Month: November 2005

Notes on Seeing the Latest Harry Potter Movie

Will and Annette and I went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie this afternoon. Here are some of my thoughts on the whole experience:

  • We got Will out of school a bit early, mainly because it is like a 3 hour movie and we wanted to be able to watch it and get home before it was way way past dinner.
  • We settled in, into kind of the front row as you enter the theater. It’s not the absolute front row, but it was maybe the fifth or so row, and it was also very near the enterance to the theater.
  • Just as the previews commercials that I didn’t pay to see were starting, a group of older folks who seemed determined to talk through the entire feature and who also seemed hard of hearing sat down to our right. Annette and Will, who were sitting to my immediate right, moved over to my immediate left.
  • Then, about a minute or so into the feature itself, a man and his two children sat down to our (and specifically, Annette’s) left. And I mean right on her left, like a seat away, and it’s worth pointing out that while the theater was crowded, it was far from packed. These people could have sat in many other places. Then this guy then starts explaining the movie to one of his kids, saying stuff like “Okay, now all these people are wizards. Oh, and this game quidditch is sort of like soccer but they play it on brooms.” Annette, not a person to suffer fools in a movie theater, leaned over and said “shhh!” His response was “No.” Annette said “What?” He said “I’m not going to be quiet. This isn’t your house.” Annette said “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He said “My son is hearing-impaired so I need to explain things to him.”

    Now, let me point out that I didn’t hear any of this, but I could tell that there was some kind of commotion going on over there. Annette gave me the very brief version of what was going on and I knew immediately that this wasn’t going to work. I started gathering the coats hastily and said “Let’s move,” and we did.

    As we walked by Mr. Talker and his “hearing-impaired” son (I’ll get to that later), I said, quite sarcastically of course, “Thank you.” You know, a “THANK you!” kind of thing. Mr. Talker’s loud and somewhat sincere response was “Asshole!” Whatever. We retreated to seats a few rows behind.

  • I liked the movie, I think quite a bit. It was a bit problematic for me though because I have only managed to read about 200 pages fo the 700+ page book, and the movie got through this material in literally the first 10 minutes. But I was able to follow what was going on and I thought it was pretty well done.
  • It is a pretty scary movie, and one of my former students/friends sent me an email last week saying that he thought it was too scary for a kid Will’s age. I emailed back and told him (and I’m not really proud of this) that Will has what strikes me as an unusually high tolerance for violence and such on the screen. And it does turn out he was fine. When I asked Will after the movie if he thought it was too scary, he just scoffed at me.
  • It turns out that in our huff to leave our previous seats, I had left Will’s mittens and stocking cap behind. So, as the credits were rolling and Mr. Talker et al were watching them, we walked by to look for them. To Mr. Talker’s credit, he apologized to us profusely for his earlier behavior, explaining that he too didn’t like it when people talked at the movies, he was embarassed for his past behavior, etc., etc. We small-talked a bit about the movie (Mr. Talker liked it too), and then he explained that his son was actually not hearing-impaired but he had ADD and Mr. Talker thought he’d have to explain everything to his son. Which, for me, prompted a big ol’ “Huh?!?!?!?!” in my head.
  • Annette clearly had mixed feelings about the flick, largely based on the many things that were left out of the 700+ page book, and also (IMO) largely based on her extensive knowledge and scholarship on the whole Harry Potter series. It wasn’t quite like this, but it was a bit like her saying “And that whole deal that was on page 373? That’s not there at all!! Can you believe that?! Jeesh!” Well, like I said, I need to finish reading the book first.

Like I said, other than some weirdness, a good movie. Worth checking out.

Zoo visit and Logan’s Run




Where is everyone?

Originally uploaded by steven_d_krause.

This past weekend, Annette’s parents were in town in lieu of coming up here on Thanksgiving. We had a nice time, though one of the challenges of entertaining the parents/in-laws is finding something new for them to do after they have been here a zillion times.

Anyway, among other things, we went to the Toledo Zoo on Saturday. We arrived at just shy of 4 pm, which was a kind of odd time for this time of year. The zoo closes at 4 pm, and technically, folks have an hour to clear out. However, the zoo re-opens at 5 pm from this past weekend through Christmas for the light display, which is certainly worth the trip by itself. But Will wanted to actually see some animals at the zoo (go figure), and we didn’t want to be out too late.

Our timing turned out to be excellent. First off, we saw some cool animal activites– they were feeding the seals when we arrived, and we also so the wolves quite a bit more active and visible than they usually are. Second, we had the place almost completely to ourselves, at least until folks started showing up for the lights, which is a pretty big deal at the Toldeo Zoo every year. And it’s worth the trip, actually. It’s kind of fun walking around a dark and chilly zoo, looking at lights of animals instead of actual animals.

While we were walking around, I saw a sign that said “carousel.” You know how sometimes you have those weird juxtapositions in your head about things? There we were, walking around these monumental-like zoo buildings, more or less alone, and I thought wow, kinda like Logan’s Run. Remember that flick? I remember that movie really creeping me out, as it probably should have since it was in the theaters about 30 years ago. Anyway, remember the scenes toward the end where they are wondering around the ruins of Washington, D.C.? That’s what it was like.

Something to think about on your next trip to the zoo….

C&W 2006, C&W 2007

The Call for Proposals for the Computers and Writing Conference 2006 in Lubbock, TX is out. And of course, I’m looking forward to that.

But in other news, Computers and Writing 2007 is going to be a hop and a skip away in Detroit at Wayne State University. Here’s a link to the application, which also spells out some of the budget issues for this thing, something that might be useful for future proposer, too.

Congrats to Rice and crew!

Town-skipping carpet?

See this post on the New West End Blog about the closing of Shayani Oriental Rugs on Main Street in Ann Arbor. I don’t really know if these folks are right or not, that this would be a better location for a bar, restaurant, coffee shop, etc., than for a bank. All I know is we bought a nice rug for our living room from these people back in August, and had we somehow been able to wait a few months, we would have probably saved 60-80% on it. Oh well….

Another to do list item: get rid of aluminum foil cap

For all kinds of different reasons, this has been kind of a bad week for me in terms of blog posting (obviously). The in-laws are visiting right now, and so far a good time is being had by one and all, and I might be able to get back in the swing of things next week, unless the stack of essays I need to grade falls over and smothers me. Deep sigh.

Anyway, in lieu of actually having something intelligent to say (and I have a whole thing working in my head about how both the Democrats and Republicans are lyng about the whole WMD thing in Iraq, though the Republicans are clearly the bigger and more dangerous and more expensive liars), I offer this link to a study about the ineffectiveness of tin foil skull helmets.

A couple of links/planning my near teaching future

I’ve been pretty swamped with this pesky school stuff lately. As I often joke, being a college professor would be a pretty easy job if I didn’t have to do things like grade and read student work; alas, that job is of a college administrator….

Anyway, I came across a couple of links I need to think about for at least one (possibly two) class(es) I will be teaching in the winter.

  • As mentioned Kairosnews, there’s this article, “Who Needs a College Campus?” an article in Forbes by a computer science professor at Yale who (basically) suggests that students at all but the most elite schools will soon be taking all of their classes online. I don’t want to make too many judgements about an article I have yet to read, but I suspect a bit too rosy of a picture of the future. I do agree with one passage that is a quote from the article (apparently): while online classes probably cannot replace a well-taught small group seminar, they probably can replace big lecture hall classes taught by less than stellar teachers. I would add (and I don’t know if this is in the article or not yet), based on my experiences this semester, that while I don’t think students need to take all of their classes online, I think it makes perfect sense at schools like EMU for students to take about a third of their classes online.
  • I wanted to include here a link to an article from last week’s CHE, “Do Not Fear the Blog” by Rebecca “her real name” Goetz. Basically, she is giving the flip-side to Ivan “the worst fake name ever” Tribble’s articles from earlier in the year where he suggests that academic blogging is a bad thing. These articles might make for a nice conversation in my graduate course and maybe my Writing for the World Wide Web course.

Speaking of which: I think I have (at least more of) a plan for the courses where I was asking for help previously. I am almost certainly going to be using the Wysocki et al collection Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. My copy arrived just yesterday, but after looking at it for about 10 minutes, I’m already saying “Oh, yeah. I obviously should use this.” I think I will stick with the Literate Lives in the Information Age: Narratives of Literacy from the United States by Selfe and Hawisher and many “et alâ€� book (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004 ) because it went over well (though it is a bit pricey, if you ask me), and then I will round out the readings with quite a few articles and web readings.

For my Writing for the WWW class, I am going to use Horton and Lynch’s Web Style Guide (which I still think is a great book, even if it is getting a little dated), Williams’ and Tollett’s The Non-Designer’s Web Book (3rd edition), and Molly Holzschlag’s Spring Into HTML and CSS. I was originally going to use a different book that folks had recommended, but– long story short– I was worried about the availability of this other book because a new edition of it is coming out in March 2006 and I think the publisher has listed the current edition as out of print, which might make it tricky for students to get.

Now, my original plan for this week was to have all of my “ducks in a row” so that I could spend my freetime over Thanksgiving break getting these Winter classes ready. Alas, my ducks are still scattered about. Oh well, I’ll still have some time to work and such next week… and I might work in some eating, too….

EMU starts a PAC (or, more than a day late and a dollar short)

The Ann Arbor News ran a large story this past Sunday about EMU’s (still relatively new) president John Fallon starting up a Political Action Committee; a version of the story appears on the mlive web site, “EMU seeks more help in Lansing.”Here’s the opening paragraphs:

Eastern Michigan University wants to win more friends and influence more people in the increasingly competitive world of Lansing politics, where the payoff for good relationships can be increased state aid or funding for building renovations.

This fall, as part of new President John Fallon’s plan to develop more clout in Lansing, the university formed its first-ever political action committee, called “Friends of EMU.” The PAC will give money or participate in fundraisers with legislators whom they view as supportive of EMU’s interests.

State political insiders say EMU is a latecomer to what has been a long-established practice that receives little public attention – public universities unabashedly raising private money to give to legislators who are in position to approve projects and policies in line with the universities’ needs and goals.

Fallon has apparently been making a lot of trips to Lansing to try and get more money for EMU, an issue he seems to understand better than the last three or so EMU presidents. Part of the problem, as the story talks about, is that the Michigan legislature instituted term limits a few years back, and that really changed the power balance. For example, back in the day, EMU had a major booster in a guy named Gary Owen, who was the Michigan Speaker of the House (and is the namesake of the College of Business building, too). But these people are all gone, which means that each state university has to hustle for itself a bit more, and EMU hasn’t done that.

The cost to EMU for this lack of “direct” political action has been pretty apparent, actually. EMU hasn’t had a “capital oultay money” (e.g., a building on campus or some other major project) since 1996, which I believe was the library. That ain’t good. The PAC is tiny right now and someone is quoted in the article as saying that university PACs don’t have that much influence because there isn’t much money there (compared to, say, the wine and beer distributors PAC). And you could make a compelling argument that state universities shouldn’t have to have PACs like this in the first place. But in situations like this, I think there are some political realities that require something like this.

One thing not in the article: I might be wrong about this, but EMU used to have a Vice President who was supposed to be doing this sort of thing. This person doesn’t work here anymore.

Comedy Hijinks Ensued

As part of Annette’s birthday week, we went to the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase Friday night. Annette’s wanted to go to this place for a show for a while now. Personally, I wasn’t against going, but I wasn’t for going either. It’s just not one of those things that was high on my to do list.

But we did have a fun time. The AA Comedy Showcase is in the basement of Seva and has that black, grungy interior that I suspect (from what I’ve seen on Comedy Central, at least) is the default decor of comedy clubs everywhere. The 8 pm show we attended was a non-smoking event, which was a good thing because the dark basement space looked to me like like it would be pretty unpleasant for the smoking shows.

The first joke of the night was when Annette asked to see the wine list. They did have other bar items and fine popcorn, though.

The “main act” that night was Maryellen Hooper, though there was also an “MC” (who told a few jokes, told us to tip our waitstaff, and told us we where we were supposed to exit after the show) and a brief “opening act” (who I thought was pretty lame). Hooper is someone who looks vaguely familiar from various comedy shows, though I can’t say I remember actually ever seeing her on TV.

I don’t really have much more of a review other than she was funny. Lots of jokes about her adopted baby, her husband, boys versus girls, etc., etc. Clean stuff, pretty much. Anyway, a fun night, not crazy expensive (well, the drinks weren’t cheap), definitely something I’d do again.

For the Geeks Among You: The Lord of the Rings as Role Playing Game

My friend Chris sent me this, a narrative about The Lord of the Rings played out as a role playing game (aka, something like Dungeons and Dragons). In case you’re a bit confused: GM= “Game Master,” or the person who runs the game; “PCs” are “Player Characters,” which are the ones run by other players of the game; and “NPC” means “Non-Player Characters,” meaning a player actually played by the GM, really to make things go smoothly.