When six hours of sleep seems glorious...

I like to think that I'm the type of person who does what needs to be done. Like, if there are dirty dishes in the sink, I'll wash 'em. This week, I found out that the production schedule for my editing job listed an erroneous deadline. It said all the docs for the program wrap were due on May 14. Except that on May 6, the printer called and said, "Hey, if you want the docs in the proof, everything should be due on May 5." And I think I looked behind me at the calendar and said, "You mean yesterday?"And, in fact, she did mean yesterday.

Soooooo...I spent the last three nights up late late late, editing like mad and turning stuff in. Forty-two documents in all. I slept three hours the first night (got up and taught music theorat 7:50AM), four hours the second night, and a glorious six hours the third night. When six hours seems like sleeping in, you're either working too hard...or you have kids.

The good news is that I've done the lion's share of the work for this particular deadline. Put out most of the flames from this particular fire. I am by no means finished, but I might sleep eight hours tonight.

There's a lot of other stuff going on with my jobs and such. We're getting into the last weeks of the semester and that means final exams. My students are doing concerts all over the place (some are my responsibility, some are not). I myself am singing in some concerts as well (and choreographing the benefit concert at church). And did I mention? We're moving. Yep. Big Red and I signed a lease today for a place in Highland Park. We have a full two weeks to move, but I think you can imagine that my time to move is severely limited. Luckily, Red is spearheading the moving movement. He's a peach.

Right now, I think I might nap for about twenty minutes and maybe catch a movie with the man. I'll start fresh in the morning.

Eight hours of sleep. I can hardly believe it.

~Hero

Lazy Lima Bean

There used to be a sketch comedy show starring some of the Wayans Brothers called In Living Color. There was a recurring sketch called "Hey, Mon," starring a very busy Jamaican family. Each member of the family had numerous jobs, to a nearly insane degree. One family member might be a doctor, nurse, orderly, janitor, and lawyer (for the malpractice, presumably). Anyone not having multiple jobs was dubbed, "A Lazy Lima Bean."

My family's been calling me "Lazy Lima Bean" for years, but its not cos they're mean; they're just being ironic. In the almost twenty years since I started working, I've held multiple jobs for probably eighteen of those years. Working three part-time jobs at once seemed normal back in my college days; the year I graduated, I was gainfully employed by the Honors Program, the History Department, and the Journal of Philosophy. Some years, I had five W-2s. I always assumed that a time would come when I grow up and have a single job. You know, like most grown-ups I know.

Then I went to grad school and decided to become an academic.

So...that means you work your ass off to get a degree, you pray for a full-time job, and in the meanwhile, you work a million jobs anywhere you can. It's expected. Halfway through grad school, I started working at Pasadena City College teaching classes here and there. Then I got a gig at Los Angeles City College. After I graduated, USC gave me a class. I also taught at Santa Monica College. Running around like this is so common for academics, we have a special name for it here in the southland: freeway flying.

I used to dream of the day I'd get that full time job and finally stop freeway flying. I didn't do it for all that long, but it was long enough. Then, it happened. A full-time job pretty much fell into my lap, and I thought I was entering into the land of one W-2.

But that was not how it went down. Last summer, I got a job writing program notes for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. This summer, I'm adding a similar gig with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. And just two weeks ago, I got another job for the summer this time as editor for the Aspen Music Festival. I'm going to have a busy couple of months, for sure, but it occurs to me that I wouldn't want to have it any other way.

I'm not saying that having one job is boring to me. Or that I have ADD or something. I suppose I like to feel needed. Like there's something I can contribute. Also, being stretched thin makes me feel alive in the same way that base jumping makes some folks feel alive. I'm not a stress junkie or anything. I'm an...accomplishment junkie. A resume item-adding freak. Busy as a B-plus. Call me what you will.

Just don't call me a lazy lima bean.

~Hero

Get busy livin'

The internet is a powerful thing. It's a source of endless information (some reliable, some not). It's a way to connect with people who have similar interests. It's a way to check out what's happening in the world. You can do everything from order pizza to submit your dissertation using the internet. I still remember the day I realized the internet's awesome power: I typed "The Lord of the Rings and Led Zeppelin" into Yahoo and came upon pages and pages dedicated to the connections between them. I thought to myself, this is an amazing, beautiful, terrible beast.

I didn't know I was gonna use it to make friends.

I have mentioned in the past my OWC (online writing circle). It's a close-knit group of friends. We share our writing, edit and comment on each others' stories, encourage each other. Two weeks ago, one of these friends died tragically in a car accident. Anjali was twenty-five years old. Like some of my internet friends, I actually met Anj in person before we were in the OWC together, but we grew closer over the internet. We had a lot in common. She was a musician and a teacher, and we shared the same passion for learning and education.

When I first starting surfing the web, I never imagined that I would make real, honest-to-God friends there. People to chat with? Sure. Folks to take the old futon off my hands? Absolutely. But friends? I had serious doubts about that. I guess I had the prejudice that "internet friends" were all a bunch of sexual predators who lied about being six-foot-tall buxom blondes. What can I say? I'm from New York. We're always on our guard. (To this day, when someone brushes past me--even if it's a kid--I check for my wallet. Old habits die hard, I guess.) I couldn't just assume that my internet friends would be real, amazing, wonderful people, could I? But they were. They are.

The way I found out about Anj was a phone call from another internet friend, Georgia. She's been a close friend for years, even though I met her in person for the first time a month ago. Georgia called to tell me about Anj, and the two of us cried for an hour together. Since then, we've been talking about how Anj's death has affected us, calling and texting when the day hits a rough patch or when something in particular reminds us of her.

The other day I was talking to one of my students, and we were talking about age. I asked her how old she is and she said, "I'm 25." And for some reason, that was just like a punch in the gut. Twenty-five years old. Like Anj. Here's my student, with nothing but awesome life in front of her, and Anj--whose life was taking off in new and interesting ways--who won't get the chance to do so many things. The way she died is also screwing with my head a little bit. Imagine leaving the house one day and just...never getting back home. Maybe she left dirty dishes in the sink, or the laundry unfolded (this is not a prompt for you to go do housework or anything). I know for a fact that she left 11 unanswered comments on her blog. God, that just hurts to think about.

From a purely selfish perspective, it's just scary to think that I could leave my work unfinished. I've got three novels going right now, and the idea that they might not be completed is frightening to me. And finishing them is going to get slightly thornier because of my new summer job. This post was supposed to be all about the job, but Anj was on my mind so it'll have to wait. I guess, though, that even if I live to be 110, there will still be things I would have wanted to do. I'm just that type of person, I think. I'm pretty sure Anj was too.

I'm grateful to the internet for allowing me a place to be friends with Anj, for giving us a forum to meet up and talk and discuss music and scholarship and Japanese and anime and Harry Potter. I'm grateful for having had the opportunity to know her over the last two and a half years. She wasn't just an "internet friend." She was a friend, and I'm gonna miss her terribly.

~Hero

P.S. Next time: The Sarah Marshall movie and the new job.

Meeting celebrities

I grew up in New York, and when you're from the city, you inevitably see famous people. Most New Yorkers I know, do not bother famous people. One time, I rode the subway with Sara Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. The three of us shorties were hanging onto the same pole. No one spared them a second glance. We were all, like, 'hey, those guys' and then we went about our business. I don't mind seeing celebrities, but I won't go up to them.

I'm a big fan of the TV show, Supernatural. This weekend, I went to a convention where the stars of the show appeared and signed autographs. I had mixed feelings about meeting them. Well, I met them, and everything went fine; they were perfectly lovely people. But for the last few weeks, I've been thinking about why meeting them got me so twisted up.

Here's the thing. I'm a pretty cool gal. I'm smart and funny and I like to think I'm a force to be reckoned with. When I meet a celebrity, it's a completely one-sided thing. I went to the con to tell these folks how much I admire them, but meanwhile, they didn't have any idea that I'm pretty awesome too. I know all about them, but they know nothing about me. For some reason, I think that sucks out loud.

For about ten seconds, I toyed with the idea of making up a t-shirt that said something like, "I'm not just a fan of Supernatural; I'm a college professor, musicologist, writer..." etc. 

I wanted them to know I wasn't just some giggling obsessed fangirl. I'm a real person, and I'm just as worthy to be met as they are.

Is that weird?

Anyway, all the folks who came to the con were absolutely wonderful. Very gracious, charming, and genuine, and I'd love to meet them all again. But next time, I want it to be because they want to meet me. 

;-)

~Hero

Save the Vocative Comma!!

The vocative comma is a very important thing. I'm not saying I'm always perfect about using them. The folks that beta read my stories can attest to that. However, I know where they're supposed to go, and I know I've been missing them in the ad campaign for Judd Apatow's upcoming film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

What's that, now? You don't know about the vocative comma? Let me explain with a little grammar lesson (although I'm sure many of my readers know a helluva lot about grammar). Each word in a sentence has a function. The function of a word is referred to as its case. You learn about cases when you study a language like Latin or German. In those languages (called "inflected") and others, the ending of a word changes based on its case. We have that a little in English (who vs. whom, for example), but in English, word order creates context and meaning. In inflected languages, word order is less important. The words with their different endings convey all the meaning you need. You can figure out a word's function just by looking at its ending (we called that "parsing"). Word endings for nouns can tell you number and gender, while verb endings convey person, number, tense, and voice.

Anyhoo, long story short, we have cases in English, we just never use that terminology to talk about them. The nominative case refers to the subject of a sentence, the accusative is the direct object, and so on. The vocative case refers to someone in the sentence who is being called or addressed ("vocative" comes from the Latin word "vocare" meaning "to call"). As in, "Hey, you!" In English, vocative commas help the reader understand who is being addressed. In the sentence, "Get me that wrench, John," I'm addressing John. Without the comma, the meaning of the sentence changes. "Get me that wrench John," is telling some unknown person or entity to acquire something called a "wrench John" whatever that is. (Perhaps it's a little bathroom for wrenches?)

So if I say, "Don't eat Mom!" I must be addressing some cannibal who's about to cook up my Mom for dinner. But if I say, "Don't eat, Mom!" then I'm telling her not to chow down on the food. Maybe because it's not cooked properly or something.

Everyone good on the grammar? Okay, good. Let's get to my rant.

The ad campaign for the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall features a series of seemingly handwritten billboards. One says, "YOU SUCK SARAH MARSHALL." What could this billboard mean?

1) It could be a message FROM Sarah Marshall, telling someone else that they suck. As in:

You suck!

--Sarah Marshall

But that doesn't seem likely because we don't have the punctuation to back it up.

2) Someone could be telling Sarah Marshall that she sucks:

You suck, Sarah Marshall!

But there is no vocative comma, so it can't mean that, can it?

3) Someone could be making an observation about someone else actually sucking Sarah Marshall. Maybe 'Sarah Marshal' is a new variety of frozen treat akin to the popsicle:

You suck Sarah Marshall.

Perhaps the billboard should include an accompanying sentence to clarify:

You suck Sarah Marshall; isn't she delicious?

Or not.

Obviously the ad wizards meant the second one, but how the hell are we supposed to get that from what is written?

Vocative commas, people (<-- look there's one right there!). They're cheap and they convey meaning. Gah.

You can categorize this post as nerd wankage, and sure, that's exactly what it is, but don't you agree there should be someone who fights for the freaking commas??? Grrr.

/rant

Here's a funny anecdote I heard in Latin class. Apparently Sanskrit has something like fourteen cases (more than double that of Latin). It must have been grammatical chaos to ask for anything.  My Latin teacher in college told us that the worst insult one could hurl at a speaker of Sanskrit was to call him "an incompetent grammarian." Gee, you think?

If I met the marketing crew that put together the Sarah Marshall campaign, I'd call them incompetent grammarians, but I doubt they'd let it bother them too much. Jerks.

~Hero

The Pleasure and the Privilege

I have no time for pleasure reading lately. It's a tragedy because I have a stack of awesome books to read. I have a book by Asimov from Dad. Immortality from Kevin. Geek Love from Cael. And like a moron, I just bought Sideways and Little Children from Barnes and Noble dot com. I opened up Little Children just to see if the opening sentence was similar to the opening voiceover of the movie, and suddenly I'm 50 pages into it. Ye gods, it's good. Tom Perrotta is a genius. Sometimes I read books and I can't believe how good the prose is. Hell, I read the fiction of friends in my OWC and their prose freaking blows me away.

When I read books like Little Children  (Rick Moody's The Ice Storm or Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down), I think, I can do that. Know why? Because they make it look so easy. They make it look So. Damn. Easy. Now, I don't know if I can do it, or if I'm fooling myself, or what, but I suppose I'm gonna keep trying until the well of ideas runs dry.

Sometimes I wonder about my day job and how long I will spend being "Doc G" for my students. Maybe I'll be Doc G for the next few years and then I'll transition into writing full time. But who knows? I really do like being Doc G. A lot of my students are ridiculously wonderful people who enrich my life with their personalities, their music, and their own journey of self-discovery. I wonder what I will do if I ever decide to cut off that supply of fresh, new faces every semester just so I can have enough time to sit home alone and try like mad to craft that beautiful prose I admire so much.

But teaching would be really hard to give up. Sometimes, a student will finally understand a theoretical concept that had been giving him trouble, and you can practically see the light go on. Or a student will break through the fear that's been holding her back, and for the first time, she can sing without self-consciousness. And it may not the best singing in the world, but it's the most beautiful sound there is. That freedom.

Just being there for those moments, seeing those breakthroughs happen, it's what teaching is all about. 

And to be part of that, in ways big and small--maybe being the first person who told a student that mistakes are okay, or spending hours outside of class trying to figuring out a new way to clarify things--is not just a pleasure, it's a privilege. I mean, damn. It's a freaking honor to do those things, and to get to do those things every day. I'm not saying they happen every day, because they don't, but they happen enough to make it worthwhile, even from a purely selfish point of view.

So, yes, I want to be a writer. And, yes, I already am a writer. But I am also a teacher. I don't really know how to reconcile those things right this minute, but the point is I don't have to. I've lived my life riding the waves of this big fantastic river, paddling at some times and just going with the flow at others, so I'm pretty sure that eventually, I'll find the way I'm supposed to go. For right now, I think I'll let the river carry me for a while, and I'll do my best to enjoy the ride.

And if going with the flow right now means nudging students to find their voice by day, and trying to craft seemingly effortless prose by night, then so be it. So be it.

~Hero

Random fun on two legs

It has been a rough week-and-some since last I wrote. Deadlines tried to kill me, but I managed to survive. I had to write some emergency notes for one of my jobs over the last week. I cranked out the first set in a day, and it was fine. Then, on Sunday, I wrote nearly 400 words of fine information in about an hour. The notes were a little generic, but it got the job done. We missed the printing deadline anyway, so I now have the very great honor of making it less generic. Did I mention the piece I'm writing about isn't done yet? Yeah. That makes it easier.

I also handed in an almost-final draft of a paper about the score to Back to the Future. Even though I knew about this deadline since January, I hadn't had any time to work on it. So I wrote solidly from Tuesday until Friday night. Got about 5500 words done. I've heard nothing back from the editor, but I think that the paper is not a travesty, at least. I know, ringing endorsement. That's what the Nobel committee says when they're choosing a winner of the Lit Prize every year. "Well, this book should win because it's not a travesty." *sigh*

In other news, John Williams is coming to my school for a special concert. Yep. That Johnny Williams. The guy whose score to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom pretty much sealed my fate as a musician forever? The guy who spoke at my graduation from USC, signed my Harry Potter CD, and congratulated ME on my doctorate? The guy who was so gracious and kind and humble that meeting him actually made me collapse from overwhelm-ing-ness? That guy. He's coming to LACC as a guest. We're doing a Q&A with him, and then putting on a concert of his works and the works of some of our young composers here. In the concert, the chamber choir is singing "Double Trouble" from Prisoner of Azkaban, and I AM SINGING WITH THEM! Isn't it weird how life works? Years ago, I never thought I'd even meet the guy, but now I'm seeing him for the THIRD time (and introducing the Q&A), singing FOR him (Harry Freaking Potter, no less), and then having dinner with the guy afterwards. I suppose that means there's still some chance for other dreams I have.

In that last paragraph, I totally meant to complain about all the extra work the JW concert thing is causing us, but I got carried away. Suffice it to say, it's a lot of extra work, but it's going to be so worth it if it all works out.

So yeah, my dreams. There was a time back in the day when I really wanted to be an actor. Back before I realized I'd never play a leading lady. Back before I realized that I was destined to be the wacky neighbor for all eternity. Funny then, to make it all the way to Hollywood years later, but to come here as a damn musicologist and all around nerdlinger. I still think that somewhere down the line, I might go back to acting in some form or another. I'd be happy as the wacky neighbor now, I think. But here's the thing, I don't want to do the Hollywood actor thing. I want people I know to put me in their films. I don't want to go through the pain and suffering of auditioning. To paraphrase the older guy in an action movie: "I'm getting too old for that shit."

Maybe I'll take a step in that direction by taking those voice over lessons I've been putting off for years. If money and time are in abundance this summer, it'll happen We shall see. Right now, I feel pretty confident that dreams do come true, and if that's the case, I'm just going to keep wanting things.

~Hero