Fredonia's Got Talent!

Apologies to my regular readers for taking this mini-sabbatical from Mostly Harmless!  Probably the main reason I've been too busy to blog has been all the extra time I've been putting into meeting with my students this past month to consult with them on their critical essays and final research projects.  Although most of them chose not to do web authoring projects, a good number did; here are links to their work:

• Alexandra Atseff, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone:  Book to Film [blog]
• Aubrey Cunningham, Fantasy Fiction [blog]
• Halie Degnan, Alternate Worlds [web site]
• Paige Jones, Fairy Tale Seamstress [blog on making of fairy tale dress for character in her fairy tale revision of Beauty and the Beast]
• Jessica Krajacic and Skylar Pratt, Fantasy Fiction and the Harry Potter Generation [blog]
• Kyle Roof, Harry Potter vs. LotR vs. GoT--Fantasy Fiction Club [live-action on youtube]
• Rhiannon Vercant, A Neapolitan Cinderella in Oz [animation on vimeo]
• Ashley Weinheimer, History of Magic School [blog]
• Kristal Zarczynski, Fantasy Blog [blog]

Please check 'em out while you're waiting for me to finish grading!

[cross-posted at sf@SF and Citizen of Somewhere Else]

My Picks for the Canadian Pacific Women's Open

Between the imminent start of the semester and the return to Western NY of my lovely ladies after nearly 2 months in Japan--not to mention needing to finish N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy and Guy Gavriel Kay's 2 amazing historical fantasy novels set in China (Under Heaven and River of Stars), as well as finish binge-watching Parks and Recreation before my students, colleagues, and family take up most of my time and attention--my post-Wegmans week has been packed already, so I'm rushing out my picks for the Canadian Pacific Women's Open tonight:

1. Ko
2. Park Inbee
3. Pettersen
4. Lewis, Stacy
5. Feng Shanshan
6. Kerr
7. Ryu
8. Thompson
9. Munoz
10. Nordqvist
11. Lincicome
12. Lee Mirim

Alts: Choi Chella; Stanford; Yang

So go with Tony Jesselli's this week rather than mine!  Would love to sneak up to London, Ontario, on Sunday, but going to have to get a lot done the next 3 days for that to happen....

Recommended Reading: If You're Wondering Why I've Been Away from Mostly Harmless This Week....

Check out my post on the Neil Gaiman interview/book signing event at Saratoga Springs last night!  For those who come here for the golf writing, there is a little bit on interviewing LPGA players in it....

Neal on Neil and Neal

I know it's Masters week, but what better time to let the world know that I'm going to be teaching a summer course on Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson from May 28 through June 28 at SUNY Fredonia?

Here's how I've been pitching it on campus.

Summer Session I

Bring on the "Ne(a/i)ls":

Bruce Neal Simon Will Be Teaching Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson

ENGL 427 Major Writers: Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson

During Summer Session I, we will examine a sample of works from the major fantasy fiction writer and the major science fiction writer of their generation: Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson. We will start by pairing some shorter works that made the writers' early reputations (for instance, Gaiman's Sandman: Season of Mists and Stephenson's "Mother Earth, Mother Board" from Some Remarks). We will then pair Gaiman's (and Terry Pratchett's) Good Omens with Stephenson's Snow Crash as hugely popular and influential experiments in narrative, humor, and apocalypse. Finally, we will pair Gaiman's American Gods with Stephenson's Anathem as mature and major novels. If we have the time (and are completely insane), we will also try to pack in their most recent novels, Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Stephenson's Reamde--you know, for fun (these novels will be optional purchases)!

We will consider such questions as what makes a writer "major"? how do these very different writers speak to each other, to their own times, and to us? what connections and contrasts can we find between their characters and settings, characteristic themes and figures, central beliefs and values, writing styles and narrative strategies, and literary and political projects?

This course fulfills the "major author course" requirement for undergraduates majoring in English or English Adolescence Education.

Happy Birthday, J.R.R. Tolkien!

Just noticed that J.R.R. Tolkien would have turned eleventy-nine today. In honor of his birthday, I'll pass along a link to a song one of my students composed and performed based on lyrics from The Hobbit and remind everyone that there's plenty of interesting Tolkien-related blogging from my students up at sf@SF!

Too bad The Hobbit movie didn't get finished or released in time for us to discuss it in class, but here's a trailer:

This Makes Me Proud

Onechan, a 1st-grader, is trying to read a 50-page "Step 3" illustrated story based on The Incredibles--which we've been watching every other day for the last few weeks (not to mention watching the awesome short "Jack-Jack Attack" much more often!). Guess which words and phrases she's been having no problem reading on her own....

"bad guy"
"attacked"
"ran for our lives"
"his own robot"
"after us"
"Syndrome's guards"
"in trouble"
"powers"
"pretend to be normal"
"not a real Super"
"slipped into her force field"
"super speed"
"she set us free too"
"with his remote control"
"We got there just in time"
"turned into a fireball"
"Super-strong little monster"
"We have the best family!"
"save the day"

Oh, and guess who's going trick-or-treating as Violet?

All I can say is, there's hope for that girl yet!

Recommended Reading: My Fantasy Fiction Students at sf@SF

Back in the day, Mostly Harmless had an expansive definition of "fun" (as its perpetual tag line, "for fun," and long links list over there on the left remind me every time I visit the site), which included science fiction, fantasy, anime, music, tv, films, theory, and politics, as well as golf. Fortunately, I've got a couple of academic/pop culture blogs, sf@SF and American Identities, that allow me to sound off on most of those topics when inspiration hits me and I don't feel like cross-posting it here. More important, though, they allow me to showcase some of the work my students have been doing in my courses.

Well, the time has come for my Fantasy Fiction students to start sharing their response essays with the world (or that portion of it that makes it to sf@SF!). And that's where my Mostly Harmless regulars come in: I'm asking you all to point your own intertubey (and other) networks at the most interesting essays from my students this semester. I think you'll see from the 1st post that their topics, views, and writing will be worth your time!

J-Pop Culture Update: Moe Madness!

Here's the anime du jour at the Constructivist household. It's called Kimi Ni Todoke and the Full Metal Archivist calls it "the Bible of moe." What's moe? Mao Asada would like to know. (Hint: Mao Asada is moe and so is her reaction to the question posed to her at the end of the video.) For more details, check out the hottest new anime in Japan and around the world at AnimeKuro. What's striking about "Reaching You" is how a subculture into fetishing the purity and innocence of young girls has gone mainstream via the manga and anime. And what's striking about the Discovery Channel International Made in J-Pop Culture documentary is the subtitles posted on it in Japanese on youtube:



Japanese pop culture is fascinated by how American (and other) pop culture is fascinated with Japanese pop culture. Check out the channel of the samuraitoshi3 to see what I mean.

Me, I'll go back to Karen Tei Yamashita's Circle K Diaries (2001).... Somehow I find the Discovery Channel's borrowing tropes from its nature documentaries less interesting than early Yamashita writing about the permutations and mutations of Brazilian, Japanese, and American identities.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Yes, I just compared ex-LPGA Commissioner Carolyn Bivens to the dolphins in the 4th novel of Douglas Adams's classic Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy.

And yes, the analogy doesn't precisely hold, for as the 2nd-most-intelligent species on Earth, the dolphins in Adams's novel saved the planet after it had been unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, or rather saved the 3rd-most intelligent species (us) by pulling a parallel Earth to replace the demolished one (it's all there in Chapter 32), so if you take the Earth as a metaphor for the LPGA, this seems to me to better fit the new-Commissioner-to-be-named-later than Bivens herself, whose grasp of English and social interactions was never quite as Vogon-reciting-poetry-bad as critics like Geoff Shackelford made out but who really did take a huge gamble with the tour's future and has paid the price for it, although her consolation prize--a buyout of the remaining years on her contract--will pay for a lot of fish, so maybe the metaphor does work, after all. Speaking of fish, Adams has lots of passages that can help a blog named Mostly Harmless commemorate the end of the Bivens era.

Take last year's language controversy. All the LPGA needs is the Babel fish, right? Hmmm...what does the Hitchhiker's Guide say to that?

the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

Of course that one's from page 42 of The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide. Here's one for the golfy media, courtesy of Wonko the Sane:

I'm not trying to prove anything, by the way. I'm a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting.

Anyway, to return to my nautical theme, Marsha Evans, a retired Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy and former President/CEO of the American Red Cross, will be the tour's interim commissioner, and Annika Sorenstam will be helping the Board of Directors find its bearings and chart a new course. Apparently the idea was that having been ousted in a ARC board mutiny back in 2005 and participating in the LPGA Board's own in 2009, Evans will have learned from her own and her predecessor's mistakes. In which case, let's hope she wasn't in charge of the announcement process.

Sometimes life imitates Adams. And sometimes bloggers do, too.

[Update 1 (4:11 pm): Here's Ryan Ballengee with the news and background on Evans, Stephanie Wei on Bivens's legacy and Sorenstam's role, Jay Busbee on what next, and The Golf Chick with some answers.]

[Update 2 (4:14 pm): And here's Brent Kelley's thoughtful analysis.]

[Update 3 (4:21 pm): And here are the LPGA's press releases announcing Bivens's replacement with Evans and explaining Sorenstam's role.]

[Update 4 (11:11 pm): Bill Jempty, one of Bivens's longest-standing and harshest critics in blogaramaville, weighs in with his thoughts on Bivens's ouster and replacement.]

[Update 5 (11:18 pm): Here's Randall Mell.]

[Update 6 (11:24 pm): Here's the Golf Channel video of the announcement.]

[Update 7 (11:49 pm): Here's Hound Dog's reaction to the news and the press conference.]

[Update 8 (7/14/09, 9:54 am): Here's Daniel Wexler's reaction and Stephanie Wei's overview at the Huffington Post.]

[Update 9 (10:00 am): Geoff Shackelford links to and comments on various journalists' reactions.]

[Update 10 (10:09 am): Here's Dave Seanor's reaction.]

[Update 11 (11:18 am): Here's Christina Kim on why she's optimistic about the LPGA's future.]

[Update 12 (11:33 am): Here's Gene Yasuda's piece for Golfweek.]

[Update 13 (11:44 am): And here's one of the guys from Nice Ballz.]

[Update 14 (4:21 pm): William Rhoden of the NYT got Bivens to talk in a phone interview, so his piece is definitely worth reading.]

[Update 15 (7/15/09, 10:54 pm): John Strege shares the views of a former tournament organizer of Bivens's 1st ex-tournament, the Shoprite.]

[Update 16 (7/16/09, 12:37 am): Brent Kelley has done some reading--and linking--of his own.]

Stanford Financial Follies

No doubt you've been reading Geoff Shackelford, Ryan Ballengee, and Hound Dog on the impact on professional golf of the "massive ongoing fraud" investigation into Stanford Financial Group. I'm a little surprised the golfy media hasn't dug up more LPGA implications on a story that's been front-page material since Tuesday and floating around the business media for longer. Recently, Charles Elmore focused on the Morgan Pressel endorsement angle, while Purva Patel countered some of the overly optimistic spin coming out of the PGA Tour spin department (but didn't really add anything to Dave Seanor's overview from the 17th).

Me, I'm just glad to be teaching Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place in my Black Women Writers course in a couple of weeks. Apparently, nobody in the LPGA office has read Kincaid's 1988 jeremiad against the ways postcolonial Antigua has sold its soul to the highest bidder (among other juicy topics). Then again, I've not only read it several times but taught it before, as well, yet I still never thought to connect a Houston-based company with its founder's activities and standing in Antigua (indeed, I wasn't even aware of them). Dumb, right? I mean, back in July 2000, David Ivanovich of the Houston Chronicle quoted Stanford as saying, without a trace of irony, "I just happen to be a major investor in a small place," which no doubt prompted Ivanovich to lead his story with, "R. Allen Stanford went empire-building in the Caribbean. But the Houston businessman's dream of creating a major offshore banking center on the tiny island of Antigua ran up against the U.S. State Department's crusade against money laundering."

So while I can't exactly fault the LPGA for failure to perform due diligence when they decided to dump ADT for Stanford Financial as the title sponsor of their season-ending, $1M-to-the-winner event--heck, they probably thought Stanford was less wacky and annoying than The Donald, for all I know--I can make the following modest proposal: do a google search before you strike your next deal. Oh yeah, and take heed of Momoko Ueda's recent observation on her blog, "I really do love books. Books give you an opportunity to reexamine who you are, and I feel like through books you can make fresh starts" (sorry, I can't reproduce her expert use of anime-emoticons here, so you're losing the full effect). If I might offer a humble suggestion, there's no better place for the LPGA to start than A Small Place.

Totoro iPhone Ocarina Theme/Robo-Murasaki

For Valentine's Day.



Plus a robot that recites the Tale of Genji, courtesy of Bill Benzon.

Yep, Mostly Harmless is romance central.

On Golf and Literature: Potiki and the PGA

It just so happens that I've started teaching Patricia Grace's 1986 novel Potiki in my Novels and Tales course just in time for the 1st pro-am at the PGA's Turning Stone Resort Championship. Potiki was brought to American readers by the University of Hawaii Press as part of their series Talanoa: Contemporary Pacific Literature. The General Editor of the series, Vilsoni Hereniko, introduces Grace's novel as follows:

Potiki is a moving story that will be familiar to oppressed people everywhere whose livelihood is threatened by "Dollarmen," property speculators who speak of golf courses, highrises, shopping malls, and tourist attractions. There is a lesson for us all in this community's response to foreigners' attempts to destroy their ancestral symbols and values.

Does the fact that the Oneida Indian Nation owns and runs the Turning Stone resort complex which is hosting this week's PGA event blunt the force of Hereniko's critique? These days, it seems that certain members of the surrounding communities are trying to cast themselves as victims of the OIN's development plans, as both wikipedia and a visitor to the conservative Alexander Hamilton Institute's inaugural dinner attest in their different styles and as historian Beverly Gage analyzed in The Nation almost 8 years ago.

Seems to me both Grace's novel and the Turning Stone resort deserve to be read in all their complexity and ambiguity. What can we make of this coincidental intersection between my academic and blogging lives?

[Update 1 (9/30/08, 7:38 pm): Interesting story on South Korean sensation Danny Lee aiming to make a big splash in this $6M event. Wonder if we'll soon be reading many more stories about male golfers of Korean descent like him and Anthony Kim are changing the face of the PGA.... Still a long way to go to catch up to the LPGA in that regard.]

Babelfish Poetry: For Momo-chan

Just want to make a small point about the beauty that can come from non-standard English--in this case, the babelfish translation of a Japanese news report of Momoko Ueda's painful fingernail accident. I've just removed some words and punctuation marks, inserted some line and stanza breaks, changed some capitalizations, and voila: a pretty damn good imagist poem.

The seeing eye dog surprised
the flash of the cameraman of the multitude produced
to run, suddenly.

Being flurried, tries probably to grasp the lanyard
“the painful [tsu]!” with voice was increased
being caught to the cord which was pulled

It peeled the nail of the left hand middle finger
the nail which peels off even cruelly fell to the land
the blood dripped from the finger

For a while holding down the finger
at that place
which it cannot move

It is painful
the face was twisted with pain
the tear floated in the eye

Hopkinson@SF

[cross-posted from sf@SF]

It's official! Award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer Nalo Hopkinson will be giving a reading/lecture at SUNY Fredonia on Monday, April 21st. And she'll be making a special appearance in our Science Fiction class the following day, which we're moving to a new room to accommodate Saundra Liggins's African American literature class and any other Fredonians who want to attend.

Many thanks to the Dean of Arts and Humanities John Kijinski, the Pride Alliance, the Science Fiction Fantasy Gamers Guild, and the Mary Louise White Fund--not to mention the amazing Ms. Hopkinson herself--for making this visit possible. And to Jeffrey McMinn, Textbook Manager at SUNY Fredonia, who will have about 25 copies of her newest novel, The New Moon's Arms (which, by the way, was recently shortlisted for the Nebula and Aurora awards) and her first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring (which won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest in 1997 and recently was one of the 5 finalists among the books selected for the Canada Reads program).

Here are the details:

Monday, April 21, 4:30 pm, Thompson W101: Reading/Lecture on race in science fiction; free and open to the public

Tuesday, April 22, 2 pm, McEwen G26: Class Visit; free and open to SUNY Fredonia students, faculty, and staff

And a bit of a bio:

Born in Jamaica, and raised in Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, and the U.S., Nalo Hopkinson has lived in Canada since her family moved there in 1977 when she was 16 years old. The author of four novels and two short story collections, she has branched out into essays, editing, and art in recent years.

Spread the word!

J-Drama Update: Bara no nai Hanaya

As spring break ends, I thought I'd recommend another J-Drama that the Full Metal Archivist and I have gotten into on Veoh: Bara no nai Hanaya, or The Flower Shop Has No Roses. This one is not nearly as funny and self-consciously postmodern as Hottie Paradise (or rather, Hanazakari no Kimitachi e); no, it's much more Dickensian in the convolutions of its plot and Hawthornesque or even Morrisonesque in its exploration of the risks and costs of love and revenge. For a glimpse of the show's different strands, check out what its fans have been putting up on YouTube:





Trust me when I say go to Veoh as often as you can the next few nights and catch up on the first 10 episodes--the final episode's fansub should go up in the next few days. You can be the first kid on your block to experience in almost real-time what prime-time audiences in Japan did on Monday nights this season. And yes, there's a SMAP connection--how could there not be when it's a) super-popular in Japan, and b) something found by the Full Metal Archivist online?

The Continuing Adventures of Sparkychan in GrandpaLand

When last we left Sparkychan and Gojochan, they were trying to figure out the difference between dream and reality. Had they really been rescued by onechan and imoto from the meanies who had imprisoned them in a space-faring box, or was it all a dream?

Well, Gojochan will have to speak for herself, but I can report that Sparkychan has been pursuing such metaphysical questions for the past several months in a super-duper top-secret adventure of her own. You see, the last time onechan and imoto visited their grandparents in Clinton, Sparkychan heard tell that Grandpa was a FILL-OZ-OF-HER. She didn't quite know what that meant, but she thought it had something to do with playing with grandchildren a lot and telling a lot of funny stories. So she decided she would stick around central NY instead of heading back to western NY with Gojochan, onechan, and imoto in the Super-Prius. But she forgot to tell anyone! We all were worried sick about Sparkychan when we realized she hadn't made the trip back to Dunkirk with us. Fortunately, on our last trip to Clinton, Sparkychan, her mission complete, made contact with us via Grandma, who had found her in the Drop Zone underneath papa's old bed, but didn't know who she was or where she belonged.

After the reuniting celebrations were complete, onechan, imoto, and Sparkychan had the following conversation (which might make more sense to new readers after checking out the following playbill):

Onechan: So where were you and what were you doing? We were missed you! And we were worried about you!
Sparkychan: I was on a super-duper top-secret mission.
Onechan: Huh? What's a mission?
Sparkychan: It's when you're trying to do something important.
Onechan: Like what?
Sparkychan: Like find out what a Fill-Oz-of-Her is. And figure out what's Really Real.
Imoto: Gojochan!
Sparkychan: Yes, I missed Gojochan a lot. But I had to complete my mission!
Onechan: You must have been lonely.
Sparkychan: Yes, but it was all worth it. I found out that Fill-Oz-of-Hers tell great stories.
Onechan: Like what?
Sparkychan: Like about the dog who goes on a walk every day and every day something funny happens. And about the man who forgets how to do things. And about Aki and Aya who live on a planet with four seasons, just like ours--winter, spring, summer, and up--except that in the last one, leaves fall up.
Imoto: Up!
Sparkychan: I know--funny, right?
Onechan: What does telling funny stories have to do with figuring out what's Really Real?
Sparkychan: Hmm, I'll have to think about that question!
Onechan: You don't know?
Sparkychan: Well, that's one thing I learned from listening to the Fill-Oz-of-Her's stories. Sometimes you have to stop and think.
Imoto: Dora!
Sparkychan: Yes, like Dora.
Onechan: But why didn't you come back to us sooner?
Sparkychan: I wanted to, but then I realized the Fill-Oz-of-Her needed my help.
Onechan: Huh? Why?
Sparkychan: Well, it turned out that there's a lot of heavy lifting involved in all that thinking--grandpa got a Fill-Oz-of-Hernia and needed an operation.
Onechan: What's an operation?
Sparkychan: It's when you go to the doctor and they help you get better.
Imoto: Byoin!
Sparkychan: Yes, at a hospital.
Onechan: Ooh, I play hospital all the time with my friends in Dunkirk!
Sparkychan: Really? I think playing hospital is kind of like telling stories.
Onechan: It's fun to pretend!
Sparkychan: I think that's why your grandpa is a Fill-Oz-of-Her. He gets to pretend every day!
Onechan: Hmm, maybe papa is a Fill-Oz-of-Her, too.
Sparkychan: I don't think so. I heard grandma telling her friend that when your papa was going to college, she told him he could be anything he wanted to be, except a Fill-Oz-of-Her.
Onechan: Why?
Sparkychan: She didn't say. She just thought it was funny he majored in Math and English.
Onechan: Why? What's majored?
Sparkychan: I don't know. I've been hanging around here trying to find out.
Imoto: Gakko!
Sparkychan: Yes, it has something to do with college, but I don't know what.
Onechan: I'll find out. I go to school at papa's gakko lots and lots and then sometimes I go up to Japanese school at mama's gakko!
Sparkychan: Cool! Thanks. So after your grandma told the joke I didn't get, that was when I found out that your grandpa needed my help.
Onechan: Not just with the Fill-Oz-of-Hernia?
Sparkychan: Nope, he was doing fine after the operation. This has something to do with a Pee-Essay test. It's the kind of test where you're supposed to score a zero.
Onechan: A zero! What kind of test is that?
Sparkychan: I'm still not sure. But grandma told her friend he wasn't getting zeros on his tests.
Onechan: Hmm, maybe that's like making a bogey.
Sparkychan: A bogey? What's that?
Imoto: Shikaku!
Onechan: Yeah, it's when you make a square instead of a circle on the golf course.
Sparkychan: Huh?
Onechan: One more than you should instead of one less.
Sparkychan: That's neat. I wonder what's one less than zero.
Imoto: Birdie!
Onechan: Yeah, one under par.
Sparkychan: Par?
Onechan: That's it! The Pee-Essay test is par zero! Grandpa needs to start making pars and birdies--and stop making so many bogeys!
Sparkychan: Oh, I think I get it. That's probably why he was taking out his golf clubs and making holes in the carpet.
Imoto: Swing!
Sparkychan: Yeah, he called it working on his swing. Didn't seem like work to me. But he sure did it a lot.
Onechan: Hmm, did he try to roll golf balls at chair legs a lot, too?
Sparkychan: Yes, he did, come to think of it.
Imoto: Putt!
Onechan: Yup, it's called putting. I'm very good at that. Better than papa. I think next time I visit grandpa I need to teach him how to roll the ball into the hole.
Sparkychan: The hole that goes to Kansas?
Onechan: Yeah!
Sparkychan: I have an idea! Maybe Gojochan and I can try to find The Little Worm and find out the secret to making birdies on the Pee-Essay test!
Onechan: The Little Worm knows that?
Sparkychan: The Little Worm knows lots of things. It comes from getting into so many computers.
Onechan: Oh.
Imoto: Oh.
Sparkychan: Maybe then, Grandpa won't have to drive to Syracuse so much this spring.
Onechan: Where's Syracuse?
Sparkychan: I'm not sure.
Onechan: We can ask the Super-Prius later.
Sparkychan: OK.
Onechan: Won't you two be lonely, going on an adventure all by yourselves?
Sparkychan: If it helps your grandpa, we can do it!
Imoto: Gaman!
Sparkychan: That's right, imoto. Sometimes you just have to tough things out.
Onechan: That's what mama tells me all the time.
Imoto: Gambare!
Onechan: That's what papa tells me all the time.
Sparkychan: What's it mean?
Onechan: Go for it! OK, so, I'll help grandpa with his putting next time I see him and you two try to find the Little Worm.
Sparkychan: OK! I'll go tell Gojochan the plan. Let's get back together for ice cream and tea in a few minutes.
Onechan: OK, see you soon! [To imoto:] We'd better tell our other friends. Sounds like Gojochan and Sparkychan will need lots of help!
Imoto: OK!

Sounds like a lot is going on. Stay tuned!

SBS Open Thursday: Valentine's Day Romances and Heartbreaks

After all the anticipation, Valentine's Day on the LPGA certainly had its share of thrills and spills! I'll let Hound Dog offer his usual more-than-professional synopsis and break down the first round of the 2008 season by career cohorts.

The Vets
Annika Sorenstam isn't the only one facing a career crossroads this season. Among her peers in the field this week, Cristie Kerr is fighting to reestablish herself as the best American in the world; Lorie Kane is struggling to regain the game that put her among the world's best for 3 years; Pat Hurst, Sherri Steinhauer, and Laura Diaz on the American side and Sophie Gustafson and Maria Hjorth on the European side are looking to qualify for at least one more Ryder Cup Team and burnish their formidable reputations; Rachel Hetherington, Carin Koch, Wendy Ward, Wendy Doolan, Kelli Kuehne, Moira Dunn, and Janice Moodie are fighting to rescue their careers; and a host of others are testing the LPGA waters to see how regularly they should plan to play in 2008, including big names like Meg Mallon, Michelle McGann, Brandie Burton, Liselotte Neumann, Helen Alfreddson, Michelle Redman, and Jill McGill.

Feel free to click on the names of your faves to track the ups and downs of their rounds; I'll give a quick rundown to save you some time. Kuehne (-5) has to be the happiest of the bunch--it's been a long time since she broke 70 in an opening round (counting the Canadian Open last August, she's only done it 7 times in the last 4 years, and then usually towards the end of the season), much less held a first-round lead, but she's picking up where she left off in Q-School. Ward (-3, T3) and Mallon (-2, T10) are probably the next-most-thrilled, although the former has the memory of a 68-75 start here last year and the latter has the memory of a 69-82 start at last year's Tournament of Champions to temper their excitement. Steinhauer (-3, T3) is probably the only other vet who can look back on Valentine's Day with unadulterated satisfaction; her bogey-free round contrasts sharply with the double bogeys that will probably stand out more for Kerr (-3, T3) and Sorenstam (-2, T10) than anything else they did that day. Of the rest, only Hurst and Doolan (E, T35) can find real bright spots in their day; the less said of many of their rounds, the better.

The Mid-Career Professionals
With many of the top vets skipping the SBS, along with Lorena Ochoa, who will be starting her season in Singapore at the HSBC Champions inaugural event at the end of the month, the stage was set for the rest of the mid-career cohort to bask in the spotlight. Who stepped up and who stepped back among their top 20 on the career money list?

#17 Meena Lee (-3, T3) lead the charge with a bogey-free round, finishing one stroke ahead of #5 Paula Creamer (who matched Sorenstam's birdie-double-birdie finish) and #7 Gloria Park (who posted a bogey-free round herself), 2 ahead of #10 Angela Stanford (who responded to a double on the treacherous 17th with a 33 on the front) and #20 Becky Morgan, and 3 ahead of #3 Jeong Jang, #4 Hee-Won Han, and #11 Dorothy Delasin.

Among the disappointed are #14 Jennifer Rosales (78, T126); #2 Grace Park (76, T103); #9 Suzann Pettersen, #13 Stacy Prammanasudh, and #16 Brittany Lincicome (74, T65); and #6 Natalie Gulbis, #8 Candie Kung, #12 Christina Kim, and #18 Young Kim (+1, T44).

It can't feel good for the majority of these stars to have been outplayed by the previously free-falling Jacqueline Yang (-4, 2nd place), Patricia Meunier-Lebouc, and Michelle Ellis (-2, T10), the steadily-improving Lindsey Wright, the golf babes Erica Blasberg and Mikaela Parmlid, or the out-of-nowhere Russy Gulyanamitta, but at least the law of averages is in their favor....

The Young Guns
Some of the biggest surprises and disappointments can be found among my top 25 from the classes of 2006-2008. Who would have predicted that Ji-Young Oh (-3, T3) would be the top Young Gun in the field thus far? Or that all of my "Sure Things"--Seon Hwa Lee (74), Morgan Pressel (73), Jee Young Lee (75), or Angela Park (75)--would be over par? My "Great Bets" fared better, for the most part: In-Kyung Kim (70), Jane Park (70), and Momoko Ueda (71) went under par, but Ai Miyazato (76) and Eun-Hee Ji (75) will have to make a charge to make the cut. Only Ya Ni Tseng (70), Sandra Gal (70), and Shanshan Feng (72) stood out among my "Good Bets," "Pretty Darn Good Bets," and "Not Bad Bets At All," respectively. Who would have predicted that no one among Julieta Granada, Inbee Park, Hee Young Park, Brittany Lang, Meaghan Francella, Na On Min, and Sun Young Yoo (+1, T44), Na Yeon Choi (+2, T65), H.J. Choi and Linda Wessberg (75, T88), Kyeong Bae (76, T106), and Karin Sjodin (77, T118) would have broken par?

Looking forward to seeing if newbies Paige McKenzie (70), Katie Futcher, Liz Janangelo (71), and Carolina Llano (72) can continue to stay roughly even with KLPGA superstar Ji-Yai Shin and the rest of their peers who got off to a good start, but I suspect they'll struggle to stay ahead of the majority of their cohort. Youth and consistency don't usually go together.

Overall, I'm off to a worse start than usual in the PakPicker competition, mostly because my picks among the Young Guns and Mid-Career Professionals are letting me down. And I certainly feel bad for Moira (74) and Ai-chan, who never got it going on Thursday. But one round does not a tournament--or a season--make. I'm certainly not in Macbeth's To-morrow, to-morrow, and to-morrow soliloquy mode yet. But, I'll tell you, it's harder being a golf fan than a Bills fan--way more chances for disappointment over the course of a season!

Announcing sf@SF: Science Fiction at SUNY Fredonia

My science fiction course begins in less than an hour, so I'm officially launching the course web site and course blog right...about...now!

What's the Opposite of "Ducky"?

OK, I may have finished the Harry Potter series before my dad, but he's going to to see the Turning Stone Championship with my mom tomorrow and maybe the next day, so I couldn't even gloat properly on the phone tonight. At least I got them to promise they'd follow Shigeki Maruyama for awhile, who's having the worst year of his professional career so far, in danger of losing his card, and fighting to make the cut or even break par on a course most everyone else seem to be tearing up. These guys really are quite good. Not that I've played Atunyote--it was built too recently and its green fees are too steep for me to even consider trying it until I've got my game back and my dad is in a mood for treating me--but considering that I used to struggle to break 80 on the easiest of the 3 Turning Stone courses and haven't yet broken 80 on the Peek'n'Peak Upper Course that's hosted a Nationwide Tour event the past several years, I think it's fair to say they play an entirely different game than me (or, rather, than I used to). Even Shigeki, still. I still remember being surprised at how short he was when I told him "Nice putt" after he birdied the 9th hole in the final round of the PGA Championship at Oak Hill. Of course, my mom got in a conversation with his wife at a different event, so all in all I'm feeling anything but ducky tonight.

At least I can do this. Top that, Tiger!

Yet More Otaku Autoethnography: New Worlds

Last night I focused on cutting a page or two from my JASF talk to leave time for more Q&A for once...and most of the following ended up on the cutting room floor. So I'm giving it a "Second Life" here. Well, actually I turned it into a handout and expanded it, so it's not like it's really gone from the talk. But I will make a special one-time Mostly Harmless offer. I'll send the handout--FREE, using the magic of attachments--to anyone who figures out how to email me and uses the magic word.

Along with changes in my personal life that I alluded to at the beginning of this talk, these interests led me to begin getting more systematic in my engagements with Japanese popular culture around 2003. I began looking through a wider range of American writing for images of Japan. Not just Gibson and Stephenson, but other science fiction writers like Orson Scott Card, Philip K. Dick, Marge Piercy, and Kim Stanley Robinson wrote futuristic and alternative history novels in which Japanese people and culture played important, if often problematic roles, as well. In addition, I devoured travel narratives and memoirs like Elena Tajima Creef’s “Notes from a Fragmented Daughter” (1984), David Mura’s Turning Japanese (1991), Bruce Feiler’s Learning to Bow (1991), Cathy Davidson’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji (1993), and Kyoko Mori’s Polite Lies (1997). Even here, though, I was selective; having read criticisms of similar works by writers ranging from Roland Barthes to Dave Barry, from Pico Iyer to Lydia Minatoya, and from Karl Taro Greenfield to John David Morley, I simply avoided their writings on Japan. What I couldn’t avoid, I analyzed, criticized, and discussed, such as major Hollywood productions like Pearl Harbor (2001), The Last Samurai (2003), Lost in Translation (2003), and Kill Bill (2003-2004). But above all I devoured all the anime I could find in English on television or with English subtitles on DVD, from old favorites like InuYasha to new ones like Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex and 2nd Gig, Full Metal Alchemist, Trigun, FLCL, Paranoia Agent, and Samurai Champloo, not to mention just about every Studio Ghibli movie I could find, along with films like Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress and Metropolis.

As I was doing all this, I noted that I wasn’t alone--and the phenomenon wasn’t limited to animation. Disney and Studio Ghibli performed some kind of merger that ended up putting America’s biggest Miyazaki fan in charge of Disney’s entire animation arm; manga in translation was appearing in major national book store chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble; the video game industry was regularly reporting sales figures larger than the American film industry’s; Japanese superstar athletes competing in the U.S. like Ichiro, Matsui, Dice-K, Shigeki Maruyama, and Ai Miyazato were getting lots of attention from the U.S. sports media; and web sites, newspapers and magazines, and even scholarly journals were publishing copious commentary and analysis of all these developments. With the rise of “Web 2.0” technology like blogs, YouTube, and Google Video, even more networks for distributing representations of and images from Japan were spreading fast. Clearly, Japan had arrived in twenty first-century U.S. popular culture.

Now let's see if I that typhoon coming allows me to actually give the talk today. So far it's just blustery and drizzly (and weather.com is definitely low-keying this thing in its forecasts)....