Holiday Tunes

It's finals week here. I have two today, two tomorrow, and then I'm done except for final grading. As far as that's concerned, I'm actually making really good progress. Other semesters might find me agonizing over final papers a bit more but I'm so anxious to have this semester O.V.E.R. that I'm blowing through the stacks on my desk at a good clip. I should have everything figured and submitted by Friday, I think.

Yesterday was Maryn's birthday and she turned 10 years old. It's crazy to me that I'm old enough to have a child that's been around for a decade but it's true. She got a ton of stuff, got to pick her favorite foods for dinner, took fancy reindeer-decorated cupcakes to school, and finished the night off by performing in her school's Christmas music program. (Oh, not to mention the fact that she got her ears pierced last week as part of her pre-birthday celebration.) It was a good day for her and I'm glad. She's a really cool kid and I couldn't ask for a better daughter.

The winter storm I wrote about last time finally passed and left us with several days of bright, shining sunlight blazing off of the wind-worn crust of snow that covered everything. Now it's just bitter cold. I can't complain really because winter held off here until well into December. It could have been so much worse. Plus, December is already half over and once you get past January and February, it's practically spring again anyway.

Still, I don't want to rush the season along just yet. In order to get into the mood, here are a few holiday faves:

Snow Day

It's like ice planet Hoth outside today. If one were around, I'd slice open a tauntaun with my lightsaber and stuff my entire family inside to keep them warm.

Anyway, the weather has prevented us from attending church. The Bishop texted this morning and said most members from outlying areas (Tonica being the most outlying there is) weren't coming in and that they would only be holding Sacrament Meeting. So we're here, hunkered down, weathering the storm.

I got a note from my Dissertation Committee advisor this morning. She's going on sabbatical next semester and so she was giving me her end-of-semester suggestions to prep. She was as encouraging and positive as she gets - she wrote "Can't wait to read it when you write it" at the end of the message. That was nice but the message itself was a long, single-spaced list of all the things I need to read, think about, address, question, compare, etc. It's a big list. A big ol' list. At the end, she stressed that I need to establish why Mormon cinema matters and why Richard Dutcher's films matter in the larger scheme of academic study. I realize this is an important point - it's something I emphasize with my own students with whatever they're writing about - there must be a connection to the larger world, it can't just be a few pages about something that happened to you. There has to be some kind of significance that goes beyond your own personal reaction to something.

It's important and I get that but, at the same time, her suggestions that there doesn't appear to be anything "edgy" about Dutcher's films, that they just seem like what one would expect from an institutional film by the Church itself, make me feel like she views me (or like I am) just a naive, uninformed dilettante. Now, obviously, she doesn't know anything about institutional LDS film because if she did, she'd realize the ways in which Dutcher's films depart from that standard. But still. Clearly, it takes very little to make me feel really overwhelmed with this whole thing. I'm hoping to spend Christmas break reading and writing and to get a jump start on my prospectus. I just need to get something on paper and get it rolling. Something is better than nothing.

On another note, we've watched a few movies over the last couple of days and, naturally, I have things to say:



Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
It's unlike any other movie you've seen. It borrows from video games, anime, sitcoms, music videos, etc. to make something unique. Its hipster, rat-ta-tat-tat dialogue and editing are not to everyone's taste but in terms of its aesthetic, ambition, and creativity, it's head and shoulders above any garbagy romcom or action flick you'll see this year.



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1
Holy crap. I haven't endured two and a half hours of anxiety-inducing tension like this in I don't know how long. When you compare it to the lighthearted fun of the first couple of films in the series, you'd never imagine they were related. It's dark, violent, not afraid of killing off beloved characters, and highly engaging. Suzy and I left the theater glad we saw it but not sure if we "enjoyed" it exactly. It was really good but wasn't pleasurable necessarily.



Twilight: New Moon
We rented it last night because we knew a snowstorm was coming and we knew we wanted a variety of things to watch in case we ended up being trapped. This is my first honest-to-goodness encounter with the Twilight business. Everything I knew up to this point was based on hearsay and second-hand info. I heard the writing of the books was bad. I've seen the specials on Oprah or whatever about Twi-hards and Team Edward vs. Team Jacob, etc. But now I've actually seen one of the movies and I guess all I can really speak to is that one film.

It's lame. I wanted to reach through the screen, grab Kristen Stewart by the hair, give her a good shake, and say, "Knock it off. I don't know what's worse - this selfish, needy, pathetic character or your breathy, stuttery, sullen version of her." Seriously, is there anything redeeming about Bella Swan at all? I'm all for an everyman (everywoman) character as a protagonist. Perfect heroes or heroines are uninteresting and common people as main characters are great. But does she have to be so utterly without value on her own? What does she do other than mope, sigh, and beg to be turned into a vampire so she and Edward can get it on? Lame.

The other thing that struck me is how the whole thing is just teenage wish fulfillment. The whole world revolves around her despite her selfishness. Hot, supernatural men love her. Other girls are jealous of her. She gets to spend all her time pouting and being desired. Her dad is attentive, loving, and ineffectual. Her mom isn't around to say, "Snap the hell out it, girly!"

I hope Bella Swan isn't thought to be any kind of hero or role model for young girls. If so, what does that say about the kind of young women we want our daughters to be?

Also, Taylor Lautner can't act. His pectoral muscles emote more effectively than his face does.

So there you have it. We also rented the Robert Zemeckis version of A Christmas Carol and Iron Man 2. I didn't pay attention to A Christmas Carol close enough to say anything about it but Maryn and Avery seemed to enjoy it a lot. Iron Man 2 is, you know, a guy in a robot suit beating up other guys in robot suits - so, you know, far from what we'd call "art" but still smart, funny, and enjoyable to watch.

Dread

There's Judge Dredd, the judge/jury/executioner from UK comics. (Made into an awful film with Sly Stalone in the 90s, being remade right now with Karl Urban in the title role.)



There's Dred Scott, the African-American slave who unsuccessfully sued to win his freedom.



Of course, there's always the dread lock.



But then there's just good ol' dread, that feeling of fear and/or uneasiness you get in anticipation of something bad. Frankly, I wish I had more Judge Dread or even dreadlocks rather than feeling regular dread.

Nevertheless, that's where I am. Every morning for the last ten days or so, I've opened my eyes feeling like something bad is going to happen that day. Every minor thing that happens makes me think, "This is it. Here it comes." Parker developed a rash a couple of nights ago and I was convinced she was seriously sick. (She wasn't. She's a baby. They get rashes.) There's no logical reason for it but I just feel like something bad is coming. Usually, it wears off as I go through my day but it's exhausting to live like this, you know?

It's better when I have things to do. Teaching really helps because it's an arena in which I feel very comfortable and confident and I have very specific things that I have to get done. Having too much time on my hands is bad news. The day after Thanksgiving, I drove to Grand Island, Nebraska to meet my brother, Dan, so we could trade cars. (I was returning my Mom's van and Dan brought me Dad's Rendezvous which Suzy and I are buying.)



Nine or ten hours of nothing but fields and random, nameless fear is a rough way to spend a holiday. I obsessed about my job, my mom's health, my health, Suzy's health, living in Tonica, my woeful lack of progress on my dissertation, my upcoming translation exam, the girls growing up, the fact that Parker still isn't talking yet, and on and on. It was really good to see Dan but being in unfamiliar surroundings, with another day of driving waiting for me, it was hard to shake the feelings of dread and just relax.

The semester is coming to an end in just a week and a half. I've really been looking forward to that but given my reaction to having a lot of free time recently, I'm not as fired up as I was. I do hope to dedicate some real time to creating a draft of my prospectus. If I can get a big chunk of that done over Christmas, it will really help get some momentum for the rest of the dissertation.

I don't like feeling as though I'm damaged goods and I definitely don't want my dad's death and my reaction to it to become the defining elements of my life. It's a big deal and I realize that trying to downplay it too much won't be good for my mental or emotional health. But at the same time, I don't want to be that guy who can only talk/think about that one thing.

Ingrid Michaelson "Be OK"

While I'm at it, here's my girly, folkie, acoustic mantra-song of the moment:

Dala - Levi Blues

I have a long history of loving folky, acoustic, female, guitar-playing types - Indigo Girls, Disappear Fear, Rebecca Scott, etc. After listening to The Mountain Stage on the radio last weekend when I was driving back from Nebraska, I have a new addition to the girly-twangy pantheon:

From Today's "The Writer's Almanac"

It was on this day in 1818 that the state of Illinois was admitted to the Union.

Today Illinois is the 'most average state' in America. It was given this distinction by the Associated Press, which analyzed data from the U.S. census, looking at things like income and age and race, as well as education, immigration, rural population percentages and more than a dozen other factors. The Associated Press concluded that Illinois mirrored the makeup of the country as a whole better than any other state. Second was Oregon, and then Michigan, and Washington, and Delaware. The 'least average state' in the Union: West Virginia.

Illinois' official slogan is the 'Land of Lincoln.' And it was on this day in 1839 that 30-year-old Illinois state assemblyman Abraham Lincoln was admitted to practice law in the United States Circuit Court. For the next 16 years, he 'rode the circuit,' which meant that he traveled around to different counties in Illinois arguing cases while their circuit courts were in session. It was during these two decades on the Circuit Court, litigating disputes over canal boats and river barges and railroad charters and defending accused murderers, that Abraham Lincoln learned to give really good speeches. Twenty-one years after he was admitted to the Circuit Court, he was elected to the American presidency, and he's now known as one of the best orators in presidential history.

He delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863 at the dedication of a cemetery where tens of thousands of Confederate and Union soldiers were being re-buried. The speech is 10 sentences long, just 272 words. In it, he said that our nation was founded on the idea of equality and that the war was being fought over that idea.

In his second inaugural address, which he gave a few weeks before being assassinated, he stood on a wet and muddy Pennsylvania Avenue and talked about the Civil War, saying:

'Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.'

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.'

Abraham Lincoln once said, 'America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.'