Don't Stand So, Don't Stand So

A friend of mine coordinates English Composition courses for a college in a Midwestern state not far from here.  Every now and then, I get a copy of a student message worth consideration, much as we used to bark about students when we were both teachers here in Milwaukee.

Got this from female students this week:

Mr. [redacted], I was wondering who I should talk to regarding my current professor, [also redacted]. I am not satisfied with his teaching at all, he shows no respect for the students. If anyone walks in late he rolls his eyes at them every time. I got marked off on a rough draft because I didn’t have any resources, but no where in the requirements did it say that I needed any outside sources. I talked to him after a class and asked him and he then just told me that I need one. I was trying to understand and it felt like he was just shooing me away. I haven’t learned anything in his class because he uses examples from the 1990’s and doesn’t explain things very well, getting off topic in class sometimes. Then in a class period a couple weeks ago he was showing us a pepsi commercial from when he was a kid and when the clip was done on YouTube it showed suggestions for other related searches. There was a video of commercials that have been banned from TV and it was a girl eating a hot dog seductively making it look like something sexual. He then points it out to the class and laughs. I was disturbed at this, he then clicks on [another ad] because he was curious, the video then was a bunch of women eating different foods very seductively. It was very unprofessional and it should get brought to someones attention. Just wondering what I should do or who I should talk to?

I also have had meetings with other female students re: his showing of videos. One said "I felt that his desires [for the women in the ads] were on display for the whole class to see."
ME: "You mean that he was, um, 'interested' in the images?"
HER: "Oh, yeah.  he was totally creeping out on them."   
I have two more meetings scheduled today and tomorrow with yet other female students about, I am guessing, his porning out in class.   

This is followed by the firm but forgiving message he'd sent to the teacher in question.  But the "examples from the 1990's" stuck with me.  I felt the need to write a response in the character of the writing instructor in question, creating him out of the student's message and also getting in an old shot at the curse of the 3-Paragraph Theme, because there are some things of which I can never let go.

Britney,

Your three paragraph theme regarding how much Rebecca Solnit hates the gym has led me to respond at length in writing of my own, not least because without proper context you might later off yourself like that one guest who was bullied so horribly on the Jenny Jones talk show.  Remember Jenny Jones?  She looked a little like Debra Norville, but was far sexier, particularly if you’ve seen her as I have, on internet video, taking down a footlong meatball sub.

In any case, I suppose I can’t fault the structure of your essay, in which you charge Solnit with first hating technology, then cars with a bit more specificity, and ultimately the modern practice of driving one’s car to a health club in order to walk on a treadmill.  Do they still call them Nordic Tracks, or perhaps Tracs, as we did in the 1990’s?  (By the way, is it just me or does that decade seem like only a few years back, rather than 20 years ago now?)  While your essay’s content may be questionable, your efforts to first introduce your topics, then enumerate them in order and in distinct paragraphs all to their own, and then succinctly summarize all you have to say in a one-sentence bang-and-done final sentence is, as we once said, pretty rad. 

Structure-wise, you’ve constructed a taught triple-decker BLT sandwich whose content looks larger and more glistening in your hands than it might otherwise. If we can remember the movie titled “Almost Heroes,” which nominally starred the late Chris Farley and the pre-post-Friends Matthew Perry, we might remember that something that seems like it might be good on paper will actually come out sort of bloated and half-dead.  While your paper goes only onto the top of a second page, I still had to take several breaks to watch an image gif of Ginger Spice licking a lollipop just to invigorate me to press on. I mean, your second paragraph was shorter than Urkel!  Some ideas need time and length — say, that of Arsenio Hall’s fingers — to develop. (Maybe it’s the word “develop” that reminds me, but do you know if any footage exists of Anna Nicole Smith visiting a Hardee’s?)

If I were to rate your paper between 1 and 10, with 1 being Janet Reno chewing a Chicket and 10 being Heather Lockyear sucking a bratwurst out of a bun, I’d put your essay at about a 4.  In other words, Courtney Love and rope licorice.

Please see me for conferences in the darkened basement hallway of the engineering building.  Also, I just want all the student’s to know that I’ll be providing Nathan’s Hot Dogs as a free snack to whomever’s interested.  (Have you seen the SBTB episode where Screech joins a competitive eating contest? That was a good one, right?)

Your Mack Daddy Composition Instructor,
Brian Hindshank

If Your Train's On Time You Can Get To Work By Nine

The following is a letter sent on Wednesday by Townblog to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G., as an open response to a letter to Liddy from Jake DeSantis that appeared in today's New York Times.

Dear Mr. Liddy,

After reading Mr. DeSantis’ letter as published in today’s New York Times Op Ed section, I too feel a deeply regretted need to submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G.

Like Mr. DeSantis, I had nothing to do with the company’s credit default losses and I feel I am being treated unfairly by the company and our state and national lawmakers.

I suspect my troubles with the company first began when I realized that I was not even an employee of A.I.G. In fact, while Mr. DeSantis may have agreed to take a yearly salary of $1 (in addition to a $742,006.40 bonus, making his net income a measly $742, 007.40), I did not, sir, receive any salary at all. I was not even informed, personally, that A.I.G. was hiring.

Luckily, I am a tax-paying citizen of a nation that hoped to solve some of A.I.G.’s troubles by giving you some of the money our nation's government generated by taxes. Maybe you see already where I’m going with this. Some of that tax money may well have come from me, which I suppose means I’m part-owner of A.I.G. (Sorry I did not make the last board meeting, Mr. Liddy, but babysitters have been hard to come by.)

I therefore presume that I, like Mr. DeSantis, will soon be getting my 2008 bonus. Don’t forget to include that extra dollar! (By the way, what do the state, local, and FICA payments amount to in a $1 yearly salary? Is making 742,006.4 percent of your salary in bonus-form a good way to avoid having to pay those sorts of things?)

When I do get that bonus, I’ve decided to give it all to programs for those suffering in the current economy, just as Mr. DeSantis has pledged to do. My first plan is to give $739,007.40 to myself, since I’m currently – by my math – about $742,006.40 in arrears. (See, by not getting any money, I’ve become affected by the current economy , if you're smelling what I'm cooking.) Anyway, an additional $300 will go towards a Playstation 3 for the exclusive use of those like myself who have suffered most from the A.I.G. bonus scandal. The remaining $2,700 will go towards an account held by the Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas, NV, and will serve as a nest egg towards rebuilding the $742,007.40 I will need for the 2010 annum.

In the spirit of civic responsibility evidenced in Mr. DeSantis letter, I’ve just hit upon a deal that I think is going to benefit both of us, by appealing to your budget and my over-blown and blow-dried sense of entitlement: why don’t you go ahead and keep that dollar you owe me, and just give me the $742,007.40 instead?

Sincerely,

Townblog

The Struggle Itself Is Enough To Fill A Man's Heart

In his excellent The Art of Fiction, John Gardner makes the argument that:

“To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that one out of a hundred people who read one’s work may be dying, or have some loved one dying; to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write, as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on.”

I first read Gardner's book in my very-early twenties when I first started trying seriously to write, and that particular passage -- and its argument about one's moral obligation to humankind -- became incredibly important to me. I take Gardner to mean that one has a moral duty to be life-affirming, to suggest ways out of darkness, and to generally echo Albert Camus' solution to the "one truly serious philosophical problem." (This is not to say that art can't be dark, pessimistic, or immoral, or that it can't suggest that evil often wins or that darkness can overcome, only that art -- or in Gardner's rendering, art "with taste" -- ought not leave someone in greater pain or despair. Vonnegut, for example, was no cheerleader for the human condition, but his bleak humor and rationality were fireflies in the gloom.)

David Foster Wallace was a writer who had some impact on me in my Boston years and his death this past weekend has stuck with me. My initial response -- having heard of Wallace's death from a friend's e-mail on Sunday morning -- was probably too crass and dismissive, and tied into the problems I'd developed with Wallace's writing style. An incredibly smart and exacting writer, Wallace was also interested in formal and stylistic innovation which -- at times -- seemed a bit too clever for my tastes. There's a lot of Wallace that's worth reading-- particularly in Girl With Curious Hair and A Supposedly Fun Thing... -- but the cleverness, the syntactic exercises, and his headiness eventually wore out on me. Infinite Jest, while a book I thoroughly enjoyed reading while in the act of reading it, sort of lives up to its title too exactingly.

Since Sunday, though, I've been thinking a lot about Wallace's story "The Depressed Person" , which I read in Harper's Magazine when it was published in 1998 (strangely, it seems a lot fresher in my mind than that -- I would have guessed it appeared in this decade). While not a very dramatic story, Wallace establishes and cements a mindset of a depressed woman; all of the action of the story takes place in its footnotes. Depression, as the story presents it, is a kind of extreme self-centeredness, an obsession with self that washes out the rest of the world (including, within the story, the illness and death by cancer of the depressed person's closest friend). Wallace's story -- and the idea that depression is a malady of solipsism -- drew some heat in Harper's letters pages, but I think it ultimately adheres to Gardner's definition of writing with taste. It's idea is one that has helped me out of a dark spot or two, now somewhat complicated by Wallace's apparent suicide.

At an important time in my life, the right person gave me the right book. That book says:

At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.

As Lou Reed said, my life was saved by rock and roll.

It's Not Easy Being Green

August 14, 2007

Mattel, Inc.
333 Continental Boulevard
El Segundo, CA 90245-5012

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to thank you for the inclusion of African-American superheroes in your DC Super Friends line. As the father of twins with African-American heritage, it’s very important to my family that their world (and their toys) reflect and respect their identity. As a fan of comic books from way back, I’m doubly happy that I can share my fondness for Superman and other superheroes without giving the impression that such heroes are always and exclusively white men. (It would be nice to have some female characters in the line, too.)

I hope that you continue to consider this kind of inclusion a market value as much as an act of civic responsibility or “political correctness.” I have tracked down and purchased all six figures in the DC Super Friends line, and I’m fairly certain I would not have done that if not for the presence of the African-American Green Lantern (and the promise of a Cyborg to come).

In any case, I thought I’d let you know that I find your heart to be in the right place even in the midst of recent recalls. (I’ll refrain from the opportunity to suggest that housing more operations in America might allow greater oversight and bring some manufacturing jobs back to our shores…)

Best wishes and a speedy recovery,

Townblog

Nerd, Father, and Citizen

I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass

When it comes to cool, there is no one -- no one! -- cooler than Nick Lowe. You can take your Miles Davises, your Kurt Cobains, your Dan Fogelbergs; nobody is more preternaturally, effortlessly, endlessly cool than Nick Lowe. Here's why:

1. He looks good. Am I wrong?
2. He does the crossword, apparantly.
3. For a while, Johnny Cash was his father-in-law.
4. He wrote the song "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding?"
5. He wrote a rather good song called "Time Wounds All Heels."
6. He wrote a rather good song called "All Men are Liars," in which he rhymes "Rick Astley" with "ghastly." Those who listened to pop radio in the 80's will recognize.
7. He wrote a rather good song called "What's Shaking On the Hill?"
8. After David Bowie released an album titled Low, Nick Lowe released an album titled Bowi.
9. The UK version of the Nick Lowe album known in the US as Pure Pop for Now People was Jesus of Cool.
10. He was alternative country before anybody.
11. His English country band was called Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit.
12. "I need the noises of distruction when there's nothing new."
13. "Oh, heart: you motor of emotion!"
14. "True love travels on a gravel road."
15. In the late 70's, Nick Lowe, recording as "The Tartan Horde," put out a single called "Bay City Rollers We Love You!"
16. He wrote a song about the death of Marie Provost.
17. He was the producer for the first several Elvis Costello records.
18. He was the producer for the first Damned record.
19. In an A.V. Club interview from the Onion, he says of his two-year-old son, "he's a blooming nuisance, but he's a lovely fellow."
20. I saw him play for free in a churchyard in Boston.
21. He's WIDELY underappreciated.

Now go buy his new record, At My Age, from Yep Roc records.