we are transported with joy

I have been watching television for eleven hours and I could go for ELEVEN MORE!! Has anyone ever noticed how filled with self-loathing the host of America's Funniest Animal Videos is? He keeps making snide comments about the show and himself, all the while sporting this creepy John Davidson-like grin. It's not funny, it's just creepy.

I could host that show, you know. And I would give it the proper amount of respect and have the appropriate enthusiasm for the subject. And yet, here I sit on the couch. In my pajamas.

What a world.

P.S. I am babysitting my nephews today, and have had yet another in a series of brilliant ideas that will one day make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. Children's candy laced with child-size doses of barbituates. Snickers PM: For moms who just don't want to hear it any more.

Jacob says: army.

let's so graguate

I decided to leave for Thanksgiving a little earlier than I was going to because mom and I are going to see Sideways! That's the plan for this afternoon. I'm excited. Last time we saw Coffee and Cigarettes. My mother is the coolest person in Illinois.

We were watching a movie this morning on The Cable and someone told someone else to "Beat it." It occurred to me that I have never actually told anyone to beat it, ever. I wonder if I should include it in my list of improbable-yet-constantly-employed movie phraseology? I actually spent class time teaching my students that if a script includes the phrases "We've got company" or "Don't you die on me", those are red flags, and that they may need to leave the theatre. I'm thinking of making it a short-answer bonus question on their last quiz. Just for old times' sake.

Welcome friends! I am Potato.

I just like this heading, I don't really have too much to say. So... hmmmm. Pixies are in Chicago right now. Yep, they are. And I had three different offers of tickets. Were any of them on Saturday? Nope. And am I required to be at rehearsals every other day that they're playing?

Yep.

*sigh*

WHAT???

I totally need these! When I was eight, I had a set of Wonder Woman Underoos that I LOVED. I used to wear the undershirt to school all the time, and the other kids would pick on me and tell me that I needed to put a shirt on. I would then fly away in my invisible plane.

And I'm still flying, people!

Oh, my God. The things I will do when I don't care if I get thrown out of school or not. So I'm grading my 152 papers, and they're writing about a musical done here called Crowns, all African-American cast, set in the South, etc. A lot of these papers had sentiments along the lines of "this isn't my culture, so I didn't relate to it" or "I wouldn't recommend this play to anyone because I don't know any black people" or "I don't see why I have to be subjected to watching this when it has nothing to do with me" (welcome to central Illinois). Lots of stuff about how they couldn't relate to the women in the church because all they did was scream (there was no screaming! I don't know what the hell these people are talking about!), they are stereotypical, etc. This wasn't the best play I've ever seen, but one thing I thought it did very effectively was portray realistic black characters that addressed the stereotypes and deconstructed them. I talked to my supervisor about one paper that I thought was overtly racist and she told me that I could talk about it in a non-confrontational way and still get my point across, but I talked to the student and I am not entirely sure that it worked. I was also disturbed by the fact that it was so widespread! Easily three quarters of the papers I read had some sentiment along those lines. People consistently distanced themselves from these characters because they weren't the same color (can they not relate to Metamorphoses because they weren't raised on Greek myths? Why does this even come up???).

So I'm sitting in my 497 class this morning and we're talking about the responsibility of graduate schools to change the face of theatre and make it more inclusive and challenge people's preconceived notions about our society and I just decided, what the hell. I am not all that happy here for reasons I should not discuss on a blog, so it doesn't matter if there's a scandal and they boot my ass, so I'm doing this. So I called out my students and told them that Crowns was not a play about stereotypes, it was a story about African-American history, and further, that African-American history is all of our history. I told them that they needed to challenge their assumptions about race, and that the difference between a racist and a non-racist isn't that a non-racist knows everything, it's that they are willing to admit that they don't, that they are willing to admit when they are wrong and that they are willing and able to think critically about the socio-political atmosphere they live in and the kinds of assumptions they hold. Ideology versus methodology, people!!

THEN WE WATCHED THE MOVIE. Oh, my goodness. That's when things got crazy. I borrowed a movie called Ethnic Notions from my professor and showed it in class. Most of it. It is a really unsparing look at how black people have been treated in this country and portrayed in the media (especially theatre), from around the time of the Civil War to present day. Well, we got about halfway to present day when one of my black students got up and walked out because he couldn't stand to watch anymore. I shut it off and said we should talk about what we've been watching. So we started talking about what this has to do with "us", and I said that this is the kind of thing that Crowns is talking about, this is the kind of thing that Crowns is challenging, AND this is the kind of thing that is part and parcel of all of our histories because we are all from the same damn country. So of course it came up that some white people in the class have no ancestors who ever had slaves, and I said, well duh, me neither, but I am standing here before you, and you are sitting there before me, and we're enjoying privileges that we aren't even aware of based on the fact that we're white. And so even though you live in a white area and you don't know any black people, this story has everything to do with you and with who you are. And then a WHITE guy left me class because HE couldn't stand to listen to it. So I was like, o.k.I was actually REALLY nervous about doing this, I am not usually all that confrontational, but I just would be the worst professor in the universe if I just decided not to discuss this issue when it come up SO blatantly in everyone's work. I mean, it's a university, for God's sake. SO I was like, how is everyone feeling? Are you angry at me? If you are, it's o.k. and we should talk about that too, and one of my black students goes NO, we are not angry at all, we're glad! Really loud. And the room was just quiet for a while. And then I dismissed class. It was pretty amazing. Afterward a couple of students, white and black, came up to me and thanked me for doing it.

I know I didn't handle this perfectly, but I don't think I did the wrong thing. I know that I would be the biggest fucking wimp in the universe if I didn't say something. Another thing that this confirmed for me is that I am so back at UW Oshkosh as far as people's attitudes go. I miss Iowa City.

Weep weep.

The book, the magazine, and the comic, etc. for the adult man are chiefly sold in this shop.

Just a brief observation, why is it that Tennessee Williams' plays are so beautiful on paper and on film they turn to utter camp? I just watched Night of the Iguana last night (it's being bandied about by the play selection committee here) and GOOD LORD is it campy! And Suddenly Last Summer is the same way. Eerie.

Cowgirls Napalm Corrupted Apple HAPPY DAY!

I would bitch about the election, but everyone is doing that. What I'm more concerned with is the sensation that I have somehow fallen into a parallel universe where the abiding theme of my life will be that nothing is what I think it is. And the very strange thing is that as soon as I think something is something, or even realize that something is indeed something else, then is again morphs into another thing, leaving me endlessly wondering what the fuck could possibly go wrong next.

Well, I can't say that everything has been entirely awful. The class I'm teaching went really well the other day. We were talking about acting processes and so I started telling them about the stuff I learned this summer about interbeing and two of my students wanted to know who Thich Naht Hanh is and so they're going to read Being Peace! Micropolitical practice, people. Catch the spirit!

And my musical theatre lecture was based around Animal Crackers, and it came out well. And one of my students wants to get back into acting, he's so darn inspired. And I'm actually developing a small curriculum for next year (if I don't run screaming into the night by then) based on The Shining, which, as we all know, is one of the best movies of ever. And our discussion of the play Crowns was totally exhilirating, we were able to be really frank and open about whiteness and blackness, and after reading the some of the prejudiced stuff going on in my students' papers I think it was definitely something a lot of them needed to hear. So things aren't entirely awful here, I guess. They are verging on the entirely awful, though, and if a couple more bad things happen along the lines of what's happened already, I may be packing my bags. And then leaving, after I finish packing.

I was home last weekend for Halloween... and there's a room open at the Summit House...

Something else I've realized is that I love it when the tips of people's noses move when they talk. The only thing is that it's hard for me to comprehend what someone is saying when I'm so entranced my their nose. Nose.