Close To Home

I was browsing over at Maud Newton's place last night and came across a sidebar note related to Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The note linked to a few places that are currently talking about the book (about which I wrote a rather silly review back in November) and one of the links was to an article that promised scholarly speculation about the novel. It was late last night, and I was ready for bed, and what better to lull me to sleep than some scholarly speculation about a novel that utterly fascinated me (and, apparently, Oprah, too)?

I was expecting the link to send me to a fairly high-brow publication. I mean, doesn't most scholarly speculation take place in high-brow settings?

So, I clicked on the link, expecting to be transported to one of the more enlightening areas of the interweb, and where did I end up going? The Peoria Journal Star, a local paper. It's not that the PJ Star isn't a fine publication or anything. It's just not the kind of place I'd expect Maud Newton to link to--or, for that matter, the kind of place I'd expect to see an interview with a scholar. Still, I thought it was a pretty cool bedtime discovery.

Headshots

J.C. got a promotion.

When told she was smirking in the photo accompanying the article, she had this to say: "I'm not smirking because I'm trying to be smug. I'm smirking because I don't like to smile."

I knew she didn't quite mean it exactly the way it came out, but still, I felt obliged to open Text-Edit and put the quote down word-for-word.

Irish Twins

Whenever I mention my brother around people who don't know him, they ask who's older. I tell them I am, that I'm exactly fifty-one weeks older than he is.

And today, today's my brother's thirtieth birthday, which means we are the same age from now until next Wednesday.

I usually explain this phenomenon by saying that my parents were so excited, so happy to have me, they got right to work on making another one just like me. And then they had my brother. And then they stopped altogether.

My brother's never really liked that story. His goes something like, "They had you and were so disappointed they were certain they could do better, so they had me, and once they'd achieved that perfection they stopped."

Since it's his birthday, I suppose I'll go with his little tale for now.

At least until next week.

Video Activism

Pretty much everybody has seen this video already, and I wanted to post it a while ago, because I was pretty certain Alanis was doing something smart here. I couldn't, however, quite put my finger on it.

Now Patrick Goldstein has. You can read what he has to say here.

I like the political angle he ends up taking, but I'm wondering too how all of this could be applied to literature, to art. As of now, I still haven't figured out anything concrete. But it's there, waiting to be discovered, I think.

"Remember When"

From last night's Sopranos (and I'm paraphrasing):

Tony: 'Remember when' stories are the lowest form of conversation.

Back when I was twenty-two or so, I started working on a novella called (pretentiously enough) "Yesterday's Mythologies," which was all about 'Remember When' stories, but the stories were only days or months old--so, all the characters were essentially trying to make events that had only happened to them recently seem significant, meaningful. And this, especially at that time in my life, seemed like a tremendously stunted thing to do.

I'm not so sure I'd wholly agree with my twenty-two-year-old self, but I do agree with Tony S.: 'Remember when' conversations are pretty tough to endure.

Livejournal

On Wednesday nights, I teach from 7:30 until about 11:30.

So, tonight, I got home at around 12:00. I could try to go straight to bed, but, you know, a person has to unwind a little. And the way I go about unwinding is by sitting at my computer for a while.

It's 2:17 right now. Well, my iBook says it's 2:17, but its clock runs ten minutes fast, so it's really only 2:07.

Anyway. I've been sitting here, unwinding, and to my left there is a bookshelf filled with books, many of which I have not yet read but want to. So, a couple minutes ago, I thought to myself, "I should be reading."

And then I decided to google "I should be reading"--in quotes--to see how many hits come up. Can you guess how many?

61,900.

I scanned the hits, though, and noticed that many of them didn't quite suit the context I was looking for, so instead, I googled--in quotes--"I should be reading right now."

Any guesses?

699.

I was actually expecting the number to be higher.

* * *

Image via John Sherffius

The Strangest Month

Since about the second day of April, when we were reading Some Ether by Nick Flynn in Intro to Lit, I've been reminding my students that it's National Poetry Month.

Then, about a week ago, I came across this item in the local paper. That's right: April is also National Sexually Transmitted Infection Month.

I thought quite a bit about how the two might somehow be related, and I laughed some, and then this morning, another item in the local newspaper.

So, April is National Poetry Month. And it's also the time we should think about Sexually Transmitted Infections, and be aware of alcohol.

Suddenly, the connections among these three things are becoming so much clearer. I think I may write a poem about them.
* * *
On a wholly unrelated note--and it's so unrelated I should probably give it its own post--MLB celebrates the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut with the Dodgers today. This--acknowledging the social impact/role of sports--is one of those things that makes me feel less guilty for all the time I spend watching college basketball and football, the Cubs, and myriad boxing and UFC matches.

Though, in the end, I'm not so sure the UFC will ever impact society all that much. Nonetheless, it's pretty fun to watch.

Winterpills - A Benediction

This is the music I've been listening to lately while I write. Well, when I've been writing.

Poetry Thursday--Vinzant

My buddy Josh, a fellow former Saluki and one of my favorite poets who has not yet published a book, started a blog recently. It contains, I believe, exactly two posts. One of them, though, is a pretty kick-ass poem.

You can check it out here.

To Come Back

I've always been the kind of person who calls movies movies.

I run in the kind of circles though where a lot of people call movies "films."

Sometimes, I'll hear a person call a movie a film after I've just called it a movie, and I'll wonder whether or not that person is, in some way, correcting me.

I didn't start to realize this little discrepency until a few years ago. Since then, I've kind of figured out that if you're talking about, say, Wayne's World, it's okay to call it a movie; but if you're discussing Seven Samurai, you should probably call it a film.

I suppose I've adapted somewhat to this new lexical law, but I still, most of the time, long to call a movie a movie.

Nonetheless, I watched two films this past weekend: Volver and Children of Men. Neither was wholly perfect but Volver was strange and pretty and ultimately a little moving, and Children of Men was bleak and visually stunning and a little thought-provoking. And, as I suggested, I'm pretty sure both of these would be called films.

Two more films I'm looking forward to: Half Nelson, which is already out on DVD, and Little Children, which should be out soon.

I'm also hoping Grindhouse makes it to the local Kerasotes soon. Based on what I've read about it so far, though, I'm unsure whether it would qualify as a film or a movie. Perhaps it's a film masquerading as a movie? Whatever it is, it looks like pure entertainment, and I can't wait to see it, though I may have to attend it alone--as J.C. doesn't seem nearly as thrilled about it as I am.

"Sunday Night...

...ain't a damn thing funny..."*

Like Lucinda Williams, I've always had a hard time making it through Sunday. From about the age of twelve, Sundays filled me with such dread I'd spend most of the day lying immobile in bed, a remote control in my hand.

Since I started grad school way back when, I haven't quite been afforded those kind of luxuries, but I did start watching The Sopranos and Six Feet Under on Sunday nights a few years ago, and every week they gave me something to look forward to on that most anxiety-filled of days.

Lately, though, Sunday-night TV has kind of sucked.

I could opt to read a book or something, but the truth is, I like watching TV on Sundays, especially good TV.

And tonight, oh tonight, in just twenty minutes or so, the beginning of the end of The Sopranos is going to start. I just re-watched the last two episodes of the first half of the season to get me prepared, and, man, am I psyched.

And what else? The new season of Entourage starts tonight, too.**

So I think my Sunday nights are going to be pretty solid from now until sometime this summer. Well, I'll at least be more likely to make it through them anyway.

*Prizes--most likely virtual, ethereal, though no less thoughtful--go to whomever can complete this slightly botched lyric.

**I just remembered: The new season of The Shield started this past week. It's like some kind of TV heaven going on right now.

Tea Party--D.

My father-in-law informed us that D. has a new nickname around town: Fish. Eventually, Fish, w/fish*, made an appearance. For a while, big Fish wore a frilly red dress over his jeans and sweatshirt, but he wouldn't let anybody take his picture.

*Little fish is D.'s first catch of the season--an eight-pound carp he pulled out of Pope Creek, which runs behind J.C.'s parents' place in rural Rio, Illinois. Mama J wrapped the fish in a towel and then double-bagged it and stuck it in the freezer, as the family debates whether or not little fish should be stuffed and mounted or smoked.

Tea Party--Pheebs

One:

Two:

and Three:

I'm not a big fan of portraits, but these three kind of kill me. I know, I'm such an uncle-blogger.

Tea Party--The Birthday Girl

One:

Two:

and Three:

Tea Party

My niece turned two last week, and Sunday, we celebrated with a tea-party.

Mama J went a little overboard on the cake:

It looked so good I couldn't even eat any of it.

I could try to write a narrative to go with the photos, but instead I'll just put up pics of J.C. and me, and then I'll get to a few of the niblings--because they're way cuter than we are.

So, here I am, sipping tea.

And here's J.C. We were supposed to dress up, and she ended up looking a little like Madonna might have looked had she attended a two-year-old's tea party back in 1984.