Science News Cycle, posted on May 18, 2009.

PR and Prejudice: why rape story erred, posted in The Guardian on July 4, 2009.

Since the heat wave seems to be leaving, I took myself to Boystown for the Pride Parade today. It was supposed to start at noon, so I got there at 11 for a good spot. I picked the corner of Belmont and Halsted, where the parade was supposed to start, because I'd be right there when things kicked off at noon, and in the meantime, I could entertain myself watching the preparations.

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All this coverage of Michael Jackson's death got me thinking. I should design a course (for when I have a Ph.D and a teaching job) about dance in popular culture. You could include stuff on mass media, Nijinsky, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Busby Berkeley, Elvis Presley, Broadway musicals, American Bandstand, teenage dance crazes, Michael Jackson, the image of the dancing male body, break dancing, dance marathons, Wheaton College, all sorts of things.


ETA: Oooo, and bhangra, too! Jazzercise, folkloric dance troupes, drag . . .

The ETA Strikes Back: meggins suggests adding So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With The Stars to the curriculum.

. . . Lhude sing oy vey!

In the Red Eye (the free edition of the Chicago Tribune for people with limited attention spans or who just want a free crossword puzzle), Mark Bazer goes for the win.

Well, only a year late, I finally got around to seeing Prince Caspian. I have to say, I'm not massively impressed. Admittedly, the book is probably one of the more difficult ones to translate to film (The Last Battle would probably be the most difficult, considering that big You Did Not Just Go There moment at the end), both because of its massive timeskip and the somewhat jarring change in tone between Lion Witch and it. But . . . yeah. Even with those strikes against it, the right director can still manage to make a movie that's even more out of place.

( Here's how )

I took my transcription exam this morning. Me, a piano, a few pieces of staff paper, a CD player, and two minutes and forty-nine seconds of a man playing the Ahavo Rabbo mode on the violin. Since this was a written practicum, it has to be graded, so I don't know the results yet. If I pass it, then that's all my practica done, and only the Special Fields exam and the dissertation proposal needed to advance to candidacy.

Fingers crossed!

juno_magic asked, and she shall receive:

It's word-association time! Quick, I say "Liverpool," what do you think of? The Beatles, of course!

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I took great advantage of being in Liverpool to walk around the city and see interesting things. I skipped the BFE business meeting to take a walk, and I also had most of Sunday afternoon after the conference was over to look around. Here are some of the things I saw on my wanderings:

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It has been far too long since my trip to Liverpool for BFE, and I've just been way too busy to post the photographs. But it's a nice rainy day outside, and I have some time, so let me show you Liverpool!

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. . . some racist anti-Semite has to go and start shooting in the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

Dude is 88 years old. My grandmother is that age, and she's frail and doesn't walk, hear, or see so well. But this guy, blessed with robust health in his late 80s, chooses to use it to bring a rifle into the Holocaust Museum and shoot a guard. That is so many kinds of unfair.

Introducing America's First Black, Female Rabbi.

Words cannot describe how awesome this is. If she were a cantor, she'd get an entire chapter of La Dissertation to herself.

I just got out of my Jewish music research tutorial. No more classes. Ever. I have Finished My Coursework. One practicum exam, one Special Fields exam, and one dissertation proposal are the only things standing between me and candidacy now.

. . .

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just got an e-mail yesterday from Aunt and Uncle Pony. Cousin Halbarad's wife had a baby boy on Wednesday! Aunt and Uncle Pony used their impartial grandparent skillz to declare him the most beautiful baby ever, and I have to admit, the photograph they sent does not lie -- he is a beautiful baby. Though also a pissed-off one, as he was crying at the top of his lungs at the whole indignity of being shoved into the world when the picture was taken.

I hope Cousin Halbarad and family decide to come east for a visit sometime soon -- I want to meet the newest cousin in person!

I'm back from WisCon!

Had a fantastic time, including plenty of quality time spent with a good portion of my f-list. I'll do a more detailed post later, but just this for now:

lcohen, thank you thank you thank you for thinking up this neat opportunity to go to WisCon and sing!
rhobike, thank you for the ride up.
canyon_lady, it was great to sing with you, and thank you for breakfast this morning.
berzerker_prime, I'm glad we were able to get together and hang out.
cabell, your panel was lots of fun. Was that Professor Barcode you were hanging out with at that cafe?
meckinock, good to see you again! Thanks for spotting us in the great sound-vacuum of the Gathering.
dawtheminstrel, I loved the reading. That was a neat bonus, to see other people enjoy your work.

City of New Orleans Photo Safety Program, you suck hairy monkey balls.

Off to WisCon today. Must remember to warm up in the car.

I sang bass at our regular sing last night, just for that little bit of extra practice, especially with the tricky bits like the "O my son!" part of "David's Lamentation" and That Fa On Which The Rest Of The Bass Line Depends in "Africa." I do feel much more solid on both of them now, which is excellent.

I can't wait to see people there!

Since canyon_lady did it, I can, too!

I'm getting excited about WisCon! Come to the gathering, and sing with me and my friends! I'll be singing bass, lcohen will be on treble, canyon_lady will sing alto, and rhobike will sing tenor, so there will be someone to help you on whatever part you choose. If you don't think you can sing, well, we'll teach you! No one should feel left out.

I was drafted to cater the post-keynote reception for a conference on music in South Asia going on today and tomorrow down at school. I was told that the reception would be for "twenty to forty" people, which is organizer-speak for "I have absolutely no idea how many people will be coming to this." As it turned out, at least forty, possibly fifty, people wanted to hear this particular keynote speaker. Fortunately, all the cooking and shopping and totally anal compulsive planning was up to the task. Everyone loved the reception, and all the food was eaten, which is a great relief to me, because I don't have to bring any of it home.

I'm going to have to start charging the music department to do this next year.

Speaking of which, I got re-hired as a TA for the Intro to World Music class! Yay! I think there were more senior grad students ahead of me who got the independent instructor slots, so I am happy to TA again.

In other news, this article annoys me. I don't disagree with the vast majority of what Mr. Herbert has to say -- there is indeed a severe racial bias in the way that news is covered in the United States, and the ongoing slaughter of Chicago Public School children is a highly newsworthy event. But what annoys -- irritates, angers -- me is when he dismisses the murder of Johanna Justin-Jinich as just another sensational story of an attack on a young, pretty, white woman.

Johanna Justin-Jinich was Jewish, and she was specifically targeted as a Jew, by a man who wrote in his journal that he thought that murdering Jews was a good and acceptable thing to do. This was a murder that caused the town's only synagogue to close its doors for several days in fear. This was a murder with anti-Semitism at its heart.

Anti-Semitism still exists in this world. It did not die with Hitler. The fact that the majority of Jews in the United States are middle-to-upper-class and white, does not make them any less Jewish or any less targets for determined anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism exists, just as racism exists. Don't ignore either of them.

Since there are plenty of people on my f-list who will appreciate this.

Tom Shippey's review of the new publication of Tolkien's Sigurd and Gudrún in the TLS, the review wonderfully entitled Tolkien out-Wagners Wagner.

The Pony Parents came to visit this weekend, which is why I haven't been around much. I loved having them! We went out to Chinatown and to the Velvet Lounge (taking the Pony Parents to a jazz club was a trip in and of itself), we traveled way out past the edges of town to find the cemetery where my grandparents (Dad Pony's parents) are buried, we visited the university, and they got to meet some of the Music Department personalities, the Cubbies won several games in a row, it didn't rain, so my roof didn't leak . . . life was good.



ETA: And then the music graduate students had a margarita party yesterday. This ended happily with a rather plastered Pony, but a nice long sleep definitely helps with that.