Some Assembly Required

Podcasts: a dying medium?

2012-01-13T07:02:00.000-08:00

I'm a podcast guy.

More times than not, if I'm going running or working in the yard, and I'm firing up the Nano, I'm listening to podcasts rather than music. The simple logic, I suppose, is that while I can read and grade to music, I can't multitask to the point of following the argument of an essay along with the conversational thread of a podcast simultaneously...

I was really bummed a few years back when Lietuvos Radijas closed down their daily English-language show (and podcast!) "Radio Vilnius." (Full disclosure: I wrote and presented for RaVil in 2000-2001 while conducting dissertation research.) I still have the last week of the show in my iTunes--and I still can't bring myself to listen to those final broadcasts. Someday.

Over break, I found myself listening to the last podcast of the New York Times' "Tech Talk," a show I've listened to regularly in the past few years, in conjunction with teaching "Media Literacy" (COMM 311). (I also subscribed to, and admittedly underutilized, their "Music Popcast.")

It seems like the Times is redoubling its efforts in terms of apps, utilizing a "freemium" model: for instance, allowing access to a limited number of stories, but requiring payment (either a la carte or as part of a subscription) to access all areas. I'm planning on checking out their election app for the iPhone, for instance--but I'm hoping they repackage their technology hub in app form quick-like.

The Times is in business to make money, of course--they clearly feel that the opportunity cost of producing free audio content as a means to move folks to the paper itself (either physically or online) was too high. If this trend plays out across commercial producers, then podcasts become the realm of public broadcasters like the BBC ("Click") and NPR ("This American Life"). Of course, the former has had to rebrand in the last few years, being tied more closely to the TV show of the same name; and the latter regularly solicits donations above and beyond station membership to sustain its availability...

The web radio situation has actually gotten better, rather than worse, in recent years. It's not like we're stuck listening to UVB-76, right? For instance, our system no longer crashes if we try to bring in Lithuanian pop station "Lietus," which is a big deal in our household.

Still, the days of the free podcast (at least in the form we've had in the past decade) seem numbered. Perhaps the app environment, in which podcasts are more aggressively bundled with other multimedia content, will once again carve out a creative space for this flavor of audio content delivery.

Reboot

2012-01-09T07:44:00.000-08:00

New Year's resolutions are always dicey, so this week's blog reboot comes with no promises to either me or You. Still, if the endgame is more regular writing on top of Life Otherwise, it needs to start somewhere.

So it starts here.

I guess I was most excited about blogging in the pre-Facebook days, when the idea of generating a personalized website seemed far-out and progressive. Now it seems like another (slightly creaky) spoke in the social media wheelhouse. Still, it seems to me that as an outlet for regular and public writing, blogs still have their purpose.

The potential is still there.

So in the spirit of potentials, here's a short-list of three things for me to do this semester to personally increase professional (and therefore personal) satisfaction:

1. Regular writing. Blog as mental stretching exercise...but work on upcoming conferences necessarily opening up into larger projects. Like Blur says, "Yes, it really really really could happen."

2. More face-time. With students, this means scaffolding conferences into larger assignments, revisiting the notion of the Ron Christensen Memorial Oral Final Exam, and leaning on my advisees for more than 15 minutes a semester of "quality time."

3. Manage the inbox. Getting my personal email inbox down to double-digits was a personal victory. The goal is to do the same for the university address. Let's just say that there are miles to go before I sleep.

Debt ceiling talks...in 3-D!

2011-07-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

Am I the only one who feels like the daily non-progress on the debt ceiling talks is like watching disaster footage frame-by-frame ("The Hindenburg catches fire...NOW")?

Seeing as nothing says "disaster" quite like 3-D, here's one vote to move the negotiations between the President and the Speaker of the House, amongst House Republicans, between the Gang of Six and all comers, etc etc, onto C-SPAN...in 3-D! We can all rock our cool glasses, and the negotiations will play out something a little like this...

What is this Google+ of which you speak?

2011-07-25T16:41:00.001-07:00

Teaching COMM 311 (Media Literacy) again this summer, and the new wrinkle is Google+. Maybe you've heard of it? Ha. Maybe you're on it? Maybe you've figured it out?

I guess I've been on now for a fortnight--not only did I fail to win Wimbleton AGAIN, but I'm still feeling my way on Google+. I think I'm averaging the creation of a new circle every two days, as I try to refine my organization of contacts. Not that I'm posting a whole heck of a lot over there...but by God, I'm organizing my circles.

As the fizz of the new slowly subsides, I've been thinking about where the buzz came from, and what the draw is for folks. I have a few ideas, and I'd love to hear yours....

1. Manufactured scarcity. The game of needing to get an invite was kind of a funny riff on the are-you-cool-enough-to-get-into-the-club? game. You bet there was a bunch of folks hot to get onto Google+ because, well, X got in and they didn't. Yet.... Though by this late date, it's really a beta in name only, isn't it? Anyone want in anymore that can't get in? We can sort you...

2. A fresh start. Americans love a new frontier, and they love starting over. Here was a chance to not only be an early adapter, but also a place where you could ditch the parents, or the ex, or those folks who you don't even know how you became facebook friends with but don't have a gracious way of saying see ya to. To say nothing of the annoying / embarrasing photos. Or the confusion of the privacy settings. Or... you get the picture.

3. The potential. Google+ plays out like one of those inkblot tests you studied in Psych 101--everybody gets to project their hopes (desires?) on this new system. This is particularly true of folks who are IN on the Google Docs thing. I myself am particularly intrigued by the possibilities of networking a number of folks together in a video conference--virtual post-dissertation group, anyone?

What's your take on Google+? I'd love to hear your experiences... Now let's see if I can hook up an RSS feed on Google+ like I have on Facebook--THEN we'll be cooking...

Day 3: Oh yeah!

2011-06-03T20:53:00.000-07:00

30-DAY FILM CHALLENGE, DAY 3:

A film I watch to feel good...

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

When I was actually in high school in the 80s, I actually was kind of annoyed by Ferris--I remember sympathizing more with his buddy Cameron. (Come to think of it, I kept rooting for Ducky in Pretty in Pink... there's a trend here, I'm afraid...)

So 25 years later, though I still have never lived in Chicago, and I have to acknowledge the questionable racial politics of John Hughes (here and elsewhere--Long Duck Dong anyone?), I will always pull up a seat if this one appears on cable.

It's innocent and playful in a way that I seem to not have appreciated at the time...

The 30-day film challenge!

2011-06-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

Before undergoing a successful medical procedure (woo woo!), a dear mentor of mine posted responses to a facebook 30-day film challenge in one shot... Seeing as I'm asking my COMM 229 summer class to blog again, I need to get back in the game myself. So...

In an attempt to jump-start some more writing by doing some "warm-ups" here, I'm going to spend June working through this challenge... Maybe July will be an old classmate's music challenge? Ha! One month at a time. Look: I already missed the 1st, so I'm going to double-down here to catch myself up. This month's for you, Joan....

DAY 1: YOUR FAVORITE FILM--Blue (1993, d. K. Kieślowski)

I was a new M.A. student in Austin when the first of the Three Colours trilogy hit the theaters--and I was gobsmacked. I've had numerous conversations with Folks Who Know about which of the trilogy we like the best, whether the trilogy wasn't really a rehash of The Decalogue (1988), and so on. I believe I'd seen a few Kieślowski films before, but Blue in the theater was special. It marks for me the start of my own ability to take film seriously...

There's another way in which Kieślowski was an inspiration to me: to not give up on my doctoral studies. Walking away from my dream school (which had accepted me, but only with potential funding contingent on Year One) seemed at the time like one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. But because I decided to go to Lithuania to regroup / reapply, it really was one of the best things I ever did in my life. In an interview book, Kieślowski relates that it took him THREE TIMES to get into the Polish film school in Łódź--I figured I could live with applying for Ph.D. programs twice...or more.

Using a page from the Jim Naremore school of teaching Intro to Film (Citizen Kane, full stop), I used the trilogy to introduce film form and style to students in Columbus, IN as a Future Faculty Fellow. I used these films whenever I taught my Central European Cinema topics course. And this fall I'm teaching an honors section of a First Year Seminar that centers around the Three Colours. These films are so rich... they lend themselves to reviewing time and again, and seem to work great as a limited set of texts to introduce students to academic film studies...

DAY 2: LEAST FAVORITE FILM: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

With video-on-demand, it's really easy to opt out of bad films--you just leave the window where you're screening the bad Netflix film, and try again. But a bad experience in the theater...and with friends...that's tougher.

I can't say I have any real hard-core grudge with this film, truth told. But seeing as I'm working with my Intro students on the notion of narrative in general, and Todorov's notion of equilibrium in particular, I find myself using this film as my example of narrative frustration. Three hours of great looking film...but film that starts in the middle of things, and ends in the middle of things. No resolution, no nothing.

A lot of Tolkien fans might be more forgiving than I was... and maybe if I go back and watch the trilogy in one shot I'll be less crabby. But.... yikes.

Time will tell if I manage to work the challenge all the way through June--but this is a good way to dust off the proverbial cobwebs. Let me know if you're playing along at home--would love to read other folks' choices on these prompts. Peace!

~bpi

From despair to where?

2011-01-10T20:07:00.000-08:00

Last week I had one of the best media-induced highs in recent memory... No, not the Pack beating Philly! No, it was Steve Buckley's "coming out party" on WEEI. For those not in New England, Buckley is a known and respected sportswriter/commentator, and his column in last week's Herald prompted a fascinating four-hour conversation on sports-talk radio about the politics of coming out, gender and sports, etc. Amazing stuff, no kidding.

But by the weekend, all that feelgood got swept away with a phone call from my brother, saying that the congresswoman from Tucson had been shot--that a lot of people had been shot. Nils reminded me that Mom & Dad had volunteered for her campaign this past fall, that they'd met her at our neighborhood friends' house where we always do Thanksgiving and Christmas... That first day had a lot of phone calls checking in on folks, emails inquiring about possible family connections with those killed, etc. Awful. Just awful.

(Among other things, I learned that Congresswoman Giffords went to UHS--but I don't recall running across her there.)

And now that the initial shock is over (well, maybe--IS it over?), the killings have become major political fodder. I was AIMed by a student who wanted to blame Fox News et al, but that seemed too simple. Palin's "target map" speaks more as an overt representation of the overheated rhetoric than anything else I can point to tonight...but that's too easy, too.

This needs to be a real gut-check for all of us, folks. As a state, as a nation, as a global community: who are we becoming? Who do we want to become, and how do we get there?

I want to keep working this through for myself this week--and I'm particularly anxious to hear from AZ folks, to get a sense from them about the state of the state, from their personal perspectives.... Be in touch?

Happy New Year! (2011, and all that...)

2011-01-04T18:46:00.000-08:00

I figure I'm still good until Thursday to tell every everyone Happy New Year...after "Three Kings Day" on the 6th, the Christmas stuff gets repacked, and we all resign ourselves to the 2011-ness of it all. (By the way, are you a pro-"twenty-eleven" blog reader, or a pro-"two thousand eleven" blog reader???) Regardless, one of the best ways L & I wound down 2010 was to make a quick getaway to Manhattan after finals... and finally got to several places I'd wanted to check out for years...

First, we got to the top of the Empire State Building on Saturday night...Well, I guess we could have paid some more and gotten up another 12 floors, but the 80+ floors seemed good enough for us. Clear cool night, so we could see for miles in all directions. (KISS were no-shows, though.) New York & Vilnius seem to be the only two cities that really make me weak in the knees...

Next, after a semester of John Lennon-related readings (solo album releases, 30th anniversary of his death, etc.), I made a solo pilgrimage early Sunday morning to the Dakota and Strawberry Fields. Knowing the back-story of his murder made the gates of the Dakota--I guess I just felt numb. There's nothing marking Lennon's death there--no need, perhaps. Plus, across the street is where the "Imagine" mural is located. Quiet and still at 8am...

And finally, I got to the MoMA--half a day was enough to make a dent, and not much more. Still, I was lucky that the Andy Warhol film exhibition opened on the top floor, including a gallery space with 13 screen tests all screening simultaneously. Warhol's subjects stare back at you--and projected at 16fps (after being shot at 24fps), their slow-motion added to their oddness.

Well, not everybody stared. Lou Reed stared. Niko stared. Alan Ginsberg stared. But Dennis Hopper couldn't help himself....

15 Albums...part 3

2010-12-29T18:28:00.000-08:00

Too long a hiatus from writing--the blog (to say nothing of the book proposal) has gone to seed in recent months. What is Winter Break if not a chance to jump-start neglected projects, New Year's resolutions, yadda yadda yadda? So here's a comfy way to ease back in: taking a cue from the "15 Albums" thread that circulated through Facebook last summer, I'm finally writing a bit from the list I'd jotted down after getting to enjoy several of your posts....To embellish and/or spread it out a bit, I've broken it into a bite-sized, 3x5 format.....This is part three, w/ albums 11-15--see Monday & Tuesday for 1-10 if you're so inclined....If you've not done this yourself, it's worth it to take a few minutes....and be in touch!

And thanks for the kind feedback, memories, etc...

Bjorn's 15 Albums (in chronological order of when I got hold of them):

11. Foje: 1982 (1996) What turned out to be Lithuania's biggest rock band's swan song was released months before I arrived to teach English in February 1997, and I blew seeing their farewell concerts that summer (chronicled on the live set Vilnius. Kaunas. Klaipėda [1999]), though I made up for it by seeing Andrius Mamontovas solo a number of times. Foje was crucial to my Lithuanian education in several ways: their lyrics gave me fodder for early language lessons; the breadth and depth of their fanbase underscored to me the presence of a whole national pop culture of which I was only getting the haziest of clues; and their serving as a key into contemporary Lithuanian culture nudged me (ever so politely) to understand that I just had to think beyond cinema in my, erm, scholarship.... Their last album was my first, but by the time I left for IU I had the entire back-catalog on cassette--subsequent fieldwork meant subsequent securing of same on CD, along with the run of Mamontovas solo work. Research, don't you know...

12. V/A: The Inner Flame (1997) This tribute disc was released as a fund-raiser for guitarist Rainer Ptacek that first summer in Lithuania--by the time my parents sent me a dub that Christmas, he was gone. I only saw him play once, at Club Congress in Tucson. I remember thinking he was a roadie when he first went up on stage, ballcap and all--then I remember him doing amazing things with steel guitars and digital delay loops. I subsequently searched all over Tucson filling in his back-catalog (typically, much of his stuff is only available from a German import label). This record connected me back to Tucson, and his picture was on the wall of my Šeduva classroom until the end of my career as a Lithuanian secondary school teacher...

13. Radiohead: OK Computer (1997) Back in the day, in Lithuania, you could buy pirated cassettes of just about anything. And not just in Vilnius, either: I believe I bought this on tape at a kiosk in Utena for five litas (which, given the old 4:1 exchange rate, I can assuredly assert came to all of $1.25). Sure, it appeared to have been pressed in Belarus. Sure, two of the songs had been deleted (due to time constraint or musical taste, I'll never know). Sure, the order of the remaining songs was quite different from the "proper" release. But I'll take my 10-track Belarussian tape over your CD any day of the week....

14. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (1959) It took me a long time to even start to appreciate jazz--and I've got a lot to learn. I find myself feeling defensive that I've got what could be considered such a "cliche" of a record on this list, but the truth of the matter is that there is no single record I have listened to in the past five years than this one. Every semester I find myself grading more than I ever imagined when I put together my syllabi (note to self: less grading this spring!), and this is a record to grade to, to read to, to relax to, to write awkward sentence constructions to. You know what I mean.

15. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (1964) If Miles is someone with whom I can do a ton of academic work (at least on that release), 'Trane is not. John Coltrane demands your attention--not at first, but soon enough. And it's only worse on the deluxe re-release that includes a rare live set of the entire suite (complete with pissed-off French crowd that wants more!)... A Love Supreme refuses to be functional--it's too much for that. Hearing the band repetitively sing/chant the title--it's as close as anything I can think of to a zen moment.

15 Albums...part 2

2010-12-28T11:33:00.000-08:00

Too long a hiatus from writing--the blog (to say nothing of the book proposal) has gone to seed in recent months. What is Winter Break if not a chance to jump-start neglected projects, New Year's resolutions, yadda yadda yadda? So here's a comfy way to ease back in: taking a cue from the "15 Albums" thread that circulated through Facebook last summer, I'm finally writing a bit from the list I'd jotted down after getting to enjoy several of your posts....To embellish and/or spread it out a bit, I'll break it into a bite-sized, 3x5 format.....This is part two, w/ albums 6-10--see yesterday's post for 1-5 if you're so inclined....If you've not done this yourself, it's worth it to take a few minutes....and be in touch!

Bjorn's 15 Albums (in chronological order of when I got hold of them):

6. Brian Eno: Before and After Science (1977) Sophomore year of college at Gustavus--and the vast majority of our studying was done at the North Mankato Perkins restaurant, the only 24-hour cafe/diner/coffee shop to be had in the area. Ace and I would bring our Walkmen and a stack of tapes to study with. I think I read about Eno in Rolling Stone as not only the producer of debuts by Ultravox and Devo, of key albums by Bowie, Talking Heads, and now U2, but also as a solo artist of merit (after a one-record stint with Roxy Music)... I think I'd bought a tape used at Bookman's in high school, but never got my head around it until one night I happened to throw it in my Walkman whilst eating a PeterBert Special (we ate there so often we could order OFF the menu if certain cooks were working). What is it that just CLICKED that night, after several years of having that tape just sitting around? The music hadn't changed--but maybe I was. "No One Receiving," "Backwater," "Julie With...," "Spider & I".... So many great songs here! This jump-started me to first fill out the "vocal" back-catalog from the '70s, and then start in on the ambient stuff....

7. The Stone Roses: The Stone Roses (1989) I must confess that even while I was studying at UEA that Fall of 1989, I was aware of how big The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays were (ah the weekly purchases of NME and Melody Maker!), but I hadn't fully investigated until back stateside. My story is that I spent my money on trips to Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany...which is true! But it's also true that I was measuring each purchase in terms of the number of Guinness pints sacrificed otherwise. Still, once back at GAC to finish my junior year, I played this disc into the ground--I even remember having an absurd argument with two fellow-travelers over who got into the Roses first. How could a debut album be this perfect? And how could it all dry up so soon?

8. Kitchens of Distinction: The Death of Cool (1992) Having graduated college, having made a mess of my personal life, and thus having moved back to AZ for a time, only to move back to MN for a while more, I was plotting my next move from a shared apartment in Uptown. Somehow I got the biggest bedroom in a shared 3-bedroom apartment, despite having the least furniture. I kid you not: we set up a fully-functional train set I got for Christmas in my bedroom, with the TV in the middle to count down the New Year of 1993. This is an album full of sonic space--big enough to step inside, and try to figure out how to invite someone else in, too. Seeing Kitchens at First Ave. was a treasure--they seemed honestly gobsmacked at the positive feedback they were getting from the crowd (as an opener for 99.9-era Susanne Vega). One more album and they were gone...

9. Tindersticks: Tindersticks (1993) It used to be an annual rite to try to track down the year-end issues of both New Musical Express and Melody Maker to get a look at their year-end best-of lists. This was a crucial record from UT days, although I might have picked it up originally in Bloomington studying Czech Summer 1994. The dark and moody atmosphere lent itself to any number of late night study sessions, writing blitzes, and sleep soundtracks. I remember hearing Curtains (1997) playing at a record store in Poznań several years later, recognizing the band on the spot, and willingly handing over all the złotys I had...

10. Everything But The Girl: Walking Wounded (1996) Sure, the papers cried foul: folksters coming late to the trip-hop party, and all that. But the tunes were there, and it captured a weary determination that permeated our mid-90s circle of friends in St. Paul. This was one of the cassettes I took with me to Lithuania in '97, which seemed again to strike the right chords. Ben Watt had nearly died before he made this album, which could then easily be heard as a rebirth, as a redefinition of who they were going to be as a band. After having to walk away from NYU, and going to Lithuania to teach, I too was hitting the reset button... At the time, it felt like the hardest decision of my life--but in retrospect it was one of the best decisions I ever made....

15 Albums...

2010-12-27T08:49:00.000-08:00

Too long a hiatus from writing--the blog (to say nothing of the book proposal) has gone to seed in recent months. What is Winter Break if not a chance to jump-start neglected projects, New Year's resolutions, yadda yadda yadda? So here's a comfy way to ease back in: taking a cue from the "15 Albums" thread that circulated through Facebook last summer, I'm finally writing a bit from the list I'd jotted down after getting to enjoy several of your posts....To embellish and/or spread it out a bit, I'll break it into a bite-sized, 3x5 format.....If you've not done this yourself, it's worth it to take a few minutes....and be in touch!

Bjorn's 15 Albums (in chronological order of when I got hold of them):

1. The Beatles: Revolver (1966) My parents were big Beatles fans--dad in particular. I had this Fischer Price plastic record player with which I used to listen to my records as a little boy...Well, OK, they weren't mine--I'd bugger off with dad's records at four years old, and listen to them in the basement.... "Tomorrow Never Knows" is still one of my favorite songs.... So not only would I scratch them all to hell (imagine the stylus quality of that Fischer Price--go ahead, I'll wait), but I would also let them pile up unsleeved on the floor of that red-painted, cement floor. Do you think I protected those records before we played dodge ball or football or Nils Patrol (a whole other shame spiral)? Riiiiight. So if the meat grinder of a record player didn't get them, the red paint embedded in the record's grooves from kids' stepping/slipping on the stacks of vinyl did. Dad got a working copy of Revolver again when the Beatles did their first CD catalog roll-out in the 1980s...other albums from this early period that I destroyed included CSN&Y's 4-Way Street (1971), which I actually replaced for him on vinyl after a PDQ run...

2. Kiss: Alive II (1977) After cycling through my neighbor's 7" single collection (Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, represent!), I found my first band. Well, I found them through Troy (one of my best friends around this 3rd grade period), who had found them from his older brother. The blood! The noise! The make-up! The (barely) double-ententes that we didn't understand ["You pulled the trigger of my love gun"? Nothing. "She wants a rocket ride"? Nada. I kid you not.]! This wasn't my first record of theirs (that'd be Destroyer [1976]), and it wasn't the record I quasi-conned Grandma Merrifran to buy for me (Dressed to Kill [1975]?)--and it's not even the double-live Kiss record that I'm supposed to have liked more (that would be Alive [1975]). But this was something that was mine--something I shared with my friends that my parents tolerated, but never embraced. Looking back, maybe all those Kiss posters on my wall were doing some serious identity work...

3. Queen: News of the World (1977) The first post-Kiss album I bought with my own money, in 5th or 6th grade... Not too radical a break from early elementary school, I grant you, but it was still an important transition. "Sheer Heart Attack" and "It's Late" were on heavy heavy rotation, if only in my bedroom. This arena rock vein continued into junior high (Styx! Led Zep!) and even early high school (Def Lep! Crüe!), though it came up against a growing interest in pop music (see Rock, Vol I [1981], my first-ever mix tape of 7" singles, from Pat Benetar to Foreigner) and its new wave variants (Human League! Devo! Gary Numan [see below]!)....

4. Gary Numan: Telekon (1980) I'd bought the 7" of "Cars" at the time, but hadn't pursued Mr Webb any further until I came across this album in the $1.99 cutout section at the Musicland in Tucson's El Con Mall. I distinctly remember scrutinizing this album with dad's headphones over and over while pouring over the liner notes. This was the musical break with my rocker friends--this is where I was finally more "Whip It" than W.A.S.P....The blame for my Tama Techstar electronic drum set can probably be pinned on this record too (although I learned to play it by spending way too much time with the self-titled A Flock of Seagulls [1982]...I still have a slab of vinyl inches thick of Gary Numan records (domestic releases, imports, singles, you name it)--seeing him in Boston within a month of moving to New England took me right back to the days of Alice Vail Junior Jail....

5. U2: The Joshua Tree (1987) Fast-forward to spring of senior year of high school, and there I am with Bret (then-editor of the Rincon Echo--I was the "Arts & Entertainment Editor or some such thing) camped out for U2 tickets. (Remember "camping out" for tickets?!) U2 opened their tour that year in Phoenix on April 4th (!) in response to then-Gov. Mecham's policy to be the last state in the union to not adopt MLK Day as a state holiday. (Tucson was two shows later.) I think that show was the week I saw U2, X, and Hüsker Dü all in the same week. And in December, they wrapped up the tour again in AZ, as Jack P. scored tickets for the show being filmed for Rattle & Hum (1988). I never managed to finish that cassette with all the extra tracks from the singles, but the recent re-release satisfied all the completists out there. And of course, "U2" will always be remembered as the Hangman answer that stumped Eric's brother Paul on a OSLC camping trip ("U....question mark?" NOOOOO! "U.....period?" NOOOOO!).....

Why ethnic studies?

2010-10-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

Ethnic Studies Week (Oct. 1-7) at BSU was part of a nation-wide effort to raise our collective profile, as well as draw attention to regressive state legislation in Texas and Arizona, effectively restricting programs like Latino Studies or African-American studies in these states' secondary schools, colleges and universities. (Blog site readers: see the Google map of sites around the country taking place below!)

View Ethnic Studies Week October 1-7 Initiators in a larger map

I jumped at the chance to speak at yesterday's roundtable, "Why Ethnic Studies?" After all, I grew up in Arizona, and got my M.A. in Texas--what was happening in these places I've called home?

You all that are reading this and living in either of these states can answer that far better than I can, of course. But these are not isolated cases--this is a nationwide trend of disavowing difference and diversity (Glenn Beck's co-opting MLK in the name of "unity" is just one loud, pungent example).

In the run-up to this week, I picked up the latest book by bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (2010), the third and final installment of her "pedagogy trilogy." The chapters are short and sweet--I'm reading them like morning meditations. Today's nugget of practical wisdom, for instance, was on decolonization. On p. 25, hooks writes:

"The most essential lesson for everyone, irrespective of our race, class, or gender, was learning the role education played as a tool of colonization here in the United States."

So part of our ongoing mission as teachers and educators is to consciously push back against (re)colonization of our schools, as part of our effort to consciously push back against (re)colonization of our society.

Taip, mums galima.

Dispatch from Starbucks

2010-10-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

It's time to jump-start the blog again this fall--having absorbed the initial blow of the Fall 2010 semester, and still standing, let's get back on the proverbial horse. And what better way to do so than to talk a bit about my new "remote office"....Starbucks.

I know, I know. Really. I know. What I wouldn't do to have Bentley's transported over here from Tucson!

But what can I tell you? Local coffee shops in Plymouth roll up the welcome mat at 6pm. Starbucks is open until 9, which is at least better. And then there's wi-fi. Check out the page that pops up once you agree to the Terms of Use! Play along at home!

So yeah: wi-fi. Email, Blackboard, even fantasy football managing ("no, I'm not interested in trading Aaron Rogers to you for Michael Vick, but thanks for asking!"). Blogging too, apparently--once I'm so moved. After about a week of listening to the piped-in music (seemingly a rotation of tracks from discs they are selling, though I'm not totally sure), I'm back to using MySpace for streaming records (right now? Happy Monday's Hallelujah [1990]). I'm even using the time to screen DVDs for classes, like the Criterion Collection release of El Norte (1983) for my Foundations of Media Studies course...

"People haven't gotten really mad--that annoys me."

2010-07-19T05:47:00.000-07:00

In an effort to improve blogging sustainability, I continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Last week, BSC's assistant director of alumni relations sent a query email re: what faculty are reading this summer. Here's the skinny....

ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac....I'm mentoring Mike Gálvez's ATP grant project, which is to make a documentary film while driving across the USA. Kerouac grew up in Lowell, and this classic captures some of the crazy maddening bliss of an extended road trip...We're reading all of these books together, and then talk about them on iChat (me on the Cape, him on the Road)...

DEKALOG 1: ON 'THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS' edited by Mette Hjort.... Mike's film springboards off of THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS (2003), a superb collaboration between two Danish directors: Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier--von Trier sets up a series of "obstructions" to push Leth forward as a filmmaker and as a human being. This thoughtful collection makes us go back to the film again and again...

DOGME UNCUT: LARS VON TRIER, THOMAS VINTERBERG, AND THE GANG THAT TOOK ON HOLLYWOOD by Jack Stevenson....Lars von Trier was principal instigator behind the Dogme95 film movement whose attempts to jump-start creativity through constraint quickly translated beyond Denmark and into something of a global contra-Hollywood strategy. Nothing says "student filmmaking" quite as succinctly as "creativity through constraint," right?...

LARS VON TRIER: INTERVIEWS edited by Jan Lumholdt....This collection allows us to see von Trier wrestling with ways to attack film form and style in thoughtful and direct ways. Sample banter: "Q. What are your comments on the reactions [your thesis film] has brought? A: Well, they've hardly been good enough, because people haven't gotten really mad. That annoys me. But we'll just have to hope that that happens a little later."...

~bpi

(Formerly Lutheran) College, Inc.

2010-07-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

I'd kept the link to the Frontline special College, Inc. in my inbox for several months, hoping to eventually get back to it this summer. Last night was the night--and a little extra surfing brought the issue into even sharper focus. The program looks at the rising phenomenon of for-profit colleges and universities, the significant debt load with which it burdens its students (much higher than even non-profit private schools, much less non-profit publics), and the inordinate default ratios such loans are generating...

As a Gustie grad (Class of '91, yee haw, etc.) it's particularly interesting to me to see how ELCA-related schools have been affected by the changing landscape brought on by recession & educational for-profit speculation. Readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education have been able to monitor the death throes of Dana College, outside Omaha. A little surfing brought a new stunner to me: Waldorf College in Forest City, IA was sold to a for-profit last year...

Some background: My grandmother Lois still lives in Forest City, and my late grandfather Wilfer worked at Waldorf for several years as a custodian. From my first day as a professor, I thought about how his work at college had laid the foundation for my own. So Waldorf has a soft spot in my heart...

One of the things education speculators look for is existing accreditation, so that they can buy into legitimacy (and have a pipeline to those all-important federal student loans). The failure of such a transfer means the end of Dana College. Waldorf College continues, but is now much closer in spirit to the University of Phoenix than it is to Gustavus Adophus College, I'm afraid.

My hope is to see my grandmother this fall (long overdue), and maybe I will have a chance to get a first-hand sense of what's happening at Waldorf. If any of you have ties with any of these schools, and/or have first or second-hand experience with for-profit higher education, I'd love to hear about it...

On The Road...online

2010-05-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

One of my projects this summer is mentoring my student Mike Gálvez, who won an ATP research grant to make a series of short documentaries whilst on the Great American Road Trip with his buddy Trevor. One of the books we're reading this summer as part of his foundational research is Jack Kerouac's On the Road. And this time through, as I read this at HOME in my HOUSE that looks over a GOLF COURSE (what would JK say?!), I find myself using the Internet to make the book more of a hypertext: MySpace pulls up tracks like Charlie Parker's "Orinthology" (1946); Google Maps bring up towns like Ogallala, NE in an instant.
So now I just need to find the origins of the phrase "Pisscall!" on Wikipedia...
View Larger Map

LT '10 tour scrapped--maybe next year?

2010-04-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately we didn't get enough students this spring for the Lithuanian study tour. The post-mortem points to a lack of branding ("...and Lith-u-a-nia is where?"), funding issues (study grants have dried up, and loan requirements are such that a separate new loan application would be required of interested parties), and general economic malaise (students have to work more this summer to pay their bill from last semester so they can register late for next semester)... It sounds like over half the proposed trips for the college won't run, so there's cold comfort in knowing we weren't alone. Still, though!

But we're going to try again in 2011, this time with a more systemic outreach to other campuses nation-wide that have a stake in things Baltic (Indiana, Ohio State, Washington, Yale, etc.) as well as Boston-area schools that might have interested students (Harvard, Emerson, Stonehill, etc.).

And in the meantime, as I start to hunker down for the upcoming joint Baltic / Scandinavian studies conference next weekend, I find myself daydreaming about a winter trip to Norway, centered around the 2011 Tromsø International Film Festival. I'm afraid it would cost 25-50% more than the proposed Lithuania trip, but maybe the lure of an international film festival (and even the Northern Lights?!) will get some folks to commit to an arctic expedition before the start of spring semester...

Noir de Mexico

2010-03-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

When was the last time you stopped a film less than five minutes in, just to make sure you just saw what you just saw? That's what happened to me tonight, screening Aventurera, a 1950 noir-musical gem from Mexico.

Actually, truth told, the plot lurches forward several more times before the nine-minute mark--by then, you realize that what you are confronted with is the template for everything from telenovelas to Desperate Housewives and pretty much everything inbetween. Imagine The Bad & The Beautiful with a half-dozen cabaret numbers, and you're close.

Running a search for stills to post on this post, I came across a festival happening next month in Austin: the 13th Cine Las Americas (21-29 April 2010). Looks like a great fest--I guess us folks stuck in Massachusetts will have to content ourselves with some of the other free classic titles the fest has screened in years past under the title Sin, Scandal & Song: Victimas del Picado (Victims of Sin, 1951) and La Mujer del Puerto (Woman of the Port, 1934).

Here's a teaser for Aventurera--the film is worth seeking out!

My life according to Gary Numan

2010-03-09T09:23:00.000-08:00

I blame ASP for this...But I also thank her! Her Go-Go's-fueled post has inspired me to sort one of my own.

The game is: Using only song names from ONE ARTIST (or band), cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on any others you would like and include me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. You can use current or older artists. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)"

Your Artist: Gary Numan

Yeesh--here's an amazingly iffy video from 1982, for those reading on the blog site...Great bass on that album, but the persona he crafted...well, check out the video!

Are you a male or female: White Boys & Heroes
Describe yourself: Noise Noise
How do you feel: Berserker
Describe where you currently live: Cars
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: A Dream of Siam
Your favorite form of transportation: Films
Your best friend is: Are "Friends" Electric?
You and your best friends are: Remind Me to Smile
What's the weather like: Complex
Favorite time of day: Friends
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: I Still Remember
What is life to you? Oceans
Your relationship: Blue Eyes
Your fear: The Life Machine
What is the best advice you have to give: Cry, the Clock Said
Thought for the Day: Call Out the Dogs
How I would like to die: Down in the Park
My soul's present condition: This is New Love
My motto: Please Push No More

Frost knows syllabi!

2010-01-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

The spring semester begins tomorrow, and somehow I am not scrambling to finish that last syllabus. I seem to have sorted things there--which only means that now I'm scrambling to set up Blackboard sites for all my classes. A net loss, come to think of it...

Syllabus revision is a (bi)annual ritual for the professorial crowd--not really a clean slate, but a chance to start over, for sure. You want to cut your workload, but you want to cover more material, but you want to make it easier on yourself, but you want to get better outcomes from your students, but... You see how this goes. Prof friends of mine reading this: you know what I mean.

Last semester, I taught a first-year seminar for the first time: an honors course on Central European cinema. The culmination of the class was to present at the college's undergraduate symposium with frosh and sophomores from across the college--sort of an in-house NCUR, if you will.

And part of what makes NCUR great is that you get to hear a discussion on Don Quixote, a panel on quantum physics, and a poster-board session on service learning...all before lunch. And so I felt at home hearing my student paper on the interplay between Polish film and its socialist-era contexts presented amongst several presentations doing close textual analysis of US poetry.

The poem that hit me across the head was by Robert Frost (somewhere RHS junior-year English teacher Mr. Mackey is nodding wisely) called "The Armful." It struck me that what Frost describes here is what professors go through as they try to revamp their courses (yet again!) in the hopes that they can it just a little bit closer to where it "should" be. Here's the poem, in its entirety:

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns--
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.

Classes start tomorrow...only four months until syllabus revision starts all over again. Camus would say: Surely we must be happy.

Fantasy Football: (no) prep is for losers!

2010-01-02T07:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a note I originally posted on the Inter-Galactic Football League (IGFL) site this weekend--the league has been around for better than a decade, and contains a number of Gusties (although they let in at least one guy from Augsburg, but it's OK--he never wins). The lull between fantasy playoffs and actual real-life playoffs gives us a window of lethargy to craft stuff like this...
~bpi

Despite winning the East, WMD folded like the proverbial deck of cards in the semifinals to eventual champion Environmental Warriors. Any success I had this year was a matter of the waiver wire rather than the draft, I kid you not...

ROUND ONE: MICHAEL TURNER (RB)--Mind you, this is the #2 overall pick...After AP, it was a toss-up for me between Turner and Jones-Drew. Let's just say that, to date, Jones-Drew is a solid 3rd in scoring for running backs, while Turner is 12th, and fading. To a point, we were all sleeping: the top scorer, Chris Johnson, was taken in the middle of Round Two....

ROUND TWO: GREG JENNINGS (WR)--Sort of a homer pick, sort of a hedge against taking a seemingly overpriced 2nd RB (see Chris Johnson discussion above), sort of a hedge against taking a QB "too too early." Jennings is 27th in scoring for WR/TEs. Remember how we all watched in amazement as the Robot picked tight end after tight end? Remember how we all watched in amazement as the Robot won game after game, all the way to the championship game? Remember how we all made a mental note to let the Robot draft for us in 2010?

ROUND THREE: TOM BRADY (QB)--Manning was still on the board, Brees had been passed up last time around, and Aaron Rogers (the eventual points leader) remained on the board. (Hey wait--f**king Ace scooped him up in the 3rd! So with the top overall RB and the top overall QB, Black Tail managed to get bounced in the division round? Uff da.) I noticed that my record this year pretty much paralleled that of the Patriots. And just like I felt really squeamish about my chances in the playoffs, despite winning the division...

ROUND FOUR: WES WELKER (WR)--Finally! Value for the money! Sort of. Welker finished 21st in scoring, although he always seemed like he was better. He'd have been a heck of a #3WR, but turns out to have been a bit of a stretch as a #2.

ROUND FIVE: ROY WILLIAMS (WR)--Yeesh. Disaster. Dropped and forgotten.

ROUND SIX: LEE EVANS (WR)--See "Roy Williams," above. It's a good thing I can justify this nonsense with the fact that I clearly did not do my homework.

ROUND SEVEN: FRED JACKSON (RB)--A desperation pick for a stopgap running back actually worked out for a few weeks. Lynch was suspended and Jackson actually did will for Buffalo for a while, then got cold and I dropped him. By the time he was rocking again, he was long gone off the waiver wire...But then I found Ricky...

ROUND EIGHT: JULIUS JONES (RB)--What can I say: the season was a constant fight to sort two believable running backs week-in week-out. Might have started a week or two for me. Yeesh.

ROUND NINE: FELIX JONES (RB)--Ha ha ha. Boy I was really sucking at this point of the night.

ROUND TEN: STEELERS (DEF)--Might have been a reach, but even this early, the Steel Curtain was probably more valuable than any of the three running backs picked in Rounds 7-9. A bye-week drop in favor of New Orleans, which worked out fine.

ROUND ELEVEN: MATT HASSELBECK (QB)--Adequate bye-week fill-in for Brady, but was just insurance.

ROUND TWELVE: Neil Rakers (K)--Did fine, but was shown the door w/ the bye week. Picked up New Orleans kicker(s), which worked fine.

ROUND THIRTEEN: JERIOUS NORWOOD (RB) (RB)--Insurance for Michael Turner, which, as it turned out, was warrented. Except that Norwood was hurt too by the time Turner went down.

WAIVER PICKUP THAT SAVED MY BUTT: RICKY WILLIAMS (RB)--Good Lord, who is that in 4th position for running back scoring?! Is this 2002 or 2009?! Sick!

MY NOD TO THE TIGHT END FAD OF 2009: VISANTHE SHIANCOE (TE)--He would never get a whole lot of yards, but Favre seemed to find him in the end zone with surprising regularity. More points than Jennings, that's for sure. And for the haters: he even scored more than Anquan Boldin!

So what have I learned from all this? First: don't dismiss tight ends out of hand. Second: don't wait forever to get that second RB. Third: crack the f**king magazine BEFORE the draft starts.

When's the baseball draft?

More balance in '10?

2010-01-01T07:20:00.000-08:00

It seems I'm as vulnerable as anyone to making grandiose (and half-baked) New Year's resolutions--but I'm trading in mine for my wife Loreta's. It took me about two seconds to realize hers made waaaaay more sense.

Having worked through our discomfort w/ J-Lo, and counting down the minutes until 2010, Loreta asked me what my New Year's resolution was this year. I started to mumble something about more of everything ("everything" being book proposals and the like), but stopped short of anything definitive.

She, on the other hand, was perfectly clear: "I want more balance in my life." Absolutely right, of course. We've taken on new challenges in the past several years, and hope to take on more (and sooner rather than later)--but to take them on effectively, we both need more balance between work and play, career and home.

So if I sort out this book proposal, lead this study tour, etc., then cool. But not at the expense of other parts of my life which I can neglect, if I'm not careful.

Naïve? Maybe. (I didn't get the nickname "Skippy" from the Queen for no reason.) But it's a worthy goal--wish me luck. And I wish you a happy, healthy, and balanced new year to you and yours!

Muddling through Moodle

2009-12-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

Seems like the blog was one of the things that slipped away from me this past semester--where did the time go?! But it's time for a reboot...and look for an exciting announcement this week on a spinoff project that is a long time in coming... I mean besides the gingerbread...

One of the real frustrations of this past semester was the "upgrade" to Blackboard 8--I liked to think I was pretty adept at our previous platform, but the new version wreaked havoc with my ability to provide live and accurate grade information for students. Further, it appears that sending students email from Bb from my Mac is a non-starter (of course, that could be a 10.6 glitch too, I suppose). In short, several key aspects of my online platform have fallen, and they can't seem to get up.

So this might be the tipping point to move me to Moodle, I thought to myself. I even went onto the Moodle site and set up an a/c for myself last night, starting to poke around and see if I was getting myself into deeper doo-doo by trying to learn a new platform in a few weeks rather than the summer (I might just pilot one class this spring)...

Thing is, I opened my BSC email this morning, only to be confronted with no less than three dozen spam emails for Viagra, penis enlargement, and what have you. Aha--the downside of open-source software! So if I go the route of Moodle, is this something that my students and I have to look forward to every morning?! Yeesh.

I love the idea of open-source software for online media studies classes (ready-made self-reflexive opportunities and all that), but is spam the price we have to pay? If our IT wants us to migrate, we need way better filtering.

My question to You The Reader: What experience do you have with open-source software and/or institutional spam protection? Also, if any of you have Moodle experience (good or bad) I'd love to hear about it!

"O Lithuania, My Homeland..."

2009-09-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

This week in COMM 199 we're seeing a pair of films from perhaps THE most prolific and important director in Polish film, and a celebrated auteur in the realm of what we lovingly refer to as "global cinema": Andrzej Wajda. This weekend, we'll screen his canonic Ashes and Diamonds (1958), his third film, and the completion of his "WWII war trilogy." First, though, we're starting with a more recent film set nearly two centuries ago, Pan Tadeusz (1999). Though they're made over four decades apart, with wildly different geo-political and industrial contexts for their productions, both films are dealing with Polish statehood and national identity.

Perhaps not surprisingly, though, things can start to get complicated once you get underneath the surface a little. Consider the opening line of Adam Mickiewicz's epic poem upon which the film is adapted:

O Lithuania, my country, thou

Art like good health; I never knew till now

How precious, till I lost thee. Now I see

Thy beauty whole, because I yearn for thee.

For some, this couplet points to the Polish-Lithuanian union which existed in what we commonly call the Middle Ages, until the partitions of Poland that forced this part of the world to become a part of Czarist Russia from 1795-1918. It's remembering a state of the nation that no longer exists (note that both Tadeusz and Ashes chronicle nobly doomed attempts to reassert independent Polish statehood). But as is alluded to in the end of Pan Tadeusz (with a discussion about serf emancipation), the reassertion of Poland and Polish rule over the land puts the Poles back as colonial rulers in their own right. Lithuanians might hear this opening couplet from Mickevičius (as he's know in Lithuanian) and have their own sense of this country that they lost time and again...

Remembering 9/11

2009-09-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

Driving down the Cape this morning on an errand, I came across coverage of the 9/11 anniversary ceremony in New York on WCBS (880 AM). Listening to the names being read, I was reminded that, unlike most of America, I experienced much of that day mediated via radio rather than television. We'd just moved back to the US from LT a few weeks earlier, and didn't have cable in our apartment yet. Workers on our bathroom told me that something big was going on in New York, and I should check the radio--it never turned off that day. I remember playing an intramural tennis match that day (?!) and also teaching my 16mm film class. Walking here and there, I was listening on my Walkman radio. Only in the middle of the afternoon, at the country library, did I start to see the video images...

2006 was (to my knowledge) the first time that you could relive the TV coverage on 9/11, as CNN streamed their coverage from five years previous in real time. That was my first semester at Bridgewater, and was quite an "in" to discussions in both Intro to Mass Comm and Mass Comm Theory & Research courses. Today, I found out (from WEEI-AM, who declined to name the specific network!) that CNBC is replaying NBC coverage from eight years ago today. I can't spend more than an hour with it--it's too hard. And I'm tuning in now, after the towers have fallen, and I am so ok with that. If you have time, reviewing the coverage is well worth the effort....

And for a palate cleaner (I need a lot of those this year, it seems), I offer the trailer for last year's documentary Man On Wire. Really nice film--and it's available to stream on Netflix. Worth a look.

And then tell your important folks that you love them.

Farewell, Amanda

2009-09-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

This is an odd way to start the semester, but I just wanted to publicly wish my former colleague in the Department of Communication Studies, Prof. Amanda Brozana, all the best as she leaves Bridgewater State. Those of you who have worked with Amanda know about her passion for all things journalism--we will miss her as she pursues other projects.

By the miracle of facebook, you might even read this yourself, Amanda. Take care, and be in touch.

Nothing cleans the palate like a good KISS lip-sync video

2009-07-24T06:55:00.000-07:00

COMM 229 goes in a slightly different direction today, as we talk about fan-created videos--discussions surrounding doglover199709 and her Katy Perry video point to other preadolescent hijinx. Which leads me to my next skeleton in the closet--my KISS fandom.

I will just say that as an enthusiastic 4th grade fan of KISS, I did not understand what they meant when they sang "You pulled the trigger of my... love gun!" That is too blatant to even call it a double-entente. That is what you gotta call a single-entente--hilarious in its crude artlessness, which is I guess why I still like KISS, despite it all.

There is another Bjorn Ingvoldstad (well, Björn Ingvoldstad) I have met over the web (yes we're related--a 3rd or 4th cousin in Sweden), and he's sent me video his son has made of his son & buddies IN FULL KISS MAKEUP doing a lip-sync video for "Detroit Rock City." This is SWEDEN in 2009 for God's sake. I attach it here--the best stuff is actually the curtain call in the last minute. Amazing.

And if I had the technology back in 1979, I would have done the same thing. I hope! To mix my 70s rock references, for those about to rock, we salute you....

Gates' arrest: "...a local issue..."?

2009-07-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

My COMM 229 summer web class is discussing race and media representation this week, and the arrest Dr. Gates in Cambridge has certainly enlivened discussion. Here's the latest snippet I posted to our discussion board, complete with ongoing tie to local sports-talk radio station WEEI (which does great local sports coverage, but way too often veers off into right-wing political diatribes--listen to their 6-10am morning show on the web in the next few days to get a taste of how they're discussing the issue)....

Did you all catch the Obama press conference last night? If not, here's the Yahoo article from this morning w/ relevant quotes, plus the rebuttal from the Cambridge officer.... as quoted on WEEI! Unreal....

In view of our discussion on the phrase "playing the race card" this week (it's not about race until Gates says it is), I want to highlight something the officer said that again shows the lack of understanding of the context of this issue:

"I support the president to a point, yes, I think it's disappointing that he waded into what should be a local issue and something that plays out here," Crowley told WEEI. "As he himself said ... he doesn't know all the facts."

So not only would this not be about race (if Gates would have JUST SHUT UP), but it would also not be of national attention (if The [national / liberal (ha!)] Media and/or Obama would JUST SHUT UP).

There is the event itself, and there is the perception of the event. And there is the discourse surrounding the event, which is part of a larger discourse on race in the USA. The pattern I see emerging from the Right is the attempt to not only refute any perception of racial injustice but as well any possible linkage from this to any wider social context.

Nothing to see here, folks--drive on by. Wow.

Every picture tells a story...

2009-07-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting threads on the COMM 229 discussion board this week has to do with our textbook's use of photography to unpack notions of both semiotics and narrative. This dovetails nicely with a recent find from the Sandwich Public Library: a book of color photographs from the late depression years, part of the FSA/OWI (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information) archives, now housed at the Library of Congress (click here to access their online holdings and search engine).

The attached photo is part of the collection--a color shot of the office of the Brockton Enterprise which still publishes some 15 minutes north of BSC. Note the two-colored, hand-printed headline thumbnails in the corner window--the poor man's scrolling LED display!

The book, nicely titled Bound for Glory (hip points for COMM 229 students that can identify the allusion), is striking in its ability to bring color to an era that, for those of us who didn't live it, is mostly frozen in black and white. It's eye-opening to see pre-WWII farmsteads in Pie Town, NM or street scenes in Lowell, MA in living color. Do yourself a favor and see if you can find it in your town library--it's a trip.

Fish, Céline, Audrey, and (yes) Michael

2009-07-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

The word from Wing-Kai in Shanghai is that blogs are still being blocked in China, making Fish's blog on his BSC study-tour a moot point. However, you just have to think that this could be the seed for a new media / int'l media policy senior-sem kind of paper, right? In the meantime, if anyone reading this knows Eric Fischer, and is looking for China blogs, you might be best served to check his facebook a/c instead for updates. We might get a deluge of stuff on the blog once he's back...

In the ever-growing "Things We Like About Toronto" file, let us now praise the 33 1/3 night bringing together readings and discussion on the series' books on Céline Dion and Elliot Smith. Those who took COMM 399 ("Popular Music, Communication & Culture") with me last fall are nodding knowingly--the rest of you need to check out Carl Wilson's book (subtitled A Journey to the End of Taste) now. If anyone has read Matt Lemay's book on XO, I'd love to hear what you thought...

Caught a charming little film called How to Steal a Million (1966) last night--Hepburn & O'Toole are solid together, and seeing Hepburn into any number of chic '60s outfits (the dresses! the hats! the sunglasses!--seriously!) and one hell of a red subcompact (see above) is worth a look...

And what would this week's blog entries be without yet another MJ reference? Mowing the lawn and listening to podcasts yesterday, I noted yet another King of Pop moment from left field. This time it was This American Life, which organized their show in four acts, each named by a Jackson song, topped by the "Man in the Mirror" outro. I believe the show was sent out on Saturday, so this must have been something of a last-second choice (unless they recycled this particular old show on the basis of the MJ organizational principle). It was understated, and more poignant for it...

Michael is everywhere!

2009-06-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

A postscript of sorts to yesterday's post... Finally sat down this morning to watch (& send off) the Netflix DVD that's been languishing on our kitchen table for at least two weeks, a 2000 Oscar-nominated Belgian film called Everybody's Famous. I won't give too much away by saying that our protagonist kidnaps a national star in a bid to break out of an increasingly desperate mid-life turn of events--he himself is a frustrated songwriter hoping to jump-start the career of his daughter, who is floundering on the Flemish star-tribute circuit...

Anyhow, the father shows up to negotiate his demands wearing a Michael Jackson mask (which I unfortunately cannot manage to find a picture of on the web--someday I'll sort out how to do screen-shots). A jarring yet oddly moving moment--and another nod to MJ's global reach...

Remembering: Michael

2009-06-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

Time will tell if folks will truly remember when / where they first heard of Michael Jackson's passing (why this particular fascination? do people need to feel "a part of" the story? trace it back through not only 9/11, but also Diana, Lennon, Elvis...), but for me, I was folding clothes and listening to NPR. At that point, it was an unconfirmed report, but I hopped over to CNN while finishing the laundry. Turns out I watched a lot of TV on MJ this weekend, and heard not a few songs on the radio to boot--collective, mediated mourning...

I was pretty much in Michael's marketing sweet-spot circa Thriller--an 8th grade music (video) enthusiast. Granted, my copy of this album was in fact one side of a Maxell D90 cassette recorded from Tony Wilson (the other side had a Pat Benetar live set, if I'm not mistaken), and I was never a "fan" the way I was about new wave artists like Mr Numan (or even Prince, for that matter)... But Michael Jackson was someone who really transcended culture cliques--or perhaps better to say, race-based entertainment boundaries of the 1980s...

Favorite musical moments from Jackson's songs returned in force this weekend: the squeal of delight as "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" kicks, the bubblegum fizz of "ABC," afro-beat echos in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"... Video moments I'd forgotten, like the nod to Do the Right Thing as MJ goes postal at the end of "Black or White," Steve Stevens giving it the ol' college try in "Dirty Diana," Cher trying her best to keep up with a choreographed Jackson 5 (good luck with that)...

Back in the day, I taught a class at BSC called "Mass Communication Theory & Research," and one year we read a solid book by Jason Mittell called Television and Genre, which had a chapter on Michael Jackson and music videos. MJ is so intertwined with '80s-era MTV that it's hard to imagine one without the other. So it was eye-opening read for the whole class (myself included) to find that in fact MTV had refused to air Jackson's first single off Thriller. It took the entire corporate weight of Columbia/Sony to get MTV to ease up on it's lillywhite playlist policy. (For media studies folks who might be reading this, seek out this chapter--it's an enlightening window into race and pop culture in Reagan's first term.) This helps to explain why even now I am still sorting out all the solid music made by African American artists in the 1980s that I never really sorted out at the time--to say nothing of whole histories of blues and jazz...

The 24/7 news cycle lumbers on that Friday, with Larry King interviewing Céline Dion & Cher.The most surreal moment of the evening comes with Randy Jackson ("No relation!" King dutifully notes) on the line. We see a decontextualized image of a helicopter--King, only mildly flummoxed, learns through his ear that the copter appears to be carrying (Michael) Jackson's body, prompting him to ask (Randy) Jackson if maybe he knows where the flight is headed? Randy does not...

I've read some pretty nasty stuff on facebook and elsewhere on MJ's passing--and I guess I can understand it, if you believe he was guilty as charged in the various molestation charges. But it seemed oddly dissonant to me--something even now I'm not terribly excited to engage. I think of Jackson's struggles these days (or my mediated understanding of them, of course) in terms of Herman Gray's book Watching Race, which is about television, race, and cultural politics in the era of Reaganism (coming this fall to a COMM 300 virtual classroom near you). MJ's too-overt wrestling with his own racial identity is starting to become a means for to talk about race in the USA in the 1980s (and beyond)...

We flip to MSNBC, where the helicopter has landed--Jackson's body has been moved from UCLA Medical Center to a helipad at USC, which is close to the LAPD Coroner's Office (where by now two autopsies have been carried out and reported upon) and Keith Olbermann narrates the transfer of the body into a waiting van. Ambulance chasers, all of us--we watch (and watch again) as the nearly-formless, sheet-covered body is slipped into the van, which drives uneventfully to the Coroner.

He is gone.

I turn to my wife and say something inane about the universality of death. However wrongfully, I can't just not say anything...

I get interviewed, or 10 litas wasted!

2009-06-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

A month or so back, I was asked to do an interview for Lithuania's largest daily, Lietuvos rytas. After teaching on media for several years now, and writing about Lithuanian media in particular, it's an odd experience to become a "participant" again in the process. I managed to piss a lot of people off for writing off Sasha Son (who did, in fact, get to the second round of Eurovision). I still owe him 10 litas. Here's the interview:

1. How many years and under what circumstances have you lived in Lithuania?

Add it all up, and I've lived over two years in LT... 1997-98 I was an English teacher at Seduva Secondary School. 2000-2001 I was doing dissertation research and interning at Radio Vilnius. Summer 2002 I did some follow-up research in Seduva. But really that was the last serious chunk of time I've lived in the country. By the time I finished my dissertation, I was already writing about history--the period right before EU & NATO accession. I've been back each of the past two summers, and have a conference in Kaunas this summer--but it's not the same as living there. I miss it.

2. From http://www.bridgew.edu: “His particular focus continues to be in Lithuania, with a wider contextual base in post-socialist Eurasia.” Is it accurate to say you sort of built a career out of interest in Lithuanian pop culture? How much of your research material, gathered in Lithuania (or about Lithuania), do you use in your classes? Do you students seem to be interested in it?

My dissertation on Lithuania allowed me to work through a range of interests: not just television and film, but also popular music and new media as well. My work on Lithuania certainly helped build my career. My hope is that it's not a one-way situation--for instance, I'm working on a study-tour to bring a class of students to Lithuania this next summer, introducing them to another culture--one I fell in love with myself some dozen years ago...

My work in Lithuania comes up in my research methods course (field work takes time!), though I try to not make it about ME. I have a new class next year called "Cinema of Small Nations" that will include a unit on Baltic film--we're going to use a special issue of the Estonian journal Via Transversa that focused on the "lost cinema of the former Eastern Bloc."

My students are curious about the world, but a lot of them haven't had the chance to be exposed to a lot of stuff. I had a student travel to NYC for the first time in his life (only a four-hour drive) only because of the festival success of a film he acted in. Students take my classes on Global Cinema, Central European Film, or (most recently) Central Asian Cinema and are really learning about that part of the world along with trying to sort out the films. Even sorting out watching films with subtitles is a challenge, because it's a learned skill they have yet to develop....

They're open to learning, and that's all I can ask for!

3. You met and interviewed Andrius Mamontovas, other Lithuanian pop/rock stars. What impression they made to you? Any stories/reminiscences connected to them? Did they conduct themselves as stars, or they were casual with you?

AM was incredibly gracious with his time--I interviewed him twice, and once my cassette recorder even worked! He strikes me as both wise and self-aware--seeing as all I could muster is kind of smart and self-conscious, I wasn't exactly in a position to negotiate a profound interview, I'm afraid. I still have a tape of our interview in Old Town: AM's talking interrupted by a song by....yep! No escape.

I still regret not getting to the last Foje show in '97--I made up for it by seeing AM several times in 2000-01, including a blisteringly loud show in Palanga...

Olegas from Lemon Joy opened several doors for me, for which I'll always be grateful. My wife and I even celebrated Int'l Women's Day w/ him & his family, which was fine.

I got to interview Skamp in 2001 after Eurovision--I wrote extensively about the LT contest that year in my dissertation, and so it was helpful for me to hear from them what they thought about the whole "real Lithuanians" discourse.

I got a few autographs for friends / family but never for me... except for running into A. Kaušpedas in the airport w/ my 4-CD Antis reissue, and sheepishly asking for a signature....

If you're asking whether the LT stars acted arrogantly, I would say absolutely not. It was an artificial situation--they don't know me, I'm recording their conversation, I'm from the state radio (press) but also a student from abroad (?!).... So the fact that they sat down with me at all was gracious.

I realized, though, that my interest ultimately was more towards these stars' AUDIENCES and that my time was probably better spent sitting around in Seduva talking about what Antis meant to them... instead of trying to interview Antis themselves.

4. How they perceived themselves being musicians in a small country, relatively far away from the European music scene? Did they express any frustrations?

I think AM and Skamp both were looking to break out, or cross over, or what have you. Neither really succeeded in that sense, but both really continue to be successful domestically. In the diss, I discuss AM's double-bind in particular--he was looked at with a fair amount of disdain for trying to "rebrand" himself internationally.... And when he would go abroad, it still ended up mostly being Lithuanians looking to hear "Laužo Šviesa" and relive the '80s....That's got to be hard--but it's also opened so many doors for him...

5. What did you know about Lithuanian pop music/pop culture before coming to Seduva/Vilnius? Did reality contradict any of your preconceptions about the state of Lithuanian pop music? about consumption of foreign pop music?

I knew absolutely nothing about Lithuanian pop music before setting foot in the country. Well, I read about Antis from a dogeared copy of LET'S GO USSR! We saw Lemon Joy play at a club in Feb. '97--they were pretty heavily influenced by The Smiths at that point. That was my first exposure to the local scene.

Really, my students were my teachers. We would talk in and out of class about media, and I would encourage them to bring tapes to class to play. Students took me to see SEL that spring, and introduced me to Mamontovas and Foje.

I came to LT thinking I was going to write a dissertation about postsocialist film industries that was going to cover 27 countries--totally ridiculous. Once I actually was living in Lithuania, I realized there was WAY more going on right there than I could account for. And I needed to not just talk about film, but about a wide spectrum of media practices. I'm lucky my students were willing to teach me so patiently.

6. In your article “Lithuanian Contests and European Dreams” you focus a lot on European Song Contest—Eurovision. Why Eurovision was interesting to you? How you, as American, not just as media researcher, perceive it? Is it comparable in any way to “American Idol”? Why yes/no?

I'd read about Eurovision in Melody Maker & the NME (all bad stuff, of course), but never seen it until 1998--"Viva Victoria," right? It was just great television for a night. Israeli transvestite boom-chick? I'm in!

Working at the state radio in 2000/01, I saw the gear-up for the ESC first-hand, which got me to talking with folks on both sides of the TV screen. This was a period when everyone saw that LT needed to get into the EU & NATO, but a) it wasn't 100% clear it was going to happen [remember how LT = NATO, EE = EU, LV=?], and b) it wasn't clear what was going to be gained, but c) there was a sense of loss--a decade after getting out of one multinational state only to enter another, right?

I couldn't really walk up to folks and say HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT EU ACCESSION, THEN? and expect anything worthwhile. But I could get to that through the back door--LT & Eurovision (vis-a-vis success by both EE & LV) became something of a referendum of whether or not LT "belonged."

I don't think it necessarily plays out that way now, but I defer to those "on the ground" to make a more informed argument on that...

7. What drive people to think of Eurovision as “a gateway to Europe”? Do you find these hopes naïve, or they do have any substance after all?

The precedent is there: ABBA, Celine Dion...even Lordi! Heck, Ruslana made the rounds after her win, right? The problem when it comes to LT artists is that the political economy of the industry works against them in a huge way. Ironically, after trying to break out by playing it straight, the boys of LT United made a blip on the European radar with tongue firmly in cheek. I have to admit I didn't get it at first--but now I look back and see that as probably THE defining LT/ESC moment. At least until 2010--I have 10 litu that says Sasha Song doesn't make it out of the semifinals.

8. Let’s say one day Lithuanian wins Eurovision. Will that help the country’s image? Will substantial amount of Europeans pay attention to it? What about Americans? Australians?

I think Europop travels--wait, is Lordi Europop? I think so. If the act has that "something" that puts them over at Eurovision, they can potentially take that "something" on the road. But while my students that are into metal know Lordi, nobody has anything to say about the Russian winner this past year.

9. Maybe having internationally successful band would help Lithuania’s image more? I’m thinking about something like Lithuanian ABBA… What are the biggest obstacles for Lithuanian musicians to make any larger footprint in the world pop scene (I am not talking only about ESC)?

Robert Burnett wrote a great piece about the success of Sweden internationally, and he identified four key things Sweden had going on: musical competence of its citizenry (especially seen in extensive music education), industrial / infrastructural presence, a history and existing network of voluntary organizations, and audience sophistication vis-a-vis global music trends. What kind of marks might we give LT on the "Sweden test"?

10. Do you find it strange that Lithuanian national television (LTV) is at the center of selection who is going to represent Lithuania in Eurovision? LTV is all about being non-pop and elitist… Some of the “expert judges” are experts in folk singing… Does it have anything to do with the poor Lithuania’s performances in ESC?

If you look at the ESC from an industrial POV, whom else would be in the center of national organization if not LTV? This is part of how public-service broadcasting is being branded, right? Pan-European populist broadcasting. This tension you identify is something that public-service broadcasters globally are wrestling with--but having folk singing experts decide who goes to Eurovision helps explain to me why we have another LT singer with questionable taste in hats ready to be bounced in the semifinals. I think the hat just bugs me because it reminds me of "I, Assassin"-era Gary Numan!

But fair is fair--I remember seeing a broadcast in '98 of Rebel Heart playing for all the kids in Vilnius for Dainu svente--headbanging kids in traditional outfits, while the band (in full pancake makeup) spit out I'M YOUR ENEMY--DON'T YOU F**K WITH ME! Classic.

11. If you approached an average Joe in Massachusetts and asked him what Eurovision was, what, in your opinion, he would say? Why most Americans are not interested in European music; or are they? How would you define a term of Europop to an average Jonas in Seduva? Why Americans do not like Europop in particular?

An average person in Massachusetts has no idea what Eurovision is. Students in my "Popular Music, Communication & Culture" course now know what it is, but I think they wish they didn't. Their loss.

I think what matters here in the US is the song... or the (sub)genre....more so than where the song is from. People don't care that Peter, Bjorn & John are from Sweden--they just like that whistling song, right?

I think part of how Europop works is that it's designed for folks whose first language ISN'T English--English is pretty much THE second language of Europe at this point, and it serves as common currency. But if you're looking for something deeper in terms of lyrics, that's not where to look.

12. At a time you were living in Lithuania, debate about Skamp’s Lithuanian-ness and necessity of purely Lithuanian pop music versus singing in English peaked. Do you think the debate is still relevant in nowadays Lithuania? In other words, do you think Lithuanians are more open in 2009 than they were in 2001?

I'd like to think that this debate is over. But it's not. Actually, I think it's transforming in ways that will make this even MORE pressing in coming years. This latest wave of folks who have left the country to make their lives outside of Lithuania--there's so many folks like this. And they're EVERYWHERE, right? I think folks from LT are more open, but I think the discussion re: Lithuanian-ness will continue...just like European-ness and global citizenry. Those questions never are fully resolved--they keep coming back in new and interesting ways.

13. In your article “Lithuanian Contests and European Dreams” you wrote: “To a native English speaker, Europop lyrics can always seem simplistic, if not downright nonsensical”. What do you make of this piece of lyrics:

        A little girl is crying alone
                    A little boy searching for his home
                    Giving up to a sin
                    For a heart-craving dream
                    Is that a sin?

                    If you really love
                    The love you say you love (really love)
                    Then surely that love would love...
                    Then surely that love would love to love you back

FYI, this is a song by Sasha Son, official Lithuanian entry to Eurovision’09.

I saw the video.... His heart is in the right place (vs child abuse) but the whole thing seems packaged in a way that is ultimately disappointing to me. Like I said, I have 10 lt that says LT is done in the semifinals, but I'd love to be proved wrong. As soon as someone like me opens their big mouth, that's almost a guarantee that Fate will find a way to serve me Humble Pie...

14. A very straightforward question: Why Lithuanian acts always were miserable to lukewarm in Eurovision?

We might best answer that on a case by case basis....

15. What Lithuanian music is on your iPod (if any)? Why?

Mamontovas--Laisve tavyje...Superb b-side w/ a beautiful chorus

Empti--Diskoteka...They should have been MASSIVE--what a loss

Jurga--Instrukcija...Saw her in Boston--great new hope for me for LT pop

Lukas--Ėch ta laime...Did a presentation on this song at MIT two years ago!

Mango--Raskila...Musu kiemo raskila, nu va.

It was 20 years ago today...

2009-06-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

June 4, 1989: concurrent with major changes in Eastern Europe, China too was on the verge of major change...or so it seemed. For weeks before, hundreds of thousands of people had converged on Tiananmen Square, looking for change.

Instead, they got tanks. And the counter-revolution was televised.

I had a conversation with a student yesterday who is (rightfully) psyched to be going to China later this summer on a school trip--it's going to be an experience of a lifetime for him, no doubt (at least until his next trip, when he stays there even longer!). When I brought up the June 4 anniversary, though, and the government tactics (reported by NPR) to cordon off social networking internet sites in an attempt to nip any reprise in the bud, I didn't get much of a response.

In some ways, it's natural--he was one year old when that happened, while I was going into my junior year of college. Still, that past informs the present, and is important in helping to contextualize China (and the world) in 2009...

I haven't seen this yet myself, but a little Google action turned up this link to an episode of PBS' Frontline on China & 1989. Check it out, and maybe even let me know what you think?

Reboot

2009-05-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

Time to get serious about blogging again--summer vacation (give or take that section of COMM 130), like baseball's Opening Day, is a time when we're allowed to think that anything is possible.

Like, for instance, getting (back) into the habit of regular blogging. Is 3x/wk really too much to ask?! Don't answer that one--at least not for another couple of months. Let's see where it goes...

Two weeks from now I have a conference presentation on post-accession-era Baltic film industries in Kaunas, so along with the class and the home-front (weeds! boxes! filing!), I'm looking to craft something presentable at the Baltic Studies conference....

I named my talk "From Despair to Where?" making a nod to the Manic Street Preachers (who I first got into while teaching in LT in the 1990s) while trying to put my finger on this transitional moment immediately after EU accession. When I came up this title last fall, I thought I was placing the present moment in the "where," locating "despair" as the period of re-independence / reemergent capitalism (1990-2004) that had been less than completely kind for the local film industries. However, with the global recession in full swing, I realize that the real moment of despair (industrial or otherwise) is in fact right now. So the question is how Baltic film has managed to reposition itself within EU structures, and how it's positioned to weather this recession...

In the meantime, I'm trying to watch all the Lithuanian films we're managed to stockpile before making another run. This weekend, for instance, I screened Paskutiniai Brėmeno muzikantai (Bremenas' Greatest Musicians, 2005), which for anything reminded me most of the hip-hop parody Fear of a Black Hat. Here, for instance, is the band having a go at what I'm 99% sure is a Boney M parody:

Several of the actors were involved with the LT staging of Jesus Christ Superstar back in the 1980s, and offer up a loving look at chasing Soviet-era musical fame (click here for a Wikipedia overview of Lithuanian rock). An overwrought love hexagon drags things down a bit, but there are enough good bits to recommend interested parties to seek it out--available, among other places, at BalticShop.

NCUR Week!

2009-04-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

Some two dozen BSC students are taking off this week for the National Conference for Undergraduate Research, held this year on the campus of UW-La Crosse. Four students from the Department of Communication Studies will be presenting--when you see them, ask them what they think about cheese curds!

Here's the rundown: Shawn McGeoghegan is presenting twice, on the rhetoric of marriage and on the persistence of classic rock as a genre... Alex Mello discusses the straightedge Boston scene, including the ways it broke from the punk crowd... Shawn Mullins investigates why folks might pay for music when free downloads are so readily available... and Tim Haber extrapolates his study-abroad experience by looking at New Zealand radio regulation through the lens of cultural imperialism and globalization.

NCUR 2010: You could be there!

Opening day: radio on!

2009-04-06T04:58:00.000-07:00

Despite my utter failure to research my fantasy baseball team adequately this spring, I've still been fizzy all week in preparation for the start of the baseball season. Heck, I even watched the first half-inning of the first game of the year: the defending champs from Philly gave up a two-run homer in that first frame, and lost 4-1 to Atlanta. I'm not even an NL guy, but it was BASEBALL, darn it!

Truth is, though, it's really hard for me to sit and watch a game, at least on TV. For me, baseball is much better experienced on the radio--I enjoy picturing it in my head even more than seeing it with my eyes. What that says about me I do not know. After some AM searching, I found the Philadelphia station (1210 on the dial, for those of you keeping score at home), and listened to a few middle innings while doing dishes. I even caught a little more via the web after I was done....

Radio on the web--great idea. Major League Baseball continues to have a subscription deal where for $15 you can access home and away radio broadcasts of all games (including archived games) for the year. You can stream TV too, but for me that's $15 very well spent. It's all good. I can follow the Twins, keep up with the Indians, even see if something funny is going to happen with the Cubbies. Talk about multitasking enablement.

So if the Red Sox manage to get their game started this afternoon, I'll probably follow the same pattern: the opening inning on TV, but then slip over to the radio as I work on something else. Maybe even... taxes?

COMM 430: Five more books on Central Asia

2009-04-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

This semester, a small but hearty set of souls has gone on a journey with me--a filmic / literary journey (but a journey nonetheless) to Central Asia. Thanks to the Soros Foundation & the Open Media Fund, BSC scored a box-set of ten DVDs from the region. COMM 430 this semester has been watching these films, as well as reading Christopher Robbins' excellent and highly recommended book Apples are From Kazakhstan (2008). The subtitle of the book is telling: The Land That Disappeared. I think I can speak for the class when I say what an eye-opener it's been this semester becoming better acquainted with a region of the world so rich in tradition and culture (to say nothing of geo-political importance) that heretofore has been so absent from our collective radar screens.

For my 430 folks, and anyone else who might be interested, here's a short list of some additional books (and a CD) I have on the region. They may be of help for those final papers, right?(Let me know if you're interested, and I can bring them in to loan.) Otherwise, it might be something to check out for summer reading... No, really!

Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present (2007) is an academic anthology rooted in sociology and anthropology, with a distinct ethnographic methodological tilt. Sections of the book include works on gender, religion, and the nation/state. A great way to get more in depth in the daily lives of folks from the region.

The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia (2008) offers a number of interesting maps, with a single page of text accompanying. Sections include sets of maps on the Mongols, the era of Russian/Soviet colonialism, and the post-Soviet era. The green and grey maps might be off-putting, but I find the accompanying text to be concise and quite helpful.

The Lost Heart of Asia: An Intimate Portrait of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Kirghizstan, the Five Central Asian Republics (1994) has a subtitle only an Amazon.com search engine could love. I found this in the "travel" section of a big-box bookstore. Could end up being a nice follow-up to Robbins--in fact, I'd be shocked if Robbins hadn't read this in the midst of writing Apples.

Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, A Historical Overview, 3rd ed. (2002) is an example of truth in advertising--the book's focus is indeed the complicated relationship the region has had with its neighbor to the north. Relatively light on more recent decades, the book's strength is in presenting the systematic colonization of Central Asia by Czarist, and later Soviet, forces.

The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia (1970) is apparently a classic in the field, but there's a reason I managed to stumble across this only at the Harvard Co-op. Meticulous and dense, this is the place to go to get the goods on Jenghiz Khan of Mongol (2007) fame. The first of three sections of this tome only gets us to the 13th Century, and the book on the whole doesn't broach the 19th Century. This would seem to complement the previous book nicely, in that regard.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I did not mention a CD on the region: The Rough Guide to the Music of Central Asia (2005). I came across this series as a world music DJ in graduate school, and it's consistently solid. You get a mix of traditional instrumentals, vocal tracks, and even some decidedly 21st Century-sounding material. I'm not sure what this says about where I'm at in my musical tastes, but I find myself going back to this disc more often than the new U2.

A Sunday morning in the life of a prof....

2009-02-01T07:33:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if this is a cautionary tale or what, but here I'm posting a proposal for a Baltic Studies conference in Lithuania....that I whipped together this morning before taking off to Boston with L for cepelinai. Fingers crossed!

"From despair to where? The post-accession era Baltic film industries"

Bjorn Ingvoldstad, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Communication Studies

Bridgewater State College (USA)

Abstract submission for the 2009 Baltic Studies Conference

Vytautas Magnus University--Kaunas, Lithuania

Cinema Studies offers a particularly revealing lens through which to investigate the intersections between Baltic cultures and Baltic identities. In addition to work on texts and audiences, work on film industries reveal the economic spine of "the most important art." Building on recent work on "cinema of small nations" generally (Hjort & Petrie [eds.], 2007) and on Baltic cinema in particular (Naripea & Trossek [eds.] 2008), I propose to discuss the most recent, post accession era (2004- ) in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

In particular, my focus will be on the film industries in the Baltic and their adaptation to the economic and geopolitical opportunities and constraints coupled with accession to the European Union and NATO. My presentation uses Baltic cinema circa 2004 as its initial reference point, and works its way out both chronologically and geographically.

While accession to the EU and NATO was an endgame envisioned and worked towards for over a dozen years, it certainly was not "the end of history" (Fukuyama, 1992). Rather, it opened a new chapter in the political, economic, and social transformations taking place in the Baltic States (the post-postsocialist era?). Half a decade is a blink of an eye compared to the millennium of Lithuanian history we celebrate in 2009, yet it still offers us a vantage point to trace the continuities and discontinuities in the film industries of the region upon greater European integration.

Rather than strictly focusing on one particular country, the analysis will center on the national cinemas of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. My presentation will consider the level of interaction and integration with one another (is there such a thing we can meaningfully refer to as Baltic Cinema?), as well as interplay with other regions' cinemas (Scandinavia, Central Europe, Western Europe, and the CIS) and the global film marketplace. In this regard, I will explore EU-based funding networks for production and distribution (in particular, co-production and cross-medium strategies), the evolution of exhibition and ancillary markets, and the relative position of Baltic cinema within both the EU and the global marketplace.

Seeing film as a cultural crossroads of culture not only allows us to look at the ways in which cinema industrially links texts with audiences, but also offers a connection between people of different localities, nationalities, and regions. Baltic cinemas, in this sense, can rightly be viewed as an intersection of civilizational identities.

Your 7th Grade Hit Parade (part one)!

2009-01-24T17:23:00.000-08:00

This Christmas, my wife got me a boombox so that I could listen to my old cassette tapes again. We have boxes and boxes of tapes in our garage, but haven't had a working tape deck since my Sony Walkman gave up the ghost.

Rather than unpacking everything all at once, I opened one box, and dug for mix tapes. One particularly scary find is simply labeled Rock Vol. II, a Memorex D-60 compilation of 7" singles circa 1981-2. Why did I feel I had to assert that this was "rock"? What's with the Roman numerals? Where did Rock Vol. I go, and is there a Rock Vol. III somewhere? Washing dishes tonight, I was pleasantly surprised to find that several b-sides had made their way onto the mix--they tend to age better than the a-sides, I kid you not.

Play along at home: here are the big pop hits from Vail Junior High in 7th grade, or at least for this post-Kiss / pre-Numan 7th grader. We'll count them down, from least to most embarassing....

10. "Rapture" b/w "Walk Like Me," Blondie--My only real regret about "Rapture" is that it's the single mix--it's so short compared to the ten-minute 12" mix I found a few years back. After an ill-fated "Blondie Awareness Party" in college where all we had to play was the ten-track Best of Blondie over and over, I started working on completing my Blondie back-catalogue on vinyl in the mid-1990s. Now watching the video, I find myself gasping, "Wait--is that Fab 5 Freddy?!" "Walk Like Me" is kind of B-52's-ish in a good way. I realized tonight that Missing Persons was basically a (noble but failed) West Coast attempt at filling the void that Blondie left after this album....

9. "Start Me Up," Rolling Stones--The video has so many funny takes of Charlie Watts' bemusement, while the other guys elbow each other for lens time. I think this was their last good single, save "Undercover." I came to really resent classic rock for a number years starting in 8th grade, but you see this was 7th grade.....

8. "I Love Rock-n-Roll," Joan Jett & the Blackhearts--This was a favorite at dances well into early high school--the rockers loved it, the pop kids loved it, and it still sounds good. Dig a bit to hear her do "Bad Reputation" live on the Urgh! A Music War soundtrack--now that is good eating. You can hear the end of the studio version at the beginning of the video--can't say I remember that at all....Indicative of 1981 that her lyrics kept her four-square in the closet, so that is a little wince-worthy....

7. "Freeze-Frame" b/w "Flamethrower," The J. Geils Band--The first of two J. Geils singles on the tape; add the b-sides and four of the 14 songs on here are from them. At this point in my life, the hits are time-encased novelties, while (at least in my own mind) the flipsides are still worthy of a listen. If you've never heard it, check out the b--tasty solos.

6. "Shake it Up" b/w "Cruiser," The Cars--By the time I got into the Cars, they were on a slow but steady decline. At least, that's what I think now. Then, I found this great band, starting with this single, then the full album, then the three before the Shake it Up LP. By the time I saw them in Phoenix supporting Heartbeat City, they were one of my favorite bands. Come to think of it, though, I believe I was asserting at the time that the opening act, Wang Chung, was now my favorite band of the moment--but 9th/10th grade is a whole other list.

Next time, we'll hit the mother-lode of embarrassment. I'll give you a taste: Olivia Newton-John doesn't even make it to #1.

We are the agents of change that we have been waiting for

2009-01-20T06:10:00.000-08:00

As I made breakfast this morning, hundreds of miles from DC, preliminary NPR coverage of folks gathering for inauguration festivities this afternoon started to make me a little fizzy. In fact, I popped upstairs to turn on CNN to see live images of people collected near the Capitol, on the Mall, and along the parade route. The sea of humanity was impressive--like what we experienced at the Thanksgiving parade off Times Square in November, but with that extra....fizz? This triggered a recurring conversation my wife and I have had about our hopes (or lack thereof) for change with the Obama administration.

My wife L identifies herself variously as an optimistic pessimist, a pessimistic optimist, and a realist--I'm pretty much a manic optimist, but prone to crashing into sullen pessimism on occasion. We were both excited to move to an ostensibly liberal Massachusetts in 2006, only to find ourselves in a pretty conservative pocket of the state (libraries?! we don't need no stinking libraries!). Further, Obama's yes we can echoes our Gov. Patrick's together we can--yet we still can't manage to keep professors from working without a contract this year, with no end in sight (and scant hope any retroactive COLA increases).

After my verbalized, coffee-induced daydream about driving to DC this morning, L noted that she wished she was more excited, but after the rise and fall of hopes under Patrick, she's just not on fire like folks you hear interviewed on the Mall. I understand her--today is symbolic, but it's not merely symbolic. (In fact, as my semiotic-grappling COMM 229 students will attest, nothing is merely symbolic.) Symbols matter, and the swearing-in ceremony for our nation's first first black president is an important symbol for our country. Hearing an NPR report from Montgomery, AL, where a convention center blocks away from where water cannons were used on civil rights protesters in the 1960s is set to host thousands of people for the inauguration, brought that home again this morning.

Another way in which this symbolism matters is in terms of the peaceful transferral of power from one party to another. This is something that as Americans we might take for granted--but we shouldn't. Consider the recent Russian elections, where Medvedev is now president, but it's pretty clearly understood that Putin is running the show. (Of ourse, we had Cheney behind Bush, which only underscores the importance of today's symbolic moment all the more, right?)

Further, for the last decade, internal opposition in Russia, much less any attempt at providing an objective (journalistic) voice within the country, has been literally shot dead in its tracks.

The latest proof: today's New York Times article about another political assassination in Russia. This time it was a human rights lawyer and a journalist. The lawyer, Stanislav Markelov (34), described by the Times as having "spent the better part of a decade pursuing contentious human rights and social justice cases," had been fighting the early release of a Russian tank commander accused of murdering a young Georgian woman. The journalist, Anastasia Baburova (25), wrote for the government-critical Novaya Gazeta newspaper, and is the fourth journalist from the paper to have been killed since 2000. The most notable of those four, of course, was Anna Politkovskaya (murdered on Putin's birthday in 2006), whose last book Putin's Russia is a heartbreaking and alarming must-read.

So let us give thanks. Today is an important day. We should rejoice for any number of reasons. But we should also be ready to roll up our sleeves tomorrow. In reading Sarah Susanka's The Not So Big Life, L came across a quote from Ghandi this weekend that was particularly poignant to us, and that I leave you with:

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.

Don't call it a comeback!

2009-01-19T19:14:00.000-08:00

(With all apologies to LL Cool J, who you can hear at the end of the blog entry, if you are so inclined...)

New calendar year + new semester w/ 60 students blogging for those elusive points = new resolve to regularly blog myself. Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before....

But really: where there's a will there's a way. (And of course, when you're in Stratford-upon-Avon, where there's a Will there's a play.)

What can I say, my friends, it was either post-syllabus induced punning, or YouTube clips of Scandinavian death metal. The latter, for those of you keeping score with the Sons of Norway, will have to wait for another entry...hold me to that, yeah?

Enjoy inauguration day, and stay tuned!

Fire in the Twilight

2008-11-16T19:56:00.000-08:00

Just finished an anthology of writers on John Hughes' 80's output called (what else?) Don't You Forget About Me. The editor is local, and I'd seen the book first at the MFA bookstore. Not quite ready to lay down the $16 (despite the back cover looking like a VHS tape--nice touch!), I picked up a copy at my town library, and promptly started thinking about how to pitch a John Hughes frosh seminar...

But then I lurch back to high school: Why did Ferris Bueller bug me so much? (Not as much as everyone in St. Elmo's Fire [1985], but still!) Why didn't Duckie get Andie? How did I manage to get Jennifer Anderson to go to prom with me--was it the floor tickets I had for the Simple Minds concert?

Then I fast-forward to my first-ever paper from graduate school: a textual analysis of Pretty in Pink (1986). And he still agreed to be on my thesis committee! Hmmm: I wonder if the world could use another academic article on Molly Ringwald?

What are the films kids are watching right now that they'll look back with wistful embarrassment in 20 years' time?

Blog as I say--not as I blog!

2008-10-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

What is it about deadlines that compels us to procrastinate until they loom before us in all their angst-ridden glory? I'm not sure how many new leaves I've promised to turn over, but I guess this is another one... Besides, in reality I should be raking those leaves on my front lawn, right? Ah well. In an attempt to jump start the conversation, let's pull out an old trick--what showed up on "random" on the iPod whilst beginning to rake said leaves this afternoon?

"Safar," Le Trio Joubran Instrumentalist trio that all play the oud. Saw these guys at Lotus Fest in Bloomington in the middle of the decade, and Loreta & I plopped down the $15 for a disc after seeing their most excellent performance (in an acoustically beneficial church, as I recall).
"Bright Mississippi," Thelonious Monk My buddy Adam was always ahead of the curve on things like getting hip to jazz. Monk, Miles, Coltrane.... I'm pretty sure he taped me my first copies of all those guys. And what did I give him in return? Gary Numan outtakes?!
"Mussolini vs. Stalin," Gogol Bordello If you haven't seen Everything is Illuminated (2005) yet, it's time to take care of that. Eugene Hutz, singer/songwriter of the Bordellos, plays a key part in the film, which our pal Lois set us up to see. However, it was my time as a DJ at WFHB that got me hip to this band. Nothing like being a DJ to have an amazing infusion of music and experiences, no doubt.
"All You Need is Love," The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour (1967) was one of those albums I nicked from my parents' collection when I was four, taking it upstairs to play over and over and over on my plastic Fisher Price record player. Ironically, my 215 class referenced this song in their newscast they shot this past Wednesday. Like, weird.
"Tu mano mergyte," Omega Classic throwaway Lith-pop. The the guy lists off all the different ways he and his girl are a matched set (You're my little sun, I'm your little sunbeam, You're my little little heart, I'm your little kiss, etc.). In Lithuanian, though, it sounds really nice--the lyrics are a litany of diminutives that carry a cumulative humor and tenderness. Even if you don't understand the words, you can feel the flow:

"War," Bob Marley & The Wailers Man! Go back and listen to the lyrics here--it'll stop you cold. Marley was nothing more than a cliche to me in high school, and I slowly warmed to him in college. Only in recent years am I filling out his back-catalogue. Better late than never?
"Medley: The Loner/Cinnamon Girl/Down By the River," Neil Young 4 Way Street (1971) was another of those albums I ran off with when I was four, and this track is an extra on the CD issue of that double-live from CSNY. I actually got my dad a replacement vinyl copy for the one I destroyed some three decades previous. Remind me again why I passed on getting tickets to see Neil the last time he was in town?!
"Strange Apparition," Beck In which the Beckster does a pretty mean Rolling Stones impersonation that is most certainly meant to be heard on headphones. Maybe not while raking leaves, but definitely on headphones.
"Archives of Pain," Manic Street Preachers The last album recorded with Richey James before he plain vanished (suicide is presumed). If The Holy Bible (1994) isn't the biggest downer you've ever heard, I want to hear what tops it. Commercial failure, total genius. I remember sitting in a cafe in Klaipeda (Lithuania) reading the lyric sheet for the first time, jaw ajar.
"Fio Maravilha," Toquinho/Jorge Ben As Talking Heads wound down, David Byrne began putting together world-music compilations for Warner Bros. The first he did was Beleza Tropical (1989), which I turned around and taped from my dad. Hmmm--seems like there's a pattern here.

What's on your playlist these days? What memories come to mind as you listen? And perhaps most important, how many more snow-free weekends do we have this fall?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Still a work in progress...

2008-09-05T05:11:00.001-07:00

A special hello to 399 folks reading the blog for the first time.... A new semester, a new captive audience! I look forward to reading stuff from you all.

This is going to be a quick post, seeing as I am shooting out announcements to all my classes via Blackboard before slowly working my way to Logan and beyond, but I wanted to get something new up here after yesterday's class. I'd asked the class to talk a little about music they just hated, which makes me ponder just what I would identify here...

I'm thinking back to my dorm freshman year, and the "old guys at the end of the hall" (they were sophomores) who insisted on playing f**king Steve Miller Band every f**king weekend night as they doused themselves with Polo cologne and engaged in the Gustavus ritual of the "pre-party." I never really thought about Steve Miller much one way or another before that year--I guess there were songs on the classic rock radio station rotation, but it just washed over me--not anything I would ever seek out.

Well, it found me, I kid you not.

The funny thing is that, now with 20+ years of hindsight, I hear SMB, remember Co-Ed (the nickname of the dorm, the first on campus to house both boys and girls in the same building--hot stuff for us Lutherans), and actually feeling nostalgic about the whole thing.

If I step outside myself, it seems ridiculous. But subjectively, that experience was part of the whole college thing that year. Of course, this was the year I pissed off my roommate by putting up a questionable Bangles poster ("Girls can't rock!" he more questionably sputtered) and attending the previously lamented David Bowie "Never Let Me Down" concert.

Bad taste? There was probably plenty to go around.

Wait--that's end of the summer?!

2008-08-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

Holey moley, how'd that happen? I was just sorting out this vacation thing....

Some random notes as we move into Labor Day weekend:

Raymond Williams, an early theorist of television, was jolted into writing while stuck in a Florida hotel, watching US TV from his British perspective--and being totally flummoxed at how the whole deal was going down. I felt a similar shock at getting cable installed (first time in five years). The biggest new toy is "on demand" (no, still no DVR). Not only can I find movies from 20 years ago (Back to School, anyone?), I can score music videos from 30 years ago ("Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" features MJ's real nose, I was reminded). The upshot is being able to watch things like Obama's speech or M*A*S*H reruns, but man there's a lot of crud on TV. (How did ultimate cage pummeling become our national sport?)

Facebook has already moved beyond being a reunion machine to a virtual door collage. Who makes all these different add-ons? And what information am I giving away each time I sign up for things like Packer Fan Forum or Virtual Bookshelf or whatever? Minimalism is clearly not a virtue for the Facebookers....

Wi-fi saved our butts for the first few weeks of our new home... but once it blinked out for a few days, it was time to pony up. The whole reason we have cable at all (see above) is that 1. the cable company is the only DSL provider in our town, and 2. TV w/ internet was like $7 more than internet alone. For the first year, of course. Unless they are having some kind of price war with Verizon, I think cable will be a one-year deal....But I'll still have YouTube!

This blog will be even more musically focused than normal (?!) this semester, as my only blogging class will be my COMM 399 course, "Popular Music, Communication & Culture." I'm going to be using YouTube to organize videos that go along with readings, and will post a link for easy access from this blog. That reminds me: gotta find some good Celine Dion concert footage! (The early 33 1/3 book on Let's Talk About Love will be a good litmus test for all of us!)

10 years, 7 moves!

2008-07-29T04:14:00.000-07:00

This is a little off topic, but with the house closing today I've been doing a little thinking about the notion of "home" (can you guess the musical cue?)... In particular, I started thinking about the number of different places I've lived--and the number of different places from/to which I've moved! For my last post from 72 Union, I want to turn back the clock: the moves of the past ten years.

#1: From Seduva to Bloomington, 1998 Leaving Lithuania after 1 1/2 years as an English teacher, and starting my Ph.D. program in Indiana. I moved from the bendrabutis across from the high school to a garage apartment walking distance from the university. I hauled back my life from Europe and set up shop again in the Midwestern USA. Loreta & I were married during the tenure at North Lincoln (yes, she sobbed seeing the sight of this place, and there were not tears of joy, I assure you).

#2: From North Lincoln to Orchard Glenn, 2000 Our lease ran out Summer 2000, and we had a fellowship in Lithuania after I passed exams. The net result was some vagrancy (cat sitting! Lois' basement!) that got us to a place on Bloomie's west side for a few months. We managed to squirrel away some stuff at Loreta & Vit's until returning from LT.

#3: From Orchard Glenn to Vilnius, 2000 I think I had additional stuff stored in my departmental office (books and such), as we went for about nine months to live a charmed life walking distance from Old Town. We may never live this rich again. We lived pretty minimally, although the apartment we rented was furnished. We blew out the Belorussian stove almost immediately, thus eating a lot of boiled stuff that year.

#4: From Vilnius to Bloomington, 2001 Back to Bloomie only weeks before 9/11--the culture shock was big enough before Sept. 11, thanks. Two years on South Lincoln, blocks from Loreta's work, and an easy bike ride for me to school. This place had some interesting storage nooks, which got the best of us soon enough. I did follow-up research in LT in Summer 2002, and it was so hot that Loreta swore we were outta there once the lease was up .

#5: From South Lincoln to Steeplechase, 2003 Air conditioning! A pool! (After our car got dinged, and we raised hell) a garage! The only way we could make this really work was with the aforementioned car, although we did our share of public transportation from South Sare Road as well. We actually lived there longer than anywhere else, other than our parents' homes, come to think of it.

#6: From Bloomington to Bridgewater, 2006 Dissertation defended! My brother and Loreta's sister get married (not to each other)! First trip to LT in years! A bona fide professorship! 2006 was awfully good to us. This was a hair-raising move, though--we contracted with a truck to drive our stuff across the country, but first the truck had to be able to park. I wonder how the new saplings and lawn are doing there at Steeplechase. IU buddies helped us out the door, and IU buddies helped us unpack in Massachusetts. Hoosier pride!

#7: From Bridgewater to Sandwich, 2008 So today we're signing papers on our new house, and tomorrow we're moving in. This time around we're driving ourselves, although it's more than an in-town move. And this time we've got BSC buddies pitching in, for which we're eternally grateful. As I look around: bags and boxes. And more boxes. And chairs from Indiana that Loreta bought down the road--go figure.

We're hoping it will be some time before I feel the need to write a "moving post." Cue cheesy Motley Crue!

Summer "Vacation"

2008-07-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

Well my friends, Summer I is in the books (more or less--a little editing left to do for the 220 short), and it's time to look forward to the next two months or so. Three major projects for the next two months... bear with me, and you'll get your Go-Go's payoff here in a minute....

1. The Book Proposal. A whole lot of sound and fury these past two years, but I really want to make this happen. My problem is that on top of the idea of turning the dissertation into a book, I have at least two other book ideas percolating at the same time. Typical! Ideas come exponentially, but the follow-through is linear. Still, to have a proposal out by Labor Day would be huge. It's time.

2. The Preps. No less than three new classes for the fall, including COMM 221 (Foundations of Communication Studies), COMM 290 (Videography) and COMM 399 (Popular Music, Communication & Culture). The Central Asian Cinema course for the spring is lurking in the background as well. A lot of new material to cover!

3. The Move. Looking to close on a house at the end of the month, so the third big project is packing up in Bridgewater and getting everything over to Sandwich in one piece. Anyone into hauling appliances around S.E. Massachusetts?

And as promised--cue Belinda!

Facebook (finally!)

2008-07-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

Summer 2008--Dateline Bridgewater:

After two solid years of cajoling, NP finally got me to sign up for Facebook. Even though I teach aspects of new media in my theory course, I've been reticent to get into either MySpace or Facebook. It seemed to me like going to a club where all my students would hang out--"who's the creepy old guy?", y'know?

But ok--I'm in. And frankly I owe NP a thank-you for allowing me some pretty fast-moving reconnecting. To whit, here are a few of the folks I've reconnected with just this week:

DD went to another high school in Tucson, but we became friends through our church youth group ("Does Facebook have an OSLC page?" I find myself wondering). Actually, among DD's hijinks in HS was to dress up like a substitute teacher and pop up in the halls of RHS, just to say hey. Can you imagine this happening post-Columbine?....

SJ was in my "sister section" of my frosh dorm @ GAC. We were also in the alternative "CII" curriculum track together, which meant we got to go to a monastery in North Dakota, puzzle over Plato's Cave ad nauseam, and such. I just found out she's a newlywed!....

IE lived down the hall from me during my "semester abroad" @ UEA. The look is markedly different (a function of living in Sweden?), but the mischievous grin is absolutely the same. Does he still do the arm-flail when "Ride on Time" comes on?....

MFC & I were @ IU together those first years of CMCL, w/ offices in The Attic of what we subsequently learned was a literally diseased building. After getting her MA, she's been in China for eight years teaching EFL....And looking to go back to grad school for that come the fall (after the Olympics?)....

These were all folks that, for a time, were an integral part of my everyday life. At least at this early stage, it feels like Facebook is a reunion machine. As a professor, though, joining Facebook has allowed me to stumble on a philosophical / pedagogical question: Should professors and students be (Facebook) friends? I'd be curious to know your thoughts!

George Carlin (1937-2008), R.I.P.

2008-06-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

Seven dirty words...anybody?

Of course the beauty of grassroots production is that we're able to bypass TV, which still would bleep out all the naughty bits. Here on the blogosphere we at least get to hear the routine normally and share it amongst fellow travelers. Fucking FCC.

With Carlin's passing, I think back to the Vietnam era, and the TV war coverage then versus what we have now. Don't you think if networks had access to the horrors of war in Iraq or Afghanistan, and were allowed to (gasp!) show American flag-draped coffins coming home, that our activities abroad would have been, erm, curtailed? Maybe that's wishful thinking, but damn. Fuck the Bush Administration.

NPR is running a series on parents who've meet at "Section 60," the area in Arlington National Cemetery where soldiers from Iraq & Afghanistan are buried. It's moving stuff--part one was today (Monday), and not sure how many more days they'll do, but at least tomorrow. Fuck commercial radio.

If you've not seen this yet, spend a few minutes by clicking on this interactive from the NY Times. Then come back for a Monty Python palate cleaner, below.

4-3-2: a must-see

2008-06-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

Just watched one of the best films I've seen in some time--also one of the hardest films to watch in some time. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (2007) was the last of the "big three" Romanian films of recent years to make it to DVD (after The Death of Mr. Lazarescu [2005] and 12:08, East of Bucharest [2006]). 4-3-2 won the Palm d'Or @ Cannes 2007, and deservedly so. It's wrenching, it's heartbreaking. It's the real deal.

Technically, the film is actually reminiscent of our Danish friends from Dogme95 (e.g., The Celebration [1998] and The Idiots [1998]): long takes, handheld, no music soundtrack, etc. The DVD extras are quite nice, including extended interviews w/ the director and the cinematographer. Also, there's a short documentary about taking the film on the road to show in provincial Romanian towns that no longer have a dedicated cinema in which to watch these films.

In light of my current research on Lithuania, I'm arguing that--at least from an audience perspective--Lithuanian "national cinema" was only viable while Lithuania was not a nation-state, but rather a republic of the USSR. Conversely, after re-independence, Lithuanian national cinema has collapsed. In the Romanian case, this collapse of the audience is also clearly happening... And yet we've seen some amazing, world-class films come from there in the past few years. What lessons can Baltic filmmakers take from the Romanian case?

Below, I've posted the trailer for the film (now out on DVD). Do yourself a favor and see 4 Months... But be forewarned: it's a bitter pill.

Beatles! Beatles everywhere!

2008-06-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

I note with a mix of amusement, bemusement, mock-horror, and mirth that at least 33% of current 396 blogs now host Beatles songs! Having just screened Across the Universe (2007) this morning, it is apparently my constitutional duty to post this Eddie Izzard outtake as Mr. Kite.....

I go back and forth on the film. Every generation can and should rediscover the Beatles, and if this film does the trick then I'm all for it. Lord knows when I was in college, there were any number of house versions of Fab Four tunes (check the 1991 Candy Flip cover of "Strawberry Fields," below...the song Shawn's blogged quiz says most fits my personality type--go figure), and that was a way to reconnect after playing (out) the catalogue in earlier years....

More than anything else I got frustrated with the 1:1 correlations thrown out there one after the other, demanding I think them clever. Yes, it's dear Prudence, and yes she came in through the bathroom window. JoJo is here, as is Sexy Sadie, Jude, Lucy, and even lovely Rita (albeit a contortionist, no longer a meter maid). Sadie = Janis, JoJo = Jimi, Jude = John. The Hair sequence is here, the Abbey Road roof gig is here, and on and on. And that's what makes the Izzard sequence a relative breath of fresh air for me--controlled chaos.

As far as Beatles updates / mashups / you-pick-'ems go, on the whole I'd still give the nod to the George Martin Love (2006) project's fusion of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Within You, Without You" (neither of which appeared in Universe). Mind you, I have no stake in the video--but the audio mash-up is spot-on brilliant:

Now with the Beatles edging out Gary Numan in the blog charts (at an inexplicably close 3-2 margin) let's see if other folks chime in?

As a PS, here are the aforementioned Flippers, doing their best Happy Mondays vs Paul Oakenfold impression. THIS, kids, is the kind of stuff your professors were clubbing to in college. Scary, no?

See also: Danielle Dax, "Tomorrow Never Knows"; The Dream Academy, "Love." And for a different flavor, track down Sonic Youth's blistering cover of "Within You Without You"

Madonna vs Gogol Bordello

2008-06-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

Bloomie in full effect! Last night I dreamt of the Farmers' Market....

I'm sneaking in this Pokemon as well in a tribute to Vilnis, who was kind enough to introduce us to the wide world of Pokemon. According to a test I found on the web, this is the Pokemon that most closely resembles my personality. Make of it what you will.....

Safe zones, Summer I, RSS feeds....

2008-05-27T18:41:00.001-07:00

The management @ Some Assembly Required is proud to announce that this blog is now a certified safe zone! If you have any questions or concerns as part of the GLBTA community, have any questions or concerns regarding GLBTA issues, or have a good lead for another outfielder for my fantasy baseball team, please feel free to contact me!....

Summer I started today, and Opening Day for my two courses are tomorrow: COMM 220 (Intro to Mass Communication) and COMM 396 (Mass Communication Theory & Research). After this semester, the term "mass communication" will be little more than a foil for the term "media studies," which personally makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Both classes will be blogging, so I am hoping to get a little traffic from BSC folks (though I LOVE LOVE LOVE hearing from friends and family far afield, make no mistake!). This is the second summer I've had students blog--I'm looking forward to getting feedback from new cohorts. And, of course, it's always a blast for me to read what you all are doing as well--I love how I can click on your response to me and see your own blog. (Geez, I sound all saucer-eyed, but it's a beautiful thing!)...

Finally, check the RSS feeds I've installed on the bottom of the blog. I will try to add different stuff as I go this term, but with AABS coming up this week, it is indeed right and salutary that we have feeds from both the English-language weekly The Baltic Times and the Lithuanian daily Lietuvos rytas. Ask me how to add RSS feeds to your blog or webpage (hint: painfully simple)!

The past between them

2008-05-23T10:17:00.000-07:00

Truth...and reconciliation? Why would children of Holocaust survivors and children of Nazi perpetrators come together to explore "the past between them"? Here's a video from CBS circa 1992 on such a meeting at Harvard University--it just popped up on the H-Net listserv thanks to Mona Sue Weissmark of Northwestern University.

Sorry that the video isn't loading--follow the link!

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=4079008n

"Could you describe the RUCKUS, sir?"

2008-05-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

This fall my COMM 399 course on popular music is going to be using the legal download service RUCKUS--currently available for free for BSC students, $8.99 / month for faculty. It'll serve as a shared music database for the course, meaning I won't have to force my students to buy a CD of Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love--the 33 1/3rd book will have to suffice!

I got the service up and running for myself yesterday, and so far find myself gravitating to a) albums / songs I already own, but have "locked up" in box currently in our storage room, like Tindersticks or b) obscure remixes from bands I've liked for 25 years, like Talk Talk. So far not a whole lot of exploration, but a lot of aural "comfort food."

It makes grading finals go down a little bit easier, dig?

Blogging about blogs!

2008-05-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

My goodness, how did it get to be a week before graduation? I vaguely remember this buzz in my ear saying that Spring Break was almost over, and now here we are with two days of finals left. How did that happen?!?

So with the end of 396 this spring, I've completed a year-long experiment in requiring blogs from students. Feedback has been mixed to mostly positive--and I figure even for folks who aren't at all into it, they're able to speak from experience now. It's been a worthy experiment, tied to Henry Jenkins' book Convergence Culture, which talks about convergence as something that's happening in audiences as much or more than in hardware (hence his term "black box fallacy" to describe the PS3, the iPhone, or what have you).

I'd be curious to hear from 396ers on this--what's your take on this blogging thing? Was it valuable to have an alternative venue for working through your thoughts and ideas regarding media studies? Did it give you any added sense of "community" in 396 or beyond? And hey: anyone continuing after the course? (Let me know, and I'll link you as an alum on my site--feel free to do the same!)

With finals winding down (yeah right, 25 research papers are due in 42 hrs 28 min) I'm hoping to get back on the blogging wagon. In the meantime, here's what NOT to do for your video blog:

Sox, McMillan, and blogging about blogs

2008-03-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

Another 6 a.m. start for the Red Sox, allowing my to serenade my wife with the "1-800-54-GIANT" jingle while she showered this morning (complete with my Supremes-wannabe shimmy...don't ask). Things were pretty much sealed with a 3-run homer by Emil Brown (still available on the waiver wire, fantasy players!), so the collection of folks getting their cars serviced at the local Toyota dealership glumly watched the 9th on the beautiful wall-mounted flat-screen that we were all helping to pay for (several times over, I'm sure)....

I regret not pushing the Terry McMillan talk, which took place last night @ BSC, harder than I did for my students (a la Spike Lee). I myself hadn't read anything by her before she was announced as this semester's "Presidential Speaker," and even now I'm only 2/3rds of the way through her second novel, Disappearing Acts (1989). McMillan was not only engaging, she was riveting. She read from a work in progress (which she promises will be unrecognizable when it finally is published) that is a sequel to her best-seller Waiting to Exhale (1992). It definitely pushed me to read that next, and look for the follow-up when it arrives (in 2009?).....

Finally, I've set up a new list on the sidebar to go along with what I'm currently watching, listening to, and reading. I'm offering up links to several other blogs--both academics working in media studies, and former students of mine that have continued their blog writing. So far I only have two up: Bob Rehak is an old classmate who now teaches outside of Philadelphia, and Tim Haber is a 396 alum doing a semester abroad in New Zealand. Check them out!

24-Hour Party People!

2008-03-25T04:38:00.000-07:00

7:30 a.m. Boston time. 4th inning of Opening Day, and the Sox are down 2-0. Dice-K gave up a homer his first batter back in Japan--oops! How bizarre to be listening to live baseball before my morning class. Reminds me of listening to NFL playoff games on shortwave in Lithuania. Space and time, my friends. Space and time.

4:30 a.m. Tucson time. Just got off the phone with mom, who got dad finally admitted to the hospital, after waiting in the ER for hours as a preventative measure (long story for another time)....So it's already today in Boston, but I'm apparently in "tomorrow" as far as mom is concerned....But she hasn't slept yet tonight....this past night...whatever....so it's all a little confusing.

Back to grading...let's go Sox!

What I Did On My Vacation

2008-03-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

Grade a lot, really.

But that doesn't make for such a hot blog entry, so let's talk movies. I got to see a couple big Oscar winners, and pulled off a "Dina" yesterday.

The "Dina"? My advisor from UT days, Dina Iordanova, told me once that at that stage of my academic career I should be watching two features a day to get me up to speed. At the time, I was trying to fill huge gaps in my Central European cinema experience. These days, I just feel like I'm scrambling to fill huge gaps everywhere. That's what education is supposed to do, right? Help you know what you don't know?

Last night was a double-feature for today's COMM 371 (Global Cinema) class: Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love (2000). Both are beautiful, achingly sad films--just the thing for students on spring break! Whoops.

(GRATUITOUS ASIDE: My senior year, spring break was a road trip with the Gustie hordes to South Padre, TX. Somehow there on the beach I was reading both Children of the Arbat for Russian/Soviet history and The Cider House Rules for Curriculum II Senior Sem. Both great books--but lugging them around in hardcover because I got them out of the library rather than buying the paperbacks was not the best idea if mine that week. It was also not the worst--I kid you not.)

From Netflix, we got in No Country For Old Men (2007), which got the Best Picture Oscar last month. Man, talk about brutal. The nice thing about watching films at home is that sometimes when things get to be too much, you can just hit pause and walk away. We actually broke the film up: two viewings over three nights, taking a night off between, thank you very much. Javier Bardem was awesome as the baddie--but after working with Charles Ramírez Berg's book Latino Images in Film in COMM 300 (Media, Minorities, & Cultural Diversity), I can't help but see him as the latest incarnation of the bordertown bandito. *sigh*

Finally, The Counterfeiters (2006), the Foreign-Language Oscar winner from Austria (see previous blog entry on COMM 371's successful "collective intelligence" pick of this film to win--especially you COMM 396 folks reading Jenkins!). I would like to go on record to say that I was wrong to think it was going to be so very apologetic--the film was gritty and even brutal at times, but in the right ways (I got a particular shock from a scene set at a quarry camp outside Saltzberg we'd visited as a family back in '98).

I'd double-dog-dared my 371 students to go see a foreign-language film in the theater this past week, after their midterm exam. I did my bit, darn it. There's no way I could rally to see the complete Berlin Alexanderplatz (all 15 hours or whatever!) Easter weekend, so this was a good compromise.

So now spring break is over...the final push for graduation begins!

Spring Break Shenanigans

2008-03-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

So what is it about breaks that make you do silly things you wouldn't bother doing otherwise?

Case in point: D & D monster tournaments over Thanksgiving back in junior high (watch out for the werebear!).....Or questionable road trips to Texas or Florida.....Or....

Going through a spindle of burned discs to see what's buried there?! I think it had to have been junior high the last time I consciously tried to listen to everything I owned straight through. Nothing so silly here, but I'm still working my way through a lot of goodies. Here's what I've stumbled across on a random spindle in the past four days or so:

BLACK BOX: Dreamland
EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL: Like the Deserts Miss the Rain
MILES DAVIS: Kind of Blue
MILES DAVIS: Birth of the Cool
MILES DAVIS: Sketches of Spain
KEANE: Hopes and Fears
GARY NUMAN: Exile
V/A: Maloney Wants a Drink (St. Paddy's mix!)
JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO: Double Fantasy
ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO: Thirteen Years
SHAKIRA: Fijacacion Oral

Hmmmm--that was a bit of a Miles kick I was on yesterday....Now where's ON THE CORNER when you need it?!

Thank You Brett

2008-03-05T06:03:00.000-08:00

When the news came through yesterday that Brett Favre had announced his retirement, I had a strange mix of regret, happiness, and nostalgia. Patriots fans, take note: some day Tom Brady will retire too, and you'll be left to ponder all the memories.

Me? I remember watching the Packers beat the Lions for their first playoff win in forever while studying in Austin. I think I was at a bowling alley with Philip, the best friend I ever had who also liked the Cowboys. (Yes, also the ONLY friend I ever had who liked the Cowboys.) I remember the fall/winter of '95-'96, living back in Tucson, driving every Sunday to watch the Packers at the Oldfather Inn on the Northwest side. I remember trying to not pay too much attention to the 1996 Packers/Cowboys NFC championship game while celebrating Adam & Yael's wedding (it was better that way).

I remember rooting for the Packers with a roomful of purple in St. Paul (I think we lost the battle, but won the war that year...). I remember being home in Tucson before leaving for Lithuania, watching the Packers win the Super Bowl over You Know Who (right, kids?).

While teaching in Lithuania that next winter, I remember listening to the '98 NFC championship game on shortwave radio (a win) and avoiding the Super Bowl altogether for some reason (a loss).

The next decade has had highs and lows, and this last season had both. The win in the snow over Seattle! The awful interception in overtime against New York. Sitting in the Bridgewater 99 bar, clutching my beer a little too hard. A sick, sad, resigned feeling. The truth is that there's a lot more of that kind of feeling than the other, come the end of the season.

And now Favre has retired. I was quietly hoping he would as early as two years ago--not because I thought he was "done," but because I wanted him to be able to walk when he's 65....On some level, I'm part of the reason why professional football players end up hobbled, or worse--sacrificing their bodies for (eye-popping) salaries. On some level, I feel responsible, and I didn't want to be responsible for a hobbled Brett Favre.

So I'm sad that he retired, because this year was so much better than expected, the best in years. Yet I'm glad that he's getting out on his terms, rather than in Aikman-like agony.

Everyone should have their favorite team win it all once--everything else is just gravy (Pats fans needed a reminder of this on their not-so-inevitable march to a perfect record and a fourth championship this decade). In '97, that's exactly what Packers fans got. It was gloriously brilliant--the memory of watching the game with my Dad (who was in Wisconsin for the Lombardi years) is something we'll always have.

I never got to see Favre play in person, but I got to enjoy his play on TV for over a dozen years. All those "did-you-see-that?!" moments, like this one, in his last win at Lambeau:

At the risk of getting really sappy, thank you Brett.

Now get in there, Aaron Rodgers!

March Madness!

2008-03-02T07:07:00.000-08:00

Snow turns to sleet turns to rain....and today there's sun and we're all supposed to pretend that none of that weather earlier this weekend ever happened. I am soooooooo ready for spring.

Which leads me to today's topic. Part of what got me through this latest bout of my when-will-winter-end blues was listening to the Red Sox play the Twins on Friday night. Baseball on the radio--all is right in the universe!

I think I'm going to sign up for the MLB audio package again this year--for $15, you get audio streams of all baseball games, including archived stuff. The video streams are a little rich for my blood, and I'll be fine with the audio. This way I keep tabs on the Twins, the Indians, and (let's be honest) my fantasy baseball players all around the country.

There's a comment starter for you: anyone play fantasy baseball? With whom, and for how long? I will announce another baseball-related retro-frenzy in this space here shortly, but in the meantime, here's Tommy Lasorda doing his darndest to be a role model to all the kiddies out there!

Head vs. Heart: Counterfitters or Katyn?

2008-02-23T10:34:00.000-08:00

HEAD: Now that the Global Cinema class has spoken on their thoughts for the foreign-language Oscar, it's my turn.

HEART: Our turn!

HEAD: Ok, our turn. But I'm not so sure about this mind/body dichotomy. Does Descartes know you nicked his blog password?

HEART: Erm....right. So let's see what the collective intelligence of COMM 371 has to say about Sunday, and we'll throw in our two cents too.

HEAD: First off, nobody's buying Beaufort, which was actually Israel's second choice for their national pick. I just realized that each and every film nominated this year centers around war. Sign of the times?

HEART: Afraid so. The Russian film 12 got two votes--I have to say that I really hope this film doesn't win. I want to see the film a lot, but having a bunch of Russians sitting around in a Chechyn gymnasium to decide this case (we get it, folks, we get it) is more than I can stomach.

HEAD: Don't you think the 12 Angry Men angle helps it more than it hurts? But I think that's negated by the fact that Mikhalkov already won one of these in the mid-'90s--Burnt by the Sun is a great film, by the way.

HEART: Then we have a tie--two films that got 2 1/2 votes. Mongol is a Kazak film on Genghis Khan--we're going to be seeing a lot more films from Central Asia @ BSC in the next year (thanks Soros!), and a win here would be a nice catapult.

HEAD: But...even though this is the foreign-language category, don't you think this is a bit too....erm....foreign for US audiences?

HEART: And the other film at 2 1/2 is Katyn, the latest from Andrzej Wajda. We watched several films of his in 430 last semester (Ashes & Diamonds, Man of Marble) and the latter is screening this week for 371. Did you know that Wajda won a lifetime achievement Oscar several years back, but has never won the foreign-language Oscar? Here's the chance to right that wrong before he's dead.

HEAD: But they've already done the right thing with that lifetime achievement award--I think they're going to go elsewhere....to The Counterfeiters, to be specific. Collective intelligence points to the Austrians to win, albeit narrowly at 3 votes. You've got the WWII angle like Katyn, but it targets Nazis instead of Soviets (always a better Oscar strategy).

HEART: Do we get to talk about the crowds in Vienna welcoming Hitler with open arms upon annexation? Or do we talk about how we were all victims of Nazism? I'm afraid it's the latter, and it's depressing. My vote is for Katyn.

HEAD: And I'm saying The Counterfeiters takes home the trophy. In the end, I just hope these nominees make their way to Boston-area screens sometime this year--or at least get to f**king Netflix.

HEART: Peace out. Tune in Sunday!

Persepolis gets my vote!

2008-02-18T16:06:00.000-08:00

Seems to me that the foreign films that have gotten the most buzz / traction this past year (Golden Door, 4 Months..., Persepolis) have unsurprisingly all gotten passed over for the foreign language Oscar. Maybe that's how it should be, as often films get catapulted into our consciousness as "Oscar-nominated" or even "Oscar-winning," and we've already sorted these out. And Persepolis is nominated for best animated feature (what are the odds?!?). So.

My COMM 371 (Global Cinema) students are weighing in on who they think will (or should) get the Oscar on Sunday--I have committed to sorting out my guess / vote by then, too, so look for that later in the week. In the meantime, though....three cheers for Persepolis, which Lorka & I got to see this afternoon. The film is adapted from a graphic novel via animation--I'm embedding a teaser here:

Don't worry--the film has subtitles in US theaters. But what I love about this clip is how American popular culture circulating globally becomes fodder for youthful rebellion....although to placate the Old Lady Morality Police (circa early 80's Iran), the young girl tries to pass Michael Jackson off as Malcolm X. Priceless!

Spike delivers, students out in force!

2008-02-14T02:30:00.000-08:00

Spike Lee took the BSC stage by storm last night--in a Giants Super Bowl sweatshirt! Spike was enjoying giving Pats fans the business--still on a high from the game the other week. (Want to relive the nightmare? Check this out, and note the gentleman in the Strahan jersey--WARNING: CONTENTS OF THIS VIDEO MIGHT STILL BUM OUT PATS FANS.)

We got the nonsense taken care of early, and spent the vast majority of the time talking either politics or film...I wonder how many students might have been nudged to register as a result of last night?

It was fascinating to hear themes coming up in classes this term being worked through in this public forum: race and politics, how to get into filmmaking, the evolution of Malcolm X, stereotyping, the importance of pre-production strategic planning....and yes, even Spygate!

We had a lot of solid questions from the community (including several current and former students of mine, he said proudly), and a great turnout overall. In fact, the turnout by my students was phenomenal: nearly two out of three students in my five classes this semester (64.8%) will be receiving their extra credit for being there last night.

Spike Lee showing up to talk on a Wednesday night? My friends, that's what a college education is all about. Brilliant.

Gratuitous mix lists!

2008-02-10T19:44:00.000-08:00

It's getting close to 20 years ago, but at one time I too was a senior in college. Trying to sort out my senior seminar, going to NCUR (got Ray Bradbury's autograph!), spring break in Texas, ignoring the job market come May, the whole bit. Anyhow, I came came across a mixtape (D90, go!) I made that final spring at Gustavus, circa 1991. Here's the "set list":

*****SIDE A*****
"Soon"--My Bloody Valentine
"Fall"--The Darling Buds
"Dennis & Lois"--Happy Mondays
"Opportunity"--The Charlatans
"Been Caught Stealing"--Jane's Addiction
"International Bright Young Thing"--Jesus Jones
"Harold & Joe"--The Cure
"Sweetness & Light"--Lush
"Heaven or Las Vegas"--Cocteau Twins
"Bloodline"--Ultra Vivid Scene
*****SIDE B*****
"What is Love?"--Deee-Light
"Pro-Gen"--Shamen
"Tomorrow Never Knows"--Danielle Dax
"One of Our Girls Has Gone Missing"--A.C. Marias
"Of These, Hope"--Peter Gabriel
"Paper Dolls"--Innocence Mission
"Night & Day"--U2
"Love"--The Dream Academy
"Looking for Atlantis"--Prefab Sprout
"Been There Done That"--Brian Eno / John Cale
"The Moon in the Man"--David J
"Disappearer"--Sonic Youth

Geez, that was long. My idea was to post a list I did last month to compare and contrast, but why don't I let you all join in? What sets have you done recently? Or for that matter, in the distant past? Is this microphone on?

BTW, my email inbox is winning. I don't even want to run the numbers. It's sad.

Spike Lee: Coolin' that s**t out!

2008-02-02T06:30:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't heard yet, Spike Lee is going to be on BSC campus on Wednesday, Feb. 13th, at 7 pm. Tickets are free but need to be picked up at the Info Booth @ the RCC. If you're in one of my classes this semester, you'll be hearing about it for sure--extra credit even! Like Da Mayor says: always do the right thing. In my COMM 300 class, we are revisiting Malcolm X (1992), but any student can go get the link for the digitized stream for Do the Right Thing (1989) at the Circulation Desk @ Maxwell, and watch that on your laptop (ditto Malcolm X).

Here's a gratuitous list of another half-dozen additional Spike Lee films you'd be well to check out--preferably before the filmmaker arrives on campus (nothing like an informed Q & A session, that's all I'm saying). I bet you could come up with your own list of six different titles...In fact, drop me a comment and build on this:

1. When the Levees Broke (2006) A four-hour documentary on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Incredibly hard to think that it was only 2 1/2 years ago....But it has to have felt like several lifetimes for those whose lives have been directly affected. His most recent full-length project, originally produced for HBO, and now out on DVD.

2. Inside Man (2006) This film was widely praised as a throwback to Classical Hollywood caper films--I kind of think some critics loved it so much because it didn't have the stamp of a Spike Lee film. Or so they say. Taut and full of momentum, this is his most recent film to get wide theatrical release.

3. Bamboozled (2000) A scathing critique of media representation of race, and our complicity with it in any number of capacities. Sure, the plot goes off the rails in the final reel, but still: a number of jaw-dropping moments, including a heartbreaking historical montage.

4. Clockers (1995) I remember seeing this one in the theater multiple times, thinking how Lee was taking his work to a new level of thoughtfulness and introspection. This is a story of circumstance and what one man does to try to write his own ticket....to Arizona.

5. 25th Hour (2002) This was one of the first cinematic reckonings with 9/11 that I remember--and still one of the most poignant.

6. Michael Jordan Nike Campaign Run a web search and you're bound to find some examples out there. Lee brought his "Mars Blackman" character that he developed in his NYU diploma film / theatrical debutShe's Gotta Have It (1986), and paired it with the generation's most iconic sports personality. It's gotta be the shoes!

The 8-bit Scene (or, behind the curve yet again!)

2008-01-31T10:51:00.000-08:00

So the crew @ WBIM were kind enough to give me this hilarious compilation of 8-bit covers of Kraftwerk songs last semester called 8-Bit Operators (2007)....I have made public my deep affection for Kraftwerk in classes, conversation, and even a previous blog entry (see the Archive). It's a nice compliment in my collection to the compilation Trans-Slovenia Express (1994), which of course is a set of Slovene artists doing songs like "We Are The Robots" and such. 'FHB used the disc to make a series of station promos before I finally was allowed to abscond with it to my office....

If you're scratching your head going, "Erm, 8-bit?" think of the bleeps and pops you used to get with those 1st-Gen home gaming systems (Atari or Intellivision, anyone?). These systems were going into homes right around the time that Kraftwerk was coming out with records like Computer World (1981). (True fact: I had to read and write about an article in a science magazine for 8th grade science w/ Ms. Guptil, and I managed to get by with writing about a review for Computer World in a computer magazine....Then biked to Park Mall and picked up the record, much to the befuddlement of my Motley Crue-listening friends)....

8-bit seems like a pretty funny / cool mode to work in: using the aural landscape of the early home computing age, ripping it out of original context and re-processing it in all of its lo-fi glory. What a cool idea, I thought to myself. Then, thinking a little more, I realized I had students back in Bloomie two-plus years ago that were already way hip to 8-bit.

The course was "Production as Criticism," and we used Dogme95 as our problematic. For the final project, and in the spirit of Dogma, students had to draft a set of rules / constraints that they agreed to work under--the idea being that contraints can potentially invigorate ideas and creativity through problem solving. Anyhow....

One set of students did a project that looks for anything like a role play game you might have found on your Apple II, called In The Year 20XX (2006). You can cut & paste this link into your browser to see the film (note that the hero is uncoincidentally named Lars):

http://www.archive.org/details/In_The_Year_20XX

Long story short: guess who is behind the curve yet again? But you know, you could die trying and still never have a chance. The fun of teaching is enabling folks to do stuff you would never think up yourself, and see them learn/grow doing it.

Priceless.

Trolling the "used" bins @ Newbury Comics

2008-01-28T18:56:00.000-08:00

The thrill of the $3.99 used CD continues....that's about as much as I can budget myself with a clean conscience to mine the depths of my '80s music cravings. This week? Peter Murphy's first solo effort after the Bauhaus meltdown, Should the World Fail to Fall Apart (1986). Somewhere I have a D90 cassette dub of this that I made off vinyl from the Minneapolis Public Library...."Canvas Beauty" is going to show up on some compilation discs this year, I kid you not.

Here's another guy named Peter Murphy who (spoiler alert!) flubs his chance at glory. Troll YouTube for the other one.

Inbox Reduction Resolution 2008
YEAR TO DATE: Yahoo: -20% BSC: +6%

The post-commencement fizz

2008-01-26T05:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a gratuitous pic of three Commies from before the ceremony. Who's that stiff-looking guy on the left?!

I'm a little off-topic today, but not by much--I just want to reflect a bit on the accomplishments of the Class of 2008 (January edition!) whose graduation was last night.

Successfully navigating your way through college is not an easy task--there are any number of ways to get sidetracked, waylaid, or otherwise disposed (and no, we're not going to get into biographical specifics on this, thanks). My point is that completing your BA is a big deal, and something worth celebrating. Commencement is literally a rite of passage, and I was glad to see so many proud students (and even prouder parents, friends, etc.) last night.

Commencement, as the keynote speaker said (in his perhaps-a-tad-too-long-kinda-sorta speech), is also literally a beginning rather than simply an ending. It's true: for the Class of 2008, today is the first day of the rest of their lives....I heard great things that our Comm grads are already plugged into, and future plans being hatched. It's exciting!

And it's a good reminder that any one class, or even the accomplishment of completing a degree, is part of the broader and deeper life-journey that we're all on....As I used to say a whole lot more often, "It's all good." True, that.

Another RIP blog entry

2008-01-24T05:46:00.000-08:00

This isn't good--one of my last entries of the fall/winter was regarding the murder of South African reggae artist Lucky Dube (see the archive for the post + a video). This week I'm sad to report not only the death of US actor Heath Ledger (perhaps most known from Brokeback Mountain and most recently in the Todd Haines Dylan antibiopic I'm Not There), but also Belizean singer and world music star Andy Palacio.

Palacio is the lesser known of the two, but well worth a listen. This past weekend I picked up the most recent issue of Songlines magazine, which pegged his album Watina as #2 in their "Best Albums 2007" survey (you can hear samples of his work at www.myspace.com/andypalacio). His body of work, recording and otherwise, recently garnered him the honor of being named UNESCO's 40th Artist for Peace. He was only 47.

IRR: BSC=389 (+6.6%/sem.); Yahoo=107 (+7.0%/sem.)

New Year's Resolutions (I know, I know)

2008-01-18T12:38:00.000-08:00

I know what you're thinking, and you're right: new year's resolutions can be pretty lame. Personally, I think what makes them lame is that, if you're not careful, they can really set you up to fail. And who needs that?

Still, there's something to be said for the symbolic attempt to consciously vector one's life in positive directions....even if it IS doomed! And in a public forum, no less. Wait--who thought this was a good idea?

Of the New Year's resolutions I made this year, at least three are applicable here:

1) I hereby resolve to regularly blog once again. I figure if I can write 3x/week here, that's pretty good. Not coincidentally, my father is on a similar 3x/week kind of schedule, albeit not exactly of his own choosing. So if I can manage to have a new post for him every time he logs on for a post-Nadine's read, I'd be a happy camper. And if I'm blogging more, it puts me in a better spot to cajole my students to do the same (are you listening, gang?)....

2) I hereby resolve to get that darned book proposal out. My advisors in graduate school always framed our dissertations as "the first draft of your first book." Ok, then. I love the fact that BSC values teaching so highly, but both myself and the college would like to see some action on the research front beyond conferences and such. Fair enough. For the book to fly, the book proposal has to sing--how's that for a mixed metaphor? So that needs to happen asap, if not sooner. No pressure....

3) I hereby resolve to weed, prune, and ultimately drastically reduce my email inboxes. I'll track the progress of what I lovingly refer to as the "Inbox Reduction Resolution of 2008" (hereafter "IRR'08") through the spring semester....or at least until it gets annoying and/or boring. I'd love to hear your strategies on this--or if you even think this is a problem. For the record, I'm going into this with 365 emails in my Yahoo a/c, and an even 100 in my BSC a/c.

Item last: found two Rainer discs I didn't have, thanks to my friend Ryan who has succeeded in transplanting himself from Bloomie to the Old Pueblo this past year. Maybe more on that next week, but in the meantime here's a clip of him doing "Life Is Fine" on British TV....Enjoy.

Apple gets another pound of flesh

2007-10-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

All right. I did it. I ordered the 10.5 OS. I was pissed when they released 10.4 soon after we got our Mac....It was one more reason for L to be convinced that Apple was an expert in sucking users dry rather than crafting elegant hardware. (This leads to at least one "fun conversation" w/ my brother, who gets his paycheck from Apple, during any given visit to AZ....but I digress...)

I remember being floored as a colleague of mine in school was so INTO getting his 10.4 in the mail....Like it was opening night for a film he'd been waiting YEARS to see....I can recognize the need for upgrades, and even the need for paying for it...But it still made us miserable that this $1000+ machine we'd bought seemed already....out of date. This must have been what the folks who didn't wait for the Video iPod felt like. Or the folks who saw the iPhone price plummet. Still, Apple stock continues to go through the roof, and my bro (who gets stock options as part of his gig, to the best of my knowledge) continues to wax rhapsodic about Steve & Co.

I guess there's something to it, because I just ponied up over $100 for the new OS (maybe we can work out some of our surfing bugs this way? maybe???).....But I do it with a sense of inevitability and even resentment, rather than excitement.

Here's a link to Apple's "guided tour" of the new OS: http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Me, I hope I don't crash the hard drive upon installing....Computer Love, indeed....

Lucky Dube, RIP

2007-10-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

I just found out this morning that Lucky Dube, a giant in world reggae, was killed in front of his children in an apparent carjacking this past Thursday. He came out of South Africa, but his impact was truly global. What a waste--what a loss.

When I was doing work for WFHB in Bloomington, I got a chance to review his last album, called THE OTHER SIDE. The title track to that is brilliant--seek it out if you have a chance. Not finding that on the global jukebox that is YouTube, I offer another clip to get a sense of who he was and what he was on about.

The Good Ol' CBC

2007-10-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

So I had to get up REALLY early one morning this week (the reasons are already hazy to me). Like usual, I turned on the radio, but instead of going to one of my usual suspects (NPR, ESPN radio) I kept going, I guess trying to pull in the Cleveland AM station (WTAM--1100)....

I guess I never got there, as instead I found a local outlet of the Canadian Broadcasting Channel (the CBC)....I used to listen to the CBC when I had a bad bad BAD job at a mall in the Twin Cities, and Quebec was THIS CLOSE from secession.

Anyhow, the local CBC on AM is on 1070, from Moncton, New Brunswick. If you'd rather check them out on the web, you can click and stream from this link: http://www.cbc.ca/informationmorningmoncton/

Of course this begs the question of what Moncton looks like. Which, apparently, is something like what you see above....

Has anyone travelled much in New Brunswick and/or Nova Scotia? I sense a summer roadtrip in the making.....

How's Your News (revisited)?

2007-10-15T02:48:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a podcast of THIS AMERICAN LIFE while running this weekend, and the show did a repeat of a feature they did on a film called HOW'S YOUR NEWS? (The website for the movie, which includes a link to this radio feature, is: http://www.howsyournews.com ) I got a chance to see it a few years back, and thought it was great--especially the music! There's some real wisdom swirling around, here.

As a taste, here's one of the reporters talking about Texas....

Now I lived in Texas for two years, and I'd say this is pretty spot on.

These developmentally disabled reporters are folks that, in the pre-nonlinear computer editing, pre-camcorder era, had little to no access to be the SUBJECT of media output, much less the PRODUCERS of such output.....This is a nice example of what Jenkins might call the grassroots-enabled production. Check it out!

boom boom boom boom

2007-08-16T06:44:00.000-07:00

Only a few weeks until school starts, and then we're in for some serious blogging shenanigans, so I think I need to spend the next few weeks in "training camp" (aka rural Lithuania) getting myself up to speed.....

As an opening salvo, let me sing the praises of Robert Palmer's book DEEP BLUES (1982), which I nicked from my dad's bookcase on this past week's trip to AZ. My dad has the advantage of age AND wisdom, which means that it takes me a while to catch up with him....and beginning to grok the blues is just another example. From my dad, I got into John Lee Hooker, Mississippi John Hurt, Rainer Ptacek, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters....yadda yadda yadda. Palmer's book helps provide a clear, encompassing cultural history of Delta blues....a good a roadmap as anything I know to start getting into the blues.

Here's an early '60s clip of John Lee Hooker, as an appetizer:

We're heading to Lithuania tonight, so we'll see how I do with postings....But we'll be in touch.

Click "shuffle," press "play....

2007-06-28T19:46:00.000-07:00

The question has been raised by Jason....what's on my mind? Heck if I know.

But I can one-up that: what's on my iPod? The next ten songs are generated at random off my server....And as an added bonus, I'm embedding video clips of the songs or something quite similar....Play along at home!

1. Neil Young, "Let's Impeach the President"--No kidding, this was the first song that came up. Hmmm: I'll give you one guess who I didn't vote for in '04. This was the "single" off of LIVING WITH WAR....I haven't heard the new/old live disc that came out this summer. I grew up w/ Neil Young records from as young as I could grasp my dad's vinyl copy of FOUR WAY STREET.

2. Sara Tavares, "Balancê"--This is a track I came across when I was DJing world music at a community radio station in Bloomington, IN. Tavares is of Cape Verdean descent, but born and based out of Portugal. Gorgeous voice--gorgeous melody.

3. Madeline Peyroux, "Was I?"--My wife is a huge fan of Peyroux, and I'm a convert....We missed her live twice in the last year, and we won't make the same mistake three times in a row. Peyroux does a killer Patsy Cline cover on this disc (DREAMLAND).

4. Lô Borges, "Equitorial"--This is a track from one of the first world music collections I ever had, the David Byrne-compiled BELEZA TROPICAL: BRAZIL CLASSICS 1.

5. Andrius Mamontovas, "Pauksčiai"--What do you know...this is the guy whose videos I have YouTubed on the bottom of my blog....I got a chance to interview him a few times for my various projects, and also saw him live several times off of this 2000 album whose title translates as EVERY WINDOW LOOKS TO THE SKY. Here's another track from that album, recorded live @ Lithuanian TV:

6. Mahala Raï Banda, "Iest Sexy"--Brilliant track that arrived on the sampler with the British world music magazine SONGLINES a few years back. Roma brass with a Justin Timberlake-esque swagger. Infectuous. The clip I found seems to be staring down Borat without blinking...

7. REM, "Electrolite"--REM and U2 were the bands I grew up with through high school, college, and beyond....Saw them on the DOCUMENT tour in 1987 or 1988, which was--wait for it--my freshman year at Gustavus. Yep. Do the math. I was previously unaware they had redone "Shiny Happy People" w/ the Muppets. Who knew?

8. Maria Bethânia, "Sonho Meu"--What's this?! Yet another track off of BELEZA TROPICAL?! Do you ever wonder if your electronics are trying to tell you something? Here's something a little more contemporary from Brazil:

9. Lush, "Scarlet"--Back when you all were pondering the pros and cons of kindergarden (!), we were agog over a four-piece out of England who sounded dreamy and loud as all get out. Search for "shoegazing" on Wikipedia for kicks. How did they come up with those harmonies? This is a track from one of their early EPs....Sadly, the band went defunct when the drummer killed himself. Here's another single from this period called "Sweetness and Light."

10. Os Mutantes, "Bat Macumba"--OK, three Brazilian songs from 10 at random?! I think not. This is from the import compilation TROPICALIA--A BRAZILIAN REVOLUTION IN SOUND. Os Mutantes translates as "The Mutants," if I remember right, and you can hear how they're messing about in the studio big time. Late 60s / early 70s? But the clip is from a more recent tour...

So that's newest latest here at the Ingvoldstad household. Hope there's something there you like!

Got podcasts?

2007-06-17T04:46:00.000-07:00

Something I've started to use this spring has been podcasts....once I realized how painfully easy it was, I was in....The biggest problem is that it's like subscribing to more magazines and / or newspapers than I can keep up with...Every now and then you just have to write off good intentions and hit the DELETE button liberally.

So I'm curious to know: do you all podcast? Audio or video? Which do you particularly like, and why?

Because THREE (3) is a nice round number, here are three of my faves, to get the ball rolling.....

1) DIGITAL PLANET (BBC [British Broadcasting Service])--When I lived in Europe, I had a shortwave radio receiver, and fell in love w/ listening to the BBC. Now, of course, you can access all their various streams on the Web (a good thing, seeing as they've stopped shortwave service to North America), yet having to coordinate times to catch particular shows can be tricky. Podcasting has become my BBC radio TIVO....although not everything I'd like is available (o why won't they podcast EUROPE TODAY?) Still, I do get several streams, including a news digest and a commentary magazine. DIGITAL PLANET is notable for its weekly foray into new ways technology is being applied and implemented....I remember J wondering how much further cell phones could be pushed last week in class--and I think we all wonder that about any number of technologies...DIGITAL PLANET is something of a mind-stretcher that has opened me up to a wider range of technological potentials (and pitfalls too, but mostly potentials....it maintains a positive spin on tech world).....more info at http://www.bbc.co.uk , or search in iTunes.

2) THIS AMERICAN LIFE (NPR [National Public Radio] / WBEZ-CHICAGO)--Part of the Sunday Family Ritual in Bloomie was reading the Sunday papers in bed, listening to WEEKEND EDITION until 10, then THIS AMERICAN LIFE for the next hour after that. Ira Glass is brilliant--we got to see him on a tour preparing to try to move the show to Showtime as well....But as a radio guy, he's tops. The show excels at throwing you curveballs, truly "making the familiar strange." We're going to use a comic book he put together on how to do a radio show for my COMM 399 "Radio Studies" course this fall....more info at http://www.npr.org , or search in iTunes.

3) THE CURRENT SONG OF THE DAY (MPR [Minnesota Public Radio])--They blip me a new song for free every weekday that their hipster station is breaking. Invariably songs are piling up, but when I dig through I find some real jems amidst the so-so tracks....Also like the idea of them promoting local (MN) artist about once a week....(Wouldn't you like to get blipped new local Mass Music weekly? Being a recent transplant, I know I would, anyway....Dropkick who?).....Best track since subscribing: The Stooges' "My Idea of Fun"! More at http://minnesota.publicradio.org or on iTunes....

Come to think of it, all these podcasts originate from non-commercial public radio. That fits my listening pattern otherwise these past few years.....

So how about it? What kinds of podcasts do you all enjoy?

Making Media Now....

2007-06-04T05:53:00.000-07:00

...That's the name of the conference I was able to attend this last Friday at BU (thanks to my departmental travel grant). It was a one-day gathering of local media producers, with a particular emphasis on going digital. Highlights:

CAMERA SEMINAR--John Rule of Rule Broadcast Systems showed a series of High Definition (HD) cameras now out on the market for sale and/or rental. HD has become industry standard, and while high-end cameras are going for $25k and up, they're available for rental (which is usually the way productions go). My curiousity was piqued by the Panasonic P2, which was referred to as a "21st Century Bolex" (look it up)....A P2 is still a hefty investment for the department, but I Have A Dream....

DEMYSTIFYING DIGITAL FORMATS--720p vs 1080i vs 1080p....HD vs SD (Standard Definition! Who knew?)......The panel was moderated by Ed Krasnow from Massasoit, who was excellent....Conferences like this are ways for folks like us to finally meet one another, even if it seems crazy that we have to go to Boston (or points further) to do it....

PUTTING IT ALL INTO PERSPECTIVE--David Tames spoke as we finished our box lunches (mmmm, roast beef) on how he saw digital convergence finally locking into place. It felt like he gave us homework assignments, but in a good way. Need to check out blip.tv and joost (pronounced JUICED, I think some Estonians put that together if I am not mistaken)....Also, in addition to the aformentioned Henry Jenkins book CONVERGENCE CULTURE, he also recommended THE WEALTH OF NETWORKS (2006), THE LONG TAIL (2006), and THE FUTURE OF WEB VIDEO (2006)....

PRODUCING AND DELIVERING SHORT VIDEO ON THE WEB--David Tames of kino-eye.com and the lunch talk moderated this panel that was 2/3rds industry, 1/3rd academia. Mike Hudack from blip.tv and Joe Hurd from VideoEgg both discussed their video platform business models...Both are worth a look if you're interested in video blogging or seeing what folks are putting up as far as non-TV "TV shows" on the web....Anna von Someren from MIT had the most provocative take of the three, from my perspective. In discussing web aesthetics, she shifts away from things like cinematography and editing, emphasizing instead the importance of the end-user, emphasizing the importance of "context-based content," participation, and dynamism....To me, von Someren seemed to gesture towards our 220 discussion of multi-platform narrative from last week.

MAKING CONTENT INTERACTIVE--Michelle Haslell is a web consultant and co-founder of NYC-based Missing Pixel. Go to their site www.missingpixel.net to get a sense of the businesses connecting traditional and new media. To produce and maintain a low-end site, they're getting $1-15k; for mid-range, $25-60k; and high-end stuff nets $80-150k. The work flow necessary to make any interactive site worth its bandwidth is eye-opening....

Conferences like this are important for the mental stimulation, for the networking, for the product exposure, and for the teaching resources I'm able to bring back home. My advice: keep an eye out for opportunities to attend such conferences this next year....Heck, think about PRESENTING at one of these conferences! A good place to start is the BSC Undergraduate Research Symposium, held every semester....why not you?

Syllabus 2.0

2007-05-29T05:37:00.000-07:00

I sat down yesterday in the backyard, and found myself revamping the syllabus. Why do professors do such things? Behind the scenes, I think we like to think we're good tinkerers. Or, at least, that tinkering is important.

Moving a syllabus used in a regular semester to a 4-week summer session takes some adaptation. Plus, I'm going from 20-25 students down to a half-dozen. Constraints and opportunities...and Syllabus 1.0 wasn't taking full notice and advantage. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

No coincidence that I finished Henry Jenkins' CONVERGENCE CULTURE for 396 prep yesterday...Jenkins gestures towards media literacy, and in particular the fostering of a more participatory media culture, as his key pedagogical issue. Reading him this month (both this and FANS, GAMERS & BLOGGERS) pushed me to have students make blogs like this. But with a class of six, I realize I can bring in some additional production stuff the textbook offers and still keep it managable.

So a few chapters in theory are off, a whole week on media production practices is on, and a third chapter of media debates (docs & reality tv) are also now in the mix.

Plus, time-management issues gesture towards in-class screenings. Mr Ledezma would be proud of me.

Now if I could only get someone to post a comment....

Hope this doesn't B to the L-O-W

2007-05-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

What can I say--this is a test run....Seems to me that everyone taking a media class in 2007 should have their own blog....Can I get a witness?!