Amy asked what I’m taking this term. I’m not sure yet, but I will say this: I’m shopping. That is, I’m going to a bunch of classes the first couple weeks, and then I’ll drop the ones that don’t engage me. I didn’t shop enough last term, carefully selecting everything from the catalog ahead of time. My advisor implied this is one of the issues that alienate students from teachers — teachers resent being treated like sweaters at the Gap, and hate the drop/add chaos at the beginning of the term — but too bad. This is my last term, and I’m not wasting any of it.

Today I went to a 400-level poli sci class, the name of which I forget, but it’s something about how special-interest groups pressure the political process, which might be helpful for my new-media study plan. Undecided. Then I ducked into a 200-level creative writing class on impulse and loved it — it’s a lock, I think. The afternoon was a small lecture class on Russian picaresque fiction. Undecided. Tomorrow: Back-to-back public-policy seminars in “networked society” and “changing economics of knowledge.” Friday: Writing for Television. (Why? Why? WHY?! Because I liked screenwriting so much, that’s why.) Mondays are the second part of the screenwriting class, in which we rewrite the screenplay we worked so hard on first term.

Whatever I choose, it’ll be the wrong thing. One of the fellows took a class on medicine and society last term that was fascinating to hear about even second-hand. And someone came to the meeting tonight raving about a comp lit class combining romanticism and Buddhism — the first 10 minutes of the class, the prof had everyone eat an orange in silence.

I just checked the catalog. It conflicts with my poli sci class. More shopping ahead, I think.

Why so much writing? Because I’m a writer, and one of the best things a writer can do to improve is to try new forms. I’ve been so depressed and rut-bound the last few years that I’d forgotten this, and one of the truly wonderful discoveries about the first term was how much I enjoyed doing so. All bitching about the size of the job notwithstanding, I was delighted to actually finish thing, as flawed as it was.

On the subject of shopping, I just bought a down parka suitable for polar expeditions on eBay, at about 66 percent off retail. It’s 8 degrees as I write this; it may be the bargain of the day.

A mild illness overtook my holiday-sapped body yesterday, a mid-level queasiness that stopped short of vomiting but kept me pinned to the couch for most of the day. Bad news: I had no good books to read. Good news: “Lolita,” the Kubrick version, was on TV. I think this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen it all the way through, and my opinion has now come full-circle: It’s a movie with some wonderful moments that, ultimately, fails. All movie versions of “Lolita” will fail, because even a movie using a barely legal actress in the title role will never be able to portray the simplest, most basic thread of the narrative — the seduction and corruption of a 12-year-old girl by a sleazy European. It’s a nasty business, and movies shrink from nasty, or at least that type of nasty. The other layers of the book are, I figure, just way beyond the screen. There’s a reason people say, “The book was better.”

Also: Kill “Sex and the City” now. Now, I say, and spare us any future reference by Sarah Jessica Parker to “my new favorite website, Google dot com.” Does anyone on the writing staff actually use Google? And if so, have they ever heard any human being refer to it as “Google dot com?” Didn’t think so. (Someone’s probably trying to get in on the IPO.) Plus, the girls are all looking like what they are, at least on HBO — middle-age babes who’ve been sleeping around too long. Poor Kim Cattrall. Stop her now.

Looking for something good to read? You could do worse than Richard Cohen on Grover Norquist’s comparison of the estate tax to the Holocaust. (Yes, really.)

Me, I’m off to class

At the North American International Auto Show, it’s not the supercool Hollywood-style display spaces all over Cobo Hall.

It’s not the free swag — tote bags, food, alcohol — that makes you feel like such a piggie at the trough.

It’s not the calla lilies and lucky bamboo, set in a line of perfectly plain crystal vases, each of which leans at about a 30-degree angle, artfully illuminated by a pinpoint halogen spot.

It’s not the daiquiris they’re pouring at the Mini Cooper booth, where you can make a little postcard of yourself driving one.

It’s not the computerized fountain at the Jeep display, where JEEP CHEROKEE 4X4 is written in falling water.

It’s not the Mexican bean-dip thing they had going on there, either.

Nor is it the open bar at the Jaguar / Range Rover space.

It’s not the chrome cutaway engines and floor models that are dusted, like, every 30 seconds, all of which somehow leads to the illusion that new cars can stay new forever and engines need not be fouled with stuff like gasoline and oil.

It’s not the plasma-screen video over at Mercedes, and at Audi, and at pretty much everywhere else, too.

It’s not that having a press credential lets you do all this stuff before the crowds arrive next week, and it all gets shoulder-to-shoulder.

It’s just that the cars look so, so cool.

Stipulation the first: I am not now, nor will I ever be interested in participating in the old v. new media debate, at least as it applies to weblogs, because sooner or later everyone starts discussing Instapundit in respectful tones, and I simply cannot keep a straight face.

Stipulation the second: I am in full agreement that, at least when it comes to columns, many bloggers-who-work-free write rings around columnists-who-earn-a-good-buck-at-it. However, and this is where I part ways with many in the blogging community, I don’t think this is a harbinger of the death of old-media columnists. See the “My kid could paint that” debate for background.

What keeps me coming back to my blog bookmarks day after day are entries like The Poor Man’s year-end awards, where, in search of nothing more than an excuse to put off starting the day for another couple minutes, I might find a line like this:

The greatest seasoning of 2003 was, once again, garlic. Runner-up goes to cilantro. Cilantro’s like the Larry Bird of seasoning – it’s not just that it tastes great in its own right, but it makes the food around it give 110% as well.

Several people have asked me, “So how did Kate enjoy Argentina?” Kate did not enjoy Argentina because Kate did not go to Argentina. Argentina is the only fellowship trip to which children are not invited, so she stayed home with a very expensive but ultimately nerve-soothing live-in sitter. (I prefer “live-in sitter” to the snootier “nanny,” although that’s essentially what she was.)

Anyway, what that meant for us was, we didn’t have the liberty to stay on in south America for at-liberty exploring like many of the other, unencumbered Fellows. I was able to keep my seething envy of these lucky souls at bay until one returned and e-mailed me a picture from his trip to Tierra del Fuego. “Here’s a fun picture to share with Kate,” he offered in a fellow-y note. Yes, but it’s a cruel picture to share with me. I’ve only seen penguins in a zoo.

Maybe next time.

Excellent photo by fF Vince Patton, fyi. He took 1,399 others. I want to see them all.

The lesson of 2004 is: Do things impulsively.

At 4:40 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, I was trying to conduct an end-of-the-year phone call with my best friend Deb when I was interrupted twice on call waiting, by ffF Fatih, suggesting we bag any New Year’s Eve plans we might have as individuals and instead hold a spur-of-the-moment party for our new fFs, arriving in the last few days from Istanbul and Buenos Aires.

OK. And we’ll have it at my house, eh?

So we did. And it was the right idea. It only takes a couple hours to lay a tablecloth, light some candles, pour some chips into a bowl, open some wine and throw a CD or two on the stereo. As it turned out, we had a party with four Turks (plus kids), one Argentine (plus kids), and three Americans (plus kids). The kids banged pot lids at midnight and we all had a great time. I did, anyway. Best story of the evening: The Russians had a mobile brothel that rolled around Istanbul for a time, a bus emblazoned “Feel the Difference.” Four rooms, with showers and even a hot tub, picking up and dropping off customers as it traversed this ancient capital. “Feel the Difference.” Can you make this stuff up? You can’t.

Happy new year to you all. I hope your new one is as good as my old one was — the last half, anyway.

Like everyone else who survived tenth-grade English, I had my problems with Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” when it was all over the radio, most of them having to do with her obviously faulty understanding of what irony actually is. It is not raaaain on your wedding day, or a black fly in your chardonnay. It isn’t most of the things she mentions, but I gave her a pass on most of them, because she obviously wasn’t up to the task of filling her chorus with examples and making them rhyme.

However, the other day I saw an obituary in the Free Press that’s, like, a whole ‘nother verse.

Well-liked and nationally known ER doc dies in a car crash on I-75. Ejected from his vehicle. The irony:

Aranosian, who had trained many emergency physicians and emergency medical technicians, was not wearing a seat belt.

“He had a clip in it where he had defeated the seat belt alarm system,” Simon said. “Not wearing a seat belt was a contributing factor in the fatality.”

Oh, well. Dr. Frank has a pulmonologist colleague who’s a secret smoker. The impenetrable human heart.

Got home from our whirlwind holiday tour of the Buckeye State tonight, finishing the last 100 miles in a driving rain. Fifty-eight pieces of e-mail were waiting for me, 57 of them spam. I don’t want a larger penis; how do I let these people know?

Thank God for Mail’s spam filter. It caught all but 11.

I’ve been feeling a little guilty for not writing much lately, and then I didn’t. One of the things the director of our Fellowship told us early on was to treasure the year’s empty spaces as much as the full ones, to not deprive us of time spent “staring at the ceiling,” because it’s there, as much as anywhere, that inspiration will strike. This week, in between the driving, has been a ceiling week, and I think I know what he’s talking about. There’s much to be said for just smiling and passing the eggnog, for keeping your mind as empty as Paris Hilton’s, for enjoying a detective novel and letting the well refill. So that’s what I’m doing.

But here’s a movie tip: If you get a chance to see “In America,” do so. Treads the line between sentiment and sap oh-so-deftly. “Return of the King” will still be there in a month. But this little gem is an art-house bubble, so go now.

More from me as the spirit moves.

I knew there’d be a reason to stay in Ann Arbor for Yuletide and skip the traditional Tour o’ Ohio. From the AA News’ listings for Christmas Day activities:

“THE SOUND OF MUSIC”
SING-ALONG
10:30 a.m., Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty St. The Temple Beth Emeth’s annual presentation of a classic musical this year features the favorite about the Von Trapp family. Costumes encouraged. For tickets and information, call (734) 665-4744.

Unless I’m mistaken, this is the famous “Sing-a-long Sound of Music,” conceived by (who else?) gay men and loved by nun drag queens and the sort of people who sing “Doe, a deer, a female deer” when alone in the car. It’s the movie with a follow-the-bouncing ball singalong track, and the idea that a Jewish congregation is presenting this as a what-the-hell-else-is-there-to-do-on-Christmas just tickles the crap out of me. “Costumes encouraged?” Oh, man, they don’t know what they’ll get. I seem to recall a New Yorker story about the long-running London engagement, which featured the aforementioned nun drag queens, but also some guy dressed like Ray, a Drop of Golden Sun.

I’d kill to go to this, kill I say. Unfortunately, I will not disappoint my aging mother-in-law by skipping Christmas dinner at her house. Sigh. Some other time.

Oh — and Merry Christmas to all NN.C readers. Don’t disappoint your mothers-in-law.

We had our mother-daughter teeth-cleanings scheduled yesterday, so off we went to faraway Fort Wayne for a quick visit to the dentist, a Santa run to Kate’s friends and the safe winter stowage of one of the kayaks. This took, of course, too much time, and we ended up having dinner at La Margarita, our Mexican local. Leo, the owner, greeted us, the way he always does.

“You missed our Christmas party last night!” he said, before sketching out the evening’s festivities. It was held for the children of regular customers, family and friends, and featured games, party favors, toys for all, Pancho Claus and Pancho Claus’s magic bag, which was filled with — gulp — $500 in change. (Every kid got to stick their hand in, and pull out all they could hold in one handful.) There were elaborate door prizes — TVs, etc. — and, of course, chow for all.

I was stunned. La Marg is a successful business, but a small one; if there’s more than a handful of modest livings in it, I’d be astonished. And yet Leo, through the generosity of his own big heart, managed to throw a party with a more lavish budget than the last three or four thrown by my own employer (parent company market capitalization: $4 billion). It was probably more fun, too — I’ve never seen a Pancho Claus.

As we were leaving, Alan was doing some last water-pipe flushing in the house and I turned on the laptop to play a quick round of Bugdom. The AirPort sensed a weak signal, and I was able to download my e-mail, courtesy of a neighbor — I’d guessing either Mario or Patrick, but it could be someone else — with a wireless network.

The iMac is still ailing, but I love my laptop. Since I got the cord that allows it to run off the car’s cigarette lighter, Kate can now pass long trips watching movies in the back seat. And I can download my e-mail on Dayton Avenue! Worlds of wonder.