Today's note of praise - sadly timely - is for Robert Duvall's performance in APOCALYPSE NOW! It's like all of Duvall's best performances: hugely controlled, tightly wound, with more than a hint of insanity underneath. My favorite moment: his delivery of the line "Some day this war's going to end"..

Last posting of yesterday's thread!

Got another of my favorite kind of reviews for PRESS 1: a parent told me today that his kid got in trouble (not too much, thankfully...) for reading it in class! If you'd like YOUR middle-grader to be a juvenile delinquent of the readerly kind, check it out! www.simonandschuster.com/books/Press-...

I have to say that I have made several of my classes this year tech-free and I love it: the energy in the classroom is palpable...

Have been remiss in this for a few days, but today's note is for Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's VELVET, which is a lovely hard-boiled take on the question, "What if Miss Moneypenny was a spy herself?" Fun switchbacks and double-crosses and great action!

If you are a Hugo nominator, and you liked PRESS 1 FOR INVASION, it would be a lifetime-level honor for me to be nominated for a Hugo, so just putting that out there.... www.simonandschuster.com/books/Press-...

I'm rereading Gone With the Wind now in preparation for a class, and the treatment of the Klan - which, if I recall correctly, is basically removed in the movie version - is genuinely, if dispiritedly, fascinating.

I have been lucky enough to read a draft of this book and I cannot tell you strongly enough to pre-order

This is my mantra

Got another of my favorite kind of reviews for PRESS 1: a parent told me today that his kid got in trouble (not too much, thankfully...) for reading it in class! If you'd like YOUR middle-grader to be a juvenile delinquent of the readerly kind, check it out! www.simonandschuster.com/books/Press-...

Assuming that the Democrats take the House, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that it takes a simple majority to impeach a Cabinet member.

Agree with this (just read the transcript). I hope the book that's mentioned by @anandwrites.bsky.social at the end finds a publisher.

Just continuing to put my dream out there into the world

Just continuing to put my dream out there into the world

Friendly reminder for HWA members that there are 3 days left to vote on the Preliminary Stoker Ballot! bramstokerawards.horror.org/front-page/t...

Today's note of praise is for the Taverner Consort and Players' performance of Vivaldi's Gloria & Magnificat (1700s; 1992). It feels light and soaring - it was, apparently, written for girls and young women of an orphanage to perform - and Taverner gives you the sense of ascendant glory.

If you are a Hugo nominator, and you liked PRESS 1 FOR INVASION, it would be a lifetime-level honor for me to be nominated for a Hugo, so just putting that out there.... www.simonandschuster.com/books/Press-...

In order to take Gallup at their word - which, all things being considered, I'd certainly like to - I'd love to know exactly *how* measuring presidential approval, or approval of any individual figure, doesn't fit in with their evolving sense of mission and research.

Someone should bet on Waite

Today's note of praise is for the Taverner Consort and Players' performance of Vivaldi's Gloria & Magnificat (1700s; 1992). It feels light and soaring - it was, apparently, written for girls and young women of an orphanage to perform - and Taverner gives you the sense of ascendant glory.

For students as well as teachers. Responding to teachers and peers, thinking through ideas on your feet, developing your own ideas in DIALOGUE with others—critical skills practiced with joy that are marketable and transferable.

As someone who probably shares more of the qualities below than I'd love to admit, I think this puts it well: the process of friction in the classroom dynamic - responding, thinking through what students have to say on your feet, developing your own thinking about a topic in the process - is key...

As someone who probably shares more of the qualities below than I'd love to admit, I think this puts it well: the process of friction in the classroom dynamic - responding, thinking through what students have to say on your feet, developing your own thinking about a topic in the process - is key...

Last posting of yesterday's note!

Doing my first AMA Monday. Sneak peek!

Today's note of praise is for my colleague Racquel Gates's book DOUBLE NEGATIVE: THE BLACK IMAGE & POPULAR CULTURE (2018), a very fine study of figures like Eddie Murphy, Halle Berry, and Flavor Flav, and their complex reception in American culture. I learned a lot!

Final posting of yesterday's note!

Today's note of praise is for a performance I watch every few months that retains the same haunting power for me it had when I first saw it years ago: Naya Rivera (and others, but mostly Rivera) performing this mashup of Rumor Has It and Someone Like You on Glee: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKhy...

Today's note of praise is for a performance I watch every few months that retains the same haunting power for me it had when I first saw it years ago: Naya Rivera (and others, but mostly Rivera) performing this mashup of Rumor Has It and Someone Like You on Glee: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKhy...

I think this is right (and what I was trying to get to re "community" before). Will be a lot of ink spilled about whether/how the performance was political, but I think this was *the* brilliant, and of course political, decision.

Based on my children, and so I am being basically serious about this: in 10 years, I think there may be consensus that this is KPOP DEMON HUNTERS.

Haven't read this yet, but looks great and look forward to checking it out - was an issue I struggled with a bit in writing AMERICAN COMICS: A HISTORY. If I recall correctly, I tried to include more than McCloud might have but probably still too little....

Friends with a new, renewed, or amplified interest in the Spanish language and Latin America, consider checking out the work your colleagues/neighbors in departments of Spanish/Romance Languages/Modern Languages/etc--they're likely in the corner of an old campus building 1/

I think this is right (and what I was trying to get to re "community" before). Will be a lot of ink spilled about whether/how the performance was political, but I think this was *the* brilliant, and of course political, decision.

And what a wonderful expression of community - it's really so joyous

And what a wonderful expression of community - it's really so joyous

Ok the stagecraft of that first sequence was just amazing

Ok the stagecraft of that first sequence was just amazing

Jessica Williams

ok that was a lot of celebrities in the dunkin donuts ad

Given that Kevin and I are almost precisely the same age and became professors at about the same time, it was teaching my class on the 1980s last term and seeing my childhood as eagerly consumed history that was the, um, final nail in the coffin for me.

A niche choice, but Russell Kirk

Kind of crazy that if I understand correctly Tarantino did not actually direct the most Tarantino-esque trailer ever? (Of course Fincher can do anything and has style of his own to burn)

Today's note of praise is for Vera Caspary's 1945 novel BEDELIA. Caspary's better known (to the extent she's known at all) for her prior novel LAURA, the basis of the Gene Tierney movie, but BEDELIA is another wonderful novel of the genus femme fatale....

Today's note of praise is for Vera Caspary's 1945 novel BEDELIA. Caspary's better known (to the extent she's known at all) for her prior novel LAURA, the basis of the Gene Tierney movie, but BEDELIA is another wonderful novel of the genus femme fatale....

100 percent

Last posting of yesterday's note!

Today's note of praise is for Nick Nolte's performance in NORTH DALLAS FORTY, the 1979 movie about professional football; I don't want to say that it's a great movie, because it isn't (although it's eye-opening in terms of, among much else, the Stone-Age level training compared to today's NFL...)