Ciao, Tutti!
I should be doing homework right now instead of blogging, but some important political event just happened and I feel the urge to blog about it. I'll probably fall behind in school work and graduate into a lousy job in a failing economy and...
Well, let's just say I've been down on myself for not working hard enough lately. Life has been distracting me. Let me count the ways.
1) Me and a couple of friends from the Florence program got together this weekend to play music. We're going to be, I say hopefully, an indie band. We all play guitar and piano, and we all sing. No bass player or drummer, but there is a MicroKorg that can play bass for us. We don't need bass and drums anyway. We immediately connected at the jam session. We met at 8:00, none of us having eaten dinner yet, expecting a short, hour long rehearsal and catch-up after. Instead we found ourselves eating Italian food in a diner at 1:00 in the morning. We were starving and tired but couldn't stop playing. So, just a heads up, you may hear a lot more of my voice on CD in the coming however-long-it-takes-for-us-to-get-something-recorded.
2) I am still horribly unqualified to teach Constitutional law, but I have to anyway. Thanks to a scheduling confusion, team teaching the first day was done by seven people, four of whom were in the law school. Needless to say, I didn't have much of a role. However, I did notice a few things, like how smart the students were. I totally underestimated them, not just for their critical thinking capacities but also for their incredible retention of basic facts (dates, names, clauses, etc.). I also noticed a place for me in the class, a historical niche that the law students were conveniently overlooking. Historical context is something me and my other undergraduate team teacher can help out with while the law students unload their database of rote law information. Together we will be unstoppable! Anyway, I'll be reading the constitution a few times, if I can get away from obsessing about life, as well as some court cases and reviewing revolutionary history.
3) TV on the Radio plays in Brooklyn a week from today, but the only apparent way to buy tickets is through their site, and I don't want to become a member and receive a bunch of random emails about concerts in Oslo and the like. Well, I did anyway, only to find out that the pre-sale is sold out. I have to find some other way to get to the show. Does anyone have experience with this, by the way?
P.S. I will be seeing Of Montreal on Friday night, but it won't be the same...
4) I am still terrified of Sarah Palin. This may be a part of me not sleeping well, along with eating dinner at 1:00 after jamming for too long. Now, as you all remember, I'm scared of her incompetence (I've watched the Couric interviews now...) and I'm scared of how everyone perceives her performances. But now I have a new fear: how people in the jazz department at NYU make fun of her. It is gross. People use the acronym MILF to describe her, which I probably am not allowed to spell out, and they talk about performing acts which, well, I probably can't spell out either. Is it any wonder that I have trouble sleeping! Perhaps there was a good reason only old white men used to run for president. This whole thing reminds me of the good old days when making a sexual joke about Nanci Pelosi was an unforgivable act.
5) The second presidential debate was tonight, a town-hall style format that McCain is particularly comfortable in. I have to say, I didn't quite know what to expect. Luckily I had watched the first debate, and there wasn't all that much different tonight, even considering the new economic situation. This is what I did not see or hear: any mention of either Ayers or Rev. Wright; any personal attacks at all; any new policies, save for McCain's new housing approach to the dismal housing market; a constant linking between McCain and Bush; or a gaff of any kind. This being the case, I don't think there was a clear "winner" or "loser." This was not a debate that would earn anyone major points.
Of course that's what I'll say. You all know who my guy is. But, if the truth be told, I actually thought John McCain actually came out on top tonight (town-hall, not like we expected anything different, right?). There was one example when the clock-watching Tom Brokaw asked a question, I think about energy plans (this is why I'm a blogger, not a journalist), about mid-way through. Both of the candidates answered with the same substance. Something about decreasing US dependence on foreign oil. Obama went first, and he's answered this question plenty of times before and he had his script to go by. This being one of the sole issues the two candidates agree on, they answered fairly similarly, but McCain's answer made much more sense. He spoke more slowly and he used language that was far less technical, and he physically reached out to the audience. There was something in his speaking that I could identify with, even if I can't stand the guy. Obama, on the other hand, as one TV analyst from PBS said afterward, elicits no emotion from the audience during a debate, much different than watching the man orate. I hate to say it like this, but McCain was simply better at conveying his opinions to the world than Obama was. Problem is I don't agree with any of his opinions. Obama was obviously better when answering the questions after McCain rather than being the ice-breaker. He needed time to prepare. I could even see his speech relaxing in the middle of answering a question, like I could hear his mind working out an answer as he said catch phrases he had rehearsed beforehand. I know he's not a great debater like Denzel Washington, but I was a bit dissapointed in this.
The only time I thought Obama actually outperformed McCain, and this is a surprise, was in foreign policy, near the end (Obama did get better as the night went on. He needed to relax!). McCain made the assertion, as he had before, that Obama could not simply announce that he was going to invade Pakistan. He invoked Theodore Roosevelt's famous adage, "Speak softly and carry a big stick," asserting that Obama only spoke loudly. Obama returned with the reference, as usual, to McCain's support of the war in Iraq ("Bomb, bomb, bomb!") and his comment that the US could simply "muddle through" Afghanistan. Basically a summation of McCain's foreign policy gaffs. McCain should have been prepared for this sort of attack, but for some reason he wasn't. It was his vaguest point in the entire debate, the only one where his response had nothing specific or insightful in any way. He repeated Obama's gaff (that he had just cleared up) and tried to emphasize Obama's inexperience and naivete. He actually looked tense on stage and struggled finding words.
It's a good thing that point came near the end of the debate because otherwise I'm fairly certain McCain would have been considered the winner of the debate for sure, especially considering his fairly effective attacks on Obama's economic policy, making a dent in what has evolved into one of Obama's strongest positions.
Well, the red light is flashing. I suppose that means I'm out of time.
6) Midterm season approaches. And I have two essays due in the same class (!) a week from tomorrow. The day after the TV on the Radio concert where, I assume, I will not eat dinner until 1:00 in the morning again, thus not sleeping at night. Again. But hopefully the papers will be done by then. Regardless, being a double major in history is much harder than I ever thought it would be. It makes me glad I'm antisocial, I don't play an instrument that gets me many gigs, and I don't have a long-distance relationship anymore. I'll bet my parents are sad they don't get to hear me call every other day anymore.
7) Of course I have time to call my folks every day, but that time ends up being taken up by the difference in time zones as well as, shall we say, other obsessions. I suppose I will call this obsession, "plot." I just love stories that are about things (so therefore not "The Namesake," no matter how well it was written). Stories, novels, TV shows, movies, people's lives, cartoons, you name it. Plus I like to make things up that have plots, too, like short stories and novels. It happens every November too, and may even stop my blogging for quite a while. But, ooh, is it worth it! So, sorry, Mom and Dad!
Sigh! It's so hard when I've got so many exciting or terrifying things in my life distracting me from living! I mean, I do have to do schoolwork at some point, don't I? I suppose this is the price I pay for having so many interests I want to investigate. That's a nice way of saying I'm indecisive and like to dream up fantasies. Which is a mean way of saying I have a lot of interests I want to investigate.
Until next whenever-I-need-another-distraction-from-homework-or-there-is-another-debate,
-Sam goldsmith
