The Team

The entire Mystic Krewe of Saturnalia, including the representatives from the Dream Team.

Fletcher, Katelyn, some old guy and the esteemed Brandybuck.

Mystic Krewe of Saturnalia

And here is another chaotic situation that is completely caused by my manic, hyper-competitive friend Cyndi Brandenburg.  As we all recall, she was truly the driving force behind the Chicken Wing for Charity competition because of her smack-talking.  And now she's done it again.  Every year Champlain hosts an Iron Chef competition to raise money for a student organization.  Cyndi, as is her wont, decided that she had to get involved, and, putting aside our natural rivalry and history of antagonistic competition, she pressured me into being her partner.  We worked together to come up with a recipe and I supplied the team name - the Mystic Krewe of Saturnalia.  The entire thing is pretty complicated, so expect many posts.  Our team - including more than a dozen folks because of Cyndi's ability to cajole people - hung around the cafeteria from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. last night for preparation.  The competition is this afternoon, but we had lots of chicken and sausage to cook and sauces to prepare last night.  I also had to devote a goodly amount of time to hiding the green peppers so that they didn't find their way into the recipe.  I would love to show a picture of our friends and competitors, the Bayou Voodoo, the excellent Steve Wehmeyer and Mike Lange, but I don't think I have one wherein Lange is not flipping me off.  More later.

The team captain - and faculty senate president - Dr. Cyndi Brandenburg.

The hired help.

Mesa of Lost Women

As is pretty well-documented I am a complete movie nut.  While I don't have the encyclopedic knowledge of  cinema that my good friend Erik Esckilsen has, I am hooked on film.  Not only do I wear out my Netflix account, but I also get tapped by the nefarious Erik to host many of the college's public film screenings - which is just about favorite chore.  What may be less well-known, although not to my long-suffering friends, is that I also love bad cinema.  I think I may have memorized Welden's Psychotronic Guide of Film, both volumes.  One of my favorite memories of my teenage years was watching the Cool Ghoul (Cincinnati's late night horror movie host) every Saturday night.  One night in particular an astonishingly bad movie entitled Mesa of Lost Women came on.  It was so mind-numbingly horrible that I actually woke my father up out of a sound sleep to come in and watch it with me.  Luckily, he avoided the obvious and appropriate response of beating me senseless and instead gracefully got up and watched the movie with me.  We laughed so hard we cried, and it remains one of our fondest memories.  Follow the link and watch it - if you dare.

I'm not certain how many Oscars it won, but not enough to match the joy it has given me over the years.

Fool in Action

And here's a nice picture that my excellent student Brianna took.  She was a student in my Concepts of the Self class in the fall and needed to take some pictures for a photography class and asked if she could visit my Islam class.  It was a day when I asked the students to bring in their laptops so that we could discuss Umayyad and Abbasid art that I had collected in an Artstor folder.  So here's a shot of me on bended knee talking to a group about Islamic art.  Years ago I moved away from lecture almost entirely and instead always stress analysis of documentary evidence and classroom discussion.  Even I get tired of listening to myself talk.

I loath having my picture taken, and here's another example of the correctness of that view.

School of Athens

And here's another great artwork that it was my pleasure to see on the recent trip to Rome.  While I knew that Raphael's masterpiece was in Rome, it still caught me off guard when I walked through the door at the Vatican Museum and saw it.  Not only does The School of Athens take up an entire wall, but it is also still in pristine condition.  I had discussed this work of art in my classes for years, so, much like seeing the Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi in Florence, it was amazing and humbling to see if up close.  Plus, I agree with Raphael - we are all graduates of the School of Athens.  Being in a city with the incredible history of Rome brings home the intellectual legacy of the Greeks and Romans.

And while I look like poor Diogenes sprawled out on the steps, I'm probably much more like Socrates in the upper left starting an argument.

St. Valentine's Day in the UAE

One of the misconceptions that Americans have about the rest of the world, and especially the Middle East, is that they have to leave the familiar behind.  That is hardly the case, especially in the UAE.  I guess it may seem strange to celebrate a martyred Christian saint in an Islamic country, but we are all peoples of the book - and the Emiratis are even more commercial than we are.  I was determined to make sure that Laura received a dozen roses for Valentine's Day.  Yes, it is a ridiculous corporate holiday, but I am both very old school and also absurdly romantic in my own odd fashion, so not getting flowers was inconceivable.  Now, how to pull it off?  I drafted our good friend Mel, who teaches with Laura at Zayed, into the covert operation.  Mel, being a good soul and a person with tremendous clandestine potential, had two chores: tell me Laura's office number (even though I'd been in the office a thousand times I couldn't have told you the number) and swing by Al Bustan Flowers to gather information.  It may seem odd that you would have a flower shop on campus, but Zayed has one on the female wing of the Abu Dhabi campus.  So, I emailed Jinan at Bustan Flowers and she managed to get a dozen lovely roses delivered on time.  The only thing we haven't figured out is how to pay for them.  The online tool for paying with a credit card isn't working, so I truly got the flowers on credit.  I told them I'd swing by in a couple weeks when I visit Abu Dhabi for my spring break, which they were perfectly cool with (try that at home).

The good folks at Al Bustan Flowers.  The female students stay on campus all day, so flower shops and nail salons are a natural fit.

Nicely done.

Laocoon

As is well-documented, whenever I head overseas to any part of the world I am magnetically drawn to any and all museums, which makes traveling with me more than a bit of a pain.  I'm also famous for these almost mystic responses that I have to great works of art, either because I've discussed them in class for years - or because I've never heard of them before and still felt profoundly moved (and appalled at my own ignorance of all things).  On the recent trip to Rome my experience trended, not surprisingly, towards the former.  One of my favorite statues has always been the Laocoon, and it was amazing and also a bit humbling to just stumble across it at the Vatican.  As you know, Laocoon was a Trojan priest who was punished by the gods for pointing out that it might not be a particularly good idea to bring in a large wooden horse left by the Greeks (which gave rise to that very famous saying).  Here he and his sons are being devoured by some sea snakes sent by the gods.  For many reasons it's undeniably a classic, although I suppose mainly because the passion and angst is so representative of the Hellenistic age, as compared to the more balanced and serene sculture of the Hellenic age.  I think I've always been drawn to it because I've always sympathized with Laocoon's battles with the gods and the seeming folly of pointing out the obvious.  Recently I've been involved in a series of battles here in the Champlain College Faculty Senate and I've felt much like poor Laocoon.  Hopefully the gods will treat me more gently, although harsh or gentle treatment never seems to diminish my desire to fight the good fight.

Maybe this should be my self-portrait in Concepts of the Self.