the groundhog day project

(For the record, most of what follows was written prior to today. For my Monday-night class this quarter, we've been having to write drafts. I don't normally like writing drafts. That is why I like the blog format, I think—I just write and what comes out is what is, with only minimal changes as I go. Anyway, there has already been a 500-word assignment setting up the topic, and a 750-word draft that I put together as a sort of teaser, ended on a cliffhanger even. (I've also handwritten the last several lines (probably) of the final piece.) The final version is supposed to be 1200-1500 words. I have been taking word count as a challenge in this class, so I may aim for 1200 even. We'll see. [Note: I finished at 1320, then cut back to 1200, which was not easy.] As I write, because it is once again the 2nd of the month, Groundhog Day will be playing. This blog has been going for 31 months now. I have watched this film about 396 times in that span. That's from start t...

As Anomalisa gets underway again, I reflect on the days that were full of life. And I reflect on today. I think of full days like some speech tournament days--good and bad--or when I met my first girlfriend in Salt Lake City, or my second in Memphis, or my third in Burbank. It is not that many things need to happen. It is just that something needs to happen. I've written before in this blog--so very long, it seems--about the moments worth repeating. But, it could just be about the moments... the mundane moments. Today, for example, I awoke just before my 6:11am alarm. I actually have several alarms set, most of them on my old phone which is now just a glorified alarm clock. The 6:11am is louder and on my iPhone. I was awake early enough that I did not have to rush. I fed the cats and headed out, stopped at Starbucks on the way to work. Taught class at 8:00am and at 9:50am. I got a good impression of both set so students. I've got a good feeling about this quarter. It was the...

(650) I was going to make a point today about performativity and performance... but then I thought maybe I'd already made it. Some scribbled notes on my copy of Brickell's (2005) "Masculinities, Performativity, and Subversion" that I wanted to share, and a quick Google search and I found the blog entry-- Day 557 - i think i hear a footstep --in which I typed up my scribbles word-for-word... I suppose you can go read that entry (which, ostensibly, was about Singin' in the Rain , by the way) but the basic gist was that all performance is performativity. That is, everything we do, even our subversions, our revolutions, are defined and con fined by what the world tells us we can get away with. I just recently started reading José Esteban Muñoz' (1999) book, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics . The gist I'm getting so far to his idea of disidentification is effectively finding your identity in the differences, the opposite ...

Let us begin with an update. Long-time readers, you should know, the piece by Michael Schulman, the reporter I met a year ago— Day 184 - it’s so beautiful —in Woodstock, has been published over at The Believer . I’m in there a bit alongside Danny Rubin. And, it’s quite good. For those of you finding this blog anew because of a) Schulman’s piece—called “That Accidental Swami” by the way—or b) it being Groundhog Day today, first of all, welcome. Second of all, the basics you should know: (Long-time readers, skip down past the image.) Yes, I watched Groundhog Day every day for a year and wrote blog entries related to and/or inspired by the film each of those days. Yes, I even went so far as to go on a pilgrimage to Woodstock, Illinois, where they filmed Groundhog Day last Groundhog Day. And, it all started because I had little going on in the summer before grad school got underway. Schulman quotes me—which is weird, quoting myself by way of an interviewer, but hey, it’s not the weird...

Tonight in class, we were running ad hoc focus groups. A couple topics were political. Mine was not even really conducive to much disagreement, or necessarily a lot of conversation... I thought. I started with the Jelly Bean video I've linked a couple times in this blog, notably in Day 52: if you only had one day to live . My first question was simple enough but lead to discussion of elitism and whether or not any of us are wasting our lives, as the video seems to be telling us. Good times were had. A fellow student, Shawn, had us discussing the concept of villains in his focus group. For the briefest of moments, I thought I'd use that as the jumping off point for today's Groundhog Day Project entry, but I've already talked about how a) there is no villain in Groundhog Day or b) Phil is his own... antagonist ; there is no villain in Groundhog Day . (I would link but I don't think that topic was its own entry, just part of some other one. And, really, the conce...

(An aside before I get going today: today in my Intercultural Communication class, we watched Gung Ho and Rick Overton, Ralph in Groundhog Day had a small but briefly important role in it. He’s 7 years younger and they barely say his character’s name but once or twice so while I noticed his name on the IMDb page, I didn’t recognize him until a good way into the film. He doesn’t have any great thematically central dialogue like “That about sums it up for me” but his getting injured on the assembly line does make for a key moment in the themes of that movie.) Today, February 12, is the anniversary of Groundhog Day ’s original release. So, let’s look back. Jerry Adler and Ray Sawhill—apparently, it took two authors to review one movie—at Newsweek , 8 March 1993*, for example, note the importance of Bill Murray’s casting in the film. “Acting a scene, Murray’s face registers a sequence of emotions as precisely as a galvanometer,” they tell us. They continue: Between expressions the...

Back to photos, and still Saturday, because the symposium was Saturday. That’s Craig Krandel, member of the Inner Square Committee and announcer for the symposium and the official breakfast. And, I met him Saturday morning at bowling. The audience, of course. And, Danny Rubin: After the symposium, Rubin autographed little movie posters. I stuck around on the stage, met a few of the more obsessive fans (like Kyle Sweeney) and talked a bit with Mitchell Olson (the host of the symposium). I wrote my blog that day at the bar in the Pour House, just a few feet from this: The next morning, it was cold but there was no more snow falling. And, of course there was the prognostication. Then, the official breakfast at the VFW. Craig mentioned me early on. But, there was breakfast service, the high school girls singing group Premium Blend, and a polka band playing before I got to go on stage to kick off the Groundhog Day trivia contest. I sat at a ...