New York, escape to and fro

You know the saying "It's the journey, not the destination?" I would really like to find the person who said that and repeatedly punch him/her in the prefrontal cortex.

I had occasion this week to transport a vampire to New York City. We got up early for the long drive. Ohio was fine. Pennsylvania seemingly never ends. Seriously. It goes on forever. You enter Pennsylvania on I-80, travel 300+ miles, get in sight of the Welcome to New Jersey signs, and then you undergo an instant quantum transportation back to the Ohio border. Little known fact: remember the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where the Enterprise was caught in a temporal causality loop for several weeks? That was based on Pennsylvania's interstate.

Furthermore, about 35% of said never-ending interstate system is currently under construction and down to one lane. This adds even more time, but what can one do, other than raise a fist to the sky and curse Obama's communistical socialism? How dare he spend money on something helpful and productive rather than just give us bribe checks as did his predecessor.

At one of said construction areas, traffic stopped. After five minutes, I turn off the car. Five more, we get out and wander the interstate. Helpful truck driver behind us tells us there's a major accident ahead. We see three separate helicopter ambulances. Then, 20 minutes later, they begin to shunt all interstate traffic onto a back road. About 20 minutes after that, they let those of us past the exit turn around, go up the on-ramp, and join the endless flotilla of vehicles clogging the isolated two lane country road. Eventually, we get into a very small town where, no lie, people are sitting outside their trailers staring at the line of cars while drinking canned beer...for entertainment purposes, one would presume. Two hours after we initially stopped, we get back on the interstate, ten miles down the road. By this point, though, the interstate is open again...so it would've been quicker if they would've just left us alone.

We wind our way into New Jersey and follow the handy online directions to the NJ light rail station...which is fun, because although said station was in a relatively affluent area, the township apparently doesn't believe in either streetlights or legible street signs. At said station, there is no mention of parking payment, meters, or anything else to suggest exactly how we're supposed to make sure my car didn't get towed. The train ride into Penn Station was uneventful, but Penn Station itself was about 128 degrees, with 98% humidity. This made hauling the vampire's suitcase over the top of the subway gates real fun.

For my solo trip back to Ohio, I woke early...around 6:30, thanks to the cars at the nearby intersection blowing their horns repeatedly and a neighbor moving what I can only assume is a piano out of the third-floor walkup. I walked the three city blocks to a bagel factory (recommended by our awesome hostess). While munching on a fresh out-of-the-oven everything, I:

• walk the seven blocks to our original subway stop; they don't sell tickets.
  
• I then walk one block to another entrance; their ticket machine is broken.
  
• I stagger the two blocks to one of the Times Square stations, knocking tourists and schmucks out of my way. The station has a working machine, but you can't get on the line I need from that location.
  
• One block away was the Times Square station that did grant access to my line. The building was closed for repairs.
  

So I crawl on my hands and knees the three blocks back to my original stop and actually got on the train. This ended up being a seventeen block walk (Manhattan city blocks, mind you) to get a bagel and a subway ride, which takes about an hour...and although it was early, I was tired, thirsty, and utterly drenched with sweat.

From that point on, though, the trip was relatively smooth. I negotiated New Jersey's mass transit with no problem. My car was still there, both untowed and without ticket. I found the interstate and drove westward, towards my beautiful spousal unit. Eventually, my sadness at the vampire parting just turned into anger and political activist resolve. I became road-weary, but it only caused me to do something stupid once (when I accidentally entered a YouPass toll lane and had to back out without getting hit). There was still a metric crap-ton of construction in Pennsylvania (which, once again, refused to end), but there was only one stretch where I averaged four mph.

Still, in spite of the good company on the ride into the city and the relative freedom of my return drive, I think the destination was far more momentous than the journey, which just annoyed me incessantly. I just wonder if Snake Plissken would agree.

the river rolls, rolls, rolls (final KY notes)

Cairo Cairo is a place I dearly love

Everything around me and the moon and stars above

--Lil' Son Jackson

Cairo, Kentucky is a town that's located near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Like most things related to the mighty Mississip, and even though I never actually have (until recently) stepped foot in the town, it's a name that resonates.

It is my junior year of high school, and I'm hiding in the back corner of fifth period history. The class is, of course, relatively boring. With hindsight, I realize how hard it must be to make any good sense out of “all the history of the world in the last five hundred years” in the span of a single school year. All I could tell at the time was that I was overwhelmed by nothing but bland, boring, faceless generalities. But even at the untested age of 16, I realize at some level that the specificities are where the real interesting stuff occurs...and without the quirks of history, I just can't force myself to care about the class even in the slightest.

I've long since tired of staring at my surroundings, and there are no close friends in the class to distract me. I've also long since bored of trying to perfect my hand-drawn renditions of various band logos and guitar designs...I suck at drawing anyway. As I'm sitting next to a shelf, I decide to quietly dig amongst its contents...just for something to do. The shelf is mostly filled with teaching supplies for various classes held in this room. After discounting a box of writing supplies and chalkboard erasers, I stumble upon two stashes of paperbacks, no doubt for an English class later in the day.

At the time, I didn't realize this was momentous, a sort of “monkey discovering the monolith” moment. But when I found those boxes full of copies of Animal Farm and Life on the Mississippi, something changed.

I dug Animal Farm, to be sure. Even in my inexperienced state, I was beginning to suspect (hell, I was a teenager—which meant I knew with every fiber of my being) that power and leadership were valuable commodities that should not be handed out to someone just because they desire them...which describes the point of the Orwell novel perfectly.

Life on the Mississippi, though, really captured me at a vastly deeper level. I plowed through that book at least ten times that year. The characters, the conflicts, the settings, all of them washed over me, taught a bored teenage version of me more than a droning teacher ever would. One image which always stays with me, however, is of some small village that, because of the river being the official state border, went to bed one night officially in Kentucky yet woke up the next morning as part of Missouri after the river decided to change course in the night.

I loved that book because it resonated with some of my deepest desires. I desperately wanted to escape my life of hardship and boredom, go out on the road, have a chance to not just reinvent myself, but to invent myself in the first place. I wanted to become an expert in something mysterious, I wanted to learn a new, mysterious, romantic way of life, learn it deep in my bones. I wanted to live where I had real value, and where that value had all come because I personally earned it, through hard work, perseverance, and innate ability.

In spite of these dreams, though, I stayed fairly pedestrian in my life for some time. I lived at home entirely too long after high school, took extraordinarily menial jobs, engaged in typically pedestrian irresponsible behavior, went to a community college that was in biking distance, and generally clamped down upon that fledgling Twain-inspired desire for adventure.

Flash forward to my recent Kentucky vacation. After days eating much smoked meat, drinking in lakefront bars, and holding many conversations both more profane and personal than expected, my awesome hosts offered to take us to a brewpub in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. On the way, upon hearing we would drive through the town of Cairo, Illinois, my mind immediately clicked onto Cairo's appearances in Life on the Mississippi, and I looked forward to staring at the river while reliving my memories of Twain.

Time, however, had not been kind to Cairo. What had once been a town of over 15,000 has dropped to under 4,000. What was once a fairly grand main street is now a monument of decay and abandonment, with windows boarded up, paint peeling, and (in one case) a thirty foot tree plowing through the middle of one building. Our host informed us that the citizens are quite used to us college-types slowing down to take photos of the deindustrialized, post-apocalyptic landscape. However, we were informed, we would not be leaving the car, because Cairo had become quite a center of crime.

Cape Girardeau, our ultimate destination, was a complete and utter whiplash-inducing contrast of a town. I had never heard of the town at all (not in Life on the Mississippi or otherwise), but it immediately struck me as somewhere I wanted to be. Although it boasts a university I've never heard of (who knew there even was a Southeast Missouri State University?), it had a wonderful midwest college town atmosphere, tons of good restaurants and shops, beautiful houses, wonderful views. It was a truly unexpected jewel

After our brew-pub meal, we even got a chance to wander down to the waterfront, past the flood walls, and stare at the mighty Mississip, much as I do whenever I get down to New Orleans, and it was (as always) glorious. True to form, it held all the mystery, all the nostalgia, all the Mark Twain memories I imagined as a kid, that I see every time I stare at its vast expanse and drift into my own dreams.

Because of the day's travels, however, there was an entirely new level of complexities to the river, which begged the question, How did the world fit in? Cairo, the town of which I dreamed, whose very name resonated with me on some deep, personal, and spiritual level? It was a mess, beaten up by forces beyond its control, pushed into obscurity and blight. But then there was the unknown town of Cape Girardeau, which was glorious and fun, which had been sitting there just outside of my realm of knowledge and expectations.

There were many lessons there, but as I was staring at the brown water of the Mississippi, most of them escaped me. Twain was still in my mind, but mostly as a counterpoint: how would Mr. Clemens, I wondered, respond to the dualities of current day Cairo and Cap Girardeau? What lessons of hard work, romance, and dreams would he find? How would the Mississippi of today stack up to that of his childhood?

As I gazed out at the river, I knew I couldn't answer for Mark Twain. More surprisingly, I couldn't even answer for myself. I have no idea where my expectations lie anymore, or even if I should have them in the first place.

The river was still there, though. It would always be there. It would just be me that's different, I thought, as I took one last glimpse at the water. We then left and went back to our host's house, where I prepared for the long trip home.

KY trip...days 2 & 3

So, how does one spend one's vacation? Personally, I just aim for as many ways of doing utterly nothing as possible. My life in the semester is largely governed by to-do lists, an hour daily of putting out fires, and large moments of sheer panic...so it's nice to practice the sedentary arts. Vacations allow me to be sedentary in whole new locations...so they are, in some ways, learning experiences...and not just excuses for bad behavior.

Friday started out with a nice Japanese lunch (you heard me...you always start with lunch on vacation, unless there are stray bags of junk food nearby). Pork and sushi? How can you beat it? Afterward, we found a video store that was going out of business and shopped the fairly nice collection. I ended up with some good ones, including Serenity, Adaptation, The Wrestler, and Synecdoche, NY. Unfortunately, my host beat me out to Anvil: The Story of Anvil and Heavy Metal in Baghdad, but all's fair in war and discount clearance shopping, I guess.

We then found a classic barbecue place...not a restaurant, mind you, but a stand on the side of the road inside a hastily assembled screened-in porch. We got 1 1/2 pounds of pork and a chicken for dinner later that day. They were both awesome, even though the chicken was entirely the wrong type of meat to come from a barbecue stand. We then drove through the Land Between the Lakes (and around the lakes themselves) before returning to the homestead for a laid-back evening of barbecue and the aforementioned Anvil before our gentle slumbers.

Saturday, by contrast, was more about unadulterated hedonism. Lunch was at Murray KY's own Big Apple Cafe for fish tacos and beer. The strangest part of the whole experience was seeing people actually smoke cigarettes indoors; for some refugees from a state with a fairly strict smoking ban, it was unnerving. The Romaniac is a smoker, but he said that he nevertheless felt weird about lighting up indoors...but did anyway.

Afterwards, we went back to the Land Between the Lakes area. While the various spousal units decided to sit by the lake and read, us menfolk went to a lake front marina bar called Fat Daddy's. It's a floating bar that serves Yuengling and has a bikini-clad wait staff (which, if I weren't so non-sexist, I would admit was a huge selling point). The clientèle was strange: an interesting mix of boaters, bikers, and military...no fights, though. The band was even neat--they did some cool stuff, including a blues version of Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" that actually made the song palatable. Really, there were very few ways the afternoon could've been improved.

We ended up back at the host house, had some grilled food, hung out with the hosts & some of their friends, and talked about such wide-ranging topics as spicy potato chips, Romanian salt mines, how women learn about their menstrual cycle, Stephen Seagall versus Jean Claude Van Damme, feminism, ice storms, and the proper way to integrate food into all-day drinking binges.

It's been a blast so far. Really, the only thing that's been missing is a healthy serving of green vegetables.

KY trip...day one notes

Yesterday was mostly about the road...long hours driving, mostly through the middle of nowhere. We take the standard shot down 75 south through Cincinnati, turn off once in Kentucky, and then pretty much go the longest diagonal path through the state that's possible.

There were very few surprises, travel-wise. Dayton continues its trend of always having their interstate under construction (which has been going on, via personal knowledge, since 1998). There was, shocker, road construction outside of Cincinnati (which distracted me from giving Touchdown Jesus his full amount of deserved attention). There was a surprising amount of cars in Louisville for 3:30. There was pretty much nothing going on between Louisville and our destination.

So we amused ourselves. The spousal unit, after decades of being contractually obligated to me, does this as a matter of course...so we consigned her to the back seat, where she could read, sleep, and ignore us to her heart's content while riding in plush comfort.

The Romaniac and I talked about a suitably strange variety of things. Included on the topic list was why MTV's programming was destined to quit playing music based on advertiser concerns, the politics of pay-per-view wrestling broadcasts, how the Romanian style of pizza (with your choice of sauces poured on top) leads--or at least lends itself--to outrageous levels of drinking, how my random play on my mp3 player continually frightened me or induced musical whiplash, contests of will with Moldovans, and how we could make academic rejection notices more brutal than they are already ("We thank you for your application, which caused three committee members to weep in pain and another, despondent over the future of his profession, to attempt hanging himself with his doctoral hood").

We eventually got to our destination, and while friends make a great ending point for a long drive, friends bearing the fruit of a kegerator make an even better one. From there on out, it was a quiet evening of beer, a magnificent pasta salad, beer, cigars, and beer.

More soon, assuming I can remember what happens next.

KY trip...overview

When I got my full-time position, I swore I would occasionally treat myself. The most overt self-treat was buying a really large gas grill, and this is one that has paid off deliciously. However, I also decided that I would occasionally do something for which all academics dream...take a vacation that was (gasp, shock) not connected whatsoever to an academic conference!

Yes, I admit this is a true luxury, one that mkes me feel like a thousand-aire. However, I'm still pretty much in debt, so we get to do this on the cheap...which means staying with friends who've escaped their grad school towns. This is, truth be told, the main reason why I want friends to get exciting jobs...more exciting vacation hotspots from which to chose!

This year's vacation was to visit a friend who got a job in the far end of Kentucky. Joining me and my lovely spousal unit is the Romaniac. On schedule is barbecue, gentle socializing, partaking from our host's kegerator, and plenty of resulting bad behavior.

We are, after all, a simple people.

homes that are no more

When I first moved to Ohio from Florida, I was always astounded at the level of stereotypes some Northerners had about my old home, the South. They treated it like it was a different country, like it was a place of stupidity and ignorance, like it was a waste land in most senses. I chalked a lot of this up to an unwillingness on many of their parts to critically look at their own surroundings...they were quite comfortable deconstructing an "other," but to deconstruct themselves? Many simply could not do it. A prime example came in one of my classes, where a long-forgotten student, talking about his own trip to the South, said "they're racist down there...not like up here." This student then couldn't figure out why I and three students-of-color were all laughing.

There are, admittedly, key differences between the two regions, the most obvious of them being the openness of the South in revealing its idiosyncrasies. People who feel strongly about race, about politics, about anything at all are quite willing to tell you. In spite of (or perhaps because of) this, you are also more apt to see the difference at work. Yes, there is an open level of anti-African American racism in many quarters, but I also see more places where both blacks and whites mix socially. For that matter, I see more mixed race couples than I do up here. Chalk it up to what Patterson Hood calls "the duality of the Southern Thing."

These are some of the dominant things stuck in my mind when I think about my basic faux-reunion trip, because the trip has made me reconsider much about my past, and my relationship to my previous place I called home.

When I first met my friend T, the first words out of his mouth were "I feel so much a liberal, I'm thinking about joining the Communist party." I do know how he feels. Personally, I saw a previously smart person I know espousing views that put him within shouting distance of a Libertarian militia. I saw news broadcasts overrun with stories about police shootings. I heard the terms HUD, apartment complex, blacks, poor, and crime made synonymous.

Now don't get me wrong...much of this, I was expecting. Jacksonville has always been a right wing, conservative enclave. However, my personal distance from all this was thrown, during this trip, into sharp contrast.

And it was not the only time where I felt my differences.

Because of my differences with most of my classmates, I avoided the reunion. I realized that to spend a C note to get into a honkey tonk's VIP room one night and eat at a hotel buffet while listening to 80s music would, in addition to just plain costing too much, be dishonest both to who I was in high school and who I am now. And when I talked to my friends, the ones I did connect with and in fact wanted to see, I realized that they felt similar. One friend, D, upon hearing I would not be going at all, developed a deer-in-the-headlights "I gotta go through this alone?" look of terror.

Instead of the reunion, I decided to stay true to my high school character and went to a heavy metal show with some friends. Some of the bands, however, made me feel way too distanced from my heavy metal past. There was way too much cookie monster singing. Way too much stuff was in dropped-D tuning. Hardly anyone on stage looked like they were having a good time...certainly not the singer in a (no lie) clown mask. I did get to see an awesome band called Glorious Gunner that made me cackle with joy, but it was clear this is an identity I can no longer claim wholesale.

I felt very disconnected with the city. Distances became too long. The environment, littered with an increasing number of gambling parlors and strip clubs, seemed more scummy than anything. The heat was way too oppressive. And the "strip malls and subdivisions" layout of many areas just bored me.

What did I still enjoy? Well, there is the food. Day one, I had great fish. Midwesterners still don't get fish, but then again, they only see 2 week old garbage in the grocery stores. I also had great barbecue, and that alone marks the South as a truly cultured part of the country. And how can a place which has boiled peanuts be entirely bad?

Then there are the people...my family and friends, people with awesome talents, hidden depths, lives both heroic and tragic. I have not told half of whom I've seen or what I did, but if anything could draw me back, it would be them.

In the end, though, it was clearer to me than ever that Jacksonville is not my home, and nor will it ever be. And although I feel sadness for having to leave many people, they are the only thing there to which I'm really attached. We will all have to come to terms with me only, from now on, being a visitor to the place that used to be my home. It's a feeling that I've known for a while, but this trip made it clear. Moreover, I also feel fine knowing that this is how things are.

Although I would admittedly feel better about everything if I could just get good barbecue up here.

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.

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?

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.
   

final gotham reflections

It was the end of our last night in New York City, and as we were walking back to the car after a cool night trip on the Staten Island ferry, the spousal unit asked me the standard, innocent question: "What are you thinking?"

This is a dangerous question to ask me. If I'm to answer truthfully, I'm either going to say "absolutely nothing but the chirping of my head crickets," say something so weird and alarming, it will immediately stop all hopes of further conversation for at least an hour, or just start going off onto tangent upon tangent until the questioner's eyes glaze over and they start shambling like a zombie.

In this case, however, it was an apt question, because the trip had made me mull over an awful lot...about multiculturalism, about the standard perception/fear of New Yorkers themselves, about class, about food, and about tourism, to name a few. My major impression, though, was of the unique relationship that New Yorkers have to New York as a place...and as a state of mind.

New Yorkers love New York. They think it's the best city in the world. Moreover, they take great pride in New York to the point of pitying other people for not living where they live.

It's an arrogance, for sure, but it's an arrogance that has some basis in reality. Gotham is truly a magnificent place. In terms of food alone, I lost count of how many times I felt maddeningly jealous of its citizens. Products? Everything was insanely fresh, with a selection of which I've never dreamed. Restaurants? You could eat at a different place each day, enjoy amazing food, have a different cuisine every day of the month, and never run out of options. The same goes for people, sights, experiences.

It's an attitude which extends beyond the city itself. New Jerseyans (such as our host's significant other) think and act like New Yorkers. People from upstate think and act like New Yorkers. Everyone thinks and acts like New Yorkers...except those wearing Mets caps.

It carries over into some rather possessive attitudes. I have lost count of the times in my life where, when mentioning the word "pizza" to a New Yorker, they roll their eyes before going on a dissertation about how pizza only exists where they are from, that the rest of the country...nay, the rest of the world is being fed some lie, some cheap imitation, some heretical abomination.

Now, the NY pizza I had was very nice indeed, but I'm just not ready to declare it the Platonic ideal and declare that everything else (including the Italian original, at which New Yorkers still sneer) does not equal pizza. I'm for variety in forms and types.

New Yorkers, however, are also for variety...hell, it's possibly the most diverse place in the US. But New Yorkers only like that variety within the borders of their city. They're diverse, but in an insular fashion, if that makes any sense

Really, the relationship between the city and its citizens is pretty unique. The closest analog I can come up with is between some obsessed Southerners and the South, although the circumstances are very different indeed.

The other "different" thing about New Yorkers you just can't avoid is their relationship to 9/11. I heard our host's significant other mention the towers several times during our final day, as if they summed up the city and acted as a crown to its grandeur. Without them, New York was just a little less "big."

Indeed, the effects of 9/11 are everywhere in the city. You can't go into the Statue of Liberty anymore because of terrorist threat. The subways and train stations all have "heightened terrorist alert--bags subject to search" signs. Most of the major attractions have massive security checks (which, incidentally, is why we didn't go to the Empire State Building). New Yorkers take this all in stride, however, as just another cost (along with commute time, dirty bathrooms, and expensive restaurants) of living in the greatest city in the world; they refuse to suffer any of the defeated attitude that plagues even the most prideful of Southerners.

I loved my time in New York. I'd jump at the chance to live in Manhattan, but the odds of me ever scoring a job that pays enough to allow me to do that are slim...I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never be a superstar academic. Would I live outside of Manhattan? That's a lot more problematic...I'm not sure how tolerant I'd be of either the commute, the pollution of surrounding areas, or the exorbitant rent.

New York was fabulous, and I can't wait to visit again...but as fascinating of a place as it was, and as interesting as were its citizens, I would still rather live in Toronto, which, in many ways, is New York perfected. They don't have the pizza, and it's still expensive as hell, but they have great street hot dogs, they're tremendously diverse, they have a cleaner and less confusing subway system, and they have better beer.

This was what I was thinking upon leaving New York. Of course, there were New Yorkers within earshot, so I censored myself somewhat in answer to the spousal unit's query, lest they think me anything less than a gracious visitor to their amazing city.

Because I truly do love New York like the teeshirt said. I also couldn't quit singing Sinatra the whole damn time I was there.

(This is, by the way, the last you will hear about New York City from me for a while.)

gotham in pictures

For those of you anxiously following my New York City visit chronicles, I just finished uploading a Flikr set of the "best of" Gotham photos. I've been experimenting with black and white, which works very good for some of these subjects. As always, let me know what you think.

I actually have a ton of photos that I've been meaning to photoshop/tweak and get posted...guess that will be my new time-waster.

last day in gotham

Sunday was to be the spousal unit & I's last day to visit the relatively sizeable pomaceaous fruit of the malus domestica. This time, we had our host and her significant other as guides. Once again, there were a whole bunch o' things learned.

• Our hosts assured us that while New York might have the lock on pizza, New Jersey was their equal in terms of bagels. While I'm not gonna render a judgment on that one, the NJ bagels we had were mighty fine.
  
• While New Jersey is a diverse state with many beautiful areas, the area around New York is about as disgusting as you've heard. The good thing about having guides for this trip is that we could get a running commentary as to what manufacturing process was causing what particular smell. "That's methane...they trap it from the world's largest landfill and use it for power. That smells from this plant, this smell comes from manufacturing..." This is, of course, fascinating, but I just wanted a city-sized can of Lysol.
  
• Staten Island is much like New Jersey at least in terms of smells and visual appeal, if the part we drove through is any indication.
  
• New York roads are the worst ones I've personally ever seen, and everyone drives like homicidal, axe-wielding maniacs with constipation. I survived the car rides by focusing on the surroundings...but, as I've said, since it was mostly chemical waste dumps, that didn't help all that much.
  
• There does seem to be a tremendous dropoff between Manhattan and the other boroughs.
  
• The Staten Island Ferry is a cool way to get into New York. It's free, it's scenic, and it takes you within a pretty good distance of the Statue of Liberty. Since we didn't visit the statue otherwise (you can no longer actually climb up the statue...thanks, terrorists), this was a real plus.
  
• When I saw Manhattan from across the East River, I kept thinking of The Crimson Permanent Assurance. I saw, however, no rampaging accountant/pirates.
  
• The subways don't work as frequently on weekends as they do during the week...and this greatly annoyed our host's partner, who, being a native NJ resident, is not tremendously patient for such things by default.
  
• I finally got my chance to try New York pizza at one of the approximately 2,683 Rays pizzas (don't know which one it was, but it was a bagel/pizza place). Very nice and cheesy, and the crust was good. I'll talk more about this in a later rant.
  
• We spent a decent amount of time in McSorley's Ale House, a bar that's been open since 1854 (and only allowed in women in 1970). It's a classic place to have a beer...they have "light" or "dark" only, served in 1/2 pint glasses with a good 1" or more head. By the time we finally finished up and I was settling my tab, our drink count (among the four of us) was either 48 or 56. Later, when I told this to my spousal unit, she immediately replied, somewhat defensively, "I don't think I did any more than ten"...before we both immediately burst out in laughter.
  
• After a few more slices of NY pizza (to soak up all that ale), we started to wander down to the Chinatown/Little Italy area before being caught in a horrendous downpour. After about an hour, we finally got tired of smoking cigars under a store awning while waiting for the rain to stop and decided to get a cab. Once again, however, this led to an unfortunate stereotype reinforcement period...our driver was middle-eastern. He was real fun, though.
  
• Chinatown was really cool, and I was amazed by the variety of fruits and veggies (many of which I've never seen in person). Some of the shops also had a tremendous selection of astoundingly fresh fish. Unfortunately, everyone else wanted to eat Italian, so we didn't spend nearly enough time exploring the area.
  
• Little Italy was an interesting mix of tourist t-shirt shops and restaurants. The spousal unit was, true to character, buying souvenirs for everyone she ever knew. We then went to a very good Italian restaurant (don't remember the name), ate a great meal (I had a delicious pan-fried trout in an olive oil/garlic/rosemary sauce), and talked until very late.
  
• The ferry ride back was cool, because the city and the statue look even neater at night, all lit-up.
  

Coming up: a final thoughts rant and links to the photos.

gotham interlude

Yesterday, we took a break from the city and explored New Jersey:

• We visited a Pennsylvania Dutch superstore. There was a Penn Dutch butcher, a Penn Dutch baker, a Penn Dutch fudge maker...and, for some reason, a sushi shop.
  
• Afterward, we went to Lambertville, a town on the NJ/Penn border. We decided to stop for a drink, and that turned into several drinks...but it was a fun way to start the day.
  
• We then went to a cigar superstore, which turned out to be an outlet for my online cigar stop. They had a bar, so we did cigars and beer.
  
• Finally, a great steak place called Arthur's, where I got a 24 ounce steak. The cow, I can assure you, died for a good and delicious cause.
  
• NJ is not entirely toxic waste factories and suburbs...something I knew, but it's nice to see firsthand.
  

Back to Gotham today...Staten Island Ferry, Little Italy, Chinatown.

gotham thought 2

While going through New York, much of it felt familiar, but for a strange reason. For example, when we were on the subway, we passed Atlantic Avenue, and I suddenly started wondering if it were a yellow or green property. I realized that there was no possibility of actually building a house on Park Avenue, let alone a new Hotel. And I was quite expecting to see a giant shoe or dog.

another quick gotham thought

Somewhere on the subway ride to Coney Island yesterday, there was a part of the voyage where we had an Orthodox Jew sitting across from us, two Chinese women next to her, a Russian man reading a Russian novel in Russian across from him, a Latina behind him, and a few African Americans at the other end of the train. In fact. there were no other people who were, by strict definition, "white."

Compared to life in Bowling Green, this is a world away. Most of my students think that they are down with diversity because they have one black family in their hometown. It really highlights just how insular life in the midwest can be. Reality is diverse. Reality involves people sort of like you, people a little bit like you, and people nothing like you at all.

It's one of the coolest things about New York so far.

things I learned in Gotham--day one

• The New Jersey Metro line into New York is...well, I was expecting a bullet train. I got a lightly tossed pebble train instead.
  
• Bathrooms in New York are problematic. The ones in Penn Station smelled like concentrated human sweat. The ones in the Coney Island subway stop were so horrific, I still can't fit it in with my version of reality...the men's room had some guy washing his clothes in the sink. Most others had more water (?) on the floor than in the toilet. There was very little hand soap to be seen anywhere. The bathrooms in Grand Central Station, however, rocked, high velocity air dryers and all.
  
• Coney Island had the shabby working class thing going for it. I kinda dug it, but I can understand why developers feel it's ripe for redevelopment...or at least the next generation of Bruce Springsteen
  
• For some reason, there were a number of hot Russian teen girls working the Nathan's stand...either (to invoke some stereotypes) waiting to get into the mob, or they just haven't been invited into the world of adult films yet.
  
• Many roller coasters shock, frighten, or play with you. The Coney Island Cyclone basically beats you to a pulp. My neck still hurts. I'm glad I did it for the historical thing, but thank whatever deity you have that they don't make them like this anymore.
  
• The Brooklyn Bridge is a cool walk. Somewhere, I read it's one of the few places where you can fly over someone walking over someone driving over someone in a boat. Great sights, though.
  
• Grand Central Station is certainly grand. They have a food market, where the spousal unit and I got an organic baguette and some parma salami for a great snack.
  
• Central Park is confusing. We got trapped walking on some jogging/horse track, and while doing that, we somehow got turned around and were halfway to Harlem, on the other side of the park from where we started. I suspect it's a hole in the space/time continuum...and we hit one later, when our subway train skipped ahead four stops. Apparently, in New York, the fabric of reality is already unwinding.
  
• New Yorkers are friendly. We got out of a subway stop, and we had some nice lady ask us (unbidden, mind you) if we needed directions to the Met or the Guggenheim. Maybe we just looked too oblivious for her liking.
  
• The Guggenheim was undergoing some renovation, so it was all scaffolded up. It's a shame, because I wanted some pictures...you know, "I saw that on Men in Black! That's where Will Smith chased an alien off the roof!"
  
• If the street performers in Central Park are anything to go by, it seems that synchronized break dancing is making a comeback. This is cause to start drinking, if you ask me.
  
• The sandwiches at the Carnegie Deli were amazing...in both size and taste. You have to physically unhinge your jaw to bite into one. They actually have one waiter on staff named Francis who specializes in helping along your dislocation.
  
• The last ultra-tourist thing we did was hit Times Square. The spousal unit regressed into her sugar rush 4 year old state and demanded that I take photos of signs for Broadway shows she wishes she could see. For me, it was like a bunch of Rolling Stone ads threw up. It was lightweight Tokyo without the potential for Ninjas.
  

Tomorrow, less touristy stuff.

on the road--big city edition

So the spousal unit and I are doing as close to a vacation as we're gonna get this year...a weekend visiting a spouse friend in New Jersey. Naturally, this will mean lots of trips to New York City. I hear that if you can make it there....well, your chances elsewhere are fine.

My main reason for coming along, other than keeping the spousal unit happy, is that I've wanted to see Coney Island for some time, ride the roller coaster and all that. Well, next off-season, that's all getting torn down so that yuppie condos can go up. So this is my last chance.

I also want to eat pizza, bagels, and hot dogs, and New Yorkians are always arguing that they have the best. I'll be the judge of that, damnit.

Yesterday was taken up by traveling. Wee. Some observations:

• For all the variety in this great land, the world is awfully boring, dull, and monotonous when driving on the interstate. Yes, this isn't news to anyone, but I often like restating the obvious, as my spouse will gladly tell you.
  
• Someone in Pennsylvania got goofy with their road signage...there are "Buckle Up for the Next Million Miles" signs, as well as places where they've painted big circles on the road itself, to visually demonstrate how much following distance you should have. And it works...when the circles are on the road, no one tailgates. Of course, they go back to riding your bumper soon enough when the circles go by-by. Better driving via hypnotism....me like.
  
• Somewhere in PA, we passed a truck owned by someone who likes TGIFridays so much, he festooned the back of his vehicle with bumper stickers. I would like to blame Guy Fieri, but people have been enjoying their frozen, pre-made food for ages before he started mugging for them.
  
• Every stereotype you hear about New Jersey drivers is true.
  
• New Jersey also loves their signage, but their love is more demanding. They have signs at rest areas telling you not to run through flower beds, not to throw things in the urinals, to wash your hands, to dry your hands. On the road itself, they have (for some reason) signs telling you to maintain your speed even if you're driving up-hill. They think, I have concluded, you must be an idiot, or they're just into the whole police state thing.
  
• The spousal unit's friend's place is nice, in a nice neighborhood, but it is one of the noisiest places in existence. The birds started their atonal chirping at 4am. The street sweeper made seven drive-bys at 7am. These people need to sleep, damnit.
  

Today, we go to the city. We will negotiate the trains and subways. I will ride the Coney Island Cyclone. We will eat hot dogs. And I will report back...because that's what I do...so you don't have to.