Taught my second GRE class today. My teaching instincts are starting to come back, and I felt very good up there today. I like my students, and as far as I can tell they like me and are satisfied with the course so far. I still have timing issues--we ran long for a second straight session--but I'm hoping that works itself out, and if it doesn't, well then at least it's better than having content issues.

DEK and I went to see Confessions of a Dangerous Mind after class. OK, it's far-fetched and probably a bit over-directed (if you can find a scene with normal lighting, you're doing better than I am), but I loved it. Amazingly fun movie experience. Best last line of a movie I've seen maybe ever, or at least since the last time I watched Casablanca. The only downside is that the song "Palisades Park" is totally ruined for me now. For life.

From the Grad School Ruins Your Life File #37:
Dad and I watched Barbershop last night, and I thought it was very funny, especially the scenes revolving around the stolen ATM machine, which were excellent slapstick and physical humor. So, then, why did I spend the latter part of the movie and a good while afterwards thinking about Jurgen Habermas? The short answer, of course, is the subtitle above this paragraph. The longer version is that Jurgen Habermas is the pre-eminent thinker behind the idea of the public sphere as a literal place where ideas spring up for a modern, Enlightenment community because of the possibility of unfettered free thought. Habermas in particular studied 18th-century European coffee houses as a place where the intelligentsia would meet to discuss and advance political ideas.

So what does this have to do with a contemporary slapstick African-American comedy? As it turns out, Cedric the Entertainer's main serious speech toward the end of the film on the value of the barbershop in the African-American community very closely mirrors Habermas' ideas about coffee houses. Cedric says that barbershops have been the place in African-American ghetto communities where men could congregate and really say what they felt about anything and anyone, away from the measured tones required toward mainstream culture, and where constructive and public-yet-private self-criticism in particular is possible. Admittedly there is something a bit sexist about this (though Toni Morrison's Jazz in particular shows a similar dynamic in beauty parlors), but I can't help but feel that there's something to it. I'm not sure how many institutions like this we have in our culture, and Cedric's speech really makes it clear what is at stake when they are threatened with extinction.

Jesus do I need to start dating or something....