Accommodatingly

Mary Roach is a funny writer and, from the short time I met her at the Twin Cities Book Festival, a very nice person. However, she apparently does not know what a wampa is.

There is simply no excuse for not looking up that word. If she didn’t think to do so, I can’t imagine why the producer wouldn’t have. What kind of standards do they have over at NPR, anyway? SHEEEESH. I’ve already sent a correction request. I hope that they give it all due attention. (Which is to say, none. I feel kind of guilty for wasting some intern’s time on my Star Wars obsession, but WRONG is WRONG.)

Back from Chicago, or rather from the posh Chicago suburb in which Lake Forest College makes its home: though I’d been there in 1988 and 1989 for a pair of Quiz Bowl Tournaments, the campus didn’t look familiar at all. Maybe the new buildings explain it. (It looks as if the Lake Forest quiz bowl tournament itself has ceased operations: pity, if so. We had fun. Well, I had fun.)

Most gratifying aspect of visit: a giant audience, as such things go– at least 35 people, in a classroom on a Tuesday night with plenty of combination without a new book to flog. Robert must have promoted it well. Thanks, Robert!

Weirdest aspect of visit: I ended up teaching Jane Eyre, for reasons too long to explain here: I didn’t mind, but I definitely didn’t expect it.

I’m apparently in this week’s Times Literary Supplement, with a poem (about our old house on Fairmount Ave.) called “Bluebells.” (You’ll have to get the print publication to read it, though: I don’t think they’re going to put the poem on line.)

New Veronica Mars season looks like it’s going to be just as good as the first season, i.e. worth going way out of my way, if necessary, to watch, which I wouldn’t say about anything else currently on TV not involving basketball. But if Veronica (and Wallace) are so smart, why did they misspell “volleyball”? In the same way (no “e”), in big capital letters, twice?

Tomorrow we make another journey to another Baby Shower. Tonight, however, we join the Browncoats. I for one am psyched.

Wingnuts think March of the Penguins supports wingnut ideas. University College London geneticist Steve Jones responds: “Supporters of intelligent design think that if they see something they don’t understand, it must be God; they fail to recognise that they themselves are part of evolution. It appeals to ignorance, which is why there is a lot of it in American politics at the moment.”

Indeed. I do wish the enormously popular film had some one-sentence aside about global warming; Luc Jaquet says it’s a problem for penguins, too.

I think about Batman in today’s Huffington Post.

“Adults [in the 1920s and 1930s] regarded children’s toys and literature as much more than mere playthings or pastimes. They were intended to meet children’s psychological needs, which loomed increasingly large in adults’ minds. In 1938 Lois Barclay Murphy, a child psychologist, drove her family from New York to California. As they approached the Kansas border, her six-year-old daughter, Midge, demanded that the family avoid the state, because she did not want to be blown away like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.” –Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood

Warning: sarcasm ahead.

It must, since the Department of Homeland Security helped shut down EliteTorrents because of it.

I guess I’m relieved that they have all this free time to devote to protecting Lucas’s intellectual property. America must be pretty safe for DHS to be so concerned about Ep3’s bottom line. I mean, it only grossed $124.1 million in three days. I’m sure it would have done better if there weren’t people at home downloading it, and the fact that it didn’t bring in a cool quarter mil has more to do with BitTorrent than with the fact that diehard Eps 4-6 fans like me don’t give a shit any more.

Of course the ultimate master of the Star Wars domain is not Lucas, but cuddly ol’ Rupert Murdoch, so it’s no surprise that our anti-terrorism corps hopped to it so quickly.

If you haven’t yet seen Ray, I’m going to give you some advice. As the end approaches, and he is in rehab, shut off the movie after he throws the table with the chess set to the floor. It is enough for you to know that he kicks the junk, continues to have a successful career, and is honored by the state of Georgia. You do not need to see the truly awful, syrupy, withdrawal induced conversation he has with his dead mother and little brother. Trust me. It’s so bad it makes me wonder if Charles himself weighed in and thought that the film needed a scene of his little brother forgiving the adult Charles, or perhaps some stupid producer applied pressure after test audiences responded. If it was the writer’s and director’s fault, they should be flogged. They demolished every gram of respect I had built up for over two hours in two minutes.