Halloween Hijinks

The Dangers of Sending E-mail While Tired and/or Driving

"Mr town I'm going to be a few minutes late to class thus morning. My power wet off last night and my alarm never went off. Sorry

Sent from my iPhone"


Just call me Mr. Town!

Fall Break

Today (all of it, the whole 24 hours) is Fall Break at IVCC. I'm not complaining about its brevity because I did take almost all of last week off after all. It just kind of makes me laugh. It's like Spring Break at Ricks College - they'll let you out of class just early enough on Friday afternoon to drive to SLC for April conference. No time to fit a Girls Gone Wild performance in that window, you know?

Anyway, I just took Maryn-Martone-Balone and AJB to school and neglected to mention that the rest of us will be heading to Bloomington for a few hours while they're busily studying. We have a couple of things to return and will be probably enjoying ourselves at Olive Garden for lunch.



I just finished watching the pilot episode of Justified. I'd downloaded to it watch on the plane last week and never got around to it. The thing about pilots is that the show is usually unformed and uneven. I've been watching the first season of 30 Rock in reruns and am shocked and how it's practically a different show -- Liz is confident and capable, Jenna is relatively sane, Tracy is not a complete buffoon, etc. I enjoy the jacked-up surreal version that developed sometime toward the end of the second season more but it's interesting to see where it all started.

With Justified, surprisingly, there's none of that. Admittedly, the show is only two seasons old. It's right at the point when 30 Rock really started to evolve. So if this season it suddenly becomes something entirely different (which I doubt), I guess that will be fine. But for now, I just really appreciate how whole and fully-imagined the whole thing is. Harlan County is a universe unto itself and it's there as much in the first episode as it is in the 26th.

I'm not usually a man-crush type. It's just not in my nature. I think it has something to do with not caring about professional sports - I'm not in the habit of having a deep personal admiration for someone named Payton or Jimmer or whatever. However, I have to admit I have a man-crush on Raylan Givens, the protagonist of Justified. He's just so cool, you know? Ice-water in his veins and a Stetson on his head, he makes me want to invest in a handgun and possibly some cowboy boots. How many guys are so cool that they make you want to buy Western wear?

Note that I admire Raylan, not Timothy Olyphant, the actor who plays him. Olyphant is obviously talented and clearly a kind of unofficial successor to Clint Eastwood (he voices the Eastwood character in Johnny Depp's Rango cartoon) but it is the creation that is Raylan that I think is awesome. Olyphant was the star of a movie called Hitman that I have no interest in seeing and he was the bad guy in the most recent Die Hard which I haven't gotten around to seeing. What I like, I guess, is the combination of Elmore Leonard/Graham Yost's words on paper and the way Olyphant brings them to life.

Anyway, the new season will feature perpetual bad guy Neal McDonough and the surprisingly versatile Idris Elba as villains. It premieres in January and that sounds like a pretty good birthday present to me. (By the way, those of you who know who he is, did you know that Idris Elba is actually British? I had no idea until I heard him in a radio interview the other day. I defy you to listen to his accent as Charles Miner, the upper-level manager who replaces Michael Scott during the Michael Scott Paper Company fiasco on the Office, and tell me you can detect even the slightest clue that the guy isn't American.)

Anyway, off to return stuff and enjoy endless pasta!

Back in Town

It has been a busy couple of weeks to say the least. I went to Arizona last week to present a paper at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference. My work paid for the flight, hotel, car, etc. so it was pretty sweet. The weather was perfect -- not too hot -- and it was fun driving around amid palm trees, saguaro cactus, and restaurants that serve things other than fried chicken and gross pasta. Very exotic.



The conference was fun and rewarding -- I always get charged up by things like that. The conference covers everything from really practical teaching stuff to super-obscure academic topics so I got some new tips on teaching and also heard some great talks on everything from the LDS pioneer paintings of C.C.A. Christensen to the excellent post-apocalyptic graphic novel Y: The Last Man. I met some nice people and my presentation seemed to go over pretty well.



There were two real highlights of the trip that had nothing to do with the conference. The first was Friday night when I took an evening tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's summer compound, Taliesin West. I have been an architecture geek my entire life and to see this 20th century master's house, office, drafting room, theater, etc. was just a huge thrill. I would touch things and think, "This was his desk. He sat right here!" About midway through the tour, I remember thinking to myself, "I could not possibly love this more."



The best highlight, however, was hanging out with the Norman family in Mesa. They graciously took me in, let me play with their kids, and talk their collective ear off. It was fun to listen to tales of Jeff burning scorpions with a blowtorch and to eat homemade ice cream for a breakfast dessert. Mel is always fun and interesting to talk to and her kids are among the best around. I particularly love that, prior to my arrival, super-niece Maia wandered around the house saying, "Do you know that Mark Brown is coming to our house?" I love that she knows that I'm her uncle and calls me that now but I kind of miss her referring to me simply as "Mark Brown."

As great as the trip was, by the end, I was pretty anxious to get home and see everyone. While I was gone, Suzanne traveled to Michigan to visit her family. She clearly has an iron constitution to take two older bickering daughters and one younger, utterly out of control daughter on the road for four days. I mean, that's practically one of the tasks from the old Fear Factor show. I think they all had a good time but I also think we were all glad to be back together.

One thing that often strikes me when I travel is how small and, in some ways, limited the Illinois Valley is. I forget that not everyone in the universe wears hoodies and sneakers to church. I forget that there are places where exercising is something that a lot of people do -- and not just to get in shape for high school football. I forget that there are places where a college education doesn't make you a freak. I forget there are places where there are lots of Mormons and they are friendly and helpful. I forget there are places that have more than one class per grade in the elementary school. I forget there are places that have bookstores. I forget what it's like to live close to family.

I have so much to be grateful for. I have a good job in a terrible economy. I have a warm, comfortable house where I enjoy spending time. I have three healthy, happy children. I have an excellent wife. But, if I'm honest, sometimes coming back to Illinois bums me out a little. Is that bad? I should probably be happy where I'm planted, I guess. But at the same time, it's not a bad thing to be honest about how you feel, is it? I know the grass is always greener elsewhere and that there are plenty of places much worse than where we are. But there's nothing wrong with hoping for better in the future while trying to be at peace with my present circumstances.

Anyway, enough of that. It's autumn in Illinois and that's a pretty nice time of year. The leaves are changing, the nights are cool, and everything feels like it's holding its breath waiting for winter. Better live it up while we can.