Thanks for Sharing.

I'm debating with myself whether I should respond to, ignore, or delete comments like the one from "anonymous" to this post. I appreciate the criticism. I like it when my blog becomes something more than just me sending my thoughts into a vacuum, but, besides the fact that anonymous comments are kind of creepy and underhanded in general, I'm not sure how comments like this, which seem to come from a resentment about something other than my blog post, shed any light on the subject. On the other hand, maybe I'm just feeling insulted or guilty and that's why I think this person is full of shit.

I wish my shy commenter would at least sign his or her name to his or her words of wisdom.

We Can All Relax Now.

The pressure is off. I got my first B -- in Texas Political History. The grade for the course comes solely from scores on 3 exams. The first two exams had 35 questions each and the third one had 30. The total of the three scores is curved so that the top 25 scores in the class get an A, the next 20 get a B, the next 20, a C, etc. I got a 75, and the cutoff for an A was 77. You wouldn't believe these exams. I've never seen anybody pack a multiple-choice exam so full of obscure trivia.

I kind of enjoyed the course because the subject is interesting to me, but the exams -- and I studied hard for them -- required more memorization than I can manage, I guess. My consolation for the low grade is that I learned a lot.

Grumble.

The real dramatic difference between college back when I was college age and college now is that everyone is connected by email and web. U.T. has a web service called Blackboard where professors post course materials and grades, etc., there are discussion forums, they can email us with announcements, and we can email them, or our T.A.'s. And students can email everyone in the class.

So, especially around test time, there's a flurry of mass emails from students, most of them asking for the notes from a particular day when they missed class. I had 8 of them in my inbox this morning, with excuses ranging from, "I missed that day because I had my chemotherapy treatment in Houston," to "I have no excuse. I just really hated going to the boring class. Thanks!"

The ones that really get on my nerves are the emails asking for information that's in the syllabus or that could easily be gotten by contacting the professor or T.A., like "What dates does the exam tomorrow cover?" Would you send an email to 200 people for something you could get by sending an email to one? Kids today!

There's so much talk about academic dishonesty now. Every course syllabus has a required section explaining exactly what cheating is, because I guess teenagers don't know by the time they get to college that it's wrong to copy answers from someone's test or to turn in someone else's work as your own. But all this pleading for other people's class notes doesn't strike me as exactly ethical. In fact, it doesn't seem any more unethical to lift your research paper from Wikipedia than to send an email to your whole class asking to copy someone's notes in exchange for baking them cupcakes. Does it?

Work.

This is the closest I've ever come to a flame war on my blog. How exciting. People have strong feelings about work. Typically, I go back and forth on it. I've been having this conversation in my head in one form or another since I was a teenager and it's only gotten more divergent as I've gotten older and, maybe, clearer about the issues at stake.

The notion of a civil society where everyone follows the rules and contributes has a strong pull for me. We're better when we work together, and sometimes we have to do unpleasant things for the good of society. I have my utopian fantasies. The trouble always seems to be that these things don't ever really work unless there's a strong authoritarian element. Some people just want to do what they want to do.

It's always been major drama to get me to do anything I don't want to do -- ask my mom and dad about mowing the lawn or cleaning the garage when I was in high school -- and the times when I've had a regular job (like most of my twenties and thirties when I worked two jobs -- all day for a paycheck and all night for art) are times when, looking back, I see that I was unhappy more than not. But that's not your problem, is it? What's more important, my happiness or making the world go 'round?

An old friend visited recently. When I met him years ago he reminded me of my father. He grew up in the same area as my dad, their temperaments and accents are the same. As I got to know him better, the resemblance grew stronger. Like my dad, my friend is a lovable curmudgeon. He is a dear man, naturally generous and good, the kind of person you feel fortunate to have as a friend. But on the other hand, he always seems unhappy, he's judgmental, pessimistic, irritable, put upon, complains about everything. It's that dark, sad side of him that reminds me most of my father.

During this recent visit, I realized the other thing he and my dad have in common. They both worked all their lives at jobs they hated. For decades they spent most of their days at soul-crushing, humiliating jobs working for big companies that didn't appreciate them and which left them little time or energy for anything that brought them joy, like hobbies or friends or sitting on the porch with a beer watching the grass grow.

When my father retired a few years ago, his temperament changed overnight. He's still a curmudgeon, but he's lighter, funnier, he has more energy. He seems happy now in a way that I never remember him being. It's a change in outlook that feels familiar to me. When I quit my day job in 2001 I suddenly felt very different too, and it started a whole cascade of changes in my life and attitude that I wouldn't trade for all the financial security in the world. I wish my friend were closer to retirement age.

(I feel a need to defend myself a bit from the commenter who suggested I suck it up and get a job. First, my issue with that craigslist ad was with the falseness of it. The gall of asking people to pretend to be ecstatic about a demeaning minimum-wage job. Generally, the people applying for that kind of job are people who don't have a lot of choices. It's like saying, "I'm going to slap you really hard across the face, and I want you to smile when I do it." I think it's a symptom of a sickness in our society that is caused by corporate culture worming its way into every aspect of our lives.

And regarding me: I do work hard. I'll admit that I guard my leisure time fiercely, but I work hard. I just don't usually get paid for it.)

Where Am I?

This is the kind of ad that I'm scrolling through, looking for work. I find this process so profoundly depressing, for reasons I've whined about enough.

*Do you have a great smile and personality?
*Do you radiate energy that is felt by those around you?

Texadelphia is looking for Customer Service Reps that embody a great attitude and exhibit the ability to connect with our customers. We have immediate opportunties at all of our locations for day/night, part-time/full-time positions.

Here are a few of the qualities and expectations that we require for this position:

*An awesome disposition.
*Energy that is easily noticed by others.
*A charisma that is "contagious" to our customers and your fellow employees.
*The ability to suggestively sell our menu offerings.
*The utmost of integrity, honesty, and dedication to the position.

As a customer service rep with Texadelphia, you set the feel for what our customers experience. We are looking for special candidates that can create atmosphere and maintain the experience that Texadelphia has been known for 30 years - an atmosphere that is cool and comfortable from a customer's viewpoint.

A couple of things to consider when applying:

*We don't wear uniforms.
*The qualified candidate will make $8+/hour + tips (usually $2-$3 extra/hour depending on your ability to engage the customer).
*We provide balanced, consistent schedules.
*You will be joining a cohesive teamwork environment that will support your success as you will support your fellow employees.

***

We look forward to meeting YOU!

What universe is this, where fast food workers radiate energy that is felt by those around them? Like, for instance, the kind of energy you might find leaking from the gates of hell? I worked at McDonald's for a summer when I was a teenager, and I'm almost positive I didn't have an awesome disposition. I'm not qualified for this, and I'm not qualified for the high-paying corporate jobs either -- the ads for which are virtually identical to this one -- even though I've done both.

The older I get, the more alien I feel. I can't live in the world of these ads. I don't breathe the same air.

I'm in Love with Ann-Margret.

I finally picked a Texas movie to write my paper about. State Fair is, as far as I know, the only score Rogers & Hammerstein wrote for a film that wasn't a stage show first. The story is that Fox threw it together quickly to capitalize on the popularity of Oklahoma which was still running on Broadway. The book is pretty lame, and the songs seem almost like very good parody of R & H. A lot of musical themes evoke more developed themes from earlier and later shows of theirs, like South Pacific and The Sound of Music.

In 1961, they made it over, leaving out half the original songs and adding a few new ones by Richard Rogers (I think Hammerstein was dead by then). The remake starred Pat Boone, Ann-Margret, and Bobby Darin, who are all very good. And they moved it from Iowa to Texas, filmed it on location at the fairgrounds in Dallas, just a little over a year before the JFK assassination. I think the general consensus is that it's bad. Parts of it are embarrassingly hokey, but I think it's a pretty interesting film overall. Some of the songs, especially the new ones, are great. Ann-Margret and Pat Boone are really good in it.

I'm arguing in my paper that the movie is Texas's, and by extension America's, fever dream of anxiety about the possible triumph of the modern world over an agrarian innocence we hold as sacred, Texas's final desperate (but unconvincing) assertion of its purity on the eve of a very public loss of innocence in 1963.

Texan-ness.

I watched an awful movie last night called Moon Over Miami, with Betty Grable and Don Ameche. I have to write a paper for my American Studies class on a film about Texas. This movie mostly takes place in Miami (duh), but it's about waitresses in a Texas drive-in who hatch a scheme to go to Miami and trick millionaires into marrying them. (Because there were no millionaires in Texas?)

I never knew much about Betty Grable except the famous WWII pinup poster, but I've seen her in two movies recently. What was that all about? Watching her tap dance is like watching an amateur dance recital. ("Well, isn't she cute?) She doesn't actually bite her lower lip, but you wish she would, just to complete the picture.

Redeeming the film is Don Ameche, only because he's so sexy as a bored millionaire. And Charlotte Greenwood and Jack Haley. They're very funny as you would expect. (Charlotte Greenwood played Aunt Eller in Oklahoma.) There must have been a taboo back then against showing any real heat between older people in movies. (I say older, but they're probably not even as old as I am now.) Their characters -- Haley is a waiter in a fancy hotel, and Greenwood is the truckstop waitresses' aunt posing as a maid -- are supposed to be in love, but in their romantic scenes they act like a cross between 8-year-olds and a couple of old ladies. They have one very funny number in which Greenwood gets to show off her signature high kick.

Oh, and there's a horrifying, hilarious (and huge) production number near the end called "Solitary Seminole." A loving tribute to the indigenous people of Florida. Tap-dancing, of course.

I can't be the first one to point out the resemblance between Don Ameche and Johnny Depp. Not just that they look similar, but watching Don Ameche in this movie it struck me that Depp's whole persona seems almost like a studied imitation. That combination of eagerness and boredom. And the mustache. It was eerie. I was going to do one of those "separated at birth" things but I can't find a picture of Johnny Depp where he resembles Don Ameche. It must be something that happens with movement.

Instead, I'm going to write my paper on a movie called Pigskin Parade. It's a low-budget Fox musical from 1936, also with Jack Haley and Betty Grable. (And Judy Garland in a small part -- she's 14, I think, and it's her first feature.) It's about an obscure Texas college football team that is mistakenly invited to play Yale. Yesterday I checked out a stack of books from the library about college football, which made me laugh, and blush.

For that same class, we've been reading Friday Night Lights, a non-fiction book about a town in Texas and their high school football team in 1988. It's a pretty great book but very depressing, really much more about racism than about football. Maybe I'm getting that impression because I'm skimming the parts where he narrates the games in sports announcer jargon that apparently people find thrilling but to me looks like technical writing. ("Carter dove forward for four yards and a first and ten at the Carter 28-yard line." Hm...)

Sprung.

I dreamed this morning that I was taking a Spanish exam and had only finished half of it but the time was up. I was furious, I wadded up the test and scowled at the teacher as I stormed out.

This semester is very different from last semester. Last fall, except for my Spanish teacher who was inexperienced and struggling, I had excellent professors who were organized and enthusiastic, great lecturers, tough but fair. There wasn't a lot of bovine memorization; their exams were more about understanding complex processes and being able to grapple with the subject matter. Also, I only had 15 class hours and an American government class in which I knew about 80% of the material going in.

This semester I have one really outstanding teacher (he's a grad student, I found out last week), one who is entertaining in lecture, but sometimes vague and scattered, one who is a walking encyclopedia of American and Texas history, and -- for someone who loves to listen to people who know history talk -- a mesmerizing lecturer, but whose exams are straight names and dates, and one who is an absolute dud whose class makes me want to scream it's such a disgrace. And I have two classes, geology and Texas government, packed with subject matter that was totally foreign to me, as well as two hard-core academic thinking and writing type American Studies courses. And Spanish.

The other big difference, the one I'm most concerned with right now, is that last fall everything didn't pile up at the end of the semester making the last couple of weeks hellish like I remember from my first college career. Finals were tough, but I didn't have a lot of big projects and papers due right at the end. This semester is more like old times. Hence, the dream.

I have a sinking feeling last fall was the anomaly.

The World Now.



I was watching this clip with my political hat on, as a supporter of Obama's campaign for president and as someone who has very little patience with anything anyone in the Bush administration has to say, especially about Iraq, especially someone like Rice, who was so instrumental in starting the whole fiasco, and suddenly it hit me that these two people are both black, roughly my age, one a woman, one of whom will likely be our next president and the other of whom serves our country in an office that wields great power and influence in the world. Regardless of how I feel about this particular debate, the fact that they are there having it moves me deeply.

I'm getting to the age where I'm beginning to have moments when I think, "the world has changed so much in my lifetime" -- a phenomenon I always associated with old people. I could never have imagined Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama when I was 9 or 10 and my mother was organizing in our neighborhood in Indianapolis to stop banks from redlining and to fight discrimination by racist realtors, when my elementary school changed from almost all white to nearly all black within a few years because of "white flight."

I guess one would expect the world to change some in 40 years. Maybe I just never thought I'd last this long!

Third Ward TX.

(I sat down just now to write about a film I saw last year and loved, but I got sidetracked. Eventually I meandered back to the film, which is called Third Ward TX. I just want to say that, if you get bored with me pondering about my ego, scroll down and follow the links to find out about this great movie.)

I've been invited to participate in the American Studies (that's my major) honors program, because I'm one of the top 25 students in my class. The invitation has unexpectedly, but not surprisingly, stirred up a swirl of old feelings.

If I participate, I will write a 60-100 thesis, on a subject I choose, over the course of next year. On top of my regular course load. I may be able to make a film instead of a traditional written thesis. Either way, it'll be a shitload of work --actually the film would probably be quite a bit more work -- but it will be great preparation for grad school, and it will strengthen my application for the MFA program, especially if I make a film.

But I wonder if I love the honor part of it too much? The way it makes me feel: smart, special, etc. I feel like I'm in high school again, jumping at every little bit of recognition. (They told me that holding offices in clubs would enhance my chances for scholarships, so, in my senior year, I ran for and was elected president of art club, thespians, and the honor society. It's not like I had big ideas for what I could accomplish in these clubs, and I don't remember really doing much; I just wanted the titles.)

I can hardly imagine the amount of work the honors thesis would be -- not only do I need to take a full course load both semesters if I want to graduate any time soon, but I won't be able to get through another semester without some kind of job. Make a film on top of all that? Wasn't the idea to finish a B.A. as quickly and easily as possible so I could get on with grad school? And isn't my grad school application already pretty impressive. I've made a feature documentary, not to mention over 25 years of fairly interesting (and applicable) life and work experience. Still, it's hard to say no. I want the prestige.

I was discussing it with J the other night and he interrogated me a bit about "why?" Do I think there's intrinsic value in this type of academic recognition? Yes, but... Is this type of recognition a life-long dream of yours? Yes, but... Ever since I knew what they were I've wanted an Oscar, a Pulitzer, a Nobel Peace Prize, whatever. My attachment to recognition has loosened some -- most significantly around the time that I realized that these desires (more like neuroses) were at the root of a lot of my unhappiness -- but apparently there's still a bit of it lurking somewhere in my soul.

The focus of my life in the last 5 or 6 years has been to unravel this part of my personality. To relax about it. To enjoy being smart instead of needing desperately to be regarded as smart. I want to be honored, but because I've done good work, not because the honor makes me feel for a moment like I'm a good person.

I have a perfect thesis idea. If I decide to do it.

In my Intro to American Studies class, we just read a book called Dawn at My Back: A Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing, by Carroll Parrott Blue. It's a very American Studies-type book: family stories, pop psychology, cultural history, photographs (the author is a photographer, filmmaker, and academic), letters and other ephemera, haphazard and beautifully connected at the same time. I loved it, and it inspired me.

For years, I've wanted to make something with the story of my grandfather. I wrote a song about him a long time ago, called My Family Tree, but I want to do something more in depth. Right after I came out to my family, when I was 20, my father (through my mother) told me about his father who he's certain was homosexual, partly because he disappeared several times when my father was growing up only to be found living with a man, the same man each time.

The story is compelling just on its face, but the background is fascinating too. What must it have been like to be homosexual (and possibly in love?) in the 20s and 30s in the Midwest? The other element of the story, for me, is the question of what gets passed on from father to son, genetically, socially, by example, and through family stories and mythology. (My mother joked to my dad that the homosexuality came from his side of the family, not hers. My father has a lesbian niece too.) Every one of my male friends has a difficult relationship with his father. Mine was painful as I was growing up but has over the years become a source of great pleasure.

But more on the Carroll Parrott Blue book. Though I love the book, the subtitle set me up for disappointment. The author grew up in Independence Heights in Houston, which was originally an incorporated town, a settlement built specifically for freed African Americans after the Civil War (I think) but much of the book takes place in Michigan and Detroit and other places. I wanted more Texas.

I saw a great documentary in SXSW last year, called Third Ward, TX, which is about a neighborhood in that area of Houston. I wrote about it very briefly at the time. I want to see it again. One of the reasons I'm so intrigued by these neighborhoods (urban, black, usually very poor) is that they are the neighborhoods I end up living in. I move in when they're being colonized by artists. Next come the homosexuals, and pretty soon I can't afford to live there once the yuppies arrive and drive up property values and rents. On the corner of my block a gay couple built two beautiful modern houses, one 2 stories high that they live in and another smaller one that they just sold for $650,000. Across the street there's a house under construction that is three stories tall and takes up almost every square inch of its small urban lot. It towers over the tiny houses on either side of it. I love our house, but it's falling apart and we feel like it's only a matter of time before our landlord sells it. The lot is worth a fortune. Meanwhile 3 blocks away, there's a brisk street business in cocaine and low rent prostitutes.

Anyway, Third Ward TX is a wonderful film. It shows that the arrival of artists in a poor downtown neighborhood doesn't have to mean the end is near, but could possibly be a whole new beginning.

Spring.

It was warm and muggy when I got up today, just like it had been for the last few days. It was raining on my walk to the bus. When I got out of my first class the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees. I went home to get a sweater, but I only wore it for about 20 minutes because a few minutes after I left the house the sun came out and it got warm again. Now it's dry and cool.

I finally got my garden in. We have two rows of sunflowers with green beans in a ring around them which I hope will grow up the sunflower stalks like beanpoles, 4 jalapeño plants, and a patch of cilantro and parsley. It's probably not the time of year to be planting parsley, but, what the hell, we'll see how it does. I also put in a row of red sunflowers along the front of the porch.

I was going to plant cucumbers since they did so well last year, but I changed my mind. We got tons of cucumbers from our farm last year and no green beans and not enough hot chiles. (Those are the two things that did the best in our garden last year with very little maintenance, and this year I'm all about low maintenance/high satisfaction.)

I had a run-in with an anthill, and now my fingers are fat and red like monster baby fingers. I don't know if they were fire ants, but they were tiny and red and they were mad at me.

Speaking of spring, maybe it's just the season but everyone I saw today looked good.

Check Out That Seersucker.

This is my grandmother and her brother, my great uncle. I think this photo was taken in 1910.

I was going through some random photos I have because I'm contemplating a short video piece using old photos and my high school journal, and I found a few very old ones that I ended up with after my grandmother died a few years ago. I love them. (Check out the dog. He has the same expression as my grandmother.)

I never noticed this before, but in pictures of me at that age I look very much like my great uncle. My grandma had lots of brothers, and she adored them.

I have only one sister, and I adore her. Below is a picture of her and me from 1973, which makes me 12. I'm doing her hair. (Whatever.)

They get bigger if you click on them.

I Need a Job.

We live near I-35, the Interstate that runs through Austin on its way from San Antonio to Dallas. At most of the intersections on the access roads along I-35 going through the central part of the city, there are one or two panhandlers working all day, asking for money. J found a dirty, wet piece of a cardboard sign on the street when we were walking home from somewhere a while back, and it's hanging on our kitchen wall now. Part of it was torn off and missing, so it reads:
Cold
Hung
Please
Help

That wasn't what I was going to write about -- it just came to mind. I was going to mention here that I'm looking for a summer job in New York. There's a little web site I can go to and look at a map that has dots on the cities where my readers are, so I know a few of you are in New York. Just puttin' it out there, as they say. I can cook, I can type, I'm pretty smart and easy to get along with. I'm willing to do anything ... I was going to say anything legal, but that's not true; I don't care if it's legal, as long as it's ethical.

Facebook.

I don't get Facebook. What are all those people doing? I hate to get left too far behind, so I joined, but maybe the social networking thing is not for me because I can't find much of interest there. And whenever I do find something interesting, I have to click through five screens of permission to give up my privacy, so I usually end up backing out.

My friend T is very anti-social networking because it obliterates privacy. Or, rather, it takes away your personal control over the parameters of individual relationships. It forces you to have the same relationship with your mother, your life-long best friend, the guy you just met at a party last weekend, and your boss.

Maybe that's where we're headed, but it makes me nervous. Do I want everybody I know, no matter how well they know me, to read a little note I write on an old friend's "wall" which makes reference to an old joke between us that, without the context of our long relationship, may be meaningless or hateful to someone else? One of the things I like most about conversation is that it's ephemeral. I was horrified a few years ago when I realized that every google chat I had ever had was stored in a Steven file somewhere in the big google sky. Somebody is making a list and checking it twice, separating the sheep from the goats. It smells too much like judgment day to me.

I can see you raising an eyebrow at all this apprehension about loss of privacy coming from someone who writes about his sex life on a blog for the world to read. You have no idea how carefully calibrated this writing has become. I might be telling you a lot, but I'm not telling you everything.

What I like about Facebook -- and this happened when I first joined Myspace, too -- is the flurry of contact with old friends. We're so peripatetic these days -- maybe some of the appeal of Facebook et al. is that it relieves some of the sadness and tension of having friends and family so far flung. Social networking brings us all together. I think I would just like to have a little more control over how together we are, and when, and with whom.

Fifties Day.

This morning I put on my favorite pair (my only pair) of 501s and a white t-shirt. Lately I've been putting lots of goo in my hair and slicking it back because I never know what to do with my hair and I don't like the way it looks if I don't do anything. But I realized just now when I looked in the mirror that I look like I'm dressed up as Fonzie for a Halloween party.

I also look quite a bit like my dad. I have a few pictures of him from the late fifties, from just before and just after he and my mom got married, in which he's wearing exactly what I have on right now and his hair is slicked back. It's not hard to see why my mom fell in love with him. So, though it's not not weird, it's not necessarily horrifying that I resemble him more and more. But, in those photos, he's in his early twenties. I'm pushing fifty. Tomorrow is my forty-seventh birthday.