Urban Honking

Andrew, What do I do? Why did I come to Los Angeles! Everyone here talks constantly about stuff they saw and not stuff they did, because no one is doing stuff. At least not the people I’ve come into contact with. People here talk about movies as if watching a movie is the same thing […]

This movie is beautiful. It is nearly flawless. It is pitch-perfect and all the other terms you use to describe good cinema. It’s a romantic comedy sort of but it’s also deeply sad, and it has this incredible ending I don’t want to spoil. But I will tell you that the entire audience spontaneously broke […]

I’m in my new office. This time it has a window! Still an office mate, too, but the window is pretty sweet. I am about to have an all-day meeting. Meetings! I wish faculty still ran the universities. I think meetings were probably more fun back then. I wish a lot of things. My new […]

Dear Yours Truly! How do you know when you are 7 year itching and when you should really get out of a relationship? I’ve been with my husband almost 7 years. I don’t know if I have an itch or if I am feeling like things have run their course and it’s okay. Is there […]

Susan Sontag wrote that we live in an age of extremity, characterized by “the continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror.” She was clearly describing the academic’s life. Joke! She was describing consumerism and war. Anyway, the school year is about to start, and my body is […]

I had high hopes for Jeremy Renner. I have loved his frowny pug face in several movies in a row now. I watched the new Mission Impossible on hopes he would be awesome. His abs-lighting nearly upstaged his performance in the Avengers movie, but he was still great. Then, judging by the trailer for the […]

Two posts in one day! CONTRABAND: INANE BOURNE IDENTITY RE-VIEWING: GREAT

Okay you guys. Lets do this. First of all, is there anyone out there who actually liked this movie? It was up for a million Oscars, so I guess the answer to that is “Yes.” People also seem to love Velveeta cheese, endless illegal wars and paying for their own health insurance, though, so lets […]

In spite of the classic Texas thunderstorm that threatened to strike at any minute, my parents and I did make it successfully through our four hour layover in Dallas and on to the plane and on to our hometown, where my husband picked us up and we struggled to talk comprehensibly through our exhaustion. What […]

One of the delights of being a not-super-organized person is that you’re constantly discovering things you’d forgotten about. Just now, I’m going through my notebook from last year, prepping discussion questions for my class this coming year, and in said notebook (in between notes on Genesis and notes on Plato) I find some notes I […]