Jacob Bender's Blog, page 7

"Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas": Harvey Danger, the Post-Ironic, and the Secret Lives of One-Hit-Wonders

 [Like Blondie, a group, not a person]
So this year, as part of my continuing quest to find Christmas music I don't hate, I stumbled upon this hidden gem:
Harvey Danger's "Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas" just nails the feeling of abject melancholy that comes from, well, having to work on Christmas, a severely under-represented element of the whole Holiday experience (and really, if you're thinking of going to see a movie on Christmas day, please think twice; it's bad enough that t...

SPECTRE (Or, a Love Letter to Casino Royale)

It is entirely likely that Daniel Craig's latest round of declamations that he is "through with Bond" are just a strategy for strengthening his salary-negotiation position before the next film (he claimed he was through before Skyfall made him an obscene gob of money, too).  But I vote that we treat his claims as entirely sincere this time around, and bid him, in all sincerity, a grateful adieu, for it is high time to reboot the series once more.

For the same pattern happened when Pierce...

G.K. Chesterton's 1922 Introduction to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"

  So a few Decembers ago, I suddenly decided that Dickens' A Christmas Carol was a thing I should own.  It was an impulse buy--I was just hanging around some mall Barnes & Noble waiting for someone (the usual reason for hanging around a Barnes & Noble), when I spied this ornate little copy sitting on the shelf, claiming to be a facsimile reproduction of the original 1843 version.

Which turned out to be a bit of false-advertising--what Barns & Noble actually had on display...

On Columbine

And yet again, there has been another mass-shooting--this one hit especially close to home, because my fiance was raised in the San Bernadino mountains.  Her family has been following the details especially closely.  Somehow we never seem to get desensitized to these, as each just feels more horrible than the last--for this comes scarce a couple months after Umpqua Community College, which in turn came on the heels of Coral Ridge Mall, Charleston, UC Santa Barbara, Sandy Hooks, Auro...

On the Sexiness of Ulysses

So there's this 2000 art-house film, Nora, based on the relationship between James Joyce and his wife Nora Barnacle; I still haven't seen it yet, largely because the poster's tagline of "The World's Sexiest Writer Had One Inspiration..." seems about the wrongest way to market Joyce ever.  Anyone who picks up a Joyce book expecting some great Modernist "Dirty Novel" á la DH Lawrence or Henry Miller is in for a bitter disappointment.  "World's Sexiest Writer" is generally the las...

Post-Comps: Princes of the Universe

I read over a hundred books.  Wrote over a hundred pages.  Out of necessity (the head of my committee is retiring next month; this was her final act as an academic), I did in 6 months what most grad students take a year to study for.

I even made flash cards to prepare my answers, carefully mapping out each response with relevant texts and theoretical frameworks--all for naught, for during the oral defense they did not ask me not a single question I had prepped for, and every question...

The Violence in Paris

The above is the famed 1939 photo of a Frenchman crying on the streets of Paris upon hearing the news that France had fallen to Nazi Germany.  The shock and sorrow expressed in it feels sadly apropos this morning--not that France is anywhere close to surrendering to ISIS or any such nonsense (really, my greatest fear right now is a further increase in European xenophobia, anti-Muslim violence, and a return to the French police state; as Tom Wolfe once said, "the dark night of fascism is...

On The Recent Changes to Handbook 1...

...of which we scarcely need to even name now, do we.

A personal response in 9 movements:

1. I have had far too many intimate experiences with the Church and the Holy Spirit--too personal to detail here--to ever abandon them now. These include the many manifold times I have felt guided, protected, preserved, encouraged, discouraged, moved with and against the Spirit, moved with and against myself. My parents named me for the Biblical Patriarch who wrestled with God, and I have continued t...

On The Recent Changes...

...of which we scarcely need to even name now, do we.

A personal response in 9 movements:

1. I have had far too many intimate experiences with the Church and the Holy Spirit--too personal to detail here--to ever abandon them now. These include the many manifold times I have felt guided, protected, preserved, encouraged, discouraged, moved with and against the Spirit, moved with and against myself. My parents named me for the Biblical Patriarch who wrestled with God, and I have continued t...

On Actually Enjoyable Academics

So our revels now are ended.  I have checked off each book on my titanic reading lists.  I have submitted my portfolio to my committee.  In less than 2 weeks, I defend my comps portfolio.  There is naught left but to prepare for battle.

Of those reading lists: roughly 50 of those books, or about a third altogether, were critical texts, works of scholarship written over the past century upon the works of Modernism and Postmodernism.  My attraction to these art movements...