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?"