Imagine Your Thanks

Dropping like trash

Deposited like an investment

Feeding fish

Diving in an exploration

Planting like seeds

Billowing like clouds

Climbing towards forever

Filling a tank, a room, your room, our lives and charting a map of our past, a history of interactions

[The Thank Tank is still looking for hosts for one and two week periods. Please get in touch if you are interested.]

I spend much of my time in the classroom breaking down and analyzing that “hard English stuff” that many of us geeked out over as undergrads. Sonnets and pantoums and villanelles and odes and god knows what else. It’s fun and I see sparks as students begin flexing their own critical analytical muscles.

And yet, when it comes time to flick through the playlist or slide in a CD, invariably it’s the most standard of pop cuisine. Endless verses of rhyming couplets stacked comfortably within blankets of gooey choruses strung together by sappy chord changes; pop at its very heart. Sure, I’ve gotten my fair share of albums from Amoeba’s “unusually experimental” aisle (now sadly displaced to the back of the store alongside Jazz and Blues … hmmm there’s something that needs to be deconstructed!). However when it comes to long-drive listening and I don’t have the energy for Ira Glass & Company’s company, it’s typically the “unpopular pop” of Jon Brion and his cadre or something else of equally shiny pop veneer.

It may look brittle and flimsy compared to Ashbery, Walcott & Plath (the most awesome literary law firm since Silverblatt’s crew), but there is something eternally, inextinguishably human about the way pop can creep into your brain and whisper to yer heart.

-Then there was this time by the beach. He wheezed cooly in the darkness. -Must have been going on 20 ought years now. There were six or seven of them, all flying in a row, single-file like. They was too high up to make out a distinct breed, I bet nothing more than seagulls or what have you. To me, I remember them as a synchronized set of black crosses on a blue sky, a silent, flapping mass. A dirge en route to the sun.

He didn’t say anything else for a good while. He studied the fire like an office and he grunted contentedly into the mug of coffee.

-I guess it ain’t anything at all like what you was initially talking about, but it was the first thing I thought of the moment you mentioned charity.

While out sipping down Horny Goats in the Windy City, my colleagues and I came up with a list of theme party themes – this is specifically in response to a certain presenter’s upcoming ’80s theme party.

The list is a follows:

Johnny Depp Films, Sub category: Johnny Party (Johnny Depp, Johnny Walker, Johnny Rockets etc.),Prince Party!, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Sitcom Families, Board Game Party, Guess Who Party (the classic board game with a live action simulation!), Clue (ibid), Super Heroes, Gilligan’s Island, TV Island Party, Favorite Drink, Jackson Party (Michael, Janet, Jesse …), Puppet Party, Labadlabad, Dress-as-your-favorite-punctuation (dangling modifiers, et all), sexy fascists, favorite idiom, and perhaps the most conceptual of all… the “theme party theme” theme party. Will such events ever take place? Only time will tell.

I’ve also got a ton of things I need to eventually write about. This is my digital clipboard for these ideas.

I have two ideas that will likely be co-authored at one point or another working titles follow:

“Send in the Clowns”: Teachers at Entertainers

Title: Colon OR Colon: Colon as Convention OR “Witty Title: Serious title”: Colon as Titling Convention

Additionally, the in-flight film I watched yesterday while heading back to L.A. was Freedom Writers. I took detailed notes until I fell asleep about 45 minutes in… rant forthcoming.

There is also a lot of information I plan to reflect on from the AERA conference, though I doubt I’m ready for that quite yet.

Whilst sharing a couple of pitchers of beer with one Tai Kim (aka the ice cream guru in charge of Scoops), I was informed that the two main beers brewed in Korea are spinoffs of Kirin and Saporo. They came about directly because of the era of Japan’s occupation of Korea. I’m intrigued and have been sparked into examing socio-political influences on food and food manufacturing. If I ever get around to making a coherent thought on breakfast, I hope to follow it up with a look into this.

T-Minus one week until Chicago and AERA. I guess that means I should actually start planning out my portion of the ol’ presentation.

Credit should probably be given to one David Garza for being an all around awesome person. Insanely talented musician, David (pronounced Dah-veed since there should be an accent mark if I was a little less computer inept) is responsible for the title of this site. Blatantly lifting one of his prized lyrics, I’d be remiss not to tell y’all to go spend all of your precious clams on David’s music.

And … scene!

Greetings and welcome to another unnecessary blog. Things should shape up around here shortly. I’ve got some urgently undiscussed issues regarding breakfast and the American way of life to get off my chest in an upcoming post.