Monday, November 22, 2010

The Medill School of...oh, whatever


I went to college to study journalism. I chose Northwestern because it is home to the Medill School of Journalism. It's a fantastic school and as a result the name "Medill" carries weight in the industry, and I wanted to be a part of that.

So I've watched with waning interest and waxing exasperation as the Medill administration has been dicking around with the name of the school. At first they announced that it would just be "The Medill School," dropping the "of Journalism," as reflected in the current logo (above). This was done, they said, in consideration of the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program, which is also housed in Medill (and which, in my opinion and that of others, really belongs in the Kellogg School of Management or perhaps the School of Communication).

We wouldn't want the IMCers feeling left out by having the name of a journalism school include the word "journalism" in it. I know, we're so thoughtful. But whatever, I can swallow that. It's not like the value of a Medill degree isn't understood.

But that solution was too simple, and someone* changed their mind, so earlier this month the faculty voted (38-5) to change the name to "The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing."

Let's just let that soak in for a minute.

The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing**

Seriously? At what point did we decide that verbose and gawky is better than clean and simple? And also that conjunctions are unnecessary? It just feels like we're trying too hard. It's inelegant. By attempting to list everything that Medill is, we limit ourselves to that list.

As a way to soothe our collective indignation, I did some brainstorming with my unofficial panel of fellow Medill alums for alternative title ideas. (Warning: They get progressively angrier.)

My suggestion: The Medill School of Muckraking, Pandering, Asyndeton
E.D.'s suggestion: The Medill School of Journalism and Not Journalism
T.H.'s suggestion:
The Medill School of Whatever D.L.* Wants to Name It, Apparently
B.M.'s suggestion:
Medill: Who Gives a Fuck So Long as It Sounds Pretentious

I'm proud to have studied journalism and to have graduated from Medill. But I don't have confidence in what this shift means for the program. I just hope that the word craft doesn't get lost amongst the verbiage.

* That'd be Medill's dean, John Lavine.

**UPDATE, 11:06 p.m. - So the Daily Northwestern messed up the name -- it should actually be the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. That's...so much better.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Blogs: Shitty First Drafts

I'm reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, a fantastically funny and informative book that offers "some instructions on writing and life." A typical piece of instruction, taken from the chapter titled "Shitty First Drafts:"

"All good writers write [shitty first drafts]. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)"

First of all, is that not wonderful? Lamott mixes in so many elements -- humor and a relaxed voice, mostly, not to mention a successful, totally tangential parenthetical -- that we can't help but wonder what the first draft of this very paragraph must have looked like.

But mostly, this is incredibly comforting. I'm sure I'm not the only writer who's ever written something I'd rather eat than show to another living soul. Getting over that hump -- making myself just sit down and write and not worry about spitting out polished prose on the first attempt -- is probably the most important thing I've learned in two quarters of a master's writing program. Taking the time to write a shitty first draft and then revise it -- this must be how the great writers do it. Why didn't I realize that before?

I think this is also why we consider blogging such an inferior writing outlet: It's almost always comprised entirely of shitty first drafts. This, what I'm writing right now, is a shitty first draft. I won't revise it, save maybe fixing some spelling errors. I might read it through once, but I'm not going to go back over it and take the time to really craft it. There are way too many people like me out there, throwing up their shitty first drafts all over the Internet.

See? Being a writer is a practice in self-hatred. Being a blogger, doubly so.

So really, thanks for reading. I promise I do actually edit my posts sometimes.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

NU @ Wrigley

I've missed you all. Not as much as I've missed NU football.

Obviously.

P.S. I turned in my final assignment for this quarter at DePaul, which means I should have more time to post interesting things for you to read. We'll see how that goes over the next few weeks.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Yeah, Toast



With this video, released yesterday, OK Go continues to blow everyone else out of the water when it comes to music videos. At this point we can safely assert that the treadmill guys (53 million views, holy crap) are more than just a gimmick; they obviously see the music video as an art unto itself.

Last Leaf is the latest song off the 2010 album Of the Blue of the Colour of the Sky to get the video treatment: check out WTF?, White Knuckles, and End Love, as well as two separate videos for This Too Shall Pass (video 1, video 2), the first one of which features members of the Notre Dame Marching Band.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

I'm not a food blogger (yet)...

...but damn, I'm proud of tonight's cooking achievements.

Martha's Curried Carrot Soup

Serve hot or cold, 185 calories per serving. Check out the recipe here.
(UPDATE, 11/11/10: This dish has received official roomie approval. Win.)


Rosemary Roast Beef with potatoes, scallions and mushrooms

And my own recipe. Now accepting applications for future rich husbands seeking kickass homemaker. I'll provide the apron, you provide the bon bons.

These days, a self-pleasuring bear isn't enough

Wrong Conan, but just as amusing.

I watched the
new Conan show on TBS last night. It was fairly engaging, but I can't shake the latent concern that Conan's weirdness, while an endearing quality, is also what drives viewers away. It's obvious that the target audience is my generation: The show was preceded by a Family Guy marathon, the guests were under-30'ers Seth Rogen (who told a bunch of weed jokes) and Lea Michele, as well as prodigal musician Jack White, and the cameos included pseudo-household names Larry King, Jon Hamm, Ricky Gervais and the teenage-boy-gag masturbating bear, among others.

But while it's amusing to revel in Conan's self-proclaimed awkwardness for awhile, the ruse can't last an hour every night of the week. My 20-something attention span, which has been ravaged for years by things with glowing screens, is over it after a few revolutions.


I hope Conan succeeds. I want him to, because he's sincere and cleverly droll, and I appreciate his brand of vaguely band geek humor. But at the end of the day, awkward is just awkward, and if the first show was supposed to wow me, I don't think they're quite there yet.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Bo Burnham Update

After spending so much time on this post last week, I caved and paid the $8 from Amazon for the new (DRM-free) Bo Burnham album. And you guys...it's pretty good. Mostly recordings from live shows, with a few studio versions, it's a comedy album that I'd put in the same league as Stephen Lynch, with more re-listenability than Dane Cook.

Also, two weeks ago Collegehumor posted an instructional video on how to parlay playing the piano into getting laid starring -- you guessed it -- Bo Burnham. (Embedding disabled, you'll have to hit the link, but it's worth it.) Apparently all it takes is some hair flipping, arpeggios and scribbling of notes. PMA boys, take note.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Oh Bo! Or Oh No?

So I wrote this post last night and I woke up this morning with a mash-up of both these songs (the new ones, "Words Words Words" and "Oh Bo") stuck in my head. I can't help but be both impressed and annoyed, and I'm curious as to what you guys think of this guy, so let me know in the comments!



I first heard about Bo Burnham when a friend sent me the above video in November of 2008. My response to the email: "Ha...pedophilia..."

(For context, that video was posted on YouTube in July 2008, more than a year and a half after this kid posted his first video in December 2006 at age 16 to amuse his older brother, who was away at college.)

Despite my caustic response, I enjoyed the video; the quips are quick and the puns roll off almost effortlessly. He's obviously got talent. About a year later (fall 2009) I looked him up again to find, along with a slew of other videos and appearances, this:




I mean, c'mon. That's hilarious. It looked like the kid's career was really taking off. I then forgot about him again until this week.

Turns out Burnham's been busy. In 2008 (before I'd even seen the first video), he headlined an episode of Comedy Central Presents. That was four days after he turned 18, making him the youngest stand-up comic to be on that show. Ever. He also released an EP, "Bo Fo Sho," via Comedy Central. (He's got an agent and a record deal for three more.)
In 2009 he released a self-titled CD/DVD and had a bit part in Judd Apatow's 2009 flick Funny People and in his spare time, he wrote a script (an "anti-high school musical") that Apatow might (maybe) produce. To top it off, this month Burnham released a third album, Words, Words, Words, that has already hit #1 on the Billboard Comedy charts (a chart I'll admit I didn't know existed), paired with yet another Comedy Central special (aired October 16th), and he's launched his second national tour, making a stop in Chicago next Friday.

Whew. Did you get all that?

The point is...

I've decided that I want this kid to succeed. Sometimes it takes a few listens to get into (and to catch all the jokes), but I think he's legitimately funny, and I appreciate the heavily satirical and un-PC subject matter. I especially appreciate that he considers himself a comedian (way) before a musician, but he can still hold it down on the piano.

Not to mention that he's 20 years old. Twenty. He's got a better comedic sensibility than the collective mind of the Saturday Night Live writers room at this point and he's just starting out. He's not a household name but, as they say, he's doin' it right. There are two videos off the new album and this one is legit funny, well-produced and well-directed (warning: not safe for work):



Even though his intended audience is in college, I'd bet a decent number of Canadian dollars that a large portion of his fanbase is under 18, and so the same sexual references that I find hilarious are also being watched by my 10-year-old cousin. But I mean, I would have loved this guy when I was a teenager. So who am I to say?

Though I'm not really sure what to make of this one...




P.S. It doesn't hurt that he's much cuter at age 20 than he was at 16. Just sayin'.

(That's not creepy, is it?)

(Hi Mom.)

UPDATE

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Post-Election Haze


This blog is not political, and that's the way I'd like to keep it. Therefore I have little to say about the results of yesterday's midterm elections except to mention that I cast my first ballot ever -- yay! (I even did my homework on the minor races, though I still don't know what the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioners do, exactly.)

I'd also like to direct you to
this blog, written by a pair of hilarious octogenarians. Talk about street cred: surviving the Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, disco, the transformation of the two-party system, and Vanilla Ice and then launching yourself onto the blogosphere. I hope I write like that -- clear, eloquent, and in touch with reality -- when I'm in my eighties and capable of wielding almost a century of experience. My favorite passage by Helen Philpot, to entice you to make the jump:

"Folks, from where I sit, we’ve never had it so good. One less war. Most of the TARP money paid back and another Great Depression avoided. Unemployment numbers are shitty – yes - BUT imagine how bad it would be if Republicans had done away with unemployment benefits like they wanted. And as someone who has Medicare, I can assure you that government-run healthcare isn’t Obamacare, it’s common-decency-care.

"The Tea Party wants to complain about Obama’s “run-away spending” but the fact is Bush spent billions on wars while Obama has spent billions on an economic stimulus package. Fact. More private sector jobs were created in the last 8 months than in the entire 8 years of the Bush presidency. Fact. The only thing the Republican Party has increased recently is the number of gay teen suicides."

Talk about sassy.

Monday, November 1, 2010

NaNoWriMo

Wrong month but same idea.

It doesn't take much to convince me to over-commit myself. If something sounds like fun, or like something I should be doing, I jump in.

Such is the case with NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. My friends and fellow Medill alums (tools) Tian Huang and Bethany Marzewski pointed out to me this morning that today, November 1, marks the first day of the 2010 month-long, group-oriented catastrophe that attempts to make writers of plebeians. The basic idea is to complete 50,000 words in a month -- an average of 1,667 words per day. Quality isn't as important as just getting something down on the page, which for many writers (myself included) is usually the first and most daunting hurdle. I tend to edit myself as I write, so the idea of just trying to hit a word count each day is strangely appealing; therefore color me intimidated but determined. My plan is to respond to one writing prompt per day via a list of prompts from my Memoir Writing class, which ends in a few weeks but has planted a stubborn seed in my brain. So it's not a novel, but hey, it's daily writing -- something I've never before attempted or sustained, not even for this blog.


I'm cutting myself just a bit of slack right at the beginning by including in my word count not only my prompt from today, for which I wrote 1,689 words (woot!), but also a piece I wrote for class last month. The prompt I used was "Write two pages of your relationship to Sundays (at various points in your life)." I don't expect much of what I write this month to be blog-worthy, since again the goal is not quality but quantity, but if any gems emerge I'll be sure to share them with you. The Sunday piece is pasted below.

----

Sunday was for church. I wore my little dresses with bows and black patent shoes. I sat in the church until the hymns were over – that was the fun part – and then the pastor excused the children to Sunday School. When I got too old for Sunday School, I had to stay in the service the entire time. I was bored, because you can’t make kids listen to sermons on marriage and being a good person when they don’t understand what that means. I started reading the Bible every Sunday during sermons instead of listening. I intended to read it cover to cover, but by the end of Genesis I was exhausted, and I knew that was probably the most fun chapter anyway, what with all the stories about arks and Abraham and stuff.

My grandma is the one that took me to church. My mother is an atheist and the man who became my stepfather is Jewish. One of my grandpas is Catholic. I was baptized Lutheran, because my mom wanted to appease her Nebraskan relations, particularly her grandparents. My great-grandmother sewed my white baptismal dress. So at least I had the sin officially washed away once.

My grandma took me to church because she felt it was her duty. She took me to Presbyterian church at first, and I really liked their Sunday School room because they had Mr. Potato Head and I didn’t have a Mr. Potato Head at home. My aunt got married in that church when I was seven. I was a junior bridesmaid and I wore purple with white lace around the collar and took my first limo ride. Then my grandma decided she disagreed with the views of the pastor (or is it minister? I can never remember) and we started going to an Evangelical church across town, which my grandma explained to me meant that they accepted all the different Christian sects as parishioners. I didn’t have an opinion either way, but luckily I was starting to get too old for Mr. Potato Head.

When I was old enough (eleven) I joined the youth group. We met once a week on a weeknight and ate pizza and played games and talked about God. I was really into it. I liked going there because it meant I had another set of friends, one that I didn’t go to school with, which was good because I didn’t consider myself that popular in school. But that didn’t matter as much in youth group. I went away to Bible camp for long weekends and played furiously and talked a lot about God and cried when I accepted Jesus into my heart. I was sure I’d remember the exact date forever, but I’ve forgotten now. It was summertime.

When I was 14 my parents moved and I went with them and my grandma couldn’t take me to church anymore. After a few months in the new town I made friends with a girl named Candice and she took me to her church, which was Baptist. I didn’t know anything about Baptists except that they like to sing a lot and they wait until people are older and can actually accept Jesus into their heart before they dip them in water. I didn’t need that, because I’d been baptized as a baby and besides, I’d already accepted Jesus into my heart. He was there to stay. I really liked the singing though.

I attended Baptist youth group with Candice and it was much more laid-back than at my old church, almost disorganized. We didn’t spend as much time talking about God, or maybe I just didn’t pay attention.

I would go home to my atheist mother and Jewish stepfather and assumedly agnostic baby sister and I could tell they didn’t approve of my church-going. Since I couldn’t rebel with marijuana or alcohol (I wouldn’t know where to get it) or sex (I was too shy), I went out on the religion limb. I helped found the Christian Club at my high school. My stepfather tried to tell me that we couldn’t have a Christian Club because of the separation of church and state, but I told him we could and then I talked to the principal or someone else in charge and they said we could too. I started the club and then only went to a couple of meetings. I was getting disgruntled with God. I started to have questions that no one could answer, at least not to my satisfaction. How did Adam and Eve start the human race without their children engaging in incest, which would be a sin against God? How can we live by the Bible when the Bible says homosexuality is an abomination? I stopped going to youth group, and I stopped going to church. I still hung out with those kids but we didn’t talk about God.

When I went to college I declared myself an atheist, but that probably wasn’t true. I was actually agnostic; I just didn’t know what to believe anymore because the Bible is obviously total bullshit. I took an Intro to Religion class at one point and visited a Baha’i temple to write about their services, because I felt like it was one of the few religions with which I was completely unfamiliar. Plus my college campus was just a few miles from the only Baha’i temple on the North American continent, a stunning, all-white, domed building with nine sides and exquisite architectural details, surrounded by gardens. The service was fifteen minutes long and consisted of readings out of different holy books. No hymns, no sermon, no collection plate. Just different members of the community getting up and reading out of the Bible, the Qur’an, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (the Baha’i holy book). The man that read the Qur’an actually sang it, and I’d never heard that before. It was beautiful, and if it had been a movie I would have cried and thrown up my hands and said you know what? Religion doesn’t matter. Faith matters.

But it’s not a movie, and I still don’t know what I believe.