I Write All Right

by Dale Grauman

[iwriteallright]

[iwriteallright]

Links: Shaq's Retirement Party

Yesterday, Shaq announced his retirement from the NBA.  To eulogize his unique career, here are some links to videos of Shaq doing things that pretty much only he can do:

Shaq v. Jordan during All-Star shootaround, 1996. Crossing over Jerome James.  Most NBA guards could do this.  (In fact, if guarded by Jerome James, most junior varsity high school guards probably could do this.)  But pretty much no 7'1'' centers can do this.

Dunking on the Admiral during the 1996 All-Star game.

Give and go between Dwight Howard's legs during the 2009 All-Star game.

Bullying Chris Dudley.

Dance off between Shaq, Lebron, and Dwight Howard at the 2009 All-Star weekend.  Notice that, at 7'1'', 350+ pounds, and 38 years of age, Shaq appears to be more coordinated than Lebron James.  Also notice that Dwight Howard is a tool.

Shattering a backboard against Ahmad Rashad at the 1992 draft combine.  Rashad playfully goads Shaq; Shaq responds by playfully reasserting his absolute physical dominance over everybody in the room.

Bringing down the shot clock at the Meadowlands.

Outwitting a smart-ass reporter at a press conference.

By the way, I'm not going to write it, but there is definitely potential here for an essay about how Shaq is the most American thing ever to come out of America.  He's big and gregarious and arrogant and fun and insufferable and voluptuary and generous and he did it his way.

[thedailywhat]

[iwriteallright]

Let 'em do it!

thedailywhat:

BAMFs of the Day: Over 200 retired Japanese professionals — dubbed the Skilled Veterans Corps — have volunteered to help bring stability to the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The volunteers — all over 60 years old — are lobbying the government to be allowed to replace some of the younger employees at the power station. “I am 72 and on average I probably have 13 to 15 years left to live,” says 72-year-old Yasuteru Yamada, a former engineer. “Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30 years or longer to develop. Therefore us older ones have less chance of getting cancer.”

Though grateful, both the government and TEPCO remain tentative about accepting the senior citizens’ offer. “It is on the way but it is a very, very sensitive issue politically,” Yamada told BBC News. Goshi Hosono, the prime minister’s special adviser to the nuclear crisis, controversially referred to the group as the “suicide corps” during a recent press conference.

“I don’t think I’m particularly special,” Michio Ito, a retired primary school teacher, is quoted as saying. “Most Japanese have this feeling in their heart. The question is whether you step forward, or you stay behind and watch.”

[bbcnews / cnn.]

[iwriteallright]

Movie Review: Bridesmaids

Walking into Bridesmaids, I assumed that it would be a The Hangover knock-off geared towards women.  A bro-movie with a female cast.  A bra-movie, if you will.  I imagined it as some sort of battle-of-the-sexes, anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better response to Galifianakis and the boys.

But I was wrong.  The genre of Bridesmaids is much closer to that of the traditional romantic comedy than to the bro-venture of The Hangover.   

Kristen Wiig plays Annie, a thirtysomething-year-old jewelry store clerk whose love life consists of a series of heartless booty calls from Ted (Jon Hamm), an archetypal ass-hat.  Annie has been stuck in a rut ever since her beloved bakery failed and her beloved boyfriend dumped her--at the same time.  Now Annie's bff, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), is engaged and Annie is appointed to be her maid of honor.  

At the engagement party, Annie meets the rest of the bridal party for the first time.  Each member is--spoiler alert--quirky.  Megan (Galifianakis Melissa McCarthy) is gruffer'na billy goat.  Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey) is a desperate housewife pining for respite from her hellacious children.  Becca (Ellie Kemper) is cheerier than the Keebler elves.  Helen (Rose Byrne)--Lillians other bff and a Veronica Lodge clone--is rich, passive-agressive, and hyper competitive.

Much of the plot feeds off of the tension between Annie and Helen as they compete to establish which of them is Lillian's best bff, a contest that evokes two ibex fighting for mating rights.

Driving home from the engagement party, Annie is pulled over by officer Rhodes (Chris O'Dowd), who happens to be sweet, charming, stable, and likable.  Maybe I'm being overly judgmental here, but he clearly deserves better than Annie.  Not that Annie's a bad person--but she has a lot of baggage that provokes her to do stupid things.

The drama builds as Annie bobbles her duties as maid of honor and as she bobbles her fledgling relationship with Rhodes.  As in most romantic comedies, there is a pretty even combination of drama and humor.  The humor, however, sets it apart from the standard romantic comedy.

The jokes get dirty.  Lots of sex jokes; lots of poop jokes; lots of jokes about drugs and alcohol.  And they're pretty funny.  Bridesmaids is a solid laugh-getter.  In the theater I was at, men and women alike were laughing at both the delightfully cheap, raunchy stuff and the smarter, subtler gags. 

As regards storytelling, however, Bridesmaids leaves something to be desired.  The best movies are believable.  Not necessarily realistic, but believable.  Movies don't have to obey the laws of reality, but it's nice when the events of the movie make sense within the universe of that movie, you know?

[The following paragraph contains a spoiler.  To avoid it, skip ahead to the next bracketed section.]

Given the universe in Bridesmaids, I thought it was hard to believe that officer Rhodes would ever take Annie back after she torpedoes their relationship.  She acts increasingly crazy and decreasingly endearing as their relationship unfolds.  She pulls herself back together rather quickly just in time for the wedding.  The problem is, Rhodes never actually witnesses her transition back into sanity because they break things off in the midst of her decent.  And yet he conveniently returns to her at the end of the movie, ready to make amends.  But why?  The audience knows that Annie has grown, but Rhodes was not privy to any of that growth.

[End spoiler.]

But I'm really just nit-picking when I criticize the storytelling in Bridesmaids.  Overall, it was a solid comedy.  Based on my completely subjective grading scale for movies, I give it a B-minus.

[iwriteallright]

Nothing new, but here's an old haiku...

I did write something today, but it was a cover letter for a job application, and I'm not going to publish that here.  Instead, here's a copy of a haiku that I published as a Facebook note several months ago.  I originally titled this "Geology," but five minutes of google research has convinced me that traditional haikus don't have titles, so I'm considering dropping the title.  For now, let's just say that if this haiku has a title, then that title is "Geology." 

A steady drip-drop will bore through stone, yes.  But you'll probably die first. 

[iwriteallright]

My CV

Today I received a lead for a potential teaching gig, and so I wrote a curriculum vitae, something I probably should have done months and months ago.  It's posted below.  Note: some of the formatting stuff might be a little messy because 1) I've never written a CV before and 2) this is copy-and-pasted from Microsoft Word.

By the way, I'll write more about the job if it pans out.  For various reasons, I hope that it does.

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Dale Grauman 155 NW Larry Street #8 Pullman, WA 99163 Phone: [phone] Email: [email protected] 

Curriculum Vitae

Education Washington State University, Pullman, WA Master of Arts in English Literature, May 2011 Thesis: “I Acquiesced in the Dispositions of Providence”: Theodicy in Robinson Crusoe 

Multnomah University, Portland, OR Bachelor of Science in Bible and Theology Minor: English 

Teaching Experience Washington State University; Pullman, WA; 2010-2011 Instructor of Record Designed and wrote syllabuses, schedules, and assignments; administered all grades. ·         English 101—First Year Composition—Spring 2010; Fall 2011 ·         English 201—Research Writing—Spring 2011

Tutor Facilitated a small, for-credit peer-review workshop; taught peer-review strategies, led the workshop session, and kept track of student attendance and participation. ·         English 102—Writing Tutorial—Fall 2010

Grace Christian School; Gladstone, OR; 2008-2009 High School Teacher Taught subjects from provided materials; administered all grades. ·         Freshman/Sophomore Combined English ·         Junior English ·         Senior English ·         Freshman/Sophomore World History ·         Junior American History 

Relevant Coursework Washington State University; Pullman, WA English 501—Seminar in the Teaching of Writing: Methodology of Composition—Fall 2010 English 531—Administering a Writing Program—Spring 2011

Other Relevant Experience Washington State University; Pullman, WA Placement Reader, Tiers I and II Placed students into appropriate first-year composition courses based on there written responses to placement essay prompts.

Presentations “On Training Faculty to Communicate Learning Targets in the Course Syllabus.”  2011 Writing Program Administrators’ conference; July 2011; Baton Rouge, LA.  (Proposal accepted.)

“Using Youtube to Teach Rhetorical Analysis.”  Washington State University, English 501; November 2010.  (As an instructor and second year MA student at WSU, I was invited to present a lesson for the first-year MA and PhD students in a seminar on teaching composition.)

[iwriteallright]

Blogging about Blogging (with a dash of Kurt Vonnegut)

Writing is hard.  I've been sitting here for, like, 20 minutes trying to figure out how I should start this, the first post of my new (and only) personal blog.  But that's the whole point of keeping a blog in the first place--that is, I started this blog because writing is hard.  At least, it's hard for me.  I'm not bad at it, but I want to get better.  Much better.  I'm told that my writing will improve if I write every day, so my goal is to start writing something daily.  I don't plan to record all of it on this blog, but I figure that the blog should give me an outlet to write for, and I probably will record much of it here.  And as an added bonus, the chance (however slim) that somebody else will eventually read some of my posts might motivate me to write somewhat more goodly.

Problem is, I don't have much to say every day.  And shouldn't we reserve our words for those times when we actually have something to say?  In my eyes, writing just for writing's sake is kind of indulgent, and so I feel kind of silly even starting this project.  I'm worried that I'll just end up writing about myself or meta-writing about writing.  I mean, look at this post so far: all I've written about is myself and writing itself.  Self-referential, much?  

Kurt Vonnegut once said, "I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far.  Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak."  I'm not at all trying to imply that by writing this blog I am creating "literature"--at least, not "literature" in the sense that Vonnegut is using the term.  He's just making a good point about the perils of self-reference, you know?  I'm interested in both writing and myself, and this blog is essentially functioning as writing practice for me, and I've even written the words "I" and "write" in the title of this blog, and so at times I'm undoubtedly going to write about writing or about myself.  But it would still be kind of nice if my blog didn't just disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.  At least, not all the way up.