So, for us middle-class moderns, having that sort of good day is difficult in the best of circumstances. Still, it can happen. Exactly a week ago, I had a good day. I even did some work in the morning. Then I attended a free lunch concert at noon, and met Jack Abramoff that evening. Yes, really.

The Fusebox Festival lunch/concert involved Graham Reynolds playing Led Zeppelin on a drum kit of kitchen sounds, and “Teenage Wasteland” on piano, with what I understand is called a “ping-pong delay.” It was everything conservatives fear about long-haired hippies using your tax dollars to make free art and free lunch, except that I’m pretty sure Whole Foods sponsored the lunch.

Chef Sonya Cote, Fusebox Digestible Feats coordinator Hank Cathey, and long-haired hippie musician Graham Reynolds. Photo by sound guru Buzz Moran.

And then, from art to, I suppose, commerce: cocktails with Jack Abramoff. I am not making this up.  I’d consulted on some of the event planning involved to bring him in to talk about ethics (yes, yes, insert joke here), and, following Richard Feynman’s advice for having adventures, I’d put a line out (“I’d love to meet him!”) and waited. Ater a few weeks, behold: an invitation to the welcome wagon/cocktail party.

Abramoff is tremendously charming and charismatic, as you might expect. Mostly, people asked him about his experience in prison and lobby reform and all that. I, being me, asked him about being on Colbert. And when we were being herded out by his handler, instead of saying the correct “nice to meet you,” I was the twit saying, “Did I hear you use the word rhadamanthine?”

I just couldn’t help it. I thought I’d heard him use it, when he was talking about a prison guard. And in Greek mythology, Rhadamanthus is one of the big-daddy judges in the afterlife. It was a Classics thing in addition to being a word-nerd thing.

“Yes!” said Abramoff. “‘Severely strict in administering justice’.”

“When I was in prison…” he started, but the handler told him it was time to go.

“Two minutes.” he said. He then told me that when he was in prison, he’d read a lot of books, and when there was a word he didn’t know, he’d put it on a vocabulary card so he could learn it. And that he’d learned something like 3200 words that way. He said prison gave him more time to read than he’d ever had before.

“Well,” I said unthinkingly, “John-Paul Sartre said that his year in a German POW camp gave him more freedom than anything else.”

He laughed, and we parted ways. I happen to know a friend of mine asked Mr. Abramoff what he thought of the good life the next day. We’re good humanists, me and my friend. Civic duty done? Check.

Come to think of it, it was a good week by ancient Greek standards. Last Wednesday I was taking pictures at our robot-themed Dionysium, co-sponsored with Fusebox. I learned about artificial intelligence. I met robots, including an R2-D2.

Everyone's favorite photo from the evening. This girl was frolicking with R2 all night.

By Friday evening I was watching Taming of the Shrew performed on a farm, and on Saturday afternoon I was watching a trippy post-human play starring William Shatner’s voice and image.

In fact, all this culture has left me exhausted. It’s time to lean a little more on the philosophy, or at least Python-learning, side of things for a while.

It’s been almost exactly two years since I officially left academia. I’m not going to say everything’s easy now; I’m still working out how to balance making enough money with not going crazy. But that was true even when I was in academia.

And I will say this: I never had the time and energy to do this stuff when I was a professor. I never had the wide variety of social networks I have now, which means I can talk about Plato or Sartre or whatever with people who don’t have ego invested in their article on it.

Of course it helps to have chosen where I live. Granted, this city houses an enormous, affluent, and influential university, and that certainly affects the cultural landscape. But it’s not the ONLY game in town, nor, as a private citizen, do I have to worry about accidentally insulting the Provost, or Provost’s niece, or the Provost’s favorite donor, if I venture outside my own department.

Most importantly, if there’s a robot-pocalypse anytime soon – which there might be, according to the AI expert we brought in – I’ll die where I wanted to be, with people I actually like. And as American Express reminds us, that’s priceless.

Mr. Offerman chose to enter shirtless.

In the course of an hour, Offerman gives the audience Ten Tips for Prosperity; in the last several months, he’s been taking those tips to campuses across the country; and after last night I’m fully prepared to make “American Ham” the basis of our educational system and to put Mr. Offerman in charge of the whole shebang.  Somehow, I feel the youths will listen to him.

Now, just to be clear, Nick Offerman is not the same as Ron Swanson, the character he plays on Parks and Recreation – though you can’t deny some similarities.

It was a reverse striptease situation.

Offerman is a sturdy, brusque Midwesterner who easily tosses around words like “countenance” and “eschew”. Beneath all that bristly facial hair, he has a surprisingly girlish giggle and high tenor voice. He’s married to Megan Mullally, who opened the show, and both are “awesome sauce” in love after twelve years of marraige. He’s passionate about real people making real things, whether that be woodstuffs or yarn dresses or Art.

I’m not sure which moment convinced me that Mr. Offerman should be in charge of higher education. Maybe it was when he said he had to pick one deity, he’d go with Dionysus (whoo!), or when he casually referenced Stanislavki’s method, or when he and Megan Mullally sang a country-western love duet about a scientist wooing a creationist.

Megan Mullally!

But I think it was most likely the moment he revealed his second Tip for Prosperity: Say Please and Thank You. “It’s like the WD40 of social interaction,” noted the Illinois-bred Offerman. Amen, brother, and if you can get the kids to listen to that, you’ll be doing better than a lot of parents.

Even if you’re not a college kid, the show is entertaining and chock full of great advice – but, as Offerman tries to tell people, it’s not standup.  “American Ham” is storytelling punctuated with songs, generically similar to Prairie Home Companion. Except with more advice on oral sex and intoxicants. And more lovingly vulgar banter about marriage. Which, come to think of it, is another reason I think Mr. Offerman should be educating America’s students.

I think more professors should cultivate this image.

And just when we thought things couldn’t get any better, Mullally and Offerman sang “5,000 Candles in the Wind” to wrap up.  (That’s a song Andy composed for Lil’ Sebastian’s funeral on Parks and Recreation, for non-fans).

Speaking of P&R, I have to go watch last night’s episode.

For once, no complaints about my day here.

Dwarfed by the enormity of my subject.

I also saw Anthony Jeselnik’s Austin show last Friday. And for better or for worse, the Dionysium debate (on whether humor was by its nature cruel and dehumanizing) had gotten the theoretical wheels turning just in time.

In case you don’t know, Jeselnik’s stage persona (we hope) is that of a sociopath. He jokes about rape, child molestation, and homicide. Yet perfectly decent people, whole roomfuls of them, laugh at his act. His timing is masterful, to be sure, but that’s really not enough to explain why you leave feeling so much better about life.

The cold, dead eyes are scarier in person. Photo from {link: http://www.anthonyjeselnik/com}AnthonyJeselnik.com{/link}, happy to include better attribution if anyone has it....

Mary Douglas thought that joking rituals reversed the logic of entire societies; I can’t think of a better way to describe why Anthony Jeselnik is this funny. It’s a communal (and playful) suspension of common decency, and it feels good to vicariously blow off some steam. Aristotle wouldn’t like me calling it a catharsis – he reserved that for tragedy – but fuck him, he just didn’t like comedy.

Speaking of catharsis, while watching Jeselnik I had a brief, odd thought: I wish my friend, X, could see this. I bet it would make her feel better. Odd, because my friend’s social circle has endured Weeks of Tragedy – serious, unfunny tragedy, including child deaths. Still, I was convinced this showroom of non-compassion would make her feel better. I asked her what she thought of that idea (she does humor theory too) and she agreed: “Maybe by saying the worst possible things you can imagine, you excorcise them.”

A few days ago, a marketing person was trying to explain to me that sales were scientific; that you had to find people’s “pain” because that’s what they pay to get rid of. I stifled a laugh at that one. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche would tell you that life is pain. So to, I suspect, would comics like Louis CK and Anthony Jeselnick. Which is why they – all four they, I mean – are so damned funny.

I guess that’s why humor is an evergreen product.

This was said in a less-than-admiring tone, by someone interviewing me for a job.

The question of networking had come up, and as usual I was struggling not to express how much I despise “fun” events which are really just a way of extending work hours.

I’m upfront about stating that I’m very protective of my non-work time, and that I’m very selective about which groups I join and which events I attend, and that in my experience it’s better to know the right people than the most people. Which is what led to the above comment. Because obviously some people think it’s anti-democratic to admit that not everyone has got something awesome to offer the world. But as a person with limited energy I reserve the right not to interact with just anyone.

Anyway, this is just another short post to say that I’m still not dead, I’m just curating people. It’s exhausting, but exciting. Plato’s army of lovers has nothing on my merry band of artists and mad scientists.

You’ll see.

One reason I’ve been blogging less is because I’ve been curating the Dionysium’s April humor show. I’m also co-hosting the show, meaning that I’m in charge of giving the invocation to Dionysus. I was looking for some inspiration on that front, and all I wanted to know was if/where Shakespeare talked about Dionysus. Googled “Shakespeare Dionysus”. That didn’t work. The top hit was an essay mill (which is kind of amusingly laughable if you want to read it) and some second-rate pseudo-Nietzschean analysis.

Fine, I know Shakespeare didn’t have all that much Greek, let’s try “Shakespeare Bacchus”. Best result is a 1923 German treatise. I’d prefer not to read this in German. Got a less-dodgy blog. Did not get what I was looking for, i.e. a simple survey of anything juicy the Bard might have said about this particular Greco-Roman god, however you want to call him. Surely he said SOMETHING.

So, let’s do this the old-fashioned way. Are you a Shakespeare scholar? An actor who knows Shakespeare? Someone who knows someone who knows about Shakespeare?  Give me quotes. Or tell me why there are none. I demand answers!

Or just give me some other Bacchic inspiration – your favorite line/quote/whatever. Doesn’t have to be Shakespeare. Can be whoever the hell you like. Any author, any genre, any language. (Though, for the record, I’ve got the Homeric Hymns and Bacchae pretty well covered.)

Nets, don’t fail me now.

–Liz Lemon

Ooops, it’s been a month. Funny how that happens.

Lots of conversations lately about how to balance love and money, art and commerce, following your passion vs. being a grownup who can’t afford to fuck up your credit rating anymore. Some at SXSW, some elsewhere.

Anyway, I’m not dead, and I’m still thinking, and I’m mostly thinking about what the next steps are for the blog/book/brand. And there are a lot of things to think about on that front.

In the meantime, here’s a list of “stuff that works.” Or at least stuff that has worked for me.

1) Louis CK, “Live At The Beacon Theater”

My love for Louis CK is so obvious that I need not speak its name.  I was saving the newest special for a rainy day, but one shitty, non-rainy Monday I gave in and bought the thing. I love the TV show – a weekly slice of Waiting for Godot – but I love the standup more and by God, this one’s good.

That’s all.

2) Fallen Princesses 

I discovered Dina Goldstein’s Fallen Princesses while I was at work and still couldn’t stop myself from Facebooking and Tweeting up a storm. It’s funny, it’s snarky and it makes a good point without saying a word.

3) Slut Quizzes

Mother Jones outdid themselves with this one: an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure style quiz that forces users to run up against the double standard at every turn. Kudos to writer Tim Murphy and especially developer Ben Breedlove, who shared his code with me – because Al Sweigart is right, nobody wants to learn to program. They want to BUILD COOL STUFF. Like this.

4) My Friends and Their Work

I have a friend who has a band –  an insanely talented band. You don’t have to believe me because I don’t “do” music, but I recently took a friend to see this band and she turned to me and said, “So…good…why…haven’t…I…heard…of…them?”  Yeah, that’s what everybody says. (And, to be clear, it’s not that they’re totally unknown, it’s that they’re not popularly known.)

Why was she surprised? Why are we all surprised? Because deep in our hearts, we still want to believe in meritocracy. We like to think that people who are insanely, undeniably talented will be known to us because they’ll be rich or at least famous. Not true, of course, and hard work only “might” get you there. Every time someone says that thing about my friend’s band, it’s a necessary reminder that unfairness is the natural state of humanity and that trying to fight it means a lot of different things.

5) Rhonda Lowry’s SXSW Talk on “Why My Biggest Business Advocates Have Been Men”

Admittedly, I help put this event together so maybe I’m biased. The talk was great on all fronts, but what intrigued me most was Lowry’s approach to diversity, which is grounded in computational models of social systems. So, she said, the greater success of diverse groups “isn’t touchy-feely. It’s math.”

Huh. I’d never really thought of it that way before – but by chance I had already been talking with some friends about how damaging homogeneity is to any endeavor. As Lowry put it, you can’t keep hiring people who are exactly like you just because they bolster your self-esteem.

Damn straight. And damned pertinent to so many things.

Because women making media is important. Take the Superbowl ads, for example. It’s great that Twitter allowed us to point out the stupid stereotypes en masse, but the next step is to  get women making some ads of their own. Advertising is still 97% male and apparently disinterested in listening to the people it pays to give advice on how not to be terrible. Q.E.D.: We need women doing the writing, producing, directing, and decision-making.

Ditto for every other male-dominated media industry; as Sarah Silverman has noted, women have to stop complaining about the stories and start writing some of their own. And ditto for Tina Fey. One of my favorite parts of her book is the list of real-life lessons learned from improv, particularly the part about MAKING STATEMENTS instead of only asking questions:

In other words: Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles. We’ve all worked with that person. That person is a drag. It’s usually the same person around the office who says things like “There’s no calories in it if you eat standing up!” and “I felt menaced when Terry raised her voice.”

Or the person who wants to argue about the definition of “narrativity” instead of writing effective stories. No matter. The point is, media-making is way more fun – and empowering – than media-talking-about ever was, and I’d recommend it to anyone — and if you agree that women should listen to Tina Fey instead of Cosmopolitan, please do pass it on.

It was a hoot listening to an hour’s worth of stories about Ann Richards. Slater and Stekler had worked with Richards. Taylor had only met her once, but had meticulously researched Richards’s life for her play, to universal acclaim.

And really, it was a discussion of doing history. Taylor talked about the need to take diverse sources and synthesize them into a character; Stekler talked about the similarity of this process to editing footage; and Slater told some great stories about accompanying Richards on the campaign trail. All of them talked about falling in love with Ann Richards.

Audience questions made this an interactive event, and that’s when things got really interesting. The first woman in line announced that as someone who wanted to get into politics, she was frustrated by the fact that they kept talking about Richards’s accomplishments as a woman, because she (the asker) wanted to know about Ann Richards’s accomplishments as a politician. I thought it was a fair question; there had been a bit much of the “what women bring to politics that men don’t” talk, involving the dread “empathy” point.

The panel’s reaction was not happy. Stekler started to man-splain to the asker, essentially implying that she just didn’t get how important and revolutionary Ann Richards was. Taylor joined in, so maybe it wasn’t man-splaining.

The asker politely pressed again, saying “I already know how to be a woman. I want to know what made Ann Richards a great Democrat. I want to know what we can learn from her that way.” Then and only then did they throw the question to Slater, who gave a really good answer about Ann Richards’s policies. He talked about governing for the sake of the weakest; voicing strong opinions (“remember when Democrats did that?” ); and being willing to disagree with other, more conservative Democrats. Good answer.

Then Slater, Stekler, and Taylor all agreed that it was Ann Richards’s character that made her a great politician, because people voted on character, not issues. Another fair point, and they seemed to be implying that this was the reason they were talking so much about her as a woman. I don’t think that was quite true, but it allowed them a dignified exit, and by the end they admitted that Ann Richards would have supported anyone’s right to challenge them on the issue.

After the show, the audience around me seemed as displeased with the question as the panel had been. So I found the asker and tapped her on the shoulder, and told her I was glad she asked twice because having to do so was pretty much standard for women, still.

I then spent the better part of the evening trying to bridge the generation gap, explaining to several people that the asker’s attitude was very typical of Gen-Y feminism,  and that we shouldn’t assume this approach is based on ignorance of the past. Also, telling people they just don’t get it rarely works, unless you’re using a finely tuned form of sarcastic pedagogy, face-to-face. But of course as a historian I understand the concern that people just don’t understand what things used to be like.

It strikes me that oral history is the same as any other history. You always go to the primary sources to ask questions; when the sources happen to be human and still alive, they’re fiestier than dead pages, canvas, or parchment. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask the questions. Even if you have to do it twice.

No, I’m not darkening my website. To be honest, I’m not sure what that’s supposed to achieve other than making it harder for millions of Americans to dick around during work – oh, but wait, Twitter and Facebook are still up. So maybe it will force students to type out their plagiarized assignments, like kids did in the old days.

I can already imagine a world without “free” knowledge; I’m old enough to have lived it. Before the internet, you just walked to the goddamned library, which had thoughtfully purchased those expensive tomes. Actually, it was free, except for the cost in energy and motivation.

Free? Then why are you begging me for money? Oh, I see, you've just discovered nothing is free, after driving down the price of information? Fuck you very much.

Now, it’s obvious that old-school lawmakers have been complete, head-in-the-sand morons about the realities of the internet. Look at my footer. It was inspired by several moments in my internet career – such as when, back in 2005, I called the copyright office to ask about internet publication, and they gave me what was obviously a canned answer equating to “We don’t know if writing appearing on the internet counts as publication yet.”Okey-dokey, I thought, it really is the Wild West out here.

But then started I teaching media literacy in my classes, and found out that certain entities did count the internet as publication, namely large media corporations (they weren’t people yet). Because of them I couldn’t use the audio-visual materials I needed in class, at least in any convenient online fashion.

What they were preventing, in fact, was audio-visual citation.  Once, just as an experiment, I tried copying the video snippet and putting it YourTube with full and correct citation and attribution, as well as commentary and a fair use clause. Just like I’d require in, say, a paper. Just like I’d be required to do if I worked for anyone other than the Huff Post. But no, I got slapped by Google/YouTube/Fox and of course the citation just made it easier for them find. Yes, Fox was being a dick – but so was Google.

Where have I heard that before? Oh, right, large corporations..er, people.

So I don’t want to hear grandiose statements about information being “free.” It’s never free, as Wikipedia’s begging campaign and Google’s data mining demonstrate. As much as we all like to think we’re fighting for a cause, this isn’t Cowboys and Indians. It’s a messy issue, and all of us are still struggling to adapt to the new era of information and what it all means.  Sure, it’s annoying that  lawmakers how the internet works, but it’s also annoying that Google and Wikipedia are trying to paint themselves as the “good guys.” They’re doing nothing more than looking out for their corporate interests, just as much as the media companies are looking out for theirs. Everybody has an agenda.

Here’s mine:  I want the right to cite audio-visual material, online, for commentary and analysis. That’s a basic principle of fair use (one that even dinosaur legislators should understand) and muzzling it is a really good way to prevent people from acquiring critical media viewing skills. Think about it. If you’re a media commentator, you’re still left explaining visual scenes – which are effective because they’re fucking visual - like some Film Studies grad student.

It really makes me think George Carlin was right – they want you to be stupid. All of them.

Anyway, although it’s totally obvious that nobody’s without an agenda in this fight, I support Google and Wikipedia’s right to lobby, just as the other large media corporations do. And punishing unauthorized online reproduction is both unenforcable and, when practiced as selectively as it is now, philosopihically objectionable. And it’s true that deciding to pursue this legislation would both break the internet and the bank, so I don’t support it – not because anybody’s got an unassailable  moral ground in this fight, but because I’m a pragmatist who thinks nostalgia is not a good basis for legislation.

I may have to adapt to the Brave New World. Hell, I may even be good at it. But that doesn’t mean I have to throw a party for it.