11.01.08
Posted in Composition at 10:34 am by Justus
Remember two weeks ago, when I was in the middle of grading the first batch of WR121 essays? How I said, “I’ll have more to say about this shortly”?
I guess I lied. Here it is, November 1, and I’m once again in the middle of grading a big stack of WR121 essays. After about three weeks into a term, my definition of “I’ll get to that shortly” changes substantially. During the summer, “shortly” usually means “a day or two.” During the school year, as I keep assigning essays, and students keep writing those essays and turning them in, and I keep grading those essays and handing out assignments for new essays, and students keep writing those new essays and turning them in, and–you get the point, right?–anyway, during the school year, the definition of “shortly” becomes entirely relative to what week of the term we’re in.
For instance, if I say during week three that I’ll get to something shortly, I mean “in eight weeks, after I’m done grading the final portfolios.” If I say the same thing in week seven, I mean “in four weeks, after I’m done grading the final portfolios.”
I suppose I should just strike the word “shortly” from my vocabulary for the duration of the school year.
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10.15.08
Posted in Probably Irrelevant at 5:03 pm by Justus
I’m in the homestretch of grading the first big batch of essays from my WR121 courses. I’ll have more to say about this shortly, but in the meantime, please enjoy:
Leonard Nimoy singing “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”
There are many benefits to carpooling; one of them is that the conversation can remind you of forgotten gems from yesteryear such as that song.
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10.05.08
Posted in Creative Writing at 5:15 pm by Justus
I just got a question from a creative writing student that usually doesn’t show up until much, much later in the term. There are some questions that we teachers hear all the time, and over the course of our teaching careers we develop stock answers. I think I’ve answered these questions better in the past, but for the sake of posterity (and anyone reading this blog who might be interested) here are my responses:
In terms of getting someone to look at your work, the best advice I have is to write some short fiction and send it to any literary journal you think might be interested. Of course, that involves researching all the literary journals across the country, especially the small ones… it’s time consuming, and there’s a massive amount of rejection, but if you keep writing and submitting, you’ll eventually start to get publication credits. After you get a few things published, you then have something to show publishing houses: “Hey, look, someone not related to me thought my stories were good enough to publish.” That’s kind of how the industry works. Unless you happen to find yourself in a position to make friends with a famous writer with connections or an editor at a publishing house (that also works).
I do have a suggestion for someone who would one day like to become a full-time author: marry someone rich, so you either don’t have to work or can work a part-time job, and can spend all your time writing. Barring that, you might try winning the lottery. But there’s only one real piece of advice: if you really want it, don’t give up. That’s harder than it sounds. First, you have to accept the fact that you might never be a full-time author. Next, you have to accept that you might work all your life pursuing a dream only to end up dying without that dream coming true. Finally, you have to decide that even if your dreams never come true and you never end up publishing anything, you still want to write because you love writing and can’t live without it.
And as for the challenges of making ends meet between publications: most authors aren’t full-time writers. Only the big ones who sell millions of books and have those books turned into movies. Most publishing authors, even highly respected ones, do other work, even if it’s just part-time (teaching’s pretty popular).
Pretty depressing, right? The best thing you can do after reading this is think to yourself, “That Ballard guy is full of crap. I’m going to be a successful novelist.”
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10.01.08
Posted in Creative Writing at 2:42 pm by Justus
Good news, everybody!
Celebrated Portland author Monica Drake (who wrote Clown Girl) will be visiting Chemeketa for a reading and a fiction workshop.
You can check out the postcard designed by Chemeketa’s VisComm students here.
And for those of you who would like to click through links but just don’t have the time, here’s the vital information:
The readings are free. The workshop costs $125 (lunch is included!), and you need to preregister using CRN 38712. Spaces are limited.
WORKSHOP
“Stolen Truth: Bringing Your Life into Fiction”
An interactive workshop with craft talk, writing time, examples, feedback, and more. No experience or prior writing necessary; just bring your memories and a pen. Saturday, November 8, 8:30am - 4:30pm
Multicultural Center, Building 2
READINGS
Friday, November 7, 11:30-12:20
Multicultural Center, Building 2
Friday, November 7, 7:30pm
Blue Pepper Cafe, 241 Commercial St NE
503-371-4600
Last year, the poets seemed to have a pretty good time at the Lawson Inada workshop. Those poets. Always having fun.
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09.28.08
Posted in Film Arts at 6:20 pm by Justus
I realized that after all the hype over the past couple months, I haven’t said a thing about the latest Coen brothers film since I saw it. I hate disappointing the three people who read this blog, but there’s no time for a full review… so you’ll have to settle for one in haiku:
Burn After Reading
Refers back to Blood Simple
Malkovich is great
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09.27.08
Posted in Film Arts at 10:41 am by Justus
Paul Newman died on Friday.
I know, I know: people die every day. And there’s something that seems a bit callous, as though we had misplaced priorities, when we choose to publicly grieve the deaths of artists and celebrities while keeping the grief we feel about the deaths of those close to us private.
But for all of the annoyance we might feel at the pettiness and irrelevance of contemporary celebrity culture, sharing our thoughts about the lives and deaths of people whose work we admire is one of the most effective ways we non-celebrities can connect with each other. If someone in my family dies, and someone in your family dies, we can perhaps get together and talk and share the experience–but only to a certain extent. Our experiences are similar, but they are separate. However, when Heath Ledger or David Foster Wallace or Paul Newman dies, and if you happen to also be an admirer of those people’s work, there is a shared experience of loss that makes it much easier to communicate with each other.
With that said…
I have a long list of favorite all-time films, and Newman starred in two of them: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Cool Hand Luke. I’ve never taught them in a film class, in part because I’ve never offered a class called “Films Justus Ballard Thinks Everyone Should Watch,” but they do make appearances in my WR262 screenwriting class. Newman had a good eye for solid scripts, and was rarely involved in a film with a lousy story.
The bicycle scene from Butch & Sundance
This is the first Newman film I consciously chose to watch, and it was all thanks to my grandpa. Every once in a while, in response to seemingly nothing at all, my grandpa would say, “Who are those guys?” and laugh to himself. Eventually, I would also laugh, but I had no idea why it was funny, other than my grandpa was apparently being comically perplexed by an invisible group of mysterious men. Finally, I had to ask him: “What guys?” At which point he looked at me sternly and said, “You don’t know Butch and Sundance?” And then, finding out I didn’t, he sat me down and made me watch the movie. And it was beautiful and charming and funny, and I developed a serious crush on Katherine Ross, and discovered Burt Bacharach, and it immediately became my new favorite film (displacing, if I recall correctly, Caddyshack). As a teenager in the early nineties, I found something magically nostalgic about a film made in the sixties about a couple of good-hearted outlaws from the old west. I don’t know if the filmmakers intended this to happen, but every time I see it (or hear “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head”), I get this weird feeling of love for America…
And here’s a TV spot for Cool Hand Luke. You should take the time to check it out. Even if you’ve seen the film, and if only to marvel at how much film advertising has changed over the years.
I finally saw this film about five years ago, and I regret not having seen it sooner. Actually, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t see this film in high school. I had enough problems with authority as it was; I can only imagine the hours of detention I would’ve earned for saying “What we have here is failure to communicate.”
This post is already far too long, but I’ll leave you with the final quote from the NY Times obituary:
“We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”
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09.18.08
Posted in Probably Irrelevant at 9:53 am by Justus
I am a glutton for punishment. A few months ago, my good friend and colleague Jeff McAlpine (who teaches at Clackamas Community College) asked if I wanted to help him introduce a couple of performances of Waiting For Godot at Clackamas Repertory Theatre.
I said, “Why not? It’s not like I’ll be busy prepping my themed WR121s or FA255 courses.”
Cue the rueful laughter on the soundtrack.
Anyway. We’re scheduled to introduce the Saturday performances on September 27 and October 4. Our introductions are scheduled for 6:45, and curtain for the play itself is 7:30.
The title of our introduction is “Top Ten Things You Don’t Need to Know About Samuel Beckett.” And yes, I will be playing a keyboard and pretending to be Paul Shaffer. I need to brush up on my Canadian, but otherwise I think I’m going to nail this role.
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09.11.08
Posted in Probably Irrelevant at 1:31 pm by Justus
I’m in the middle of putting together all the materials I’ll be using for this term’s courses, and while blogging about the process would be an excellent way to procrastinate, I can’t imagine that anyone would want to read about it. Actually, let’s test that hypothesis: I’m polishing up the third essay assignment for my WR121 courses, and I just spent five minutes researching the early years of American television broadcasting.
OK, maybe that was a little bit interesting. Nonetheless, I’d rather write about comics.
First, let me introduce you to my current favorite comic strip. No, it’s not Garfield Minus Garfield, although that was a good guess.
It’s Achewood. Achewood is about a couple of bears, a tiger, and an otter. It’s occasionally vulgar and almost always funny. I know, I know, vulgar bears and tigers aren’t for everyone (the otter is never vulgar). It might not be your cup of tea. If it’s not, forget I mentioned it.
However, if you like your cup of tea sweetened with an occasional fart or sex joke, you might want to check it out. Thanks to the magic of free online comics from Portland-based Dark Horse Comics, we get several full-color pages about the greatest trip to Taco Bell of all time.
In other news, there’s a new Ambush Bug series out from DC Comics.
I was never a big comic book reader as a kid. I liked the comic strips (Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbes–you know, the classics), but I didn’t really have the disposable income or proximity to a comic book store to really get into the monthly books. There was only one series that really grabbed my interest, and that was Ambush Bug. I was ten years old, and that comic book blew my mind. It was about a humanoid bug who… had problems with his socks and kept getting beat up. None of it made sense. When I got older, I learned that the reason it didn’t make sense was because I didn’t read many comic books, and the entire premise of the Ambush Bug series was to present a bunch of inside jokes that only hardcore devotees of the DC Universe would truly appreciate.
I didn’t “get” any of the jokes, but I laughed anyway, because it was the most absurd thing I’d ever stumbled across. (This was still a couple years before I discovered Monty Python, but around the same time I saw the Beatles in Hard Day’s Night.)
Now, a couple of decades later, Ambush Bug is back. I’m still not a regular reader of any DC Comic, which means I’m probably still not “getting” the jokes. But this afternoon, when I’ve finished reading up on Milton Berle and Hopalong Cassiday, I’m heading down to my friendly neighborhood comic book store to pick up issue two of the new series. Sometimes things are just funnier when they don’t make any sense.
SPECIAL BONUS WINTER TERM FILM ARTS COURSE PLUG: Remember, kids! The Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading opens at a theater near you tomorrow!
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08.28.08
Posted in Probably Irrelevant at 11:43 am by Justus
Just in case any of you were under the mistaken impression that I’m cooler than I actually am, here’s a little story that last blog post reminded me of:
As an undergraduate, my friends (and believe me, I use the plural of this word very, very loosely. I had one friend, and he had another friend that hated my guts. I wasn’t too fond of him, either, but I still counted him as a friend because it’s humiliating to say, when what your weekend plans are, “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just hang with my friend.”) and I decided to form a gang. To be precise, a Grammar Gang.
We weren’t organized enough to come up with a mission statement, and we never held any meetings. The one thing we did do was decide to get tattoos.
My friend decided he would get a schwa:
His reasoning: “It’s upside down. That’s AWESOME!”
My friend’s friend… well, I forgot what he decided to get. But he was a total jackass, so it doesn’t really matter.
I had a difficult time deciding between the semicolon:
;
Or the classic expression of surprise and amusement, the exclamation point within parentheses:
(!)
I went back and forth for what seemed like weeks, until we each privately decided that getting a tattoo would be far too painful, and that being in a gang really wasn’t working out.
In the years since, I finally did make up my mind. I’d get both tattoos. As soon as I get over my fear of pain.
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08.26.08
Posted in Building 45 at 11:26 am by Justus
This has been a pretty good summer for submissions to Building 45. Which, I have to admit, is surprising. I didn’t think the submissions would be coming in until at least second week of fall term, but we’ve already got 26 of them (!).
On the one hand, I’m absolutely thrilled that you writers out there got your acts together and submitted early and often.
On the other hand, it means my extended vacation from managing editor duties is now officially over.
However! Since at this point in the summer I’m about five times as dedicated to procrastination as any student I’ve ever met, I decided to ease into things by upgrading the various WordPress installations we use behind the scenes at Building 45.
You whippersnappers out there may not realize this, but in the olden days of yore, upgrading a single WordPress installation could take upwards of an hour… and upgrading four installations, well, that was a solid day’s “work.” (And by “work,” I obviously mean “checking MySpace and eBay for four hours while occasionally clicking the “Next” button on the installer and waiting for files to download and upload. And yes, those were all billable hours.)
These days, WordPress has a fancy “Automatic Upgrade” plug-in, which means I just spent 15 whole minutes doing everything that needed to be done.
I just wasted ten more minutes blogging about the process… and now I’ve got nothing. I could check my FaceBook profile and pretend that my computer is doing something productive in the background, but I’m kind of out of practice at that sort of self-deception. So I guess it’s time to get to work.
Stupid efficiency-boosting technological advances…
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