All of a sudden, I'm glad I didn't write about the "laundry bags incident"

If you have a computer, you know about the "25 Things" meme that is heading all over Facebook at the moment. In fact, if you don't own a computer, you know about this, because other media outlets are also covering the ubiquity of the phenomenon.

Such as the Washington Post. Funny enough, this article got brought up at church yesterday, but I didn't think much about it -- until it was pointed out to me that one of my own responses was actually quoted in the article. (If I hadn't thought about it as little as possible, I would have easily figured out who would be writing such an article.) The piece is written fairly well, particularly given the form.

I'll let you figure out which one is mine. No, I did not poop in my pants as an adult.

(h/t to jenny for pointing this out)

In which I offer proof that Laura Brown is a better cook than I am

The cake is less than she hoped it would be. She tries not to mind. It is only a cake, she tells herself. It is only a cake. ...

According to the clock on the wall, it is barely ten-thirty. She has plenty of time to make another cake. This time, she will prevent crumbs from getting caught in the icing. This time, she will trace the letters with a toothpick, so they'll be centered, and she'll leave the roses for last.
- Michael Cunningham, The Hours

Exhibit A:
On the left, you'll see the dregs of cake #1, which was an attempt at a double-laayered chocolate cake, aborted when both cakes stuck to the bottom of the pans they baked in, despite my having "lightly greased" each pan per the directions. Cake #2 had the opposite problem. While this time I greased and floured the pan, it was a bundt pan and the cake came out fairly quickly ... too quickly, in fact, as it practically fell apart as I turned it onto the plate. I ran out of time to make a third cake, before I went to pick up the person who said, "There will be cake on my birthday."

Unlike Laura Brown, however, I love my spouse immensely. So I resisted the urge to read Mrs. Dalloway (again) and go for a long drive.

Ah yes, and happy birthday, belovéd. I love you, clearly more than the cake loves me.

What I get for not updating this blog more frequently

Yesterday was my second day of class in the new semester. I teach my upper-level class in the early afternoon, half of which have taken one of my classes before; in other words, they know me and my idiosyncrasies fairly well. My introductory film class, however, meets at 8:30AM. I hate teaching at this time; they hate taking classes at this time; we all nonetheless try to make it all work.

I had my computer open and up on the big screen in the room, showing some clips and the trailer for Singin' in the Rain. In discussing trailers, one person mentioned Don LaFontaine, the voice-over artist for trailers who recently passed away; reminded by the mention of his name, I asked if anyone had seen the trailer for Comedian, the Jerry Seinfeld documentary. No one had, so I said, "Give me a moment to open my browser. It's definitely worth it." I pulled up the browser and continued with whatever I was saying while I was waiting for Firefox to open.

In the middle of a sentence, however, the entire class started laughing. I stopped, turned around.

Naturally, my browser opens on my blog. If you scroll down to see the posting immediately before this one, you'll see what was displayed on a very large screen behind my head. Photo included.

I turned back, very red in the face, and said, "I can explain that..."

Let's see if that shows up on evaluations.

Do ya think I'm sexy?

This is my official photograph for the university. It's a couple years old, but it gets the point across. I'm not going to sell any magazines, it's true, but I do OK.

Oh, except, wait. I forget that the above photograph demonstrates that I'm sexy as all get-out.

Granted, perhaps you could just learn that from my wife after a couple shots of vodka. But according to a new poll, apparently it's not just me, but my profession that makes me sexy. I received this from another professor in my department, and responded that now I really need to hit the gym this semester; another person replied, "Why bother? Just wear your glasses!" (To wit, Angela has actually rejected my tentative flirting with contact lenses, since she indeed thinks glasses are better.)

So how do I translate this to higher student evaluations? Hmmm....

Dat's wat I'm talkin bout

Naturally, Angela and I are so out of touch, we hadn't heard of the original song before we laughed our heads of at this. The scary thing is that, as you can imagine, some of this regularly seeps into some of the papers I receive.

Plus, this (at least visually) features the amazing HotforWords, who has to be doing something for rising interest of English-language etymology among teenage boys.

I don't watch movies. I prefer good film criticism.

I just found out that Metropolitan, one of my favorite movies from the early 1990s, just got release on Hulu, of all places. The movie was an oddly daring debut from director Whit Stillman, and garnered a well-deserved Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination for a talky piece about some rich kids maneuvering through the upper echelon of Manhattan.

I saw this when I was a freshman or sophomore in college, just before I started really appreciating "films" and yet I found this movie utterly refreshing, having giggled incessantly throughout. I thought that perhaps it was because I was at Dartmouth, where many of these people who were really so full of themselves seemingly ended up (or so it seemed, work-study kid that I was, surrounded by what seemed to be very privileged people). On my exchange term at UC-San Diego, however, I convinced someone on my hall -- a very loopy, arty guy that I respected -- to come to a campus screening with me, and he laughed throughout the whole movie and thanked me profusely when it was over.

There's a great moment which, I'm sad to say, isn't spoken by my favorite character, the insouciant Nick (played with gleeful abandon by Chris Eigeman), but rather in an exchange between Audrey (Carolyn Farina) and Tom (Edward Clements). (I wasn't able to snip out a clip from Hulu, so look for it around the 27-minute mark.) Not so surprisingly, Audrey loves Jane Austen and is unnerved by Tom's vehemence against her work -- when all of a sudden he admits the he's never read Austen at all. "Oh no," he says, "I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking."

Every so often, I wonder about whether literature (and film) professors in general suffer from this conundrum. And then they wonder when people like Audrey, who rightly live in the pleasure that the book provides, think that we're nuts for looking too closely at what we read.

Where parents fear to tread...

I had promised to take Xan to the playground after a nap on our last day in Ann Arbor, fully aware that it was supposed to storm that day. Luckily, there's a cool indoor playground/coffee shop called Jungle Java that has a giant structure to climb around. Xan saw it, went in and didn't touch the floor again until they closed.

At some point, I decided that this was a good moment for me to take my trusty new pocket video camera and venture inside this structure. Clearly, a Steadicam would have been more useful here, if even more impossible to go around various corners; clearly, this was also not made for a thirty-six-year-old man. (That said, you may note I'm not the only one in there.) Please note how appreciative my son is of my travails in maneuvering said obstacle.

The terrible threes(ome)

M is a sweet and pretty little girl at Xan's school who apparently is relatively shy and reserved, often plays by herself.

That is, unless my son is involved.

Xan had a hitting incident with me this morning (for which he was reprimanded with some stern words and a three-year-old lecture on the perils of hitting, particularly the perils of hitting me). When I brought him to school, another kid came up to hit him while I was there. I was proud that he didn't hit back right away and mentioned this morning's incident to one of his teachers. "Oh yeah," she said, "it's his new thing, the hitting. He's definitely in that rambunctious phase." We've known this for a while: don't let anyone tell you anything about the "terrible twos," which I now think is a completely myth -- it's the threes you have to worry about (and Ange's Mom said she was the worst at four so I guess it could get worse). His teachers mentioned, however, that this new bravado turned out to be a good thing in another way: apparently, his current wild-man phase has been pulling M out of her shell a bit, since she adores him and will happily follow him around, even doing some naughty things herself because he did them. This is actually a good thing for her, according to the teachers, since they would like her to mix things up a bit. So while they are not letting him get away with everything, secretly they are pleased about the residual effect on M.

Anyway, Xan went over to M's house yesterday for a play date after school and they had a great time. This evening was the school potluck and M's mother sat next to me while the kids were supposed to be doing this group exercise thing in the campus amphitheater; my kid, meanwhile, was running around the back part of the plant area. "Look," M's mother said, pointing to her daughter who was running after him with the biggest grin on her face. "She is so smitten with him. I think she has a crush."

I had seen this a little earlier, when the two of them went off together to play on the playground and then she followed him to the tricycles. He had pedaled away and she was standing there. "Would you like to ride as well?" I asked her. She shook her head and said simply, "I don't know how to ride the tricycle yet." (This is totally understandable: Xan has only just learned, and through much determined effort because of his neverending obsession with wheels.) I watched him ride away with me and her standing there, looking after him. And she had that look in her eyes that said, Wow, he is just so cool. I thought to myself, Oh my goodness, I think M totally has a crush on my kid. This is so freaking adorable. Except, male that he is, he isn't really noticing at all. Typical guy.

I mentioned some of this to M's mother, who laughed. I looked back at the kids and at M running after Xan, trying to get his attention. But at that point, I noticed he was doing the same thing -- only not with M. I turned to M's mother and said, "M may have a crush on Xan, but right now it looks like Xan has a crush on R" -- one of the twin boys in his class, who Xan was indeed chasing after and imitating, no matter than R was trying his best to ignore him. In an exact parallel of what was happening with M.

For a moment, I realized with some surprise that this was mimicking the plotline of Threesome, a movie with Lara Flynn Boyle, Stephen Baldwin and Josh Charles that isn't all that great but that I still have an affection for, maybe because in 1994 I identified with it a bit too much when I saw it (and that is all of that story any of you people need to know, thank you very much). Still, all we need is for R to have unrequited affection for M, and then they go to college and...

No, no. No.

Still, it's incredibly cute to see what seems to be the first crush. (Just don't tell Jolie. Seriously. M doesn't stand a chance.)

On Eduardo Noriega

This weekend was the SCMS annual conference, held this year in Philadlephia. I have had the good fortune to be able to present at the conference every year (except 2000) and it regularly becomes the energizing academic force for me every year. This year, blogging came into play as well: I have recently read about bloggers meeting other bloggers but hadn't done that myself until Stinkylulu sent me an email asking if we should meet while at SCMS -- and suddenly, I realized that several of the film blogs I've been lurking around were also written by young film nerds academics like me! It was a blast meeting Lulu and Nick (and QTA, whose own blog is now defunct because of silly pressures like having to write one's dissertation and all). Plus, I went to a couple panels directly related to blogging on films, so we'll see how this affects this space as well. (Although Nick and Lulu both said that the Xan-pics need to keep coming as well.)

My own paper was for a panel on the relationship between contemporary Latin American cinema and Ibermedia, the most prominent funding source for Latin American filmmaking, which happens to be located in Spain. The panel was great: one person wrote about the program itself, I gave some ideological implications resulting from the growing dependence on Ibermedia within Latin America, and a third offered a somewhat anthropological glimpse as an insider on a movie funded by Ibermedia. We had a robust crowd with over a half hour of questions (unheard of!) and a number of compliments after we broke.

And, of course, this meant that I talked a little about Eduardo Noriega.

You may or may not know that I am teaching a course on Stardom this semester and I am always tempted to discuss him because he fascinates me. He actually has made a number of films, of which I have seen four: Alejandro Amenábar's Tesis and Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes), Guillermo del Toro's El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone) and Marcelo Piñeyro's Plata quemada (Burnt Money). With those heavy eyebrows and strong facial features, he's natural hunk hunk burning movie-starness; what fascinates me is how these four films (a) know that and (b) subsequently twist the characters around how smoldering he is. In all of these films, he is either crazy or a murderer or both -- and yet somehow the viewer wants to let him off the hook anyway because he's, ya know, hot. Amenábar in particular uses him in this way, particularly as he is paired with phenomenal character actor Fele Martínez, who conspicuously plays the normal (read: not hot, but also not crazy) guy in both of those films. Angela and I talked once about how the relative hotness of an actor often helps us identify with a character quicker and easier, justifying decisions like casting Jennifer Connelly in House of Sand and Fog for a character who was originally plain and dumpy. (Christian Metz would, I imagine, have quite the field day with this idea. But I digress.)

My paper, however, was not about Noriega's hotness (which is what I would talk about if and when I bring him up in class this semester) but rather his Spanish-ness. The image above comes from Plata quemada, which is actually an Argentine-Spanish co-production. While that production certainly gained cachet by casting Noriega after his performance in the break-out international hit Abre los ojos, doing so also slightly changed the narrative since the script (and novel) is based on a true story about two Argentines. My paper talked about his inclusion as such and the implications of diluting national cinematic identity when you throw a random Spaniard in a main role.

Naturally, I waited until the very last minute to finish my paper, which means I finished it very early Saturday morning before the presentation that afternoon. When I checked into my hotel, I had asked if there was a place to print nearby. They happily assured me that I could print there. Great, I thought, I'll just print it, grab something for breakfast and run to the first panel. Alas, when I came down to print, I discovered that the internal server was down and I wouldn't be able to print from the regular terminals -- but that there was one behind the front desk that I could print from.

It was only after I begun that I realized I was printing on the slowest printer ever. My 12-page document took 40 minutes to print. I was kicking myself.

Here's where things get a little spooky. While waiting for the interminable print job, I tried to find the printer application so that I could speed things up. In the process, I opened up the "Recent documents" drop-down menu. Clearly, whoever had used the computer before had been viewing some -- ahem -- naughty pictures of a sort, given some of the random document names that I saw on the list. While amusing, I would otherwise not note this -- except that smack in the middle of the list, I saw the name "eduardonoriega.jpg."

Now how weirdly coincidental is that? I'm printing a paper referencing this guy on the same computer that rather recently someone else is apparently ogling him -- which I guess only proves my original claim above, that he's a hunka hunka burning movie star. I think that for the next conference I go to, I'll try writing about some other semi-obscure randomly attractive actors that I like -- Emily Watson, Ricardo Darín, Shohreh Aghdashloo, maybe Maggie Cheung? -- to see if other hotel computers can be made to bend to my whim even before I arrive. (Or maybe I should just try to channel this to happen again. Because if they all show up at my hotel at the same time... well, I might just pass out in cinematic apoplexy.)

I think I've seen this someplace before...

Anyone who has taken one of my classes knows that I am somewhat obsessed with fonts. Somehow, I missed this particular font-oriented tidbit, brilliantly put together by Goodie Bag. Now all I need to to see the new documentary Helvetica and my life melding my font and movie obsessions shall be complete.



(Cross-posted at the new Critical Approach to the Cinema blog, for the AU Cinema Studies student community!)

Why I still get carded

Overheard this evening, on the bus coming home with Mama:

X: Mercedes is a kid.
A: Yes, she is.
X: And Xan is a kid.
A: Yes, you're right.
X: And Dada is a kid.
A: No, he's a grown-up.
X (in resolve voice, a la Willow Rosenberg): No, he is not a grown-up. Dada's a kid.
A: He may act like a kid sometimes, but he's really a grown-up.
X: No, he's not. Dada's a kid.
(slight pause)
X: Mama's a grown-up.

Well, there you have it.

There is no substitute........

While there is no substitute for the true author of this blog, there is also no end in sight to his backlog of papers to grade. So in the interests of not allowing a similar backlog of topics to stymie him when he returns to posting, Jeff is allowing me to procrastinate on my lesson prepping write an entry or two. Basically, I'll be keeping the chronicles of Xan's life up to date and avoiding any movie commentary. For those of you who don't know - I am "Wifeling," Mother-of-Xan, and She-Whom-the-Cat-May-Upon-Occasion-Actually-Obey.

Before putting up Xan posts, I'll start with a quick "life with Jeff" vignette. Specifically, a list of ways to tell that Dr. Middents is in grading mode:

1. The amount of hair product is drastically reduced and instead he controls the poof of his hair with a baseball cap.

2. When I wake up in the wee hours of the morning, he is asleep on the couch / dining room table / floor with a pile of papers on his chest.

3. His futile dialogues with the cat feature lines such as "Vega, would you give this a B or a B+?"

4. He reaches for his 25-pound dictionary, muttering "Oooooh, I absolutely do NOT think that word means what you think it means."

5. He cannot tell you how many papers he has left; he lists how many stacks of papers he has left (4 stacks now - 4 more to come by Thanksgiving)

6. He drinks coffee. Sometimes starting at 10pm. The man almost never drinks coffee.

7. His generally amicable TA says "You're STILL not done?"

8. He begins to sport a grading callous on his right pointer finger.

9. He tries to get his 2-1/2-year-old son to help grade, again.

10. He doesn't blog.

Yet this amazing man will still take Xan around campus to trick-or-treat and bring him to family orchestra concerts (posts and photos coming) - and even do dishes!

Anyone have any advice for Jeff as he grades?

I (do not) win

I would like to announce that I officially introduced my son to the world of board games today. I have always loved board games, ever since I was a little kid -- virtually any board game will get me going. I have blogged before on the usual game played in out house among the adults, but I saw a really neat version of a good game at the mall today that was markdown-priced and thought, It's time to induct the new generation into another passion of mine.

What I was not expecting was that I would get my ass completely beaten to a bloody pulp.

Yes, it's true. I have not lost in any game by such a large margin in a very long time. And it's not like I was trying to play badly so that my son would be bolstered by a win. No, by sheer luck, my game piece was barely past the opening while my son crossed over the finish line. It wasn't even close. I was crushed like a bug.

Indeed, it may take a little while for me to recover to play Candyland again.

And they all die in the end!

Having pre-ordered the book, ensured its delivery to Cape Cod on the right date, and received it yesterday afternoon around 1:00PM, I proceeded to stay up until around 5:30AM to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows all the way through. It is quite the riveting tale and I relished every page even as I was reading as quickly as possible -- not just to ensure that I would be able to get to the end before anyone told me about it, but also before my 13-year-old Potter-obsessed nephew (along with my sister- and brother-in-law) arrived to steal the book away from me. Plus, I knew I wasn't going to legitimately get any free time to read it and still attempt to be any sort of dad paying attention to my son's burgeoning trampoline skillz unless I finished it as quickly as possible. And hey, it's ben a while since I've pulled an all-nighter.

Anybody who knows my good buddy Marcy will tell you that the title of my posting gives nothing away: this is a common response to all plots and can only be confirmed by actualy reading it yourself. (So there. Nyah.) I have been somewhat amused about the attempts at covering up some major issues of "spoilering" which I refrained from reading entirely until today. The best one that I heard, however, comes from the NPR Quiz Show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" whose first segment featured host Peter Segal stating that audio-version actor Jim Dale refused to let on the Potter ending -- which featured, among other elements, the ending that everybody loves "when Ginny [Weasley] and Cho Cheng drive a Cadillac convertible right into the Grand Canyon or, much to Joey's chagrin, Hermione decides to move in with Ross, or . . . the most satisfying part when Harry Potter finally whacks Tony Soprano." (And hey, how's this for blogging synergy: the special guest this week on "Wait, Wait!" was Patrick Fitzgerald, who Marcy talks about considerably in her book! Score!)

(Yes, there will be more posting. I don't have a direct-to-Internet connection at my in-laws, but when I do there are a whole lotta pictures to put up. And besides, did I mention that I'm on vacation?)

I hope Stevie Nicks likes Latin America...

Despite my general devotion toward new wave bands like New Order, The Cure, Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys, I confess I also have an odd fondness for Fleetwood Mac. (Also Supertramp. Might as well confess that, too.) So it is with some bemusement that I thought of their song upon seeing the random "news" story that I actually participated in.

If I live to see the seven wonders,
I'll take a path to the rainbow's end.
I'll never live to match the beauty again.

Yep, it turns out that Peru (along with Brazil and Mexico) is now host to one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. (Let's not debate the fact that Macchu Picchu ain't all that "new," all right?) Admittedly, I actually voted in this, buoyed by some hype on NPR about the surge in voting for the Christ Redeemer. What amuses me is that five of the ones I voted for were actually chosen (although, admittedly, I went for the Acropolis and Angkor Wat over the Christ Redeemer and Chichén Itzá). I really have no vested interest in this, but I still find it amusing.

Gloating/Not gloating

My son is two-and-a-quarter years old and sat getting his haircut the other day without shedding a single tear. Primarily distracted by the hair-dryer across the room, he sat still until the whole event was through, only then calling for Mama. What a little gentleman!...

...who, three days earlier, woke us up by bringing a book for us to read -- a book that was goopy to the touch. At which point we realized that that container of Vaseline that we thought was too high for him to reach was, in fact, not high enough at all. After six baths over two days, most of the Vaseline was finally out of his hair.

The other day, our son defied what all the books say about kids his age, proudly declaring, "I try olives!" before gobbling down (several!) pitted, marinated kalamatas with relish. This gives him about a 25-year jump on his dad in the olive-eating category (also the raw-tomato-eating category). Our boy is adventurous in food...

...which is good given that his dad had a hard time eating from the major head-butt he got from his son, so hard that he got a major fat lip that brought about tears. The boy then gave himself a bloody nose (and currently only has one elbow without a scratch on it) and nearly bestowed a black eye on his mother from a unintentional fist. Don't send us donations; just drop off the Ace bandages. (Upon telling this story, we learned of a colleague whose now 17-year-old jumped off a coffee table onto his father's resting body on a sofa, cracking three of his ribs. Given that Xan has done this already, we may have something to look forward to.)

Please place that "Absent Minded Professor" sign here. Thank you.

"Hey."

"Hey there."

"Um, so did you drive in this morning?"

"No." Duh. Of course, I didn't.

"Where is the car then?"

"It's not in the driveway?" Oh crap, someone stole our car?

"Um, did you remember to drive home last night?"

"No, I me-" Wait. Yesterday? When I was late to class and drove in and dropped Xan off and you and he went home on the metro, and I stayed late so I wouldn't have to walk in the rain, which means the car is still here on campus which means that it's PROBABLY GOING TO BE TICKETED RIGHT NOW??!!!!! "Ohmigod. I gotta go."

"You are unbelieveable."

But should it be a philodendron, a cactus or a spider plant?

My super fabulous undergrad assistant for the last year, Liza, graduated this last weekend. She took my class her freshman fall (naturally, earning a well-deserved A) and I wanted her from the beginning to lead my post-screening discussions at some point. She has done a great job this year and I'll miss her greatly.

I had met her mom several years ago when her cousin Grant (who was also my assistant before Liza) graduated and the whole family came from Minnesota to celebrate; this time, because we couldn't join them yesterday for dim sum, Liza and her parents took us out for lunch. Among other things, her parents asked about what students were really like and I have her my impressions. "I have to say, however, that the thing that really gets me are students who expect to get an 'A' for class participation for just showing up. 'I was here, don't I deserve an "A"?'"

"That's amazing."

"Yeah, I mean, a potted plant can sit in the corner every day. Does it deserve an 'A'?"

"You know, you should do that."

"What?"

"Bring a potted plant to class on the first day. And just sit it on the corner every class. And you can always point out that by the end of the semester, the potted plant has actually grown."

This, I have to say, is brilliant. If anybody gives me grief, I can just point. That potted plant is getting more of an education than you are! Sheer brilliance!

I have all summer to pick my potted plant. And my pot. Because the Fleischer memorial hibiscus, currently in my office, is just way too big for me to lug all over the place. Consider this a solicitation for suggestions.

Hmmm, what can we make Xan do?

This is exactly what I thought when I saw this. Yes, I know I'm promoting Will Farrell's new site by posting it. Yes, I don't care. I laughed that hard. The best part, naturally, is Pearl's last line.

UPDATE: Gosh, that was annoying. Damn video would start every time you opened the window. Argh. The video can be found here.

The dangers of working in a cafe

I am currently trying to get some work done at Mayorga, a cafe in Silver Spring where I occasionally write. I'm in a quiet room off to the side, which is generally where people work to get away from the mild roar that dominates the larger room.

I have to note, however, that there is a couple who have sat down near me who are clearly having coffee and snacks and seem to be having conversation resembling a first date. I am not eavesdropping; his voice is just semi-stentorian in this already somewhat quiet room. (It's distracting enough that I may move any moment now.)

I'm an Alpha Thetian (indeed, wearing a Dartmouth sweatshirt right now), so those in the know will get an extra kick out of me saying this, but an indication of how this date seems to be going (and why I'm trying to suppress laughter right now) can be summed up in the somewhat disappointed line the guy just uttered a minute ago: "Ah. I guess you don't watch very much Star Trek, do you?"