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It’s time for another post from the back stage of the blog! 

Why?  Because I’m flying off to San Francisco and points north for a friend’s wedding, that’s why.  The friend in question would be Larry Gallagher, the guitarist/ sax player/ horn arranger/ wandering minstrel/ ordained Zen monk/ part-time carpenter/ freelance journalist whose website looks like this, and with whom I played in a couple of bands when we were callow college youth.  It was the early 1980s, and Larry was playing in outfits like Normal Men, The Beaux Arts Society, and Onan Flan (the first two with me, the third without), and writing things like

I’m still subject
To subjectivity
There’s too much id in
Ideology

--which is really not bad for a 20-year-old kid, especially the whimsical sort who’s also writing songs like “Shake What You Haven’t Got” and “The Way You Seem Tonight.” These days he’s still laugh-out-loud funny, as the lyrics of “Wimpy White Guys with Guitars” will tell you–

Christian feels a certain special pain
He compares his inner landscape
To a gently falling rain
Trey is wondering where his lady went
Travis is smitten with a vague discontent
Justin has a message for his show
He came all this way to tell us that
He just doesn’t know
Reid will sing a song about a train
Blake will make you wistful for a fistful of change

Wimpy white guys with guitars
Choking up the coffee houses
Bringing down the bars
Restless as the ocean
Countless as the stars
Wimpy white guys with guitars

Need I add that part of the brilliance of the song is that it sounds exactly like a sensitive white-guy tune?  Or you could take the lyrics of “Show Me Your Flaw,” in which a hapless would-be lover asks the woman of his dreams (who is, of course, gazing deep into the eyes of a ponytailed butthead) to assure him that she’s not really worth longing for:

Show me your flaw,
Show me your flaw,
‘Cause from here you look perfect, and it’s eating me raw. . . .
Indulge a geek, miss
Any major weakness will suffice–
Dianetics, Michael Bolton, homicide, or lice
Show me your flaw!

But Larry writes some extraordinarily moving stuff as well, and if you check out some of the songs (like “Disappointment Slough,” my current fave) on his website or on the Amazon.com page, you’ll see why he gets reviews like these from fans and first-time listeners alike.

Anyway, I’ll be away from blogs for a while, though I do plan to dine with this guy, who, as you all know, is responsible for much of the Left Coast’s finest blogging, de-blogging, and general blog-commenting.

So since the beginning of August, this is what my real life has looked like: off to Connecticut with the family for a friend’s funeral.  Then, a week later, to North Carolina with extended family for vacation.  Two days after that, off to St. Louis with the family to drop Nick at college.  Two days home, then to northern Virginia by myself on a one-day secret mission.  Last weekend, to New York by myself for an MLA meeting and a lovely backyard bloggerfest at Casa Sisyphus.  And now solo to California for Larry’s wedding.  Meanwhile, over the past month alone, I’ve written up two tenure-and-promotion cases (each of these takes about a week, and I did one of ‘em while I was on vacation); I’ve drafted a 15-page thing for the secret mission; I’ve written a couple of sections for the report of the MLA Task Force on the Evaluation of Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion (that was the New York meeting); I’ve submitted my course requests for 2006-07; I’ve met again and again and again with three different campus committees, each of which is doing work that is at once critically important and yet somehow too boring to blog about; I’ve met with people who want to start up an AAUP chapter here at Penn State, now that we have the Horowitzian HR 177 “select subcommittee” of the House of Representatives investigating “liberal bias” on Pennsylvania’s campuses; I’ve done some planning stuff for my session at the end-of-September conference of the Pennsylvania Association of Rehabilitation Facilities; and I’m almost finished with a 2000-word review of a 700-page book whose title rhymes more or less with Queory’s Quempire.  I think I’m also reviewing one book proposal and one article for publication, or something like that.  Oh yeah, and one more promotion review to do by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, Jamie has started seventh grade, and is taking French this year (wish him luck!  tomorrow he has a quiz on les jours de la semaine); he turns 14 on Friday, and believe me, neither of us is happy that I’m missing his birthday.  But I’ve promised him that I won’t miss another one, and I’ve explained that a dear friend’s wedding is a serious thing.  Especially when the wedding band needs a drummer!  Yep, I’ve also spent part of the last two weeks learning the songs the wedding band will play during the reception—Larry’s musician-friends made up a CD for people to practice with.  I even went out today and got three new pairs of sticks for the occasion.  Which I badly needed anyway, since Nick, before he left, chewed up or broke practically every stick in the house.  Good kid, that Nick, and a fiery drummer, but he clearly needs to learn to play some easy listening, quiet storm, and smooth jazz. 

When I get back, things should settle down a bit.  Janet and I will celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary; most people don’t know this, but the twentieth anniversary is the Cobalt Anniversary, and gifts are really hard to find (just wait til the Radium Anniversary!).  Then a few days later, I will turn 44, and my hockey season will start.  I played in an informal over-35 game last night and scored three goals in a 7-3 win, but I am badly out of shape, what with the post-appendectomy summer and all this dang travelling.  I don’t expect to be in game form until mid-October at the earliest.  And I almost forgot:  I’ll also start my final revisions on a pair of books, both of which should be out next year!  That will be fun.

Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that my life is so simple as all this.  I haven’t even mentioned the Severe and Almost Life-Threatening Pancreatitis of Lucy the Dog, or the fateful thousand-dollar visit from the plumbers, or Janet taking Jamie to a hearing test tomorrow to check on the damage from that sinus infection, or our frantic scramble to weatherproof our house for the winter now that we’ve learned that natural gas prices will be roughly 70 percent higher than last year.  (Nick, if you’re reading this, we’ve decided not to heat your room while you’re gone.  Please let us know if there’s anything in there that might freeze, crack, congeal, or explode.) I wouldn’t want the blog to get all clogged up with minutiae like that, now, would I?

And no, I haven’t forgotten about Theory Tuesdays and Arbitrary But Fun Fridays.  If I have a moment (and Internets access) this Friday, I’ll come up with something arbitrary (but fun).  If not, see you all next week.  Don’t forget to call for a vote of no confidence in our federal government and its incompetent leader while I’m gone!

Posted by on 09/14 at 08:12 PM

  1. For your Cobalt anniversary, you could get a case of Ty Nant water in the pretty cobalt-blue bottles....or not.

    Posted by  on  09/14  at  10:30 PM

  2. Maybe you coulda take some time off from your busy schedule, Minstrel Mike, to pen a decent ballad or two on that group of confused, greasy -assed rhetoricians and irrationalists, the MLA: HOws aBout, “Get On the Train, you piece of shit Dyke” (or replace in dyke with - fag, n-ah, pimp, post-modernist)...or better n Deutsch (correct me grammer if you like Doc)

    Steigen Sie in den Zug, Schweine!

    Posted by Spichael  on  09/14  at  10:49 PM

  3. Ty Nant water!  My year-long search is over.  Thank you so much, deja pseu!

    Posted by Michael  on  09/14  at  10:49 PM

  4. You get one more, Patrick/ Spichael.  Make it a good one.  Make us cry this time.

    Posted by  on  09/14  at  10:51 PM

  5. Why would a wedding band need a drummer?  Wouldn’t a jeweler be better?

    *ducking*

    Posted by Sherman Dorn  on  09/14  at  11:00 PM

  6. Well, hell. I’m on an overnight to San Jose. Actually right now I’m sitting in the airport of the strip mall capital of the world (Phoenix) waiting for a connection. Maybe I can make it to the city in time for brandies?

    Posted by Roxanne  on  09/14  at  11:28 PM

  7. Bon voyage!  And good luck, Jamie, on les jours de de la semaine!

    Posted by bitchphd  on  09/15  at  01:03 AM

  8. Oh, we’re going to try that trick with closing off our son’s room and not heating it, too—we’re closing off the whole upstairs of our house.

    We’re looking on the bright side. If gas prices skyrocket enough, maybe the money we save by not heating that part of the house will equal the amount we’re spending on his tuition at UW Madison.

    Posted by PZ Myers  on  09/15  at  10:39 AM

  9. I was mostly kidding about the Ty Nant, but hey, if it works for you, you’re welcome.

    Posted by  on  09/15  at  10:50 AM

  10. Anybody else notice that Michael did not list brushing his teeth among the things he accomplished during August? Sheez, piece of cake if one drops that--no wonder he gets so much done.

    Heck of a month there. Enjoy that wedding!

    Bon chance, Jamie! Et demain, c’est TGIV! (Or maybe that’s MDCV?) I hope the results of your hearing test bring good news.

    Posted by  on  09/15  at  05:27 PM

  11. Bon chance, Jamie, et a vous, Michel, aussi. (Pardonnez-moi pour les fautes d’orthographie ou de grammaire et l’absence des “diacritical marks") ["En Francais, Tina!”...Man, what is my high school French teacher doing here?]

    Oh, and en anglais, I think more “behind the scenes” posts might be a good thing.  The world needs to know more about what profs do when they’re not in the classroom, imho.  And *we* want to know more about *how* you do it!

    Posted by Tina  on  09/15  at  05:37 PM

  12. Would Larry be the (usually) quiet but (always) forceful man I knew only as Captain Vinyl?

    Posted by Tim Horrigan  on  09/15  at  07:53 PM

  13. Oh, we’re going to try that trick with closing off our son’s room and not heating it, too—we’re closing off the whole upstairs of our house.

    My mom tried that when I ran away from home. Pipes froze and burst. Hundreds of (1976) dollars of repair ensued.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  09/15  at  08:14 PM

  14. Never thought this would be useful to know but I once visited a museum shop—the Blue Shop—in Norway exclusively devoted to cobalt items.

    http://www.blaa.no/hoved.asp?kID=4&side=764&sprk=2&skat=1012

    Posted by cobalt hunt  on  09/15  at  09:50 PM

  15. Hey next time you come to NYC, let me know, ok? I would love to meet you and buy you a beer.

    Jeremy

    Posted by Jeremy Osner  on  09/16  at  10:24 AM

  16. Lucy!  How’s she doing?  Not that she ever wasn’t terrified of me, but I’m concerned.  I <a href-"http://sterneworks.org/v-web/b2/index.php?p=218&c=1" target="_blank">had to make one of my cats radioactive recently</a>, so you have my sympathy.  In the meantime, enjoy your trip.

    Posted by Jonathan  on  09/16  at  10:32 AM

  17. so much for links embedded in comments. . . .  let’st ry the old way.

    http://sterneworks.org/v-web/b2/index.php?p=218&c=1

    Posted by Jonathan  on  09/16  at  10:33 AM

  18. Jonathan, it was that “equals” sign after the “href” that did you in. wink

    Posted by Linkmeister  on  09/16  at  05:18 PM

  19. Alovely entry, but alas I have to point out that it must be totally bogus.

    After all, I have it on very definitive authority, by someone who claims to have studied the academy carefully for years, that tenured professors work no more than 6 hours a week. 

    You’ve heard of a certain Mr. David Horowtiz, self-proclaimed intellectual extraordinaire, and how his brilliant books are never engaged by the lazy, lefty tenured intellectuals who waste their six hours/week on other, less worthy pursuits, I presume?

    Anyways, happy birthday to Jaimie-hope the hearing test gave some reasons for optimism.

    Posted by  on  09/16  at  11:06 PM

  20. Maybe the principle that keeps my refrigerator from getting so cold it freezes my eggs will work in your house: the trick is that full spaces retain heat better than nearly-empty ones.  I started keeping books in my fridge, as my way-hip bachelorette life never needs much more than spinach, eggs, feta, and a few cheap chardonnays in the fridge.

    In lieu of filling Nick’s room with books, I recommend cheap chardonnays.

    I also would like to apologize for adding to what must have been an equally busy September last year with my pesky law school recommendation.  Now that I’m in law school, I regret that request wholeheartedly.  (Mostly kidding.)

    Posted by Sarah Farber  on  09/17  at  10:44 AM

  21. I was moved to email Larry using the address on his web site.  He had more important things to do than to reply.

    I hope Michael reports on the wedding. I am especially interested to hear which other ex-Columbia types else got invited and/or showed up.

    Posted by Tim Horrigan  on  09/19  at  10:29 PM

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