Two Months as Dean Monday, Sep 21 2009 

academia thisgaudygildedstage 3:19 pm

Now that I’ve been dean for a couple of months, I thought that I would check in and write a little about what it’s been like so far. In sum, I love it!  I’m pretty sure I have the best job on campus. Our students are great, as one would expect of honors students. So it’s not difficult to love that aspect of my job. But I’m also enjoying all of the other aspects too. 

That said, being a dean is even more unlike being a faculty member than I had thought. It was only 6 months ago that I sent in my application for this position; I look back at what I thought then and can’t help but think how naive and unprepared I was to assume this role. The past two months have already taught me more about being an administrator and about myself than I could ever have imagined possible in so short a time. 

The months of July and August were fairly quiet. All but a few of our students were out of town, so I had plenty of time to read files that were left by my predecessors. It was a great time to learn about the history of our college and to find out how the previous dean had dealt with (or tried to deal with) various issues. Many of her efforts were unsuccessful, and it was probably important to learn up front just how difficult it can be to change the way things are. 

Then the fall quarter hit.

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SotW: Million Dollar Bill by Whitney Houston Wednesday, Sep 16 2009 

music thisgaudygildedstage 2:58 pm

Whitney’s back! And to celebrate, I’m listening to “Million Dollar Bill,” the second single off her new album, I Look to You:

I’ve long been a Whitney fan — her voice and talent have long been unparalleled in my book. But I’ve never been the kind of fan who paid any attention to her private life. I’m not particularly interested in her marriage and divorce, her drug use, or anything else about her life off-stage. I don’t even watch the various interviews she’s done with Dianne Sawyer or Oprah Winfrey. I just want to hear her sing.

So, I’m glad that she’s back to doing what I love best: singing. I haven’t downloaded the new album yet; I wasn’t especially impressed by the first single. But this new song is just plain fun — a great pop song that’s fun to sing along with. This is what Whitney should be doing with her career right now, I think.

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Rudo y Cursi: A Review Sunday, Sep 13 2009 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 3:39 pm

Last night, PJ and I watched Rudo y Cursi, which reunites Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, who had previously starred together in one my favorite movies, Y tu mamá también. In this movie, they play two brothers who compete against each other for their mother’s love, for their social status in the local community, and, most importantly, in soccer. Here’s the trailer:

Garcia Bernal plays Tato, who is a talented scorer, and Luna plays Beto, a great goalie. Tato is, as his nickname suggests, also a big romantic, someone who falls in love deeply and quickly without thinking it through. He’s also passionate about  singing, which is the career he really wants. Beto is married and has several children. He’s always been the responsible brother — he’s even the foreman of a banana factory when the movie begins — except for one thing: he has a major gambling problem.

Shortly after the movie begins, the two brothers are discovered by a talent scout who wants to manage their football careers. Both brothers are older than the usual rookie, but the scout thinks he can help them anyway.

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SotW: Paparazzi by Lady Gaga Wednesday, Sep 9 2009 

music thisgaudygildedstage 2:29 pm

The remixes of Lady Gag’s “Paparazzi” were released this week in iTunes. I immediately downloaded them and started listening to them, since I already liked the album version. The original video was also great:

This video harkens back to the good old days of video art in which Madonna, Mariah Carey, and Michael Jackson made little films rather than “just” music videos. Plus, Alexander Skarsgård is too hot for words. And Lady Gaga as a semi-crippled woman is both amazing and totally crazy.

Of the remixes, my favorite is the Moto Blanco mix:

It’s got a great, danceable rhythm. So, I’ve decided that this remix is my song of the week. I’ll include the lyrics after the break.

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Seraphine: A Review Monday, Sep 7 2009 

art and movies thisgaudygildedstage 10:27 am

On Friday, PJ and I saw Seraphine, a movie about Seraphine Louis, a French painter who lived from 1864 to 1942. Here’s the trailer:

Louis painted in the “naive style” and was discovered by Wilhelm Uhde, who was one of the earliest collectors of works by Pablo Picasso and George Braque. Louis was a domestic servant for middle class families when Uhde first saw her one of her still-lifes in 1912. His patronage of her work was interrupted by World War I.  He fled the advancing German army and did not see Louis again until 1927. Uhde then worked to get Louis’s paintings exhibited, and in 1929 she began to see great success. But the Great Depression undercut her ability to sell her work, and in 1932 she was admitted to a mental hospital, where she spent the rest of her life.

Seraphine recounts Louis’s discovery by and subsequent relationship with Uhde. Yolande Moreau plays the title role. Not knowing anything about Louis before seeing this movie made watching Moreau’s performance more interesting, I think. Early in the film, we see that Seraphine isn’t like everyone else. At first, this just seems to be the stereotypical “artist’s temperament.” Later we realize that she’s suffered from mental issues all along. Moreau therefore has the difficult job of conveying to the audience Seraphine’s mental instability without making her seem totally crazy from the get go. I thought she did a great job of making us care about her character. She also gives us a great sense of Louis’s connection of painting as a religious experience.

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SotW: Growing Up Beside You by Paolo Nutini Friday, Sep 4 2009 

music thisgaudygildedstage 3:11 pm

This week’s song of the week is Paolo Nutini’s “Growing Up Beside You.” Here’s a great live version I found on YouTube:

This song is off Nutini’s new album, Sunny Side Up. It’s not the first single — yet again I prefer a different track on the album than the one that’s been released as a single/video, which is “Candy,” which is also a catchy song.

I haven’t listened to this album enough yet to decide what I think about it overall, but I love Nutini’s voice and its rock/folk quality. So many of today’s “artists” can’t sing live (does that make me sound like an old crank?!); Nutini is even better live than recorded, I think. Sometimes his producers drain some of the uniqueness from his voice, I think, to make him sound more mainstream. It’s his difference that attracts me to his music.

He’s definitely a musician I want to continue to hear from.

 

15 Books Wednesday, Sep 2 2009 

books thisgaudygildedstage 8:56 pm

One of my friends from graduate school recently tagged me in a note on facebook. Here’s the prompt she answered (slightly corrected by me) and wanted her friends to complete:

Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it: fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you, first fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what books my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks, and tag people in the note-upper right hand side.)

I completed my list, but since I didn’t elaborate on why I chose the books I chose, I thought I would blog about them here. (These aren’t in any particular order.)

1. Faggots by Larry Kramer. A few years ago I started teaching this novel in my Lesbian and Gay Literature class. I wrote about one of those experiences here. I recently started rereading this novel just for fun. I love how Kramer takes a large cast of characters and uses them to critique the sexual mores of the 1970s. It’s a great and inadvertently tragic satire.

2. Becoming a Man by Paul Monette. I haven’t ever taught Becoming a Man, though I did teach Borrowed Time: A AIDS Memoir. Where Borrowed Time is unbelievably tragic, Becoming a Man is a hopeful autobiography about coming out and getting angry at the way gay people and especially people with HIV are treated in America. I read it as an undergraduate and loved it. It was integral to my own coming out process. I started rereading this book too earlier this year, but it got away from me as work piled up.

3. Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. I used to think Agatha Christie was the greatest detective novelist ever until I read this novel by Sayers. I reread it a year ago and fell in love with it all over again. Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey are one of the great romantic couples of modern literature. This novel also makes great use of Oxford as a locale. I wrote about reading the LPW novels here.

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SotW: Wanna Be Starting Something Saturday, Aug 29 2009 

music thisgaudygildedstage 11:20 pm

Tonight I went over to my friend Michael’s house and then out to dinner. After dinner we met up with a couple of his friends for a drink.

One of his friends, Justin, is obsessed with Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Starting Something.” He gave us a ride back over to my friend’s house. As we drove, we listened to this song, which is now going to be stuck in my head. It’s way too catchy!

I was never much of a Michael Jackson fan — Tina Turner and Madonna were more my style. But this song made me interested in Thriller again, so I downloaded it from iTunes and am listening to it from start to finish really for the first time. It’s still not exactly my thing, but the big singles are all amazing pop songs. Jackson’s death really is the end of an era.

I’ll post the lyrics after the break.

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Visiting Venice Friday, Aug 28 2009 

museums and travel thisgaudygildedstage 7:09 pm

The last part of our trip to Italy earlier this summer was to Venice. I guess it goes without saying that Venice is unlike any other place I’ve ever been. This is the only place I’ve ever visited that had absolutely no automobiles. You get where you’re going either by walking or by boat. It’s totally foreign to everything I’ve ever experienced as an American.

Ultimately, I have to say that I loved it, but the Venice part of our trip was complicated by two significant factors. First, I was exhausted. We had already been walking a lot for more than a week by the time we arrived in Venice. In that regard, I was pretty much over this vacation. My feet hurt, my legs were tired, and I just wanted to go home. More importantly, on the second day we were there was got a message from our house sitter that one of our cats was severely ill and might be dying. Not a great way to end a vacation. Again, I just wanted to go home.

Despite these obstacles, we decided to persevere and try to enjoy ourselves. We couldn’t get home early, there was nothing we could do to help Marlowe until we got back to the states, and you never know if you’re ever going to have the opportunity to visit a place like Venice again, so we decided to walk more slowly and just try to forget our troubles. It didn’t entirely work, and we both spent time crying over what might be awaiting us when we got home, but ultimately I couldn’t help but love Venice.

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Men’s Semis at the Western & Southern Sunday, Aug 23 2009 

tennis thisgaudygildedstage 7:55 pm

PJ and I spent most of the weekend in Cincinnati. For as long as I’ve lived in Ohio, I’ve wanted to go to the Western & Southern Tennis Tournament in Mason, OH. We almost went last year. I was determined to go this year no matter what.

So, we drove over the Cincinnati on Friday, had a nice time downtown, and then went to the men’s semifinal matches on Saturday. We also got to see the end of the first men’s doubles match, in which Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonnic played Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles.

Nestor and Zimonjic (above) won in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3. I only saw the last few games of the match, but it was fun to watch Nestor and Zimonjic work together so seamlessly. They seem an unlikely pair in some ways, Nestor is a little older than your average tennis player (he’s 36), and Zimonjic is beefier than most tennis players (the ATP website lists him at 200 lbs. whereas Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are listed at 188 and 187 lbs.).

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