faux reunion post 4

Things I learned over the past few days:

• Although he's had some systematic changes in his life, my friend from CA is still a blast to hang with...and blindingly obscene.
  
• There's a music store in town that's owned by Mennonites that have an apocalyptic theology...and Apocalyptic Mennonite Cult would be a great band name.
  
• Reverend guitars are awesome, and I want one.
  
• Similarly, Orange amps are great.
  
• Remember how I wasn't able to make it for my friend's funeral? Well, he either was never buried, or I have no idea where he is. I really wanted to sing Motorhead at his grave.
  
• When a car has a weak air conditioner, Florida really becomes unbearable.
  
• Shopping malls are less cool in your late 30s than in your late teens.
  
• I am not the only one who gets bored with metal that uses cookie monster vocals and drop-D tuning repeatedly.
  
• I've been away from lovely spousal unit way too much, and the trip isn't over yet....sigh.
  

I'm sure there will be more blinding insights still to come.

faux reunion post 3

The last two days were supposed to be when I would be at the class reunion. Ultimately, however, I decided against going. Why?

• Most people I wanted to see either were not going, graduated before me, or graduated after me.
  
• I don't really remember much about high school--I was working 35+ hours a week--so most of the evening would've been spent pretending that I remembered who many people were and how I knew them.
  
• It cost $100...and I'm cheap. I mean, c'mon, that's a lot of PBR.
  
• There was a dress code...and I refuse to dress up more for recreation than I do for work.
  
• Day one party was at a honkey tonk. Enough said.
  
• Day two party included a dj playing eighties music...and I hated that stuff enough when it was current.
  

So, it was clearly time for alternate plans.

Friday night, I went to day one of a heavy metal festival of local bands at a San Marco bar/sweat box with my friends K and M (hey, by using just initials, I feel just like a 19th century Russian novelist!). First, it was great to hang with the K-M duo...I had a blast. I also learned many things...like M was actually in my 10th grade English class. Why didn't I know this? I blame my own stupidity, bad memory, and the fact that I was in one of the most ridiculous and long suffering unrequited infatuations of my life. Mostly, though, I was just stupid.

I don't remember any of the band names, but the evening went like this: first up was an "old school" metal group...old school meaning that the singer was in his late 39s at least. They were pretty good, but not without weirdness. The bass player was the son of the guitar player. The bass player had the "let's twirl the hair in time with the music" bit down pat. The singer was this huge guy who parked himself at the center of the stage. The guitar player was shaved head with the requisite pointed goatee. Later in the set, the guitar player's wife flashed her breasts at the band...which included her son. Just be thankful I'm not describing the phallic nature of the band's tee shirt design.

Band two was...not great. The singer alternated between low growls and high squeals. Their songs were similarly not great...they included the random insertions of jazz segments before going back to noodley over-playing, and the only way you could tell the song ended was the guitar player assuming the "Rio statue of Jesus" pose.

Band 3 was a pretty tight metal band from Gainesville with a singer who was only 2'4".

Band 4 was actually my favorite...the guys looked like they were having real fun, they sounded like a cross between Judas Priest and Ozzy Black Sabbath, and they even did a cover of "The Trooper." I wanted to see if they had cds, but they left after their set and never came back.

Band 5 was called Carnivorous Carnival. Yeah, I know. The band consisted of a drummer, no bass player, and two guitarists. As opposed to the other two guys, who dressed more or less like normal people, the singer wore a clown mask and talked about how "this next song is for everyone who feels like a freak"...well, maybe you. They drove 85% of the crowd out the door.

We sat through one more mediocre band before leaving. Overall, it was fun, but the 122 degree temperature (Kelvin) inside the club did distract from the evening. When I got back to my parents' place, all of my clothes were soaked through. The next day, there was a salt evaporation line on my shirt.

Reunion day two was also with K&M. Their nephew was playing in a battle of the bands competition for teenage musicians. His band was good, but the bit I will never get out of my head was the wanna-be 13 year old musicians playing Eric Clapton's "Cocaine." Went to European Street for lunch and ran into J and his lovely spouse (whose initial is escaping me). After hanging out at the awesome K/M casa (I love high ceilings) and scaring the hell out of their 6 cats, we went to see the Jacksonville Suns play because nothing says sanity like sitting outside in 95 degree weather...but at least it was cooler than the metal festival.

After getting something to eat (which should not be as involved as it was...why do so many restaurants close before 10?), we went to the former "Monty's" for some beers. As a pleasant surprise, there was an R&B band playing...wearing matching red shirts and playing Booker T & the MG-esque toons. All in all, a good way to end the night, and K&M made the weekend more fun than I would've ever had at the reunion.

And I am still not getting any work done, by the way.

faux reunion post 2

Last two days in Florida have been very quiet...hanging with family all day Wednesday, reading several Robert Parker novels, now onto Tom Clancy...who is a good read yet really, really annoys me for lotsa reasons. Last night, went to hang with several friends...talked, caught up, played micro bits of guitar. Low key, but very fun...so low key, can't write sentence with noun.

Anyway, tonight is supposed to be the first night of the class reunion. So what am I gonna do? A friend who graduated a year after me is coming to pick me up later. We are going to eat burritos. After that, we are going to a bar to see a heavy metal show. Really, this is much more in tune with what I want to remember about high school than the $100 "listen to 80s music (why? I hated it back then) and talk to people who never talked to you" reunion.

I had, of course, grandiose plans to do writing while I'm down here--Krom knows I need to do the work--but thus far, laziness has overtaken. I'm just being very sedentary while talking, reading, and missing my dear spousal unit.

faux reunion post 1

Yesterday was marked by the beautiful spousal unit crawling out of slumber at an ungodly hour so that she could taxi me to the Detroit airport. A few years ago, for reasons that I have never been able to fathom, it was cheaper to fly Toledo-Detroit-Jacksonville than Detroit-Jacksonville. Now, all of a sudden, logic has been restored, so we had to make the commute into Michigan...which means a longer rider, getting up stupidly early. Actually, I prefer illogic.

After beautiful spousal unit dropped me off, I went inside to check my bags...and couldn't find the Northwest counter. Went outside, only saw Delta. This is when I assumed that there had been a merger or something...but really, as I have frequent flier miles and a booked trip, it is puzzling that I had to make a guess on this one.

It was 7:30 am, and the airport was exceptionally dead and empty. I shuffled off to my gate, found it, and then went to stake out the airport bar for the obligatory pre-flight bloody mary. The bars were, however, deserted. Now, I know that 7:30 am is not normally considered prime drinking time, but c'mon, it must've been 9 pm according to some traveler's internal clock. But no, nobody was drinking. Now, this says something about me: I had utterly no qualms about a bloody mary at that time of the day, but I also didn't want to be the only person sitting at the bar drinking at that time of the day. Damnit, as much as I really want to say "I don't care what anyone thinks," that ain't apparently the case just yet. I'm such a wimp.

The plane was delayed 20 minutes. Apparently, they found condensation inside the cabin and had to repair a leak. It's obviously not the kind of thing you want to hear before flying, but it could be worse...they could be attacking the engine with a roll of duct tape and a piece of panty hose.

Flight was uneventful. I have the normal trick for keeping chatty passengers from talking to me: I get a book with the heaviest sounding title I can find to read on the plane. This time? The Second Industrial Divided, an economics book. No one talked. I think I might've even scared one baby from crying.

Parental units picked me up from the airport. We ate lunch at Harpoon Louie's, and I had my regular blackened grouper sammich...awesome. I also had a Yuengling, sipped it, and pondered the inequities of life, in that such a fine brew is still not available where I live.

The rest of the day consisted just of hanging with the parental units, fixing their computer (installing Avira, Firefox), scumbag brother and nephew coming over for dinner, exposing my family to the joy and pleasure that is Maytag Blue, and arguments about politics and beer. Overall, a fine day one.

process (of avoidance)

Once again, I am in the midst of a summer with entirely too much to do in terms of scholarship. I gotta write, write, write. However, in spite (or maybe because) of having way too many projects on the go, very little actual writing has taken place so far.

Until today, that is. Lunch is still in the oven, and I have already busted out a pretty good draft of an introduction to a paper I wasn't even considering writing yet will eventually be both very important to my branding as an academic not to mention a pretty cool and sexy vita line. I'm actually pretty confident about my argument (it's notable, important, and doesn't seem to have been made yet...an academic sweet spot) and my ability to get it done. And as optimism isn't a regular feature of my writing, I'm doing my best to enjoy the sensation.

However, as nice as it is to be producing again, I have been noting the things that come along with the drafting process:

• My choice of beverage seems to take on massive levels of importance. Moreover, the art of getting a refill becomes a major event, much like I imagined the planning of the invasion of Normandy to be.
  
• Cleaning also becomes important. While I'm making more tea, I might as well do a load of dishes as the water boils. And then clean the countertop. And then the cabinet doors. And then reorganize my kitchen.
  
• I tend to get into major projects unrelated to writing. Yesterday, for instance, I steam cleaned the carpets instead of starting the draft.
  
• I am very much a fan of the "pile stuff around your chair" method of organizing my research...which, incidentally, makes all those trips for more beverage all the more taxing and precarious.
  
• For reasons I cannot really fathom, Tetris has become vital to my writing process. I must play a game before I start, whenever I get stuck, and after finishing each paragraph. And when I play poorly, I write poorly.
  
• I am a night person, but for some reason, I am always more productive in the morning, when I am half asleep, unkempt, and drooling.
  
• Just as I Twitter more often when I grade, I also do more tweets while writing.
  
• Every paper I tend to write takes on a life of its own. I'm either exploring whole new areas of knowledge in which I really don't have all that much experience, or I'm trying to do vast, overarching, game-changing scholarship. In other words, it's never easy.
  
• When I'm not currently involved in a writing project, there's never anything on television worth watching. When I do write, I get hooked into complex, intricate shows. Do I really need three hours of The West Wing a day when I'm trying to do a paper? Even the Television Gods are against me.
  
• The older I get and the longer I write, the more I gravitate towards incorporating stream of consciousness blasts into my process...which totally goes against my normally super-anal procedures.
  

It is, of course, always interesting to learn more about myself. I also find many wonderful, unique insights into the writing process. However, most of them are simply bad habits, so I really can't share them with my class. Besides, how many students nowadays need to be told ways to avoid the writing process?

Up!

As a society, we are often prone to discount full strata of experience. This is particularly the case when it comes to our popular culture. For whatever reason, ordinarily sane people feel perfectly comfortable and justified trashing media or genres of culture for no logical reason, based only on their (often wrong) presumptions.

Of course, as someone who teaches, studies, and writes about popular culture, I admit that I am firmly prickly about such matters. However, I notice it a lot. Even people who know what I do feel insistent on telling me such lovelies as "No, I would never play video games," or "that's just a kids program"...and I have heard more than one academic (who should otherwise be a smart person) brag about either never watching or not even owning a television. Being the smartass that I am, I'm always forced to wonder how they would respond if I came back with "Oh, I don't read...I'm proud not to read."

Unfortunately, this is something that is not confined to the freaks who will actually associate with me. I think it is widespread. Rather than take chances on new media experiences, many people are all too ready to just follow their blind prejudices or simply do what they've always done. This leads to narrow mindsets. Moreover, it leads to people thinking of entire realms of experience as being "no thought zones." And is there really any good that can come of us just deciding not to think of something?

Even worse is when this happens within the culture industry itself. I've always said that there can be, for instance, magnificent children's entertainment. Roald Dahl works (James and the Giant Peach and the Willie Wonka stories are great examples of kids stories which are smart, witty, and never talk down to their audience. Harry Potter is the same way. As a result, these are magnificent experiences for kids and adults alike.

Unfortunately, most of the children's entertainment out there does not have respect for their audience, and this is a prime reason many disdain children's culture. As a man with two nephews and a niece, I've seem my share of awful bilge pumped out in the name of Children's Entertainment. Parents have undoubtedly seen more examples of this than they would care to recall. All I have to do is even think of the trailer for Hotel for Dogs or see an ad for some Hannah Montana crap, and I'm ready to discount anything written for anyone under 18.

This would be a real shame, though, because I would lose Pixar films.

I liked Toy Story a lot, but I never really thought too much about the studio behind it. Then the spousal unit and I saw Wall-E and were blown away...I still think it should've not only received a nomination but should've won last year's Best Picture Oscar. Then we saw Ratatouille and The Incredibles. These brilliant movies all convinced me to give Pixar a free pass. If they make it, I will see it.

This faith was rewarded this weekend when the spousal unit and I saw Up.


Up, plot-wise, follows an elderly balloon salesman named Carl Fredricksen on his quest to finally escape his life and enter into a world of adventure. He does this by tying a gaggle of helium balloons to his house and flying to South America.

However, this (or any other plot description) does not really do justice to the movie. Rather than being plot-centric, Up is a character piece about loss, closure, and life. While there is a definite action theme central to the movie--after all, it focuses on a man who's dreamed of adventure his whole life--this movie is about emotion.

The first scenes show Carl as a little kid, watching a movie theater newsreel about a daring adventurer named Charles F. Muntz, who Carl idolizes. The next day, he meets a young girl named Ellie who's similarly obsessed with Muntz, and the two become friends.

However, the next sequence is utterly devastating. In a montage spanning 70 years of Carl's life, we see Carl and Ellie growing close, falling in love, marrying, building a house together (while still wearing their wedding clothes), working together, promising to each other to go on a grand South America adventure some day, planning for children, being told by doctor they will never have kids, having life (in the form of car repairs, house repairs, and such) get in the way of their planned adventure, growing old, and Carl finally being able to buy plane tickets for the two of the to finally visit Paradise Falls in South America...just as Ellie gets sick and dies.

It's a haunting sequence, slamming the viewer from highs to lows, making you first get interested in these two characters, then start liking them, then become intimately involved in their life together which never quite reaches their dreams. If I were not so strong of a man, my emotions would've gotten the better of me.

(okay, damnit, I choked up and cried)

From then on, the "adventure" phase of the movie starts. However, even in the most adventure-ridden scenes, there's such a strong current of emotion that underlies the plot. There are big events. There are funny jokes. The talking dogs (constantly obsessed with and distracted by squirrels) are amazing. But while every other element of the movie is great--the visuals alone are stunning--the movie makes sure you never forget that it is a ride of emotions, first off.

While flying to South America in his balloon-lifted house, Carl discovers Russell (a Wilderness Explorer--basically, a Cub Scout) has accidentally stowed away. This of course leads to some good "old guy versus young kid" humor, but the relationship between the two gets much deeper, and the movie never lets the viewer forget it. While resting for the night, Carl asks Russell about the kid's father, and Russell tells him his parents are divorced. While Russell doesn't see his dad that much, he does enjoy sitting with him and eating ice cream while counting cars. Speaking about his dad, Russell tells Carl "It's funny...it's the little things about being with him I miss most."

That is the joy of Up. While there are big visuals, big action, big jokes, the movie really excels when it drives home the point that the little things are, in the end, more important, more noteworthy.

And it would be a shame if anyone missed this message simply because it came in a "kid's movie."

television, texts, and change

There might be a new way of doing things coming. It might completely change the way the media is made. It might alter the stories we can tell...or the stories we can be told. The effects could be momentous.

And it all started with a silly name.

When I first heard it, I have to admit that I fell victim to my own prejudice. After all, I had seen enough juvenile crap at the movie theater and had no real reason to waste any more of my time on something I just knew I wouldn't like. Really, how good could something called Buffy the Vampire Slayer really be? The name alone drove me off (as it would later drive off my parents, who refused to even consider the show in spite of (or maybe because of) my suggestion). I did hear that it was originally a bad movie, so its history also worked against it. But really, more than the name or its past, I realize now that it really was my prejudice that kept me away.

But graduate school in culture studies does strange things to a person. One of my own personal projects upon arriving in Bowling Green was to open myself up to new experiences, to overcome my prejudices. This is why I started watching the various Star Trek series, why I started to follow wrestling. I wanted to know what was going on.

Eventually, this led to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One of the networks (TNT, I believe) was showing episodes, 2 a day. And my schedule was, at that moment, pretty flexible, so I started to watch. I was amazed at the level of depth, complexity, intricacy, and real-world applicability this admittedly weird horror series contained. I immediately indoctrinated the spousal unit, and we both became really big fans. And while I never reached the level of obsessiveness that some Buffy followers attain, this series (and its spin-off Angel, which I actually think is a better program) made me devout followers of their creator, Joss Whedon.

Whedon, for those of you who might not know, is more than the creator of these shows. He's more than an extremely good and experienced Hollywood writer (responsible for, among other things, the script for the Pixar breakthrough Toy Story). I think he's responsible (at least in part) for signaling a change in the way television works.

A bit of Media 101 background first. One of the most difficult (and seemingly counterintuitive) facts about broadcast television networks is that even though they provide a large volume of programming, spanning multiple genres and styles, they are not actually in the entertainment business. They don't make any money by showing (say) twelve episodes of American Idol each week (with the exception of some ancillary revenue such as licensing fees). No, they get most of their money by selling advertising. They are in the business of selling ad space. In that way, they are really more like a billboard company than an entertainment provider.

The programs are only really there in order to give us reason to watch television advertisement. Show of hands: who would sit and watch commercials on television if there were nothing else beside the sales pitch? And while I realize that some of you might share my obsession with bad infomercials, that's not what I'm talking about.

No, you watch the advertisements that come on television because they happen to interrupt your favorite program. But networks realistically care more about a good audience for advertising than a good audience for, say, drama or comedy. This is not to say that broadcast television does not lead to some great pieces of art; however, their ability to draw in the 18-25 year old male demographic is the real reason for the success of a particular program, not its level of quality or insight.

(This, incidentally, is why all television seems to be marketed towards the youngish...they are the ones with disposable income.)

Cable has obviously changed the landscape, because with cable television (or its sibling, the mini satellite dish), you do actually pay for the content you watch. However, most cable networks include advertising as well. You might pay for the right to watch Cartoon Network, for instance, but the network still operates on the broadcast paradigm.

There are non-commercial exceptions, of course, networks like HBO or Showtime. They have no commercials, but you do have to pay more for them (hence the name "premium channels"). However, the content is generally movies (a medium where the consumer does pay for content). And while they have always had original programming (at least since the early 80s, when I first encountered them), that programming was always more of a filler than a draw.

But then came The Sopranos, a gritty serial drama about a mob family. It was a television show on a non-advertising-based network which really became a "destination" show. People subscribed to the network specifically to watch the show. A television show became a product rather than just something to draw in advertisers, because there actually were no adversisers. And under these circumstances, it is much easier to do Art.

The Sopranos had a real effect on how television could be produced/consumed/perceived. There are a host of other premium channel programs now, and I have many friends who alter their television purchasing options based specifically on program schedules.

There are other things changing the landscape of television, such as the digital video recorder (perhaps my favorite gadget of the last decade). There's lots of work to be done studying the ramifications of DVRs, and this is something I would gladly both read and teach.

How does Joss Whedon fit into this? Well, two things.

First off, consider Whedon's third created program Firefly, a science fiction western. It is perhaps my favorite program of all time. Unfortunately, the network did not like the show that much at all, and it was canceled after less than half a season.

However, a weird thing happened. People who watched and liked Firefly were generally extreme fans of the program. DVD sales were very brisk, more than you'd think for a show that didn't even run a full year. Furthermore, upon the show's cancellation, a letter and e-mail campaign to bring back the program, aimed towards its studio, generated an avalanche of messages, so great that Whedon was allowed to bring it back as a movie, the 2005 release Serenity. Think of the momentousness of this for a minute; A broadcast television show, which never found its audience while on the air, generated so much commitment from its fans (which should, according to the broadcast model, only really be advertising demographics) that it was made into a motion picture. It went from something used unsuccessfully to sell advertising to a commerced piece of art unto itself.

This is not the only reason I believe Whedon's works are notable, though. Also important is the recent renewal of Dollhouse. Dollhouse has not had the highest of ratings, for several reasons; it is aired on Friday night (traditionally a low-viewership night), and it does have a rather complex and morally ambiguous story (it concerns humans who get imprinted with different personalities and leased to customers) which might throw off casual viewers.

However, Dollhouse was just renewed for a second season. What is interesting about this is the resulting press coverage. Many reporters have gone out of their way to note that Dollhouse is one of the lowest-rated television programs in recent memory to be renewed. The show does do a good job of drawing in viewers either via DVR or the internet, but those viewers do not see the accompanying advertising which the network is supposedly in the business of selling. So why, if it fails at its job of bringing a desired advertising viewers, is it being renewed?

While one article quoted a network executive jokingly suggesting it was a preemptive move to stop the expected avalanche of fan letters and e-mails, most of the articles point toward the possibility of high DVD sales...as all of Whedon's shows have done extremely well in that market.

This is, I feel, why Whedon and Dollhouse are both important. Dollhouse is still a broadcast television show, but the actual broadcast and resulting advertising revenue is perhaps its weakest point. Instead, it's become a valuable program predominantly for what would normally be ancillary revenue potential. It is not used to sell something else (the ads) but instead has become a commodity in and of itself, as a piece of art, in spite of being on broadcast television. In other words, it's breaking the traditional model of broadcast television and suggesting something much more text-centric, art-centric.

This feels notable.

(note: this may eventually morph into an academic paper, a class segment, or maybe nothing at all. If anyone has any insight, please let me know.)

a political quandry

This says something about me, apparently, but my first thought, upon seeing this photo, is "are we now negotiating with with terrorists?"

cleaning and self-realization

I determined that it was long past the time when I needed to clean my oven. So, on one of her last trips to the store, I had the spousal unit pick up a can of oven cleaner.

Tonight, I finally got around to starting the cleaning. Rather than just jump into the new can, I seemed to remember having just a bit left in a can under the sink that should probably be used up first. So I checked under the sink for said half-used can. I didn't find it, but I did find two completely full cans instead.

Apparently, every so often, I decide the oven needs to be cleaned, so I buy oven cleaner. But then I procrastinate, and eventually the can goes into storage. Time passes. Again, I decide I need to clean the oven, buy a new can of cleaner, procrastinate, store cleaner. Repeat.

This says something about me. If I was a stronger man, I might be tempted to figure out exactly what the message is.

my American Spendor day

In some issue of American Splendor, Harvey Pekar expresses his shock at seeing someone else named Harvey Pekar appear in the Cleveland phone book, And then another appears. And another. This makes Pekar question his feelings of uniqueness and individuality, driving him to ask "Who is Harvey Pekar?"

So why am I thinking about this?

Way back in December 2007, an article I wrote on Captain America saw publication in The Journal of Popular Culture after over four years in their cue. This led, through a rambling path (one I've recounted earlier) to another essay in an anthology on Cap. Today, when the lovely spousal unit got home from work, she brought in the mail (I leave it for her, because fetching the mail gives her a certain amount of glee), and amongst the bills and assorted crapola was my copy of the anthology containing my new publication.

I instantly geeked out a little, but there was little time for a full-blown ego-fest...me and the spousal unit were out the door, onto the theater for Star Trek. Later, though, when we got home, I looked through the book more carefully and found that not only was my Journal of Popular Culture article included in the "Selected Bibliographic Essay," it was also cited by one of the other contributors. Instantly, I moved from just being a published author to a cited authority...for what it's worth.

This wasn't the end to my self-referential day, however.

I have a friend in Canada who randomly calls me up late at night. They're always fun, interesting,and informative calls, if always a little unusual and out of the blue.

Tonight's call, amongst other things, had to do with my school bio and an error within. Apparently, my friend, in researching something else, ran across my department biography by googling my full name and spotted said mistake. Feel free to go look for the error, but it is now a priority to write a new bio first thing tomorrow, so your time will be limited.

While I was talking to said friend, I also googled myself. I've done this before, but as I share a name with a former University of Alabama football coach, I never come up in the search results. However, it is scary to realize there's also a Mike DuBose whose an Austin musician (maybe an alternate reality me?) and one who's a businessman of some sort.

I know these alternate Mike DuBoses are not me. However, I think I'm going to have to start following their careers. When the musician Mike DuBose's album comes out, I need to get it. Who knows? Maybe I'll make a false cover and photoshop my face into the artwork. At any rate, it's one of the reasons I called this blog "TheMikeDuBose"...to separate myself out from all these other (seemingly more successful) versions.

Anyway, this time, I included my middle initial into the google search, and I learned a bunch of facts about myself, some of which might be a little frightening to those who know me.

• The only poem I published in the two years or so I thought I would become a poet is still online. I thought this was, for good or ill, lost to the nether regions of the interwub. Now I know it's still up there as a potential object of either praise or ridicule.
  
• The aforementioned Journal of Popular Culture article? It seems to be a part of some anonymous Ph.D. student's reading list...which makes me wonder how helpful I am to this student.
  
• Furthermore, the JPC article is also a required reading for a senior level history class called Mass Culture and the Postmodern Era. Do they like me, or are they just bored with me?
  
• The same article is also being used for an Arizona State University English class, as well as a few others.
  
• I also saw that article reviewed on a few student web sites, including this student blog entry.
  

In many ways, this should be the exact opposite of the aforementioned Harvey Pekar moment...because all the references I encountered are, in fact, actually about me. On the other hand, I still have a problem reconciling them with the man who spent most of the day sitting on the couch reading, only taking a break for lunch while watching a Deadliest Catch repeat. Am I the Mike DuBose that took my wife out to see a geek movie, or am I the Mike DuBose who has 137 google hits, and who is apparently read and debated in class rooms?

I'm not sure how to feel about any of this. Frankly, I think the world might very well have imploded on itself today, and I missed it only because I was sitting on the couch.

the return of fragments

For anyone who's interested, my summer restart of scholarly activity means I am now thinking again. This means I need somewhere to ramble on, to spout out incoherent and developing fragments of thought. This means I am now posting again over at Thought Emporium. If you have any desire to see unconnected thoughts as they emerge from my reading and pondering, go, visit, comment.

hot fun in the summer

This morning, my alarm went off..and a large part of me regretted it. My first act, rather than jumping out of bed and rushing through a morning routine (speed shower, speed breakfast, speed drive across the countryside to traverse devastated roads to get to the university) was to shake the dream fragments from my head (some like B horror scenes, some like a sitcom version of my life, some of people I don't recognize, but strangely enough, no pizza making dreams) and wonder why I set the alarm in the first place. After a minute, it came to me...it was all about motivation.

During the course of the normal school year, I am up to my neck in schedules. I have my teaching schedule, schedules in each of my classes (each of which balances out my students' assignments into some master schedule), my office hours schedule, my lesson planning schedule, and others (including to, but not limited to my vague relaxation schedule). These all balance out with my lovely spousal unit's schedules. Some of these are mandated, some of these are by design, and some of these are by default. Regardless, they all rule my life in many ways, throughout the course of the semester. I don't have to question what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, because it's all mapped out.

However, the summer is quite different. I don't have a set natural schedule. I don't have any specific, gun-to-the-head obligations. I don't have anything I have to do. Everething is entirely up to my personal discretion.

At least, that's what the narrative of "teacher over the summer" says. The reality is quite different. I'm non-tenured, and I very much want to become tenured. Because I'm non-tenured, I really don't have to do service or scholarship. It's not part of my job. However, since I want to become tenured, I have to do a lot of scholarship to make it visibly apparent that I'm still an active thinker. My job allows me absolutely no time to do scholarship. So guess what I do over the summer? So I gotta do a lot of scholarship, because I want a better job, and doing the work of an assistant professor on top of doing the work of a lecturer is not optional.

Moreover, it's a requirement of my ego that I stay active. While I absolutely love teaching, I ultimately did get into this business to do scholarship, to think. If I don't do it, I feel more like I'm a warehouse worker than anything else.

And a lot of this ego-business is preemptive. On top of the pure random luck involved, my success on the job market next year will depend on how much work I get done this summer. So, while I could still possibly sit around unshowered and play video games in between watching television every single day, it would mean that much heartache and depression when the rejection letters start rolling in. Of course, getting a lot of writing done is no guarantee that I'll get a job (see the last two years), but it does make me feel that much better...okay, less whiny.

However, while my need to do unpaid work is not really optional, I still have to deal with the workload while knowing that I have no schedule. I am master of my own summer domain, true, but this only really means that I can't count on outside schedules to provide guidance. Instead, I have to set my own plans, keeping that fear and need for ego as my motivation.

So, what's on tap? How do I proceed? I have my plan lined out, step by step.

1. I have to remember how to be an academic scholar. This basically means I have to read a whole lot of scholarship and theory so I can have quotes and experts at my disposal.
   
2. I have to remember what my book is about. This means revisiting my dissertation and the pile of revision notes scattered across the study and computer...after, of course, trying to find everything and get it into a system of piles which makes sense.
   
3. I have to remember what I was thinking in the big theory chapter. That means reading all the chapter-specific notes, theory, texts. It means re-reading the 50% of the chapter I've finished, hoping to get back into whatever groove I was in when I had to abandon this. It means reading my old fragment note, maybe writing some new ones.
   
4. I have to finish said chapter, which takes all my theory and half of my literature review from the dissertation and pushes them through the grinder with my analysis of the novel Neuromancer. It takes on postmodernism, as well as a whole bunch of Haraway derivatives. It's also where the main point of the book comes out and moves into "this is exactly what I'm adding to the cultural conversation." In other words, it's the most important part of the whole project.
   
5. I have to see if there's updated stuff I have to read for any of my other chapters...and since I've been working on this project for eons, you know there will be books galore.
   
6. I have to revise everything else, getting it to read as much like a popular book while not diminishing the intricacies of the thoughts swelling around my head for the last several years.
   
7. I then have to proof everything and send it off to the editor who was interested...not to mention hope that said editor is still interested.
   
8. Time permitting, I have a 90% researched paper on CSI: that I would love to bust out.
   

Piece of cake, no? This is why I have to set the alarm, avoid hitting the snooze, and actually do something...which is cool, because I do, after all, enjoy the work.

I have to admit, however, that I still have to fight the temptation to just goof off...which is the true peril of the summer academic.

I'm going down...all the way

When I first started teaching, there were many things about the occupation/calling that really surprised me. I was surprised at the emotional response I had to being in front of a group of students, for instance. I, a normally shy person, did not freeze up or feel all that nervous. Instead, I participated in a bevy of shared emotions with the students: frustration at a stupid text, wonderment when a mental wall was broken down, glee when a cool idea took center stage.

What really shocked me, though, happened in my (communally shared, cramped, and ultimately decaying) office, at my lonely desk, when I was forced to slog through student papers and exams. I thought that I would be able to coolly detach myself from the act of grading. After all, I was (I figured) only dealing with questions and answers, theories, ideas...wasn't I? I wasn't actually rendering judgment on them on their worth as people. And I had the added benefit of having an extremely rotten mind for putting names together with faces (am I mentally deficient? just had too much fun in high school? I dunno), so I couldn't really figure out, in the majority of cases, whose work I was evaluating. The anonymity, I believed, would help.

Somehow, in spite of knowing I was evaluating ideas and not people, in spite of not being able to tell which person wrote down those ideas, I felt very much involved in the plight of the (oft-anonymous) students anyway. Sifting through stacks of paper, red (or the more student-friendly green) pen in hand, I still found myself rooting for students, cheering their accomplishments, feeling insanely proud when someone got a key point, suffering a meltdown when the point (whatever it may be) was irrevocably lost in a haze of illogic, suffering akin to the sensation of parental failure when someone obviously didn't care. Frankly, I wasn't expecting this level of emotional investment.

Moreover, I wasn't expecting the resulting student reactions. Those who earned As were unnervingly nonchalant about them. Likewise, and even more unexpectedly, those who earned Cs were similarly nonchalant. The realm of student expectation was so strange to me. About the only people who really seemed to care, out of that first group of students, were those who earned A-s...those acted as if I was exercising some vast, personal vendetta against them because I mysteriously didn't want them to get into Harvard Law or something like that.

And although there is a bunch of negatives about the actual grading process (it's isolating, tedious, mind-numbing, repetitive, the papers blur together, your eyeballs hurt, your back starts to give out, you envy everyone who gets to work outside), it's this emotional state that's the worst.

It's also why I try not to do it anymore.

Nowadays (or, as the comp student likes to say, "In our modern society today..."), I just hold conferences. Rather than me rendering solitary judgment, the student comes in, and we read, talk ideas, plot organization, and suggest revision strategies. It actually takes more time, but for most students, we get to have a conversation. Students seem to prefer it, and for me, it turns an isolating, pain-inducing desk session into an interactive student-centered learning opportunity (how's that for educat-speak?).

However, there's still a problem...the students still ultimately have to turn in revisions, and I still ultimately have to grade them. I only have to experience the roller-coaster that is grading one time a semester, but that one time involves everything each student has written...and therefore is a real doozy.

That's where I am now...in the middle of grading hell. One class is down, and I'm in the middle of a second. I hope to get class 2 finished after lunch, maybe get class 3 done before bedtime. Friday will be class 4 and any stragglers. Then I will be done...both in terms of workload and of leftover mental sanity.

When I'm grading, other things, the regular small activities, tend to increase in importance and interest. I must, must regularly check all e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, Reader pages for updates...I can't fall behind! I need hot tea; coffee provides too steep of a kick, and tea has the added benefit of taking just long enough for me to go ahead and stay in the kitchen, away from those pesky portfolios. Lunch moves away from a quick sandwich, or maybe leftover something-or-another, and takes on epic proportions, both in preparation and consumption; today, for instance, I plan to cook a nice chateau brion, accompanied with rosemary-chive-goat cheese-black truffle mashed potatoes and cedar-wood grilled asparagus in a freshly made bernaise sauce. Then, of course, there's always writing this damn blog entry.

All to avoid going back to grading, you see. Because I want it all. I want large breaks from the tyranny of having to apply judgment, but I also want all said judgment over with. I want to do experience all the aspects of learning save the detection and determination of whether or not any actual learning actually happened. I want the teaching experience to be limited to just the adulation, the admirers, the illegal cash gratuities, the wine and champagne, the admiring students throwing garlands of freshly picked roses.

Of course, that will never happen. That, my friends, is why they call this grading hell.

sanity and reunions, part two

A while back, I mentioned my plans to go to my high school reunion In typical themikedubose style, I quickly turned the post into a snarky dig on people who have really done nothing whatsoever to me. Well, wouldn't you know that the situation has gotten stranger and more complex.

The main reason I planned to go was because I convinced a friend from California to come to the reunion, and frankly, I had no real idea how else I'd be able to get together with him and hang out. I really like Mr. California, and I often wonder what he's up to. I hung out with Mr. Cali quite a bit in Jax. We even played briefly in a band. And, as he likes to say, we have lots of bribery material on each other.

But it goes beyond just hanging with a friend. While I would never say I acted perfectly around him, he is one of the people that I don't feel ashamed of my behavior around. Thinking about the high school reunion has brought this unpleasant truth to the surface: I don't really like who I was in high school.

True, I did achieve a certain level of popularity. I also had bitchin' hair. However, I was socially awkward. While I put on the "I don't care what you think" appearance quite regularly, the fact was, I really cared a lot. Even worse, I really had no clue how to get people to like me by just being myself. So I acted (alternately) strange, distant, eccentric, aloof, ass-ish, deep, intellectual, scumbag...you fill in the adverb. The result of this was that I had a few really good friends, a bunch of people who thought I was an amusing freak but whom I never let know me, a number of friends/coworkers who saw the dictator side of my personality, many people I liked but who thought me inconsequential (potential relationships mostly fit into this category), and so forth.

Not Mr. CA. We were always pretty open around each other. We never held back. Neither of us would allow the other to play games.

This is why I was looking forward to hanging with him during the reunion. It would be fun to get the comedy duo back together. But more than that, I knew that I would have at least one anchor to the real themikedubose, someone who had as much disdain for appearance games as I, someone to keep me honest.

Unfortunately, wouldn't you know, he can't make it to Jax until after the reunion. I've been trying to see if any of my other friends (those who actually know me) are going. So far, I'm having a hard time getting any real confirmation. One friend, I didn't realize, graduated the year after me. A few can't afford it. I've lost contact info for a bunch of others. So if I go to the reunion, I have no clue who else will be there, which makes it scary.

Also, the reunion itself scares me. The brochure I have has the day one welcome party at some place called "Maverick's Rock & Honkey Tonk"...which doesn't sound an appealing venue in the lest. Day two has a buffet dinner/dance, with a DJ playing 80s music...I hated the decade's popular music back then, and time has been less than kind to it. Plus, this night requires "cocktail attire," whatever that is. Damnit, I lent my tuxedo out. Also, the whole shindig costs $100, and that doesn't even include the bar. I do get a photo name tag, however!

Simply put, this does not look good.

Right now, I'm leaning towards just setting up shop in some bar and holding an alternate protest reunion.

NO part 2: on marketing, conferences, and incompatibility

When I was in grad school and teachers talked about professional development (which was not nearly enough for my tastes), one of the things they frequently mentioned was the academic conference. Conferences were many things; they were places to share ideas, mingle, develop contacts, network, interview, gain publications. They were an opportunity to be a professional in your field amongst other professionals. They were a break from teaching and an opportunity to be, first and foremost, a scholar.

I wish those teachers would've added "your mileage may vary."

Don't get me wrong. I still love going to conferences. I still love presenting, hearing other presentations, getting the chance to be a scholar. Conferences, though, have never really been the mystery wonderland of academia others make them out to be.

The problem is, I suspect, one of marketing.

My best two conference presentations were the two that were explicitly organized around a specific theme. When I presented at the American Studies Association, I was on a panel about comics, so everyone there wanted to hear and learn about comics. It was cool, keeping in mind I see problems being marketed as a comics scholar. The second one was something about medicine and popular culture at the North East MLA. I got great feedback, but my paper was on House, M. D....and who doesn't like talking about hit television?

But the rest of the time, I end up being the "which one of these things is unlike the others?" presentation. As a result, I normally don't get many good questions. If I don't visibly fit in, if I'm the oddball, then how will any good questions come? Who will be impressed/interested/curious?

And yes, I know that being an academic oddball is ultimately down to my own choices, but every academic ultimately has to answer the question: do you want to be a small player in a big field, or do you want to be an innovator yet have no peers? This is something I've been working on since starting my Ph.D.; I initially was going to study Twain as post-traumatic stress syndrome literature (thus becoming one of a million Twain scholars) before settling on deconstructing definitions of the mainstream in 1980s popular culture (a field that has, as far as I can tell, only me). However, I'm still not 100% sure where I want to be.

So, for my New Orleans conference, I honestly tried to present with marketing in mind. I submitted what I thought was a nice topic with wide appeal, involving New Orleans, football, race, and Katrina. I applied to the television area, which I assumed would be fairly mainstream. However, I was on a panel with one presentation analyzing some HBO drama about a psychiatrist and an analysis of the nineties sitcom Wings...so right away, I didn't fit in in spite of my attempts to market my presentation. However, as there were utterly no commonalities between any of the papers, ultimately, no one fit in...so I guess that's something.

Then I had A/V difficulties. I assembled my first powerpoint for a presentation ever. I made multiple copies (on flash drive, on cd, mailed to 3 different e-mail accounts). There was no computer. Luckily, I had my dvd and knew the exact times of my clips. However, the panelist closest to the dvd player could not, for some reason, fast forward to my second clip for me; I had to bring my presentation to a screeching halt to get to it. So much for flow.

Nonetheless, I thought I did a good job on my presentation. I spoke rather than read. I had neat clips. I was on time. But then there was the Q/A session. I got one good question, but I got one person who blatantly attacked my premise on the grounds that how can sports broadcast do anything other than cover sports? He obviously didn't like or hear anything I had to say. Sigh.

So academically, it wasn't the most smashing success I've had, and ultimately, my attempts to market myself made utterly no difference whatsoever. However, how upset can you really be when you still get to hang out with long-dispersed friends in New Orleans?

distraction

Someone down the hall from me is playing Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Yes. Honestly.

Y'know, I expect certain distractions when I work in my office. I expect to have my colleagues dropping by to complain about their day. I expect to get annoying e-mails. I expect to have homicidal maniacs run through the hallway carrying axes. I expect to battle the infestation of wallabees.

But Bonnie Tyler? Damn. I need a raise.

trapped in the gutters

When I was a kid, I was never really close to the world of comics. Certainly, I knew that world existed, but that was about it. My parents only ever bought me the Harvey comics--either Richie Rich or Casper the Friendly Ghost--and those weren't really good enough (or even, for that matter, non-gag-worthy enough) to inspire a habit. Furthermore, I didn't have any comic book friends, so there was no hope of becoming indoctrinated by an acolyte in the cause.

So I was never really a comic guy. I had no preconceptions of the medium, of the quality of the texts, of the limits of the form, because I really had no earthly idea what they could do.

I never even considered comics in high school...they would've distracted from my horror novel phase. College was no better, particularly as I was in an English department. Don't get me wrong, though...this had nothing to do with prejudice. I was all about breaking literary boundaries (I did in fact write a Freudian analysis of a Bugs Bunny cartoon), but again, comics were too far off my radar to hold the level of a preconception which needed to be shattered

Trust me, though, I had a lot of preconceptions at this point. Fortunately, I left my hometown in order to get my Ph.D., and in addition to changing my physical location, I also decided to revisit and actively undermine most of those preconceptions. As I was going to be teaching popular culture, I decided that I needed to know more about that popular culture. So I began a program of total immersion: I saw more movies, I started watching a few of the Star Treks, and some friends introduced me to wrestling.

Somewhere within my second year, a professor offered a class on comic book culture, and I took it out of the same spirit of exploration and boundary-stretching. Not only did I get to read a bunch of enormously important texts for the first time (including Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns) and wrote a paper which would eventually become part of the dissertation, I also became a fan of the medium. I found favorite writers. I developed the expensive habit of my own comic pull list. In many ways, I started to make up for lost comics time.

Comics did (and still do) fascinate me. There are several reasons for this. Not only are they a relatively open field for me personally (I had, after all, few preconceptions to overcome), graphic fiction still has the feel of a medium on the edge. While comics have been around for ages, and superhero fiction specifically has been around since the thirties, comics really only came of age in the eighties. There are still numerous possibilities for innovation within the medium, and it still harbors writers (such as Warren Ellis and Brian Micheal Bendis) who could never really work as well in a different, more established tradition.

But then there's the quandary of the comic-obsessed academic. As there's still room for cutting edge fiction within comics, there's likewise room for cutting edge interpretation. There's the growing role of comics in determining the timbre of our popular culture as a whole (as movies and television is increasingly either based off or inspired by comics). Comics is, in short, a medium which should be very attractive to academics, to scholars looking for mediums to make their own. And indeed, there's lots of exciting scholarship coming out of comics studies.

However, comics also bring their own baggage. Up to the late eighties, most comics were, frankly speaking, really awful. In my research, I've found myself stuck reading 50s Captain Americas, 60s Thors, and 70s Avengers...and they were all painful to read. They were, for the most part, the type of fiction obviously written as a "product" rather than a serious endeavor. Worse still, lots of it was written as "dumbed down" children's literature...simple plots, unrealistic dialog, and the utter and complete lack of complexity, moral, ethical, or otherwise.

Unfortunately, I am wiling to bet dollars to donuts that most people have the latter impression of comics rather than the former. Many people still must think of comics as being simple, and therefore, comic scholarship as inconsequential. Do serious scholars study comics? I imagine that many (including a sizeable chunk of the intellectual "powers that be") would say the answer is obviously "no."

This is something with which I really struggle. I love comics. Moreover, I love writing about comics; I've done it many times, and I think I've done it rather well. But do I keep doing it? Do I try to become a big name in an unrespected field that I nonetheless love? Or do I try to avoid typecasting as a frivolous scholar?

It's not just comics that bring up these thoughts. I wrote my dissertation (and am writing my book) on eighties culture, so I've also been wondering if I really in fact want to market myself as an eighties scholar...there are few jobs for someone with that label. But comics...well, have you heard the quote "just when I thought I was out, they drag me back in?"

So how does this tie into today's weird mood? Well, that requires a history lesson.

When I was taking that comics class, I wrote a paper about the aforementioned Watchmen and Dark Knight. A few months later, a fellow grad student saw me in the library. When he told me that him and the professor of that comics class were putting together an anthology, he suggested that I contribute something on comics in the eighties. I protested, saying that I didn't really have the time...moreover, I didn't really know anything about comics in the eighties. He gave me a list.

This of course meant many hours plowing through back issue after back issue of many different titles. Eventually, I found a neat bit I could write about Captain America, plowed through the article, stitched it with that comics class paper, submitted it for the anthology, and made it the basis to one of my dissertation chapters.

Then the anthology died. Undeterred (I had, after all, spent a lot of time on this article and wanted to milk it for all it was worth), I submitted it to The Journal of Popular Culture, and they accepted it...my first academic journal publication!

Unfortunately, the journal had (at that time) a pretty intense backlog of accepted work. It took over four years for my article to actually see print. I got to present it at the American Studies Association's conference (which allowed me to meet both Lawrence Levine and Janice Radway), but then, I put it out of my mind.

In the meantime, I concentrated on finding a job, and only really thought about comics as my own fun bit of culture. While they were amongst the things to go when money got tightest during the adjunct period, one of my first acts upon getting my current job was to hit a comic store. I wasn't, however, thinking of them as a subject of scholarship.

Then the Journal of Popular Culture article on Captain America came out--a nice line on the vitae! Within a month, though, I was contacted by a guy who was putting together an anthology on the good Cap, and was I interested? Again, when I tried to beg off (I had no time to write, hadn't read it in years, still didn't know much, and had no ideas), he gave me a list of ideas...and there I was, writing about Captain America again.

It took me a while to write, but the article came out really well. I ended up focusing on Cap's popular fiction appearances (another medium I can teach) and the version of masculinity they portray (another theoretical angle I can teach), so it was all a good thing, and I can use it to make several career-based arguments. The anthology, Captain America and the Struggle of the Superhero, recently came out, so that's another neat vitae line.

I currently have no superhero stuff in the cue, but the medium is still forcing its way into my head. I recently had an article on House, M. D. accepted by Television & New Media which looked at the show's protagonist as a (wait for it...) superhero...and, of course, involved superhero fiction analysis as my critical theory (which allowed me to cite myself, something I wholeheartedly recommend). I get to revise the dissertation/book chapter on Cap this summer...that is, if my brain does not implode before I get to that stage of the process. And who knows where else comics will rear their ugly head?

And this is where I'm torn. I dearly love graphic fiction. I regularly read a number of titles. My favorite current writer (Warren Ellis) works in the world of comics. If pressed, I would say my favorite work of fiction period is Sandman. I don't see comics ever going away for me. And I would love to present more comics stuff, research more comics stuff, write more comics stuff.

Do I dare do this, though? How much attention should I pay to the stereotypes? Do I suppress my academic urges and write about more marketable stuff? Or do I follow my muse, even if it leads to academic ghettoization? It's not selling out, because I do also love the stuff currently in my head and on-deck circle...but what happens when my biggest ideas are ones that might work against me? Will I be labeled as a "comics scholar?" And will that ever be anything other than limiting to my career?

The world of comics is one of panels, borders, word balloons, and gutters. Even in the wildest, most cutting edge comics, there is still, in the end, a sense of order in the medium in spite of experimental artwork and narrative. There are definitive lines even when there are competing visions.

I know that. I get that. Sometimes, though, I wish my intellectual relationship to comics was as clearly defined.

sanity and reunions, part one

I have most likely decided to go to my high school reunion. This is unexpected for me...I hated high school, hated the person I was at the time, had no good relationships, and generally could not wait to leave. On top of that, I have seen remarkably few people from high school since leaving.

It's not that I hated everyone with whom I went to school. Far from it, but out of the 5-10 people I really would like to see, the majority of them still live in our hometown, and I've run into most of them during my brief stays. While it would be great to see them all at once, the thought of "enforced nostalgia" which will inevitably accompany the formal reunion makes me itch, frankly. And if I wanted to see all my old friends, I'd rather just plan an extended trip back down there and make some phone calls.

However, a friend of mine who moved to California (and developed a rather nasty habit of saying the word "dude" repeatedly) is coming, and since I have very little chance of making it out to the left coast anytime soon, I have agreed to go to this nightmarish reunion. In order to make the whole shindig more notable, I have suggested a number of tasks to occupy our time at the ceremony. Round one involves coming up with and then betting on over/unders for the:

• number of people who scare us
  
• number of people who show us photos of their kids
  
• number of people astounded we don't have kids
  
• number of people who tell us children are the greatest blessing in life
  
• number of people who will talk to us now but wouldn't in HS
  
• number of people we really don't want to see
  
• number of people who look disappointed when they find out I'm a leftist
  
• number of people who don't understand why I would want to be a teacher (and, as a result, I'm thinking of just introducing myself as a media scholar)
  
• incidents of homophobic rants
  
• amount of times we hear Bon Jovi, hair metal, or Prince
  
• amount of subsequent dancing to said crap music
  
• robots
  
• automatons
  
• number of people who have aged 20 years more than expected
  
• general level of smugness
  
• number of people who've never actually left our hometown
  
• amount of times we resist the urge to punch someone
  
• number of minutes until we are overcome with the urge to blow the joint and just hit a dark dive bar
  

Anyone have any further suggestions? I feel I'll need all the distractions I can get.

NO part 1: two incidents I like

I have lots to report on the New Orleans trip, but most of that is waiting for me to have time to manipulate the photo imagery. In the meantime, there are just two things I can't wait to tell you about.

1. When I was checking into the conference, I was recognized. I went to the registration desk and said "Hi, my name's DuBose, first name..."
   

   The guy running the "A-D" section looked up, excitement splashed across his face. "Mike?"
   

   "Um...yeah."
   

   "Oh, hey. It's great to meet you!"
   

   (was he really talking to me?)
   

   "I saw you give a talk in Hartford, and I use some of your ideas."
   

   This floored me...mostly because it took me a few seconds to remember when the hell I was in Hartford. "Was that for the American Studies Association," I asked.
   

   "Yeah. You presented on Captain America. There was also some guy who did something on Batman."
   

   This is when I was sure that the Hadron Collider must've ripped a hole into the space/time fabric and sucked both me and this guy into this world from totally distinct and different dimensions...because I presented with two very big scholars in the field on this panel (the late Lawrence Levine and Janice Radway)...and I'm the one he remembered? Not to mention this was in 2003.
   

   But he seemed like a nice guy, so we talked for a few minutes. Eventually, we exchanged business cards (which took the form of a nice ceremony that pretty much inverted the scene in American Psycho...we were comparing how cheap were our respective cards), and I hope to have some conversations with him in the future.
   

   The whole incident was pretty surreal, though, and it was the first time anyone's ever talked to me out of the blue who was a fan of anything I've done. You can bet that this a story I'll be repeating widely and often.
   

2. We spent a lot of our night time in two bars. While me, the spousal unit, and two friends were on the road, another friend (still in NO) called us to tell us that the bartender of Molly's on Toulouse told him "You're not really tourists...you're more like travellers."
   

   I like that.
   

context

While walking out of the dentist's office, my mind started to bounce from topic to topic, first thinking of how roughly 2/3 of the females working within seemed to share a penchant for the exact same cut of their peroxide-blonde hair, then thinking of whether the personalized "RU FLOSIN" license plate was cutesy/clever or instead a desperate cry for career choice validation, then trying to think of a good lesson plan for the day's class, all within the fifteen steps before finally reaching my car. But, as someone who professionally studies the elements of everyday life, it's always like this for me. The brain is a pinball, constantly propelled from thought bumper to thought bumper, and it's up to some other part of my consciousness to try to first find some usable patter and then try to do something with the resulting accumulation of thought. Sometimes, I think that the real difference between a hopefully normal person and the crazed, neurotic academic is a constantly shifting, sliding, rotating mental terrain.

I get to my car and pull out before the cd player finishes reading the enclosed disk and spits out sound. It's a compilation of The Replacements someone made for me years ago. Normal, healthy people would, I assume, try to lose themselves in the songs. Not I, however. Yet I do try. I pound the steering wheel in time, bob my head, attempt some typical "rock guy" gesticulations designed to follow the various crescendos of the main guitar part. But still, that "I must know what IT (whatever it may be) means" portion of my brain just cannot cut off.

For instance:

I was never a big fan of The Replacements growing up. I had nothing against them, but they just never entered my radar. I was too busy listening to ACDC, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, and Megadeth. When I finally did get to hear them, it was when they were opening up for Tom Petty. They were horrible...they opened with a pseudo-jazz song, played a lot of meandering stuff, and then started to antagonize the bored crowd. As a result, I didn't listen to them for years. I had, I told myself, better uses for my time than a band that clearly was unprofessional and didn't really care if anyone liked them.

About a decade later, long after they had broken up, someone made me a compilation cd of songs from throughout their career, and something did indeed click. I started to appreciate why people became fanatical about The Replacements. However, when I tried to discuss my new-found appreciation for the band with these fans, I found out I liked much different stuff than did the hard-core. I, for instance, liked a lot of their later songs. I liked the "wrong" version of some songs. I preferred the studio stuff to any live bootlegs I heard.

The difference ultimately came down to context. I didn't like The Replacements as a band representative of a certain segment of musical history. I just could not listen to "Left of the Dial" and think of it juxtaposed to the mainstream music released simultaneously. I never had to reconcile their move to more professional, maybe more commercial music as their career progressed. They were ahistorical for me, because I lacked the context embraced by the hardcore fan.

Of course, that context can be a double-edged sword. Many hardcore Replacement fans miss a lot of good songs from their last few albums out of a loathing for those final disks inspired by an unreasonably intense loyalty to their early work. Still, though, I sort of wish I had the context, because without it, The Replacements would only ever be "a band" for me...they would never become a cause.

So, as I was driving back to campus, instead of just listening to my Replacements cd, instead of losing myself in the moment, instead of just "being," I was analyzing. I started to apply my rambling theory of context to other things...television, movies, friendships, politics. I started to think about the connections between time and experience. I started to think about systems, logic, and disorder.

Again, plusses and minuses exist. A friend can burn me a disc of his favorite band growing up, but I now know that I can never experience it the way he does, that it will never mean the same thing to me as it does to him. This is because of the nature of my mind. It will throw me from topic to topic. It will push me into oceans of material before yanking me out, up towards the higher ground of context, of theory, of concepts...and then, it will plunge me back into the realm of minutiae.

I eventually got back to campus, miraculously found a parking spot, and the cd died in time with my car's engine. As I walked back to my office, I thought less about context than my insatiable, unstoppable need for the order I would never find. I unlocked my door, sat down at the computer, and did get a lesson plan out of it. It does make me wonder, though...is this neurotic tendency what threw me into academics, or is it caused by my choice of vocation?

Another mystery to ponder, I guess.