Pretty self-explanitory. Kinda funny.
Restaurant Review: Chuck E. Cheese
What and Where:
Chuck E. Cheese | 2655 Oak Valley Dr. | Ann Arbor, MI 48103 (734) 222-1003
Ratings (1=terrible, 5=mind-blowingly great)
Comments (as of 2/19/06)
- Every once in a while, especially when the weather is bad and/or when Will is having a wee bit of “cabin fever,” Annette or I (and it is more often than not me) take Will and/or his friends to Chuck E. Cheese. It’s sort of a restaurant and we went this on Saturday, so I thought I’d offer this review.
- Obviously, no adult would go here without children. Though one of my neighbors told me a funny story about how she took her sister there on her 21st birthday. The newly legal to get drunk anywhere sibling was not amused.
- I actually don’t mind the pizza, much in the same way that I don’t mind a hamburger from MacDonald’s once in a while. It’s not real pizza, but, for someone like me who grew up in suburban/strip mall America, it is oddly comforting, like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. They have a salad bar and other food at CEC, but I have no idea as to why you would even think about eating these items.
- Chuck E. Cheese is amusingly staffed with surly teenagers/early 20-somethings. I can’t imagine what the “manager” in one of these places looks like. And God help the poor sap who draws the short straw and then has to get into that damned rat costume– some dumb-ass might make you hold up a can of beans.
- The vibe of CEC depends. Chuck E. Cheese is essentially a kiddie version of Las Vegas, and my impression is that one’s feelings toward “sin city” are exactly the same as one’s feelings toward CEC. We’re itchin’ to get back to Vegas, so the Cheese is okay with us. Actually (and strangely), I find Chuck E. Cheese a pretty easy place to read, grade papers, check my email, etc.
- For the “under 10” age group though, Chuck E. Cheese seems to universally be the equivalent of crack.
- At face-value, is an extremely poor value. The food is over-priced as are the tokens to play various games and win various completely worthless tickets. On the other hand, it often is a small price to pay to entertain the boy for a couple of hours.
Blargon (?!) in the NYT (and none of it from me…)
Loyal readers, do you remember how, a couple weeks ago now, I had a post seeking blog specific jargon? Well, I feel comfortable now revealing that the inquiry that prompted that post came from none other than William Safire and it resulted in this article in the New York Times Magaine this weekend.
Well, okay, it wasn’t from Safire directly; it was from one of his researchers. But he (the researcher, that is) did email and leave me a phone voice mail message about this back at the end of January/begining of February, and I obliged with a blog posting trolling for requesting input.
It’s an okay enough piece, but I guess I have two critiques, both of which I suppose are semi-obvious. First, a lot of the terms/jargon in this article seem, well, a bit of a stretch for me. I mean, “moonbats?” “deliciousing?” “blegging?” I dunno…
Second, Safire makes no mention of me nor any of the comments on my post about this. I feel kinda used.
Ralph Reed: the graphic novel
Ralph Reed, who has been a major force in spearheading conservative Christian efforts in politics, has always creeped me out quite a bit. Here’s a “graphic novel”/comic strip as to why that’s the case.
See? Blogs in secondary schools aren't all bad…. Oh, but don't forget about Facebook
One of my catch-up/work activities is sorting through email, and another is preparing for the “TBA” reading sections in my two on-campus classes, both of which are examining blogging issues. Which is why I’m linking these two articles:
- “Reading, Writing, and Blogging,” from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which is about a Richmond, VA area school district where all the teachers are required to keep blogs. The idea is for teachers using blogs to keep in touch with students/parents/etc., and some of these teachers have used their blog spaces to publish some student writing, too. One thing that’s impressive from looking at these web spaces/blogs in this school district: these people appear to have their techno-stuff a lot more together than most school districts around here.
- “Blogs are a ‘voice out to the world for teens,” which was in the Sunday Ann Arbor News. It’s a “Q&A” with Paul Mobbs, Dexter’s (a suburb just up the road) school liaison police officer about blog stuff. Basically, Mobb writes about how he gives workshops for students about what they ought to be careful about with blogging. Here’s a good quote:
I’ll pull up a student’s blog and say, “Is this too much information?” And most people will say no.
Well, then I get on their buddy list and within five minutes, I have the ability to figure out from other messages what school they go to, what grade they’re in, what activities they’re involved in. Some people put phone numbers. Within a few minutes, without even trying, I could do a MapQuest to their house. Someone could use that information to create a profile and attempt to start a relationship with that person.
The students don’t really think of it along those lines, but if you put the pieces of the puzzle together, you can get a lot of information.
In other words, Mobbs is teaching some basic writing and rhetoric skills regarding audience awareness and computer technology. What I want to know is how come this stuff isn’t being taught in a Dexter high school English class? Or maybe it is?
- But it’s not all hunky-dory. The EMU Echo has a two article series on the Facebook at EMU. The first article, “Face-ing the Truth,” takes the angle of faculty and staff and others using Facebook to keep tabs on students. To be honest, I don’t think this article has much to say. I mean, “student conduct” isn’t my job, but I have to think that most of the faculty and staff who have Facebook pages are kind of like me (I set up a page after this article): we’re just curious to see what this thing is all about.
The second article is both kind of obvious but also the sort of thing that our students probably should remember: “Facebook Could Hurt Job Chances.” Here’s a quote:
It is strikingly common for students to post revealing information about themselves in their Facebook photos. Many students younger than 21 post photos of themselves drinking or playing beer pong, for example.
David Stollman, a co-founder of Campuspeak.com who has delivered speeches to college students about the dangers of posting dicey information online, said employers are watching.
“I have talked with employers who have told me that the Facebook entry of an applicant has ruled them out of an interview process,” Stollman said in an e-mail interview. “Basically they said they get lots of resumes and when the person doing the research on the applicants finds ridiculous pictures, stories, etc., [the applicants] were told not to waste their time anymore.
Now, the article also points out that there aren’t any statistics about how common this scenario actually is; if anything, the article suggests, the number of people being denied jobs because of Facebook things is probably pretty low. Still, students (and everyone else, of course) ought to be aware that whatever you put up on the web has a chance to come back and haunt you, even if you think you’re anonymous. And all I know about Facebook (at least at EMU) is it seems to be a web space most students use to post pictures of themselves and their friends, generally “partying” in some sense. It seems fairly harmless and fairly useless to me.
Just in case you want to study more….
I’ve wanted to blog about a variety of things this week, but school and life have both been too busy (a theme this semester, eh?). In the meantime, check out this reading list from folks at UC-Santa Barbara for an MA exam. Kinda interesting….
More Fat Suit! I Need More Fat Suit!
I don’t know what this says about me, but I for one enjoy watching Entertainment Tonight. I sometimes watch the show to mock it and our stupid fame-obsessed culture, but I more often watch to participate in/be victimized by our culture’s obsession with entertainment and fame for fame’s sake. Besides, there’s nothing else on at 7:30.
Anyway, lately ET (and just again on ET “Weekend” this past Saturday– hey, what can I say, I can’t get enough of the ET) has really been working this “Fat Suit” angle, as this story on the ET Online Web Site explains. Since November, I swear they’ve had some version of the fat suit on at least once a week, and it’s starting to drive me a little crazy.
For those of you not up to speed on this, let me try to explain: ET “Reporter” Vanessa Minnillo, an extremely attractive woman (a former Miss Teen USA, according to her bio) who probably is about 5’5″ and maybe 120 pounds dripping wet, is put into this elaborate “fat suit” to change her into a 350 pound woman. Then they send her out with a film crew (presumably a hidden camera kind of thing) and watch people react. Inevitably, Minnillo is surprised– hurt, even!– to find out that most people react poorly to her in her fat suit. As she says in the “news story” I link to here, “[N]ot only do I have a new perspective on people with weight problems, it’s an experience I will never forget.”
Oh, where to begin?
First off, there’s overweight, there’s “fat” (like me), there’s “wow” fat, and then there’s this look. No offense to anyone out there reading this, but dude/dudette, if you are five-foot five and 350 pounds, well, you’ve got issues. I mean, this picture doesn’t do justice, but this outfit makes her look circus freak show fat. In my mind, a more effective test would be to dress Minnillo in a “chubby” and/or merely “fat” suit, maybe around 200 pounds, and see what happens.
Second, I have no doubts about the basic premise here: overweight/fat women (men too, but more women, I am sure) do get looks and hassled by people. But because Minnillo looks so downright freaky in this get-up, you have to wonder how many people are looking at her and thinking “wow, look at that super fat woman,” and how many are looking at her and thinking “wow, what’s up with the woman in the fat suit?”
Third, it doesn’t surprise me that Minnillo reacts with such shock at being ignored in the fat suit because she is so freakin’ good looking in “real life” that she has certainly never been ignored before. They did a couple of “fat suit”/”sans fat suit” comparisons on the weekend show that had me laughing. First they showed fat suit Minnillo getting into the subway, demonstrating how people either ignored her or were obviously not pleased about being next to the fat woman (or just the freaky woman with a fat suit fetish). Then they showed Minnillo without her fat suit try to get her hot little self on to the subway, and it was like she had a magic wand or something. “Excuse me,” she said in her cute girl way and the crowd parted. It was hillarious. Of course, she still was stared at, though for different reasons.
Anyway, I hope ET gives up on this fat suit thing soon before I have to write a stern letter. Maybe they can try a different angle, like get Minnillo to haul around a little kiddie wagon full of poo and see how strangers react to that.
Recommended listening: Cut and Paste Plagiarism on NPR
I caught most of the “cut and paste plagiarism” episode on the NPR talk show “Talk of the Nation” this afternoon, and I must say that on the whole, it was a pretty good piece. While you had just enough “alarmists” to keep it interesting (and, sorry to say this, it seemed that most of the alarmist were high school teachers), most of the discussion was, I thought, surprisingly reasonable. Of course, this wasn’t a Rush Limbaugh talks about plagiarism show….
Check out the link, if you’re interested; I’m likely to assign this as at least “recommended listening” for my grad class.
My Increasing Lack of Grading Speed
I am super-duper behind in all sorts of things having to do with school, largely because I think I’ve taken on just a bit too much work this term. There’s a fine line between being just busy enough to be productive and being busy to the point of being overwhelmed and thus swamped and not so productive. I keep crossing back and forth over this line.
And one of the things that’s complicated this lately is that when it comes to facing student essays/assignments I need to read, comment on, and grade, I seem to be getting slower. I mean a “stack of papers,” but I don’t mean a stack of papers too, because (and this I think is at the heart of the problem for me) I am thinking right now of grading assignments from my online writing class. I am collecting, reading, commenting on, grading, and returning MS Word documents which I never print out.
Two (or one of two) things seem to be happening to me. First, because I am reading these essays on my laptop in MS Word and because that allows me to insert comments with relative ease, I end up inserting a lot (probably too many) comments. Second, I might just be getting old(er), and either built-up grading experiences or the burdens of age and wisdom just slow me down. I think the problem is mostly a technological one, but I don’t dismiss the age factor either. It seems to me that 10 or 12 years ago, when I was a younger grading pup, I could crank through a stack of 20 essays in about two and a half hours. This weekend, it took me more like six or eight hours to read and comment on 20.
For my sanity’s sake, I think I’m going to have to be a bit more “precise” in my time spent with the next batch of essays for my online class. I am just going to have to be less comment-happy, and I will probably return to some of the tricks of the trade from years past. Years and years ago, I was an assistant for a burned-out lit prof in a lecture hall section, and his tip for reading student essays was to make sure you could read and grade 10 of them per hour, five minutes apiece (with a 10 minute break built in at the end). I don’t think I can read these essays at that kind of clip (after all, the things students in this online class are writing are longer and more complicated than in that intro to lit class), but I can try.
Of course, I can’t get any younger.
In any event, have others who read and comment on student work electronically noticed the same thing? Does it seem to take you longer? Or is it just me? And if it is just me, what do you do to be efficient with your grading?
Why men are more likely to be ambidextrous, why I’m glad I’m not a campus janitor or a campus cop
It’s funny how, while actually looking at academic/professional blogs this morning, how easily one can stumble upon items about mastrabation. Take these two, for example:
- From the ASU Web Devil student paper: “An 18-year-old male ASU student was arrested Sunday night at Hayden Library and charged with indecent exposure and public sexual indecency. The suspect allegedly pulled his pants and underwear to his mid-thighs to masturbate while watching pornography on his laptop. When asked why he had gone to the library to view pornography and masturbate, the suspect allegedly told police, ‘To be honest, the Internet connection at my dorm isn’t good enough.'”
- From the Davezilla blog (and this is what linked to the academic blog and that started this whole thing) comes this memo about spooge clogging up the shower drains in the men’s dorms. It’s an image file on his blog, so you’ll have to go there to enjoy it in its full glory, but, according to the memo from the Durham University Estates and & Buildings department, semen has been clogging the drains and they will seek DNA testing if the problem persists. So please, says the memo, advise students who wish to mastrabate to do so in the comfort of their own rooms.
Ah, youth….
Well, time to take a, er, “shower”….