Mountains Made Low

Here it is, another month has gone by, and it’s time to get the resolutions updated again. So here we go. I’m going to say that they’re all still intact, but a couple are hanging by a thread — this is called cutting myself some slack but feeling like a slacker at the same time.

#1 & #2. The last couple weeks have been sort of workout free. This is because it’s the end of the semester, and my priorities have been elsewhere. I did do a fair amount of walking with the camping last weekend (though not as much as I’d intended), and, given another week to get through the end of the semester, I’ll be back on track. This is where I feel like a slacker, but I am still cutting myself some slack, because I know that these three weeks pretty much happen at the end of the semester, so I’m not going to panic about them.

#3 & #4. Just like last month, so: check and check.

#5. One third of the year gone in terms of months, 32.8% gone in terms of days. Either way, 10 is where I should be and 12 is where I am. Ahead on this one. At this rate, I’ll hit 36 by the end of the year. We’ll see what the summer brings.

#6. Again, either one-third or 32.8% of the year gone, so right around 17 is where I should be. I haven’t done much viewing this month, of course, but 17 is where I am. That makes the annual total 51. Hmmmm.

And that’s about all there is to that!

As of the end of the day today, I now have five students who are completely done with whichever of my classes they’re enrolled in. The semester ends next Friday. That’s next Friday. And none of my students is required to be done yet. In fact, next Tuesday is the first time that all the work for any class is due.

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that, in most cases, I’m pretty strict with deadlines throughout the semester, and when the end of the term rolls around I loosen up, but by then, some students are so used to having the deadline that they just keep working away and find themselves done. Maybe its that my deadlines are pretty much always of a nature that allows the students to get work done early if they can or are so inclined, which allows them to focus on things like final exams that have to be taken on a specific day at a specific time, because they’ve gotten the work for my class done early.

It’s probably some of both. Because the one class where no one’s asking to hand their work in early is the class where there have been no deadlines all semester. And it seems like they’ll all be scrambling to get their work done this term. But they get the most fun “final exam” — a reading of their creative work. During which time, I’ll also be reading my own work — two works, one a poem (that term ever so loosely applied) written in these students’ honor. Yep it should be a lot of fun.

And between now and then, I’ll see how much work comes in from the overachievers in the other classes.

Movie #17 (2009)

A divorced dad. An academic administrator. Two doses of terminal cancer. Yep, Griffin & Phoenix has all the makings of a happy feel-good movie.

Griffin (Dermot Mulroney), no first name given in the film, is the dad. He’s also a workaholic who, we get the impression, doesn’t spend too much time with his sons. Phoenix (Amanda Peet), Sarah Phoenix, is the dean. Both Griffin and Phoenix are cancer patients, and in the first half of the film, as they meet, flirt, go on dates, and begin to fall in love, neither tells the other.

Though there are some highly emotional moments in the film, real Kleenex moments as a matter of fact, it is not an unmitigated sobfest. Indeed, despite the depressing on its face subject matter, I would go as far as to call this film a romantic comedy. I laughed at least a much, and at least as hard, as I cried in this one, watching the dying struggle for all they’re worth to live.

Much of the credit for that certainly belongs to Mulroney and Peet for their performances — Mulroney is at his sarcastic, perhaps cynical, deadpan finest throughout much of the film and Peet provides that wry humor with its perfect foil: part straightman, part perfectly witty. And some of that credit has to go to director Ed Stone for bringing these qualities out in his actors. The lion’s share though, I think, should be reserved for screenwriter John Hill, whose dialogue pops, whose tender moments are poignant without being sappy, and whose humor is both understated and LOL funny.

We watch Griffin and Phoenix learn about each other, learn about love, and learn about life in the shadow of death, and that makes for a quite interesting story. As the story unfolds they learn that even the worst things they face can be better, even good, if they face them together.

While I may set up my netflix queue so that that next offering is lighter fare, I still popped this dvd out of the player with teary eyes and a smile on my face. Maybe it’s catharsis; maybe it’s talent on the screen; all I know for sure is that this was a good movie.

I watched the movie Griffin and Phoenix tonight. That’s not one of the stories, but it brings the stories to mind. Well, it brings the second story to mind. The first story is about me, watching the movie.

Story #1
I cried like a baby. Several times. I laughed a lot, too. But I’ll save the rest of that for my next post (the review).

Story #2
If you watch the movie, and you do like I do and watch the end credits, too, you’ll see in those credits, right after the cast and the two stunt performers, a one-line grouping. This credit is for the film’s line producer. I’ll be honest: I don’t know enough about filmmaking to know what, precisely, it is that a line producer does — in fact, I’m not sure what anyone with the word producer in their title does, though I’m fairly certain that in most instances (especially when producer is preceded by executive or nothing) it has a lot to do with money. But I don’t know what a line producer does.

In this case, though, I do know the line producer. In fact, at the time I knew him best, he was working on this particular film. I didn’t know that when I set out to watch the movie — I just thought the movie looked good. But then I remembered this guy saying that he was working in New York on a film staring Amanda Peet. So I checked IMDB — lo and behold.

And that’s the story. While this acquaintance of mine was working on this film, I had a conversation with him, and he told me what he was working on (and who with). And the gist of the story was that most of the guys he knew were quite jealous of him at the moment because he, as the line producer of this movie, had Amanda Peet’s cell phone number.

Okay. Not the greatest of stories (either of them), but they were on my mind….

Well, it’s not exactly, firmly, 100% the beginning of my birthday celebration. There was an incident involving my parents earlier, in which I got a few things that fall, broadly, in the category of “fixtures” from my mom’s store when it closed. In this incident, I was given the choice: pay for them, or let Mom and Dad call them my birthday present. So I have my present from Mom and Dad and have had for a couple of months now.

However, I got the first birthday card of the season in the mail today, and for something utterly unusual, someone beat Grandma to the punch (Grandma almost always strikes first, usually on or about May 4 — 2 days early).

But not this year.

From whom did I receive this card today, six whole days ahead of the actual date, you ask? From my boss. Not anyone I work with daily, not even the dean.

Today, in the mail, I received birthday greetings from the president of the college.

Whaddaya know?

All the caveats from before about not liking the literature/literary/popular divide still apply, of course. Also, it’s worthwhile to note that I think some of the writers (if not the specific works) on this list will survive the test of time and come to represent the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the canon of literature. Anyone who wants to think differently is welcome to. And welcome to stick it.

10. The Stand, Stephen King (1978; 1991). For some reason, I’ve been taking a lot of crap lately for being a Stephen King fan. I don’t understand it — mostly I don’t understand why people don’t like King’s writing. I’ll grant you: Hemingway he ain’t; but in my book that’s a good thing. The Stand is one of King’s longest books, and it’s an epic battle of good and evil set in 1990s America. What’s not to like? Especially when he went in, did some revisions, and made it fit the history of the late 80s and early 90s even better. And, yes, this is the first of multiple King entries on this list.

9. Your Heart Belongs to Me, Dean Koontz (2008). The other writer with multiple entries here is (probably again unsurprisingly) Dean Koontz. I can’t say much more about this book than I have already said (it’s reviewed here), other than I really like it.

8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003). This was one I experienced as an audiobook last summer before I came to the conclusion that audiobooks: a) counted, and b) should be reviewed. So I didn’t. But this is an interesting story, as narrated by an autistic teenager, of the murder of a dog and the boy’s subsequent investigations. Which also includes him running away from home, to London where, he has learned, his mother lives. The mysteries here are not limited to the dog’s death, but include lies, jokes, train timetables, and divorce. The perspective Haddon provides is interesting, as is the fact that the chapters are headed not with straightforward cardinal numbers but with prime numbers, starting with 2.

7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J K Rowling (2005). The best of the Potter books — hands down. Though Harry “comes of age” in the wizarding world in volume seven, this sixth entry provides us with the true beginning of Harry’s adult life — a life that begins with the loss of a mentor and friend, a serious betrayal of trust, and Harry’s somewhat over-dramatic declaration (he is only 16 after all) that he must face the world, and Voldemort, alone. The burden that builds on Harry throughout this novel leads him to embrace his orphaned state wholeheartedly: betrayed and bereft and without natural family, he turns his back on the family he has made, as well. It is the darkest of the Potter novels, to be sure, and it sets up the finale beautifully.

6. Beautiful Lies, Lisa Unger (2006). Unger has fast become a new favorite for me. This book is a mystery/thriller that introduces the character of Ridley Jones (who appears again in Sliver of Truth), and it’s the perfect blend of mystery and intrigue, questions and answers, love and hate, violence and sex. I wasn’t sure I’d like it when I picked it up, but having picked it up, I just couldn’t put it down. And I haven’t regretted any of Unger’s other work, either, which this one led me to.

5. Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris (2001). I like these books (though I’ve only read two, and I’ve chosen to include this one because it’s the first and introduces the concept and the series beautifully). This work is urban fantasy in that term’s broadest sense (Bon Temps, Louisiana, is pretty rural, but if you know urban fantasy you’ll know what I mean). And they’re funny urban fantasy in the Dresden Files sense — the fantasy itself isn’t all that dark, but the humor sure as hell is. Again, what’s not to like? Vampires on Oprah. Now, that’s funny. And the story is well-written and mildly allegorical.

4. The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult (2004). Picoult is another favorite, and this is her best work to date. It’s her lit-major novel, drawing heavily on the Inferno for imagery, though it takes place between New England and Alaska. There’s a murder mystery, the problems of teenagers and parents, teenagers and teenagers, and teenagers and their parents and the law. It also deals with the question of what happens when defending a child crosses to an illegal place. A thought-provoking read, in a contemporary setting, that still manages to do Dante proud.

3. The Dark Tower, Stephen King (1982-2004). Here’s my cheat on this list. This is a seven-volume series. It is King’s magnum opus, and it is the work of decades. The story of Roland Deschain and the Tower (in homage to Browning, whose own work did homage to Shakespeare) is a work defies genre: it is high fantasy, it is a western, it is a contemporary gothic tale (minus the horrific), it is science fiction, and just in case the horrific element was too far gone, it features the priest from ’Salem’s Lot. While The Stand may seem epic in scope, The Dark Tower is truly King’s epic tale, of good and evil where the face of not only the world, but every world that is or might be, hangs in the balance and rests on the shoulders of Roland Deschain, last Gunslinger of Gilead.

2. The Good Guy, Dean Koontz (2007). I like this book because it shows Koontz’s range. There is no element of the supernatural to this one at all, but Koontz doesn’t need the supernatural to produce a thriller. This is about a stonemason and the interesting situation he finds himself in, saving a very self-sufficient woman from a hitman. She needs his help, but he’d never be able to save her without her. A great story, showing the chops of a great storyteller, outside the genres he normally works in.

1. Bag of Bones, Stephen King (1998). As much as I like The Dark Tower, Bag of Bones is the best novel King has written, and my all-time favorite (popular) novel, ever. It’s gothic at its best: spooky, dark, maudlin, and incredibly sexy. There’s absolutely nothing not to like here, either. I could gush on and on about it. Instead, I’ll just offer two words of advice: Read it.

This phrase was used by one of the my students this past fall semester to describe me. And while it doesn’t seem to be a widely shared opinion, it does seem to have some appeal.

I was walking on campus, yesterday, and happened across one of my current students. She was waiting for a meeting with her group members from my class and I, as is my wont, stopped to chat. “Waiting for your group?” “How’s the project going?” that sort of thing.

But though we had happened upon each other in a public space, and I was asking about things specific to the class that I teach, she was ready to bolt. I could see it. And later, when she and her groupmates were talking to me for a few minutes, she admitted it.

Now, like I’ve said, I know that this is not a widespread opinion. Another group from that class came to the optional meetings yesterday solely to inform me that I’m, and I quote, “a weasel.” And that was not meant in anything but fun — okay, it’s a longer story, but they came to a class session they didn’t have to, only and specifically to make fun of me. Not something you do if you think the prof is “creepy.”

I wonder, at times, if students just aren’t prepared for professors who think of them as people; who are willing to recognize them “out of context” — outside the classroom. I’ve run into my students in the grocery store, and said, “Hi.” When I pass them on campus I wave. I’ll talk to them about class stuff if I meet them on campus, and about non-class stuff if they bring it up. They’re people, I’m people.

Or maybe I’m “kinda creepy.”