Likely I wouldn’t have noticed, cold as it was and concentrating on returning to some warmer spot. But my eyes were alert because my ears had just heard a “Christmas tune” by Babyface. And if you aren’t ready for sharply decorated trees, you are simply unprepared for major key tonality that is trying to hard.
Why does every musician these days feel the need to record a Christmas record? I suppose it helps them fill in the last two tracks of their “greatest hits” effort, which is widely viewed as a way to fulfill the last project on a bad record deal. This is the penance for recording “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in a Hawaiian shirt in July.
So, yes, the tree displays were a surprise.
It has been observed that Thanksgiving is the day where we go from complaining about Christmas arriving too early to complaining that it is arriving too quickly. More and more this seems apt with retailers as worried as they are.
Last year we saw Christmas bric-a-brac at Labor Day, so this, after Black Friday, and at a mall no less, is almost passable.
But Babyface?
Got some things done today, but not enough. There is now a list. Forty percent of it has been struck through. I had an hour-long printer jam. This required opening the front door, pulling out the toner and retrieving a piece of paper. From the rear of the printer I retrieved three pieces of crumpled paper. From the front again I pulled, and tore, the side of another sheet. Back to the back, then, where I pulled out some component that has important looking latches. I took the back door completely off. I contemplated building a catapult so I could fling the printer over the mountain, but it is not worth cranking the tension in the ancient weapon.
Instead I just meekly went back to printing
Also held class. This is a challenging part of the semester. Some people have not yet mentally returned from Thanksgiving. Others have already flown to Christmas in their imaginations. I blame the lights in the trees.
Holiday travels this week, so it might be a bit light here. But there’s a theme! This is Iron Bowl week after all. So let’s talk about football all week. Happy Thanksgiving!
Yesterday we briefly examined a youth “misspent” as an Alabama fan. Today we’ll discuss sorting out the brain washed allegiances and finding what your heart tells you is true and right and just.
This will read like my college decision was centered too much on football. That’s an important part of the culture, but only a side note for me. Education is and has always been an important consideration for me. The program I was interested in at Auburn was great and … well … you’ll see …
The first time I visited Auburn was in the summer of my eighth grade year. It was part of a school trip and the teacher, an Auburn graduate, decided to visit one of the bookstores. This was awkward for me because I was wearing an Alabama shirt at the time.
The visit was brief, though. We got to where we needed to go, participated in the contest we were there to take part in and traveled to Montgomery.
The next visit was a few years later. More school organizations led me to campus for meetings. Being involved in the FFA meant spending more time with ag kids, and that was an important contribution to the exposure. There was also game experiences like this:
I watched Nix-to-Sanders in a hotel room in Montgomery, and — this makes no sense — there was an embodiment of attitude in that team and that game that seemed admirable.
Perhaps most importantly, when I was a high school senior the girl I was dating was a freshman at Auburn. I went to visit early in her freshman year, spent a weekend with friends and had a blast. Everyone was nice and the place was beautiful. And I knew people and all of that was very important to a high school kid.
[She and I dated off and on for the next few years. But being at Auburn never seemed a bad decision. (Except for chemistry classes. Yeesh.)]
I made it home, announced I was going to Auburn and went to my room.
My mother was … less than pleased. “If you’d told me you’d robbed a bank, I would have said ‘That’s OK, son, I still love you.’ But I never, ever, thought you would tell me you were going to Auburn.”
The only thing we’d ever really disagreed about was how to pay for this. There would be a way, said the wide eyed child. The pragmatic parent wasn’t so sure.
That same fall, this happened:
I missed the great comeback because of a flat tire. A flat tire! It would be six or seven years before I actually saw the game. Why LSU was throwing the ball still boggles the mind. But I digress.
I got one scholarship, was able to qualify for good grants and tried to figure out how to live cheaply. And then, just three days after my high school graduation, I was called in for a scholarship interview. I sat in a small room with two older gentlemen and discussed college, life, ambition and study habits. After the meeting I drove to my mother’s business.
“What if I told you they offered me a one-year scholarship?”
“That would be good,” she said.
“What if I told you they offered me a two-year scholarship?”
“That would be good,” she said.
“What if I told you they gave me a three-year scholarship?”
“That would be even better.”
“What if I told you they gave me a four-year scholarship?”
“I would say ‘War Eagle!'”
And so everything was fine.
She still gave me a hard time about all things Auburn, even beyond football. So did the family. I’m the one Auburn person in the bunch in the whole family — both sides! I catch a lot of grief, but it is, usually, all in jest.
And then after a few wonderful years I graduated (in spite of chemistry).
In 2004 I started graduate school at UAB. They all took great pride in pointing out what the A stood for in that acronym.
But no matter. The boy had long since become an Auburn man.
Tomorrow, we’ll dig up some memorable games from my time as an undergrad, as we try to pad out the holiday week. May all your turkeys be delicious, and all your football teams win. Unless that team is Alabama.
A series of meetings punctuated the beginning of my work day. Check in with a colleague about the big upcoming journalism awards submissions that must go out tomorrow. Check in with my department chair for the regular this and that. Check in with another professor to make sure we’re on the same page about a class session later this week. There’s another professor with whom we must organize the awards submissions.
Then I ran into someone else I needed to speak with, and so we had a brief meeting at the top of a stairwell.
Make sure everything is graded for this afternoon’s class, nurse the printer through another round of printing things. I’ve been pointing out the eventual demise of this machine for a few years now. One day it’ll day, or they’ll replace it. Until now, CMND-P, which stands for Pray.
Staple all of those things which just got printed. Go to class where students are writing things that need writing.
And then to the Crimson, where the student-journalists are busy putting out another paper.
After a while, I went out for dinner. Stopped by the bookstore to look for a particular magazine for research. There was a book signing, featuring some science fiction writer I don’t know and his new book of which I am not aware. Not really my reading genre. The place was jammed, with little hope of walking or browsing.
So dinner, then. Stopped at Jason’s Deli in the mall where I met a couple who’d been at the book signing. Said he was a nice guy, who stopped and talked to his readers and signed all of his books, not just the new one. The restaurant employees, experts on book signing dynamics since the chain often has them, said a crowd that size would be there until midnight, easy.
Thought, then, I would go up the street to the other bookstore to look for the magazine we need. This was the scene:
Shame, really. This Books-A-Million always had great sale racks. Though, like every Books-A-Million, the tome you wanted was inevitably the 1,000,001st book. Never seemed to have the thing you’d want. Still, there were a lot of things in there. The entire back wall was magazines. I read an important newspaper in there one day. Another day I found myself making an important decision in the local section. I liked that bookstore.
They closed in September, the sign on the door said. Now, there’s only this:
As I mentioned this summer while in Portland, there’s really no need to buy anything in bookstores anymore. But still, this is a sad turn. And, yes, I appreciate all the many contradictions in this paragraph, but there is something useful about browsing a bookstore. There is a great deal of charm in spending part of a lazy afternoon aimlessly looking through the books. Now you’ll just have to do it somewhere else.
And now back in the office. The student-journalists are working on their paper in the newsroom. I’m working on the journalism awards submissions. This will require more work tomorrow. I’d bet we spend about three full days on this when all is said and done.
And that will be tomorrow, when the things have to be postmarked and shipped to the judges.
That’s from my phone, as I cruise down the interstate. With a real camera, and a sincere processor, the entire back of Oak Mountain there would just explode. You can never capture the fall in a photograph, but this year is trying to help us out.
Class this afternoon was on public relations. I joked with the students they had the wrong professor, that the esteemed Dr. Smith was the one they really needed. After class there was the paper.
The student-journalists put together a pretty good paper, but they have a good time, too. They showed me this video tonight, demonstrating their grasp of one of the seven news values. Can you guess which one?
Sent the in-laws home today. They’re lovely folks, full of fun and I’m glad when they get to visit. It seems we’re making this an annual thing, though, their fall trip for a weekend. Last year they made it down for a homecoming game. This weekend they saw Auburn host Ole Miss. Next year, a big-time game perhaps.
Anyway, we had breakfast at Barbecue House, as has become a weekly tradition. Some football players were there, including an offensive lineman. My mother-in-law barely came up to his shoulder blades. Mr. Price now remembers me. He asked my mother-in-law if if I was back or visiting.
And this is the sign that I ate here too much in undergrad — several times a week for breakfast and sometimes for lunch as my class schedule allowed — he now recalls me by name. That’s a powerful memory.
I graduated a decade ago.
Saw them off and headed to campus. Did a little work, graded some papers, mingled a bit and went to class.
I learned what relief sounds like. I told the students they would have no quiz today and the room got brighter, louder and the barometric pressure dropped two degrees. The escape of tension can be a tangible thing.
At the paper, where the student-journalists are hard at work … showing each other videos. Rapper’s Delight shows up in here, as well as other high points of the genre:
There are three things about that. First, I’ve now seen Jimmy Fallon do something funny — he’s just … not. Second, I think I’ve found Jimmy Fallon’s audience — the college student. Third, this is the jumping off point where I can no longer relate to that audience — I’m old.
They are also putting together a paper, alas, there is no compelling video of this herculean feat. There will be news copy tomorrow, however.
Google is making changes. They are horrible. More on that tomorrow.
