APOLOGY AND RECOMPENSE

Dear readers…

I am sorry to have been so long away, to have left you without writing. I must beg your forgiveness and attempt to atone.

Last Wednesday I embarked for Atlanta for the Popular Culture Association national conference. All in all everything went well, though Atlanta is undoubtedly the worst city in which to attend a conference – unless you particularly enjoy dinner at Hooters or the Hard Rock Café. Seeing as I enjoy neither of these, it was a bit dire. But otherwise the conference went well. [And I must say that the conference itself gave out some nice schwag – that would be stuff they gave out that included their logo.] My paper went rather well – or so I must presume. I had a request from the editor of a film studies journal to submit it for publication. To any of the academic colleagues out there who want to give any suggestions for revising this for publication – your help would be gratefully received. You can read it online as an HTML document or download the PDF and print it out. Or for anyone who might be interested in a paper titled Scribbled Notes or a Body of Writing: Memory, Writing, and Reading in Christopher Nolan’s Memento; go ahead and give it a read.

So I was in Atlanta until early Saturday morning. By early, I mean insanely early. We are talking my wake up call was requested for a good three hours before dawn. Note to Self: do not schedule a seven AM flight out of Atlanta. Anyway… I left Atlanta on Saturday, but had to leave again on Sunday for a campus visit at Marshall University in West Virginia. Since the wife and I live an hour from the airport, it seemed silly to drive home only to turn around again bright and early the next morning. Hence the wife and I stayed in a hotel in Syracuse Saturday night – we spent most of the day asleep.

Sunday morning I took off for Marshall – flights five and six within five days. I shall not write too much about the visit just yet, but I think it went quite well and the faculty was right peachy, though I am pretty sure I ate something that did horrible things to me. By the final day of my campus visit I was broken. I think a combination of too many hotels, perhaps a meal that was off, and not enough sleep simply put me away. I actually fell asleep during the hour-long drive from Marshall to the airport. I am sure that cannot be good etiquette, but it could not be helped. The only other option was vomiting. From there, at the airport – under the advice of the wife—I took a couple of Dramamine, which hit me like a rather large rhinoceros dropped from a significant height. Flights seven and eight for the week are a complete blur – though I have a vague recollection of buying a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the Detroit airport. The wife was left to virtually carry me to the car when picking me up at the airport. Speaking was beyond my capabilities. I slept for two days; I barely exaggerate this point. I awoke to find water and nutrition; that is about all. The wife nearly had to nurse me back to health, but at least I have finished running the gauntlet, or so I thought…

Yesterday I received a call for another campus visit: Philadelphia University. I had assumed they had moved on. We had talked a while back – during the trip to visit the wife’s mother. If you missed it or have forgotten – you can refresh your memory. But yesterday, they called and I shall be revving up the dog and pony show once again. Mind you, I am not complaining. Philly is one of my favorite cities, and here I would get grad students and join in what seems a rather fantabulous media program. In fact, the wife and I are both quite fond of Philly. So this visit is a good thing; I shall just have to remember to take a few extra naps this weekend.

Thus, dear readers, please accept my apologies for my absence. I shall do my best to ensure that future disruptions are kept short.

On another note, the Online Exquisite Corpse Writing Project seems to have petered out; lack of interest I suppose. To those of you who expressed interest, I am sorry. To all the others who have not, ptttthhhhwk – that is the sound of me sticking out my tongue and making a rather rude noise. Perhaps I shall attempt to reconfigure it in the future, perhaps not. For the moment I shall leave you with a copy of my Memento paper if you really want a reading fix.