Not one person mentioned my Feb 6th post. My intention was one to expose James's love for animal bottoms. And two, to then post this video link which contains the lyric, "do you remember Rick Astley? He had a big fat hit it was ghastly." So it was, you know, topical. Besides Feb 6th was just around Rick Astley's birthday. Again topical. But I got busy so the follow up fell through till today.
Along the way, a dumb thing happened. I was scanning back through the posts, saw James' picture, saw the caption to click for an explanation. And so I did. I Rick Rolled myself.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
AWP--Final
Saturday:
I woke up Saturday morning to Elizabeth's alarm. Which is something I am used to. When we were kids and I'd fall asleep watching tv I would inevitably wake up to Elizabeth clobbering the kitchen cabinets open and closed. The girl might be able to dance, but around the house she is as graceful as Baryshnikov's toejam. White nights indeed. I showered and took an absolutely amazing dump. Which really encapsulates the side plot of this entire weekend for me: my boorish physical behavior and my sisters (new-found) willingness to put up with it.
Elizabeth and I went to breakfast with her friend. A nice guy whose name I do not know. We went dutch (Which means Elizabeth paid for me. Thanks) and the dude paid for himself. the breakfast was disappointing, it tasted OK, but the menu was unduly limited.
Normally I wouldn't come back to a topic a week later, but there are three good reasons from my Saturday to revisit it.
The first is the panel that Elizabeth went to with Robert Olean Butler and Ron Carlson (and three other young writers whose names I don't remember and were pretty inconsequential.) R.O.B. was pretty interesting, arguing for the centrality of the short short in fiction workshops (and his finding that as a practitioner of the short short they crept into his longer works). I think he is right, as self contained vehicles they can be useful in pointing out ingrained aspects of writing.
If I created any writing philosophy in my 5 years teaching freshman comp, it was that the small relates to the large and viceversa. That the same concerns you bring into a sentence you bring to a paragraph, a chapter, a section, to a whole book. That is an oversimplification of a generalization (which I think equals a complete vagary) but it grows out of the idea that specific details lead to good reasons which allow for new insights. You can't write a good sentence that lacks one of those three things, nor an interesting paragraph, nor a worthwhile chapter...and on it goes. You could probably even cut it down further and simply say: specfic detail. But my guess is that if you centered your search around detail only, you'd be a successful as a dog chasing its tail. You need the other two quests to straighten you out. So I liked (and Elizabeth liked) Butler's idea teaching fiction, but the pieces he read were only fine. They were consciously noirish and although artistic, maybe not "new."
The real reason I went, the reason I skipped the celebration of Nelson Algren at 100, was to see/hear Ron Carlson. Elizabeth had seen him earlier in the conference and had come away charmed. My brother in law Jim Fullin gave me Carlson's Hotel Eden in like 1998 and since then I've read everything I could get my hands on. I would recommend all of them except his last novel, Five Skies, which the entire time I read felt like the work of someone else.
It is time to take my daughter to bed. She told me so.
Carlson was older than I thought he'd be, warmer and more self critical. What impressed me was that he was trying to get it right, that he thought there were important things to say about the art of writing and he wanted to express them correctly. It was charming to see him kind of frustrated when he felt that his words came up short.
Elizabeth and I spent the lunch hour walking down to Millennium Park, one of her favorite spots downtown. I had never been, and it is neat, in an urban way. It is not natural, but impressionistic, and it seemed that its great purpose was to open up the city before you and to allow the city to envelop you without devouring you. We spent some time watching the ice skaters at the outdoor rink you'd think would be bigger. And I thought about how much fun it would be to visit the city with Katy and Nyssa and Leila (or even just with Katy).
The final session I went to was devoted to poetry. Looking at the predominance of poetry on AWP's calendar I had pledged to hear no poem over the weekend (a pledge cast assunder by my own fiction-hero Ron Carlson!). So it was without regret that I attended a reading of 4 poets who were now writing memoir. Not really my favorite topic, but I looked forward to seeing the poet Donald Hall.
Hall had been a teacher at Michigan of my college professor, Tony Bing. And Tony had brought Hall to Earlham one semester and into one of the classes I was taking. I am dumb, and did not really appreciate Hall at the time, but I am persistant, and have sense come to really enjoy his poetry (and to a lesser extent) his prose. Ox-cart man, Names of Horses, Kicking the Leaves, his extended poem the book, Without are all nice pieces of work.
At 80 now, Hall had the sloppy appearence of someone whom no longer had time to groom, or was perhaps afraid of what even a safety razor would do in his hand. he did not care if his voice boomed through the micro-phone, but simply held his book up where his eyes could see it and read. To the charmed, he was charming, and his poem was nice. to my friend Kim he was awful. And maybe the image that will stick with me is watching him walk alone off the stage, as Kim said, "Donald Hall should stop writing. He was terrible."
My writing, if I follow my perscription above, to often leaves out the specific detail, and rushes over the good reason, in an effort to spew out the new insight. Or, lacking good reason, it clings to specific detail and dangles unfinished hoping that a new perception will hop on along.
I woke up Saturday morning to Elizabeth's alarm. Which is something I am used to. When we were kids and I'd fall asleep watching tv I would inevitably wake up to Elizabeth clobbering the kitchen cabinets open and closed. The girl might be able to dance, but around the house she is as graceful as Baryshnikov's toejam. White nights indeed. I showered and took an absolutely amazing dump. Which really encapsulates the side plot of this entire weekend for me: my boorish physical behavior and my sisters (new-found) willingness to put up with it.
Elizabeth and I went to breakfast with her friend. A nice guy whose name I do not know. We went dutch (Which means Elizabeth paid for me. Thanks) and the dude paid for himself. the breakfast was disappointing, it tasted OK, but the menu was unduly limited.
Normally I wouldn't come back to a topic a week later, but there are three good reasons from my Saturday to revisit it.
The first is the panel that Elizabeth went to with Robert Olean Butler and Ron Carlson (and three other young writers whose names I don't remember and were pretty inconsequential.) R.O.B. was pretty interesting, arguing for the centrality of the short short in fiction workshops (and his finding that as a practitioner of the short short they crept into his longer works). I think he is right, as self contained vehicles they can be useful in pointing out ingrained aspects of writing.
If I created any writing philosophy in my 5 years teaching freshman comp, it was that the small relates to the large and viceversa. That the same concerns you bring into a sentence you bring to a paragraph, a chapter, a section, to a whole book. That is an oversimplification of a generalization (which I think equals a complete vagary) but it grows out of the idea that specific details lead to good reasons which allow for new insights. You can't write a good sentence that lacks one of those three things, nor an interesting paragraph, nor a worthwhile chapter...and on it goes. You could probably even cut it down further and simply say: specfic detail. But my guess is that if you centered your search around detail only, you'd be a successful as a dog chasing its tail. You need the other two quests to straighten you out. So I liked (and Elizabeth liked) Butler's idea teaching fiction, but the pieces he read were only fine. They were consciously noirish and although artistic, maybe not "new."
The real reason I went, the reason I skipped the celebration of Nelson Algren at 100, was to see/hear Ron Carlson. Elizabeth had seen him earlier in the conference and had come away charmed. My brother in law Jim Fullin gave me Carlson's Hotel Eden in like 1998 and since then I've read everything I could get my hands on. I would recommend all of them except his last novel, Five Skies, which the entire time I read felt like the work of someone else.
It is time to take my daughter to bed. She told me so.
Carlson was older than I thought he'd be, warmer and more self critical. What impressed me was that he was trying to get it right, that he thought there were important things to say about the art of writing and he wanted to express them correctly. It was charming to see him kind of frustrated when he felt that his words came up short.
Elizabeth and I spent the lunch hour walking down to Millennium Park, one of her favorite spots downtown. I had never been, and it is neat, in an urban way. It is not natural, but impressionistic, and it seemed that its great purpose was to open up the city before you and to allow the city to envelop you without devouring you. We spent some time watching the ice skaters at the outdoor rink you'd think would be bigger. And I thought about how much fun it would be to visit the city with Katy and Nyssa and Leila (or even just with Katy).
The final session I went to was devoted to poetry. Looking at the predominance of poetry on AWP's calendar I had pledged to hear no poem over the weekend (a pledge cast assunder by my own fiction-hero Ron Carlson!). So it was without regret that I attended a reading of 4 poets who were now writing memoir. Not really my favorite topic, but I looked forward to seeing the poet Donald Hall.
Hall had been a teacher at Michigan of my college professor, Tony Bing. And Tony had brought Hall to Earlham one semester and into one of the classes I was taking. I am dumb, and did not really appreciate Hall at the time, but I am persistant, and have sense come to really enjoy his poetry (and to a lesser extent) his prose. Ox-cart man, Names of Horses, Kicking the Leaves, his extended poem the book, Without are all nice pieces of work.
At 80 now, Hall had the sloppy appearence of someone whom no longer had time to groom, or was perhaps afraid of what even a safety razor would do in his hand. he did not care if his voice boomed through the micro-phone, but simply held his book up where his eyes could see it and read. To the charmed, he was charming, and his poem was nice. to my friend Kim he was awful. And maybe the image that will stick with me is watching him walk alone off the stage, as Kim said, "Donald Hall should stop writing. He was terrible."
My writing, if I follow my perscription above, to often leaves out the specific detail, and rushes over the good reason, in an effort to spew out the new insight. Or, lacking good reason, it clings to specific detail and dangles unfinished hoping that a new perception will hop on along.
Friday, February 20, 2009
A-Roids
At the end of a long catalouge of exposed transgressions cnnsi's Tom Verducci writes, "The 2003 list of players who tested positive in survey testing may become public and five of the top 12 home run hitters of all time and two-thirds of all MVP awards from 1995-2003 have been linked to performance enhancers [where'd he get those numbers? Why'd he pick those years?] But it's important to remember that what is going on here is the cleanup from that storm, the discovery and cataloging of a dirty era. The headlines do not reflect current events."[emphasis mine]. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/tom_verducci/02/18/spring.parity/index.html?eref=T1
How does he know? What we know is that baseball still does not test for all of the known banned substances. Any conviction that the game is somehow clean now is wrong headed. Cleaner? maybe, but prove it. What we do know, is that we have owners (how could Tom Hicks employ A-roid, Juan Gonzalez. Jose Conseco and Raffy Palmero AT THE SAME TIME and not have an idea baout steriod use?), GM's,managers, agents, reporters and fans willingly looking the other way. Speaking of A-Roid, aparently he might not have merely taken tic-taks for 3 years.
"He [ Angel Presinal,] has been thrown out of clubhouses in Cleveland, Anaheim and Texas.
How does he know? What we know is that baseball still does not test for all of the known banned substances. Any conviction that the game is somehow clean now is wrong headed. Cleaner? maybe, but prove it. What we do know, is that we have owners (how could Tom Hicks employ A-roid, Juan Gonzalez. Jose Conseco and Raffy Palmero AT THE SAME TIME and not have an idea baout steriod use?), GM's,managers, agents, reporters and fans willingly looking the other way. Speaking of A-Roid, aparently he might not have merely taken tic-taks for 3 years.
"He [ Angel Presinal,] has been thrown out of clubhouses in Cleveland, Anaheim and Texas.
"He's an unsavory character," said a source.
Another source said Presinal accompanied A-Rod for the entire 2007 season, staying in the same hotel as the A.L. MVP, but in a separate room with the "cousin" Rodriguez pegged three days ago as his steroid source from 2001-03"
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Friday
AWP day 2: (This is probably a skimmer)
Friday:
1) My "Friends" Brian Whalen and Annie (I can't remember her last name...Binder!) are dating.
2) All Flyway wants for my conference registration is for me to sit at the Flyway table in the bookfair. Twice.
3) There was a moodle chart set up for the purpose.
4) Annie and Brian are dating. They registered before me.
5)I thought: I do not mind getting up. Christ, if I have to get up at 8, it is like a 2 hour vaction from regualr life.
6) I thought: I'll take the first booth time save people from getting up (also, I thought no one would really get up that early and so I wouldn't really need to talk to anyone).
7) Annie and Brian chose to take the 2nd. morning time slot. Together.
8) Like nested dolls.
9) or two mute swans.
10) who embraced necks and now are stuck.
11) like braces entwined.
12) They thought: We don't want to get up early. There is nothing that we want to see in the morning. We'll work the book table. Together. Screw anyone this time would maybe be convenient for. And we'll make someone else wake up early and s/he'll have to take a second time too boot.
13) It was Friday the 13th, my friend Ritchie Duncan wrote a nice funny erudite movie review for that, here. And I was sitting at the Flyway table at precisely 8:30am. It was nice and quiet. Elizabeth sat with me for a while, drinking coffee, and waiting for JoeFred, to come and share the table with me. He did, it was fun, flirting with the girls that came to talk to us. Giving away free stuff (the table had nice free stuff to give away, tea, soda, biscotti, old journals...and the great thing about giving someone a gift, is that they are beholden to you. You soften their hearts and they are not predisposed to hate me. And it doesn't have to be a big thing, it could be submission guidelines and a smile. They have to love you!
The moral of the story is this:
1) Brian and Annie are, my "friends."
2) Writers are mostly nice and normal, but there are a couple crazies out there.
3) Sitting at the table was a nice way to give me the courage to go and talk to people at other tables. They were after all, like me. Or I was like them, because I too sat at a table...joint-ownership.
4) I was going to get free junk.
Basically I hung out in the Bookfair room for the morning. The first conference i went to was, "The duty of the writer" at noon. "Learning" from their Nelson Algren mistake, Joe, Amy, and Elizabeth all joined be to hear about the author's doody.
Sometimes it is to late to learn a lesson. The duty panel stunk. Your duty was basically, "to the poem." I mean come on! It is fine to think that higher goods grow out of a focus to your art. I think it is a rather limited view point, but whatever, if that is what you want to disect, go for it. But don't pretend about duty, you are talking about effect. Title it: The Effect of Poetry. and I don't gotoit.
Duty is something else, it implies a higher calling. I try not to fall blindly back to Ed Abbey, but sometimes it is hard. About halfway through the talk I thought, if Ed Abbey was alive there is no way he'd be invited to this panel. But he should be. And if he was there, what would that look like. He would be powerful, dynamic, and ultimately...since he'd be speaking so far outside what these panelists were approaching...awkward, unwelcome.
The worst part of the panel, was not the panelest themselves, who were relatively charming and interesting...but not talking about duty...The worst part was the questions the panelists left FAR to much time for.
In which I propse a rule: No question should be longer than 4 sentences. Anything longer than 4 sentences is not a question it is a point (or maybe even the dreaded, by me, "take"). No one came to hear your take. If your take was important, or informed, or well put together, you would be on the panel. You aren't so be brief.
for the next panel, Elizabeth went to hear the Greywolf reading. Joe went to hear Deb Marquart, and I buggered about the book fair. My stratedgy when looking for booths was to find cute girls and tables that focused on fiction. I met some nice people, saw some really nice looking journals, and eventually Amy and Joe showed up with sushi for me. How sweet was that, Amy!
Basically that was it for the Friday session, Amy and I cruised through the bookfair one more time trying to see who could gather the most free pens.
Then we sat around for an hour counting our pens and seeing who could fling our AWP badges the farthest. Sweet.
Friday night was fun, we attended the Flyway party and then went to diner at Hackney's (thanks dad). followed by Amy and Joe heading north on the El, while I attempted to goto the Ecotone party. It was midnight, the bar was closed, and I was on State Street, but didn't know where my hotel was. Good times. So I walked north, called Elizabeth once. Woke her up. called her again.
And when i finally goto the Palmer house, asked the front desk for what room was mine.
I slept like an angel.
Friday:
1) My "Friends" Brian Whalen and Annie (I can't remember her last name...Binder!) are dating.
2) All Flyway wants for my conference registration is for me to sit at the Flyway table in the bookfair. Twice.
3) There was a moodle chart set up for the purpose.
4) Annie and Brian are dating. They registered before me.
5)I thought: I do not mind getting up. Christ, if I have to get up at 8, it is like a 2 hour vaction from regualr life.
6) I thought: I'll take the first booth time save people from getting up (also, I thought no one would really get up that early and so I wouldn't really need to talk to anyone).
7) Annie and Brian chose to take the 2nd. morning time slot. Together.
8) Like nested dolls.
9) or two mute swans.
10) who embraced necks and now are stuck.
11) like braces entwined.
12) They thought: We don't want to get up early. There is nothing that we want to see in the morning. We'll work the book table. Together. Screw anyone this time would maybe be convenient for. And we'll make someone else wake up early and s/he'll have to take a second time too boot.
13) It was Friday the 13th, my friend Ritchie Duncan wrote a nice funny erudite movie review for that, here. And I was sitting at the Flyway table at precisely 8:30am. It was nice and quiet. Elizabeth sat with me for a while, drinking coffee, and waiting for JoeFred, to come and share the table with me. He did, it was fun, flirting with the girls that came to talk to us. Giving away free stuff (the table had nice free stuff to give away, tea, soda, biscotti, old journals...and the great thing about giving someone a gift, is that they are beholden to you. You soften their hearts and they are not predisposed to hate me. And it doesn't have to be a big thing, it could be submission guidelines and a smile. They have to love you!
The moral of the story is this:
1) Brian and Annie are, my "friends."
2) Writers are mostly nice and normal, but there are a couple crazies out there.
3) Sitting at the table was a nice way to give me the courage to go and talk to people at other tables. They were after all, like me. Or I was like them, because I too sat at a table...joint-ownership.
4) I was going to get free junk.
Basically I hung out in the Bookfair room for the morning. The first conference i went to was, "The duty of the writer" at noon. "Learning" from their Nelson Algren mistake, Joe, Amy, and Elizabeth all joined be to hear about the author's doody.
Sometimes it is to late to learn a lesson. The duty panel stunk. Your duty was basically, "to the poem." I mean come on! It is fine to think that higher goods grow out of a focus to your art. I think it is a rather limited view point, but whatever, if that is what you want to disect, go for it. But don't pretend about duty, you are talking about effect. Title it: The Effect of Poetry. and I don't gotoit.
Duty is something else, it implies a higher calling. I try not to fall blindly back to Ed Abbey, but sometimes it is hard. About halfway through the talk I thought, if Ed Abbey was alive there is no way he'd be invited to this panel. But he should be. And if he was there, what would that look like. He would be powerful, dynamic, and ultimately...since he'd be speaking so far outside what these panelists were approaching...awkward, unwelcome.
The worst part of the panel, was not the panelest themselves, who were relatively charming and interesting...but not talking about duty...The worst part was the questions the panelists left FAR to much time for.
In which I propse a rule: No question should be longer than 4 sentences. Anything longer than 4 sentences is not a question it is a point (or maybe even the dreaded, by me, "take"). No one came to hear your take. If your take was important, or informed, or well put together, you would be on the panel. You aren't so be brief.
for the next panel, Elizabeth went to hear the Greywolf reading. Joe went to hear Deb Marquart, and I buggered about the book fair. My stratedgy when looking for booths was to find cute girls and tables that focused on fiction. I met some nice people, saw some really nice looking journals, and eventually Amy and Joe showed up with sushi for me. How sweet was that, Amy!
Basically that was it for the Friday session, Amy and I cruised through the bookfair one more time trying to see who could gather the most free pens.
Then we sat around for an hour counting our pens and seeing who could fling our AWP badges the farthest. Sweet.
Friday night was fun, we attended the Flyway party and then went to diner at Hackney's (thanks dad). followed by Amy and Joe heading north on the El, while I attempted to goto the Ecotone party. It was midnight, the bar was closed, and I was on State Street, but didn't know where my hotel was. Good times. So I walked north, called Elizabeth once. Woke her up. called her again.
And when i finally goto the Palmer house, asked the front desk for what room was mine.
I slept like an angel.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
I Spent the Weekend
At the AWP conference in Chicago. Over the next couple of days I'll give you my blow-by-blow accounting of my times there (Click on the photo's to see the sites I took the pictures from).
A couple of words of thanks first. To Katyfullin first and foremost, for sucking it up and taking care of Nyssa and Leila while I was away. She made it seem like it was no burden or challenge at all. All of the fun I had was a direct result of her easy going attitude. To Elizabeth, my sister, for putting me up and putting up with me. To my father for buying me dinner on Friday night, even though he didn't know it. To Amy and Joe for driving me to and fro. And to Steve Pett and Flyway, for not only paying for the conference for me, but more importantly registering me for the conference. I never would have done it by myself.
A word about Mr. Pett, if you please. He was my major professor while I undertook my MA, five years ago, and he has been nothing but my champion ever since I met him. He has offered me oppertunity after oppertunity, and I feel myself deeply in his debt. More importantly, he is a tireless embassedor for Iowa State, always available to his students, and a great teacher in the class room. And to top it off he is a great writer.
Here then is my Thursday:
My friends Joe and Amy Doolittle did me the favor of driving me to Chicago. Picking me up at Childserve, we left Ames at 7:30, thinking we’d still have plenty of time to get to Chicago and get good work done at the conference that day. I didn’t really care when we got there, but I definitely wanted to see a reading from Nelson Algren’s Man with the Golden Arm, at 3. That was no problem, we rolled down 88 to 290 and Congress Parkway with no problems and were at the Michigan Ave. Hilton by 1.
I talked up Nelson Algren to Joe and Amy, letting them know they would be lesser people if they did not join me at the reading. They are lesser people today. So is my sister Elizabeth who chose some half-baked pedagogical discussion rather than take my advice. Silly donkey, she left her panel after 5 minutes (This was a scene repeated two or three times during the weekend, I would say I am going here. She would head off to something called Lithuainian extrodinary: composing the new sentence in web based learning moduals. To which I would say. Don’t goto that. She would and I would and then I’d hear later that she walked out after 5 minutes. Was it my fault? Did I ruin it for her. Or was I just butt ass right?)
I wasn’t entirely right about Algren. Elizabeth probably wouldn’t have liked it, Amy wouldn’t have and Joe only might have. It got off to a slow start, 15 people in a room seating 400 staring at a blank panel. It turned out the delay was for a good reason, we were waiting for Art Shay, Algren’s long time friend and photo-documentarian.
The chance to see a longtime friend and contemporary of Algren was worth the wait. The Panel talked a lot about the Critical and political reception of Algren’s work, the FBI’s work to keep him from the mainstream media, and his blacklisting. The panel also spent a goodly amount of time talking about Simon de Beauvoir, the French philosopher/feminist, lover of Sarte and, in Chicago, Nelson Algren, who appears prominantely in her novel Mandarins. To the right is a photo Art Shay took of de Beauvoir, after Algren had brought her to Shay's place to bathe. Apparently, Algren said, "She never closes the door." So Shay had some warning. de Beauvoir might not have, about the next 5 photo's of de Beauvoir walking towards him, Shay said, "I have those in my estate, I don't want to have to deal with it while I am alive." So we have that to look forwards to.
While the panel was interesting, and I think Joe should have been there, I did not really get a new sense of the man, except possibly as a leader of men whose spirit was broken, and who then floundered for the ability to speak. If you haven’t, you should definetly read Man With the Golden Arm in fact you should read it twice, and teach it (and Algren) in every class you teach.
That was all the conference work I did for the day. Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS and MAUS 2 was the keynote speaker and I should have gone to see him. By all accounts he was great, charming funny and insightful. And best of all, did not take questions. But I had the chance to see my highschool friend Sharon (Groh) Vocino and so I chose her, and her red VW Bug over my own literary pursuits. She picked me up right after the Algren panel, so I missed out on the chance of talking to Algren’s publisher, and owner of 7stories press, Dan Simon. Which is to bad, because 7 stories is an excellent small press. But off I went in Sharons little yellow bug for my first ever car ride where Sharon was the driver. The 10 minutes to her house outside of UIC was amazingly smooth. We hung out at her apartment drinking beer, listening to IZ and waiting for her husband Gianni to come home from work.
He did, and after he convinced me to call up and invite my sister, we left immediately for Carnival, the most beautiful restaurant I have ever been to (the picture to the right does not do it justice.). The whole time we sat there I wanted to take pictures. The drinks where great, I had a sort of Maragrhita without Tequila and Agave nector, some lime juice and a splash of Cava to make it fizzy. Served in a martini glass with a orchid, it was pretty and ostentatious and really really easy to drink. The atmosphere was wonderful, and the four of us sat in the best seat in the house, a small balcony overlooking the main dinning room. It was a nice way for a poor Iowa boy to start his weekend. And it didn’t cost me a dime.
The Vocino’s dropped us off at our hotel, and Elizabeth and I went to sleep. Well I did, the combination of jetlag and my snoring kept Elizabeth up. Sucks to be her. I slept great, my finger pressing into my chin in an attempt to keep my mouth closed and my snoring down. See I do care.
A couple of words of thanks first. To Katyfullin first and foremost, for sucking it up and taking care of Nyssa and Leila while I was away. She made it seem like it was no burden or challenge at all. All of the fun I had was a direct result of her easy going attitude. To Elizabeth, my sister, for putting me up and putting up with me. To my father for buying me dinner on Friday night, even though he didn't know it. To Amy and Joe for driving me to and fro. And to Steve Pett and Flyway, for not only paying for the conference for me, but more importantly registering me for the conference. I never would have done it by myself.
A word about Mr. Pett, if you please. He was my major professor while I undertook my MA, five years ago, and he has been nothing but my champion ever since I met him. He has offered me oppertunity after oppertunity, and I feel myself deeply in his debt. More importantly, he is a tireless embassedor for Iowa State, always available to his students, and a great teacher in the class room. And to top it off he is a great writer.
Here then is my Thursday:
My friends Joe and Amy Doolittle did me the favor of driving me to Chicago. Picking me up at Childserve, we left Ames at 7:30, thinking we’d still have plenty of time to get to Chicago and get good work done at the conference that day. I didn’t really care when we got there, but I definitely wanted to see a reading from Nelson Algren’s Man with the Golden Arm, at 3. That was no problem, we rolled down 88 to 290 and Congress Parkway with no problems and were at the Michigan Ave. Hilton by 1.
I talked up Nelson Algren to Joe and Amy, letting them know they would be lesser people if they did not join me at the reading. They are lesser people today. So is my sister Elizabeth who chose some half-baked pedagogical discussion rather than take my advice. Silly donkey, she left her panel after 5 minutes (This was a scene repeated two or three times during the weekend, I would say I am going here. She would head off to something called Lithuainian extrodinary: composing the new sentence in web based learning moduals. To which I would say. Don’t goto that. She would and I would and then I’d hear later that she walked out after 5 minutes. Was it my fault? Did I ruin it for her. Or was I just butt ass right?)
I wasn’t entirely right about Algren. Elizabeth probably wouldn’t have liked it, Amy wouldn’t have and Joe only might have. It got off to a slow start, 15 people in a room seating 400 staring at a blank panel. It turned out the delay was for a good reason, we were waiting for Art Shay, Algren’s long time friend and photo-documentarian.
The chance to see a longtime friend and contemporary of Algren was worth the wait. The Panel talked a lot about the Critical and political reception of Algren’s work, the FBI’s work to keep him from the mainstream media, and his blacklisting. The panel also spent a goodly amount of time talking about Simon de Beauvoir, the French philosopher/feminist, lover of Sarte and, in Chicago, Nelson Algren, who appears prominantely in her novel Mandarins. To the right is a photo Art Shay took of de Beauvoir, after Algren had brought her to Shay's place to bathe. Apparently, Algren said, "She never closes the door." So Shay had some warning. de Beauvoir might not have, about the next 5 photo's of de Beauvoir walking towards him, Shay said, "I have those in my estate, I don't want to have to deal with it while I am alive." So we have that to look forwards to. While the panel was interesting, and I think Joe should have been there, I did not really get a new sense of the man, except possibly as a leader of men whose spirit was broken, and who then floundered for the ability to speak. If you haven’t, you should definetly read Man With the Golden Arm in fact you should read it twice, and teach it (and Algren) in every class you teach.
That was all the conference work I did for the day. Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS and MAUS 2 was the keynote speaker and I should have gone to see him. By all accounts he was great, charming funny and insightful. And best of all, did not take questions. But I had the chance to see my highschool friend Sharon (Groh) Vocino and so I chose her, and her red VW Bug over my own literary pursuits. She picked me up right after the Algren panel, so I missed out on the chance of talking to Algren’s publisher, and owner of 7stories press, Dan Simon. Which is to bad, because 7 stories is an excellent small press. But off I went in Sharons little yellow bug for my first ever car ride where Sharon was the driver. The 10 minutes to her house outside of UIC was amazingly smooth. We hung out at her apartment drinking beer, listening to IZ and waiting for her husband Gianni to come home from work.
He did, and after he convinced me to call up and invite my sister, we left immediately for Carnival, the most beautiful restaurant I have ever been to (the picture to the right does not do it justice.). The whole time we sat there I wanted to take pictures. The drinks where great, I had a sort of Maragrhita without Tequila and Agave nector, some lime juice and a splash of Cava to make it fizzy. Served in a martini glass with a orchid, it was pretty and ostentatious and really really easy to drink. The atmosphere was wonderful, and the four of us sat in the best seat in the house, a small balcony overlooking the main dinning room. It was a nice way for a poor Iowa boy to start his weekend. And it didn’t cost me a dime.
The Vocino’s dropped us off at our hotel, and Elizabeth and I went to sleep. Well I did, the combination of jetlag and my snoring kept Elizabeth up. Sucks to be her. I slept great, my finger pressing into my chin in an attempt to keep my mouth closed and my snoring down. See I do care.
Monday, February 9, 2009
A Foot is About 15 Inches
Here is a link to A-Roid's weasily and rather stunning admission that he used illegal performance enhancing drugs. This is nothing but excuses piled upon excuses. He refuses to say what he used, or where he got it...and he tries to imply that it was merely something you could get at GNC...
All the while claiming that he was clean before and after the three years for which he was caught.
I straight out do not believe that. There is no reason to.
I love the reason he gave for using PED's, that he was under tremendous pressure to perform in Texas. he was under that pressure because he signed with the absolute greediest agent and and held a one team bidding war. He insisted on becoming not just the highest paid athlete in league history, but in the 8 seasons since that contract was signed, no player has earned more in a year than him. That is a ceiling of earnings un-heard of in professional sports. He may very well have been under tremendous pressure (I choose to believe he was already cheating and had been since high school...his claim that he never heard of Steroids or any PED while a young player seems ridiculous. As a freshman in high school in 1987, there were athlete's in my homeroom who took steroids...) But all of the pressure he was under he placed upon himself.
Maybe my favorite quote during the interview was, "I would be really pissed of, I want to change, I want to do things to influence children."
I am not a reporter and I don't care to track down all of A-Roid's false claims and lie's...but here is a nice one...from Gene Wojciechowski "Rodriguez said Monday he didn't definitively know whether he was one of the 104 players who had failed the 2003 drug test. But a source told ESPN on Saturday that A-Rod has been aware of the test results for nearly five years. The Mitchell report also said all 104 players were notified. Whom do you believe? Sorry, but Rodriguez no longer gets the benefit of the doubt" (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=3895129&sportCat=mlb).
Basically to me, if you are caught in a lie during your "apology" that nullifies the whole apology.
When asked, so you took PED's between 2001-2003 A-Roid said, "Thats about right." About is a niffty little word. A foot is about 15 inches. A-Roids whole conversation was intended to ensure his legacy. Was to state his claim that his numbers great "before" he took PED's and after he took PED's. But lets be very clear about this: We have no idea when he took them, and no way to know that he ever stoped taking them. We do know one thing with certainty, he has yet to stop lying about his envolvement with PED's
One final thing, Since baseball has become obsessed with PED's over the last 10 or so years, the topic has never been treated correctly. Initally (and largely still) only big boppers were considered potental cheaters. But looking at the list of identified users, around 50% have been pitchers, and a huge numbe have been little utility guys. PED's are not about adding bulk, they are about aiding recovery time, aiding healing time, enhancing concentration and performance. As a result every player no matter what he looks like is a possible user. It is impossible seperate the wheat from the chaff. But reporters and commentators continue to hold out the stick of a clean game, the ending to Wojcichowski's artical is no different, Referring to the 103 players who tested positive for PED's along with A-Roid, he writes,"Rodriguez won't be the last ballplayer to fall on his bat. A-Rod's admission makes it easier for other players to step forward. For this, and only this, Rodriguez deserves applause. One down, but 103 more names to go."
The inference is that there are only 103 names. But this test was negotiated and announced (and supposedly confidental), you had to be a braisin moron to fail the test. It tested only the players urine and looked only for previously identified substances. Balco had not yet been heard of. 104 players were lazy idiots who blindly put thier faith in confidentiality. Countless more would have cycled off their drugs and not tested positive, or used substances the leauge may still have never heard of.
To me it comes down to this: Any major league player from the last 20+ years is a likely user of performance enhancing drugs.
All the while claiming that he was clean before and after the three years for which he was caught.
I straight out do not believe that. There is no reason to.
I love the reason he gave for using PED's, that he was under tremendous pressure to perform in Texas. he was under that pressure because he signed with the absolute greediest agent and and held a one team bidding war. He insisted on becoming not just the highest paid athlete in league history, but in the 8 seasons since that contract was signed, no player has earned more in a year than him. That is a ceiling of earnings un-heard of in professional sports. He may very well have been under tremendous pressure (I choose to believe he was already cheating and had been since high school...his claim that he never heard of Steroids or any PED while a young player seems ridiculous. As a freshman in high school in 1987, there were athlete's in my homeroom who took steroids...) But all of the pressure he was under he placed upon himself.
Maybe my favorite quote during the interview was, "I would be really pissed of, I want to change, I want to do things to influence children."
I am not a reporter and I don't care to track down all of A-Roid's false claims and lie's...but here is a nice one...from Gene Wojciechowski "Rodriguez said Monday he didn't definitively know whether he was one of the 104 players who had failed the 2003 drug test. But a source told ESPN on Saturday that A-Rod has been aware of the test results for nearly five years. The Mitchell report also said all 104 players were notified. Whom do you believe? Sorry, but Rodriguez no longer gets the benefit of the doubt" (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=wojciechowski_gene&id=3895129&sportCat=mlb).
Basically to me, if you are caught in a lie during your "apology" that nullifies the whole apology.
When asked, so you took PED's between 2001-2003 A-Roid said, "Thats about right." About is a niffty little word. A foot is about 15 inches. A-Roids whole conversation was intended to ensure his legacy. Was to state his claim that his numbers great "before" he took PED's and after he took PED's. But lets be very clear about this: We have no idea when he took them, and no way to know that he ever stoped taking them. We do know one thing with certainty, he has yet to stop lying about his envolvement with PED's
One final thing, Since baseball has become obsessed with PED's over the last 10 or so years, the topic has never been treated correctly. Initally (and largely still) only big boppers were considered potental cheaters. But looking at the list of identified users, around 50% have been pitchers, and a huge numbe have been little utility guys. PED's are not about adding bulk, they are about aiding recovery time, aiding healing time, enhancing concentration and performance. As a result every player no matter what he looks like is a possible user. It is impossible seperate the wheat from the chaff. But reporters and commentators continue to hold out the stick of a clean game, the ending to Wojcichowski's artical is no different, Referring to the 103 players who tested positive for PED's along with A-Roid, he writes,"Rodriguez won't be the last ballplayer to fall on his bat. A-Rod's admission makes it easier for other players to step forward. For this, and only this, Rodriguez deserves applause. One down, but 103 more names to go."
The inference is that there are only 103 names. But this test was negotiated and announced (and supposedly confidental), you had to be a braisin moron to fail the test. It tested only the players urine and looked only for previously identified substances. Balco had not yet been heard of. 104 players were lazy idiots who blindly put thier faith in confidentiality. Countless more would have cycled off their drugs and not tested positive, or used substances the leauge may still have never heard of.
To me it comes down to this: Any major league player from the last 20+ years is a likely user of performance enhancing drugs.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Super Bowl Thoughts
It was a good game with a really great ending. I missed The Steelers last drive because I was being a responsible father and husband. I have 2 main thoughts.
1) Harrison was the MVP, no one else was even close. His interception and return for the touchdown. Was at the very least a 14 point swing, and the run back itself was unbelievable. (Holmes was great, but he was not better than Fitzgerald for the Cardinals...nor was "Ben" better than warner...Shouldn't the MVP outperform the competition?) In addition Harrison got constant pressure on Warner throughout the game (drawing 3 holding penalties on ex-bear Mike Gandy).
2) I can not get the image of Bruce Springsteen's crotch flying out of the TV screen. His movement was every bit as "obscene" as Janet Jackson's costume malfunction. We didn't actually see cock, but nothing was left to the imagination. I have to believe if he was a girl in hot pants, the publics reaction would have been outrage.
I am not outraged by either Bruce or Jackson's performance, but I'll not forget either moment.
1) Harrison was the MVP, no one else was even close. His interception and return for the touchdown. Was at the very least a 14 point swing, and the run back itself was unbelievable. (Holmes was great, but he was not better than Fitzgerald for the Cardinals...nor was "Ben" better than warner...Shouldn't the MVP outperform the competition?) In addition Harrison got constant pressure on Warner throughout the game (drawing 3 holding penalties on ex-bear Mike Gandy).
2) I can not get the image of Bruce Springsteen's crotch flying out of the TV screen. His movement was every bit as "obscene" as Janet Jackson's costume malfunction. We didn't actually see cock, but nothing was left to the imagination. I have to believe if he was a girl in hot pants, the publics reaction would have been outrage.
I am not outraged by either Bruce or Jackson's performance, but I'll not forget either moment.
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