Middle Eastern politics are not my strength. I barely have an understanding of the Christianity that’s killing us; I know even less about the Jewish or Muslim fault lines crisscrossing the region. But Israel is a pink elephant in American politics, so the litmus test is about as relevant...

This wraps up the first week of writing for Politics and Film. I’m pretty sure he had a rough word limit on the essays, which was handy after the pages and pages of questions for the individual films. Each module was due on a Sunday night, so of course...

I have …almost NO memory whatsoever of watching this one. There’s a rooftop scene I mention of which I have a vague impression, but that’s it. Otherwise this one made no dent at all. Meet John Doe How are questions of class, wealth and poverty dealt with in the...

I’d started midyear and knew after that first spring that CSUCI kinda sucked, so I enrolled for a few summer courses to move things along. This was killing my summer so I leaned heavily into what I already knew. There was a Nonprofit Management class that was almost word-for-word...

From the Race/Ethnicity final. Just the last half, the first wasn’t very good reading. This was the professor who assigned a ton a of writing. Between her three classes I got 1 A and 2 B’s. I’m really wondering if those B’s couldn’t have been fixed by some legitimate...

There was an in-class assignment one day (still 306 Race/Ethnicity), to use some database of extremist groups for research, and write up two pages on the group of our choosing. On one hand, I lucked out and picked a fun (as they go) group of jerks. On the other...

I have any number of bones to pick with my theater years, which gets professionally tricky. Bad press starts to read like mere sour grapes, and I become the bad guy for having a bad attitude. And it’s a tough sell anyway, because everyone loves the movies. But movie...

Good God, did I proofread this thing at all? So many typos. Think I got a B on this midterm, I’m not entirely surprised why. Usually I’ll do a quick read of each paragraph before moving on to the next one, but some of these exams were done at...

I wasn’t super-inclined otherwise, but between Spartacus and Rome I’ve been on an Italian thing lately. So I gave Netflix’s docu-drama a try- Roman Empire. And… Eh. It’s both more and less than Spartacus and Rome were, though it’s clearly inspired some by both. There’s sex and gore still,...

Ah, the good stuff. Race & ethnicity. And you thought perhaps I sounded condescending before, the guy commenting on rape culture? Ha. There are few things in this world more ridiculous than a white guy talking about racial issues. Tall people, perhaps- they’re pretty bonkers. But this was the...