(This title the product of a snicker-filled brainstorming session with Randy.)

Rachel and I, along with the Scholls, Randy, and Barbour . . . and our good friend Wilson (who drove up from Austin especially for the occasion) did the Texas Shakespeare Festival last weekend. A play Friday evening, two plays on Saturday, and a play on Sunday afternoon . . . a veritable stage marathon of epic proportions. The breakdown:

Friday evening: Coriolanus

This is one of two little-read, little-performed Shakespeare plays put on by the TSF this year. He took his plot from Plutarch's Lives. The "hero" of the story (one of the least sympathetic I've encountered in Shakespeare) is a Roman general of unmatched skill on the battlefield, and unmatched disgust for the common man.

The first wins him great renown and a chance to be made consul. The second not only loses him his shot at being consul, but gets him banished from Rome, whereupon he goes straight to his worst enemy, Aufidius, the leader of the barbaric Volscians, and offers to lead his armies against Rome.

This he also fails to do when his mother comes to beg that he turn back, and for his failure, he is slain by the Volscians. The end. Coriolanus is such a moron that I found him difficult to sympathize with, but the performances were largely quite good, and the play certainly had its moments.

Saturday afternoon: The School for Husbands

One of two non-Shakespeare plays performed at the TSF, this one was written by Moliere. It was probably the most enjoyable of the four, and the best in terms of both material and execution. It was translated from the original French (obviously) and the translator largely preserved the characters' speech in rhyming couplets . . . amusing or painful, take your pick. I enjoyed it despite bad Alexander Pope flashbacks.

It is a farcical piece about two brothers who are the guardians of two sisters. Each brother raises one of the sisters as he sees fit with the intention of one day marrying them. The elder indulges his ward, allowing her to stay out late, attend balls, and shop for fashionable clothing, hoping to win her love through trust and respect. The younger keeps his ward under lock and key, never allowing her out of his sight, hoping to preserve her (loving or otherwise) by ensuring that she has no opportunity to cuckold him.

Of course, the younger brother's ward cleverly schemes and connives to trick him into letting her marry the young man across the street. There was much prancing, posing, witty banter, and slapstick for the enjoyment of all before the final curtain.

Perhaps the funniest moment of the weekend, though, was entirely unplanned. Near the end, the younger brother's mustache began to peel off, and when (in a moment of great distress) he reached up to stroke it while speaking, it came away in his hand. Staying in character, he stared at it for a moment, wide-eyed, then agitatedly plucked off his goatee as well, stared at it, then shoved it at a silent character whose only purpose was to hold a lantern saying, "Oh, take this!" and went right on. When he came out to take a bow (still sans facial hair) he smiled slightly and stroked his bare upper lip, much to our amusement.

Saturday night: Pericles, Prince of Tyre

The second Shakespeare play . . . and what a sprawling, fractured, out-of-control Arabian Nights piece it is. It begins promisingly, with Pericles arriving in a foreign land to answer a riddle posed by the king. If he gets the answer right, he gets the king's daughter (who is in an incestuous relationship with his daughter), but if he gets it wrong, he must be put to death.

The answer to the riddle happens to be the fact that the father and daughter are committing incest, and when Pericles figures it out, he naturally wants nothing to do with her. The king, enraged that his secret has been discovered, wants Pericles dead (turns out it was a lose-lose situation) and he must flee across the Mediterranean, hopping from port to port, pursued by assassins.

All sorts of wild things start happening at this point . . . there are multiple shipwrecks, the wicked king and his daughter are struck by lightning, Pericles gets married and fathers a daughter, but loses both wife and child. The wife is presumed dead, but is "resurrected" by a wise doctor (only mostly dead) and becomes a priestess in the temple of Diana. The daughter, left in the care of the king and queen of Tarsus, is nearly killed, but is suddenly rescued by pirates . . . who sell her to a brothel. But she isn't violated because every man who comes to see her is completely charmed by her virtue and goes away to follow the straight and narrow.

Time passes in great and illogical leaps, and the hapless Pericles is eventually reunited with his daughter. Then, just when it seems like the play might go on forever without resolution, Diana appears to Pericles in a dream and directs him to his wife.

Not the best of plays, for sure, but it also had its moments. Most of these moments came when the actors stopped playing the material straight and began to ham it up a bit . . . but such moments were far too few and far between, and the performance suffered for it.

Sunday afternoon: Harvey

I've always been partial to this play . . . well, particularly to the movie version starring Jimmy Stewart, and so I think my expectations caused my experience with this performance to suffer. Nevertheless, it is a charming play, and I still enjoyed myself thoroughly. The way they played some of the parts revealed a few things within the text that I'd never noticed before in the more strait-laced black and white movie . . . that was fun. Harvey was just generally a nice way to end our TSF experience and enjoy a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I greatly enjoyed the theater-going experience of last weekend, and I shall certainly look forward to the productions next summer . . . Hopefully they'll choose some better Shakespeare while keeping up the quality of the non-Shakespeare selections. In any case, that's all for now. I'm off.

The Honeymoon is Over

Alright, yes, I know. I have neglected my blog to the point of abuse. I've had a busy month, and when it wasn't busy, I was amusing myself in other venues. It's been a pretty good month, though, in case you were wondering in the midst of the clamor for me to confirm my continuing existence. Anyway, I can already tell from the composition of the last few sentences that I have missed doing this, so let's move forward.

In case you haven't seen Rachel's blog, I had a wonderful honeymoon: relaxing, refreshing, entertaining . . . "etc." We were at Holly Lake Ranch, a bona fide beautiful spot in East Texas with all the amenities required to keep us entertained (you'll have noted, for one, the sidebar listing, which should be changing shortly).

I got back into Longview ready to tackle the disaster area in our apartment and start looking for a job . . . and was pleasantly surprised to find that a whirlwind (Paige and Morgan, actually) had flown through our apartment and given us room to walk around. We bought a few things, like a bed, TV, office chairs, and bookcases, and set about assembling and unpacking. A month later, I'm finding it pretty homey (thanks almost entirely to Rachel, of course).

Meanwhile, I was starting to comb the Longview want ads and building my resume since I hadn't heard back from the library in over a month. However, I was finally persuaded to call them back and check on things, and (after I left a message) they called me back the next day, very happy to have found me. I thought I'd given them Rachel's cell phone number, but I hadn't . . . and I was hired full-time, with benefits, and at a 15% higher wage than what had been listed when I applied.

I have now been working for the City of Longview since the end of May, so this is my third week. I am very happy here, very satisfied with the work, and ecstatic to have a job that I don't hate. I am in charge of library reserves as well as helping at the circulation desk, and all new books that the library receives come through me before going out to the shelves (extremely cool). I'm working 9 to 6 with an hour for lunch, and once I am fully trained I will move into the rotation to work one weekend a month and two "late nights" (until 9pm) a month. I expect to be here for the next few years (the estimate right now is 3) before moving on to graduate school.

This summer is gonna be weird for blogging, I expect. I won't be doing much in the blogworthy realm. The Texas Shakespeare Festival is coming up in mid-July, and I expect it to be quite noteworthy, and there might be another thing or two of that nature. Other than that, I'll pretty much just be working, playing, and sleeping in regularly-scheduled time allotments for the rest of the summer. There might be the occasional library anecdote, like the little boy who walked in and put a book on the shelf of a different branch and he and his mother thought that counted as him returning it, or the temperamental fire alarm that made us evacuate the building twice in 24 hours.

I'm typing this in short bursts between patrons and a woman just checked out To Kill a Mockingbird on DVD. As she walked away she told her son that she couldn't bring herself to read the book, so the movie would have to do. It made me sad.

Anyway . . .

Gone Tomorrow

Today I am a single college student. In 36 hours I will be a married college graduate. I can do this . . . I can do this . . .

Paradigm Shift!

Freeze It

I just got out of my last class as an undergraduate college student. It was Intro to Political Science with Dr. Johnson. I wore my Che shirt and black leather fedora. I showed up five minutes late. We talked about national security, international relations, and the United Nations. I got my last handout, and my last class assignment was handed back at the end. I got a 100. And then I walked away.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

Our Grail class made a pilgrimage to the Scarborough Faire Renaissance Festival a few Saturdays ago to spend a day in the period we've been studying (sort of). Standing around while Dr. Watson picked up our tickets at the window, Wilson and I could already see a hint of the diversity we would be encountering pouring through the gates. The costumes ranged from wonderfully authentic to scandalously authentic to bizarre conglomeration to simply silly. I was envious of the guys sporting cavalier hats with ample plumage, sympathetic to the plight of large-chested women who (apparently) "could barely afford enough material to cover their breasts," and generally disdainful of those who seemed to be attempting some sort of Ren/Goth conglomeration. Emo just isn't medieval. Sorry.

Wandering through the gates, I wound up in company with Wilson, Rachel, and Rachel's friend Alyssa (who is also in the class). Wilson and I wanted to find ourselves some good hats, and look at cool things. Rachel and Alyssa wanted to look at boring things. Tension is essential to drive action, so I knew it would be an exciting day.

There was an additional ulterior motive behind the apparent aimlessness of our fair exploration, however. Wilson and I knew that there was more to be had at Scarborough than the novelty of the garb, jousting, and the like. Always avid seekers of illumination in any form we can get it, we resolved to locate the Holy Grail and make off with it, if possible. At the very least it might be worth a few points of extra credit. Arrayed against us was a whole host of devilish foes, both medieval and modern, internal and external, flamboyantly obvious and subtly hidden. In order to locate the Grail, we would have to best them all.

Our very first battle, one we were forced to wage throughout the day, was against the lure of commercialism. Everything was for sale, and everything looked good. There were costumes, trinkets, weapons, props of all shapes, sizes and varieties. Certainly we needed to leave no stone unturned in our attempts to locate the Grail, but it was difficult not to linger extensively over items that had nothing whatsoever to do with our quest. One particularly fiendish shop was full of items that might have included the Grail. Some of them looked very similar to what we were looking for, but we were not fooled. There can be only one Holy Grail.

The second obstacle, which we had foolishly brought with us, was (shall we say) female in nature. Everyone knows that no good can come of interacting with women when one is on a Grail quest, and our own experience was no exception. The girls were a constant distraction, wandering off at the drop of a hat or staring dull things for minutes on end. I, of course, couldn't leave them behind, and it was up to Wilson to show extra fortitude in standing by his companion on the quest instead of sallying forth alone.

The distractions kept coming, next in the form of shiny armor and feats of arms. We wandered off the path to watch the knights at work in the tournament grounds, darting about on horses and spearing things with lances. And, of course, after watching them for a bit, a new temptation made itself known: a test of gluttony. The flesh, in its weakness, demanded sustenance and I was drawn inexorably in the direction of large chunks of delicious white meat hanging off of turkey bones. Just as I finished with that (and my cup of apple cider), Rachel pulled out candy, and we ended up spending a great deal of time at table.

Not to be put off forever, though, we renewed our search with even more fervor after lunch. Wilson was the next to be tested, this time by vanity. He wandered into a hat shop and tried various articles on, checking them in the mirror and trying to decide which one he wanted. By the time all of this was done, the afternoon was wearing on and we were dangerously close to our time of departure.

To make a long story short, we managed to stay one step ahead of the big parade and scuttled into a section of the fair which we had not yet visited. There, in the back corner of a small booth, we found the Holy Grail. It shone like gleaming silver in the sunlight, standing solidly on a wide base with its long, elegant stem flowing upward into the distinctive communion-style "bowl" of the vessel. An attendant noticed our interest and wandered over to tell us about it.

After an ardent and lengthy quest that had lasted through many tests and many hours and consumed our visit to Scarborough Faire, our hopes of retrieving the Holy Grail were finally dashed entirely and with great finality (although we did get to touch it).

You see, he wanted money for it. Lots of money. How very Catholic of him.

Experiencing an Episcopal Eucharist

I had the opportunity recently to partake in "an instructed Eucharist" with Dr. Watson, my classmates from Hero Quest and the Holy Grail, and Rev. Carol Petty, associate rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Longview. We have been studying the various versions of the legend of the Holy Grail throughout history, and almost all of them involve some sort of Eucharist in a central role. Naturally, Dr. Watson could not offer us a genuine Catholic Eucharist, because we aren't Catholics (with one exception), so he got as close as he could and arranged for us to attend our own service at Trinity Episcopal one Thursday night.

We arrived at the church that evening and were greeted by Rev. Petty, dressed in street clothing. She led us into the sanctuary (I think that's still the term that Episcopals use, but I'm probably going to get a lot of the terminology wrong) and explained various things to us, answered our questions, and prepared us to work our way through a service. We each got a bulletin from the Sunday before, so we could follow along and join in when necessary. Then, Dr. Watson and Rev. Petty went to put on the appropriate vestments so they could lead the service.

I found the service very personally meaningful, as I have when I attend St. Michael's. I enjoy the sense of tradition, the rituals, the heavy reliance on scriptural readings, recitation of the Nicene Creed, and sense of community throughout the service. I grew up attending churches of all kinds, but mostly those of a very informal tradition. I used to think that I liked it like that. Adherence to tradition smacked of legalism, and Christians are freed by grace to approach a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ in whatever manner they wish. The key here is basically freedom; not trying to pin anyone down, not saying that only one way is the right way to do a thing. But I've seen too many people take that and run too far with it, and eventually I got tired of watching.

My experience with the Episcopal Church has been the opposite of what I would have thought years ago. The ritual is not a factor of legalism, and the adherence to tradition is neither blind in its rigidity, nor particularly constraining. In fact, I have found that members of the denomination seem even more free than most of their Protestant brethren. It has given me a new perspective on the idea of "freedom in Christ."

But I digress . . .

The service included readings from the Old Testament, New Testament, Gospels, and Psalms. Dr. Watson preached an abridged version of his sermon from the Sunday before (involving baseball and his brief stint as a Little League umpire), and there was a prayer time. I volunteered to lead one of the responsive readings. All of this led up to the taking of communion. We all climbed up next to the altar and stood around it in a semi-circle while Episcopal communion was explained to us. Then we adjourned to the rail and partook of it together. Trinity uses wafers (St. Mike's uses actual bread) and watered-down wine as the elements, and they are administered by the priest to each individual in turn. I really like that.

Of course, the wine came from a very Grail-like cup, and it took very little imagination to picture what we were doing in the light of the stories we've been reading. I am reminded once again, as when I read de Troyes version of the Grail story, that this quest is really all about spiritual illumination, not the acquisition of a physical artifact. It's strange how often people miss that.

End of the . . . Mid-Semester

I've just come from the Liberal Arts offices and the atmosphere there is reminiscent of the end of the semester. I'm sweating out my last hour of work at the library watching clips from "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." My brain has been on break since last Wednesday night (more or less). My only responsibilities this week were a test in Poli. Sci. on Monday (which I got an A on), and a group presentation in Grail Quest on "The Grail Legend" by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise Von Franz last night (which I don't have a grade for yet). I can't remember anticipating a break this much since . . . oh, at least last November.

My plans for Spring Break are:

1) Search rigorously for a job in town that I can plug into once I graduate . . . preferably something that I won't hate, but I can't really be picky.

2) Work at the library to keep the bank account afloat this semester.

3) Homework: I'm 4 or 5 weeks behind on Southern history papers, and I need to start reading my sources for the Thomas Dixon paper. I also need to catch up on the reading for Grail Quest and start preparing for my individual presentation on The Once and Future King. I have to read the book we're reviewing for the paper next issue, Liars and Saints. And I hope to have time to glance at that independent paper a bit . . .

4) World of Warcraft . . . the joy of Spring Break for me will be the complete freedom I'll have in the evening not to worry about homework or any other such obligations. I'll probably spend them playing video games with the few people who are sticking around on campus.

45 minutes left . . . I can't wait.

It's All So Exciting!

I am painfully aware that I have not actually updated my blog in a ridiculously long time. The factor which makes this awareness painful is that the past month has been far from uneventful, and yet I have failed to right it down. At this juncture, of course, it would be out of the question to reproduce everything as I might have done had it just transpired . . . but I'll hit a few of the highlights of the few weeks.

The Famous "Intro to Fine Arts" Field Trip

I've watched my friends trot off to spend a day in Dallas with Dr. Watson for several semesters now, and I finally got my own chance to go a few Fridays ago. I had to be at the bus by 7:30, but it was certainly worth it. The day was extremely eventful, but the real highlights boil down to an extended chance to look at pretty things (or "interact with art" as Dr. Watson would say). We went to the Texas Hall of State, the Meyerson Symphony Hall (to hear a concert on their ridiculously large organ), and the Dallas Museum of Art.

The bus broke down around the time we were supposed to leave the DMA, so I got to wander around it with Ashley for quite a bit longer than would otherwise have been possible (a fact which pleased me enormously). I saw some great stuff from all sorts of periods and cultures: Impressionist, Modern, Asian, and so forth. I especially enjoyed the chance to appreciate some more modern work. By far my favorite piece, however, was a short film by Miguel Angel Rios called "A Morir" . . . it was shot from three angles, all of which played simultaneously on three different walls. Look it up and read about it . . . it was very moving and thought-provoking.

The Infamous Review of Brokeback Mountain

Randy and I wrote a review of Brokeback Mountain for the YellowJacket and called it what it was: a magnificent and moving film which does not promote what the rabid fundies would describe as a homosexual agenda. For our pains we (and the newspaper) received a few condemnatory e-mail messages, one of which was also sent to the university president and some other higher-ups. Our review also came up in Senate in the context of a number of guys on a particular floor having had a problem with it.

The ultimate outcome of it all was a statement issued by the administration to all floor chaplains re-affirming their standing statement on human sexuality (homosexuality = not kosher) and we are printing a few of the e-mails as "Letters to the Editor" in this week's issue. Also, our esteemed editors encouraged us to brainstorm creatively with them to try and discover a way to give foolish knee-jerkers even less of a reason to complain without having to rate or describe a movie's morality (at which point I would stop writing reviews anyway). We ultimately settled on including the reason for the MPAA rating of a movie along with the rating which we had already been including, and changing nothing else.

I had a whole lot to say on this issue, I can assure you, and I have been more than a little disgusted by some of the responses I have seen and heard about. However, on the other hand, people that I actually respect have both complimented and encouraged us and our review. A certain unnamed authority figure told me today (in reference to this) to "Keep challenging." He needn't worry. I will.

The 9th Annual C.S. Lewis and the Inklings Conference

Last weekend was a whole lot of fun for me. I headed up to John Brown University with Dr. Batts, Dr. Solganick, and several other students to present a paper at the CSLIS Conference. My paper was the one I wrote last semester for C.S. Lewis about what Lewis says about the power and inadequacy of human language in his book Till We Have Faces. My paper was one of the first ones on the program, so I got it out of the way fast and enjoyed the rest of conference with no pressure. Actually, though, I wasn't even nervous about delivering it at all. I talked to fast, I'm sure, as I always do, but I got several compliments on the paper afterwards and I was quite satisfied, all in all.

And I didn't just get to present the paper, I also got to see Asa and hang out with him a bit. That was a lot of fun . . . and I owed him a visit after he came to LeTourneau last semester. I also got a lot of good thinking done on the 7-hour drives going and coming. On the way up I planned an independent paper I want to write on the effect that shifts in American culture during the past 50+ years have had on movies about King Arthur and the Holy Grail. We'll see if anything comes of that. On the way back I got quite a bit of reading done in The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz . . . I have a group presentation on the book in Grail Quest this Thursday night.

Anyway, there are a few of the highlights that I have neglected to record of late. Hopefully you'll be hearing from me some more on . . . something or other before too long has gone by again. Meanwhile, I'll stay busy and try not to have too much fun (probably won't manage that last, actually).

Close Encounters of the Shallow Kind

So, I was in the mall eating lunch with Rachel today and we happened to notice a fairly large gathering of people in the central plaza. Wandering over to get a closer look, we happened upon a twisted and sickening sight: Dozens of small girls between the ages of about 6 months and 5 years dolled up in bows and frilly dresses and being paraded on a stage by their mothers as part of what was apparently an infant beauty contest.

A number of words and phrases came to mind at this point, things like shallow, irresponsible, bad parenting, and self-esteem death. There were babies who couldn't even walk, and little 'uns who could walk but obviously had no idea what was going, all being paraded about like mantlepiece ornaments.

However, I believe the scariest one of all was a small girl who couldn't have been older than five. She stepped confidently onto the stage, face completely straight, and sauntered across to the center. Turning to face the audience, she placed first one hand on her hip, then another, shifting her weight in the appropriate direction. There was nothing innocent or childlike in her movements at all. Nothing but her size differentiated her from adult beauty contestants that I've seen on TV. She was all business.

What's she going to be like by the time she hits 12? 15? 18? What about the other girls? How will they turn out, being raised by mothers who are already shoving them onto the modeling stage? The entire display was simply depressing.

Me = Disgusted

The Final Courseload

Ha! Who am I kidding? As if this isn't the first semester of the rest of my life . . .

Intro to Poli. Sci.

My only comfort is that Dr. Johnson is teaching the class. I have no personal interest in Political Science whatsoever, and as a class to take in my last semester, I consider it a shame on the order of having wasted my senior year in high school on government and economics. Bleah. The course, apparently, will consist of four short writing assignments and four exams. It will not be a difficult class, but I'll probably have a hard time getting an A. I don't work well when I'm not motivated by the material.

Hilarious side note: LeTourneau claims to be educating me in "History and Political Science" and the latter will appear on my degree. This, however, is the first and only political science course I have ever taken. It is one of two that the school offers at all. And, I'm not required to take this specific course for that degree. I'm taking it for my English degree.

Intro to Fine Arts

Like political science, I have had no classes in the arts, how to understand them, and how to appreciate them. My feelings about this subject, however, could not be more different. I'm really enjoying this class, and I expect will be both fun and useful. The reading quizzes are a nuisance one needn't put up with in most of his classes, but I can deal. We'll be taking a field trip later in the semester to the Dallas Museum of Art, and that will be a lot of fun I'm sure. I've been hearing about the Watson field trip and watching friends make it for years now. Finally time to go myself. Meanwhile, his lectures are hilarious and entertaining, as always. Last class he spent 20 minutes railing about "Precious Moments" and his visit to the Precious Moments Chapel.

Seminar Readings in Southern History

No monster papers this semester, but probably a great deal more reading than last semester. Dr. Johnson handed us our syllabus and our first reading assignment yesterday. We'll have eight weeks of guided reading, with a 2-3 page analysis paper due each week, and then we'll be on our own to write an 8-10 page paper which either examines the historiography of a particular topic, or examines primary source material to produce a work of original research. Not too bloody difficult, is it? Our first reading, however, is quite lengthy, containing two excerpts from Albion's Seed and an excerpt from The Slave Community. I also hope to have my own field trip to Vicksburg sometime this semester. A bit of research indicated that it is only three hours away, a straight shot down I-20. I need to be sure and get over there . . .

Hero Quest and the Holy Grail

This will be a fun class for sure. It is, of course, a Dr. Watson class, and its topic is a pet favorite of mine. I actually dreamed up a fantasy class that was very similar to this a few semesters ago . . . and now it's here! I actually don't need the credit, but I certainly wasn't going to pass it up. This class is precisely the reason why I've taken summer courses and worked harder than I needed to a few semesters. A light final semester gives me opportunities I would not otherwise have.

Dr. Watson has us reading Arthurian Romances by Chretien de Troyes this week. On Thursday night, I will be presenting on "The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot)" with Wilson, Moore, and Sharpton. We will also read From Ritual to Romance, Le Morte D'Arthur, and The DaVinci Code this semester. Plus, Watson has us watching quite a large number of movies ranging from The Lion in Winter to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I also plan to do an individual presentation on The Once and Future King in lieu of one of the three sets of five journals. I already have a critical study on the way from inter-library loan.

As for other responsibilities this semester . . . I'm still writing for the paper, I'm still secretary of AHM (we don't do much, but we do a few things), and there's the minor matter of a wedding to help plan. In addition to the field trips I've already mentioned, AHM hopes to organize an expedition to John Brown for the C. S. Lewis and the Inklings Conference. And Martinez discovered a live performance of The Phantom of the Opera in Dallas that we would like to try and see.

I expect to have fun this spring.

Business As Usual

My Schedule for Spring '06:

Monday

Library (10:15-12:15)

Introduction to Political Science - Dr. Johnson (12:25-1:20)

Tuesday

Introduction to Fine Arts - Dr. Watson (12:00-1:20)

Independent Study in Southern History - Dr. Johnson (Exact Time in Flux)

Wednesday

Library (10:15-12:15)

Poli. Sci. (12:25-1:20)

Library (1:30-2:30)

Thursday

Fine Arts (12:00-1:20)

Hero Quest & the Holy Grail - Dr. Watson (6:00-9:00)

Friday

Library (10:15-12:15)

Poli. Sci. (12:25-1:20)

Library (1:30-3:00)

Saturday

Library (1:00-6:00)

I'll be sure to post more about my classes when I have a bit more time to evaluate them (Southern History hasn't met yet, for one).

Top Ten Movies of the Fall Semester and Christmas Break:

-The Decalogue

-Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

-The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

-Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

-A Streetcar Named Desire

-Orlando

-The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

-Pride and Prejudice

-Crash

-Ocean's Eleven

This list is slightly unusual because I didn't watch as many movies last semester as I normally do. As a result, I had a much smaller pool to choose from, and there are a few movies on this list that wouldn't normally have made the cut. Nevertheless, there are some true all-time favorites up there, and I hope to see some really good stuff in the days ahead as well. Meanwhile, to make up for it, check this out. It's the sequel to Dogville, and I can't wait to see it (there's a trailer up here).

Post-Christmas Guatemala Update

Well, you haven't heard from me in a while because the freaking internet has been down throughout large portions of the country since Christmas Day. It's still down in various places, including at our house, but my dad has it at the office, and I am posting from . . . thence. Or whatever.

Anyway, Christmas went pretty well. I spent Christmas Eve helping with this and that, and then we had our traditional meal of chalupas and enchiladas at 3:00 in the afternoon instead of the usual supper time. The changed time was the result of cataclysmically bad planning on the part of person or persons as yet undiscovered. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we couldn't get out of going to Fraternidad Cristiana (my parents' church). One of the orphanage girls was dancing in their Christmas program, so we all had to go, which disrupted all of our Christmas traditions.

Going out somewhere was the last thing I wanted to do on Christmas Eve, so I wasn't particularly please. Brett was even more peeved. We sat next to each other and . . . "commiserated" during the service. It was two hours long, and I've been to far more painful church services in my time. There was a really terrible "adaptation" of A Christmas Carol about halfway through, but the only thing it had in common with the original was the first name of the main character and "God bless us, every one!" at the end. I guess it was also trying to be It's a Wonderful Life and . . .The Godfather. It was bizarre and confusing, and most of the lines were riddled with obscure slang, so it was difficult to understand. Didn't really work for me.

Anyway, we returned to do the same old thing: watching the kids open presents, doing fireworks, bringing the kids' stocking over after they went to bed, and then we went home and crashed. Christmas Day was a fine affair. I didn't get many presents (since I hadn't really asked for anything besides a couple of plane tickets) but I got a lot of money which will come in quite handy.

To briefly summarize the ensuing days: I went to Alumni Day at CAG and saw various people. Afterwards Rachel and I went bowling with Asa, his younger sister Rachel, and Miss Rensch (my math and science teacher from high school). Last Friday we went to Panajachel, my favorite place in the world, to welcome the New Year. Pana is a small town on the edge of a gorgeous lake surrounded by volcanoes. It was very pleasant.

In the meantime, we've been amusing ourselves with this and that. Micah got the first season of Lost for Christmas, so we watched all of that. Freaking show is nothing but a big tease . . . grrr. We've also watched season two of Monk, we'll make a start at season three before we leave. That's such a great show. Rachel and I played through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for X-Box together. Micah got it for Christmas. It's a pretty good game as long as you can utterly ignore the source material and the wretched camera angles . . . *cringes.*

So, that's all the news for now. I'm sure I'd have posted a great deal more about all of the above if we'd had internet, but that's the way it goes. I'll be back in town on Sunday afternoon, and I can't wait to see everyone. Farewell 'till then.

Pre-Christmas Guatemala Update

Well, I've been back for over a week now, and so far I've taken the easy way out and just posted chunks of my paper (as you may have noticed). But I see that it is time for me to compose a post on my activities, such as they are. Things were pleasantly slow for the first few days.

On Thursday my mom and I gave Rachel the Grand Tour of the orphanage . . . and a lot of it was new to me. Two years, as I've said before and will say again, is too long to go between visits. I saw people around here again, and that was fun. Then we went to pick up my brothers from school and I said hello to a few people around CAG that I haven't seen in quite some time.

On Friday Brett got here and we continued to do stuff. I was re-watching Firefly with my brothers (who hadn't seen it) and re-watching Pride and Prejudice (the definitive mini-series version, not that new Keira Knightley krap) with Rachel (who hadn't seen it). Mostly it was just extremely relaxing.

Saturday was much the same, and on Sunday morning my dad was preaching at Union, the english-speaking church in Guatemala City. We went there for the late service and I ran into even more people I haven't seen in awhile. Asa had come in the same day as Brett, so I saw him there. I was also introduced to Dan Todd, a fellow that I have heard much about from my parents and Mr. Fry. He teaches English at CAG, and I was told we had much in common . . . so that was fun. Hopefully I'll have a chance to talk to him a bit more while I'm here. Meanwhile, after the service, I poked around in the used book room and found a very nice copy of The Poisonwood Bible which I purchased for Q1 (about 13 cents).

On Monday Rachel went with my mom on the weekly grocery shopping expedition, and I stayed around the house anticipating Tuesday's outing. We had to be up by about 6:30 on Tuesday morning to go spend the day in Antigua. Quick history lesson:

In the early 1500s, Hernán Cortés (as everyone knows), led the Spanish conquest of Mexico. His second-in-command was Don Pedro de Alvarado, who went on to conquer Guatemala in the 1520s and became its first Spanish governor. He established himself in what is now known as "Ciudad Vieja" (Old City). After his death in 1541, his wife, Doña Beatriz de la Cueva, became the new governor.

However, shortly thereafter, a nearby dormant volcano (now known as "Agua" or "Water" for reasons which will soon become obvious) collected a veritable lake of water after several days of rain, which was released from the crater by an earthquake, resulting in an enormous deluge which eradicated the city. The flood killed Doña Beatriz and about 1000 others. In 1542, the survivors of the flood founded a new capital a bit farther from Agua, which is now known as "Antigua" (Antiquity).

When it was first built, Antigua was named "La Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala" (The Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Santiago of the Knights of Guatemala). Over the course of the next 200 years it became one of the wealthiest capitals in the New World, but it was largely destroyed by a pair of earthquakes in 1773. The governor at the time ordered the construction of a new capital in a safer location. Construction began in 1776 on what is now Guatemala City, the current capital. Should anything ever happen to it, its name will no doubt be changed to "Anciano" (Ancient One), or something of that nature.

Meanwhile, Antigua still exists in much the same form it always has. A building code was imposed upon it so that everything constructed there must conform to the colonial style. The streets are still paved entirely with cobblestones. It is a gorgeous city, full of museums, old churches, and ruins. It has a lovely central park full of beautiful trees and eroding stone fountains, and it supports a thriving retail community of small vendors of typical clothing and trinkets.

We began our own visit to Antigua with breakfast in the Hotel Santo Domingo. The hotel is one of my favorite places to visit. It is located within a refurbished monastery of the colonial period, and everything is very well preserved and taken care of that might have historical value. The owners are constantly excavating new sections, which are open to be viewed by the public, and the hotel also supports a candlemaking shop, and a pottery shop.

Rachel and I wandered down into one of the crypts while we were looking over the grounds, and found a large sculpted relief of the crucifixion scene dominating one wall. There were large sections of floor covered with human bones, and sealed off with glass to protect them. It was very eerie, but very cool. Breakfast was delicious, and we were well fortified to continue our tour.

We went to a nearby coffee plantation which my parents have discovered since my last visit and took the hour-long tour of the place. There was a coffee museum, which outlined the history of coffee, the entire process by which it is grown, harvested, and readied for consumption, and detailed some of the economics involved in coffee production and sale.

The next time you're forking over a hefty sum at Starbucks for your cup of gourmet brew, consider this: for every dollar you spend on coffee in the United States, sixteen cents goes to the producing country and eighty-four cents is divided between the retailer and the importer.

After wandering through the museum, we saw a bit of the actual plantation. Harvesting had just begun the day before. Workers are paid a little over $3 for every hundred pounds of coffee berries that they pluck from the trees. A hundred pounds of coffee takes approximately eight hours to pick, so that is their wage for a full workday during harvesting season. The harvesters are all women, and they bring their children (some too young even to walk) along to help pick. That hundred pounds of coffee berries, once its beans have been extracted, dried, roasted, and ground, will translate into about sixteen and a half pounds of actual coffee.

Moving on from the plantation, we visited the Church of Hermano Pedro de San José de Betancurt. Hermano Pedro is a Guatemalan saint who was canonized on July 30th, 2002. He lived and worked in Guatemala for about fifteen years in the mid-1600s. The priest was just beginning the Eucharist when we arrived, so we wandered around the edges and stared at the statues and candles and so forth. Hermano Pedro had three or four supplicants kneeling at his tomb.

We exited the church and went around to the back to wander through the museum and ruins. The museum has tons of relics related to Hermano Pedro, including his clothing, the rope that he used to flail himself with as penance, and the skull he held while meditating on death. There are also pictures on the walls of everyone that he has done favors for, and a collection of crutches from lame people that he has healed. Its an interesting place.

By now we were hungry again, so we shuffled off to eat, and then spent about three hours shopping. Rachel found a bunch of stuff she liked, and I tried to pretend that I wasn't terribly bored. By 4:00 we were nearly ready to go, just stopping of briefly to enjoy a stroll in central park before heading home again. It was a fun day.

Wednesday, Thursday, and today have largely been spent helping my mother with a variety of things. We made sure that stockings for 44 children were adequately stuffed, and ensured that everyone was receiving roughly the same number of gifts. When we first sorted and inspected the piles, we found that the number of presents ranged from two to ten (an unacceptable discrepancy). By the next day we had equalized things to a range of five to eight presents per child, and decided to call it good. Rachel has also been baking a lot for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and my mom has been very happy to have the help.

At any rate, I am quite tired now, having typed a great deal in the midst of my vacation, and I am ready to wander off to bed. Christmas festivities begin shortly! Merry Christmas everyone!

Travel Day

It is quite good to be home, I must say . . . Better, even, than I thought it would be, despite months of feverish anticipation. Perhaps the pleasure of being back in Guatemala was heightened by the horrors of travel, I dunno. I swear, I used to love flying, back before my legs got too long for it to be comfortable. But now, I hate travelling more and more every time I do it. I told Rachel yesterday that the current state of air travel in the United States is a foreshadowing of the downfall of Western Civilization, and the more I think about it, the more true it sounds.

Anyway, perhaps a paragraph or two to catch the world up on my activities of the last month would not be amiss. I pretty much poured all of my blogging efforts into the "Top Fifty" list, and didn't have any time left over that wasn't taken up by schoolwork. Since last we spoke of life, I visited West Texas for Thanksgiving along with Rachel and her brother Jonathan. We had a pretty good time . . . and Jonathan did most of the driving, which was nice. I got almost all of my Christmas shopping done while I was there, and relaxed a bit more than I should have, knowing that I wouldn't have another chance to rest until I was sitting on an airplane.

Seriously, I feel as though everything between my return after Thanksgiving and my arrival in Guatemala was just a single, interminable day. It was positively dreadful. By the time I got back I was 15 pages into my 33-page paper for Intellectual History. I had to reread and present and write a paper on Till We Have Faces, plus finish the three quizzes I'd missed for C. S. Lewis. I had various last-minute details to see to about the Student Literary Conference, and I had to present my paper there and chair another session, and I had to write something for the newspaper about it. I had five journals to write for Literary Criticism. I had five journals to write for Reading the Bible as Literature, and a rather dense book to read. I had to collaborate with Paige on a book review of Memoirs of a Geisha, which I'd only half finished. I had to complete an overdue reflection paper and come up with some sort of resume for Crapstone. And all this was work to be done aside from finals week business, and packing to leave for Guatemala on the Wednesday of finals week (a departure time that was beginning to look more and more like a mistake).

Well, I got it all done, obviously, although I probably pulled 6 all-nighters or so during the intervening period. The C. S. Lewis presentation was on that Tuesday, the Literary Conference was that Saturday, my Intellectual History paper was the following Wednesday, my Bib as Lit journals were the day after that, and my Lit Crit journals were the day after that, after which I still had to find a time to write my paper for C. S. Lewis. Two of those all-nighters were this week (Sunday night and Tuesday night). I was finishing up my take-home final for Apocalypse through the Ages within an hour of departure time.

But it's over now. The trip down was an adventure. Uncle Doug locked his keys in his car at the first gas station where we stopped on the way out of Longview. For awhile I was more worried he was going to go fling himself in front of traffic than that we wouldn't be able to get back in the car. Rachel's brother came to our rescue with a few coat hangers, and we were on our way after a half-hour's delay. That cut things a bit fine, of course . . . We got a bit lost in DFW (despite all the times I've been there) because we took one wrong turn and couldn't go the right direction for awhile.

When we finally got to the gate, the line was out the wazoo . . . But we made it to check in with 45 minutes to plane departure. We also discovered that the weight limit has been decreased from 70 to 50 pounds. Even now that fact makes me want to engage in a profanity-filled rant. My suitcases will not hold that little weight . . . Besides which, one of them probably weighs a full 15 pounds by itself. I own books that weigh 10 pounds. It's just not right. Moving on, we had to clear security next. It was, as usual, an enormous hassle. The line was incredibly long and very slow-moving. We, of course, had to take off shoes, jackets, empty pockets, pull out Rachel's laptop from its bag within a bag . . . and then re-assemble ourselves instantaneously in order to avoid a traffic jam. We reached the gate just in time to hear the final boarding call.

We boarded amidst a crowd and found, of course, that there was absolutely no more room in the overhead compartments. Can someone explain to me what this racket is all about? Either luggage manufacturers are making carry-on suitcases that they know are too big, or airlines are using airplanes that they know are too small to hold everyone's carry-on luggage. Either way, everyone involved is a flipping 'tard. I turned around and asked a very irate stewardess what I was supposed to do. She said I could either go to the very back of the plane to stow my stuff (unacceptable . . . I'd have to be the last person off when we arrived) or I could check it.

I opted to check it . . . but I had to stand around for five minutes waiting for people to stop coming in so I could get back out with the two suitcases. Then, we sat at the gate for about half an hour after the final boarding call had been given, waiting for late connections so that other people could make it aboard. I have no objection to that practice, personally, having had a number of late connections myself . . . but why did they give a final boarding call if we were going to be there an additional half hour?

They showed Fantastic Four on the way down, but I slept the entire flight. Once we arrived in Guatemala, I bulldozed us through immigration, then sat for what seemed like forever waiting for the luggage. It seemed like most of our bags were about as separated from each other as they could be while still being on the same plane. Two of them happened to be right next to each other, and a very stupid young lady that was standing next to me refused to make room for me to get both of them off no matter how many times I said, "Excuse me." So, I proved to myself that, in fact, I haven't been gone too long. I knocked her over with the bags when I hauled them off. She wasn't happy. I didn't care.

We fought our way outside to where my family was waiting, got loaded into the van, and grabbed some supper from Burger King. I suddenly remembered that I hadn't eaten all day. We got home, everyone else went to bed, and Rachel and I watched "Mr. Monk and the Airplane" and laughed profusely.

Conclusion: Air travel is fast becoming the ever-loving suck of the world, but it's great to be back home again.

Reflections on 1000 Books

Tonight is something of a momentous occasion for me. It is a night that I have been anticipating for over nine years, and that I originally expected to arrive four or five years ago. On July 1st, 1996, when I was 12 years old (nearly two months shy of 13) and about to enter 7th grade, I set out for the umpteenth time to see how quickly I could read The Chronicles of Narnia all the way through.

Before I was even halfway done with them, I had already decided to see how many fantasy books in general I could read over the course of one month. And shortly after that, I just decided that I'd keep a record of every book I read, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, from then until the end of time. I've kept a "Booklist" in a Microsoft Excel or Works spreadsheet ever since (okay, actually I started in Word, but my dad recommended the switch, then helped me make it, before the first year was out).

For the past nine years I've celebrated the New Year twice. As January 1st approaches, I enjoy the Christmas holiday, consider what I have accomplished in the past year, and think about what the next 365 days will bring. As July 1st approaches, I begin to read furiously (I can generally do that in the midst of the summer with no trouble) so that I will have as many books as possible "logged" for that year of reading. I take a look at my reading progress for the past year, and resolve to read even more next year. Usually I have my eye on a number of books that I'd like to have read by then, as well. The tradition changes the way my entire midsummer works.

Tonight, November 15th, 2005, at age 22 and well into my senior year of college, I completed The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, which is the thousandth book on my list (specially selected from half a dozen candidates to fill that particular role). I have a vague idea that this was the number I was aiming at back in '96. I have no idea what I intended to do once I'd reached it . . . I think I just wanted to see how fast I could get there. Well, now I know. But I've been reading fewer books every year, and so presumably I couldn't do it that fast again.

Anyway, I know what to do with it now: Tuck it away and set out for the second thousand. Maybe I'll see how long it takes me to catch up to the present year AD or something. Then, at least, I'd have some kind of representation in terms of reading material for every year since the time of Christ. Because if there's one thing I've realized with the completion of every book I've ever read, it's the fact of how many I haven't. No one warned me, at the tender age of four when I first began to read, or at any point after that, that reading is a Lernean hydra. You can't read a book without having thirty you haven't read thrust rudely into your conscious awareness.

This may come as a nasty shock to Rachel, who earlier wondered aloud whether, perhaps, I might be able to "stop" now, but as far as I'm concerned, I'll never be well-read, but I'll always be trying to be.

Meanwhile, now that I have reached the magic number 1000, and found it to be (as I have suspected for quite some time now) inadequate even as a bare beginning, I can at least launch a special project here on my blog which I have been planning ever since the arrival of the thousandth book became a tangible reality rather than a mere concept. Beginning very soon and continuing over the course of the next few weeks, I will post a listing of my 50 favorite books (the top 5%) off of my Booklist in small, bite-size chunks.

The list has been mostly assembled (though, of course, always subject to change) for some time now, after I had reflected extensively on how best to compile and present such a list. First, I had to decide which books belonged on the list.

Of course, my Booklist itself is by no means populated exclusively by "good literature." For example, over 5% of the list is made up of Hardy Boys mysteries. Star Wars novels comprise nearly 10% of the list. However, the top five most represented authors (not counting Franklin W. Dixon, of course, as that is a pen name used by numerous authors), are as follows: Agatha Christie (32), William Shakespeare (25), Beverly Cleary (20), Sigmund Brouwer (18), and Isaac Asimov and C. S. Lewis (both 17).

My Booklist records a work's title, author, and the rating (out of 100) that I gave it. The ratings have shifted so drastically over the years, and were so totally bizzare to begin with, that they are now meaningless to everyone except (sometimes) me. I soon realized that, out of the 38 books I have given a perfect score, only a little over half of them would make it to my top 50. More deserving books have been given lower ratings in the past. Also, I realized that over 25% of all books I have read have received a rating of 90 or higher. This is clearly ridiculous. I mean, I get a great deal of pleasure out of the simple act of reading, and that is certainly a factor, but come on . . .

Then I wondered about order. At first I had them ranked from least to most favorite, but I played with them and played with them and finally realized that it was silly to try that. In the end, I dropped them all into a spreadsheet, categorized them every which way from Tuesday, and sorted them to see what worked best. I decided that I would present them in chronological order, as I read them. I think it shows best how my tastes have changed, along with how what I'm reading has changed, but also what has remained the same.

All that to say, I had a fun time of it selecting my 50 favorite books of all time and listing them off. There are four things to keep in mind as I post them in the days ahead:

-I limited myself to only one work per author on the list. This allows the list to reflect more of the authors I enjoy reading, so that it is implied that some of their other works are among my favorites as well, and I can keep the list more diverse. It also really helped me wittle down the candidates.

-In a few very special cases, I have counted books which were published seperately as a single work. I have tried not to let this get out of control, and only used it with the works that are available in a single-volume edition. There were certain cases where I truly felt that either a single, favorite book could not be separated from others without losing part of what makes it a favorite, or that the books must be taken together to be complete. In a few cases, I felt that a single volume was, perhaps, not a favorite, but that the whole definitely was. That's just the way it is sometimes, and my list reflects that.

-This is not a list of The Best Books I Have Ever Read. I wouldn't presume to judge that . . . I wouldn't dare. These are simply the books that I have gotten the most pleasure from reading over the years, and which I most heartily recommend to others or enjoy discussing with fellow fans. I would like to think that, in a sense, there is at least one book or author on this list for everyone. In other words, I would hope that everyone might find at least one of their own favorite authors on this list (if not their most favorite), or that (if they haven't read them all) there is at least one book or author which would number among their favorites.

-In the spirit of that last observation, I would very much relish any commentary from my audience regarding my list. Congratulate me for including a particular book. Tell me I'm crazy for including a particular book. Shake your fist at me for not including a particular book, or (as it is quite possible that I haven't read it) recommend that I go find myself a copy. But, most importantly, say something. I've had a great time pulling this together, and it exists for me, chiefly, but I love talking about this stuff with others. Let me know what you think.

Notice of a Brief Sabbatical

Some time has passed since my thoughts surfaced here,
And more time still must pass ere I return.
For heavy still weigh loads of work so drear.
'Tis far I am from done howe'er I yearn.
The academic stress is almost tidal:
Calling for my attention undivided
(Thinking on't makes me feel suicidal)
Still papers (three) and journals (ten) are wanted.
Yet due dates come and due dates go, as always,
Quite unlike fun which waits 'round every corner.
It follows me through Liberal Arts hallways,
And during times with friends I'll keep forever.
Reader, please, keep coming back to visit.
When stuff happens, you'll certes hear all about it.

A Proposal to Make

To be perfectly honest, I'd had my eye on the R. W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport (specifically, the beautiful gardens attached thereto) for months. Exactly one year before, Fall Break 2004, I had planned a visit to this same gallery with Anna, Scholl, and Randy as a fun break activity which would allow me the chance to see a page from a Gutenberg Bible. At the time I was taking History of the English Language, taught by Dr. Watson, and he offered extra credit for a one-page summary of the experience. The expedition was planned for October 26th, and, as Rachel and I had had DTR the day before, I asked her along. It was our first date, and I rather enjoyed myself.

By Fall 2005, marriage had already been a topic of serious conversation with Rachel. I had visited her family in California. She had played a role in the ring selection process. We were both well-aware of the approaching one-year-of-dating mark on October 25th, and she had stated a number of times that she rather expected me to propose on that day. I wanted to propose on that day, it seemed fitting somehow . . . and I wanted to do it in this great location I'd had my eye on due to its significance to us personally, its beauty, and the fact that it is outside of Longview, and even Texas. But how on earth was I to do that without giving away the game? It's not any fun if it's not a surprise.

Well, I by now I was enrolled in Reading the Bible as Literature, again with Dr. Watson, and once again he offered extra credit for a pilgrimage to visit the Gutenberg page. Gallagher and Randy were in the class with me, and the following idea occurred: If I framed this journey in the form of a quest for extra credit with friends along (and Gallagher actually doing the driving), while hinting that I still had business to attend to before I could propose (ring acquisition, parental consent), perhaps she wouldn't see it coming. Parental consent had, in actuality, been acquired nine days previously, and the ring had arrived the day after that, so everything was in place. I passed my Fall Break in a state of high anticipation, wishing I didn't have to wait until Tuesday.

We set out shortly after lunch on the 25th. Gallagher had the ring secured in his pocket so that its presence would not be detected on my person by accident. We had a pleasant drive to Shreveport, waving a gleeful goodbye to Texas at the border, and arrived at the art gallery in due time. Of course, before I could lead Rachel out into the gardens and do the deed, we had to tour the entire gallery.

It seemed much smaller the last time I was there, and every time I thought we had seen the last room, we found a new wing to explore. Finally, though, we had seen everything. When Rachel paused to tie her shoe, Gallagher hauled me around a corner on the pretext of re-examining a bronze sculpture called "The Puritan" which we had both previously admired and stuffed the box with the shiny in my left jacket pocket.

Suddenly, it seemed to be nearly impossible to get Rachel to leave the gallery. She stopped in every room on the way out to look at things we had already seen, and discovered another room we hadn't visited before we reached the exit. At the front door, she paused to slowly peruse the brochures and selected several to take with her. The instant we stepped outside and made for the gardens around the back of the building, she spotted a bench and sat down. All the while, I had my left hand in my jacket pocket, and I felt that it was starting to become noticeable.

Gallagher and Randy took the opportunity of her pausing at the bench to get a headstart towards the gardens, and left us completely in their dust. As we approached the first divide in the path and I attempted to steer her down towards the central pond, she stubbornly pulled towards the direction they had taken and I had to talk her into going a different way. To their credit, Randy and Gallagher went completely to ground, disappearing quickly and remaining out of sight for quite some time.

Rachel, meanwhile, (and, in retrospect, neither of us are certain of how the conversation took this turn) regailed me with the details of a recent conversation with her roommate, wherein they had both resolved to say "No" the first time some hapless fellow proposed to them. I still can't believe she did that to me. Here she was turning me down a full 2-5 minutes before I even planned to ask. Too late to change plans (were I to take her threat seriously), and too early to know whether she was serious, I chose to take this in the most positive possible light: as a sign that she had no idea what I was about to do.

Before long we had arrived at an isolated bridge over a trickling stream. The only people in sight were a pair of landscapers a few hundred feet upstream, totally absorbed in moving rocks, or digging, or something. I stopped mid-bridge, much to Rachel's confusion, and started talking. I'll probably never be able to remember exactly what I said . . . I got out a few semi-romantic and heartfelt, though probably platitudinous, statements. I was having a little trouble piercing directly to the heart of the matter, so I attempted to bridge the remaining gap with a private joke.

Every now and then during the previous year of dating, I'd say something to Rachel like, "I have a proposal . . ." and she'd immediately interrupt with, "No! You can't do that yet! You have to have a ring first!" This response has become standard and automatic whenever the word "proposal" creeps into the conversation. So I said, "I have a proposal to make . . ." and my voice trailed off, waiting for the standard response so I could pull out the ring and proceed in proper fashion. I didn't get the standard response. I got Rachel's mouth dropping wide open, and a breathless, "You're not serious! Here? Now?" I guess I must have said it a bit differently than normal.

A combination of this unexpected response and the recent revelation that her answer would be "No" anyway caused me to hesitate. I had my hand out of my pocket by now, the small, padded box nestled in it, and I was standing there, vascillating. That would have been a good time to simply dive in, but I chose instead to make sure that it was, in fact, a good time. "I've got the ring. You want me to do it here?"

*mouth still agape*

"Well? Shall I?"

"Ummm . . . I . . . Uhhh . . ."

Somehow I got the idea that I could go for it, so I did: I hit one knee (a startlingly awkward position, it turns out) and popped the question. She was too shocked to do anything but say yes, and I suddenly realized that this must be the real reason that proposals ought to come as a surprise. It's not important so that she can have a pleasant surprise; it's important so she'll be caught completely off-guard and won't have time to think about doing anything stupid . . . like not accepting. I offered her the ring, box and all, only to be met with: "I'm not putting it on! That's your job!"

"Oh." Well, it was all the excuse I needed to stand back up, anyway. I fumbled it out, slipped it almost-deftly onto her finger, and we continued with our walk while she stared at the shiny-ness and tried to recover. We reached the bottom of the hill, and the center of the garden, only to find that it was even more isolated, and more beautiful, than the location I had picked. I had jumped the gun, snatching at the first hint of complete isolation for fear of somehow running into a large group of people around the next bend and being completely unable to proceed. Rachel looked around sadly, "This is a pretty spot, too."

*sigh* "You want me to ask again?"

*large grin, nod*

*sigh* "Okay, gimme the ring back."

We selected a new spot together. I really can't do it justice without a lengthy and awkward description, but it was very pretty: a shady flagstone island in the center of a largeish pond fed by small watefalls and surrounded by bronze sculptures. I asked for the second time in much the same manner as I had pictured myself asking for the first time. "See?" I said, as I slid the ring back on. "I improve with practice."

Rachel has two proposal stories to choose between, and personally I rather prefer my second attempt . . . but the historian within constrains me to accuracy. And the storyteller within says that this version has a higher entertainment value. And maybe neither story is truly complete without its other half.

Gallagher and Randy finally reappeared as Rachel was talking to her parents on her cell phone. Her first words to both her father and her mother had been some variation of, "How could you not tell me?!" She claims to hate surprises . . . and definitely hates being "the last to know." Gallagher amused himself by listing off everyone else who had known of my plans beforehand, including Uncle Doug and his (Gallagher's) parents. Oh, I feel should note somewhere the oddity of Randy's presence on both my first date and at the scene of my engagement a year later. I guess I'll file that away under "Random Wheeler Trivia." We returned to Longview in high spirits, allowing the conversation to roam here and there. One particularly memorable exchange comes to mind.

Randy (from the front seat, after a pause in the conversation): Rachel, are you looking at your ring?

Rachel (gaze flying guiltily upwards as right hand protectively covers ring): No!

When we got back on-campus, I walked Rachel back to her apartment and turned her over to Paige, then left before the squealing could begin in earnest. I called my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, Andy, and Scholl, and tried a few other people, but couldn't get through. Then I cleaned up, dressed up, and went to the Olive Garden for supper with Rachel. By then she was quite drained from talking to people herself, but food cheered us both up a great deal before we crossed the street to meet up with our friends at Marble Slab.

There was quite a crowd waiting when we arrived: Gallagher, Randy, Martinez, Uncle Doug, Anna, Scholl, Sharon, Moore, Sarah, Tim, Brian, Jonathan (my future brother-in-law), and a surprise appearance by Ardith, who had fortuitously blown into town for Thursday's Career Fair. The effect was only slightly overwhelming, and I had a wonderful time joking and laughing. And Gallagher bought me and Rachel ice cream. Gallagher is the man. Rachel and I spent the last few hours before sleep at the Mayes' apartment with Morgan, Caleb, Ashley and Audra, and then I dropped Rachel off on her porch and returned to collapse with exhaustion.

_______________________________________________________________

The past few days have been equally enjoyable. Rachel and I went around to tell all of our professors, and random people I barely know keep congratulating me in class or in the hallways. Word travels like a brushfire around here. Oh, and we got on the waiting list yesterday for Married Student Housing for next fall. We are couple #5. We beat couple #6 by about five minutes. Ah, yes, and I didn't mention that Rachel's finger wasn't properly sized when we investigated that aspect of the purchase some time ago, so the ring is a bit big. We wandered around for an hour this afternoon looking for someplace that had a ring guard that could help hold it in place, and made arrangements to have it sized down a bit. I'm supposed to take it back in tomorrow.

Anyway, now it's time to settle down into some semblance of normalcy again as we try to catch up on homework. I've got two or three major papers to write in the coming month, and I'm really hoping to do a good job on them because the topics interest me. And I'll be holding out for December 14th when I can escape to Guatemala for the first time in two years, this time with my fiancée in tow.

The Big News

So, basically I'm pretty sure all of my readers already know. Don't worry, an official version of events is near at hand. I'm just too tired to get to it tonight. It's been a fun day, a wonderful day, a memorable day . . . but a long day.

In the meantime, Rachel dearest, a few facts that might be of interest: I am your fiancé. You are my fiancée. Just remember, the one you have to spell has fewer letters. Here are a few other spellings that might come in handy in your account of events: "betrothed," "museum" (but remember, it was the R. W. Norton Art Gallery, not a museum), "Shreveport," "Louisiana," "diamond," and, of course, "Jared."

Yes, that last one is a joke.

Also, many sincere thanks to Gallagher and Randy for their integral role in the implementation of my schemings. I really appreciate it, you two. Gallagher, you are truly a Roommate among Roommates. I have a very high regard for most of my college roommates, and certainly for all of my current roommates, but you have definitely gone far beyond the call of duty today. Yes, I'll tell all my single friends.

As for the rest of you, you may amuse yourselves whilst you wait with Martinez's highly entertaining account of fall break. No, seriously, go read it.

Presentationing

I never want to do that again. Two Watson presentations in four days is a bit much . . . I don't have enough creativity to go around. On Monday I joined Paige, Ashley, and Randy in a 30-45 minute presentation over Deconstructive Literary Criticism in . . . well, Literary Criticism. Tonight I joined Randy and Gallagher in a 30-45 minute presentation over Wisdom Literature in the Bible in Reading the Bible as Literature. In the end, I dumped virtually every ounce of creative innovation I had into presentation one, and tried to let the momentum from that sail me through presentation two. It almost worked. We got a 100 on the first one, and a 92 on the second. I guess I'll briefly outline the two presentations.

For the first, Paige gave a devo over our tendency as Christians to "deconstruct" the Bible, taking verses out of context and ignoring historical and literary factors to make the text say whatever we want it to say. This was followed by two metaphorical representations of what deconstruction is not.

Randy and I donned signs which read "Deconstruction Critic" and Paige donned a sign which read "Famous Author." Taking up a notebook labelled "Great Work," she approached Randy and I (who had sunk to all fours and were prowling forward in as feral a manner as possible) with much trepidation. She gingerly held the notebook out at arm's length, whereupon we snatched it from her, and, with many savage snarls and growls, proceeded to tear it to shreds.

Next, Ashley came over and we gathered on one side of the room. I distributed dish towels and Paige distributed small glass plates to all group members. Then I pulled four hammers out of the crate and passed those out. We wrapped the plates up in the towels, and commenced to demolish them with the hammers. It was all very satisfying . . . but that's beside the point.

Ashley then stood up and gave an excellent summary of what deconstruction actually is while the rest of us passed out brownies. In case anyone doesn't know, deconstruction essentially attempts to take a literary text and reveal its inconsistencies and the subjective, hierarchical ways in which it uses language in order to point out the text can viably hold an infinite number of conflicting meanings. If that doesn't seem to make much sense, don't worry. Not even deconstructive critics seem to know what they're about half the time.

After that was over, Randy and I, standing in for deconstruction and formalism, respectively, attempted to portray the disagreements between these two opposing schools of theory through a scripted argument. The turn of phrase of which I was most proud was when I had the deconstructionist refer to the text as "an artificial construct of the hierarchical subconscious categorization of your binary language modalities." It sounds like total BS and doesn't seem to mean anything, but at the same time, its exactly what a deconstructionist would actually say. No wonder everyone complains that their writings are impossible to understand.

Anyway, the debate quickly degenerated into random name-calling, and . . . Well, this is probably a "you-had-to-be-there" gag, but I'm gonna tell it anyway. Randy and I had planned and practiced this joke several times, but we wanted to make it look like a complete accident. I wasn't confident of my ability to do this because it required me to bust up laughing, and we practiced so many times that I wasn't sure I could find it funny anymore. It didn't actually prove to be a problem.

I called Randy "crazy nonconformist!" He called me "self-deceiving traditionalist!" At this point, I snatched up a padded staff (taller than me) that we had borrowed from a friend. Holding it as low down as I could, I waved it at him (as suggestively as possible) and yelled, "Hack!" He responded immediately, "Freud! Fraud! . . . Fraud!" The script clearly called for him to say "fraud" and it was obviously what he had meant to say, but he passed it off perfectly as though he had just made the textbook definition of a Freudian slip. All I had to do was completely lose my composure and collapse, laughing, into the nearest wall, and the entire room broke up.

It took the better part of 60 seconds for us to pull it back together, and as we were about to begin again, Watson piped up from the back with, "Now that had meaning." I began again with the insults, and when we got to "fraud," everyone started laughing again, even though Randy said it perfectly the second time. That was when I knew we had won.

Moving on, we then gave a brief overview of some of the major figures in the field of deconstruction, and went into the "Deconstructive Magic Act" with "The Amazing Randy!" (and his lovely assistant, Paige) . . . "They will deconstruct a text before your very eyes!" We used Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse," which was ideal for our purposes. Nevertheless, I was a bit nervous about how the class might react, and we prefaced the piece with a disclaimer/word of warning.

The poem begins "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" and contains an additional f-bomb later on. No one objected, however, and the deconstruction proceeded without a hitch. Watson later complimented us on our choice of text and deconstructing prowess. The poem had been entered into the Power Point slide word by word and we had filled the entire thing to the brim with animations of all kinds so that we could literally tear the text apart in front of them. I will withhold further details for now as I intend to reproduce what we came up with as my journal for this theory. It'll show up on here eventually.

After that, we ended the presentation with a little audience participation. We had gotten Uncle Doug to take his circular saw and slice a phone book in half for us, and had then wrapped it with wrapping paper and labelled it "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." At this point, we got Dr. Solganick to come to the front of the room to "deconstruct the text." He was, as planned, unable to tear through it on his own, so I divided the class into their groups and went around with special instructions for all, as follows:

-Two groups of four were divided in half. Two people in one were to yell, "male!" and the other two would respond with, "female!" while the other group would go back and forth with "black!" and "white!" This symbolized the binary oppositional hierarchies within the text.

-Two groups of four were to wave their arms back and forth, chanting "Yes I will, no I won't!" repeatedly. This symbolized the inconsistencies within the text.

-One group of four was to turn upside-down in their chairs to symbolize turning the text on its head.

-One group of four (our guests, including Moore, Sharpton, and Martinez) was split into the four corners of the room, "marginalized" if you will, and had to approach the center of the room, waving their arms and chanting "centralize!" in unison. This symbolized, obviously, the idea of drawing attention to the marginalized details in the text.

When all of these got going at once, at my direction, the effect was noisy and chaotic . . . exactly as I hoped. I let it go for about 10 seconds, then cut everyone off and directed attention to Dr. Solganick who, with the aid of the class and a bit of physical effort, managed to rip that massive chunk of book completely in two. Cheers and applause followed, and our presentation ended.

Fast-forward to Thursday: This one can go much faster, cuz it kinda sucked. Paige, Ashley, Randy, and I came in first and pulled up our first Deconstruction slide, pretending to do the same presentation from Monday over again, since it went over so well the first time. Gallagher came in almost immediately and chased us out with the padded staff. Randy shouted "Freud! Fraud!" as he left the room. Randy and I changed into academic robes while Gallagher, who was already wearing them, gave a devo. We borrowed robes from Drs. Johnson, Solganick, and Hummel, 'cuz we thought it would be appropriate to a presentation on Wisdom Literature. Our doctoral robes were greeted with much appreciation.

I re-entered the room wearing a large, blue, Mexican sombrero, and Gallagher and I argue briefly over whether it was "funny" and "clever" or not before I gave in reluctantly and traded it for Dr. Solganick's poofy blue doctoral hat thingie. Gallagher then talked about the essentials of Wisdom Literature and we moved into Proverbs.

A few days before, Gallagher fed the book through the Markov Chain generator, which essentially picks a random word from whatever you feed it, then selects a random word from the list of words that follow that word, and repeats this cycle until you tell it to stop. From this we selected a number of humorous "proverbs" that sounded almost real and mixed them with actual proverbs. We were then ready to run our game show, "Bible or Blasphemy," hosted by "The Amazing Randy!" (and his lovely assistant, Gallagher). We used the exact same Power Point slide we had used from the other presentation.

The class failed miserably (mostly on purpose) at selecting the real proverbs, and were branded heretics, fit to be burned. Randy presented on the salient points of the book of Proverbs and we moved on to Ecclesiastes.

I gave a brief presentation on the prominence of Ecclesiastes and its themes in our literature, citing "Parker's Back" by Flannery O'Connor, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, "Nothing New Under the Sun" (from Homer Price) by Robert McCloskey, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and "Ozymandias" and "Mutability" by Percy Shelley. Then Gallagher talked about the important facets of the book itself.

Finally, Gallagher discussed the book of Job and we ended with an epic limerick which Gallagher and I had written on the book itself. We posted signs up on the board labelling the different parts, and moved around under the signs for each speaking part so people would know who was talking. That was basically it. We were underprepared, and while we had some pretty good gimmicks, overall we were not pleased with our efforts. We were happy to get a 92, and glad when it was over. I'll try to post the limerick soon, 'cuz I really am proud of it.

I'm tired. Goodnight.

Monday Madness

Mondays are gonna be weird, I can already tell. As you saw from the schedule in my last post, Monday evenings are very full indeed, and this Monday had an additional (short) AHM meeting crammed in-between the Senior Honors Seminar and the Newspaper meeting. But first things first, I suppose.

Apocalypse through the Ages was extremely short this week because Dr. Hood had to go to Dallas. We met, blazed through the syllabus, and broke for the week with instructions to hammer out a definition of "Apocalypse" amongst ourselves on the discussion board. Meanwhile, we have 150 pages of reading for next Monday, and we need to pick our top two selections from the list of books to review and present to the class. I'll let you know when mine is assigned.

Senior Honors Seminar made me feel like a freshman again. A few of us arrived early and in high spirits, and, as we were once wont to do, we messed with the room, turning everything to face the back. That'll be a fun part of each week, I'm sure. Then, after the brief AHM meeting, we went down to Longview Hall lobby and worked ourselves into something of a silly frenzy while waiting for the newspaper meeting to start.

When it finally did start, I got assigned to cover the story I had suggested: Longview Community Theater's forthcoming production of "The Nerd." I have/had a few other ideas which I will work on producing as well. In the meantime, it's going to be a very busy week, as predicted. I was very pleased, though, by the fact that the other two seminars will not add more than 10 pages more to my writing workload, although they have increased the reading load by four books.

I don't know, in the weeks ahead, how many updates on personal life I'll be able to put together, but expect to see me posting assignments before too long.

A Novel Workload

Classes started on Tuesday, and I've just finished my third day of them. I'm taking seven classes this semester, but three of them meet only on Monday and all of those are one-hour courses. Nevertheless, I've now been in just over half of my classes and I'm already severely intimidated by the workload. I was reduced almost to whimpering this evening when class number four piled the assignments on . . . but perhaps I'd better go over my schedule, then proceed from there. As it stands now, this is my week:

Monday

1:30-2:25 - Literary Criticism (Dr. Watson)

4:00-5:00 - Apocalypse through the Ages (Dr. R. V. Hood)

6:00-7:00 - Senior Honors Seminar (Dr. Kubricht)

8:00-9:00 - Newspaper (English Internship credit)

Tuesday

3:00-4:20 - C. S. Lewis (Dr. Solganick)

5:15-9:15 - Library

Wednesday

1:30-2:25 - Lit Crit

5:15-7:15 - Senior History Research: Intellectual History in America (Dr. Johnson)

Thursday

3:00-4:20 - Lewis

6:00-9:00 - Reading the Bible as Literature (Dr. Watson)

9:00-12:00 - Library

Friday

10:00-1:00 - Library

1:30-2:25 - Lit Crit

Saturday

1:00-5:00 - Library

Now, that's just my regularly scheduled events. Already this week I'll be helping out at the Student Organization Mall Party (STOMP) booth for the English Honor Society from 4 to 7. On Saturday evening we have Honors Movie Night. Sunday evening is the dinner for History/Political Science majors. Things are just cropping up all over, it seems.

Now, I know what you're thinking . . . I have a really nice schedule. And it's true, I do. That fact will serve me well this semester. I don't have to be up in the morning if I don't want to, except for late on Fridays. That plays to my strengths since my mind works better later in the day. It means I can stay up late working on homework and not have to lose sleep. It's great that this is so, because I'm going to need it later, and here's why:

C. S. Lewis

For class we are required to read Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, and The Abolition of Man. We'll spend the first month on Mere Christianity, then it'll be a book a week for the rest. The culmination of all this will be an 8-12 page paper and presentation over a work by C. S. Lewis that we did not read for the course. People were selecting books like crazy after the first class, so I figured I'd better get my bid in. I will be doing my favorite Lewis book: Till We Have Faces.

Literary Criticism

This course wants me to die. Little does it know that I plan to have fun in it. The reading includes Heart of Darkness and Oedipus the King and critical essays on them, Texts and Contexts (a manual of various critical theories), and piles and piles of things from our Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, from Plato to Nietzche and everything in between. For Monday I need to have read and marked up the text of Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Each reading we do is a journal opportunity, and I need to complete 20 journals by the end of the semester. There will also be a group presentation, and I have already formed a group with Paige, Randy, and Ashley to present on Deconstructionism. Should be fun. Finally, we have to write a 5-7 page critical paper for presentation at the Student Literary Conference we'll be organizing for the end of the semester. Estimated writing: 50-60 pages

Intellectual History in America

For this course, which is an independent study with weekly meetings for discussion of our readings, I need to complete The Education of Henry Adams and whatever other weekly readings crop up (looks to be about 30 pages a week). Most of our weekly readings will also require a 1-2 page paper of our thoughts on the reading. I need to write a 4-5 page paper on The Education of Henry Adams as well. This portion of the class will be over by late October and we will focus entirely on the major paper for the class (topic forthcoming . . . I have some ideas, but nothing set in stone). This paper will also be presented to our classmates, and has a length requirement of something like 20-25 pages. Estimated writing: 40-45 pages

Reading the Bible as Literature

This class, too, will be a blast. As I see it, it's basically a Bible class that covers everything but what the Bible teaches. This includes the history of how the Bible has arrived in our hands in its present form, the impact it has had on the development of literature and culture, the impact that evolving language has had on it, and a study of the various literary genres of the Bible. Our texts for the course are Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired, How to Read the Bible as Literature, and The Great Code: the Bible and Literature by Northrop Frye. As with Lit Crit, each reading presents us with a journal opportunity, but we *only* have to write 10 for this class. We have a group presentation for this class, as well, and I will be presenting with Randy and Gallagher on . . . something. We haven't picked a topic yet. Estimated writing: 25-30 pages

As you can see, without even counting the writing I'll be doing for the newspaper and for my two honors seminars, I'm already at somewhere between 125 and 150 pages of writing for the semester, to say nothing of the reading and my extracurricular activities, which are at an all-time high this year. I know I can do it, but the thought of actually doing it is still intimidating. So, we'll see how the semester develops, and I'll keep you posted as best I can. Even if I don't post actual progress reports very often, I'll at least be posting a great deal of what I write, so you can keep track of things that way. Wish me luck.

Reflectioning

I am 22 today. Huzzah. I celebrated by taking the day off from work (as I have finally reached an age where I can't be assured of the chance to do that every year on my birthday). I slept in, messed around on the computer, read a bit . . . Then got a call from Scholl in the early afternoon with the offer to go to CiCi's for lunch on the condition that I come pick him up. This I gladly did, and we had a great time gabbing and eating before returning to his apartment to play World of WarCraft for a few hours (but you don't want to hear about that).

This evening saw me at Ryan's Steakhouse with . . . (thinks) . . . Scholl, Anna, Doug, Moore, Toad, Molly, and Gillis. I really like the food there. And the company wasn't half-bad either. Then Moore, Doug and I returned to campus to play World of WarCraft together . . . getting as much gaming out of our systems as possible before the return of Wilson the Stern on Saturday. Oh, yes . . . and there were various and sundry phone conversations with friends and relatives who live far away, of course. I enjoyed myself today . . . but I can't wait for everyone to get back. Even though I know that, when they do, things are going to be crazy busy around here . . .

. . . like they haven't been all summer. I think I might have been depressed at various points this summer. I need something to motivate me, and there were times this summer when I had nothing: no job, desire to do anything, food . . . whatever. It wasn't a healthy summer. My instinct, everytime I run the past few months through my mind, is to say it was a horrifically unproductive summer, but that simply isn't true. Granted, I made hardly any money this summer, but I got 9 hours of college credit out of the way, and made A's in all three classes.

I attended some great performances . . . The Pirates of Penzance, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream . . . visited California for the first time, read some great books and journaled my thoughts about them, saw some really excellent movies . . . Why can't I shake the feeling that I just blew a summer?

Let's blame World of WarCraft, shall we? I've had a wonderful time playing it this summer, and it's been a great way to interact with people who weren't around . . . especially my good friend Andy in Colorado (who sent me the game in the first place). After a summer of playing, I have eight characters, and I can't seem to settle on just one, much to everyone's chagrin. So I play them all some, and continue to create even more. It's terrible. Alright, I'm only going to do this once. My characters and servers are: lvl 33 Tauren druid (Dragonblight), lvl 30 Night Elf druid (Icecrown), lvl 27 Human priest (IC), lvl 20 Troll priest (DB), lvl 16 Gnome rogue (IC), lvl 12 Human paladin (IC), lvl 12 Night Elf warrior (IC), lvl 11 Night Elf rogue (Thunderhorn).

On to my top ten movies of Summer '05, in no particular order:

-White Oleander

-Rebecca

-Judgment at Nuremberg

-Pulp Fiction

-Pleasantville

-Hotel Rwanda

-Magnolia

-Dogville

-The Man Who Would Be King

-Wit

This particular top ten is unusual for a few reasons. First, I had never seen nine of these movies before in my life (Rebecca being the lone exception). I saw White Oleander based on the recommendation of Paige, then read the book . . . I loved both of them, and recommend both of them (acknowledging the raw content, but not allowing it to interfere with my glowing opinion of the product). Judgment at Nuremberg . . . I need to own this movie. It was the best one I saw all summer. Pulp Fiction represents the only Quentin Tarantino movie I've ever seen . . . and what a movie (but I've discussed it enough in other places).

Pleasantville, which I saw three times this summer, was a delight to both the eye and the mind. Hotel Rwanda is just good historical drama. Magnolia provided some very interesting viewing, and kept me guessing where the heck it was going for three hours until the climax of biblical proportions. Never seen a movie like it. Ditto Dogville, but for very different reasons. I almost didn't watch Dogville after reading some reviews about it, but it was already here so I decided to brave it. I actually watched it with the Scholls over the course of two sittings, and we enjoyed it. It is a movie that relies wholly on the strength of its characters, and they pull through . . . and there is a fascinating Christian interpretation that can be applied to it. High-quality viewing, indeed.

I saw The Man Who Would Be King based on Fry's recommendation, and the turns of the main character's fortunes kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. Very exciting. Finally, Wit was a bit of a surprise. Ashley picked it from the library and I watched it with her . . . it's the only made-for-TV movie to make one of my top ten lists. It's based on a stage play, stars Emma Thompson, and pretty much ignores the "fourth wall" entirely. I didn't expect to enjoy it, but I couldn't deny that it was a fantastic movie once it was over.

Anyway, that's most of what anyone who was curious needs to know about my summer that I haven't written sometime during it. For now, I'm tired . . . both physically and of hot weather and "vacation." Bring on the semester.

Odds and Ends

And so I left California. There wasn't much more to it than that, really . . . Sunday was very relaxing. I sat around the house, tried my hand at painting (with questionable results), went to a drive-in theater to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again (never been to one before, actually), etc. And then I went to board my plane in San Jose at the last possible second on Monday the 15th. We were delayed coming into Dallas due to whether and spent about 40 minutes circling over Wichita Falls. Scholl wanted to go to Waffle Shoppe after I got back, and I was game, so I went . . . and then Randy wanted to watch Six Feet Under, for which I was also game. So, all in all, it was ridiculously late when I finally went to sleep that night. Or morning.

Thus ended my grand time in California, and thus begun my hectic last few weeks before school started. A few highlights:

Wilson and I met with Dr. Hudson (new Vice President of Academic Affairs) and Dr. Coppinger (Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs and my Academic Advisor) to voice some of our concerns and suggestions regarding the LeTourneau's History Program. Our basic problems are threefold. First, we have two professors in the history department along with a certifiably insane adjunct who teaches one survey course. Dr. Johnson specializes in American history (but also covers political science and a few other things). Dr. Kubricht specializes in Russia and the Cold War (but also covers Western civilization and things like Constitutional Law). We don't have anyone who teaches upper-level courses dated before about 1700, which is sad.

Additionally, Dr. K will be leaving on sabbatical next spring, leaving history majors everywhere up the proverbial creek. Wilson and I will both lack one upper-level history course in our final semester. There are exactly two being offered, and we have each taken one of them. So, unless something is done, or we go elsewhere to transfer in credit, I will be taking American Constitutional Law with an adjunct professor (a subject which I have no interest in whatsoever at all) and Wilson will be taking Texas and the American West (he'd rather die).

Even beyond our personal complaints, survey history courses have shot well into overload every single semester for several semesters now, because we simply don't have enough faculty to teach everyone anymore . . . and the university continues to grow! It's madness! We consulted LeTourneau's 10-year plan, which I believe was drafted in 1999. It says that we ought to have 4 full-time faculty members by now, but we don't. Kinesiology, meanwhile, has nine out of a planned five professors. I feel hated on.

Our second problem involves a lack of exclusivity. Not to sound all snobbish, or anything, but I get really tired of sitting in, say, 19th Century Europe with someone who has never taken Western Civilization . . . or any other history course. The few history courses here that actually have prerequisites do not bother to enforce them, which means I'm in an upper-level class of 25 with 5 people who are actually interested in history. That sucks.

History courses right now don't even have an English comp requirement . . . which means that we get people who have never had to write a formal paper. And what this basically means in the end is that everyone suffers. The real history majors have the course dumbed down and don't learn as much. The poor techies flounder helplessly. The professors have to decide between flunking most of the class, or changing the way they teach. There are no history courses for history majors . . . the way every single other major has (bible, english, education, business, engineering, aviation . . . everyone but us . . . I'm feeling the hatred again).

And that brings me to the third point: courses we don't require. I feel like when I leave LeTourneau I will have received an education that was well-worth my time, and I feel this way for two reasons. Neither really has anything to do with being a history major. One reason is the excellent english faculty and classes, and the other is the invaluable supplement offered by specific Honors courses. After taking the Honors Historiography course last spring I feel more like a "real" history major than I ever have. It's a crime that we don't require a course like that of all our history students, but only offer it to a select group. No one should be allowed to seriously pursue history without that course.

Also, by virtue of incessant whining by Wilson and myself, we and a few other select history students have been given the opportunity to take an independent research seminar on American intellectual history. The course came about through a combination of Dr. K's clout and Dr. J's kindness (the university isn't, I understand, providing him with any additional compensation for offering this course to us). The idea for the course as I understand it is to give us a chance to take a course similar to the format of a grad school course (in addition to learning more about the particular topic in question). Courses introducing history students to proper methods of research, and preparing students for grad school, should also be required for history majors at LeTourneau . . . but, once again, it is offered in this case only to we few who have demanded it.

Anyway, that's a slightly jumbled overview of what we went to see Dr. Hudson about . . . The meeting went very well. Of course, I realize that I'm duplicating a lot of Wilson's post on this same topic, but I felt like writing it all out myself as well. Sorry if you already read it over there and are now bored to tears.

I also began my new job working at the LeTourneau library. It looks like, at least for now, I'll only be getting 10 hours a week, but I'll have over 30 hours in before school starts. So that'll be nice. So far I love the work. And, while it may look and sound like I and the other student workers at the library don't do much of anything, that's not strictly true. Working at the library is nice because you are allowed to read, do homework, or blog (furtive side-glance) if there is nothing else going on, but there is still plenty to do, I assure you. My favorite task is helping the people who call or approach the desk with research questions. You never know what they're going to ask next, and I enjoy the challenge of finding what they need . . . the lack of monotony alone puts it head and shoulders above most other jobs I've had.

Anyway, that's the bare bones of life at the moment. Everyone is trickling back into town now, and I don't expect to do much over the next week except work at the library, take care of odds and ends before the semester starts, and play computer games with the people who are here. But I think I'll save my summer summary post for later.

Part the Second

On Monday morning I awoke amidst a mad flurry of activity and did my best to, y'know, not stand around and look useless. Sadly, I think Jen was even more useful than me, and she wasn't even going. Anyway, the camper was successfully loaded and most of us piled into that while a few piled into the car to follow us to The Lake.

Knowing, as I did, that a three-day sailing trip was in my near future, I had purchased motion-sickness pills (may cause drowsiness) and I decided that this might be a good time to try them out. So I did. And I slept all the way to The River. But wait! you say. What, then, was all this talk of The Lake? Well, the multitudinous subtleties of the plan for the trip had not yet trickled down the chain of command to reach my ears. We were going to spend a day at The River, a couple of hours down the road towards The Lake, and then depart early the next morning to travel the remaining few hours to The Lake, there to stay until Wednesday lunchtime.

So . . . we got to The River and ate lunch. And then most of us, except females above a certain age bracket, set out on an expedition. The general idea was to hike two miles or so out into the hills to a place where we could easily climb down to the river, then float back to camp. I talked Rachel into coming along, and both of us immediately regretted it.

She started whining approximately five steps out of camp and continued, quite literally without pause, until we reached the river. It didn't help that we missed the path and wound up walking an extra half mile or so. I suspect, judging from the state she was in when we reached the water, that she was in the early stages of heat stroke . . . expending extra breath and saliva on talking didn't help. But the cold water helped immensely.

We wandered lazily downstream . . . about half of it was deep enough to swim, and the other half consisted of rocks to clamber over, so it was fun, if exhausting. We found a few ledges to dive off of, and so forth. For all of our jumping about, I think Rachel was the only person who hurt herself. And she also didn't jump. Ironic. She slipped on a rock and scraped, scratched and bruised a sizable portion of her left side. Ouch.

Aside from such minor mishaps, we returned, tired but happy (again, except for Rachel) to camp and had steak and potatoes. Yum. And then I went to bed more or less when the sun did . . . I never do that. In fact, I should note that I went to bed and got up earlier all week than I have since, like, high school. It was crazy.

After breakfast early Tuesday morning (and getting yelled at multiple times by the neighbors because of all the noise) we departed for The Lake. I slept most of the way again. As a consequence of this, I have no idea whatsoever at all where this lake is, what it's called, how far we drove . . . nothing. It could have been in Idaho for all I know. It wasn't, but it could have been and I never would have known.

We spent a happy day at The Lake, swimming and chicken fighting and so forth. I got burned, as usual, but not too badly. And I read and napped. Not exciting to read about, perhaps, but relaxing to experience, certainly. After supper I talked Rachel into taking a walk. She spotted a concrete building not too far away and thought it might contain bathroom facilities superior to the port-a-potty variety, so we headed that way.

To make a long story short, apparent distances of lights at night can be very deceiving. Those lights were actually the entrance to the park, at least a mile and a half away. By the time we got there, it was pitch black. Happily, there was at least a bathroom there, so the search was not entirely for naught. What I had at first taken for some sort of line dancing convocation nearby turned out to be a small youth rally. That was kind of trippy. I was halfway tempted to join them, just to see what would happen, but I was pretty tired. And so we wound our slow and weary way back to the camper in the dark, with less trouble finding it than I feared (we were gone for over an hour, I think) and I collapsed, exhausted, into my cot.

Wednesday saw everyone braving the freezing temperatures of The Lake for an early morning swim. I passed. Once everyone else was dry, we set out once again, this time back the way we had come. I fell asleep. Again. Yes, I'm boring. Go away. We had lunch on a beach on the way home, and explored the finger of haphazardly piled boulders that jutted several hundred yards out into the water. And then we got home and began to prepare for the next expedition.

Stay tuned for part three of my thrilling visit to California, coming soon. Don't worry, I spend less time asleep after this.

. . . Or Bust

For those of you who somehow missed the fact . . . Well, alright, I guess I didn't exactly blog anything about it. I meant to shortly before departure, but the opportunity eluded me. Anyway, I am in California right now (and have been since Friday night), visiting the Bamboo Giant Nursery (and surrounding area) until the 15th. If a visit to Bamboo Giant seems excessively random to you, you probably weren't aware that Rachel lives here. I have come to meet her family, see where she lives, and get a taste of California (having never traveled farther west than Colorado before).

My flight from Dallas was set to leave at 7:35 Friday evening, and Anna and Scholl were good enough to drive me to the airport. It was a pleasant enough journey, save for one thing: Scholl, in his infinite wisdom, had consumed sandwiches made of garlic-flavored bologna for lunch, and had sent a carbonated beverage chasing after them. Thus, our trip to Dallas was punctuated by repeated blasts of foul-smelling (in addition to the usual foul-sounding) emissions from his oral orifice. Guh.

I should have realized that this was an ill omen, but even if I had it wouldn't have done me a great deal of good. Upon arrival in Dallas I learned that bad weather in Denver would be delaying my flight by a full hour, thus causing me to miss my connection to San Jose, thus making life suck for me. My options were:

-Return to Longview and then come back to Dallas for a 6:45 am flight (ha! . . . not an option).

-Stay in Dallas and take the 6:45 am flight.

-Fly to Denver as planned and spend the night in the Denver airport, leaving at 8:30 the next morning.

None of these was particularly appealing, and the airline was no help whatsoever. Some asinine company policy stated that if the flight were cancelled they could find me accomodations with another airline or somewhere to stay the night, but if I miss a flight due to bad weather then I am simply considered "late for the flight" and thus get nothing. Because I control the weather, you see.

Well, I wandered over to the pay phones and sent calls flying in all directions. I called the Scholls, my friend Andy in Colorado Springs, and Rachel. After a good deal of negotiating, it was decided that I would spend the night in the Denver airport and arrive in California at the earliest possible moment. The ticket lady only checked my bag to Denver and said I would have to claim it there and re-check it in the morning. I snatched my ticket and stalked through security to wait for the plane to arrive.

To make a long story short, as I listened to announcements and kept a careful eye on my watch, I began to suspect that "late" was a fairly relative term in this case. In the end, we arrived in Denver precisely five minutes later than we were originally scheduled to arrive. Furthermore, I walked out of the arrival gate and heard "Now boarding all rows for San Jose" almost directly in my right ear. I turned, and lo and behold, there were people boarding the San Jose plane not 10 feet from where I stood.

I walked over to the airline dude behind the counter, explained myself, and requested permission to board. This permission was granted, with the condition that my luggage would have to follow me the next day. Well, duh . . . I didn't even have time to find a phone and inform Rachel of the change in plans. I certainly didn't have time to trot myself down to the Baggage Claim, claim my baggage, check it back on, re-clear security, and return to the gate in time to make the plane. Leaving the luggage just seemed like an excellent move all around, so I trotted aboard and took my seat in the very last row.

I asked a stewardess if there were any telephone facilities aboard (thinking of the kind which I used to see so often in the backs of seats), but I was informed that there were not. Frontier Airlines has replaced communication with entertainment (every seat had a small television). Happily, the guy across the aisle offered me the use of his cell phone, and I called ahead and arranged to be picked up on schedule. I gratefully returned the cell phone, settled back in my seat with a sigh, and decided that I would not be at all upset if this were the most exciting thing that happened to me for the next 10 days.

Rachel and her sister Julie were waiting to pick me up in San Jose and we returned to home base and went directly to sleep upon arrival. The next morning, Rachel decided it would amusing to bring the dog (Chudley) along to wake me up at 8:14. Hahaha. And then I had a couple of minutes in which to prepare myself to meet everyone else at breakfast. Rachel has nine siblings, but David, the eldest, no longer lives at home, and Rebecca (between Daniel and Jonathan/Julie, who are twins) had already left for work. Jonathan I know from school, and Julie I had met the night before.

Anyway, I guess I'd better stop tossing around the boring details . . . it's too complicated. I met Rachel's parents. I met her five youngest siblings (ages 5 to 15, names Andrew, Robert, Anna Racquel, Roger, and Daniel). After breakfast I met her grandma, her grandma's good friend (commonly known as "Aunt El"), and her co-workers. After a brief look around the nursery, we left to pick up Rachel's friend Jen, who is leaving for China for a year on Friday (at least I think it's Friday). Then we drove down to Santa Cruz and walked around on the boardwalk and out to the end of the wharf.

All of this was fairly entertaining. Sea lions like to jump up onto the supports of the wharf at high tide and sleep and we saw dozens of them resting under there. A few were fighting over various spots and making a great deal of noise doing it. After wandering about here for awhile and eating lunch, we returned home to get ready for church. The Gullmans go to Santa Cruz Bible Church, which meets on Saturday nights.

After church we went to a Chinese restaurant, were I was told that I would be eating with chopsticks. I've never eaten with chopsticks before in my life. Rachel swiped my fork on her dad's orders and then three or four different people gave me tutorials while we waited for the food. In the end, I did get enough to eat, and eventually I did alright with the chopsticks, I suppose.

At first, I was doing so badly that the waitress slipped me a fork, which Rachel promptly confiscated. MoM Gullman (sitting to my left) took pity on me at one point and also surreptitiously slipped me a fork. I was feeling stubborn at this point and I left it where Rachel couldn't see it and kept practicing with the chopsticks. Finally, Rachel herself quietly passed me a fork, and when the chunks on my plate where down to the size of a single grain of rice, I went with the fork.

Jen spent the night and we watched a few movies before going to bed. This morning (Sunday) we drove up to La Honda, about an hour to the north, to visit (in no particular order): David, the redwoods, Rachel's old house, Rachel's old church, etc. We stopped at a lighthouse on the way, and that was pretty cool to see. All things considered, we had rather a good time, but I need to get to bed now. We watched another movie tonight, and tomorrow morning, bright and early, Jen will go one way and everyone else will go another. The RV will be loaded up and we will all troop down to The Lake, which, I am told, is about four or five hours south of here. We'll be there until Wednesday . . . perhaps you will hear from me again then.

Wish me luck.

Philosophomory

A few months ago I watched Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and loved it. As I'm sure you all know, I routinely display the percentage rating I give movies here on my blog, and the rating for Pulp Fiction reflected this. A regular commenter, who I have a great deal of respect for, noted that the movie has a great deal, perhaps an excessive amount, of foul language, and I responded with a quick rundown of what I loved about the film and drew (speaking of gratuitous) a parallel between it and works by an author that I know he loves.

At this point, my challenger returned, as he is often wont to do (unwilling as he is to allow me to get away with not fully fleshing out what I believe and why when I make a controversial statement), and presented me with some questions. Namely, what I was asked boiled down to this: "How much intellectually stimulating content is required in order to overcome excess profanity or other troubling content?"

I quickly realized two things: First, that I would not be able to manage a proper response in the comment sections. Second, that I was essentially being asked to reveal a fairly vital chunk of my personal philosophy of art. I felt that this needed to be done eventually anyway, and that this was the perfect opportunity to do it. So I took a running start at the thing, and then (quite frankly) became intimidated at the prospect and allowed myself to become bogged down by multitudinous summertime activities and responsibilities. A few things have struck me with particular force since then, and I have taken what I began with, expanded it and modified it, and I hope that it now turns out that I have something to say after all.

My philosophy of art, as I picture it in my head, has long appeared to me as giant jigsaw puzzle being assembled without the benefit of reference to the box it came in. I do have a philosophy, yes, but it is not a fully developed one. It has grown in two years from the presence of only a few properly anchored pieces to a place where I am beginning to finally conceive an idea of the outline of the finished product.

This, I think, is how it should be. A philosophy of art needs sufficient time to develop, and I am still collecting data and experience for mine. I am still enlarging a pool of study materials consisting of, in particular, works of literature and film and fitting them into place within the framework that is slowly taking shape in my mind. It is quite probable that this process began very near to the time when I first began this blog, and if one were to read through the entirety of the thing (a task I do not by any means recommend that you undertake) it is just possible that I have conveyed (or am beginning to convey) a sense of this dark shape.

I think the formal beginnings of this process can be traced directly to the Honors class "Only Inklings" which I took during the fall of my sophomore year. It was in this class that I was finally made to understand that a certain "guilty" belief which I held more or less in secret might not come as sharply into conflict with my Christianity as I had formerly been led to believe. Namely, the idea was that truth in art (in particular, as I say, in the art of narrative, i.e. literature and film) may exist with or without the supporting presence of any other virtue, and furthermore, this truth is worth pursuing for its own sake alone, perhaps even as the supreme quality (beyond mere technical brilliance) which makes consumption of art worthwhile.

Of course, I didn't have it spelled out, even for myself, nearly that explicitly at first. However, the journey in this direction has continued in a more or less continuous flow through at least one class during each semester of my college experience. Other major contributors to this particular area include English Literature II, Studies in American Film, World Literature Through Film, American Literature II. I have similarly high expectations of my upcoming classes in Reading the Bible as Literature and Literary Criticism, and perhaps my Senior History Research Seminar as well.

However, the process has of course extended well into the realm of extracurricular activities. Long before Watson's film class and the beginnings of the movie list, my friends and I were seeking out, viewing, and discussing films of very limited popular appeal and very high critical acclaim, content no object. Movies aside, I have shared more discussions with these same friends than I could possibly enumerate on a wide-ranging variety of topics, and these, in addition to my constant visits with professors outside of class, have further served to drop puzzle pieces into place. My own independent readings (though always less thorough than I would wish) have played an important role as well.

A few important steps along the way have included a growing (but still far from perfected) ability to pick those worthwhile nuggets of truth out of a story in the first place, and, through an ever-widening exposure to those works which are widely considered great, the ability to draw and strengthen thematic connections between authors and directors who present similar ideas and philosophies to their audiences. These are the things that I strive to do.

In the end, although I was initially intimidated by the prospect of attempting to encapsulate a few years of broad study in a brief but meaningful post, and then transform that into a blithe and pithy philosophical motto, I have come to realize that explaining where I am now does not require any such profundity or verbosity. My not-quite-complete and not-totally-substantiated personal philosophy of art is a simple one. Seeing what I have already expressed of it, you may find yourself several hundred yards ahead of me . . . or you may believe that I am on the wrong track entirely. That's fine. I invite and encourage any and all comments.

What I believe is this: Fiction or nonfiction, adaptation, remake, reimagination, or based-on-true-events, regardless of genre or source material, a work of art in the realms of literature and film derives a significant portion of its inherent value from the validity of what it communicates. Unless its purpose is purely to entertain (and while I may sometimes enjoy such things, I do not allow them anywhere near, say, the same latitude of expression through questionable content), any book or movie has something to say . . . some message it is trying to sell you. It is my goal and my great joy to search for and find this message . . . to discover precisely what the artist is trying to sell me, how, and why.

The next step, which I approach even more seriously, but with no less enjoyment, is to discover whether the artist's message is a true and worthy one. This is accomplished by applying to it my personal philosophy of religion, yet another growing, but still not fully matured, area of my worldview which has developed along a different but parallel path to my philosophy of art, through yet more classes, discussions, etc. (another subject for another time . . . perhaps).

Does the idea, ideal, philosophy, lesson . . . whatever . . . which is being presented to me meet with an objective, biblical standard of Truth? If so, how can I benefit from having seen this particular "spin" on the issue? How might I incorporate it into what I know, believe, and hope to pass on to others? What new connections or ideas might it help me to see? If the issue does not come across as true, why not? Where did it go wrong? How might it be refuted and shown to be untrue? How believable might this idea be to someone who doesn't know any better, and how can I get a good enough handle on the issue to see their point of view? These are just a few of the many many questions that I have begun to try and ask myself as I watch or read.

At this point, you may all be realizing that I haven't ever really answered the original question. That's because I don't know whether there is one right answer. I'm no filthy relativist, but I really don't think there is one absolute line that can be drawn for everyone on this issue. At least, I hope there isn't, because I'm not quite sure exactly where my line goes yet . . . but I know that it's a lot deeper in the grey area (which some think I'm only imagining anyway) than most of my fellow Christians'.

In fact, a number of people I am very close to, people I respect and love, disagree rather pointedly with my perspective. And I think we are all still struggling with whether that's okay. For my part, I will willingly, even emphatically, acknowledge that my beliefs on this subject are not for everyone. Far from it. But they are my beliefs for all that. And, while I will try not to step maliciously on the toes of those who strongly disagree, I will not back down simply because they disagree, and I will continue the journey of personal discovery which I have begun. No one can begrudge me that, surely. I hope it lasts a lifetime, because it won't end until I have all the answers. And if and when that happens, well . . . Let's just say, if you think I'm insufferable now . . . ha!

No Work and All Plays

Yeah, the title is a sly and totally non-bitter reference to the fact that I hate looking for a job . . . but I hate not finding one even more. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about the fantastic time we all had attending the annual Texas Shakespeare Festival in Kilgore. (Be sure to also refer to the words of Wilson and of Gallagher on the subject . . . and Anna has a few relevant pictures up, as well.)

Saturday night was A Midsummer Night's Dream, easily my favorite Shakespeare comedy ever, and an excellent play in its own right. I've read it at least six times, a few of those with different groups of people, and seen the newer movie version (own it, in fact) . . . but this interpretation was creative enough to bring in ideas I had never seen or considered. Also, the casting emphasized some interesting parallels. Theseus and Oberon were played by the same actor, Hippolyta and Titania by the same actress, Philostrate and Puck by the same actor . . . additionally, Theseus and Hippolyta begin the play in a conflict no less violent than the one between the Fairy King and Queen. I thought it worked very nicely, establishing tension across the board and making the happy ending all the more joyous by contrast.

The sets were great, particularly the Grecian interiors. They had a number of very convincing columns made of some sort of creased cloth with carved wooden tops and bottoms which folded and unfolded from the ceiling quickly, silently, and smoothly between scenes. One of our favorite effects in the play involved Bottom and company traversing the stage en route somewhere (into the woods or to the palace) between scenes. The only light came from behind the painted night sky at the very back of the stage, showing the rustics silhouetted very clearly against it. As Wilson pointed out afterwards, their costumes were made so as to give each a distinct shape and personality which fit their trade, and both times it happened it was an excellent scene transition.

Speaking of the costumes, I thought they were all . . . Okay, I won't lie. When you're on the 2nd row and there are guys in very short skirts falling hither and thither with their legs sprawling wide . . . that's not cool. But aside from that, the costumes were quite good. The fairies all wore headgear that was full of small lights and when they skipped through the darkened theater the effect was quite ethereal. The rich green colors worn at the wedding banquet were particularly pleasing to the eye.

The acting was top-notch were it counted (and here I refer to my personal favorite character, Bottom the Weaver). He was great. In fact, all of the rustic craftsmen were extremely good and every one of their scenes had the audience absolutely rolling in the aisles. Puck got to do fun things with leaping through trapdoors . . . and of course he always has his moments. The various songs and dances were quite passable . . . in fact, I thought the music as a whole was very nice.

One slapstick device deserves special mention. It occurred at the point where mud wrestling was inserted into the movie (if you've seen it). It occurs at the absolute height of the mix-up, where both Demetrius and Lysander attempt to shove each other and Hermia out of the way in order to get at Helena while Hermia and Helena engage in a catfight. At one point, all four characters were stretched out across the front of the stage, each clinging desperately onto the leg of the person in front of them, attempting to haul them backwards, while hopping on a single leg of their own . . . and continuing to say their lines. Absolutely classic.

And no description of the acting could be complete without a brief mention of the guy who played Mustardseed. He was quite gay. Nope. He was happy, too, but I meant the other one. He was also wearing very short boxer briefs. *shudders* Typecasting fairies . . .

At any rate, as expected, it was quite a memorable experience, and one which I would be tempted to repeat again next week were it not for the prohibitively large cost combined with a lack of ready and steady income. Ah, well . . . memory alone will have to serve.

Sunday night was a good deal more somber, with a performance of Macbeth. It was the fourth play I have attended there, but the first tragedy, and I was interested to see how they would handle it. The set was quite sparse, being almost entirely black with one large, red sun (made me think of Charn from The Magician's Nephew) painted on the right side of the backdrop. More difficult to notice at the beginning was that the center of the stage was covered with an enormous black circle (difficult to spot because the rest of the stage was black as well).

However, with each successive murder during the play's first half (those being only two, Duncan and Banquo) the black circle fractured further, revealing a large reddish orange circle of a similair shade to the sun underneath. Very cool, and very effective. Because the sets were so sparse, a good deal was accomplished with the lighting and smoke. They had some very striking effects up their sleeves, particularly when Lady Macbeth was onstage alone.

The costumes were quite good here, as well. I'm not sure how . . . well, Scottish they were, exactly, but they were easy on the eyes. And I don't remember seeing any guys in short skirts (ironically, since we were further back for this play). Also, the copious amounts of fake blood splashed here and there on various people was realistic and gruesome enough to pass measure.

I thought the acting was quite good, really. Macbeth and Macduff were both excellent. The Weird Sisters were creepy (dressed like Celtic druids, basically). Lady Macbeth had some excellent scenes, but I thought she overdid it a bit here and there (this actress has had the leading female role in every play I have seen there, but her tendency to overact slightly is less noticeable in a comedy). The final fight scene between Macbeth and Macduff was fairly well coreographed . . . by which I mean it was pretty to look at, with lots of spinning and very little actual contact. I'm not hard to please.

As I observed at least twice at various points last night, tragedies are very long. But this one did manage to avoid tedium almost entirely, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself the second night as well. I shouldn't fail to mention, though, Gallagher and I were a bit concerned at the beginning. The guy who always announces the beginning of the play did the most retarded thing . . . he said "Macbeth" right there out loud. Everyone heard it. Glancing about nervously, we couldn't help but notice we were seated directly under the sound booth . . . and barring that I kept expecting there to be an actor taking an unexpected tumble through a trapdoor or a rogue Shakespeare hater within the audience opening fire with the small arsenal under their long, black trenchcoat. Thankfully, the performance came off without any consequences from the announcer's foolish tempting of the Fates, and I hope that every subsequent performance of "The Scottish Play" proceeds as smoothly.

And that was my weekend with Bill Shakespeare.

Was Today Some Kind of Holiday or Something?

In honor of Independence Day (USA, observed) I finished reading America (The Book) from cover to cover sometime very early this morning (like, 1:30-in-the-morning morning). And that's all. I even had Mexican food for lunch, Chinese food for supper, spent the morning moving out of the apartment I share with Koreans (with the aid of Gallagher . . . Irish descent), and spent a good deal of the afternoon and evening messing about with my paper on a book by a British author set chiefly in London and Berlin (no, not the Texan ones). I haven't done a single particularly American thing all day . . . and don't go trying to say that I've spent the day celebrating "The Great Melting-Pot" aspects of our nation, either.

LeTourneau University, in its infinite wisdom and boundless stupidity, is moving apartment dwellers up to the Quads for a few weeks and back again, chunk by chunk, that Physical Plant may have a chance to clean our carpets. And my turn to move fell on July 4th. I had to be out by 11 PM so that Physical Plant can start cleaning at 8 AM tomorrow morning . . . because the apartments really needed that nine hour break in-between, the poor dears. Ironically, my book report on The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is due July 5th at 8 AM in the morning. I don't know what that means, but it must be significant. Or maybe I've just been reading too much spy novel.

I'm not sure I understand why things work out this way. I have had two months of inactivity so total I could have afforded to spend hours finding and cataloguing new and exciting alternate routes between various important landmarks on campus or sitting in front of various mens restrooms and seeing which custodial cleaning crew could set the record for longest "Closed for Cleaning" status (that was a snarky in-joke). But, suddenly and all in one weekend, I am forced to write a paper, move myself and all of my important worldly goods several hundred yards uphill, and attend the Texas Shakespeare Festival with Anna, Scholl, Wilson, Gallagher, and Sharpton.

Okay, so maybe I wasn't forced to attend that last, but c'mon . . . it was important. Anyway, it's been a fun weekend, hanging with the Gallagher and the Wilson for the few days they were in town. And, in a way, I suppose the timing was good in that I was able to get Gallagher to assist me with the move (couldn't have done it without him, as a matter of fact).

And as for The Festival itself . . . Well, that certainly deserves its own post in a few hours, when I've spent some more time on my paper.

I Got Books!

Well, I knew there was a reason why I had brought an extra bag with me to West Texas, but I had forgotten precisely what that reason was until my Grandma asked me yesterday afternoon if I wanted to go look at the books she's been saving for me. My Grandma (if I haven't already mentioned this 513 times) is the librarian at Southland Public High School. She is constantly in the process of keeping the library's collection up-to-date and recently she has pulled a large number of old books that no one checks out off the shelves.

So we drove up to the school and I looked through the piles of books that lay before me and selected the following titles:

Charley's Aunt: A Play in Three Acts by Brandon Thomas

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

The Wild Duck and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen

1984 by George Orwell

The Sketch Book by Washington Irving

The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert

Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

The Iliad of Homer

Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Furthermore, I spent a bit of time both yesterday and today poking my nose into various bookstores around here looking for a particular item. I didn't find it, but I did purchase copies of the following:

Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (Complete, Unabridged, New Illustrated Edition)

America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction by Jon Stewart et al With a Foreword by Thomas Jefferson

I spent several hours poring over this last yesterday, laughing until I thought my spleen would explode. The humorous effect was exacerbated by the fact that no one else was particularly amused. My attempts to share the joy and humor were met with everything from frowns of derision to open stares of confusion. *sigh* Nobody appreciates good satire anymore.

For the uninitiated, let me attempt to describe what, exactly, this book is. Imagine "The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspre, Abridged" if you will. Got it? Good. Now imagine that, instead of the works of Shakespeare, you have a similar concept masquerading as an American Government textbook, complete with amusing footnotes. Are you beginning to get the idea? Yeah. It's flipping hilarious. (Skip below the fold for a brief excerpt.)

So, anyway, that pretty much sums up West Texas at the moment. My parents and the various aunt and uncle types are frantically preparing for the big celebration tomorrow, and I'm the only college-age cousin who has actually arrived in town, as yet. So, hopelessly and irrevocably stuck in-between two age groups, I spend my time sitting and reading, or sleeping.

Well, I could do a lot worse.

I wrestled with the idea of choosing just one funny to share from America (The Book) . . . It's all so great, and no one around here appreciates it, so you understand my dilemma. Finally, and for no particular reason, I settled on the following:

The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers

The debate over The Constitution prompted the two most influential series of essays in American history, The Federalist Papers and The Anti-Federalist Papers, two exhaustive and thoughtful meditations on the merits and failings of the nation's new blueprint.

You can read these hundreds of pages of dense, turgid prose, or you could skim these blurbs taken from reviews of The Constitution.

"The Constitution grabs you right from the Preamble and doesn't let go until the last Article . . . the must-ratify document of the summer!"
-Alexander Hamilton, New York Post

"A pathetic excuse of a social contract that makes John Locke's Two Treatises of Government look like Baron Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws."
-Richard Henry Lee, Richmond Chronicle-Courant

"If you base your new nation on only one fundamental set of governmental principles this year, make it this one!"
-James Madison, Hartford Gazette-Chronicle

"The 'Foundering' Fathers are at it again . . . who told these guys they could Found?!?"
-Samuel Bryan, Boston Courant-Gazette

". . . this follow-up to 'The Articles of Confederation' is the rare sequel that's more bicameral than the original! Gallop, don't trot, to your town square to pick up a copy!"
-John Jay, Wilmington Gazette-Courant-Chronicle

"Belongs to the so-bad-it's-good genre of political charters . . . destined to become the kind of camp classic revered by some of our more, shall we say, 'unmarried' friends."
-Melancton Smith, "Melancton's Musings" (syndicated column)

"Checkf, balancef, executive, legiflative, judiciary - thif baby'f got it all!"
-George Wafhington, Mount Vernon Bee-Difpatch

I also feel the need to share the reviews on the back of the book:

"So informative, I even found out who I was." -Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, May 14, 1801-Feb. 8, 1814

"Cruelly wrested from the hands of my ancestors or not, AMERICA makes a great read!"
-Chief Standing Ox, Navajo Nation

"Thank you for your manuscript. We regret it does not suit our needs at the current time."
-Jason Hay, editor, Little, Brown and Company

"A Bridget Jones's Diary for the comedic nonfiction government textbook set."
-Melissa Bank, author of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

"This is an epic tale of rock 'n' roll Babylon; a story of the evil men do told by the men themselves. Armed with eyeliners, guitars, and hypodermic needles, the men of Motley Crue got everything they ever wanted and then threw it all away."
-Rolling Stone

"This is similar to my works in that anyone who reads it is sure to be an asshole for at least a month afterward."
-Ayn Rand

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua!"
-Cicero

"I would certainly read this book if I were alive today, which, for all you geniuses out there, I am not."
-Abraham Lincoln

Self-Deprecation

I have arrived in West Texas, safe and sound, and I'll be here until next Monday. The reason for this trip is the 50th wedding anniversary of my dad's parents . . . EVERYbody's coming in, and it should be fun. Meanwhile, I just thought I'd share with you a few jokes told to me by my brother Ian:

A group of globetrotters were travelling aboard the same airplane, swapping exaggerated claims and tall tales. After a few real whoppers, one of the more silent ones pipes up with one of his own. "I can stick my hand outside the plane," he says, "and tell exactly what country we're flying over."

This statement is, of course, met with scoffs and demands of proof, so he sticks his hand outside the plane and, after a moment's thought, says, "We're flying over Egypt." "How do you know?" his fellow passengers inquire. "Well, I just felt the tip of one of the pyramids."

Awhile later, he sticks his hand outside the plane again, and this time he says, "Ah, we're flying over the United States now." "How can you tell?" "I just brushed the crown of the Statue of Liberty."

Finally, sometime afterwards, he sticks his hand outside the plane a third time and immediately calls out, "Aha! We're definitely flying over Guatemala!" "Now how could you possibly tell that?" "My watch just got stolen."

_____________________________________

You know, they recently invented a device that totally eliminates stealing, robbery, and theft of all kinds nationwide when simply placed inside a country and switched on. It was tested with great success in Mexico last month; all of the thieves were just gone. So, last week they thought they'd give it a try in Guatemala. Three hours later, it had disappeared.

_____________________________________

A number of people of various nationalities were sitting around chewing the fat one day, and the topic of conversation turned to the question of what makes each country truly great and unique. Going around the circle, a Swiss man proudly said, "Well, Switzerland is home to the most beautiful mountains in the entire world." "Oh?" rejoined an American, "Well, the United States was the first country to put a man on the moon."

"That's nothing," piped up a Guatemalan, "Guatemalan scientists are hard at work right now preparing the first manned expedition to the sun. Soon, all of the glory will be ours."

"A trip to the sun?" asked the American, confused. "How do you plan to deal with the problem of the sun's intense heat?"

"That's not an issue," replied the Guatemalan. "We're planning to go at night."

_____________________________________

Two Guatemalan prisoners were planning a jailbreak. "Alright," said one, "here's what we'll do. If the perimeter fence is short, we'll go over it. If it's tall, we'll tunnel underneath. I think that covers all contingencies . . . let's go take a look."

Stepping outside, they stared around them in open despair. "Well, now what are we going to do?" moaned the second. "They don't even have a fence."

_____________________________________

Well, there you have it . . . the latest word in humor from Guatemala, brought to you today by my little chapin . . . err, brother. I'll catch you all later, I'm gonna go see if he's got any more . . .

A (Student) Night at the Opera

Opera Longview puts on one production every year here in town, and I was given to understand that it was not to be missed if I could possibly attend. Well, a bit of research revealed that ticket prices ranged from $25 to $50 and, while I was still trying to reconcile my conscience and my pocketbook with this figure, a bit of further research revealed the availability of free tickets to a performance on "student night," two days before opening. Essentially, what we attended was the full dress rehearsal of Pirates of Penzance . . . and we even still, we were all quite impressed.

I don't know where or how Longview managed to dig up these people, but a number of the cast and crew members had rather impressive resumes. The soprano who played Mabel, for instance, performed the role of Christine Daae in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. The sets and lighting were fun, in keeping with the general atmosphere of the thing. The music was great, the lyrics were hilarious . . . there was a bit of trouble with the supertitles during the first half of the first act, but we could mostly understand what was being said anyway. It's not as though it were in Italian or German.

I had never seen Pirates of Penzance before, nor heard any of the music except (of course) "Modern Major General." I've read through it a bit in Wilson's Complete Gilbert & Sullivan, but I wasn't particularly with familiar with the plot or anything. In short . . . I was delighted by the entirety, save one slight caveat.

During the final notes of the final song, a British flag was unfurled in the midst of the assembled cast . . . and then it was rotated to reveal the Texas flag on the other side! Agh! They desecrated the Union Jack! How could they?! Oh, well. I guess (as Anna said) it was kinda cute. Whatever. Anyway, Scholl and I both agreed that it was by far the highest quality production we have ever attended in East Texas, and we went away happy.

Additionally, I would like to point the reader's attention to a relatively new link on the sidebar, "Mi Sociedad." It is the blog of Alpha Eta Mu, our LeTourneau chapter of the English Honor Society, set up to include contributions from the four officers (who are, at present, also the only members . . . we're working on that) and Dr. Solganick, our slightly off-center faculty sponsor (I employ these adjectives of vague warning in case you should happen to wander by his blogger profile and begin to wonder. He's harmless, really). Anyway, I am in the midst of posting a series of literary journals, some of which are recycled but modified from my blog, and some of which are entirely new. Wilson, too, has already contributed some very excellent material, and hopefully Martinez and Charissa will not be far behind. I encourage you all to troop over, take a look, add it to your links, and read and comment regularly . . . This is how desperate I am to generate interest.

Anyway, commercial over . . . and blogpost over as well.

Poof!

So . . . geez. Where did I go?! I got on to check the blog a few days back and did a double-take when I noticed the current date and the date of my last post . . . what happened? I didn't even know how to answer that question until I stopped and thought back for a bit. Government with Dr. J started last Wednesday (it's a lot of fun . . . my first 8 am class in a year and a half, but it's summer, it's Johnson, and there are four students in the class). On Monday evening The Cold War class with Dr. K officially started. And, of course, my Philosophy class won't end until next Wednesday. Blech.

Tomorrow I have a test in Government (simple stuff . . . it's over the three federal branches) and an opportunity to express myself in Philosophy (fyi, that's just the Philosophy prof trying to pretend like he's doing us a favor and letting us think when really we are just being submitted to an hour+ of gruelling copy-and-paste work from the three and a half dozen worksheets he's given us in the last week onto a bigger, meaner worksheet with "Test #3" written at the top with our short-term memories serving as the Clipboard . . . but I'm not bitter).

So . . . that keeps me busy, and in general all of my classes just have me temporarily swamped. I have been very frustrated and depressed every day during this week, dragging myself awake, spending four hours in class daydreaming (and sometimes actually dreaming) about all the sleep I'm going to get later and the fun I'll be able to have, spending four hours at work counting the minutes until I can just do something fun, then getting off and realizing that I have enough homework to keep me busy from suppertime until long after I wanted to get to bed . . . Then the cycle just begins all over again the next day.

Anyway, Rachel flew off to California last Friday, and Anna and Scholl were very nice and drove to Dallas with me to see her off. That made the trip back much more palatable, especially since I wound up having a splitting headache, slept most of the way back, and offered up the contents of my stomach before the porcelain god within 30 minutes of our return to campus. Not fun . . . but I got plenty of sleep that night followed by a totally relaxing weekend wherein I slept, ate, and leveled my Tauren Druid up to 21 in World of WarCraft (questing with my good buddy Andy in Colorado Springs, and even dragging Scholl into the mix). Good times.

And, with that update, I suppose I shall go ahead and get this posted. I have a number of thoughts that have been milling around restlessly in my head for a few days, and another major frustration has been the inability to find time to post them. I'm holding out for the weekend, hoping that I can hang onto my ideas for that long and have the time and the will to sit down and spew them forth before they are forever lost.

Life will be better in six days. God created the universe in six days. Coincidence? I think not! . . . Sorry, that was just totally random. I sense that it is time to curl up in a little ball and go to sleep again.

Understanding Keats

I bent slightly at the waist and peered apathetically through the tiny window of CPO #1134. After two weeks of eagerly checking the mail three and four times a day, I couldn't handle the disappointment anymore. And, true to form, as soon as I stopped expecting my package slip to be waiting, there it was. I calmly carried it up to the front desk and immediately used my CPO key to tear into the box they handed me in return.

Packing peanuts went everywhere in a spray of white foam, floating listlessly to the floor of MSC-1, but I barely noticed . . . There it was: The long-awaited purchase. The coveted UPS package. My own personal cloth-bound, dust-jacketed, shrink-wrapped Holy Grail, Flannery O'Connor herself smiling up at me from the shiny black cover, her last name sprawling under her picture in large, flowing white script . . .

Collected Works

Wise Blood
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The Violent Bear It Away
Everything That Rises Must Converge
Essays and Letters

I read carefully over the titles listed under the name before gathering up the scattered peanuts, tossing the box, and removing the shrink-wrap. A quick glance over the table of contents told me that I held over 1200 pages of pulchritudinous prose in my hands, while a quick glance at my watch told me I had just ten minutes to get to Philosophy class. I do believe I floated all the way over to Longview Hall . . .

I was extremely distracted during the first hour of class, barely able to wait to show off my new treasure. I briefly discussed it with Ashley (who was gratifyingly appreciative) at the beginning of our ten-minute break . . . then made a beeline for the office of Dr. Coppinger. I breezed by the secretary (distracted by a phone call) and ducked inside his door.

He was looking quite casual today as he moved about his office tidying up, decked out in a blue Hawaiian shirt punctuated by tropical yellow flowers. I greeted him and we talked for a second or two before he spotted O'Connor under my arm. He took it reverently in both hands and admired it for a few moments. Opening to the table of contents and leafing through a few sections for closer inspection, he declared himself to be officially jealous. He owns numerous O'Connor works, but no handy single-volume version of them all. My Collected Works also contains about nine short stories and an essay or two not published in most collections . . . and, of course, The Letters.

He wanted to know where I got it and we talked a bit more about that and other related matters, then I noted that my break would soon be over and moved towards the door. He saw me to the outer office door, as usual, and with the usual pleasant farewells, but I thought I detected a slight anomaly of tone. Just before I exited, he made the oddest repressed-strangling noise . . . sort of as if he were physically forcing his hands to his own throat in order to resist the urge to hit me over the back of the head with the nearest blunt object and abscond with the book. The image amused me so much I laughed to myself all the way back to class.

During the second half of Philosophy, even Dr. Batts noticed my O'Connor sitting out on the desk as he handed out a quiz. "Oooo!" he exclaimed, pausing for a moment to stare. "Lucky you!" I could only nod in agreement. I think I'll sleep with it under my pillow tonight.

Suddenly, I think I understand John Keats a lot better . . . My somewhat bemused English Lit journal of last February comes to mind. Does increased identification with a Romantic poet make me a healthy English major or a lost cause? (Please don't say "Yes.")

All-Nightering

There simply is no way that I can reasonably be expected to tolerate mornings unless I haven't had to get up . . . and the only way that's possible is if I haven't been to bed the night before. Tonight I was up late preparing a brief presentation on Immanuel Kant for Intro to Philosophy and getting distracted by a few computer maintenance issues.

Of course, as is standard practice for me, I was distracted considerably by the usual researching rabbit trails . . . tonight found me snaking my way through information on The Enlightenment, the Romantic movement, Pietism, and the like, as well as trying to wrap my head around a number of Kantian terms like "categorical imperative" and "transcendental idealism." Knowing that I had work at 8:00 and not really wanting to go to bed for less than four hours, I decided to put on a load of laundry and install World of Warcraft. My laundry is now in the final stages of drying, and WoW is 42% through downloading the necessary updates. Huzzah.

I also wanted to mention the coolest thing . . . I was driving up to the computer labs shortly after 8 pm, and I flipped on my favorite local radio station (101.9) which plays jazz, big band, and, in general, the kinds of songs you might expect to hear if you flipped on your radio during the '30s and '40s. But tonight I heard something different . . . The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show guest starring Roy Rogers and Frank Sinatra! Apparently the station has an hour of "Golden Age of Radio" every Sunday night. I parked and stayed in the car to listen . . . Such great stuff.

Anyway, it won't be long before the summer gets really crazy for a bit. My Government class starts on Wednesday and my online Cold War course begins next Monday, but Philosophy doesn't end until June 8th. I just looked over the syllabus for Cold War and it's going to be a lot of work. Plus Kubricht is using the eight-point grading scale . . . a pus-filled skin disease of a thing which I thought was confined to certain areas of the English department. Apparently it's spreading. I checked Kubricht's Russia syllabus, and he had a ten-point scale for that class. Apparently this is a special treat just for summer sucke-- errr . . . students.

Meanwhile, Anna and Scholl should be back sometime this evening, and Rachel is leaving on Friday (I'm driving her to Dallas from whence she will fly further west). A few summer activities I'm already looking forward to include Opera Longview's production of The Pirates of Penzance in a few weeks and the Texas Shakespeare Festival's performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream and MacBeth . . . and possibly Cyrano de Bergerac as well.

And now it's time for me to start moving around again. The update download is at 67%, so I should check on my laundry and find some caffeine or sugar quick. I'd better make sure I give my presentation today . . . presenting while high is a blast. Anyway . . . Ta!

My O'Connor Still Isn't Here

The first week of summer is over now, and what a week it has been . . . Funny how much it has been defined by the status of a spontaneous purchase. Anyway, I haven't really got the energy to chronicle it fully right now, but I'll hit a few of the high points.

My O'Connor still isn't here, as noted above, but the other two are . . . and fortunately it didn't arrive on Saturday or I would have been frustrated indeed. I checked my mail after hours on Friday, noting a small sign which said something to the effect of "We have changed the locks on some of the CPOs. You may pick up your new key on Monday." I noted the strange shininess of my own CPOs lock, and my suspicions were confirmed when my key didn't work. That's two Netflix and a book of Flannery O'Connor goodness I won't be receiving this weekend . . .

My Korean roommates have been difficult to get a lock on. They have moved in slowly, moved back out, had different people moved in, tried to move me out, and relegated me to a small corner of the apartment. Despite the apparent complaining in those last few sentences, I've had no real trouble with them. There are between one and five of them sleeping here each night, but it's rather difficult to track since they stay up late (like, 4:30 am late) every night watching movies on the TV which sits right next to the place I used to sleep.

This TV is hooked up to a desktop computer and is never turned off, even when they aren't here (which happens regularly from about 5-11 pm every evening thus far). There was some minor trouble a few days ago when they randomly decided to move one of the couches out onto the porch between 4:30 and 8 am. I asked them to move it back in and they did, apologizing and saying they didn't know it was mine. I'd like to know who the hell else it could belong to . . . But nevermind. I have been allowed to keep to the office and am virtually never bothered back here, so here is where I spend my time quite happily during the few hours of the day when I am actually at home and not asleep.

Wednesday was my first day in Intro to Philosophy with a certain professor who will remain unnamed for the duration. His name in a Google search already ranks my site uncomfortably high, and I have never had anything but the most uncomplimentary things to say about his teaching . . . For those of you who have followed my blog long enough, he taught my Shakespeare class in Spring '04. For those of you who haven't, I direct you to the archives at the right.

The first hour of Philosophy brought all of my horrible memories of his "teaching" rushing back to me and by our first break I was already fuming. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that during break every day I walk right by Dr. Watson's film class, which I took last summer and which ranks as one of the finest courses offered at this university. It's almost unendurable.

Ashley, who is in the class with me, did her usual bit in defense of the teacher when I went off during the break, but by the time we were halfway through the first worksheet for homework, she was far less than pleased. This simply is not a real course . . . let alone a college-level one. I've had poor examples of teaching and much busywork in classes before, but I think what makes this grate so badly is the fact that our teacher is so consistently and vociferously convinced that he is offering excellent material which will fire our creativity and sharpen our critical thinking skills.

He couldn't be more wrong about this if he suggested that copying and pasting the table of contents of our textbook from the book's website onto a worksheet is comparable in learning value to discussing controversial metaphysical questions which are actually related to philosophy. Wait. That's exactly what he's doing. No lie. I wish I were joking.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll hear more from me on the subject as the month-long course progresses. I keep telling myself that one month is significantly less than one semester, so it's all worth it in the end . . . *sigh*

Meanwhile, in the last five days alone I have seen three movies which have a shot at the summer top ten: White Oleander with 97%, Rebecca with 98%, and Judgment at Nuremberg with 99%. The strength of the first lies in the superb acting talent it employs as well as some excellent storytelling through character development. The second is some of Hitchcock's best work, with an excellent balance between romance and suspense (sort of a Jane Eyre meets . . . well, okay, it's a lot like Jane Eyre, but there's more to it than just that) and his only film to win a Best Picture Oscar.

As for the final film, I cannot recommend it highly enough, especially to History majors. The film is a masterpiece on a number of levels, and I kept thinking throughout that I wished I had seen it last summer. At that time I saw and wrote about two movies in particular which kept coming to mind as I watched this one. One was Schindler's List, the other was a very short (32 min.) French documentary called Night and Fog. The movie finally provided the closure I needed after watching the two Holocaust films and should serve to bring any truly honest train of thought on the subject to its logical conclusion. This film echoed some of the thoughts I had about the documentary in particular last year (post linked above), but of course it was both more thorough and more eloquent, and provided a number of additional things for me to ponder carefully.

Judgment at Nuremberg came out in 1961 and is set in 1948, recounting the story of a trial of "lesser" Nazi war criminals: high-ranking judges from the court system. It paints an interesting picture, both of Germans and Americans at the time. In particular, I was captivated by the vision of an uncertain America on the brink of serious trouble with Soviet Russia. The Berlin airlift is in progress and the American people are focused almost all of their energy on Stalin's alarming power plays. Yet there still remains the question of what to do with these horrible, horrible Germans who murdered millions of people in cold blood. Some want to prosecute the entire race, others simply want to quietly forget, and still others are deeply concerned with putting the past behind them so that the German people can be enlisted in the intense ideological conflict which is building between democracy and communism.

Into the middle of this arrives a quiet, district court judge played by Spencer Tracy who must try to clear the muddied waters of a world that is trying to move on in order to arrive at a just verdict. Other compelling roles are filled by Burt Lancaster as one of the defendants, Richard Widmark as the prosecuting (or is it persecuting?) attorney, and Marlene Dietrich as a upper-class German woman who befriends Tracy's character . . . all members of a formidable ensemble cast which also includes William Shatner, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift and Werner Klemperer (Col. Klink from Hogan's Heroes . . . !!! . . . also playing a minor role was the actor who played Major Hochstetter in the same series).

I had to save special mention for Maximilian Schell, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his incredible portrayal of the German lawyer who has been assigned to defend the Nazis. He is not exactly pleased with the job, but he is committed to giving them the best defense that he can, and before the end we begin to wonder whether he can keep form becoming sympathetic to their positions in the midst of his impassioned defense.

There is some excellent technical work in the movie. I was awed by the scene where Tracy walks through a massive arena where enormous Nazi rallies took place (one such rally appearing in the famous propoganda film Triumph of the Will). The entire place is deserted save for this one, lone figure trodding past the massive, empty construction of stone steps, pillars and platforms before which row upon row of identically-uniformed Nazis stood before der Furher. As Tracy walks along, we hear the Nazi anthem playing loud and clear, and as he glances over the spot, high above, where Hitler once stood and addressed hundreds of thousands, we hear his voice, piercing and insistent, haunting the place forever.

The movie brings powerful arguments to bear and asks many uncomfortable questions. It shows us, over and over, that the German people are just that . . . people. It blurs the lines between right and wrong, duty to country and duty to humanity, personal accountibility and responsibilty and loyalty and obedience, introducing large gray areas. And then, it brings them all back into sharp, hard focus at the end, with a searing indictment of the entire human race, including the viewer.

The movie (made, as I said, in 1961) is a brilliant and eloquent warning to an America emerging from the volatile atmosphere of the McCarthy years, but still very much in the midst of a stand-off with the Soviet Union. And as Spencer Tracy trudges out of a prison, formerly controlled by the Nazis, now lined with dozens of American MPs, to the tune of the Nazi national anthem, we know that the movie is saying that a single moment's inattention could take our own nation to the very brink of an incredible evil in the name of national security and the protection of our people and our ideals, if it hasn't already. Without getting too overtly political here (it's getting late and I need sleep) let me just say that the movie seems just as relevant now (or more) as it must have over forty years ago.

America, beware.

Wholly Matrimony

A wedding where 2/3 of the bridal party are members of the Shadow Council? Completely unheard of . . . until today. So sit back and relax as I recount to you the tale of the entire sordid affair: Jam sessions. Wardrobe malfunctions. Fleeing grooms. Noisy brides. Tall bridesmaids. Short bridesmaids. Sermons from THHGTTG. Food fights. Undertakers. Knives. Tankards. Ambushed groomsmen. True love. This story has it all . . .

I had to be at the church and into my tuxedo by 1:30, with lunch and a drive-by library drop off along the way. The latter two accomplished, I disappeared into the guys' dressing room (which doubles as a puppet theater) and climbed into the monkey suit amid much talking and laughing from all parties. Moore sat in the midst of it all, playing Baldur's Gate II on his little ol' laptop.

Scholl himself eventually appeared to change into his all-white tux . . . he looked like the sultan of Baghdad in that thing (as one of his brothers noted). Gallagher, meanwhile, had received the wrong tie from Al's Formal Wear, and he traded with the best man (so he would stand apart). Unfortunately, the best man's bow tie didn't work with Gallagher's shirt at all. Not to worry . . . after fifteen minutes of being pinned to the wall with a number of sharp objects uncomfortably near his throat, he pulled through looking quite presentable.

Upon reflection, the wedding almost feels like an extremely long period of standing still sandwiched between two long periods of photography. And, actually, I think that's right. But it wasn't as dull as it sounds. Well, okay, maybe picture-taking was (or would have been without Ziggy).

We took a whole round of pictures with the bride, then with the groom, and all the while Ziggy entertained us with a wide variety of selections (from the Imperial March to jazz). Throughout it all, when we weren't in front of the camera (and sometimes when we were), we groomsmen staved off the monotony by jiving to the groove (or whatever you wish to call it). It was fantastic.

Oh, yes, and let's not forget the part where Gallagher favored Scholl with a brief rendition of "My Heart Will Go On" (knowing that Scholl can turn violent when he hears it, but also knowing that Scholl was completely stuck having his picture taken).

Then, finally, it was 3:15 and almost time for the wedding to begin. Scholl got stuffed into a small room off to the side of the foyer while Anna was sequestered out of sight around the corner ("The marshmallow is in the bag," Gallagher muttered into his sleeve, playing Secret Service for a moment). Scholl kept popping his head out of the room, assessing the possibility of making a run for it, but it just wasn't going to happen.

The room he was in had a vent which opened into the hallway where Anna was standing with her bridesmaids . . . Now, obviously, keeping Anna quiet in her nervous state was going to be a labor of Herculean proportions (and we didn't have any demi-gods handy). Unfortunately, her nervous chatter was making Scholl nervous, so Gallagher disappeared into the little room to gab with him . . . and make sure he didn't try to slide out the room's other door. ("He's having his bachelor party in there," Wilson joked.)

When Gallagher wasn't able to drown out Anna alone, I joined them and we kept up a steady stream of talk between us until the processional began. The bride came in, safe and sound, preceded by her bridesmaids in all their vertical diversity (seriously . . . Ashley was what? Three feet taller than Ardith?).

The wedding from this point proceeded without a hitch. Dr. Woodring complained at the reception that the groomsmen looked like undertakers . . . I noted that he couldn't see Scholl's face, and at least we didn't look like we were being held at gunpoint. Dr. Watson, delivering the sermon, did his best to lighten the mood . . . and I guess he figured the best way to do that was to turn to Douglas Adams. The basis of his sermon was drawn in part from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Tee hee.

Anyway, it came to an end in due time and Anna and Scholl emerged, (as Scholl has referred to similar cases in the past) "a married problem, resultant of the merger of two formerly individual problems." Then there was a further spate of picture taking, which we escaped from in shifts (it was all very efficient thanks to Morgan . . . despite her disturbing enjoyment of power over us).

Anna and Scholl finally arrived at their reception, cut the cake, and (as expected) totally creamed each other with their pieces. Scholl had it up his nose, in his ear, and in his eyes and had to be helped to the bathroom to clean up. There were still bits of icing visible in his goatee when they left.

And speaking of departure, Scholl had taken the precaution of hiding his car "somewhere" before the wedding began, knowing the long and glorious tradition in Anna's family of chaining drive shafts to metal poles and the like. Shortly before they were to leave, Gallagher and Martinez were sent to retrieve said sequestered vehicle . . . and took an inordinately long amount of time in returning. They got jumped, y'see, and the car (eventually) arrived covered in streamers and red window paint.

The happy couple hopped in and drove away amid a veritable storm of bubbles (as opposed to rice), which were all the more plentiful as Wilson and I had made sure that each of the multitudinous Hoyt children was in possession of a bubble-blower.

For our pains, the bridesmaids and groomsmen were rewarded with knives and tankards (respectively) bearing our names (or, in the case of the groomsmen, our "names"). Mine says "Guatemala" on it . . . Gallagher's, much to his dismay, says "String."

No. I won't explain it. I will merely say that it was the most unique Mother's Day I've ever experienced and bring this entry rapidly to a close (I have to leave for Dallas at 7:45 in the morning to take Doug to the airport) with the following entry from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce:

"Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two."

Canonization

Oy vey . . . What a day. The beginning of summer does not bring with it rest and relaxation, despite the fact that I do not have to move or even pack any of my stuff since I'll be in the same apartment all summer and into the fall. I will have to move out at some point, but that comes much later.

Anyway, in the midst of jumping for joy at the prospect of not having to worry about any of those things it just plain slipped my mind that: Saturday morning would involve attendance at graduation in the hot, hot sun . . . Saturday afternoon would see Rachel have to move herself out (but quick!) . . . Saturday evening would find me at the wedding rehearsal . . . and Saturday night I would participate in a Weird Al sing-along.

Okay, fine. That last one wasn't really all that taxing. Excuse me for taking a break.

Anyway, I would like to thank Saint Gallagher (patron saint of inexperienced CS students, mathematical arcana, and Neverball), Saint Wilson (patron saint of textbooks, historiographers, and impulsive film purchases from Wal-mart), and Saint Martinez (patron saint of word origins, flux capacity, and Hawaiian shirts) for selflessly expending effort in all directions to help me haul Rachel and her three pickup loads of stuff off of the third floor of Thomas. Couldn't have done it without you guys . . .

Oh, yeah . . . and we should do that sing-along thing again some time. Beginning and ending with "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" from the new Hitchhiker movie. Great fun. I'll miss you all this summer and I look forward to the beginning of fall (but not too much just yet).

Reading Update on Command

As agonizing as these little lists of questions are to answer, their lure is utterly irresistible to me. Thanks, Wilson. It's funny to think how different this would have looked three years ago, just before I started college . . . Anyway:

* What book, other than Fahrenheit 451, would you want to be?

Something long, fun, and not likely to run out of readers anytime soon. I'm essentially an escapist at heart, so my first choice would probably be a fantasy like The Chronicles of Narnia. Something like The Complete Sherlock Holmes (or any of my "desert island" books below) would be a lot of fun, as well.

* Have you ever been really struck by a fictional character?

Geez . . . only all the time. A double handful of books have made me cry, and thrice as many more have left me quiet and introspective for days, but as for a specific character that I must point to forthwith . . . Well, most recently I would have to note both Asbury Fox ("The Enduring Chill" by Flannery O'Connor) and Ambrose ("Lost in the Funhouse" by John Barth).

* What was the last book that you bought?

Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works, Great Novels and Short Stories of E. M. Forster, and William Faulkner: Novels 1930-1935 . . . I decided to snag a little summer reading and beef up my personal library at the same time.

* What was the last book you read?

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt and Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

* Which books are you reading?

I am officially in the midst of summer, so I've taken a large bite . . . *clears throat* . . . The Complete Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton, Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, Cobra by Timothy Zahn, and The King of Torts by John Grisham.

* Which five books would you take to a desert island?

I'm pretty sure I'd self-destruct if I actually had to choose only five books to take along . . . but discounting anything that would actually be useful to me, here are a few possibilities:

The Bible (beefiest version I can find, Apocrypha a must, in English and Spanish if possible, plenty of supplementary material in the form of concordances and so forth)

The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Collected Works by Flannery O'Connor

Alternately, I would be just as content for a time with all four volumes of the Norton Anthologies of American and British Literature . . . although if I didn't get off the island I would go crazy wanting to read more than just the included excerpts of larger works or wishing I could delve into other writings by the favorite authors I picked out.

* To whom are you going to send this erm... let's say confession...and why? (three people) Hrm . . . How about a few fellow readers who haven't done it already . . . Say, Ardith, Andy, and Scholl.

Revenge of the Dubliners

Well, after much practicing and preparation, and despite a large number of rough spots which cropped up during rehearsal, our presentation on Flannery O'Connor went smashingly well. I expended far too much energy to get us the classroom with the stage and cool lighting arrangements. We had to talk Kubricht and Solganick into swapping classrooms around for us, and we wound up displacing about 90 students (counting our class). But it was worth all that effort in the end, for sure.

Most of our group showed up in Heath-Hardwick Hall about 45 minutes early, and then proceeded to mill around anxiously since we couldn't really do anything until some profs started to arrive and the 8:00 class let out. Anyway, we finally got in and set up at a frantic pace and generally milled around some more, bursting with nervous energy.

The class had been assigned to read "Good Country People" and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," these being the focus of our presentation. The original assignment way-back-when was the former story only, but I had long since convinced Dr. C to throw in the latter (he really didn't bother to put up a fight, actually). Martinez gave a devo from Ecclesiastes, tying it neatly to the worldview of The Misfit, and then we were off.

Martinez gave Gallagher a rousing introduction, really playing up the quality we expected from him in presenting O'Connor's biography, and then Gallagher appeared from backstage . . . decked out in a garish green headband with two plastic shamrocks attached to it on springs and carrying a couple of pink plastic flamingos. Martinez appeared confused, but handed him the Power Point slide clicker anyway as he set the flamingos down.

As Martinez took his seat, Gallagher brought up the presentation and enthusiastically launched into a biography of Flannery O'Connor . . . which happened to be a complete fabrication. I think the only thing he got right was her gender. I know he borrowed heavily from the life of James Joyce in creating this farce, and I assume the rest of it came from himself, largely. He discussed her role as a great Irish author, her hobby of raising flamingos, and her startling resemblance to Sinéad O'Connor (the Irish pop star). All of this was delivered in a heavy brogue.

After a few moments of this, the rest of the group was visibly confused, then completely panicked. Before long, we had all dashed to the front and were conferring in hushed, anxious tones just to the right of the stage. Finally, when Gallagher declared that Flannery O'Connor wrote Revenge of the Dubliners in 1944, Randy and I stepped firmly forward and hauled Gallagher off the other side of the stage. While we lectured him quietly and generally waved our arms around, Martinez apologized and Ashley pretended to frantically leaf through a few books so she could throw together a rudimentary bio.

Loudly commanding Gallagher to have a seat next to Coppinger, (who asked him if he was doing alright emotionally, and if he needed counseling) Randy and I turned and stage-whispered to Martinez to stall. So he started tap-dancing a bit, nervously trying to come up with something to say. Now, Martinez had just completed a presentation in his Intro to Research class the period before on Positive Electron Flow from Ion Emitters (or some such nonsense), so he now brought that up on the screen and launched into a discussion of the aforementioned topic. Randy and I glanced at each other and ran up to help Ashley with her research. About 20 seconds later she stepped forward to relieve Martinez and from that point forward we controlled the Power Point slides from off-stage (a tactic which we hoped would allow the presentation to flow more smoothly . . . I would say it worked quite effectively).

What has the presentation thus far had to do with Flannery O'Connor, you ask? Well, absolutely nothing, really . . . but we had a lot of fun and ultimately wasted less than five minutes. It was well-received by the class and left them ready to listen and see what might happen next. After Ashley's brief bio, I stepped up to talk about O'Connor's writing philosophy, style, and the general themes present in her work. You can find the basics of my portion beneath the fold. I read a few prepared excerpts from Mystery and Manners (these being quite difficult to select . . . there's so much good material there). Then I discussed four important aspects of her short stories and how they apply generally to the two stories we were presenting on. Finally, I read excerpts from two of her other stories to help illustrate the "moment of grace."

I hated not being able to talk about more things, but I only had 8 minutes. Ah, well . . . they'd have gotten bored eventually anyway. I just did my best to talk people into going out and reading more O'Connor before introducing Gallagher and Randy. The gimmick for their portion was that they had gotten into an argument over which story had the better set of characters: Good Man or Country People. In an attempt to promote a peaceful solution and actually get them to gather some info for the class, the story went that we had allowed them the option of engaging in a formal debate in front of everyone to help decide the question.

This debate consisted of each one discussing a major character or a few minor characters in-depth followed by a burst of concentrated, scripted witty banter running the gamut from the thumb-biting bit from Romeo and Juliet (verbatim) to derogatory remarks about personal appearance, hygiene, and ancestry. This culminated in Gallagher pulling his trump character: Pitty Sing (the cat from Good Man). Randy responded by referencing Gallagher's failed biography attempt (obviously a sore point), and Gallagher fired back with "You didn't even vote for Bush!"

The inside joke here, of course, is that Randy, in fact, did not vote for Bush . . . but after a momentary pause while this sunk in, Randy howled "You just called me a Democrat!" and chased Gallagher from the stage. At this point, Scholl (who had come to watch) walked forward wearing his thick, black cloak and carrying the Ice Cave's mascot, Murray (a skull on a stick, essentially). He also had another of the Ice Cave's mascots, the blue plush frog, wrapped around his head. Stepping to center stage, he solemnly intoned, "And now for something completely different" and returned to his seat.

This bit of utter randomocity was followed by the final portion of our presentation, a discussion of the themes in the two stories. This was to be carried forth by Ashley and Martinez, who were pretending to be a couple of random college students on an awkward first date at the Olive Garden. We had a table set up, Randy played waiter with an apron and towel, and Dean Martin crooned quietly in the background to set the mood. As I cued up slides, the class watched Martinez clumsily attempt to engage a bored Ashley in conversation before suddenly remembering the wise words of Dr. Coppinger: American Literature is great date conversation material. At this point, Ashley enthusiastically joined him in a discussion of the similar themes of Good Man and Country People which, we believe, proved enlightening to our classmates.

When they finished with all that, they stood up together, and Martinez moved on to his love of poetry, talking about how he and his lit class had recently "felt Emily" as they went backstage. The sound of a resounding slap was heard, and Martinez staggered back onstage with the accompanying slide: ". . . just don't get too carried away." And that was the end of our presentation.

But wait! Class still lacked half an hour, and we had already secured permission to lead the discussion. So the five of us lined up at the front and attempted to get people talking. And . . . people talked. About six people, to be exact. You know . . . us five and Dr. C.

Actually, a few other people did jump in at various points, and I really enjoyed fleshing things out in more depth with Dr. Coppinger's observations mixed in. We really experimented with a lot of new presentation techniques that we had never tried before, and a lot of things could have gone wrong. Ultimately, however, the presentation was well received, and Dr. Coppinger was pleased with our efforts. We had a great time (as always) throwing it together, and I would classify it as a definite success.

Yay us.

Mystery and Manners

I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relationship to that. I don’t think that this is a position that can be taken halfway or one that is particularly easy in these times to make transparent in fiction.

My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eye for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable . . . I think that . . . often the reason for this attention to the perverse is the difference between their beliefs and the beliefs of their audience. Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause.

The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

I suppose the reason for the use of so much violence in modern fiction will differ with each writer who uses it, but in my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world.

I think the writer of grotesque fiction does [things] in the way that takes the least [doing], because in his work distances are so great. He’s looking for one image that will connect or combine or embody two points; one is a point in the concrete, and the other is a point not visible to the naked eye, but believed in by him firmly, just as real to him, really, as the one that everybody sees.

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological . . . approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature.

Now the word symbol scares a good many people off, just as the word art does. They seem to feel that a symbol is some mysterious thing put in arbitrarily by the writer to frighten the common reader sort of a literary Masonic grip that is only for the initiated. They seem to think that it is a way of saying something that you aren’t actually saying, and so if they can be got to read a reputedly symbolic work at all, they approach it as if it were a problem in algebra. Find x. And when they do find or think they find this abstraction, x, then they go off with an elaborate sense of satisfaction and the notion that they have “understood” the story. Many students confuse the process of understanding a thing with understanding it.

In most English classes the short story has become a kind of literary specimen to be dissected. Every time a story of mine appears in a Freshman anthology, I have a vision of it, with its little organs laid open, like a frog in a bottle.
Some people have the notion that you read the story and then climb out of it into the meaning, but for the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.

Characters: Flawed & Grotesque

-General Sash (A Late Encounter With the Enemy)

-Ruby Hill (A Stroke of Good Fortune)

-Asbury Fox (The Enduring Chill)

Plotlines: Task or Obsession Leading to Exhausting Physical/Spiritual Exertion

-Climbing the Stairs (The Geranium)

-Woodland Chase (The Turkey)

-Lost in Atlanta (The Artificial Nigger)

Violent, Shocking Epiphany

-Arson (A Circle in the Fire)

-Spousal Abandonment (The Life You Save May Be Your Own)

-Drowning (The River)

Moment of Grace: Redemption and Purification

Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame that he had so little of it to take with him. He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was too monstrous to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.

The old life in him was exhausted. He awaited the coming of new. It was then that he felt the beginning of a chill, a chill so peculiar, so light, that it was like a warm ripple across a deeper sea of cold. His breath came short. The fierce bird which through the years of his childhood and the days of his illness had been poised over his head, waiting mysteriously, appeared all at once to be in motion. Asbury blanched and the last film of illusion was torn as if by a whirlwind from his eyes. He saw that for the rest of his days, frail, racked, but enduring, he would live in the face of a purifying terror. A feeble cry, a last impossible protest escaped him. But the Holy Ghost, emblazoned in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend.

Dead by Wednesday

That's what I'll be if next week is any crazier than this one. I thought the week would go downhill after I turned in my monster 15-page Historiography paper on Tuesday night . . . especially since we watched two highly entertaining movies in class that night.

But it was not to be . . .

Going to bed after 1:30 three nights in a row, I found myself woken up before 8:00 on the following mornings to face days full of classes, work, and homework. The last two days:

Thursday
8:00-9:15: Work
9:30-10:50: Class
11:00-1:00: Work
1:20-2:55: Meetings
3:00-4:20: Class
5:00-8:45: Out and About
9:00-10:30: Meeting
11:00-2:00: Ummm . . . ??? (not sleeping)

Friday
7:45-8:45: Hallsville Run
9:00-10:15: Work
10:25-11:05: Chapel
11:20-12:15: Class
12:25-12:50: Make-up Quiz
1:00-5:00: Work
5:00-5:10: Meeting

And as for the weekend . . .

Friday night: Webb Historical Society Movie Night

Saturday night: Longview Symphony

Sunday night: Presentation Practice

And then . . .

Due by Tuesday:
Intro to Psych- 3 Make-up Quizzes
American Lit II- Group Presentation on Flannery O'Connor with Gallagher, Martinez, Randy, and Ashley
Twentieth Century Russia- Test #3
Texas & the American West- Paper #2
Historiography- Critique and Analysis of another student's paper (in this case, Barbour's rendering of the Yom Kippur War)

So . . . I hope to be back in the blogging world in a big way come summer, but for now . . . *disappears*

Following the Madding Crowd

Tuesday is a big day: My eight-page Historiography paper comes due at 6:00 pm. I don't know how much I've written about this paper before now, but the general idea behind the assignment is that each student is to choose a historical topic which they can research for themselves through heavy use of primary sources. Dr. Johnson seemed fairly attached to the idea that someone research the events surrounding the Longview Race Riot of 1919, so I decided to tackle it.

After a bit of preliminary fact-finding, I visited the Longview Public Library to inspect their vertical file on the subject and found a wealth of material . . . far more than I had any desire to take notes on. Returning the following week, Rachel helped me make 74 copies and bring the material home with me. My sources include newspaper articles from Longview, Dallas, and Waco, interviews with eyewitnesses from 1978 (conducted by Dr. Kenneth R. Durham, Dr. Johnson's predecessor in the LeTourneau History department and primary chronicler of the events), and official reports by the Texas Rangers and National Guardsmen who were dispatched to Longview to restore order.

Playing historical detective by getting this close to little-known events as I attempt to reconstruct the truth of what really happened in Longview July 10th-19th, 1919 has been quite an exhilirating experience. Tonight, as I sat in front of my computer screen and began to lay out in my mind exactly how I was going to tell this story, I happened to glance over at my materials and spot a map that was included in the vertical file. This map has 11 locations pinpointed on it where important events transpired before, during, and after the riot.

Pulling it out, I read over the sequence of events once again and traced out, in pencil, the route followed by an angry mob on July 11th. Gallagher declared himself to be generally bereft of things to do right then, so I asked him to accompany me on a journey through Longview to locate and inspect the various sites marked on my map.

Our quest began at the Longview Courthouse, where we located the spot on the lawn where the National Guard posted their command tent while martial law was in effect in Longview (July 13-19). Directly across the street was the place where Samuel L. Jones, a local black schoolteacher, was severely beaten on July 10th by three white men. Two of these men were of a family named King. They were the brothers of a woman they believed to have been insulted by an article in the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper which Jones represented in Longview.

That week's issue had featured an article by an anonymous author telling the story of Lemuel Walters, a black man who had been lynched in Longview the previous month for committing "indecencies" of an undetermined nature towards the Kings' sister. I have been completely unable to discover precisely what the nature of his actions were . . . the rumors range all the way from rape to a dinner invitation. Whichever of these extremes is closer to the truth, I have a copy of the article from the Defender and it states that the woman "declared she loved him, and if she were in the North would obtain a divorce and marry him." And so it was that Jones, suspected of writing the article (although he denied it at all times, both then and thereafter), was beaten by the King brothers in front of the Courthouse before escaping to the house of another local black leader, Dr. Calvin P. Davis, to have his wounds treated.

The angry citizens met for several hours that evening and were "talked down" for several hours by "voices of reason" including the mayor and a well-respected local attorney, and the meeting had dispersed with the calmer types thinking the matter was resolved and would subside. However, a group of about 15 young men wandered off and milled around for awhile before making for Jones's house at about midnight . . . and that was our next stop.

Jones's house was located around 9 or 10 blocks from the Courthouse, and when the group of armed men arrived there all seemed quiet. Coming up the back street a few of them stepped up onto the back porch and called for Jones to come out. Receiving no response, they moved towards the door, only to be fired upon from all sides. Over 100 rounds were fired in the next few minutes and four of the white men were wounded. One of them crawled under a nearby house where he was found and beaten by the blacks. The unscathed men ran for it.

See, while the young men were getting themselves whipped up to attack, Dr. Davis had not been idle. He had gotten the support of 25 local black men to stand guard over Jones and had laid an ambush around the house, instructing the men not to fire until he did. His plan worked perfectly . . . up to that point.

Gallagher and I followed the route of the fleeing white men back towards the Courthouse, turning off a block short to find the former location of the Fire Station (where they ran). Once there, they rang the alarm bell to summon reinforcements numbering somewhere between 100 and 1,000 men (the sources disagree a bit here, as you can see . . . Longview at the time had a total population of just over 5,000 people, so 1,000 men is probably a bit high). Right next to the Fire Station was Bodie Park where the young men had first gathered before setting off for the house.

A car was sent to hurriedly collect the wounded men from around Jones's house, and the rest of the men got themselves agitated into a regular lynch mob. It was around here that they broke into a hardware store to loot it for weapons and ammunition. At around 4 am they headed back to Jones's house, en masse. Having already been along that route, Gallagher and I took a detour to locate the house of Marion Bush, father-in-law of Dr. Davis, who will enter this story later. This was the most difficult of the locations to find as the town has totally changed in this area.

The street on which the house stood no longer even exists, and, in fact, the general area where it would have been is now occupied by a bank, the public library, and the parking lot in between the two. We parked and hopped out of the car to snoop around a bit, and managed to ascertain that the library wasn't even built until 1987. As a result we could only get a very general idea of the lay of the land in 1919.

From there we went three blocks straight south back to Jones's house. Arriving there early in the morning in 1919, the mob found no one at home . . . so they burned the house to the ground along with the house across the street from it. We followed their route south two and a half blocks to the former location of Quick Hall, a dance hall owned by one Charlie Medlock. The whites believed that blacks were storing ammunition in it and had their suspicions confirmed when they lit it on fire and the whole place started popping like an Orville Redenbacher factory.

Proceeding south another block the mob set Dr. Davis's house on fire. He was not at home (having gone to hide out in Bush's house), but his wife and children were. After some fast negotiating, a black man was allowed to go in and rescue them from the blaze. The mob set a nearby automobile on fire as well before turning east and proceeding two blocks to the homes of Charlie Medlock and a man named Ben Sanders. When Medlock and Sanders's 80-year old wife Belle protested the arson, they were both horsewhipped. After this the sun was beginning to come up and the mob finally dispersed.

All of this area is still a residential district, and there are houses at the locations of Jones and Davis's former residences. A small church stands across the street from Davis's house, and a new house is being built on or near the location of Quick Hall. Some sort of business now exists where Medlock's house was, and, directly across the street, There is nothing but a grassy, tree-filled lot at the former location of Sanders's house. It was nighttime, and this was still south Longview, so we didn't linger . . . I returned to LeTourneau, well satisfied with the trip.

To finish the story, however, the county judge and sheriff called the governor of Texas that very morning to ask for assistance and eight Texas Rangers plus about 200 National Guardsmen were eventually dispatched to deal with the situation. Davis, who was hiding in Bush's house all that day, narrowly escaped discovery when the house was searched twice before finally escaping to Mexico dressed in a soldier's uniform.

Meanwhile, on July 13th, the sheriff came to visit Marion Bush with a friend, asking him to submit to imprisonment for his own protection due to rumors that were circulating which indicated that he might be murdered. Bush agreed and re-entered his house "to blow out the lamp." Thinking, no doubt, of the lynching of Lemuel Walters (who had been held "safely" in the jail), Bush returned with a .45 caliber revolver and opened fire on the two white men. Missing from very close range, he dashed back inside and ran out the back door. The sheriff emptied a revolver at his retreating back, but didn't hit him. Calling a farmer five miles west of Bush's house, he asked him to stop the fugitive.

Shortly afterwards, he received a call that Bush had been stopped, and he loaded up two cars with National Guardsmen and rattled out of town to take custody. He arrived at the spot to find Bush dead . . . the farmer claimed he had ordered Bush to stop, and had gunned him down when he failed to comply.

Later that day, several dozen arrests were made (from among both the white and black populations) and this had a sobering effect on the townspeople. There was no more trouble for nearly a week until martial law was lifted and all of those arrested were freed with the charges dropped. Davis and Jones never returned to Longview, and Bush was, amazingly, the lone casualty of the entire incident.

This is, of course, the short version of the events, and there's a lot more to the story as a whole . . . but that's the basic gist. I had a good time sniffing around Longview finding all these places, and I think that I have a better handle on the events for my paper from having gotten a feel of the general layout. Now to write the dang-blasted thing . . .

The Light Brigade Gets Lucky

THE SC PLAYERS PRESENT:

Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw

Myself- Captain Bluntschli
Ardith- Raina Petkoff
Wilson- Sergius Saranoff
Anna- Catherine Petkoff
Gallagher- Petkoff
Scholl- Nicola, Russian Officer
Rachel- Louka

George Bernard Shaw is just awesome. His plays are hilarious, and they always manage to stomp all over some cherished British convention of the period during which they were written. Arms and the Man is Shaw's dig at the popular Romantic notions of warfare as honorable and glorious (this includes some hilarious pot shots at "The Charge of the Light Brigade").

During a war between the Serbs and the Bulgarians, Captain Bluntschli (a Swedish mercenary), finds himself on the run after his artillery unit is accidentally routed by a suicidal Bulgarian cavalry charge (the Serbs just happened to have been sent the wrong size ammunition at precisely the wrong moment). He escapes up into the bedroom of the young Bulgarian woman, Raina Petkoff, whose fiancé, Sergius Saranoff, led this cavalry charge, and she and her mother take him in.

Soon he returns safely home in an old coat belonging to the girl's father. After the conflict ends some few weeks later, he comes back to return the coat and hilarity ensues as Raina and her mother attempt to hide their role in his escape from her father and Sergius (who met Bluntschli during the peace negotiations and have developed an enormous respect for him).

To complicate matters, Raina and Sergius each consider the other's love for them to be the one completely pure and noble thing in their lives . . . and they each find themselves falling for other people: Raina for Bluntschli and Sergius for Louka (the fiercly-independent maid). Fortunately for this ingenue and her Byronic betrothed, Bluntschli's straightforward, unvarnished view of life, and the six hotels he has just inherited from his father, are there to save them from themselves and their hopelessly idealized worldviews.

That's kinda Shaw's thing: Tension arises not only from romantic triangles and the question of who will wind up with whom, but from the intolerable possibility that the play might end while a character still has a fractured worldview. And so, by the end, everyone (at least, everyone important) has been brought peacefully and blissfully into the fold . . . their wrongheaded ideas about life, love, war, virtue, etc. finally cast aside.

Happily ever after, indeed.

"When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better."

Mae West deadpanned that line in her 1933 movie, I'm No Angel, and in many ways she spoke for the entire movie-making industry. This fact was never more clearly illustrated than during a nearly four-decade period of film history which moviegoers today might have a hard time believing ever happened. In a country where, unlike the America in which Cole Porter's inaccurately-titled broadway musical became a smash-hit (in 1934, ironically enough), anything truly does seem to go, both on the silver screen and off, it is difficult to remember that there was a time when this wasn't the case . . . and most people liked it that way.

75 years ago today, Hollywood imposed the Production Code on itself in order to avoid the looming threat of censorship by the federal government. Such a move by the government appeared more and more likely in the face of loud public outcry against the immoral content of motion pictures (thanks in part to scandals within Hollywood itself, sensationalized by the media, and in part to the advent of talking pictures that revolutionized the industry) and an ever-growing number of local censorship boards.

The Production Code of 1930 (linked above, also known as the Hays Code after Will Hays, former campaign manager to Warren G. Harding, hired by the major film studios in 1922 as the PR man in charge of the predecessor of the MPAA) consisted chiefly of a list of material deemed unsuitable for treatment by the motion picture industry. These forbidden subjects ranged from showing such things as crime and adultery in a positive light (crime doesn't pay), to any portrayal of miscegenation or white slavery, to prostitution, profanity, disrespect for religion . . . Well, you get the idea.

The code was initially pitched to the studios by Hays as a money-saver. Many studios in 1930 were in deep financial trouble after the 1927-and-following costs of switching to "talkies" and the Stock Market Crash of '29. Policing the content of their own movies while in production by the application of a universally-acceptable set of guidelines was much less expensive then sending reels back to the cutting room after government censors had taken a hack at them.

At first, (treating Hays Code as just that, a set of guidelines) the effort wasn't particularly effective . . . in fact, violence and sex in the movies actually increased. Then, in 1933, sexual innuendo in She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel served as the catalyst which caused the powers that be to crack down hard on Hollywood, forcing it to set up a "Production Code Administration." Brought in to run the PCA was a conservative Philadelphia Catholic named Joe Breen, and his regime was given the power to review every movie prior to release and demand whatever changes were deemed necessary before giving a movie the seal of approval. Any theater that ran a movie without this seal was fined $25,000.

Incidentally, both of the movies most immediately to blame for this were written and starred in by celebrity sex icon Mae West. West was already a notorious figure by this time, and she would go on to get herself banned from public radio in 1937 after a licentious appearance on the Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy Show.

In 1951 the Production Code was modified again . . . becoming more, rather than less, stringent. Some of the more humorous effects of the strictness of the code can be seen clearly in things like the separate twin beds slept in by Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on their popular television show (which ran during most of the 1950s), and the fact that the toilet which is shown in Psycho (1960) was the first one to appear on film. However, by the mid-50s self-censorship was beginning to be challenged by movie-makers.

In fact, one of my favorite movies (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959) was released with a number of direct violations of the code despite the lack of a certificate of approval. Thanks to the success of this and other unapproved movies, the code's already crumbling foundation eroded still further. Money, after all, has always been the bottom line. The slow, subtle war on the Production Code wasn't over yet, though. The movie was banned in Chicago, and Jimmy Stewart's father was so offended by the "dirty picture" that he took out an ad in a local newspaper telling people to avoid going to see it, even though his son was the star.

By the mid-60's, however, even MPAA member companies were beginning to release films which did not conform to the code (most notably the 1966 Cannes-winner Blow-Up), and in 1967 the Production Code finally came down forever (just in time for the release of another of my code-violating favorites: The Graduate). After 37 years of self-imposed censorship, Hollywood had finally bowed to the almighty dollar. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say that the almighty dollar had served as the medium of communication chosen by Americans of the 1960s to prolaim that they no longer cared about the immoral content of movies nearly as much as their parents and grandparents in the 1920s.

In 1968, the MPAA film rating system went into effect with the ratings G (General), M (Mature), R (Restricted), and X (Children Under 17 Not Admitted). M was soon changed to GP, then to PG (Parental Guidance Suggested). In 1984, Steven Spielberg suggested the implementation of a new rating (PG-13, Parents Strongly Cautioned) in response to loud complaints concerning his latest PG-rated movie, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In 1990, X was renamed NC-17 in order to escape the "adult entertainment" connotation which damaged the business of non-pornographic movies. In spite of this, no NC-17-rated movie has ever achieved commercial success.

So, the (admittedly a bit simplistic) question is, did 37 years of Hollywood restraint make us a more moral society? The equally simplistic answer is: Not really. You see, the Production Code was, in the first place, an oversimplified solution to a problem that was misunderstood, at best. Cinema is an art form, and art cannot be limited by hard and fast rules of what does or does not constitute acceptable subject matter.

Art is a way to communicate something, whether it be as profound as elucidating a life philosophy or as simple as sharing beauty. Sure it's nice to have movies that are just entertaining that the kids can go see, but it is not the duty of the artist to blunt his message just so a six-year old can watch his movie. The Production Code made the all too-common mistake of viewing cinema as entertainment only and therefore subject to strict definitions of morality and immorality. After all, being entertained by violence or sex is clearly immoral . . . Unfortunately for all concerned, that's not the whole story, and the consequences only entrenched this mistaken view of cinema deeper into the Christian psyche.

Now, I'm not saying there were no good movies produced between 1930 and 1967. That certainly isn't true . . . Heck, you can't swing a dead Communist during that period without hitting one of the great film classics. I would simply say that I trust the exceptionally talented, the the Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcocks, to get it right with or without a babysitter. And this is borne out by the fact that good movies didn't suddenly stop coming out after 1967. Tomorrow's film greats are coming out right now, and will continue to do so . . . Now, fortunately, without any watchdog agencies to clip the filmmakers' wings.

And what about those movies which are vile and reprehensible and immoral and unconscionable? That's where one exercises one's own personal responsibility and discernment as an individual, of course. That was our job all along and it was a mistake to ever give it to a group of people who, if not primarily concerned with their art form, are simply worried about how much money you've given them this year.

Anyway, in view of the importance of this day in film history, my apartment mates and I decided that the viewing of a very special movie was in order. From our tentative, "immediate-availability" pool of six movies (including Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Pulp Fiction, A Clockwork Orange, and The Graduate) we settled on Lolita, directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on Vladimir Nabokov's controversial 1955 novel of the same name. Nabokov himself penned the screenplay, and Kubrick moved to England to direct the movie that was destined to create a stir. His star power included James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze, and Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty.

Although it was made to meet Production Code standards (still, of course, in effect in 1962), it was not exactly an overwhelming success, commercially (banned left and right, condemned by every "morality" group around, and restricted to audiences over the age of 18 in the United States), but the critics noticed and it was nominated for an Oscar and several Golden Globes (among other things). Kubrick went on the following year to make the enormously popular Dr. Strangelove, which Sellers also starred in, and . . . the sixties moved on, I guess.

Lolita, as you can probably tell from the 99% rating I gave it at right, was excellent. The movie was almost flawlessly made. The acting was perfect. The writing, as one would expect, was fantastic. Who would have thought that the story of a middle-aged British author's obsession with a sexually active twelve-year old girl (changed to fourteen in the movie, and played by a sixteen-year old actress) would turn out to be well worth watching?

Aside from the extremely high production value, the movie has a fascinating take on the effects of an all-consuming obsession without the mediating influence of a moral compass. Take care when feeding your appetites, the movie tells us, or your appetites will begin to feed on you. I think the movie's tagline from the original release sums it all up nicely (bizarre and disturbing subject matter, highly-complex source novel, Production Code difficulties and all): "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?"

So, go exercise your freedom to watch an excellent, thought-provoking movie that hasn't had the life sanitized out of it by some Hollywood pencil pusher. Find a movie with some really edgy content . . . one you can get something out of. If you need any help getting started . . . Here, gimme a sec to glance around the room at the Ice Cave's DVD collection. Here are a few titles, with problematic content detailed by initials, which you might try (in addition to any of the movies already mentioned): Chicago (s, l), Garden State (s, l), The Godfather (n, l, v), Schindler's List (s, n, l, v), Traffic (s, l, v), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (s, l), Road to Perdition (l, v). That should be enough to get you started.

After own my research on the subject and general watching of movies, if I had everything on hand, the ideal PC-themed movie marathon would look something like this: Intolerance (1916, pre-code), Ecstasy (1932, banned by code), I'm No Angel (1933, caused stricter code), The Outlaw (1943, release delayed by code), Anatomy of a Murder (1959, ignored and helped weaken code), Lolita (1962, amazingly followed code . . . technically), Blow-Up (1966, ended code), The Graduate (1967, followed code).

Now go watch the right thing.

Ad Hoc

I accompanied the fledgling on-campus chapter of Sigma Tau Delta (The International English Honor Society) to Olive Garden this evening to consume a scrumptious supper and discuss activities and involvement for next semester. We also needed to elect officers for next year.

There were four offices to fill. There are currently four members of the LeTourneau Chapter who are not graduating in May.

Meet the new secretary. That's right . . . I get to take notes and type things up and send out important missives handed down to me by my roommate, errr . . . the president. Dr. Solganick seems to think that having a male secretary puts us on some sort of avant-garde cutting edge in comparison to other chapters.

As my first official act I will now go sulk in the corner.

A Very Shreveport Easter

Spring Break was closely followed by the weekend of Easter Sunday this year, granting us an additional three-day weekend after the week off . . . And there was much rejoicing on LeTourneau campus. I trekked to Shreveport in company with Rachel, Sarah, and Brian to spend the weekend with Sarah's family at her grandmother's house.

We had a grand time: watching movies (good, bad, and ugly) . . . playing Settlers of Catan . . . sleeping in . . . I had some additional time to read to Rachel (we're working our way through Harry Potter 1). There was much delicious food and dessert to be had as well, particularly for Sunday lunch, and copious amounts of delicious chocolate were distributed to all concerned parties on Easter morning.

Sarah's dad took Brian and me on a tour of the garage next to the house on Sunday afternoon . . . I had noticed that it was fairly large, but did not suspect that it contained, not one, not two, not even three, but four automobiles manufactured before 1925 and a profusion of spare parts and various other items of interest (old blacksmith tools, early gas pumps, and the like). 'Twas very cool indeed.

And, yes, never fear, I did attend a church service and spend some time reflecting on the true reason for Easter in the midst of enjoying some quality fellowship. All in all, I would definitely call my Easter weekend a success . . .

The Longest Intermission Ever

THE SC PLAYERS PRESENT:

The Man Who Came to Dinner by George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart

Scholl- Sheridan Whiteside
Rachel- Maggie Cutler, Sarah, Mrs. Dexter
Gallagher- Bert Jefferson, Richard Stanley, Mr. Stanley, Banjo
Myself- Dr. Bradley, John, Professor Metz, Beverly Carlton
Anna- Miss Preen, Mrs. Stanley, Harriet Stanley, Lorraine Sheldon
Ardith- June Stanley, Mrs. McCutcheon, Harriet Stanley, Lorraine Sheldon
Randy- Mr. Stanley, Sandy, Westcott
Wilson- Bert Jefferson

Well, in spite of the extreme hilarity and copious sly references to twenties, thirties, and forties pop culture contained in this play, we kinda stopped dead on the reading of it three Thursdays ago and only finished it tonight. Nevertheless, despite the long pause in the middle, I look forward more than ever to seeing this performed at the Longview Community Theater in a few weeks.

In this excellent play, Sheridan Whiteside, an internationally-known radio personality who runs in the highest of artistic circles slips on a patch of ice and breaks his leg while leaving the small-town home of the Stanleys where he has just eaten supper. As a result he is confined in their living room for several weeks as the holiday season kicks into full swing. "Sherry" is crusty, abrasive, and domineering, and he soon takes over the household entirely, winning over the servants (John and Sarah), constantly screaming at doctor (Bradley), nurse (Preen), and personal secretary (Maggie), encouraging the daughter and son of the house (June and Richard) to run away from home in pursuit of their own dreams and future plans, and receiving a steady stream of high-society visitors and odd, assorted gifts (from penguins to mummy cases) from celebrities around the globe.

After the doctor reveals the startling news that Sherry isn't actually injured after all he must maintain the ruse a bit longer as Maggie has fallen in love with a local reporter (Bert Jefferson) in the interim. Sherry is determined to put a stop to it for fear he will lose her. With this goal in mind, he calls in seductive stage actress Lorraine Sheldon with promises of a leading role in the play Bert has written . . . but Maggie isn't giving up so easily.

Sliding into despair after a number of attempts to subvert Lorraine's purpose have failed, Maggie resigns her secretarial position and prepares to leave. Sherry is finally forced to step in himself and rid the town of Lorraine with the aid of his ambiguously gay friend from Hollywood (Banjo, one of Gallagher's finer character performances) in the hilarious climax.

Really my only concern about the LCT production is that their portrayal of Banjo won't be nearly as side-splittingly flamboyant as our own Gallagher's was. We shall see . . . Kudos also to Scholl and Rachel in particular for good work that "made" more than one scene.

Well, Excuse Me for Enjoying My Spring Break!

Land sakes alive . . . all this fuss and carrying on about my little Spring Break sabbatical . . .

I had a wonderful break, by the way. Nothing I did was something that I was required to do. The freedom was perfect and absolute. It was pure bliss, and I can now say that I spent one Spring Break doing exactly what I wanted to do. I am satisfied.

The run-down is pretty basic, and consequently dull. I watched over two dozen movies. Read some books. Bought Season One of Hogan's Heroes on DVD and watched the first eight episodes. Ate some incredibly delicious food cooked by the crew that stuck around (Rachel, Martinez, Uncle Doug). Oh . . . and I slept. Long, heavenly periods of complete unconsciousness, punctuated by brief, languid periods of half-consciousness while I rolled over and went back to the original phase.

I loved my Spring Break, and I hope the rest of you can say the same.

I Have a Strong Aversion to Mondays

But I fully realize that nothing can be done to fix the problem. Any attempt to do away with Mondays would be akin to removing the 13th floor of a high-rise building. Sure, you can tell them they're on the 14th floor, but everybody knows . . .

Anyway, the last week or so has been pretty much a blur . . . Outside of the movies I've watched and classes I've attended, I really don't remember much . . . and I am now trying to slide gracefully down into Spring Break (which, for me, begins at 12:15 PM on Friday). I'm not too picky about the graceful part, and I'll probably wind up flopping clumsily into my well-earned, greatly-needed, much-desired vacation. I'll be spending my ten days on-campus this year, for various reasons. I plan to do nothing (for the most part) but eat, sleep, watch movies, and catch up on my reading. Rachel, Uncle Doug, and Martinez will all be here as well, and I look forward to a grand time with the three of them.

But I'm not there yet. I still have a short essay about differing perspectives on the French Revolution . . . Psych, American Lit, and Texas midterms . . . an extra credit essay on the Spanish expeditions into Texas . . . and 10 pages of Psych journals (well, technically about 8 now, I think). I've had worse workloads, but as I say, the 10 days of bliss are not upon me yet.

Here goes nothin' . . .

A Historian's Playground

Do you remember when you were a kid, sitting at home on a sunny day, bored because you still hadn't really learned to make your own fun and sustain it? Maybe you had a friend over, and the two of you were even more bored because (well, in my case) even reading wasn't an option since it couldn't involve your guest. Then, one of your parents (finding themselves somehow in possession of a coupla free hours, and knowing peace and leisure to be impossible with gloomy children in the house) would suggest a visit to the park a few blocks away.

And you and your friend and/or siblings would go out there, under the watchful eye of the adult on a nearby bench, and just attack that playground like the unconquered frontier it was. Every bar, slide, and pole had to be made use of as you expended those enormous reserves of energy you had back then (you know, the ones you should have been saving for college and beyond). All that brightly-colored metal and plastic was so fun and exciting to play on because it could be anything you wanted it to be . . . pirate ship or spaceship, hostile jungle or haunted jailhouse.

Well, I remember those days quite well (as I should . . . I couldn't have left them behind more than 10 years ago), but I had forgotten what it really felt like to experience the pure glee of conquering a new playground until Saturday morning. As part of my membership in the Webb Historical Society here on campus, I am required to volunteer 2 hours of time one Saturday a month at the Gregg County Historical M