Yesterday took a neat turn. I went to class feeling kind of depressed and didn't say much of anything during the lecture. At the end of class Paul invited everyone out for dinner with the film crew, but I was intent on getting home and waiting out the rest of the day. I went to Robarts to see if Subway was still open, but it had just closed, so I went to catch the subway home.

I'd say I'm an adventurous guy, but sometimes I have these moments of hesitation that I end up giving myself a hard time over later. Heading to the station I thought about how good it would be to go out for a beer and relax and talk with someone. While I was waiting for the train, Dru and Andrea (from the film class I took last semester) came up behind me and reiterated Paul's invitation, so I went along. Another Ethiopian restaurant on Bloor near Ossington called Queen of Sheeba. It was mostly the same group that went out for Dru's birthday - graduate film students Sarah, Paul, Sal, and Alicia, plus Tony. After eating six of us walked to a bar at Dundas and Ossington and got wrecked. It was fun sitting around, talking shit and letting loose. Tony gave me a lift home at the end of the night and I told him and Sarah that they'd made my day.

Simple enough, but I was glad to get a second chance at turning my attitude around. The funny thing is that more than one person last night mentioned that they didn't like Wednesdays. I'm completely in that camp. Something about Wednesday gets to me. But yesterday proved an exception to the rule.

I went out last night with some folks from the Cinema Studies program for Dru's birthday. I knew a few of them superficially from classes we'd taken. The night was okay though I was in a pretty shy mood. At the very end of the night I had this weird altercation with someone in my Race and Cinema class. I was leaving the bar and she pulled me aside and apologized for being assholes. I didn't know what she meant, but she was referring back to a presentation I gave at the beginning of the semester. She and this other guy pressed me with follow-up questions about Althusser that I didn't really know how to answer, and she had heard that I was angry about it.

First of all, I wasn't the one who brought it up - someone else made the observation that they seemed to be giving me a hard time of it. I also find it kind of weird that she found out. The class is comprised of a group of English students and a group of Film students, each of them close-knit, so I suppose one of the Film students heard the comments and passed them along. I don't even really remember what was said. So I pretended I had no idea what she was talking about, and that I didn't think they were assholes. Which I don't, really. It takes a lot for a person to become an asshole in my books. I might have been annoyed at the time, given that it was my first presentation of the semester and I wanted it to go well, but questions are part of any course.

I suppose I'm explaining it here because I only know these people in the context of a classroom. I haven't made what I would consider to be any good friends during my run at U of T and I find it a bit upsetting that people would think I could harbour grudges against them.

It was a pretty okay night. Dru seemed happy. Tony came out too, who is always fun to talk to, and I'm now about 95% certain he's gay. Taking the Olivia Newton John pieces in "Summer Nights" at a karaoke bar is a pretty solid confirmation.

Jay hung a picture of a kitten sitting beside a saxophone in the bathroom. Hmm.

Today was a pretty good one, lack of sleep aside. I powered through a Starbucks coffee as I waited for the final Touch of Evil class to start - I'm pretty much always the first to arrive because of my travel schedule. I got the laptop set up, and it didn't stutter at all during my presentation on my final project. It couldn't have gone better. I apologized for not filling the full 13 minutes I was allotted, but I was assured that it was okay. I think Professor Columpar really digs the idea because it conforms so closely to what she intended for the course as a whole. I got some feedback about putting the site live, which I'd like to do despite the trouble I'd probably get into with Universal (they wouldn't take kindly to me chopping up the movie like that for a non-paying audience to see).

After class I had lunch with Tony and Eileen. I'll miss that about the semester. They're my outlets for getting out concerns about my potential academic career, plus we're all pretty well-versed in movies.

I set up shop in the EJ Pratt library for awhile to send out some emails and grab some material for an essay. I emailed Professor Hutcheon about meeting with her, which I'm going to do after class next week. After that I attended the final African-Canadian Literature class. We watched a film called Another Planet, apparently the first movie to be directed and written by an African-Canadian woman. I received feedback on my Oni presentation, along with a split grade of A-/A. I'm supposed to meet with Professor Clarke tomorrow, but I'm waiting on a final confirmation.

I ran into a couple of other folks from film class in the Bay Street subway station, Drew and Alicia, and ended up talking with Alicia for a bit since we were both heading the same way. After I got back I made dinner and watched Minority Report.

The marks are starting to come in, and the verdict so far is positive. Knock on wood.

Updated To-Do List:

Monday, December 10th: Final research paper (max. 15 pages) - Opera
Monday, December 10th: Editorial exercise - Bibliography
Friday, December 14th: Final project - Touch of Evil
Friday, December 21st: Critical reflection paper - Bibliography
Monday, January 7th: Final research paper (max. 14 pages) - African-Canadian Lit

Nothing like a little Facebook profile trolling to pass the time. I'm trying to grab the rest of Ken Andrews' solo album off the net, as well as some Of Montreal. My computer is still running a little slow and stuttering despite defragging it a couple of times and running virus scanners to knock out malware. Hopefully it will stay the course well enough to get me through my presentation in Touch of Evil next week.

I had that class today. The title of my presentation is going to be "Memo-rizing Touch of Evil: The Execution and Effect of Orson Welles' Intentions." I signed a book of Walter Murch (who was responsible for the re-edit) and Michael Ondaatje (who just pulled off yet another GG win for the amazing Divisadero) interviews out from the Innis library, which bring the total number of libraries to which I owe books to three. Innis isn't really much of a library, though. It's two floor of stacks along a single wall. Really, it barely warrants the staircase leading to its "computer lab" of two terminals. Innis is a strange building.

After class I went for sushi with Eileen and Tony and talked a bit about grad school. I'm starting to think that I should talk with some of my professors about continuing my studies. I think my slipping confidence in academia is influenced by the fact that I'm not really studying anything that echoes the grad proposal I was submitting to universities and organizations a year ago. I thought I'd be knee-deep in positioning Coupland in a natinal canon by now; instead, the closest I'm coming to a Canadian text all year is the story of a young man's role in a Communist war in Ethiopia. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying African-Canadian Literature, but it's only a small fraction of where my research interests lie. The ironic thing is I've got two people who are incredibly renowned for their work in the field of Canadian studies, and one of them is teaching me about European Opera and speaking a language of music that I can't comprehend.

The other, of course, is George Elliott Clarke, who presented on his own work today and read some of the poetry in Execution Poems, which was great to see. Clarke is a great poet, there's no doubt about it. I'm not sure if he's a great professor. I don't feel as though the ideas I brought to the table, when I felt brave enough to bring them, were given the kind of feedback I receive in other classes. Clarke is a great man, a nice guy, and a passionate speaker. I learned a lot from the texts, but I felt that there was so much more to get at in the course. I still don't feel as if I can tie Africadian studies into a more general, overarching Canadian context as effectively as I may have wanted to. I wanted to learn as much about Canada as I did about African-Canadians, and I felt that the course didn't achieve that. But the blame for that rests equally on my shoulders. I've always found that courses are in large part what you make them, and I hung on for the ride too often.

I have the class evaluations sitting on my bed because the drop-off office was closed when I went by. I'll drop them off before I meet with the Opera folks for the table-read tomorrow. After I got home I watched episode four of The War, which detailed the events of D-Day, the Allied invasion of France and coverage of the brutal battles with the Japanese on the Mariana Islands which contained some of the most violent footage in the series so far. Hearing the veterans talk about the war is a really emotional experience that fully enriches the documentary. Keith David also does a great job narrating.

Today was much better. It started out with Touch of Evil and proceeded into another lunch at the Red Room with Tony and Eileen. About three quarters of the restaurant was furnished with couches and upholstery. Tony and Eileen both seem like nice people and they're entertaining to listen to. Eileen really reminds me of Esther.

After that I studied up for African-Canadian literature. Nick Walsh (which I just noticed is eerily close to Nitz Walsh) was one of the presenters on Djanet Sears' Harlem Duet. Nick has got to have his eyes on being a professor, as he's one of those people that really goes all out for presentations and discussion. Turns out the guy's brother is the guitarist for Jen Militia.

Sometimes I find it difficult to talk in that class because Professor Clarke speaks from the heart and I feel like my relatively useless observations about Bakhtin's notion of polyphonic textual nature as it relates to Sears' play aren't going to register in quite the same way. I'm also white. Now, granted, 95% of the class is white. But I don't want to feel as though I'm talking in politically correct platitudes just to contribute to a discussion. It wouldn't be fair to the material. Professor Clarke talks at great length about the texts we study, and that's to be expected, but it's hard to deliver a complimentary idea that's more classically theoretical in approach when we're dealing with such emotional subject matter. That said, I'm learning a lot in the class, and the books have all been great reads.

I chatted a bit with Brooke afterwards, about where we're from and such. She mentioned a couple of places she's been to in Ottawa (including this one Russian bar...). It gave me a chance to gush about the city. She's from London, and I told her I'd heard stories...

I made the walk from Keele station again. After I got home I lounged for a bit befoe popping in Death in Venice, which I watched for an hour or so before putting on Orson Welles' broadcast of The War of the Worlds. I laid on the couch and listened to it for the first time, 69 years to the day it was first broadcast, and let its imagery play around inside my head. For those of you who don't know much about the story of the broadcast, it's a really interesting one: read more about it here.

Tomorrow I'm meeting with my Opera group before heading over to Matt's to do up Halloween. Have a happy one.

Dietrich is out of my life for now. The presentation went fine but the morning seemed mired in technical difficulties and, and always, too much to say in too short a time period. After class I had lunch at Tik Tok Café with a couple of new folks, Eileen and Tony. Eileen lent me a Charlton Heston movie called The Naked Jungle that I thought looked hilarious based on her presentation on the Man (yeah, that's right, I capitalized "Man"). African-Canadian Lit was status quo and I conversed briefly with Brooke about the presentations we're doing on Oni next month. Should work out nicely.

The weather was miserable today and my socks were quite soaked through for hours. I long for the days of duck boots. Though it was raining I did take a few minutes before my latter class to explore the Trinity College chapel and courtyard. I'm still bowled over by the beauty of certain spots on campus.

I came home to a few DVDs I'd ordered - 24 Hour Party People, Halloween II and Talk Radio, which is an underrated Oliver Stone film I've always liked starring Eric Bogosian in a completely riveting performance as a radio talk show host. I watched that and some X-Files over dinner and capped the flick for film_stills.

Tomorrow I have a list of little things I have to take care of, including finally applying for that job. I've decided to go ahead and give it a shot. If they like me for a position, and I end up not enjoying it, I can always leave. Unless there's a clause I overlook that necessitates the breaking of my legs upon breach of contract. I'll just remind myself to read the fine print.