The Paper Chase

RBoC: High Treason Edition

2008-07-04T12:39:00.003-05:00

1. I have done nothing but work on a proposal for days.

2. I have way too many pages. We get 15.

3. This morning, I spent a lot of money on stuff I don't technically need:

Tix to see the Angels and the BoSox--we can take the train down!
Tix to see the Dodgers and the Nats
and, for my birthday in October,
Tix to see the 49ers and the Seahawks up in Candlestick for my birthday

4. I get on a plane for sweet home, Chicago tomorrow.

5. I agreed to revise a paper for a special issue. It was stupid to agree to that because I am now not revising my revise and resubmit and I am not revising my new submission. I am instead trying to finish this stupid proposal.

Guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt

Happy Independence Day

2008-07-04T12:37:00.000-05:00

Put your pride on:

hero

2008-07-03T21:49:00.001-05:00

more cat pictures

Reading for Pleasure Wednesday: LA Confidential

2008-07-02T12:46:00.006-05:00

First of all, if you haven't seen this movie, then you have basically wasted your life, it's quite clear. Yeah, you may have raised wonderful children, been a pillar of your community, and built a wide and loving circle of friends, and be at the top of your field. But still, if you havent seen it...sorry. Wasted life.

It's phenomenal--every performance is exquisite. If you avoided the movie because you can't deal with the violence (trust me, I understand), get it on DVD and fast forward. Yeah, it's that good.

And the reasons it's that good:

1) Fantastic screenplay adaptation by Brian Helgeland;

2) Very talented young director (Curtis Hanson) with great sense of timing and casting; and

3) Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful performances from Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, and (!!!) Kim Basinger.

All this is to say they also had fantastic working material. Ellroy's novel is lush, nuanced, and conducted at breathtaking pace. James Ellroy is unsparing in his appraisal of the brutal LAPD he grew up around, and he is honest about his setting, the way all real Angelenos are: unlike New Yorkers or San Franciscans whose love of place is as parochial as it is fanatic, lovers of Los Angeles love it, as the saying goes, because of its flaws, not despite them. This is a hard city, and the city noir of James Ellroy is Raymond Chandler done harsher, meaner, more profane--with more storytelling force--and even less faith that good guys are recognizable in all the squalor. Ellroy, like many of us, can't stop looking at evil, trying to understand it, worrying it like a sore, hoping to expunge it from our own dark spots.

Is anybody else vaguely intimidated by MobileMe?

2008-07-01T10:25:00.004-05:00

Perhaps I am one of the few people in the world for whom .mac worked just fine. I have an email there, I use the server for back ups. It was fine.

Now I have to learn a new thing. And while I don't generally mind learning new things, I do mind when I am hip deep in writing.

Glah!

Trailer Tuesday: Torn Curtain by Alfred Hitchcock

2008-07-01T10:09:00.002-05:00

One of my favorites among the lesser-known films.

Music Monday: John Denver's Calypso Live

2008-06-30T13:36:00.002-05:00

My God I had no idea he sounded so good live; it's a long clip, but worth it.

(Im)personal rejection

2008-06-29T10:22:00.005-05:00

Rejection is part of life, and I am bad at it.

You are not supposed to take it personally when your papers are rejected, because that is meant to be an anonymous process whereby people just engage with the work and if they don't think it's good enough, they don't think it's good enough. Ditto with proposals. With proposals, you know there is plenty of competition for money and there's no shame when you don't get it.

But it still sucks, because rejection in either of those cases means you are not getting something you wanted--you didn't submit the paper for your health, you didn't write the grant proposal because you had nothing else to do.

Last night, I figured something out that was similarly painful. Several of my colleagues came over for dinner, and it's too complicated to explain, but it became apparent to me that this guy, whom I'm assumed was a mentor to me, is not and does not want to do that. I'm rather embarrassed at my cluelessness, actually.

Here's why I assumed he was willing: after the rough tenure denials this year, he made it a point to come see me to discuss them. He's also won university awards for mentoring. He has a deep and intense mentoring relationship with another junior faculty member as her mentor. She's younger than me and came here as a fresh-out PhD. I had assumed--because this has been my experience--that people who are generous to junior faculty are that way because they are generous and interested in general.

But, he's not. He's left several large hints, in retrospect, and last night he left another.

This is tough. There are reasons why he just may not interested in engaging at that level that have nothing to do with me. He's had a tough year, and he's busy, and his intense engagement with the other junior faculty member may actually mean the opposite of what I had originally thought: he's one of those deep but not broad people. However, it feels personal. And it makes me sad. And it plays on all those emotions you have when you are the ugly, competent little girl that nobody thinks about you--ever--because you can handle yourself (you can handle yourself because nobody is meeting your needs but you--the cycle of usefulness and niceness that entraps the nonpretty girls) Of course, this other faculty member is young and stunningly beautiful (also a nice and interesting person) so that I can chalk all of it up to my inadequacies instead of to his limitations.

Whee.

For going out in

2008-06-28T09:04:00.001-05:00

clipped from www.neimanmarcus.com

Beaded Silk Dress

Marc Bouwer Glamit!

Price: $495.00

S & M Thursday: Happy Birthday, Lord Kelvin!

2008-06-26T10:53:00.001-05:00

clipped from encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
(redirected from Lord Kelvin)

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, FRSE, (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907) was a British mathematical physicist, engineer, and outstanding leader in the physical sciences of the 19th century. He did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging discipline of physics in its modern form. He is widely known for developing the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature measurement. The title Baron Kelvin was given in honour of his achievements, and named after the River Kelvin, which flowed past his university in Glasgow, Scotland.

Reading for pleasure (late): Letters to a Young Catholic

2008-06-26T09:08:00.005-05:00

George Weigel is one of Catholic America's major apologists and critics, and he does a nice enough job with this book. For those of you who haven't seen them, Basic Books has a series on the art of mentoring which is very good. They are designed to follow in the footsteps of the charming epistolary book Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke which revealed, in simple terms, a lot about Rilke's art and a lot about him--how generous and passsionate he was about his vocation. The modern series does the same thing, and I highly recommend the books for both young and old. (Were they only for the young I'd be disqualified.) I've read seven now and they have all been very good: Letters to a Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart; Letters to a Young Journalist by Samuel Freedman, Jr (fantastic); Letters to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol (inspiring); Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens (ok); Letters to a Young Activist by Todd Gitlin (ok); Letter to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza (very good). And now this last, Letters to a Young Catholic.

I think these books appeal to me so much because it so rare that one's work be treated with respect in the American dialogue. We work a lot in the United States, but it is seldom cast as something we do because it is a source of joy or calling or identity. Nope, it's done to make money. Your real soul is something that you get from your exalted family (which means those of us with lousy families are screwed). But these books meander away from that and treat work as an important aspect of the whole person.

Catholic, Conservative, and Contrarian are somewhat different in that they discuss ideas, culture, and values more than work. While work can inform belief (as it can be a part of your identity), these books tackle the question of how people of a certain tribe think and why. D'Souza's contribution on conservatism is intelligently written and pleasant--a wonderful antidote to the high-profile loudmouths for conservatism like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly. Hitchens' brand of contrarianism is all over places like Salon and the Atlantic, so his feels a little less fresh, which is perhaps not fair given that the kudzu-like nature of contrarianism derives partially from his influence.

Weigel has constructed a very special book here, managing to convey a lot about what Christian ethicist friend refers to as 'the Catholic sensibility'--a sensibility I am often incapable of identifying due to my possession of it. It's a seriousness, a willingness to believe that what we do matters, that this world matters--that it isn't all just balled up and swept away by grace or the end times. That we have responsibilities not just to ourselves and our families and God but to the larger human collective.

His letters are dispatched from important Catholic places he has known, which means it has an American and European bias to it (which sums up the church and....oh, I dunno, the entire western world). The places he chooses to set his letters, though, are truly exquisite and act as metaphor for the point he is trying to depart--a double dose of understanding that Catholic mysticism encompasses material life as well as spiritual. He takes on tough topics--hierarchies in the face of democracy and human rights, the sexual abuse cover-up, suffering, birth control, and death--and he does so deftly and wisely.

So wise and well-written it was that I had expected to see a strong argument in favor of the rigid gender roles maintained in the church. Weigel is, after all, a noted conservative. Instead of intelligence there, however, we get a craven tactic that really marred the book for me. When gender roles arise, Weigel tries to the distract the reader by mentioning "those academic feminists and post-modernists who think the differences between the sexes is nothing but a social construction." There's no way to respond to that, because it's either cheap or ignorant or both. If he actually believes that, then he's ignorant. There are few if any credible feminist scholars who believe biology is a only social construction; there are those who, rightly, note the selective attention paid to biological differences between men and women, always noting points of comparative weakness in women rather than comparative weakness in men (they do exist).

Moreover, it's just a cheeseball tactic for a writer to take: "I don't have any compelling arguments to convince you the conservative viewpoint is worthy here, so I'll make shit out of other people." And wow--talk about your easy target: feminists and postmodernists, academics no less. Yeah, yeah, we all hate them, snigger, snigger. By doing so, he misses an important opportunity to note that women have served the church for centuries from within their prescribed roles, and that the real backbone of the American church (and South American churches) have been women--mothers and sisters--who have carried the spiritual work of the church farther than saying mass has.

Trailer Tuesday: Soylent Green

2008-06-24T22:49:00.001-05:00

Music Monday (late) Don Williams and the song that reminds me of Homey

2008-06-24T22:46:00.002-05:00

Book Meme

2008-06-22T23:58:00.006-05:00

As seen over at Book Ooky. I'll tag Seeking, Brazen, and bardiac to start, but don't let wont of tagging dissuade you. Especially 'Cero.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

The Life of Pi. I didn't even try. This book was so rigorously hyped that I just couldn't bear to look at it by the end. Another one: The Secret Life of Bees.

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?

I would love to take Emma shopping and then to tea and we could shamelessly gossip the whole time.

Then Jay Gatsby and I would go out for cocktails.

And Nero Wolfe would invite me to his house for dinner and a discussion of Voltaire.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?

Tristram Shandy. I have totally tried.

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?

The Life of Pi. A friend pressured me. She wanted somebody to discuss it with. Also: Into Thin Air and Beloved. I eventually read the latter two.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t?

Nope.

You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP)

Maybe, if it's some blowhard Donald Trump type, I'd select Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre. Spanking good story, great writing. Or something by Ian Fleming: the movies are one thing, the books are another, and when Fleming's writing was on, it was incandescent. And it's full of macho BS and jiggle likely to appeal to a jerkoff Trump type.

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?

I'm already competent in Latin and French, passable in Greek. I'm thinking German would be the most useful to me at this point, but German literature...eyugh. You learn a lot of euphemisms for death reading German literature. Spanish writers are well-translated, so I am thinking I would like to have my Greek perfected. Of course, I don't need a good fairy for that: I just need to get off my dead arse.

A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?

I already do a bunch of this already: the Bible, the Wind in the Willows, The Lord of the Rings, Antic Hay, Jane Eyre, Rebecca. No problems with rereading here.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?

I learned there are a lot of really smart book bloggers out there, and that's gratifying given how every which where you read about the death of the written word, the death of the book, etc etc.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free.

It would be a tesseract of sorts, where I wouldn't have to pay in real estate for space that it'd take up. It would also be like the "room of requirement" in Harry Potter: I would hold up my hand, and whatever book I was thinking about would appear in my hand.

LA Sports, A Love Story

2008-06-21T18:45:00.009-05:00

My earliest memories in life include:

1) Watching the Watergate hearings with my grandfather, a Catholic socialist, and listening to him rant at the television in German.

2) Watching Wilt Chamberlain with the Lakers. Once you watched Wilt Chamberlain play basketball, you never really stopped watching him, or looking for the next him. Once he left the game, the court seemed empty. There was never another Chamberlain, btw--only many pleasurable memories of young players, both men and women pushing their bodies and characters to the end, and older players, doing the same thing.

Still, it is not entirely clear how a person from Iowa becomes a diehard Lakers fan, and if you are young and do not remember the 1970s and 1980s, much of this will seem irrelevant and unintelligible to you.

However, if you are a certain age (40, thereabouts, or above) you will remember the Showtime Lakers, the combination of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (nearing the end of his second decade as an NBA center), Michael Cooper, A.C. Green, and James Worthy that set the NBA on fire with their fast-paced offense and highly under-rated D. You may remember that time differently: you may remember these as the guys who battled the 76ers and the Celtics, the spoilers or the losers in the hardcore series of 1985 through 1989. But you remember them if you were alive and watching them.

I spent a goodly deal of time in the early 1980s writing "Mrs. Kareem Abdule Jabbar" in my notebook, for instance.

I think in those Sunday afternoon games broadcast on plain old network television, the two abiding loves of my life were created: cities and the Lakers. They both came together in my fondness for Los Angeles, which has been the only place that, in years of traveling about, can make me sentimental. It is not a town that inspires sentiment. In fact, among most urbanists, it is probably impossible to name a city more reviled. But it is my city, and it nourishes me like Ratty's river did him.

With this year's Lakers, the word "Showtime" came up again, and although the season ended badly on the court, it was a happy season. Kobe Bryant became the player and the man he could be. Yeah, his past casts a long shadow, and I'm not sure he can ever be forgiven for his off-court conduct. But I don't know the facts of the rape case, and I can't pretend that I do. All I know is what I have seen and heard from Kobe all season: a grown-up, leading a team of erratic young players, working his ass off, trying to ignite the team and keep it going when the young streaky players got cold and disorganized. And even when all his talent and obvious discipline didn't work for him, there was none of the whining and diva-itis of previous seasons.

The best moments this season came at the end, with

a) Jordan Farmar (one of my kids, as he's from my alma, all ball-hog and bad judgment though he is) pushed back that thug P.J. Brown (go, Jo) and,

b) two days after their rout in the garden, Kobe giving his first press conference to say, simply, that he doesn't have criticism, and he's not going to play general manager. He's just going to show up next year and do his job.

So let Boston enjoy its year: it's been awhile for them, and I'm fond of the Garden and its fans for all of the reasons Chuck Klosterman enumerates in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. There was no Magic without Byrd, no Jabbar without Parrish, and for all addicts of the game, we know that it is not about seasons or championships even, but about each moment as it unfolds, whatever it brings.

For my guys in gold, I hope this last loss hurts like hell, because if they are like me, loss is good for them. It makes me hungry. And piss mean. And ready for the next round.

Reading for Pleasure Wednesday (late): All the President's Men

2008-06-19T23:35:00.003-05:00

Two young reporters, three crusty editors, one classy publisher, a bunch of henchmen, and one president with serious trust issues.

That's good reading.

Trailer Tuesday: The Long Goodbye

2008-06-17T10:14:00.000-05:00

Music Monday: Sade on stage

2008-06-16T18:50:00.001-05:00

What will people do with their time now they can't Clinton bash?

2008-06-15T12:03:00.002-05:00

Politics is a rough game and this was a rough campaign--and I suspect it's a good sign that it's been rough--but I have to say, all of my Hillary-bashing friends are still going at it. I wish they'd take up some hobbies or get on a plane and help out the Midwest.

Barack Obama has been a gift to a certain brand of liberal, the kind that wants you to know just how More Progressive Than Thou they are. And they are irritating beyond belief.

I said, *out loud* once, that from what I've seen, which hasn't been all that much, I was having trouble trusting what he was saying. I was confronted with my racism on the spot. Wow. It's so much less racist to uncritically support somebody because of the color of his skin than it is to treat him and his ideas cautiously because he could be the next president. Because I'm the very model of the Modern Political Bullhead, I'll say it again: I'm worried. I'm worried about him the same way I worried about Carter in 1976 and Clinton in 92. So that makes me a racist racist bastard--I get it. I'm willing to live with that.

Meanwhile, hating Hillary, well, she just deserves that. All ambitious women do, you know. If you are critical about Hillary, well, that just makes you More Progressive than those who don't fly into histrionics whenever a woman runs a hard political tactic that would have been run on her in a *heartbeat* had the numbers been turned. But critical of Obama? Ever? On any point? That's just racist. That's just a sign you're some redneck too stupid to understand Obama represents your interests better than you do.

Brought to you by the State of Modern Liberalism.

Quote

2008-06-11T18:19:00.000-05:00

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Christopher Morley, U.S. author and journalist, 1890-1957

Reading for Pleasure Wednesday: David Treuer

2008-06-11T02:31:00.004-05:00

I very much wish I could find a bigger image of this cover, but this is what I found. It is not a particularly interesting cover, which is a shame, because it covers one of the best books I've read in years. David Treuer is still young, but if he keeps this up, he should be online for winning the Nobel for fiction. Yes, he's that good.

The Hiawatha is a story about Simon, an urban Indian in Minneapolis who is trying to make things work with his mother, Betty, a single mother who left the reservation for a better life in Minneapolis. She is widowed, pining from the tragic death of the husband she married at 16, and left with four children. From the beginning, we know several things about Simon: he works on construction, in the high-altitude, dangerous jobs. He is prone to depression and drink, and from the beginning, we worry about him: there is something irrationally self-destructive and dead about him. We then learn he's just out of prison for murdering his brother, Lester, during a drunken rage. He tries to be a son to the mother whose sons he effectively killed with his actions, and he finds a sort of redemption in his attempt, wounded and fucked up as he is, to be a decent male role model to his nephew who does not know of Simon's role in his father's death.

I can't honestly do justice to this book. Masterful prose, heart-wrenching storytelling, beautifully wrought characters--magnificent.

TV as role model

2008-06-08T01:31:00.003-05:00

I was raised by the television, for all practical purposes. These shows, in no particular order, formed a strong basis for my personality. This explains a lot.

Trailer Tuesday Twofer

2008-06-03T09:41:00.001-05:00

Music Monday bonus track: Earth, Wind, & Fire

2008-06-02T15:51:00.001-05:00

Music Monday: PJ Harvey and Nick Cave

2008-06-02T15:44:00.000-05:00