so where have i been?

putting aside the fact that i'm likely the only one actually asking this post's title question, the answer can be summed up right here. this fall, i'm teaching 3 sections of ENG 111 at miami university - two in middletown and one in oxford - and this is a blog i built for my oxford section (for the ex-redhawk reader, sort of a replacement for the Blackboard platform). i'm excited to see how this digital space bleeds into and deviates from the physical space of the classroom.

but since i began teaching this past monday, i suppose summer's over? what??? i would have wagered all my levi's that it just began...

well, i guess i should try to describe the top two things that characterize, for me, the summer of 2010. in no particular order (because there are only two):

THE MOVE BACK HOME

i could probably subtitle this section, "things change, and they stay the same." or maybe, "home sweet/home bitter home." or how about, "i don't know what the f*ck to feel because i have so many conflicting emotions about the thing that my reflection in the mirror doesn't even recognize me." that last one's a bit melodramatic, but just a bit.

in june i made the epic regression back to mom's basement at the ripe, young age of 25. this is the second time i've moved into the basement (the first at 22, after working on a boat 7 months), and the first time i haven't moved back out after just two months... i've made it (almost) three months so far. here's what i like about being home: it's nice being close to family. i can see my parents whenever i want, while being able to avoid them (to a reasonable degree) whenever i want, as well. ozzy (my cat) likes having more than just one room to explore... here he's got two stories and a back porch. whoa! i'd be remiss not to mention the financial relief involved in moving home... rent gone, utilities gone, grocery bills slashed. i'm even gaining a new-found respect for cincinnati as a city: it's got some pockets and places that are really cool, an existent (not huge, but certainly dynamic) music scene, a free art museum, a relatively successful (at least at the moment, knock wood) baseball club, an enthusiastic NFL fan-base, some upcoming fireworks that are probably going to be sick. also, i've got some old friends here; i haven't seen them all that often, but that's been at least partially my fault, and i hope that changes.

while i'm on the topic of cincy, maybe i can mention what i find lacking in the city in order to transition into the downside of moving "back home." first, i took for granted the flatness of oxford, oh and bloomington, in. took it WAY for granted. as one who hates using his car and likes using his bike, cincy is a tough place to get around, topographically: if your grandparents grew up in cincinnati, you can count on them actually having to go up-hill both ways on their way to school. also, cincy motorists aren't all that friendly to bikes, and the infrastructure hasn't done much to change that (things are in the proposal stages, though). on a related topic, all the "cool" pockets/places of the city (and by this i mean clifton, northside, oakley, mount lookout, and mount adams on the ohio side, and covington and newport in ky) are pretty spread out... like, "jump on I-71/I-471 spread out," especially if you live south-side of the river. to grant a little perspective on the feeling of remoteness that comes with living where i do, a resident who lives in fort thomas, ky, who would like to go to a local coffee shop perhaps to lesson plan or grade papers, has to make an 8 minute bike ride just to get to the nearest starbucks. and that's the nearest STARBUCKS. let's forget about a cool place to get coffee and work. this sense of remoteness, i recall, is something that a lot of the crowd that i ran around with in high school lamented about our little burg. i never really felt it, however, until now.

it seems sort of serendipitous that the day i turned 25 was also the day that robin henig published her now-viral article in the new york times magazine, "what is it about 20-somethings?", in which she discusses growing attention to a proposed category of social and psychological development called "emergent adulthood," found roughly between ages 18 and 29. the article engages in a staggeringly detailed study of research around the increasingly delayed leaps into "adulthood" that characterize more and more twenty-somethings every year. returning to the once empty nest is one of the behaviors attributed to "emerging adults." i guess i'm emerging...

emotional ambivalence, especially regarding values, aspirations, and goals is another, probably the one that struck me the most. i don't even really know how i feel about not knowing how i feel. sometimes it makes me anxious; other times i'm okay (or more than okay) with it. ambivalence is not something that i ever remember being prepared for, especially when i look back on my formal education. goal-orientation is such a huge factor in directing and justifying any work that we do in almost any context: what about when the goal isn't clear? i need a toolkit for that. moving home has made me (i'd say painfully, but sometimes it's happily) aware of this.

(STILL) TEACHING FRESHMAN COMP

this one is so messily related to the last that i'm going to try being super-conscious of when i might be repeating myself. but i warn you, it will probably happen.

some things change, but this one stayed the same, even though i had NO plans to that effect. the job at miami literally fell into my lap, to the extent that the story could have gone like this: on monday i emailed a former professor asking if the university hires on an adjunct basis. on tuesday, he replied, "why, yes!" while CC'ing pertinent administrators. on wednesday, i'm scheduling an interview for thursday, which yields a job offer on friday, and i immediately accept. jesus christ. if i hadn't been so utterly disoriented by the dazzling speed and curious efficiency of the process, i might have paused to remember that teaching freshman composition was not something i particularly enjoyed while in bloomington. also, learning an entirely new curriculum has been kind of stressful, especially doing so essentially on my own. i do miss the social support i was afforded as an instructor in bloomington. i'd love to have office hours with my buds again, or group grading, etc. it's sort of isolating now.

after all that, though, i'd be remiss if i didn't mention that i have been able to retroactively embrace the decision for a few reasons: (1) teaching really does seem to excite me, and i recognize that a big part of my displeasure with it has related to fears of the unfamiliar, with either the institution or the class i'm teaching, or my students, or all three... feelings that, with time and experience, should only wane; (2) more experience teaching college freshman really will give me more insight and value as a high school english teacher, should i pursue that route; and (3) it is cool to be back in oxford, and also cool to experience the miami experience at middletown, as well. the distinctions between an oxford student and a middletown student are at times elusive, and at other times, totally blatant to me. it'll be cool to flesh those out.

at the same time, though, i'm still at as much of a loss as ever when it comes to trying to decide what the fuck i want to do next. more and more lately - that is, over the past month or so - i've really been giving journalism some sustained thought. i have no experience as a journalist. i do read a lot of news, a lot of blogs, a lot of commentators. i like the exchange of ideas that can happen in a journalistic or media-related field. i don't really know how to jump on the wagon, though, and that uncertainty stretches from not knowing really what i'd want to write about to not knowing how to write for a newspaper or magazine or website or whatever. the bottom-line, though, is that i miss writing. more to the point, i miss writing for a general audience, and have grown to detest writing for an academic or professional audience, getting lost in my own meager attempts to navigate the disciplinary vocabulary and conceptual framework. (even that sentence drips of jargon...) at any rate, here again i can't help but see my "adulthood" as still "emerging."

***

so i guess the theme of the summer, if one can be assigned, is something along these lines: trying to catch my balance while jumping from one speeding train to another, while simultaneously realizing that this "new" train's tracks follow the other's pretty darn closely. should i just sit and wait to see where they might begin to diverge? or should i try hopping onto another train? suck on that question, hamlet-bastard.

:-)

alarming moment for the democratic process...

this afternoon, npr's "all things considered" quoted republican senate-hopeful ken buck, as he criticized democratic senators for applauding mexican president felipe calderon's may 20th address to a joint session of congress. in his speech, president calderon expressed deep concern over arizona's new, controversial immigration legislation, remarks that prompted cheers from the left side of the aisle, and stares from the right. mr. buck, commenting on those cheers to a crowd of "tea-partiers," explained that he would have stood up, along with his democratic colleagues. if elected and confronted with a similar situation, "i will stand up," he explained, "i will turn my back, and i will leave whatever chamber i am in."

i couldn't believe it. here we have a bona fide, major-party candidate vowing to get up and leave the congressional floor if he confronts an idea or point of view that he finds abrasive, uncomfortable or somehow offensive. in other words, if you vote for ken buck, you can count on him to abandon his seat when the discussion sits outside his value-system. and the crowd went wild.

part of me thinks this is just buck's politico-rhetorical approach to grabbing votes. he touts himself as a conservative purist, unwilling to compromise his principles for washington "business-as-usual" procedure. to boot, buck's ties to the tea party movement have been both politically convenient and somewhat inhibitive: while the tea party essentially revitalized his failing campaign, he's found himself needing to distance himself from some of the tea partiers' more extreme viewpoints (as detailed in chicago press release's analysis of buck's relationship with the tea party). particularly entertaining, he was unfortunate enough to be caught calling one tea-party audience a group of "dumbasses." oops.

but there's something about the idea of a senator getting up and leaving session simply because of ideological friction that seems to resonate with some other trends in right-wing political thinking, particularly regarding a unilateral and (i would argue) irrational fear of "government" and suspicion of what has become known as "washington elitism." first, the notion that political experience has become a liability for a candidate seems absurd to me. when i apply for a retail bookseller position at the local bookstore, i'm asked about my retail experience (and usually denied because i have none). i should hope that those working in the united states senate have some experience with legislative procedure, and that voters will at least raise an eyebrow to someone who has none. but one of buck's biggest assets in his campaign: he's a small-town prosecutor who's not been tainted by the corruption "inherent" in political seats. great.

in fact, this notion is antithetical to a fundamental principle of our governmental system; as a republican democracy, legislation is expressly the duty of elected officials who are considered better qualified than the general public to make legal decisions. the "joe the plumber" phenomenon marked maybe the most direct attack on this idea that our law-makers might know more about what legislation will work (and what won't) than, well, a plumber from ohio. this is also paralleled by the waves of anti-intellectual sentiment that have been rippling through american culture recently (i'm thinking specifically of some voters' skepticism over barack obama's law degree... from harvard). i'll admit that our legislators' disconnection from the everyday lives of their constituents is a valid concern, but i'm not convinced that ousting and alienating ourselves from those legislators - who, for better or worse, know every twist, turn and caveat of the law-making process - is the wisest course of action. imagine a chamber-full of rookies charged with untangling the bureaucratic mess that winds through the halls of congress.

but ultimately, buck's (and his supporters') disdain for washington elitism pales in comparison to the way his comments seem to show a huge disregard for the legislative process in general, one in which ideas are discussed and debated, with respect and thoughtful deliberation and discussion. i don't mean to suggest that mr. buck is unique in his apparent willingness to let anger and frustration overpower his ability to discuss rationally and respectfully: the idea of democratic deliberation is one with debatable efficacy in american politics, and the filibuster is an example of procedurally admissible discussion-halting. but turning your back on a seat into which you've been elected hardly seems like a responsible approach. whatever happened to listening to your opponent's point of view, even if just to argue against it more effectively? this is a principle i teach to freshmen in college, on how to make a strong case... consider the opposing argument. apparently mr. buck (and those who share his evasion of unpleasant discussion) missed that lesson in freshman comp. and even if mr. buck's comments were only politically-motivated, appealing to a voter-base that identifies chiefly as "anti-big-government," they fan the fire of a disturbing trend toward a perhaps partially justified, but what will become an ultimately debilitating suspicion of experience and expertise.

terms of endearment

i'm not sure, if given a million years to list topics on which i could possibly write a blog post, that i would have guessed the 1983 james l. brooks film, terms of endearment, starring shirley maclaine, debra winger, jack nicholson, and jeff daniels. i watched it this afternoon, and i'm writing here because i was very pleasantly surprised, and my overthinking mechanisms were switched on. (also surprised to learn that this is the same brooks that, six years later, went on to become a primary producer of the simpsons.)

as the dvd was loading, i pulled up the film's wikipedia page, just for curiosity's sake, to learn that the film really did earn its quasi-mythic status, winning 5 oscars (including best picture) and 4 golden globes. it was this mystique around the film that prompted me to watch it in the first place. reading the sleeve's back cover - and mistakenly reducing the film to "romantic comedy" - caused me some concern... concern that slowly but steadily waned over the film's 131 minutes. and i'm glad that i mistook this film as just another "romance" film because its deviations from this idea are what provide my appreciation of it, and my interest in watching it again.

growing up in the 90's, we were all inundated with sleepless in seattle-type films - i.e. those in which a couple either by some unavoidable circumstance can't get together (but desperately want to) until the final, breathtaking moment... or, they only realize that they're perfect for each other at the last second. (i'll admit that my definition of "romance" here is very hanks-ryan centric, but other examples fall into this structural category, even if only roughly.) terms of endearment, though, works the opposite way: emma (winger) and flap (daniels) get married immediately. thus, the conflict of the film is not the sometimes funny, sometimes dramatic search for one's "true love,", but the grim reality of a marriage made perhaps too hastily. it becomes clear very quickly that emma and flap are unhappy in their marriage. infidelity is rampant in this story, to the extent that we easily sympathize with a wife who cheats on her husband (because we also suspect, and later learn, that the husband is at least ready to cheat on her, as well, in a weird moment of ambivalent absolution for emma). in this sense, marriage is not the destination of romance here... instead, romance is everything that marriage cannot contain.

put another way, this film is anti-romantic (noting that the film retains the "romantic-comedy-drama" label in most of its references). the characters are off-beat, somewhat perpendicular to the story: emma's relationship with her mother, aurora (maclaine), is strikingly candid and repressed, smooth and abrasive simultaneously. every major character exhibits severe mood-swings, and at times the failures of these relationships, which comprise the marrow of the plot, seem inconsequential (in fact totally inconsequential by the film's end). in other words, this seems like a very complex depiction of people who are depressed and refuse to acknowledge their depression - not the romanticization of "true love" bringing people together, putting together the broken pieces of their shattered lives. here, love tears these people apart, and to me that's satisfying. maybe i'm just a dark soul.

often, anti-romantic aligns with "realistic," not working within straightforward structures of right and wrong, not idealistic, not fanciful. i'm not sure that this applies to terms of endearment, though. technically speaking, the editing and narrative progression are both very jerky, jarring, and without smooth transition, not like our own everyday experience of time at all: a year will pass by in a second without warning. and the characters are not "realistic" in the generic sense of the term, not really fitting what is deemed "normal," "well-balanced" individuals. in some sense, they're too stereotypical to be realistic, almost surreal, dream-like, especially where some of the dialogue is concerned.

in a way, then, maybe terms of endearment is the romantic comedy taken to its (il)logical conclusion... what happens after the daughter defies her mother's warnings and marries the man she loves (at least for now) madly and deeply anyway. with this in mind, the title makes sense to me: if we think of a "term of endearment" as a figure of speech that has become common - so common that it's pushed almost to the point of meaninglessness - then the film reflects this by showing how "romance" can devolve into hollow, meaningless, everyday talk. i'm thinking now of a moment that seems more significant to me - when aurora finally summons the courage to tell garret (nicholson) that she loves him, something she hasn't said to anyone in decades. garret, first dismissing the comment and then asked for his reaction, responds: "i'll i've got is my stock answer: i love ya, too, kid." the "kid" echoes humphrey bogart's famous farewell to ingrid bergman in casablanca, maybe remembered as one of the most romantic lines in all of cinema. here, it's just a "stock answer," just another term of endearment.

what i haven't talked about here is the film's tricky thoughts on sexuality: on one level, it seems to make a woman's happiness contingent on the success or failure of her heterosexual marriage, her relationship with a man. in other words, the film takes for granted that a failed marriage is a traumatic thing (maybe for some it isn't), that monogamy is "right" by setting infidelity as a central point of conflict. these are both western, heteronormative ideas. this is complicated, however, since emma is clearly in a much deeper, much more meaningful - because it is such a complex - relationship with her mother. also, by the end of the film, the icon of heteronormativity - the nuclear family - is shattered, while the film still ends on an optimistic note (and ironically at that... the final scene, well... without spoiling anything... does not take place in a happy setting).

all-in-all, there is almost nothing simple about this film. i'll watch it again, to see what else is there to pick up on.

how do you solve a problem like steve jobs?

this is just one sample of the "get a mac" ad campaign that has proven so successful for apple over the past 5 years or so. i love these commercials, and i have to admit that they are partially responsible for beginning my now growing relationship with apple and its products. i've owned a macbook for two years now; i buy music on iTunes, and then listen to it on my iPod, or stream it wirelessly to my stereo using my AirPort. i love apple products. so much, in fact, that just last week i finally took the plunge and purchased an iPhone, and i haven't been able to put it down since.

all of that said, after watching steve jobs's press conference yesterday addressing concerns over iPhone 4's antenna, i have to admit that i'm still glad to have bought an iPhone 3Gs. and that's not a dig on iPhone 4... it's a dig on jobs.

a little background: about a week ago, stories about reception problems with apple's newest iPhone model began peppering the news media and infiltrating consumer websites. Here's consumerreports.org's testimony that they can't recommend buying the product. and with good reason... why buy a phone with unreliable reception?

jobs's answer yesterday can be interpreted in two ways: we might say he reminded us that no one buys a smartphone for its fantastic reception. indeed, jobs devoted the majority of his presentation to discussing how comparable smartphones on the market today have similar difficulties retaining signal when held in a particular fashion. yes... i'm no techie, so i'm taking his word for it here.

but most pundits in the technology world are hearing this answer as they would a child on a playground: well blackberry and android and samsung are doing it, too! i'm sorry to say that these interpretations aren't too much of an exaggeration. i will concede to jobs that the press has seemed concerned not so much with calls dropped by smartphones, but with calls dropped by iPhones. of course there's a story in a wavering product coming from a seemingly infallible company. and it seems that there is a lot of truth to what jobs spent 25 minutes showing us... again and again. yes, apple is not perfect, and neither are smartphones. good. great.

but could you imagine hearing the voice that steve jobs used in his press conference yesterday coming from justin long while he's depicting mac in the "get a mac" ads? the ads position mac as a calm and confident alternative to pc's anal retentiveness, paranoia, and other general usability problems. to me, jobs sounded more like pc does in these commercials - defensive, pedantic and a bit pathetic, drenching us with data and charts, repeating the same points over and over again. other phones do it, too... oh, and here's how iPhone is still far superior to whatever these other brands can offer. WE'RE STILL THE BEST, OKAY!

now i'm exaggerating, but underneath jobs's apologies for the trouble and proposed solutions (which were late - 25 minutes in - and which everyone was anticipating correctly, anyway) the real issue rumbled. jobs was tired of getting his feathers ruffled. no one can blame him for that, but jobs's address yesterday doesn't seem consistent with the entertaining and smart depictions of its products for which apple is well-known. if this particular ad campaign shows us anything, it's that apple wants to DIFFERENTIATE itself from other, non-apple operating systems. jobs's strategy yesterday - regardless of its truth value - undermines this effort to make buying an apple product a truly unique experience.

jobs might do well to revisit some of his company's ads. it'd be easy to do; someone has stitched a bunch of them together into a single video on youtube:

i look forward to seeing what the folks behind the "get a mac" campaign might develop in the coming months to respond to what might have (even if it shouldn't have) become an unexpected, and therefore significant, PR problem.