b l o g o s

Dear Mr. Blagojevich,

Your story is the closest thing this era has to an ancient tragedy, with the important exception that tragic heroes usually had some redeeming quality, something that made what happened to them seem, you know, tragic. Hubris, though: yeah, you have more than your share of that. And arrogance, yowza.

Also, as a person of Illinois, I do not like how you keep invoking the "people of Illinois" who have elected you twice as the people who are getting cheated with this impeachment. We really don't give a flying fuck about you, although we take some comfort in having the rest of the country get a taste of what we have gone through with you as our governor.

I personally find Jon Stewart's "scumbag million hairs" section on the Daily Show to be hilarious every time he introduces it. The joke does not get old. Neither do I blame the legislators for viewing this as their long-awaited chance to finally get rid of you, after all the crap you put them through. You abused your power in so many more ways than plotting to sell that senate seat, and we all know it, because we could hear it between the lines on our local news stations. It takes a prit-tee egomaniacal leader to get to the point where no legislators will agree to even come to the bargaining table with him. That's some achievement.

I wonder what you will do with yourself, with all this time? How will you earn that money you and your wife need so badly? I think you probably will go the way of Jerry Springer or Geraldo, your newest and biggest fan, if you can convince some television network to let you host a show. Or maybe you will try to qualify for the boston marathon and claim that all the timekeepers cheated or that the clocks were defective. Or perhaps you will rip out your tongue or write a memoir, as the ancient and modern tragic figures (respectively) tend to do. Or maybe you will just recede into oblivion where you belong. What ever you do, go on, get out of here. And take your big fat hairbrush with you.

sincerely not yours,
debbie

scattershot 11: snow-ful day edition

1. I have written here before about how blogging and writing (worky-type writing) are not zero sum for me. This remains true. Facebook and blogging, however, seem to be zero sum. I'm going to try to even the balance a bit more.

2. Speaking of worky-type writing, I've hit a good stride with that lately. I can tell when something is close to done because I start to itch for the next thing.

3. In preparation for the animals book, I have gone and gotten a Latin tutor. I audited Latin in grad school, but it didn't stick because I never had occasion to use it--I was still writing about greek fellows. My Latin tutor seems quite good, and his Greek is damn good too, hooray.

4. Something about working with a hard language (like Greek or Latin) helps to organize the rest of my daily life. I'm not sure why or how, but I think it has to do with the regularity, and the way memorization keeps one (or at least me) sharp. It reminds me a little bit of learning a new sport.

5. I xc skied today (around here, it's okay just to say "skied," because there is no such thing as downhill downstate), and it was really, really great. Everything was sparkly and bright--I think I might have gotten a sunburn in fact--and the existing tracks were smooth and straight.

6. Here is something very exciting: yesterday I bought tickets to see Animal Collective in Milwaukee in May, and train tickets to get there.  This introduces the problem of needing to ease up a little on the new album, which I have been playing nonstop since January 20. My god, it is good. I took a break from it for the first time today on my walk to the public library, during which I returned to Bon Iver. And I haven't even bought *his* latest yet; I'm saving that. Is it just me, or is music pretty good these days?

7. I have finally found a good naan recipe that isn't ridiculously hard but IS ridiculously delicious.

8. I really, really hope that the education portion of the stimulus package makes it through. From what I can tell from talking to my sister, who is an elementary school teacher, and from listening to what's going on around here and in other states, a cash infusion for ailing schools could only be a good thing.

9. When I leave here I will miss the corn and bean report on our local AM station. There is something soothing about listening to technical reports about something I don't quite understand but that nevertheless affects us all. (that one is for you, cdg.)

10. I am fairly sure we will lose our capacity to watch television when the new FCC digital stuff kicks in next month. What I am not sure about is whether either one of us cares enough to do anything about it.

11. I recently joined our neighborhood association listserv, but had I known about its high, high entertainment value, I would have joined long, long ago. West Urbana is known for its uber-liberal ethos, and the posts are so over the top as to be almost parodies of themselves. A couple of instances include the message asking if anyone knows how to properly recycle those jiffy mailers because they are part paper and part plastic, and the one asking about whether it is possible to purchase an obama mug locally. Oh! And the one about how the new streetlights on Lincoln and Michigan are approved by the Dark Sky Association. Now, I'll admit, the last one impresses me. This is probably why I live here. Would you be my, could you be my, won't you be my neighbor?

mad monday

open up your throat a little

 

Spin: A waterlogged sample of a voice croaking, "You can dance" opens Animal Collective's ninth album, and it's a sign of what's to come, even if the trio take their time before dropping a beat. Two-plus minutes of woozy ambience waft by as singer Avey Tare wishes, "If I could just leave my body for a night." Then, suddenly, the dam bursts and "In the Flowers" floods the senses with rib-rattling bass and a giant 4/4 thump that could be transmitting from a Berlin superclub.

Rolling Stone: Merriweather is the soundtrack for the ultimate hippie/ambient tribal dance party, a giddy, freewheeling, psychedelic beast of an album, full of big beats, trippy drones and glistening synths dancing around the band’s rich, reverb-drenched, fugue-like vocal layers.

Pitchfork: Since their inception, Animal Collective have wandered the territorial edges of music, scoping out where boundaries had been erected and looking beyond them. They've punctuated perfectly likeable indie rock songs with bleating vocalizations. They've seeded pretty instrumentals with irritating noise. They've juxtaposed West African rhythms and melodies cribbed from British folk. They've stayed on a single chord for 10 minutes. But Merriweather feels like a joyous meeting in a well-earned, middle place-- the result of all their explorations pieced together to create something accessible and complete.

Pop Matters: Did you think this was going to pan Merriweather Post Pavilion? Sorry, can’t oblige—I’m as guilty as the most effusive critic of Animal Collective-love. So here goes. Merriweather Post Pavilion is a masterstroke, a release so fun to listen to it makes you actually hopeful for the new year, not just for music but for life in general. It’s musically sophisticated, of course, boiling up the band’s characteristic components of techno, tribalism, drone and noise with gorgeous melody into an addictive optimism.

New York Times: For a group that has rarely seemed concerned with accessibility, “Merriweather” is a significant step toward a more polished sound and a wider audience. The album has received rapturous advance praise from many blogs and music magazines — the music site Pitchfork.com gave it one of its highest ratings since 2004 — and the band quickly sold out a release-week tour. Peter Berard, an executive at Domino Records, said the vinyl edition of the album essentially sold out Jan. 6, the day it was released.

Baltimore Sun: The processed sounds bleat, converge and tumble. Beats pulsate as majestic choruses build and build before giving way to layers of fuzzy synths that churn and then disperse. At times, one song sounds like three different tunes.

Boston Globe: Forget that latest national unemployment report or the news from the Middle East. Here's the real proof the world's gone topsy-turvy: Animal Collective, the wildest purveyors of tribal psychedelia this side of the Amazon Basin, have written an album about getting old. And not just old, but all domestic and stuff.

Robin Pecknold, lead singer of Fleet Foxes: What a beautiful thing. This record makes me want to cry. . . . I saw Noah Lennox backstage at the Pitchfork festival and could hardly contain myself, like meeting Elvis. I bumbled a couple dumb words and cursed myself for looking like a Black Crowes monster.

children, looking

have i mentioned how excited i am that there are kids in the whitehouse?

photos from huffpo

fisting, eh? what a maroon.

I saw this thanks to Michael Faris. I heart facebook.

me oh my

That sure was something on the D.C. mall today, huh? I don't know how anyone on or near that stage held it together--I sure didn't. I'll leave the expert analysis to the more expert among us, saying only that I very much admire the way Obama kind of cut  through the momentousness of the day by simply getting down to business. And: the music really couldn't have been better. Yo yo ma and those other guys tore up some strings, and the spirit and weight of the day was only matched by the lovely and massive bow on Aretha Franklin's hat.

on editorial amputation

College Composition and Communication, as many of you know, is a major journal in the field of rhetoric and composition. Those of you who subscribe and have received your December, 2008 issue might have noticed that it's a rather hefty issue. This is because it features five main articles as well as the customary chair's address from this year's CCCC.

The heft is not, however, due to the usual end-of-issue shorter pieces, such as the "interchanges," review essays, or the feature that the current editor Deborah Holdstein started, called "Re/Visions," in which scholars revisit and reconsider articles that appeared long ago in the pages of CCC. These, you may have noticed, have been amputated: each piece--including a three-part "Re/Visions" feature and three review essays [!]--is printed for a few paragraphs, and then it trails into a web address that is presumably a site called "The Extended CCC," where interested (and subscribing) readers can read the rest of the piece. The issue also includes a four-page editor's account of why the amputation occurred, and this account reads like a polite defense, including a long discussion of CCC's miniscule acceptance rate.

I first found out about the editorial decision when Holdstein called me up a couple of days before the issue was going to go to press. She called me because I had organized the latest "Re/Visions" feature, a set of essays by Dana Anderson, Christa Olson, and me about a little-known article that Kenneth Burke published in CCC in 1978. The editor wanted to explain to me what was going on.

Needless to say, I was not happy about this decision, and I told Holdstein so. I also let the journal's officers know that I don't think it is the right decision to ghettoize the lively shorter pieces by lopping them off and placing them online. Practically, it means that citing the pieces is very weird. What page numbers ought to be used? And it means that people who rely on library subscriptions of the journal won't have easy access to the essays. And finally, no matter what the editor says about how these are real publications, it means that our work has been devalued.

In looking through the print edition of the issue under question, I also noted that there are THREE review essays. Review essays are also VERY hard work, and they constitute some of the most crucial evaluative work in every field. I also have to wonder why there are so many review essays. Isn't there usually only one? If that is the case, then the acceptance of so many review essays is a case of mismanagement that is unrelated to the low acceptance rate that Holdstein puts forward as the main justification for the EP CCC. What's more, our Re-visions piece ends with a blank half-page, which means three more paragraphs could have been included. The poor review-essays only got a paragraph printed in the journal, if that, before slamming into the circulation information and advertisements. Seeing those review essays, and knowing how much work went into the writing and editing of those essays made this book review editor very sad.

In any case, the thing is a bit of a mess, and even though there are various accounts about who is to blame, and even though the editor is obviously in a tight spot where page limits and acceptances are concerned, and even though I understand the problems and costs associated with publishing a book-length issue, I think this never should have happened. Jenny Edbauer Rice's piece on "Rhetoric's Mechanics" is cool, though--check it out.

Anyway, while I by no means think our "Re/Visions" essays are earth-shatteringly important, they were great fun to pull together, and the process of writing mine helped me to compose the epilogue to my forthcoming book. I also happen to think they are unfairly lopped off. I am therefore making our "Re/Visions" contribution available for download so that interested people can read it without trying to remember their usernames or passwords. You can access our essays, "Burke is Dead: Long Live Burke!" (Anderson); "The Squirm" (Hawhee); and "Burke's Attitude Problem" (Olson); as well as the original Burke article, "Questions and Answers about the Pentad," by following the links below.

Download Burke revisions
Download Questions and answers about the pentad

netflix blogging: fay grim

 

Back in graduate school all the cool kids were into indie filmmaker Hal Hartley, and I started watching his movies too. The Hartley film that stuck with me was Henry Fool. How could a movie about a garbageman poet not stick with someone getting a PhD in English and teaching composition, especially with teachable scenes like this:

Fay Grim is Henry Fool's sequel, released nine years later. It features the same actors, even the kid who plays their son whom HF takes drinking and smoking when he was 5. And of course there's the striking and subtle Parker Posey, who gets some choice lines in HF, like when she (as Fay) claims that her brother's poetry brought on her period a week and a half early. As you might be able to tell from the title and the movie poster, Fay is front and center in the sequel, which is rather unexpectedly wound around an espionage scheme. And if you haven't seen Henry Fool, then by all means, rent or netflix them both.

from the inside