Hands of the clock give me a round of applause

I had my second class today -- "Teaching Film," which deals with film theory and criticism, along with literary theory. I love it, so far. It is a grad seminar with about 15 people in it. We will have reading assignments and one movie to watch each week, and then during class, we will discuss certain aspects of the film and the theory readings we did. The professor seems very cool; he's from Wales and wrote a book about James Bond movies. Here are the movies we have to (get to) watch for assignments:

• Alien
• Apocalypse Now
• Citizen Kane
• Deconstructing Harry
• Do The Right Thing
• Goldfinger
• Kill Bill vol 1.
• The Last Seduction
• Ma Vie En Rose
• Modern Times
• The Pillow Book
• Psycho

I've seen 8 of them already and loved those. And any class in which we study Kill Bill . . . I mean, come on! It all makes me think I am making the right choice. So today in class, as part of an introduction, we watched clips from various movies and discussed specific aspects, such as framing, dialogue, psychology, etc. So he showed clips from a wide variety of movies: Trainspotting, Shakespeare in Love, Taxi Driver, Lost in Translation, and even Clueless. The class seems pretty bright, and there are quite a few other high school teachers in there as well.

In other news, I am excited because today I got a bumpersticker that I ordered. One of my friends, Jake, produced it. Here is the backstory from his blog, in his words:

The backstory: Driving through Minnesota and Wisconsin this past weekend afforded me ample views not only a lot of BUSH-CHENEY 04 bumper stickers—which, after living in Wicker Park for a while, you begin to forget exist—but also a lot of enormous SUVs with those hideous yellow (or sometimes RW&B) magnetic “Support Our Troops” ribbons. What pisses me off about this whole meme—besides the too-obvious-to-really-be-very-delicious irony of the fact that these magnets are on the SUVs that guzzle the fuel that indirectly caused us to go preemptively start a meaningless war 2.5 years ago—is the ribbons’ syntax, issued as an imperative, an order, an admonishment: SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, practically yelling at me from the aft side of their giant vehicle. If I wasn’t such a wimp, I would politely confront these people when I park alongside them at rest stops and ask them what specifically they’re doing to support our troops, besides spending $1 on a magnet. Where was that magnet manufactured, and under what conditions? Where do the proceeds actually go? Why don’t you do something more substantial to support our troops, like driving a more fuel-efficient car, or donating to veterans’ organizations, or voting for leaders who have a viable exit strategy for the war? Who don’t want to cut the troops’ supplies, salary, health care, and veterans’ benefits? Or, god forbid, why don’t you encourage your own sons and daughters to enlist? After all, recruitment numbers are abysmally low. I wonder why that is.
Sorry about the rant. I’m not raising any points that aren’t already painfully obvious to anyone with a solid grip on reality. The real point of this post is to present the little brainstorm that’s going to net me a shit-ton of bling once I patent and mass-produce it. I’m going to exploit the already-glutted but extremely lucrative snarky-left-wing-bumper-sticker market. Here’s a photo of the prototype, which I made yesterday and put on my car.

So now I have one, and I love it.

And oh yeah: a good musical evening, with Doves on Conan and Iron & Wine on Carson Daly.