This Explains Everything

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

The Anonymous Reader

This is what happens: you submit an article to a journal -- The Journal of Iberian Delights, say -- you wait between 3 months and 2 years, and either hear nothing, or receive an acceptance of your article but don't pop the cava just yet because it's pending revisions. If your article gets a qualified acceptance, you also get at least two "reader reports," in which anonymous so-called experts rip your writing to shreds. They second-guess your academic preparation; they assume, given your pathetic grasp of style, that your second language is English; they list 50 books that any idiot with a public library (much less a Ph.D.) should have read by now; they tell you you've made up words; they don't like any of your metaphors; they cut down the entire premise of your argument; in short: they eat you alive.

I am now one of those "anonymous readers" for an article more or less relevant to my field and...um... it's actually not so easy to be a cheerful, encouraging, impressed editor when what you're reading doesn't make any sense. And not making sense for 30 pages is quite an achievement. I'm not going to give any more details to protect the innocent, but sufficed to say, I'm feeling a little better about all those sharks who have bitten chunks out of my academic future in the past... now that I'm one of them.

In the Year 2525

I've just spent the morning contemplating my professional future, spit-shining the crystal ball, mapping out what needs to happen when, considering the various gauntlets I face, and calculating how old I will be the year I come up for tenure (38). Six years seems like a long time from now, but in my field, if you don't start thinking about it early, it sneaks up on you and you become a crazy stressball monster with a penchant for high fashion.^*

For now, I'm trying to take things step-by-step. First order of business: a couch for my office. I don't think I'll be able to get tenure without a couch.

^*Any resemblance to persons living or dead is merely coincidental.

Climbing the Tower

Two friends, loyal SJBlog readers, and founding members of Team Taboo have recently crossed my path on their quests for jobs at institutions of higher learning. Happily, they've both secured at least one job, with perhaps more to follow.

This time last year and, for that matter, the year before that, I was making similar marches around the country, thinking about how many coffee shops I would require to live in a small Iowa town, trying to feign enthusiasm driving by Joe Paterno's house, scandalizing seemingly liberal faculty at SF State with Almodóvar movies, marveling at the quaint mounds of snow and sheets of ice in Vermont, and asking myself why Amherst smells like beef bullion.

Despite not really knowing how I landed where I did (and recently being told that my hire was an "agonizing decision"), on a campus that still smells like beef bullion, I'm finding myself doling out advice on negotiating contracts, managing campus visits, playing your cards close to your chest, distracting yourself while waiting for the phone to ring, and surviving in a town with two streets like I'm some kind of expert. I never thought I would be nostalgic for the job search, but having landed happily on the other side of it, I admit that it's kinda fun to watch my friends go through it, remembering the days when I didn't know whether I'd need to invest in a lot of fleece or start paying attention to college football or -- horrors! -- both.

Buena suerte, PJ and Ms. Mattsie! For what it's worth, I own more fleece than I did a year ago, though I'm still cold most of the time. But I still don't care about college football. And I need a minimum of two coffee shops, both of which must have a decent selection of tea and maybe a panini on the menu, for me to feel human.

Membership has its privileges

I may not have a door on my office, but I have a parking permit!
I was told today by a senior member of the Amherst faculty that my transition to life as a faculty member is an adjustment because I'm used to being told what to do, and, consequently, not considering myself an adult.
That's not entirely true -- I had quite a bit of autonomy at Berkeley (um, you could even go so far as to call it "free reign") -- but I'll admit it feels strange that people I've just met are calling me "Doctor" and "Professor." I keep expecting them to chuckle after saying it, like we did in grad school. It's true that while the rest of you were out there getting mortgages and jobs, I was still flashing a student ID for reduced admission to movies and eating ramen.^* So, yeah, I guess I've been a student for so long that suddenly being a professor feels contrary to my highly-cultivated grad student lifestyle. But I'll get the hang of it. And for starters I can park on campus!

^* That's totally false. But you get the idea.

Paging Dr. SJB... stat!

Yes. As of 2:38 this afternoon, I am Dr. SJB, Ph.D. The last 24 hours were slightly harrowing, as I had to send one more friendly reminder email to MI(A), Reader #2, to emphasize the fact that I was planning on filing on Wednesday, that I had everything ready, and would he be so kind as to sign on the dotted line so I could graduate? Luckily, this seemingly innocent but sublimely machiavellian email worked its magic: when I got to campus today, my signature page had been signed overnight, as if by elves, and I was ready to go.

So, to answer the pending questions:
Will SJB get the last signature? Yes!
Will her margins be off when she goes to file? No!
What happens if they run out of lollipops at the Degrees office? Although they almost forgot to give it to me, I made sure that I walked outta there with the traditional "PhinisheD" lollipop, as pictured below.
How many beers will she drink once that sucker is filed? Um, a few.

Drop the puck!

Dissertation color commentary has been drawing international traffic to the SJBlog, as if I didn't have a big enough head already. How is it that turning in a stack of paper can be so thrilling?

But, if it's blow-by-blow dissertation news that you want, by God, I'll deliver.

This morning I got the second of three signatures, this one from my outside reader, who told me this incredible story about her own dissertation filing nightmare at Yale. Seems she was working off some gigantic mainframe back in the era of punch cards and all that, and she accidentally erased both of the copies of her final draft at 5 am the morning she needed to file, as her husband sat idling in the car outside, waiting to drive them both the 3000 miles to Berkeley. This being before such things as the Geek Squad, she assumed there would be no way to retrieve her dissertation from the bowels of the mainframe, and so she ended up paying someone to retype the whole damn thing from the last hard copy she had, marked up with edits.

Five minutes after I heard this story, I was in the lab, printing out my dissertation on my acid free archival 100% cotton bonded thesis paper, waiting for something to go wrong.

But the only thing that went even remotely awry was an error message from Microsoft Word: "There are too many spelling and grammatical errors in the file 'Dissertation' for Microsoft Word to continue to display them." That's right, Microsoft Word, I write in other languages. Eat it.

Will SJB get the last signature? Will her margins be off when she goes to file? What happens if they run out of lollipops at the Degrees office? How many beers will she drink once that sucker is filed? Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion to the SJBlog Saga of the Doctorate: Battle of the Readers: All Hail the Mighty Acid-Free Paper!!

I think MI(A) is the Wizard of Oz

This giant hand represents the hand of Reader #2, who emailed me at 6:40 this morning to say that he was back (from where? I do not know) and ready to sign. I'm glad I didn't have to hire bounty hunters, stake out his fiance's office or sic the department secretary on his ass. Oddly -- actually it's not so odd, given his hermetic tendencies -- the exchange of signatures will take place through an intermediary, and he's not coming to eat cupcakes and tap the keg. The honeymoon's over.

So, by this time next week, provided the god of toner cartridges, 1 1/2 inch margins and photocopiers is smiling on me, and the two readers yet to sign don't get eaten by wolves between now and the moment their pens hit my beautiful acid-free archival quality 100% cotton bonded thesis paper, I will be Dr. SJB, at your service.

I can provide the pen, too

I try not to count my chickens, which I think has been proven time and time again. To wit: Although I bought a Wesleyan sweatshirt within the first two weeks of arriving on campus, I didn't take it out of my desk drawer and cut the tags off until 3 months later, when I finally decided once and for all that I was staying. I didn't make any official announcements about the Amherst job until I'd watched the FedEx man put that $22 envelope containing a piece of paper with my signature on it into the mail bin (yes, I watched him through the window), and then tracked the envelope online until it reached its destination. Only then did I throw my poorly-attended press conference.

And now, the only thing standing between me and a doctorate is one signature -- one lousy scribbled line on acid-free archival quality 100% cotton bonded paper with "This dissertation has been approved" written across the top. My dissertation advisor cheerily sent me an email the same day my kick-ass gown and Society for Creative Anachronism-style tam arrived in the mail saying she was ready to sign off -- and she did, a few days later. Even my outside reader, who doesn't recognize me on the street, and whom I've attempted in vain to keep in contact with, is taking me out to coffee on Friday, pen in hand, ready to sign on the dotted line.

And then there's Reader #2. Let's call him MIA. I know, I know, he has tenure. He's getting married. He pretty clearly hates walking through the halls of Dwinelle. It's entirely possible that he's driving a jeep through Baja California right now. He doesn't always look you in the eye when you run into him at the gym. But he's known this day would come for months! He knows I have a job awaiting me! I've invited him to tap a keg and eat cupcakes in Tilden with the SJB posse! And yet, where is he? So far, one email has gone unanswered. So has the rare -- rare -- and apologetic home phone call I made tonight. Certain of my colleagues think I should stake out his fiance's office -- but is that necessary?!? Doesn't he know he's giving me anxiety dreams starring key figures in the Berkeley Spanish Department? No one should have to suffer through anxiety dreams starring the Berkeley Spanish Department, trust me.

So that's it. The only thing between me and Dr. SJB is a signature.

Pray for me. Better yet, if you see MIA on the street -- and he could be anywhere! -- tell him SJB is dreaming about him, his pen, and a piece of acid-free archival quality 100% cotton bonded paper.

My Chickens Have Hatched

As promised, the big news: beginning with the Fall 2007 semester, I'll be joining the faculty at Amherst College, as Assistant Professor of Spanish! The signed contract is being whisked Eastward by FedEx as we speak, I've begun to purchase more sweaters, and I've dusted off my dissertation in the interest of filing it in May. The long process of moving, blood-thickening and, oh yeah, starting down the road to tenure, can wait: for now, I've been indulging in counting my chickens, not knocking on wood, speaking in the indicative tense (instead of the subjunctive "If I were on the East Coast I would..."), not checking the job listings and my email every 15 seconds, not waiting for the phone to ring, and general merry-making in honor of my good fortune!

And, as promised, a visual tour of the last couple of weeks:


Here I am not paying any attention to LA traffic as I speak with the Amherst chair, with whom I'd been playing phone tag for a very agonizing six hours. He offered me the job, and then said many things that I found very difficult to remember... According to my friends, I just kept saying "great... great... great..."



Once I hung up the phone, the news begins to sink in...






And last night, after ten days of intense negotiations (ok, they weren't that intense, just nerve-wracking), here I am signing the contract, for those who need photographic proof (ahem, Dad).








So, to recap: two years, one interview suit, 2 trips to the MLA, 18 MLA interviews, 2 phone interviews, 6 flybacks, 5 teaching demos, 4 job talks, a gazillion hours fantasizing about life in Iowa, or Pennsylvania, or Vermont, or San Francisco, or Massachusetts, a gazillion and one hours fretting about what's next later and I've got a job!

Smuttynose Dog1 Town

AMHERST, MASS. -- A long day here at Amherst College draws to a close -- and with it the third and final flyback! I have a couple more meetings tomorrow, but the hard part is over. I think.
Being on the East Coast, in a small college town, is making college memories come flooding back: pimping myself out in my Wesleyan sweatshirt looking for a ride back to campus from Bradley airport; Friendly's; still not remembering whether it's "up to New York" or "down to Boston" or what; the NESCAC, the Little Three... stuff I haven't thought about for a long time.

My day today was another blur of meetings, teaching and my presentation, and thankfully my caffeine needs were met at all the right moments. Chapter 5 of 100 Years of Solitude went really well, even though I never got around to confirming the right pronunciation of Melquíades; my job talk, today given for the gazillionth time, came off without a hitch, and I managed to handle all the "feisty" questions the faculty threw at me; the campus is beautiful, but for some reason it smelled like beef bullion all day; and, proving that the world is, indeed, a handkerchief,² the senior member of the Spanish department not only is from Madison, but he went to West High at the same time as my Mom.³ Crazy.

I was also privy to way more inside information than I've ever gotten at any institution before, including the revelation that the Political Science professor on the hiring committee's dream job would be writing for People Magazine. And a few other more relevant tidbits, which I'll be mulling over and dealing with if...

¹ The name of a local (?) beer, worth remembering.
² This is the literal translation of "It's a small world" in Spanish: "El mundo es un pañuelo"
³ Oh, and also, this same prof, before discovering that I was also from WI, apparently described me as looking like a "German woman from Oconomowac" to another Amherst faculty member. Despite the relative accuracy of the description, I wasted no time in telling him I'm from Madison: those of us from Madison don't take kindly to being told we look like we're from Oconomowac.

Little College on the Prairie

Back in the Bay, with thoughts of snow-covered Grinnell behind me, here's my report. Compared to Penn State, the interview process at Grinnell was intense: hour-long meetings with every member of the Spanish department (there are only 4, but still) in which I was grilled on every possible classroom scenario and how I would handle it, as well as prompted for my new, creative, innovative additions to a number of syllabi that are suffering from 20th-century Peninsular Literature Depletion. That's where I come in: Dr. Brenneis, ready with your Contemporary Spanish Literature injection.

I also taught a class on the Mexican mural movement, which I previously knew nothing about, but now I've got visiting Diego Rivera's two murals in San Francisco on my agenda before I leave. And then there was the job talk, which went well, though I saw some glazed-over undergraduate eyes, so I tried to hop around a little more than usual while delivering it. And I met with members of the Executive Council, who, contrary to what I had imagined, did not wear long, flowing hooded capes and speak in Darth Vader-like rasps.

Grinnell's an interesting place: the pre-tenure faculty prefer to be called "early career faculty" (instead of junior faculty), and have founded an informal group called the FLM (Faculty Liberation Movement) through which they go to Grinnell's one non-undergrad bar for happy hours and take jaunts to Iowa City for cultural inspiration. I was briefed on the death-and-dismemberment policy (by the benefits woman who's maybe a few years older than I am and who told me she has six kids -- six kids!! She tossed this information off like she was talking about a litter of cats), which I found fascinating because apparently body parts are valued differently, and the insurance company maintains a map of the body with the prices of each of your members, should they get lopped off on the job. I thought this tidbit made for good cocktail hour chatter, but other 'early term faculty' at a reception later that day didn't find it quite as fascinating as I did. The Dean likes to ride his bike even when it's 10 degrees outside. They're pretty much just giving away houses in Grinnell. "Wisconsin Beer Cheese Soup" is a delicacy offered at the local fine-dining establishment. Still, they have a movie theater, which we didn't have at Wesleyan, and they even reserve one screen for "art" movies (this week it was "Dreamgirls," not exactly my definition of an art movie, but better than "Big Momma's House 17" or whatever).

So, if you're keeping score at home, that's 2 flybacks down and one to go. I'm looking forward to not being on a plane for a couple of weeks, and eating vegetables...

The Town that Joe Paterno Built

STATE COLLEGE, PENN. -- Well, I'm at the end of my two day campus visit to Penn State, with a little breather before I make the long flight back to the Bay Area. State College was kind enough to provide me with a mini-snow storm yesterday, followed by cold and sunshine today. I do not know whether the groundhog saw his shadow on February 2nd, but I do feel fortunate not to have had to relive yesterday over and over again until I got it right, a la Bill Murray.

Yesterday was a full day of interviews, meals and my job talk, starting at 7:45 am (which of course felt like 4:45) and not over until 9 pm, after I'd experienced four faculty members sniping at each other over the future of the profession over salmon and crab cakes. In between, I shuffled around from faculty member to dean to librarian to graduate students -- who were probably the most fun to hang out with, and who are clearly dying for some more courses in 20th Century Spanish Lit., which is where I come in. The most common question asked was "Do you like football?" to which I responded: "I can pretend to like football." This usually elicited the relieved response of: "Oh no, no, we don't care about football" from a faculty member. Clearly, however, they're the only ones in this town who don't care about football. In fact, the real estate agent who just drove me around town made sure to regale me with anecdotes about Joe Paterno (who, after having been briefed by Dad, and then having seen like five buildings on campus named after him, I now know is the 80-year old coach of the Penn State Nitny Lions¹) not being able to pump his own gas, among other tidbits. Then she drove me by his house, which is not for sale, by the way. The second most common question asked was "Have you heard of Wegmans?" to which I answered yes, since it's SKBK's favorite grocery store, and other Rochester natives and non-natives have been singing the praises of it for years. The Penn State folks are very excited about having their own Wegmans (or is it Wegman's?); I told them it sounded like some sort of cult, and did they come by your house to wash your carpets, too?

Anyway, the professional end of things went well -- my job talk was well-attended, came off without a hitch, and was followed by many questions. One of the faculty at Berkeley told me after my practice job talk that I should expect harder questions, and he was right. The questions were not softballs, but I think I handled them well.

That's the report for now -- one down, two to go. Whew!

¹ I still don't know what differentiates a nitny lion from a regular lion, but I think it has something to do with the fact that the Nitny Lion looks like a panther.

Iowa is as Iowa does

OK, that title was inspired by Nick's latest post. It's all about our unrequited liberal arts quest, I guess. I spent a half hour yesterday trying to convince a fellow Wesleyan alum that a liberal arts education is worth its weight in gold (which, for the record, I believe. But also, it would make my current quest for employment by one of said institutions rather hypocritical if I didn't, hmm?). Either I dazzled her with my brilliant arguments, or I wore her down, but either way, the aforementioned Wes grad said I'd convinced her that those four years and decades of debt weren't for naught. They made us the semi-well-adjusted citizens of the world that we are today. Plus we know all these famous people now, so that's cool. Go Wes!

Anyway, I digress: I got a flyback to Grinnell College!

A quick glance at the current weather in my three possible future places of residence confirmed that I'm totally a pathetically thin-blooded, fair-haired California girl who turns the heat on when it gets below 60 degrees outside (to be fair: apartments around here have no insulation and are very drafty -- please don't ridicule me) who's in for an extremely rude awakening when faced with snow drifts and below-zero temperatures. Future freak out about that forthcoming.

An attempt at transparency

The comment, and a fair one at that, has been made that this blog is an exercise in caginess, eschewing the use of the given name of its author, providing nebulous information as to her/his/its professional and personal aspirations, while going into considerable detail about a certain dog, baking techniques and the Iberian Peninsula.

This is all true, and, for the most part, I'm going to keep it that way.

Still, part of the stated goal of this blog, and perhaps also part of its usefulness to its author, was as a porthole into the secretive and drawn-out processes behind "the market," "the job search," "the MLA," or whatever you want to call it. So, with that in mind, and since it is, after all, the month of resolutions, I hereby resolve to be slightly more transparent about my attempt to rocket from graduate student to -- yikes -- professor.

At this stage of the game, with the blur of MLA interviews behind me, we're at halftime, the seventh-inning stretch, waiting for the puck to drop, you get me. So far, I've heard back from two schools who have invited me for what they like to call a "campus visit," but what is, in actuality, 36 to 48 hours of non-stop and sometimes agonizing interviews (which may also be referred to as "meetings," "coffees," "dinners" or "walks from one side of campus to the other"), with faculty, students, deans, secretarial staff and townies.¹ Even when you think you're not being interviewed, you're being interviewed. Last year's "flybacks" (what we like to call them) gave me a pretty well-rounded view of the process, and I've catalogued any mistakes or transgressions I made then in order to avoid them this time. Note to self: Do not ask senior professor at small college in the middle of nowhere what people do around here, anyway. Just agree that you've also got hermit-like tendencies and leave it at that.

So, here's what I can confirm:
#1 I will be a mere 78 miles away from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on Groundhog's Day.²

#2 The jury is still out as to whether it's pronounced Am'erst or AmHerst, but I'm interviewing there, too.

Hopefully, these updates will be welcome, although if they're not, you're going to have to tell me, because Tracksy threw me off their system and I can no longer peruse the visitors to my blog, so I don't know who you are anymore.

¹ Totally untrue. There is very little interaction with townies.
² In State College, where Penn State is.

Seen and Heard at the MLA

There's nothing like a few days of bleary-eyed interviews, professorial types festooned with nametags on every street corner and the welcome faces of former colleagues (well, with one exception: see below). This, my blog-friends, is the MLA (Modern Language Association) convention. Here's a taste:

• An interviewer (male) with what I can only assume was a homemade Christmas ornament dangling off his left ear, showing no restraint as he grilled me on my dissertation.
  
• "You're teaching a 50-minute intermediate language course. Today's topic is preterite and imperfect. The students have read a story before coming to class. What story would you pick and how would you teach this grammatical lesson using it? Please be specific."
  
• The 1812 Overture, as interpreted by the cell phone of the chair of another interview committee, just as I was expounding on something profound about my dissertation.
• $6 MLA tote bags -- get 'em while they last!
• At the only panel I was able to drag myself to: another stare-down from Julián, the freaky-bordering-on-psychotic former Cal grad student; an interesting paper on the Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao subway maps, given by the guy who has 'my job' at Madison; convention center carpeting that should have been replaced with the new millennium, and oddly incorporates the zig-zag from Charlie Brown's T-shirt; and a moderator with a notoriously overblown ego heckling one of the presenters on his own panel.
  
• "Would you like to sit on this chair or the chaise lounge?"
  
• Lots of suits, but not on me. I went with the skirt and sweater look this year.
• "Do you speak or read Basque?"
• A short film about Christmas celebrations in Catalonia, in which children whack a log with sticks in order to beat presents out of it (I guess), on an episode of "Teletubbies" in my hotel room. Why there isn't a panel on this custom at the conference, I just don't know. Bon nadal!
• An extraordinarily long line for free wine and snacks in the middle of the book expo. I guess the quest for free food doesn't end with graduate school.
• "Are you afraid of the Midwest?"
  

Facha in San Francisco

Whew -- a long day at San Francisco State is behind me. In fact, that's the last of my on-campus interviews for now, so I'm breathing a sigh of relief. Now for the post-mortem:

First of all, these classes are huge. I was expecting 20 students, tops, and there were about 35 in the culture course and probably 45 in the language course. All very engaged, though, which was really nice. I started the culture course giving a stripped-down, 10 minute timeline of 20th Century Spain: Civil War, Franco dictatorship, Franco's death, transition to democracy. Censorship and state-sponsored control of politics, culture, civil rights, etc. under Franco. Newfound artistic liberties, political upheaval and wild hedonistic indulgence during the Transition. Great. Everyone's with me so far. I toss out a discussion question: "How do you imagine artists would react to Franco's death and the artistic freedom they sudden aquired?"

A woman raises her hand. "Well, actually, things were better under Franco. The streets were empty. There wasn't any crime, or drugs. There was poverty, but there was also an upper class, and there wasn't any middle class. When Franco died, people just went crazy." In Spain, we call people like this "fachas:" Franquists who wish the clock would turn back so all the dirty, dangerous, democracy-loving wierdos would just go back into the caves they were forced to ride out the dictatorship in so they wouldn't be executed. Fachas are fairly commonplace in Spain, but they're an indangered species in San Francisco. Where did this woman come from? My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her to save it for whatever masonic ritual she has after hours, but instead I was civil. I told her I was trying to boil 50 years of Spanish history into 50 minutes, so obviously I was polarizing the issues, and that, yes, the Transition was more complicated than a dictator dropping dead and women immediately taking their tops off on the streets of Madrid.

The rest of the class was successful, I would say. I chickened out a little with the Almodóvar clip, and stopped the tape just before things got really raunchy (when I had mentioned to the professor who regularly teaches this course that it was a "racy" movie, he broke out in a nervous sweat, so I decided to tone the clip down from R to PG-13). But the class still got the point I was trying to make, clearly enjoying the Spanish punk music and the transsexual Alaska, one of a host of Spanish fringe actors named after remote and funny-sounding states (see also: "El Gran Wyoming").

And, I found out later, that my little facha visitor is in fact from Spain, and she causes the professor headaches by airing her "When I was in Spain, everyone loved the Inquisition" rants on a daily basis. One of the other professors on the hiring committee insinutated that he would have just thrown her out of class, so I guess I handled her pretty well, after all.

SJB, Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas de Berkeley

On Wednesday, I have an all-day interview at San Francisco State, where I'll be teaching two classes for the assembled masses. One of these classes is a "Culture and Civilization of Spain"-type deal, and I agreed to rip the students straight out of the Golden Age and into wild, frenzied, sexy Transition Spain (1975-1982).

To that end, I'll start by teaching an excerpt of Martín Gaite's El cuarto de atrás (1978), which is pretty standard college reading with a partially historical view of Francisco Franco's death and the way Spanish culture and society changed thereafter. It's also in my dissertation, which is a bonus.

But, to wake the students up after all this tedious novel-reading, I thought I would show them a snippet of Pedro Almodóvar's first movie, made before he was the toast of Spain's film export business, back when he was still working for the phone company: "Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón" (1980). Alrighty, then. I dipped into Berkeley's vast video archive this afternoon to watch the flick and find a 5-minute representative sample of a 'non-historical' reaction to Franco's death and the aforementioned frenzy of liberty and intellectual freedom that followed.

Well, Almodóvar's first movie does not contain the, ahem, "conservative" fare you might find in "Todo sobre mi madre," or "La mala educación." No, no: "Pepi, Luci, Bom..." is more akin to early John Waters, replete with snot-eating, a knitting and peeing party (that's the only way to describe it), plenty of S&M and a very memorable scene in which Almodóvar measures the manhood, shall we say, of a number of willing contestants. There's not a 5-minute block in this movie that wouldn't somehow offend the sensibilities of, say, me, much less a group of college students. And it's always fun to preview a movie like this at the library, so that everyone can see that you're watching a movie with full-frontal nudity at 1:30 p.m. on a Monday. Luckily, though, I found a brief scene that merely describes a number of these 'questionable' actions -- set to high-velocity early-80s Spanish punk music, no less -- instead of portraying them directly. These are fine lines we walk.

My hope is that the SF State students will all be from San Francisco and not Kansas, where I can only imagine what sorts of lawsuits would be brought against a lowly job candidate who shows an S&M romp to undergrads in the name of "culture." But the bottom line is that "Pepi, Luci, Bom..." really does show the destape (literally translated: taking the lid off; figuratively: whatever goes, baby) in 1980s Madrid as a reaction to 40 years of censorship under an oppressive dictatorship. It's a movie that clearly pits old Spain (straight men in positions of authority) versus new Spain (lesbians, transsexuals, punk rockers, snot-eaters and frisky women), and new Spain is obviously more fun.

So, we'll see what happens when I show my clip on Wednesday. I really hope some dottering 80-year-old emeritus professor doesn't show up to critique my teaching skills, but if he does, maybe he'll learn a thing or two, ¿no?