As the uninspired name suggested, English Composition II was the follow-up to English Composition I. Both geared toward freshmen, I often wondered if upperclassmen ever enrolled? Or was the idea that the English department required passing grades in English Composition I and II before any other English courses could be attempted? Maybe...I wasn’t an English major so I don’t know.
English Composition II was very much the class I thought English Composition I should have been. Part II seemed more structured and organized. Part I seemed hastily tossed together. Part II seemed to actually dwell on composing essays. Part I seemed more interested in discussing how you’d piece together an essay, given the chance. Part I also focused more on basic capitalization and punctuation skills that I felt was overkill. For part II, a thick textbook of short stories and poetry was promptly dumped in our laps in our first class (well, not really – we had to pay through the nose for the book first) and we quickly dove into travelers from antique lands, decreeing stately pleasure-domes, and observing lumps of lapis lazuli for tomb effigies of soon-to-deceased clergy.
At the helm of the class was Ms. Eva Fontaine, a demure caricature of the token spinster librarian figure. She’d probably been teaching for decades and hadn’t yet found any displeasure in the honorable act – though she surely wasn’t too excited about the actions of the modern student. Still, for all her wrinkles and stutters, Ms. Fontaine was sharp as a tack and exuded a fierce determination to teach and instill some redeeming qualities in her classes.
And that was the odd thing about our class: there probably weren’t more than 25 of us, meeting in a fairly large auditorium Tuesday and Thursday morning at eight o’clock sharp. Getting up and out the door by seven thirty or so wasn’t difficult by my second semester. I forget what I did for breakfast these days but I could easily amble my way from the dorm to the quad in mere minutes and find where I was going with little interruption. But where I ended up...geesh! This half of the Eckert Complex was the old band building and perhaps where this class met was once a performance hall. Many of the rooms in this part of the building had been practice rooms for band members – now they were over-sized offices that held two or more instructors.
The auditorium was obviously empty every time I arrived since I was constantly early; on my first day, I took an aisle seat three or four rows from the front (on stage left of Ms. Fontaine). Since the class was so small she asked that I take a seat in one of the first four or five rows in the middle section, instead. I remember grumbling, thinking how everyone always says your interest in a class is shown by your distance from the instructor (those down front find the topic engrossing, those in the back care not but for passing). Here I was showing an interest and being asked to move. So I took a seat as far back would allow: aisle seat, five rows back. By myself.
Since I arrived early I was usually by myself in the room for a few minutes before anyone else materialized and so I took to examining my surroundings. It was a well-lit room, for one, as the room jutted out on the west side of the building and had floor-to-ceiling windows on two walls. The third wall was partially masked by a shortened wall that served as a backdrop for the instructor or speaker. This dividing wall was about two-third the length of the western wall of the room; one could easily walk around either end and stumble into various equipment such as a television/VCR combo, an overhead projector, and stacks of extra chairs. There was nowhere else to store this in the room so it was stashed here, out of sight. Sort of. Opposite the equipment was the western wall of the room and two sets of doors that led outside and into the long-disused remnants of Avenue E. Why expensive equipment was stored mere inches from a door that could easily lead to a getaway truck, I never knew. I assumed if it wasn’t anyone else’s concern then it shouldn’t be mine, either.
By the time someone else showed up for class I had been watching the world through the windows or doors for a few minutes. It gave me time to think and prepare for the day. It also went on to give me an idea for one of the funniest things I did in college.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Composition II
(Guberman)
Morgan Guberman
From the album Hamadryas Baboon
1998
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
the one about having an eckert complex
Little ever seemed known about George M. Eckert (M for Mandrill, I later discovered), whose brief biography said he was originally from somewhere out east and had attended some college whose name began with a V. Vanderbilt? Villanova? Vatterott? I don’t remember. An English professor by trade, he came to Grandville in the mid-1920s and reportedly left town in five years for bigger and better pastures; one assumes this position at GU was just one in a series of small steps leading to bigger and better things for Mr. Eckert. But that too is a bit unclear.
George Eckert must have been held in high esteem by the colleagues that remained in Grandville because his name seems to have been evoked for years. An occasional dip into the yearbooks of the time indicate he was well-liked and, from those volumes immediately following his departure, much-missed. Looking sort of like a poor man’s John Updike, George Eckert’s name was finally etched on the face of the university in the 1950s with the construction of the Eckert English Building. As I noted years later, I can’t think of a more interesting honor for someone whose only association with the school is five years of teaching English.
The three-story Eckert English Building was a proud looking structure of grayish-cream colored stone whose short end opened out onto the main quadrangle. Its front doors, and the two-story windows directly above the door, were framed by a multi-colored brick façade that ran the height of the building; from a distance it appeared as jagged cut stone, something perhaps to give it the resemblance of a little texture.
Next to the Eckert Building was the band hall. In the 1980s the administration decided to not knock down the English and band buildings but to combine the two structures into one. This wasn’t something entirely new on campus as a few dormitories had been structurally fused together in years past and went from being known as X Hall and Y Hall to the X-Y Complex. After the newly built section between the English and band buildings – which mostly contained an open and windowed walkway and staircase – was complete, the combined structure became known as the Eckert Complex.
Somewhere along the way another complex developed, this one speaking to the fact that the original two buildings did not stand on equal footing. This meant that when you entered the front doors of the original English building on the first floor and walked up the staircase in the new windowed walkway, you found yourself on the first floor of the original band building. It could be a confusing mess if, for example, a class schedule said to meet in room 105 and you entered at the wrong door – if you’re told something is on the first floor, and you’re fairly sure you’re on the first floor, then you don’t usually go up flights of stairs in pursuit of a misplaced classroom. All this perceived confusion could have been avoided through signage but there was none during that school year I frequented the building (maybe there was some years prior or later but I don’t know). So in GU-speak, having an eckert complex meant you were prone to getting lost in the English building.
Ms. Getnam’s English Composition I class met in what was the basement of the original English Building. For English Composition II, I walked upstairs to the first floor, up another set of stairs to the first floor, and then down a long hall to an auditorium that was badly undersized for the number of students in the class.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Complex
(Edwards, Unruh)
Unruh
From the album Setting Fire to Sinking Ships
1999
George Eckert must have been held in high esteem by the colleagues that remained in Grandville because his name seems to have been evoked for years. An occasional dip into the yearbooks of the time indicate he was well-liked and, from those volumes immediately following his departure, much-missed. Looking sort of like a poor man’s John Updike, George Eckert’s name was finally etched on the face of the university in the 1950s with the construction of the Eckert English Building. As I noted years later, I can’t think of a more interesting honor for someone whose only association with the school is five years of teaching English.
The three-story Eckert English Building was a proud looking structure of grayish-cream colored stone whose short end opened out onto the main quadrangle. Its front doors, and the two-story windows directly above the door, were framed by a multi-colored brick façade that ran the height of the building; from a distance it appeared as jagged cut stone, something perhaps to give it the resemblance of a little texture.
Next to the Eckert Building was the band hall. In the 1980s the administration decided to not knock down the English and band buildings but to combine the two structures into one. This wasn’t something entirely new on campus as a few dormitories had been structurally fused together in years past and went from being known as X Hall and Y Hall to the X-Y Complex. After the newly built section between the English and band buildings – which mostly contained an open and windowed walkway and staircase – was complete, the combined structure became known as the Eckert Complex.
Somewhere along the way another complex developed, this one speaking to the fact that the original two buildings did not stand on equal footing. This meant that when you entered the front doors of the original English building on the first floor and walked up the staircase in the new windowed walkway, you found yourself on the first floor of the original band building. It could be a confusing mess if, for example, a class schedule said to meet in room 105 and you entered at the wrong door – if you’re told something is on the first floor, and you’re fairly sure you’re on the first floor, then you don’t usually go up flights of stairs in pursuit of a misplaced classroom. All this perceived confusion could have been avoided through signage but there was none during that school year I frequented the building (maybe there was some years prior or later but I don’t know). So in GU-speak, having an eckert complex meant you were prone to getting lost in the English building.
Ms. Getnam’s English Composition I class met in what was the basement of the original English Building. For English Composition II, I walked upstairs to the first floor, up another set of stairs to the first floor, and then down a long hall to an auditorium that was badly undersized for the number of students in the class.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Complex
(Edwards, Unruh)
Unruh
From the album Setting Fire to Sinking Ships
1999
Sunday, February 15, 2009
the one about remembrances along religious row
Because I lived on campus my freshman year, and because everything I needed was mostly in the immediate area, I didn’t do a lot of driving during the week. A lot of that also had to do with the fact that it would take me until the following weekend to find a parking space. But when I could I liked driving around to familiarize myself with other areas of campus and the surrounding community.
And the community did surround the campus, creeping up on you like arthritis, nearsightedness, or that toothless pan-handler at the corner of Central and Olive. Gleaned from historical photographs, I learned the university’s original tract of land was atop a hill north of downtown; between the campus and downtown were houses. Naturally, as the fledgling campus grew it bought nearby land and razed those houses and constructed new academic buildings or dormitories or parking lots, or, in rare cases, green areas.
Fast forward a few decades and it looked as if the college and the city butted heads along the southeastern-most edge because the houses remained standing. Apparently the owners didn’t necessarily want their houses torn down, particularly when their homes still had a lot going for them –structurally sound, kept the cold out, and so on. Because these homeowners had rejected the college’s advances it forced the campus to build elsewhere in other directions for a few years. Then a curious thing happened. The people in the houses along Union Street moved or died and their houses were up for sale.
“Hooray,” said the university, “we can finally buy that property and do something with it!”
“But,” said the comptroller, “you’ve blown a fortnight of funds in mere days and are almost in the red, aren’t you? Without funds you can’t very well do both.”
“Oh, dear,” said the university, “I hadn’t thought of that – we have the money to buy the houses but not enough to do anything with them except let them be.”
“Ah, that was easy,” said the comptroller, and for an encore he approved the purchase and installation of a half dozen telephones booths across campus only to be later smothered to death while participating in the “stuff as many people as you can into a telephone booth” fad of the time.
So the houses didn’t go anywhere and were instead passed-off as university-owned except that they looked totally out of place and unlike any other structure belonging to the university. Nomadic departments such as University Housing, Graduate Studies, Art, and others were uprooted from their modular buildings and squeezed into one of these houses with the instruction to “make it [their] own” but then that idea lasted only for a year or so.
Enter Religious Emphasis week, a five-night (later three-night) examination and discussion of the spiritual life of students, observed from the early-50s through 1972. A religious council organized the event and welcomed leaders from various denominations to speak to smaller groups each night. Space was needed for the events and all eyes again focused on Union Street. Within a few years the houses turned into denominational student centers for the Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, and Catholics (the Presbyterians hadn’t colonized yet and the one house given over to Nontrinitarianists was never used). Inside the houses were totally remodeled, oftentimes with the addition of small chapels or sanctuaries for Sunday services; the exteriors didn’t change much except that the Catholics transformed their two-story bungalow into a squatty, dwarfish cathedral through the magic of plywood and acrylic paint.
The Religious Emphasis week coordinators thought the houses becoming student centers was a good fit, seeing how Union Street was the neighborhood that evangelist “Handsel” Monday visited during one of his small-town revivals in the late Nineteenth Century. A woman who grew up in one of the houses and later attended the university told the story of seeing Monday speaking to a small crowd that had gathered under the boughs of the willow tree across the street (“...he sounded scary,” she recalled).
But I digress...
The houses still stood during my time on campus but most of the church groups had moved on. The Methodists apparently knew a good thing when they found it and appropriated for their own use the backyard of the long-vacant Episcopalian Student Center, whose members now met at the church across town. The Catholics had moved off-campus, too, leaving behind a bizarre-looking building and their long-suffering neighbors, the Baptists.
Those houses that were unoccupied were mothballed and used for storage, though it’s anyone’s guess as to what remained within their walls.
And the community did surround the campus, creeping up on you like arthritis, nearsightedness, or that toothless pan-handler at the corner of Central and Olive. Gleaned from historical photographs, I learned the university’s original tract of land was atop a hill north of downtown; between the campus and downtown were houses. Naturally, as the fledgling campus grew it bought nearby land and razed those houses and constructed new academic buildings or dormitories or parking lots, or, in rare cases, green areas.
Fast forward a few decades and it looked as if the college and the city butted heads along the southeastern-most edge because the houses remained standing. Apparently the owners didn’t necessarily want their houses torn down, particularly when their homes still had a lot going for them –structurally sound, kept the cold out, and so on. Because these homeowners had rejected the college’s advances it forced the campus to build elsewhere in other directions for a few years. Then a curious thing happened. The people in the houses along Union Street moved or died and their houses were up for sale.
“Hooray,” said the university, “we can finally buy that property and do something with it!”
“But,” said the comptroller, “you’ve blown a fortnight of funds in mere days and are almost in the red, aren’t you? Without funds you can’t very well do both.”
“Oh, dear,” said the university, “I hadn’t thought of that – we have the money to buy the houses but not enough to do anything with them except let them be.”
“Ah, that was easy,” said the comptroller, and for an encore he approved the purchase and installation of a half dozen telephones booths across campus only to be later smothered to death while participating in the “stuff as many people as you can into a telephone booth” fad of the time.
So the houses didn’t go anywhere and were instead passed-off as university-owned except that they looked totally out of place and unlike any other structure belonging to the university. Nomadic departments such as University Housing, Graduate Studies, Art, and others were uprooted from their modular buildings and squeezed into one of these houses with the instruction to “make it [their] own” but then that idea lasted only for a year or so.
Enter Religious Emphasis week, a five-night (later three-night) examination and discussion of the spiritual life of students, observed from the early-50s through 1972. A religious council organized the event and welcomed leaders from various denominations to speak to smaller groups each night. Space was needed for the events and all eyes again focused on Union Street. Within a few years the houses turned into denominational student centers for the Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, and Catholics (the Presbyterians hadn’t colonized yet and the one house given over to Nontrinitarianists was never used). Inside the houses were totally remodeled, oftentimes with the addition of small chapels or sanctuaries for Sunday services; the exteriors didn’t change much except that the Catholics transformed their two-story bungalow into a squatty, dwarfish cathedral through the magic of plywood and acrylic paint.
The Religious Emphasis week coordinators thought the houses becoming student centers was a good fit, seeing how Union Street was the neighborhood that evangelist “Handsel” Monday visited during one of his small-town revivals in the late Nineteenth Century. A woman who grew up in one of the houses and later attended the university told the story of seeing Monday speaking to a small crowd that had gathered under the boughs of the willow tree across the street (“...he sounded scary,” she recalled).
But I digress...
The houses still stood during my time on campus but most of the church groups had moved on. The Methodists apparently knew a good thing when they found it and appropriated for their own use the backyard of the long-vacant Episcopalian Student Center, whose members now met at the church across town. The Catholics had moved off-campus, too, leaving behind a bizarre-looking building and their long-suffering neighbors, the Baptists.
Those houses that were unoccupied were mothballed and used for storage, though it’s anyone’s guess as to what remained within their walls.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
the one about why we should wait more than thirty minutes for dr. blanc
Behind the Media, Culture, and Society course was a man named Dr. Fredrick Blanc, a middle-aged army brat that had never married, never had kids, and never seemed to like anyone or anything. He wasn’t as rough around the edges as that may sound, but he didn’t take a lot of crap from people for too long. He did take his work seriously, be that teaching, mentoring, or researching, which he did for hours on end (weekday or weekends) in his office. He did, after all, have one of the few Ph.D.s in the department at the time and therefore found little interest in the operation of the radio and television stations that attracted so many students to the program.
Blanc was a native of Massachusetts and had never lost his accent, but had tried, he said, during his childhood years moving with his dad from state to state and from army base to army base. From this way of life must surely have developed his well-known demeanor and temperament. This attitude wasn’t meant to scare off students, though. Far from it; in fact, more often than not students found they came to have a better appreciation for both Blanc and the course in later years. And that seems to be the core reason why Blanc taught the communication history, theory, and law courses – what the students learned would be with them long after the “button pushing” in the radio and television stations had faded.
So what of this famous Blanc attitude? Everything boiled down to respect: don’t interrupt him, don’t aggravate him, and don’t belittle him of anyone else. If you could manage that, and if you participated in class discussions, then you could probably get an A or B – depending on how well you did on his tests. But the surefire way to piss him off…the fastest way, the easiest way, as if was nine o’clock in the morning…was to yawn. Honestly, if you covered your mouth and didn’t make it obvious you might still get a glare from the hyperactive guy teaching at the front of the class. But God forbid – don’t let loose with a loud, long sigh…ouch! “Hey!” he snapped in his unmistakable New England accent, “I don’t teach in your bed, don’t sleep in my class! Stop it!”
These yawns usually came on the tail end of his “screenings” – essentially a chance to watch television in class for ten or twenty minutes. I actually think he called them “screenings” to get by with showing them in class, because I remember someone asking if we were going to “watch TV” one morning and this sort of set him off. We weren’t watching television, he’d explain, we were collectively screening a culturally significant program via television. And then he’d sort of give a half-tooth wise-ass smirk. (Yes, he did smile – he was generally well-deposed.)
Another good way to piss off Dr. Blanc was call him “Freddie,” his first name. “Hey, I’m your teachah, not your friend!” he’d snap, going as far to call it impolite and rude.
One of Blanc’s memorable moments happened a few weeks into the semester. Blanc’s class met in the same room that Propel’s Introduction class had met the previous semester and since both were geared toward freshmen the room was filled with a lot of the same people. The room was abuzz of chatter that morning in the minutes before class started and, without any interruption, we continued taking until someone pointed out it was ten minutes after the hour. Dr. Blanc was tardy. Soon the talk turned to the fifteen-minute rule: how long did students have to wait for a tardy teacher? Everyone was quoting something different: was it ten minutes for an MA or ten minutes for a Ph.D.? Maybe it was twenty minutes for a Ph.D. No one could quote the rule because there was no rule anywhere to quote. And that’s when people started leaving.
I remember being torn at what I should do? It was obvious he was late and I didn’t like wasting my time. On the other hand, Dr. Blanc did say this morning we were to expect a quiz – would he postpone it for the next class? About midway through the hour someone went to the department secretary and had her call Dr. Blanc at his house. He was not happy. Less than ten minutes later Dr. Blanc stormed into the room in one of the most memorable and unfashionably uncomfortable outfits I ever saw: a gray-yellow windbreaker thrown over a T-shirt, acid-washed jeans of some color between red and blue, and tennis shoes chewed through by Cerberus. He was pissed off because of his own tardiness and more so because more than half the class had bailed on his planned quiz.
Those of us that stayed took an abbreviated version of the quiz and, I believe, we all aced it. The next time class met the remainder of the students were told they should not ever again, under no circumstances, without penalty of death or a swift kick in the arse, desert one of Dr. Blanc’s classes.
Diligently silencing all protesters, he proceeded to dump a lengthier and more difficult quiz on those that walked out and let those that already took the first quiz go for the day.
We never saw that “outfit” again, by the way.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tardy
(John Shiurba)
Eskimo
From the album Some Prefer Cake
1999
Blanc was a native of Massachusetts and had never lost his accent, but had tried, he said, during his childhood years moving with his dad from state to state and from army base to army base. From this way of life must surely have developed his well-known demeanor and temperament. This attitude wasn’t meant to scare off students, though. Far from it; in fact, more often than not students found they came to have a better appreciation for both Blanc and the course in later years. And that seems to be the core reason why Blanc taught the communication history, theory, and law courses – what the students learned would be with them long after the “button pushing” in the radio and television stations had faded.
So what of this famous Blanc attitude? Everything boiled down to respect: don’t interrupt him, don’t aggravate him, and don’t belittle him of anyone else. If you could manage that, and if you participated in class discussions, then you could probably get an A or B – depending on how well you did on his tests. But the surefire way to piss him off…the fastest way, the easiest way, as if was nine o’clock in the morning…was to yawn. Honestly, if you covered your mouth and didn’t make it obvious you might still get a glare from the hyperactive guy teaching at the front of the class. But God forbid – don’t let loose with a loud, long sigh…ouch! “Hey!” he snapped in his unmistakable New England accent, “I don’t teach in your bed, don’t sleep in my class! Stop it!”
These yawns usually came on the tail end of his “screenings” – essentially a chance to watch television in class for ten or twenty minutes. I actually think he called them “screenings” to get by with showing them in class, because I remember someone asking if we were going to “watch TV” one morning and this sort of set him off. We weren’t watching television, he’d explain, we were collectively screening a culturally significant program via television. And then he’d sort of give a half-tooth wise-ass smirk. (Yes, he did smile – he was generally well-deposed.)
Another good way to piss off Dr. Blanc was call him “Freddie,” his first name. “Hey, I’m your teachah, not your friend!” he’d snap, going as far to call it impolite and rude.
One of Blanc’s memorable moments happened a few weeks into the semester. Blanc’s class met in the same room that Propel’s Introduction class had met the previous semester and since both were geared toward freshmen the room was filled with a lot of the same people. The room was abuzz of chatter that morning in the minutes before class started and, without any interruption, we continued taking until someone pointed out it was ten minutes after the hour. Dr. Blanc was tardy. Soon the talk turned to the fifteen-minute rule: how long did students have to wait for a tardy teacher? Everyone was quoting something different: was it ten minutes for an MA or ten minutes for a Ph.D.? Maybe it was twenty minutes for a Ph.D. No one could quote the rule because there was no rule anywhere to quote. And that’s when people started leaving.
I remember being torn at what I should do? It was obvious he was late and I didn’t like wasting my time. On the other hand, Dr. Blanc did say this morning we were to expect a quiz – would he postpone it for the next class? About midway through the hour someone went to the department secretary and had her call Dr. Blanc at his house. He was not happy. Less than ten minutes later Dr. Blanc stormed into the room in one of the most memorable and unfashionably uncomfortable outfits I ever saw: a gray-yellow windbreaker thrown over a T-shirt, acid-washed jeans of some color between red and blue, and tennis shoes chewed through by Cerberus. He was pissed off because of his own tardiness and more so because more than half the class had bailed on his planned quiz.
Those of us that stayed took an abbreviated version of the quiz and, I believe, we all aced it. The next time class met the remainder of the students were told they should not ever again, under no circumstances, without penalty of death or a swift kick in the arse, desert one of Dr. Blanc’s classes.
Diligently silencing all protesters, he proceeded to dump a lengthier and more difficult quiz on those that walked out and let those that already took the first quiz go for the day.
We never saw that “outfit” again, by the way.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tardy
(John Shiurba)
Eskimo
From the album Some Prefer Cake
1999
Sunday, February 1, 2009
the one about media, culture, society, and so on
When the spring 1995 semester began I was still classified as a freshman and still eager to work in the radio station. However, for reasons I’ve never remembered, I missed the semester kick-off meeting and therefore didn’t do anything for FM 89.3 that semester, 7 a.m. newscasts or otherwise. There’s a part of me that thinks I assumed the schedule would holdover from the previous fall semester...but then if my classes didn’t even do this why would I expect a silly part-time schedule to do the same?
But I didn’t leave the Communication Building. No, that would have probably been a dumb move on my part, not taking a course in my major. Looking back, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to take another Communication course that semester. No, I still visited the Communication Building three days a week (M-days) to take part in yet another 100-level course. This one was titled Media-Culture-Society (COM-187) and its purpose, according to the instructor, was for us students to develop a historical knowledge and appreciation of media development in America. His desire, or so he reiterated more than once, was for us to never watch television the same way again.
There was a lot of history in this class. I mean, the syllabus began with the note that in 1872 James Maxwell theorized the idea of wireless communication. From there we discussed Marconi playing the mamba and listening to the radio, the rise of someone named Kent Atwater, and the role Felix the Cat played in the early days of television (...makes you wonder if he’ll show up 80 years after his first appearance to help usher in Digital Television later this month). The rise of cable television, programming syndication, and ratings were also major talking points in this class that really took its course title seriously.
Besides reading articles from the textbook about the history of radio and television, we also viewed “screenings” from the extensive archives of Dr. Blanc. Back then – and even now as I write this – I wondered how Fred Blanc managed to track down everything he did. He had memorable episodes from classic sitcoms, samples of “old time” radio comedies, and an assortment of advertising oddities. And a little bit of everything else....
One of the more memorable items was during the discussion of tobacco on television and – whoa and behold – Blanc pulls out a series of cigarette commercials, including a bizarre one featuring Fred Flintstone. That, and a montage of Old Joe print ads (playing pool and driving cars) set to something from the Miami Vice soundtrack (this was a few years before the camel’s demise). We also got an earful of Archie Bunker spew a line of racial slurs a mile long during another program – all in the name of education.
But, word to the wise with these “screenings” – don’t yawn or you’ll face the wrath of Blanc!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Medium Cool
(Birdsall/Detmold/Kaika/Trombley)
The Reducers
From the album Shinola
1995
But I didn’t leave the Communication Building. No, that would have probably been a dumb move on my part, not taking a course in my major. Looking back, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to take another Communication course that semester. No, I still visited the Communication Building three days a week (M-days) to take part in yet another 100-level course. This one was titled Media-Culture-Society (COM-187) and its purpose, according to the instructor, was for us students to develop a historical knowledge and appreciation of media development in America. His desire, or so he reiterated more than once, was for us to never watch television the same way again.
There was a lot of history in this class. I mean, the syllabus began with the note that in 1872 James Maxwell theorized the idea of wireless communication. From there we discussed Marconi playing the mamba and listening to the radio, the rise of someone named Kent Atwater, and the role Felix the Cat played in the early days of television (...makes you wonder if he’ll show up 80 years after his first appearance to help usher in Digital Television later this month). The rise of cable television, programming syndication, and ratings were also major talking points in this class that really took its course title seriously.
Besides reading articles from the textbook about the history of radio and television, we also viewed “screenings” from the extensive archives of Dr. Blanc. Back then – and even now as I write this – I wondered how Fred Blanc managed to track down everything he did. He had memorable episodes from classic sitcoms, samples of “old time” radio comedies, and an assortment of advertising oddities. And a little bit of everything else....
One of the more memorable items was during the discussion of tobacco on television and – whoa and behold – Blanc pulls out a series of cigarette commercials, including a bizarre one featuring Fred Flintstone. That, and a montage of Old Joe print ads (playing pool and driving cars) set to something from the Miami Vice soundtrack (this was a few years before the camel’s demise). We also got an earful of Archie Bunker spew a line of racial slurs a mile long during another program – all in the name of education.
But, word to the wise with these “screenings” – don’t yawn or you’ll face the wrath of Blanc!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Medium Cool
(Birdsall/Detmold/Kaika/Trombley)
The Reducers
From the album Shinola
1995
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