nancynall.com » Stage fright.
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Stage fright.

Guys, I have my first meet­ing with my Wayne State class in a few hours, and of course I have a com­bi­na­tion of stage fright and impostor’s syn­drome, that feel­ing that you’re going to ask for everyone’s atten­tion, only to be inter­rupted by two goons with badges who will come through the door and arrest you on sus­pi­cion of being a big ol’ fraud.

In other words, I’m a bit ner­vous and dis­tracted. For­tu­nately, there’s some good blog­gage in the world.

First up, another absolute gem from the anony­mous scribe who writes in the Metro Times under the pseu­do­nym Detroit­blog­ger John, prob­a­bly because in his day job at the News or Free Press they have him on the better-parenting beat. It’s a story about the attempted reha­bil­i­ta­tion of one of the most noto­ri­ous strip clubs on Eight Mile Road, the All Star Gentleman’s Club:

(The new man­ager) was a DJ at All Star for years before con­vinc­ing the own­ers to pour a quarter-million dol­lars into its ren­o­va­tion — a gam­ble to con­vert a ghetto dive into a glitzy club. They made him gen­eral manager.

First thing he did was ban pot smok­ing in the bar. Then he tore down the VIP wall, turn­ing what was essen­tially brothel space into a dis­play area with lit­tle pri­vacy. Next, he ruth­lessly culled the crew of strippers.

“When the bar went upscale, I had to let go of a lot of girls I really care about because they’d got­ten on in years, gained 30 to 40 pounds, 33 years old now,” he says. “In the old days you had a lit­tle longevity danc­ing. Now you burn up a girl in a few years.”

Just one of ten thou­sand gems within. OK, one more:

“Lots of things let you know not to let some­body in,” he says. “Twelve guys wear­ing white T-shirts with the dead guy on their T-shirt and they just came from his funeral — uh-uh, you’re not com­ing in here, baby, ’cause I know what hap­pens. They want to grieve, and ‘grieve’ means pour­ing alco­hol on the floor and slap­ping girls around.”

Highly rec­om­mended. Be a men­sch and hit the Met­Times site for the traf­fic, then cruise over to Detroit­blog for the extra pho­tos, which are bor­der­line NSFW.

Else­where, I have to take back at least some of the mean things I’ve said about Rod Dreher over the years, because he’s how I found part one of a Naples Daily News series on the ongo­ing train wreck of Ave Maria, Tom Monaghan’s lit­tle Catholic out­post down in Florida. It’s a big coun­try and there’s room here for every­one, but talk about things that would make Jesus Christ say, “Jesus Christ,” here’s this:

When Kathy Delaney moved a year and a half ago with her two teenage sons from Mary­land to Ave Maria, she believed cer­tain rights remained unalienable.

Elec­tions, she thought, fol­lowed the rule she’d known all her life: Her vote counted as much as anyone’s. Delaney could only assume the gov­ern­ment of her new town oper­ated the same. …What Delaney didn’t know is that Ave Maria’s founders already had decided how the town north­east of Naples would be ruled. They would have the power to con­trol the town for­ever. This power, some say, is so great, it might be unconstitutional.

Long story short: Mon­aghan and his co-developer suc­cess­fully lob­bied the Florida leg­is­la­ture — the mem­bers of which would find a lot in com­mon with the trick­ing strip­pers at the All Star Gentleman’s Club — into pass­ing them their own lit­tle law regard­ing Ave Maria’s governance:

The law gives Mon­aghan and Bar­ron Col­lier Cos. more power than any Florida devel­oper in at least 24 years, power per­haps not seen since the days of the early 20th cen­tury land boom. The law makes landown­ers, not reg­is­tered vot­ers, the ulti­mate author­ity in Ave Maria. The law ensures Mon­aghan and Bar­ron Col­lier Cos., as the largest landown­ers, can con­trol Ave Maria’s gov­ern­ment forever.

Or, to put it another way, move to Ave Maria, exit the United States of Amer­ica. The whole series is here. Years ago, I sent an e-mail to Carl Hiaasen’s Miami Her­ald address — in other words, I spit down a well — sug­gest­ing Mon­aghan would be a good per­son to base a char­ac­ter on in one of his nov­els. How­ever, I don’t think even he could have dreamed up a twist like this.

Oh, look: Sarah Palin has fig­ured out a way to keep her­self in the news that doesn’t involve parad­ing her daugh­ter and grand­son around the morn­ing talk shows — she’s “writ­ing a book.” God help her editor:

“There’s been so much writ­ten about and spo­ken about in the main­stream media and in the anony­mous blo­gos­phere world, that this will be a won­der­ful, refresh­ing chance for me to get to tell my story, that a lot of peo­ple have asked about, unfil­tered,” the Alaska gov­er­nor and 2008 vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date said dur­ing a brief tele­phone inter­view Tues­day with The Asso­ci­ated Press.

Palin’s log­or­rhea is truly a thing of beauty. Not just writ­ten about, but also spo­ken about. Not just in the main­stream media, but in the anony­mous blo­gos­phere world. This won’t just be a chance to tell her story, but a won­der­ful, refresh­ing chance (because God knows, this woman really has been forcibly kept from micro­phones, hasn’t she?) to tell her story, unfil­tered.

I sug­gest her pub­lisher really and truly leave it unfil­tered. Give her a micro­phone and a stenog­ra­pher and let the story rip. The book will weigh in at 1,200 pages and be so bor­ing no one will get past chap­ter one.

And now, you must please excuse me, because I have to go obsess over my syl­labus and hand­outs. If you see those goons com­ing to arrest me, try to dis­tract them.

Posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 9:20 am
in Current events, Detroit life.

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40 responses to
“Stage fright.”

  1. Jason T. said on May 13th, 2009 at 9:37 am

    First? I feel like I need to do my end­zone dance!

    Good luck, Nance. I remem­ber when I was a kid, there was an episode of “The Brady Bunch” where some­one (Greg?) had to give a speech. Mr. Brady told him to imag­ine the audi­ence was in its underwear.

    Depend­ing on your audi­ence, that may be more distracting/nauseating than help­ful. Worse yet, you may start imag­in­ing the Brady Bunch in its underwear.

  2. Dorothy said on May 13th, 2009 at 9:46 am

    Wish I could be a lit­tle fly on the wall in your class­room, Nance. I’m sure you’ll be fine. After it’s done you’ll won­der what you were so ner­vous about! Have fun (or rather, I hope you HAD fun, since you’ll be read­ing this after you are done.)

  3. John said on May 13th, 2009 at 10:13 am

    Good luck too! Take Ross Geller’s advice and speak in a fake Eng­lish accent!

  4. Tori said on May 13th, 2009 at 10:17 am

    Not to be a total syco­phant, but I would love to be in on one of your lec­tures. You’ll do just fine today.

  5. jeff borden said on May 13th, 2009 at 10:23 am

    Nancy,

    You’ll do fine. I walked into my first class at Loy­ola with the kind of adren­a­line buzz asso­ci­ated with a cham­pi­onship game, but it turned out great and now I’m hooked to the point of look­ing for a grad school so I can get qual­i­fied to teach at the uni­ver­sity level.

    Don’t know the cul­ture at Wayne State, but stu­dents these days are absolutely obsessed with grades. They will parse them to the thou­sandth dec­i­mal point. I strongly rec­om­mend you go with a numer­i­cal grad­ing sys­tem so that you can avoid the dust-ups that come from dis­cussing whether a paper was an A– or a B+. I had to learn this less the hard way. When you rely on num­bers as scores, you can look them right in the eye and say, nope, you didn’t get a good enough score for that A-.

    OFF TOPIC:

    Last night I was reminded of why I love Jon Stew­art. He did an absolutely bru­tal take­down on those mock­ing Miss Cal­i­for­nia Car­rie Pre­jean –it made me squirm think­ing about some of my com­ments– and blasted the slith­ery answers Nancy Pelosi has been giv­ing about her knowl­edge of tor­ture brief­ings. He is clearly a liberal/progressive, but Stew­art goes where the hypocrisy lies and is more than happy to whack lib­er­als when they act stupidly.

  6. del said on May 13th, 2009 at 11:02 am

    The rea­son your class will be well served to lis­ten to you, Nancy, is that, sim­ply: You are a per­son who has Some­thing to Say.

  7. Peter said on May 13th, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Sarah Palin — Nancy, I think that’s a great idea. Let her speak into a mic for a few days and then tran­scribe and pub­lish. It will be com­pared to Ulysses, only not in a good way.

    Mau­reen Dowd’s can be hit or miss, but she does a proper smack­down on Cheney today. That’s one of the prob­lems with the GOP; peo­ple like John Cain don’t real­ize how toxic they are because they look at Cheney and fig­ure that they’re not as loopy as him.

  8. Sue said on May 13th, 2009 at 11:21 am

    Nancy, here’s how you get through the first few classes: imag­ine your stu­dents are us. You’ll be putting them in their place in no time, and yet they’ll keep offer­ing opin­ions any­way. Should be ener­getic and inter­est­ing. One sug­ges­tion: kick Dwight out dur­ing the first class, ok?
    Another sug­ges­tion: live blog­ging. We’ll help you!

  9. Rana said on May 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Don’t be afraid of the stu­dents — you hold the grade­book, and whether or not it feels like it, you do know more than they do. Some­times there will be moments when you don’t know a spe­cific thing, but, trust me, you still know more than they do.

    I also wouldn’t sweat which grade sys­tem you use. If you go with a points based sys­tem, they will debate with you over why it got a 77 instead of a 78; if you write C on their paper, they will ask why it is not a C+, and so on. Plus num­bers are a lot more fuzzy than they look, unless you are doing mul­ti­ple choice exams. The main thing is to be con­sis­tent, across the dura­tion of the class and for each stu­dent — and that’s pretty easy to do. It also gives you two of the most pow­er­ful per­sua­sive arguments:

    (1) It wouldn’t be fair to the other stu­dents to give you spe­cial treat­ment; and (2) I’m sorry, those are the rules. You knew what they were at the begin­ning of class.

    The other use­ful thing to know? You won’t please every­one. There will always be some stu­dents who are in the class because they have to be, and they will be either qui­etly bored and apa­thetic, or loudly bored and dis­rup­tive. Squash the loudly bored as soon as pos­si­ble, and don’t worry too much about the qui­etly bored. If you get 75% engage­ment, you’re doing great. :)

  10. MitchAlbomRules said on May 13th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    shame shame shame.

    NANCE ON EDIT: Oh, now what?

  11. Laurie said on May 13th, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    OT, lead in today’s Onion: “Detroit Mayor Throws First Brick in Glass-Breaking Cer­e­mony for New Slum” http://​www​.theo​nion​.com/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​n​e​w​s​/​d​e​t​r​o​i​t​_​m​a​y​o​r​_​t​h​r​o​w​s​_​f​i​r​s​t​_​b​r​i​c​k​?​u​t​m​_​s​o​u​r​c​e​=​a​-​s​ection

  12. jeff borden said on May 13th, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    What could pos­si­bly have Dwight’s shorts in a bunch today? The Cheney Fam­ily Tor­ture Tour? The Char­lie Crist Sen­ate announce­ment? Shot down for a date for the 1,896,765th time? The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­lessly boring…just like Dwight.

  13. brian stouder said on May 13th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    My guess on Dwight’s “shame” incan­ta­tion: the clever “Stage fright” title of today’s entry, cou­pled with that excel­lent link to the arti­cle about the ener­getic gen­eral man­ager of the reborn, upscale strip-club.

    Either that, or maybe he’s the guy the arti­cle refers to, who licks his fin­gers and wants to put them into the girls’ ears, maybe?

  14. basset said on May 13th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    Impostor’s syn­drome? And here I thought it was just me… good to know there’s a name for it.

  15. coozledad said on May 13th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    I thought Dwight was just regal­ing us with his hilar­i­ous Jim Neigh­bors rou­tine.
    EDIT:Nabors, dammit. You’d think watch­ing all those Gomer Pyle reruns would have etched the proper spelling in my brain.

  16. Bob said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

    Can’t wait to see you light up “Rate My Pro­fes­sor.” You’re a nat­ural and should be set­tled in by the third class meet­ing. My favorite com­ment in the pro­fes­sor rat­ings was about one of my high-school pals who teaches engi­neer­ing now. A stu­dent wrote that he’s “the kind of guy I’d like to have back­ing me up in a bar fight.” He must bring unri­valed gusto to micro­proces­sor design.

  17. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:02 pm

    Sha-zayam, sha-zayam, sha-zaym!

    Now we have to fig­ure out which stu­dents are twit­ter­ing from their cell phones in Nancy’s class. Any­one? Any­one? Bueller?

  18. nancy said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    Thanks for all the advice from the other teach­ers. I need to cor­rect a few assump­tions: This is an independent-study class, which means my lec­tures will be few and far between. The stu­dents are work­ing as reporters for GPT.c, which is set up as a 501C.3 to ben­e­fit the WSU j-program. I’ll be their edi­tor. But the course is Online Jour­nal­ism, and I have to teach them some­thing to dis­tin­guish it from basic newswrit­ing, so we’ll have some ad-hoc meet­ings to talk about video, pod­cast­ing, etc. At which, I sup­pose I will lec­ture. I’ll try the under­wear thing.

  19. LA Mary said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    They’re twit­ter­ing, “is this the Nancy Nall who busted Tim Goeglin?”

  20. Sue said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    Come on, peo­ple. Jesse Ven­tura says he can get Dick Cheney to con­fess to the Sharon Tate mur­ders, Lt. Daniel Choi is pub­licly chal­leng­ing Obama on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the best you can do is fret about Dwight? It’s a busy argument-inducing news fea­ture day. Pick up the pace, please.

  21. jdg said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    I have been try­ing to get in touch with detroit­blog­ger john for over a year. he is a very cau­tious char­ac­ter, and he DEFINITELY has an alter ego in some main­stream media out­let (I’ve been told by a dubi­ous source that it’s Crains).

    DBJ hon­estly cares and loves this city and its peo­ple, treat­ing both with respect and dig­nity. What an asset to the MT.

  22. nancy said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    jdg — I know some­one who claims to know him, and says it’s the Freep. But yes, it’s cer­tainly one of the ink-on-paper out­lets. He has a prose style that’s straight news­pa­per all the way.

    Sigh. At one glo­ri­ous time in this city, and many oth­ers, a story like that would have led the Fea­tures front. Then the bean-counters took over, and it’s been down­hill ever since.

  23. moe99 said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    Gotta say Obama revers­ing him­self on the tor­ture pho­tos the day after Liz and Dick Cheney did a full court press on them, looks like he is bow­ing to Repub­li­can pres­sure. Not. too. smart.

  24. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    It’s Mitch Albom!

  25. Hattie said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Don’t worry. They will love you!

  26. Dorothy said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    This is my favorite part of the Metro Times article:

    “The thing about enter­tain­ers is they’re spoiled,” he says. “A girl will make a grand in a night. You know what hap­pens the next day? Three-hundred dol­lars in hair and a trip to the mall. I tell them put that shit away because tomor­row night you might not make $10. They don’t listen.”

  27. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on May 13th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

    No dif­fer­ent than sailors on lib­erty or new MBAs at their first job. (Well, maybe not on their hair.)

  28. coozledad said on May 13th, 2009 at 4:48 pm

    More fra­ter­nity pranks that were not, repeat, were not autho­rized by the adults who were in charge for eight years, or they were because they kept Amer­ica safe from more Saudi hijack­ers, or the tele­phone mes­sages were gar­bled, or it was just a really fucked up case of Chi­nese whis­pers. Ask Lind­sey Gra­ham. When he’s talk­ing to Cokie, we don’t do this.
    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​4​8​9​9​1​4​6​/​d​i​s​p​l​a​y​m​o​d​e​/​1​1​0​7​/​s​/​2​/​f​r​a​m​e​n​u​m​ber/1/
    When he’s talk­ing to the Amer­i­can legion, we do, and it helps the boys and girls let off a lit­tle steam.
    It does look like fun. Why, I think I’ll walk out to the shop and gouge some nickel sized holes out of my but­tocks with a metal rod right this very minute.
    Fuck­ing monsters.

  29. Catherine said on May 13th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    Holy shit, c’dad, I couldn’t make it past the third slide. Seems like it doesn’t mat­ter what the admin­is­tra­tion decides about “their” images, the truth will out.

  30. LA Mary said on May 13th, 2009 at 5:11 pm

    It’s really dif­fi­cult to look at those photos.

  31. moe99 said on May 13th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    It’s unfor­tu­nate that Obama caved. Now the Repubs will think they have him under their con­trol. Until this sor­did mess is fully aired and dealt with in a respon­si­ble man­ner (includ­ing pros­e­cu­tions where necessary)it will be grow­ing like a chan­cre under our national skin and feed­ing off of our fears and hatreds.

  32. mark said on May 13th, 2009 at 6:23 pm

    Yes, moe, he’s a GOP pup­pet now. Dur­ing the big tele­phone con­fer­ence today, though, there was no con­sen­sus on how to use this power. Half wanted to order him to imme­di­ately appoint John Yoo to the SC vacancy. Half thought the power should be tested first by order­ing him to tell Michele he never really liked her meatloaf.

  33. Rana said on May 13th, 2009 at 6:45 pm

    Nancy, if it’s an inde­pen­dent study sit­u­a­tion like you describe, you may never need to lec­ture your class at all, at least not in the for­mal sense. If it works any­thing like the upper-level sem­i­nars I’ve taught, “lec­ture” is more infor­mal. A stu­dent would raise a ques­tion, or I’d real­ize that there was a basic con­cept that was still elud­ing them, or I’d noticed in a pre­vi­ous class that it was time to bring up a cer­tain bit of back­ground that wouldn’t have made sense ear­lier, and then I’d just talk about it, some­times with the help of the board, some­times not. The whole “stand before the class and speak with the assis­tance of visual aids” struc­ture of a for­mal lec­ture is really more use­ful in a large class that has to get through a ton of mate­r­ial, or in a class where you are learn­ing the mate­r­ial one step ahead of the stu­dents and need that crutch. In a smaller class where you know the mate­r­ial already, and where a good chunk of it is pre­sented in response to spe­cific issues or stu­dent needs or inter­ests, you may be bet­ter off in a less struc­tured mode.

    It’s rather like post­ing on your blog and respond­ing to the com­ments, actually!

  34. Rana said on May 13th, 2009 at 6:47 pm

    Dorothy — arguably the work done on those “enter­tain­ers’” hair could be con­sid­ered a busi­ness expense, no?

  35. moe99 said on May 13th, 2009 at 7:29 pm

    sigh.

  36. joodyb said on May 13th, 2009 at 9:17 pm

    some­body got to somebody:

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​f​r​i​e​d​m​a​n​speech

  37. beb said on May 13th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    moe99 said on May 13th, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    Gotta say Obama revers­ing him­self on the tor­ture pho­tos the day after Liz and Dick Cheney did a full court press on them, looks like he is bow­ing to Repub­li­can pres­sure. Not. too. smart.

    Obama walked into quick­sand when he decided to “win” in Afghanistan. As with Iraq, there is no def­i­n­i­tion of “win­ning.” And the US is fight­ing a inter­nal insur­gency. If his­tory has taught us any­thing it is that a for­eign power can’t beat an insur­gency. Right now Obama has a big issue — the acci­den­tal mur­der of a hun­dred civil­ians through an air strike. He quickly fired the gen­eral in charge at the time. And he doesn’t want to release these inflam­ma­tory pic­tures NOW, when anti-American feel­ings are so high there. Only it doesn’t mat­ter. As an occu­py­ing force the US will always be hated, whether or not these pic­tures are released.

    Of course it could be that Obama doesn’t want to release these pic­tures because then peo­ple will demand a full inves­ti­ga­tion into pris­oner abuse, and can only lead to war crime tri­als for Bush and Cheney. Since Obama clearly does not want to be respon­si­ble for try­ing the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion he may feel that sup­press­ing these pic­tures is he only way out. But that makes him an acces­sory to their crimes.…

    Frankly in light of the above, I’d much rather talk about Nancy’s first day as a teacher. It’s much less depressing.

  38. Danny said on May 14th, 2009 at 12:43 am

    Word at the water cooler at work is that some­body got caught hav­ing rela­tions of a sort in a con­fer­ence room. I really hope they clean those tables.

    Very busy cou­ple of days for me, but hope­fully we’ll get the long and short of this story. We really need to get to the bottom.

  39. coozledad said on May 14th, 2009 at 8:11 am

    The Iraqis already know what went on at Abu Ghraib. I talked with a guy who was a guard there who said Cheney’s KBR boon­dog­gle couldn’t even keep the flood­lights on, so there were reg­u­lar escapes; and after the escapes–
    Pin­point mor­tar attacks.
    When story and pic­tures broke here, the sweep of the insur­gency had already picked up. The Iraqis had already got­ten the word Sad­dam had been replaced with Sad­dam.
    The US ser­vice­men and women who died dur­ing that phase of the war were just more folks tak­ing the heat for Junior’s incompetence.The best light the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion can hope to be viewed in, is they were in over their heads, they refused to lis­ten to career sol­diers, they embraced tor­ture in a pan­icked effort to pro­vide jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their war, and they con­demned every future Amer­i­can POW to a hell on earth.
    Thirty per­cent of the peo­ple in this coun­try believe these guys were act­ing in our inter­ests, and doing a hell of a job at it. That the way you win wars is to dupli­cate the suc­cesses of the Impe­r­ial Japan­ese Army in Manchuria: You roll pris­on­ers around in shit, and jab at them with sticks like a bunch of reform school sociopaths on meth. Now we’ll get the bend-over-backwards-to-suck-your-own-dick jus­ti­fi­ca­tions from the usual parade of losers who framed the whole setup for the war.

  40. jeff borden said on May 14th, 2009 at 10:21 am

    Coo­zledad,

    What is truly amaz­ing to me is how quickly tor­ture evolved into a par­ti­san issue. When in God’s name did con­ser­vatism equate with tor­ture? It’s not just the Dark Lord Cheney, but the elves like Lind­sey Gra­ham who are stak­ing their move­ment and their party to this abhor­rent behavior.

    I’m damned, damned, damned dis­ap­pointed by Pres­i­dent Obama’s deci­sion to fight the release of these pho­tos. I’m even more dis­ap­pointed by the siz­able num­ber of Amer­i­cans who say in polls they would sup­port tor­ture. It’s not a major­ity, but the num­bers are still quite high.

    What kind of nation have we become?

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