drunk.com

I’m sitting here after a very long week, with Passion has Red Lips in front of me. It’s not actually a trashy novel, but an unpretentious Cabernet/Shiraz from South Australia. I bought a bottle for a party and while it tastes very young, which it is. However, any shortcomings are overcome by the label, which on the back warns that consumption of alcoholic beverages may have the side effect of “delusional misrepresentation of ones self importance.” I couldn’t agree more. It’s been known to cause people not only to register domain names, but also to post under the influence.

As I was saying, it’s been a long week. We had a project presentation on Tuesday, and it went surprisingly well. Not surprising in general - the teams on which I’ve worked in that class have largely been pretty well put together - but in particular a bunch of things that hadn’t been working all came together in the last hour. Normally it’s the opposite in that things which had worked for weeks suddenly stop working when people are watching, but this time around it worked out in our favour. I was pleased as punch.

Unfortunately, after that things went south. Given my geographic location at the moment, that wasn’t a good thing. I had a meeting with a pair of teachers from another class who weren’t particularly impressed with the work another team I was on had done. That was fair enough, as for that class no one had really put any effort into our assignment. However, on top of that the class has degenerated into an antagonistic environment. I’ve been critical of the instructors, and with good reason, but it’s gone too far.

So after they read my group the riot act, I stayed behind to have a more measured conversation and to try to clear the air. I spoke a bit about what I perceived as the situation, and in describing it alluded to what I saw as my issues with how they conduct class. At the heart of it, I don’t think they’re particularly effective communicators, at least not in the class, which is of course a bit ironic given they’re teaching a class in visual story telling. The younger of the two teachers told me she was getting angry and then tried to tell me that I wasn’t communicating effectively in the document my team had just submitted.

On the one hand, that was true. I had turned in a treatment for a short film project with which they weren’t impressed. I’ve written exactly one treatment prior to this, in this class, about which I received no feedback, so I’m not sure what exactly they were expecting. But still, constructive criticism is worthwhile and I had spent the group discussion session noting their comments and corrections. I’m a student and that’s how it works.

Her reaction to feedback though was just amazing. It was as though she were confronting a petulant child, but in truth I’m at least her age and I sat there calmly trying to have a worthwhile conversation when she nearly exploded. I looked at the other teacher as though to say “what’s up?” but I couldn’t get a good read. Fortunately for everyone involved, we were interrupted by the timely arrival of the department administrator to gather everyone for a birthday party.

My understanding is that this woman is an accomplished film maker, but I fear she’s just another example of someone brilliant at what she does but who can’t teach to save her life. For my tuition dollars I have the privilege of watching this woman flail about while managing not to convey any of her expertise or experience. Pity.

What’s worse is that I think this woman is probably a person I’d like to get to know. The semester ends in a few weeks, and we have a final project for the class. What I’d really like to do would be to just sit down with her and talk through the various issues. I find how she and the other teacher have conducted class to be completely unprofessional, and it breaks down to not communicating effectively, not being able to schedule their way out of a wet paper bag, and not being able to handle constructive criticism. The thing is, I’m sure I’ve managed to completely piss them off, but I don’t know just what it is that I’ve done. So I’d really like to be able to put to them my opinion, but also I’d really like to know what it is that I’m doing that bugs them.

Anyway, I think I’ve spent more than enough processing time on the situation in that class, and now I’d rather just go to sleep. But as there’s still more wine in this here bottle, a few words about music. I have an iPod Nano which I keep filled via a Smart Playlist that copies over everything I’ve added to my library over the last six months. It’s only 4GB, but it used to be just about right to hold the last six months or so of music. At the moment, it’s only about half full, which is a problem. I’ve hardly bought any new music since classes started. I listen to the radio online, but it’s not the same as really listening to a CD from start to finish.

So this week I picked up a handful of CDs, and a few are on their way to me in the post. I’m sure I’ll talk about more of them in the future, but at the moment I’m listening to the sad sounds of Elliott Smith.

Many influential musicians have died suddenly, at the height of their career, leaving a void. For my generation, Kurt Cobain may be the most prominent among them. While I like Nirvana as much as the next guy, there’s very little about their music with which I readily identity. But Elliott Smith, he spoke to me. I had the pleasure of seeing him play a handful of times in London, and I’m so glad I did. Even then, after he had had a song nominated for an Academy award, he seemed ill at ease with big crowds. I came to know his music by association, in that I’m a big fan of another musician from Portland named Pete Krebs, and I wish I had been able to see Elliott in the same small venues I watched Pete and sometimes bought him a pint.

Right now I’m listening to New Moon, a compilation of rarities and unreleased tracks from 1994 to 1997. I can’t judge if it’s a good collection. For me it’s getting a taste of a vintage that I thought had been completely consumed, and I cannot judge. I can merely be grateful for the experience.

That said, it’s a good CD. There’s a Big Star cover, an “early version” of Miss Misery, and 22 other tracks, so who can complain. I’m trying to treat it as though it’s all new material, and in that it works well, which let’s me hope there could be more someday, even though I know there won’t.

Anyway, I’ve written too much and for too long, so until next time…

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 9:30 am and is filed under beer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.