State of Shock

An interesting thing has happened since Michael Jackson's death last Thursday: suddenly, it's not uncool to have been a Michael Jackson fan. It's been at least 20 years since it was cool to be a Michael Jackson fan, and we all know what happened in those intervening years: he did weird, eccentric, criminal, irresponsible, unexplainable things. These are the things that toned down and eventually cooled my adolescent fandom, a thing so large and all-encompassing in its heyday that if you knew me between the ages of 8 and 15, it was assured that you knew me as a Michael Jackson fan.


So what happened? I can only speak for myself, but when I was in the throws of Michael Jackson fever, everything he did or had ever done was nothing short of spectacular. Listening to that scratchy dub of "Thriller" over and over, sequestering myself in our dark basement to watch Michael Jackson marathons on MTV, videotaping every appearance he made on television, clipping every photo of him that appeared in the newspaper (yes, even that one of him in the hyperbaric chamber), thrilling at the chance to see him on tour at the Rosemont Horizon outside of Chicago, covering every square inch of my childhood bedroom with his image, these were the traits of my adolescent idolatry.

But Michael Jackson also led me to the Jackson Five, to Diana Ross, to James Brown, and to Marvin Gaye. He led me to the history of Motown, to vinyl, to concerts, to the drums. I still can't pass up a Jackson Five song on the radio, or "Wanna Be Startin' Something" on a wedding dance floor, or a clip of "Billie Jean" on TV, and, for the life of me, I will never be able to forget the encyclopedic knowledge of this man and his music that I've come to possess.

His death came as a shock; the outpouring of condolences from friends and family reminds me of who I was to them; the media coverage I find both fascinating and repulsive. It may be overkill, but it may also be something akin to a national mourning for someone whose image, actions and voice have been stuck in the inner recesses of our minds for a long time.

This Explains Everything

Above: Graphic representation of my Dissertation, in its formative stages (I hope). Circa 2005.

Coffee, Tea, or How About Both?!?

It seems to me that there are countries known for coffee -- Guatemala, Colombia, and the Independent Nation of San Francisco -- and there are countries known for tea -- England, Ireland, the Federated Island of SJB. For me, a cup of tea is the essential start to my day, and I can deal with a tea bag (the higher the quality the better: I'm talkin' to you, Lipton's) with lukewarm coffee-flavored water, which is generally what a tea drinker gets in a coffee country (or a motel). But, ideally, a nice loose-leaf tea, piping hot water, a splash of milk: that's the stuff. I have had the opportunity to observe a coffee drinker in his natural habitat, and it seems that the same general principal is true for the other side: coffee drinkers can deal with the "bad" stuff, but they'd prefer either "good" coffee or "evil" coffee (which is coffee that transcends goodness to a thick, black viscous liquid, or so I've been told).

So where can one go to satisfy the caffeinated beverage needs of everyone?

Sitting around a bad cup of coffee and a meh cup of tea recently in Brazil, Team Coffee and Team Tea came up with some possible travel destinations that hold equal appeal for both sides:

Turkey
Indonesia
Morocco
Kenya
Peru

This is an ambitious and limited travel itinerary, but it will just have to do.

Muddle my Limes

We're back from our travels, where we learned that the distance between Río and São Paulo is three stomach-churning four hour bus rides; that knowing Spanish amounts to a hill of beans in the land of Portuguese; that, indeed, no one comes to a 9 am Sunday morning LASA panel (except for Deeny!); that winter in Brazil means, well, not beach weather; that favela tourism is a side of life you wouldn't see otherwise; that tropical fruit for breakfast just makes sense; and that caipirinhas (muddled(limes + sugar) + (ice and cachaça) = delicious) are a way of life.

Click on the photo uptop to tell the tale...

SJB baja al sur

The SJBlog will dim its lights for the next ten days as its author makes her first trip to South America, to the only country there where she can't speak the language. Yes, it's back to the overwhelming crowds at the Latin American Studies Association conference, which is a whole different ballgame than the stuffy, tense, never-exotically-located MLA conference. Unfortunately, there aren't very many panels about Spain, but I guess that would be a lot to expect, huh?

It seems that after the last time I presented at the LASA conference, in 2006, I was prescient about this moment:

In fact, I suspect that in 2009, when LASA goes to Río de Janeiro, I will once again find a pressing transatlantic issue in my research, so I can ditch the MLA and party with the Latin Americanists!

And that's what I did. My presentation is on Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker, and his two films set during the Spanish Civil War: El espinazo del diablo and El laberinto del fauno. Most of you probably saw the latter, translated as Pan's Labyrinth. Last month, I was able to give three Guillermo del Toro newcomers a private screening with the author of "Why is Spain in the Frame? Guillermo del Toro, Mexico and Historical/Mythical Resistance," and responded to their tough questions ("Wait, is she dead?" and "Are those guys the fascists?" and "Is that really what goes on with mandrake roots?" and "So, why did he make this movie?") with, arguably, aplomb. All excellent practice for a presentation at 9am on a Sunday morning in Río which only the really hardy and hungover will attend.

Wilco (the blog post)

In my alternate reality, I've been following Wilco around on tour in Spain for the last month: high speed trains and Spanish libraries by day, tapas and Wilco by night. Málaga, Madrid, Barcelona, San Sebastian... I think I'm going to plan my next research trip around Wilco's Spanish tour dates.

In the here and now, though, I just watched Ashes of American Flags, the latest DVD about Wilco, and learned that the members of the band are suffering from various repetitive stress injuries, are passionate about small theaters in dying downtowns, and oppose the Walmartization of this country. It's a beautifully-shot concert film, one that you think you're just going to listen to in the background while you fold laundry, but end up getting completely absorbed by.

So, to sum up, Wilco can do no wrong.

Except for this. If there's one blog other than my own that needs to be password-protected, it's Spencer Tweedy's.

Why I am sooooooo important

It's true that back when I was a grad student griping about the MLA convention and whether to wear flip-flops to class, no one gave two figs about my blog. I hesitate to say now that anyone gives a fig and a half about it, but as part of my transformation from grad student to professor, I now have more students, former students, colleagues, deans and trustees interested in my whereabouts, my professional activities, my spare time, my interest (or lack thereof) in faculty meetings, and my general state of contentedness, lackadaisicalness or disgruntlement. I was quite aware of this, and had made sure my blog was not "searchable" -- that is, you couldn't stumble upon it through a Google search -- and also that it wasn't slanderous to friend nor foe (the SJBlog merely strives for humor and transparency, you see).

Then, yesterday, I caught wind of a rumor that a former student had found it. I'm not sure how, I'm not sure where, but if one of 'em finds it, they'll all eventually find it. And I just can't maintain my professorial poise 24-7, 365 days a year, online and in real life. It's hard enough not wearing jeans to campus 5 days a week, people.

So, the blog's on lockdown. That is to say, it is a blog open by permission of its author, who is quite liberal about who reads it, as long as the reader is not a) a student, b) a stranger, or c) someone who will be voting on my tenure case.

I know some of you applaud these extreme measures and some mourn for a simpler time on the interweb when we could let it all hang out, but these are the times we live in, and this is the lot we have been given. Other than that, not much has changed.

A blog of one's own

Having just wrapped up a course on Spanish Women Writers, and begun my Summer of the Book, it seemed like a good time to read Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, in which she stipulates that with a nice room and 500 bucks, a woman can really get down to business and put quill to paper. Well, I have the 21st-century equivalent: a nice house all to myself (ok, I share it with the dog, but her occasional outbursts at the cat next door are only sporadically distracting), a generous stipend, and a willingness to put fingers to laptop.

Woolf's ethos about writing seems almost prescient:

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

How Woolf could have anticipated blogging, I cannot say, but she reminds me that sometimes the creative energy comes a'knocking when I don't sit down to write the great academic mindbender but rather when I fiddle around with a blog post, or an email, or an Evite. Writing is writing, after all.

But the matter at hand here is a book, and here's what Virginia tells me to do about that:

Thus when I ask you to write more books I am urging you to do what will be for your good and for the good of the world at large.

A high calling, indeed, when you're talking about post-Franco Spanish literature, but I get the drift. The process and the end result will most certainly be beneficial to me... and my long-term career prospects.

A recent visit to the Emily Dickinson Museum makes it clear that women can write amazing things when they have the freedom and space in which to do it. But, unlike Emily, I intend to leave the house once in awhile, and I don't have a white dress.

The view from 11,090 feet

Dearest blog readers,
I do not fault you for abandoning me. I would have done the same. Frankly, between faculty meetings, teaching, and the students' demands that I hold office hours from midnight to four a.m., the SJBlog got lost in a second year haze. But classes are finally over, summer is here, and this past weekend I not only climbed a mountain but read a book unrelated to work. The shards of glass and Malbec have been swept from my office, my garden is growing nicely, and the dog has a new collar that doesn't pinch her neck. We're all quite content.

Meanwhile, the summer is for research, travels, grilling, weeding, Wilco and a wedding. There will be walks to the farmer's market. And bike rides. Books cracked and articles authored. Jam will be made. "Mad Men" watched and shuddered at. All attempts to avoid the passive voice will be ignored. I have some thoughts about resurrecting the SJBlog as a place to keep track of (fun) (and fun in the way that only books about your narrow field of study can be fun) books, trips, movies and minutia. Oh wait, that's what I was doing. Well, we'll see.

I think I've been down this road of blog-doubt before (and even before that), but it's probably true that the unexamined blog is not worth blogging. I still read blogs, a few of which are not authored by my talented boyfriend, so maybe they still have a place in this saturated world of online transparency? At the very least as a self-indulgent procrastination tool, which is, you know, what they always were to me. See you again soon.

Yours very truly and sincerely and fondly,
The SJBlog