No snarking. In the foul world of big-name college sports, Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno is fairer than most and has done it for longer than anyone. So if anyone deserves 400 wins during a career, it's him.
On the other hand, it would have been nice of the Wildcats to have shown up and played in the second half of Paterno's historic win, rather than stand around and watch it happen. Just as a courtesy, dontcha know.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Risking Certain Death!
With this month's release of The Promise, a double album of outtakes recorded between Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen fans finally have -- legally -- what many of them have had illicitly or have much desired for more than 30 years -- a studio version of the classic "Because the Night."
Springsteen originally recorded the song during the long hiatus after the breakout Born to Run release in 1975. A number of experiences from that time, including the Time/Newsweek cover appearances, a lawsuit by a former manager and the process of regular old growing up, reshaped some of his thinking and diluted the exuberant optimism of the Born to Run years. By the time Darkness came out, Springsteen himself had changed as an artist and as a person, offering some glimpses of the man who would release the bleak Nebraska four years later and The Ghost of Tom Joad in 1995.
He'd put out two albums in 1973, then lingered and sweat over the epic that turned into Born to Run in '75. Ordinarily, an popular musician in that situation would have released something in 1977 or maybe even in 1976. But the lawsuit that kept him out of the studio meant that the songs which would create that album never managed to gel together, and by the time Springsteen and the E Street Band could record again, their muse had a new and more somber outlook. Most of the songs that will be on The Promise are somewhere in between the grand theatrics of the first three albums and the noirish tales of Darkness (It'll also come in a deluxe version that will include a DVD of a Darkness-era concert from Houston, a 2009 concert where the band played the whole album straight through, and some other live performances from the Born-Darkness transition period. It'll set you back north of $100).
Promise has some songs that made it onto Darkness in different versions. "Candy's Boy," a kind of moony doo-wop declaration by a small-timer about how much he loves a girl who seems to get an awful lot of gifts from well-to-do men, becomes "Candy's Room," whose faster tempo and avalanche of building sound brings a hint of menace that the singer may be willing to settle for such a situation for only so long before he takes steps to change things.
Which brings us to "Because the Night." Springsteen has said he was never able to fully finish a satisfactory studio version of the song, and producer Jimmy Iovine, who was working with the E-Street band as well as the Patti Smith Group in a next-door studio, played the song for Smith and she included it on her 1978 album Easter. She also released it as a single, and it remains her biggest hit. Springsteen, on the other hand, never did make a version of the song that satisfied him but did include it in his concerts beginning with the Darkness tour, where it became a mainstay. Many live versions and some studio recordings of the song crept out into listener's hands through the shady lands of the bootlegging community, but "Night's" only official release was a live version on the Live-1975-1985 box set.
Much like the more comedic "Fire," "Because the Night" was an experience shared mostly by fans who had seen a Springsteen show rather than just bopped along to "Hungry Heart" on the radio. And his live performance, which I have had the good fortune to hear in person (14th row, center section on the floor, Rosemont Horizon in Chicago in 1984 -- I'll probably forget my own mother's name before that fact leaks out of my brain), remains the definitive version of the song. Although Smith's recording is better able to capture the urgency that seems to best suit the song and that Springsteen has really only managed with it live, her quirky voice seems to wax and wane out of sync with the words she's singing.
This is just my opinion (see the header for a reminder), but it seems like the best version of "Because the Night" outside of a live Springsteen show is the 1993 version from 10,000 Maniacs' appearance on MTV Unplugged ("Night" may be a good luck charm -- it was the Maniacs' first Top 40 hit after 12 years together and gained them the same kind of attention it had gained Smith). The show had bands play their songs with acoustic and miked instruments instead of amplified ones. The Springsteen studio version from Promise, on the NPR "First Listen" feature, lacks energy and seems drained and wan next to the versions done by both women and by Springsteen himself live. But the Maniacs gave the song the urgency that best suits it and lead singer Natalie Merchant was much more in control of when she should be loud and when she should be soft than Patti Smith was. She's also a better technical vocalist than Smith was during the initial "Godmother of Punk" phase of the latter's career.
"Because the Night" may have been one of those songs that its creator was born to play rather than record. Its best showcase might not a band isolated in a studio but a crowd of thousands singing along to every word and both feeding and feeding off the energy of the performance and the performers. Its first authorized studio release persuades me of that anyway, and most of the studio bootlegs of it I've ever heard fall short of the track from The Promise.
Oh, the risk of death? Well, it's not because I've rambled on about a pop song for this long and irritated a reader so much I'm in danger -- one back-click and you're quite free from my opinions. It's because my friend Philip, who reads this blog, is a Springsteen devotee and when he sees the sacrilege I have just committed, he may keel right over. His wife is going to kill me.
Springsteen originally recorded the song during the long hiatus after the breakout Born to Run release in 1975. A number of experiences from that time, including the Time/Newsweek cover appearances, a lawsuit by a former manager and the process of regular old growing up, reshaped some of his thinking and diluted the exuberant optimism of the Born to Run years. By the time Darkness came out, Springsteen himself had changed as an artist and as a person, offering some glimpses of the man who would release the bleak Nebraska four years later and The Ghost of Tom Joad in 1995.
He'd put out two albums in 1973, then lingered and sweat over the epic that turned into Born to Run in '75. Ordinarily, an popular musician in that situation would have released something in 1977 or maybe even in 1976. But the lawsuit that kept him out of the studio meant that the songs which would create that album never managed to gel together, and by the time Springsteen and the E Street Band could record again, their muse had a new and more somber outlook. Most of the songs that will be on The Promise are somewhere in between the grand theatrics of the first three albums and the noirish tales of Darkness (It'll also come in a deluxe version that will include a DVD of a Darkness-era concert from Houston, a 2009 concert where the band played the whole album straight through, and some other live performances from the Born-Darkness transition period. It'll set you back north of $100).
Promise has some songs that made it onto Darkness in different versions. "Candy's Boy," a kind of moony doo-wop declaration by a small-timer about how much he loves a girl who seems to get an awful lot of gifts from well-to-do men, becomes "Candy's Room," whose faster tempo and avalanche of building sound brings a hint of menace that the singer may be willing to settle for such a situation for only so long before he takes steps to change things.
Which brings us to "Because the Night." Springsteen has said he was never able to fully finish a satisfactory studio version of the song, and producer Jimmy Iovine, who was working with the E-Street band as well as the Patti Smith Group in a next-door studio, played the song for Smith and she included it on her 1978 album Easter. She also released it as a single, and it remains her biggest hit. Springsteen, on the other hand, never did make a version of the song that satisfied him but did include it in his concerts beginning with the Darkness tour, where it became a mainstay. Many live versions and some studio recordings of the song crept out into listener's hands through the shady lands of the bootlegging community, but "Night's" only official release was a live version on the Live-1975-1985 box set.
Much like the more comedic "Fire," "Because the Night" was an experience shared mostly by fans who had seen a Springsteen show rather than just bopped along to "Hungry Heart" on the radio. And his live performance, which I have had the good fortune to hear in person (14th row, center section on the floor, Rosemont Horizon in Chicago in 1984 -- I'll probably forget my own mother's name before that fact leaks out of my brain), remains the definitive version of the song. Although Smith's recording is better able to capture the urgency that seems to best suit the song and that Springsteen has really only managed with it live, her quirky voice seems to wax and wane out of sync with the words she's singing.
This is just my opinion (see the header for a reminder), but it seems like the best version of "Because the Night" outside of a live Springsteen show is the 1993 version from 10,000 Maniacs' appearance on MTV Unplugged ("Night" may be a good luck charm -- it was the Maniacs' first Top 40 hit after 12 years together and gained them the same kind of attention it had gained Smith). The show had bands play their songs with acoustic and miked instruments instead of amplified ones. The Springsteen studio version from Promise, on the NPR "First Listen" feature, lacks energy and seems drained and wan next to the versions done by both women and by Springsteen himself live. But the Maniacs gave the song the urgency that best suits it and lead singer Natalie Merchant was much more in control of when she should be loud and when she should be soft than Patti Smith was. She's also a better technical vocalist than Smith was during the initial "Godmother of Punk" phase of the latter's career.
"Because the Night" may have been one of those songs that its creator was born to play rather than record. Its best showcase might not a band isolated in a studio but a crowd of thousands singing along to every word and both feeding and feeding off the energy of the performance and the performers. Its first authorized studio release persuades me of that anyway, and most of the studio bootlegs of it I've ever heard fall short of the track from The Promise.
Oh, the risk of death? Well, it's not because I've rambled on about a pop song for this long and irritated a reader so much I'm in danger -- one back-click and you're quite free from my opinions. It's because my friend Philip, who reads this blog, is a Springsteen devotee and when he sees the sacrilege I have just committed, he may keel right over. His wife is going to kill me.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Check Yes or No?
Although I've noted elsewhere some things I like about President Obama, I won't pretend I'll be sorry when his White House tenure ends. But I think he's taking a bum rap over the expense of his upcoming visit to India and parts east.
Folks are somewhat peeved that the total number of people involved in this trip is about the size of a small town, somewhere near 3,000. It's likely to cost quite a bit, although not the $200 million a day some excitable folks suggest or the $2 billion total (plus 34 ships -- ten percent of the U.S. Navy's floatin' iron) an even more excitable talk show host has claimed. Of course, some of those claims are based on figures given by Indian officials touting the stringent security arrangements being made for the president's trip, and it's safe to say they're a bit excited about it.
That kind of cost, if true, would be excessive, but sometimes when you want to make a good showing, you lay it on a little thick. India's been a little out of sorts because this visit has taken two years to arrange, and they feel a little neglected. English-language papers in that country have also played up that this is one of the largest, if not the largest, group a U.S. president has ever taken to another country. In addition to his staff, security and media representatives, the group includes business executives who will meet with Indian counterparts to explore different kinds of economic cooperation between the world's strongest and wealthiest democracy and the one billion people of the world's largest democracy.
And if it takes the equivalent of bringing some roses and a box of chocolates along to smooth some ruffled feathers, I don't see that as such a bad idea. As I mentioned, with a population of more than one billion people, India is the world's largest democracy. Although it still has widespread poverty, in some cases at a level of destitution that ought to make any American weep, it's also a functioning democracy. India has ethnic and regional differences that, to be replicated in this country would require something like Oklahoma sending tanks into Kansas (and not stopping until they hit the Dakotas because that whole part of the country looks the same). But despite that, it is by no means the poorest nation in the world and that same riotous palate of diversity, overlaid with a couple of centuries of British acculturation, makes it one of the most fascinating places on earth.
Attention is rightly paid to China, which has more people that India and is in a lot of senses, a more advanced nation technologically. But there are fissures in China, not the least of which are the coming demographic time bomb promised by the one-child policy its totalitarian government mandates. Or the male-female imbalance that policy promotes in a society that values sons more than daughters as a better bet for taking care of Mom and Pop when they get too old to work -- 119 boys are born in China for every 100 girls, meaning that nearly one-sixth of Chinese men are doomed to live like George Costanza, and that can't be good for the nation. Plus, China's interests and the U.S.'s don't always coincide, as we are supposed to be a bit sniffy towards totalitarian regimes that arrest people for giving away Bibles and run tanks over people who decided to publicly express their opinions.
So travel away, Mr. President! Flash some cash while you're there, schmooze a bit and tell them they've got that little something special none of the other girls in class do. It'd be great if you could do something substantive, like one business coalition suggests, and lay the framework for a real free-trade agreement between the U.S. and India, but I'm a guy too, and I know we sometimes have issues with commitment. But even if we can't put a ring on it this time, maybe we might at least let her wear our letterman's jacket.
(ETA link about China's one-child policy once I finally found the story I'd been looking for)
Folks are somewhat peeved that the total number of people involved in this trip is about the size of a small town, somewhere near 3,000. It's likely to cost quite a bit, although not the $200 million a day some excitable folks suggest or the $2 billion total (plus 34 ships -- ten percent of the U.S. Navy's floatin' iron) an even more excitable talk show host has claimed. Of course, some of those claims are based on figures given by Indian officials touting the stringent security arrangements being made for the president's trip, and it's safe to say they're a bit excited about it.
That kind of cost, if true, would be excessive, but sometimes when you want to make a good showing, you lay it on a little thick. India's been a little out of sorts because this visit has taken two years to arrange, and they feel a little neglected. English-language papers in that country have also played up that this is one of the largest, if not the largest, group a U.S. president has ever taken to another country. In addition to his staff, security and media representatives, the group includes business executives who will meet with Indian counterparts to explore different kinds of economic cooperation between the world's strongest and wealthiest democracy and the one billion people of the world's largest democracy.
And if it takes the equivalent of bringing some roses and a box of chocolates along to smooth some ruffled feathers, I don't see that as such a bad idea. As I mentioned, with a population of more than one billion people, India is the world's largest democracy. Although it still has widespread poverty, in some cases at a level of destitution that ought to make any American weep, it's also a functioning democracy. India has ethnic and regional differences that, to be replicated in this country would require something like Oklahoma sending tanks into Kansas (and not stopping until they hit the Dakotas because that whole part of the country looks the same). But despite that, it is by no means the poorest nation in the world and that same riotous palate of diversity, overlaid with a couple of centuries of British acculturation, makes it one of the most fascinating places on earth.
Attention is rightly paid to China, which has more people that India and is in a lot of senses, a more advanced nation technologically. But there are fissures in China, not the least of which are the coming demographic time bomb promised by the one-child policy its totalitarian government mandates. Or the male-female imbalance that policy promotes in a society that values sons more than daughters as a better bet for taking care of Mom and Pop when they get too old to work -- 119 boys are born in China for every 100 girls, meaning that nearly one-sixth of Chinese men are doomed to live like George Costanza, and that can't be good for the nation. Plus, China's interests and the U.S.'s don't always coincide, as we are supposed to be a bit sniffy towards totalitarian regimes that arrest people for giving away Bibles and run tanks over people who decided to publicly express their opinions.
So travel away, Mr. President! Flash some cash while you're there, schmooze a bit and tell them they've got that little something special none of the other girls in class do. It'd be great if you could do something substantive, like one business coalition suggests, and lay the framework for a real free-trade agreement between the U.S. and India, but I'm a guy too, and I know we sometimes have issues with commitment. But even if we can't put a ring on it this time, maybe we might at least let her wear our letterman's jacket.
(ETA link about China's one-child policy once I finally found the story I'd been looking for)
Thursday, November 4, 2010
From the Rental Vault: Ride the High Country
Both men play aging ex-lawmen whose time in the West has mostly moved on, leaving them behind. Neither as quick on the draw or as hardy in a fight as they once were, they find guarding a mining camp's gold is about the only work they can land. But one of the pair has taken a good hard look at future prospects and decided that he might do a sight better heisting the gold instead of guarding it, which puts the two old friends on a collision course. Caught in the middle are a young sidekick and a woman that the three men have rescued from her mining camp fiance who plans to "loan" her to his co-workers. Mariette Hartley, then 22 and in her first big-screen role, is the young woman, and Peckinpah regular Warren Oates is one of the creepy miners.
Scott and McCrea are quite obviously having the time of their lives, playing off some of their genre's stereotypes and their own screen personas. Sun and age give Scott a squint that looks like it could squeeze coal into diamonds, and McCrea's leathery twang is as Western as ol' Dollar and Gabby Hayes. Peckinpah would later explore some of the same themes in later films, but this is where he began telling stories of people who work to redefine themselves as the worlds around them change in way they don't quite understand, threatening to make the moral codes that have guided them for so long irrelevant. Ride the High Country got a crummy release and was pretty much ignored when it first came out, but Peckinpah's later fame (and weirdness) brought it the attention it deserved, both as the initial expressions of his own moviemaking philosophy and as a well-deserved curtain call for two icons of an American film genre.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Higher Education at $tate University
A lot of state-funded universities were originally created with the idea of offering close by, quality higher education to folks whose families couldn't afford the tuition at elite, far-off private schools. These schools would charge students from the state a more affordable fee, partly to offer them that opportunity, partly to keep collegiate-minded people in the state instead of losing them to other states and partly because the schools received state funds.
Although the in-state, out-of-state divide remains, the University of California at Berkeley has apparently decided to junk the whole "affordable" part. Non-Californian undergraduates who enroll in the fall of 2011 can expect to pay $50,649 a year for their Berkeley education as it becomes the first public institution in the U.S. to break the $50,000 barrier. Californians will only have to pay $27,770. A hundred colleges across the country, including my alma mater, will ask for more than $200,000 for four years of their company. You can make your check out to Sarah Lawrence College for $57,384 if you want the absolute Rolls-Royce of educations, or for fifty large even for the mere Lexus model at Loyola University of Maryland. Berekley is 83rd on the list (maybe a Lexus with...I dunno, automatic cup holders). My former academic environs sit at 37th, which I think may make them a Rolls that's carrying a few miles on it.
One of colleges' longest-running jokes amongst their students went like this when I was enrolled: "$40,000 cover charge and all the beer you can drink." That referred to our tuition and fees for the full four years we were there -- which now would get me to spring quarter midterms and then run out.
The article from The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that Berkeley is kind of extreme (insert your own joke about wacky Californians and Berkeley weirdos here. I already made one this week) in its pricing, as the median for out-of-state students at public schools was $23,526, and only 14 public universities charged more than $40,000. Of course, eight of those are other schools in the University of California system.
They don't call it the Golden State for nothing, y'know.
(H/T to Erin O'Connor at Critical Mass)
Although the in-state, out-of-state divide remains, the University of California at Berkeley has apparently decided to junk the whole "affordable" part. Non-Californian undergraduates who enroll in the fall of 2011 can expect to pay $50,649 a year for their Berkeley education as it becomes the first public institution in the U.S. to break the $50,000 barrier. Californians will only have to pay $27,770. A hundred colleges across the country, including my alma mater, will ask for more than $200,000 for four years of their company. You can make your check out to Sarah Lawrence College for $57,384 if you want the absolute Rolls-Royce of educations, or for fifty large even for the mere Lexus model at Loyola University of Maryland. Berekley is 83rd on the list (maybe a Lexus with...I dunno, automatic cup holders). My former academic environs sit at 37th, which I think may make them a Rolls that's carrying a few miles on it.
One of colleges' longest-running jokes amongst their students went like this when I was enrolled: "$40,000 cover charge and all the beer you can drink." That referred to our tuition and fees for the full four years we were there -- which now would get me to spring quarter midterms and then run out.
The article from The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that Berkeley is kind of extreme (insert your own joke about wacky Californians and Berkeley weirdos here. I already made one this week) in its pricing, as the median for out-of-state students at public schools was $23,526, and only 14 public universities charged more than $40,000. Of course, eight of those are other schools in the University of California system.
They don't call it the Golden State for nothing, y'know.
(H/T to Erin O'Connor at Critical Mass)
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Did I Vote or Not?
Well, yes, I did. My first election as an independent, since the parliamentary sausage-maker opened itself to plain view back in March and finally made me look away from what my party had been doing.
My precinct votes in a local church, one that is not of my denomination. Fortunately, their guard seemed to be down when I arrived, or maybe they disabled the automatic laser warning systems because of the election. Either way, I crossed the threshold without encountering robot machine guns, auto-dunking automatons or mechanized heretic-converters. I was greeted by three volunteer poll-workers who quickly and efficiently gathered my name, had me sign the poll book, handed me my ballot and reminded me to vote on both sides of it. I took it to my "booth," which these days is a folded cardboard cubbyhole that doesn't look all that sturdy. Probably a good idea, because a quick glance at most candidate slates these days is enough to make one seek a structure sturdy enough to support a noose, and providing one might create liability issues.
After filling out the ballot, I fed it into the machine, which beeped to tell me my ballot had successfully been counted by the scanner and changed its counter to tell me I had been voter no. 219 today. The poll workers then offered me one of the "I voted" stickers, which I declined. After all, as a citizen of the United States, I have three broad duties: 1) Obey my nation's laws, 2) Pay my taxes and 3) Vote when given the opportunity to do so. I am blessed enough to live in the best place on earth, and in return those three things are all that are asked of me. I'm not required to serve in the military. Because I was born here, I don't have to swear a loyalty oath of any kind. I don't have to venerate an image of any elected official (I am asked to show respect to the flag by saluting it when pledging allegiance or hearing the national anthem played, but I am not required to do so).
The stickers came about because so few people do vote that, I believe, folks thought that some kind of reminder might jog some memories to do the same. But when comedian Chris Rock disparaged people who said, "I take care of my kids" as though it was a medal-worthy achievement, he said, "Whattaya want, a cookie? That's what you're supposed to do!" I feel similarly about the idea that I should brag about having done one of the very few things I'm supposed to do as a citizen of the United States.
But there is a very good feeling that accompanies voting. Not the sense of participating in my nation's republic, although that is pretty darn cool when you think about it. No, what really feels good about voting is that, by your choices on the ballot, you get to say, "Talk to the hand," to the people who have relied on demagoguery and disinformation to try to sway voters their way. You can say, "Hasta la vista, baby," to candidates whose shameless misuse and manipulation of the facts represents some of the worst our system has to offer. You can say, "Make a new plan, Stan," to career politicians who figure that since they've run out their string at one level of public office they'll get voted in at another so they can keep feeding at the taxpayer's trough.
People spend a lot of money to get elected to public office. They buy ads, they buy signs, they pay campaign staffs, and so on. And yet, for free, you and I get to tell more than half of them, "Bite me."
You can't get much more American than that.
My precinct votes in a local church, one that is not of my denomination. Fortunately, their guard seemed to be down when I arrived, or maybe they disabled the automatic laser warning systems because of the election. Either way, I crossed the threshold without encountering robot machine guns, auto-dunking automatons or mechanized heretic-converters. I was greeted by three volunteer poll-workers who quickly and efficiently gathered my name, had me sign the poll book, handed me my ballot and reminded me to vote on both sides of it. I took it to my "booth," which these days is a folded cardboard cubbyhole that doesn't look all that sturdy. Probably a good idea, because a quick glance at most candidate slates these days is enough to make one seek a structure sturdy enough to support a noose, and providing one might create liability issues.
After filling out the ballot, I fed it into the machine, which beeped to tell me my ballot had successfully been counted by the scanner and changed its counter to tell me I had been voter no. 219 today. The poll workers then offered me one of the "I voted" stickers, which I declined. After all, as a citizen of the United States, I have three broad duties: 1) Obey my nation's laws, 2) Pay my taxes and 3) Vote when given the opportunity to do so. I am blessed enough to live in the best place on earth, and in return those three things are all that are asked of me. I'm not required to serve in the military. Because I was born here, I don't have to swear a loyalty oath of any kind. I don't have to venerate an image of any elected official (I am asked to show respect to the flag by saluting it when pledging allegiance or hearing the national anthem played, but I am not required to do so).
The stickers came about because so few people do vote that, I believe, folks thought that some kind of reminder might jog some memories to do the same. But when comedian Chris Rock disparaged people who said, "I take care of my kids" as though it was a medal-worthy achievement, he said, "Whattaya want, a cookie? That's what you're supposed to do!" I feel similarly about the idea that I should brag about having done one of the very few things I'm supposed to do as a citizen of the United States.
But there is a very good feeling that accompanies voting. Not the sense of participating in my nation's republic, although that is pretty darn cool when you think about it. No, what really feels good about voting is that, by your choices on the ballot, you get to say, "Talk to the hand," to the people who have relied on demagoguery and disinformation to try to sway voters their way. You can say, "Hasta la vista, baby," to candidates whose shameless misuse and manipulation of the facts represents some of the worst our system has to offer. You can say, "Make a new plan, Stan," to career politicians who figure that since they've run out their string at one level of public office they'll get voted in at another so they can keep feeding at the taxpayer's trough.
People spend a lot of money to get elected to public office. They buy ads, they buy signs, they pay campaign staffs, and so on. And yet, for free, you and I get to tell more than half of them, "Bite me."
You can't get much more American than that.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Timing is Everything
I went to college in the wrong decade. Were I an undergraduate today, enrolled at the University of South Carolina, I could take a course called "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame." Lady Gaga, of course, is the stage name of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, the latest specimen of ephemera produced by the ADHD world of modern pop music. She wears weird costumes and releases silly songs, or it may be the other way around.
Either way, the good folk of South Carolina are helping subsidize an exploration of fame and celebrity via a study of the 24-year-old's career. According to the course catalog, “The central objective is to unravel some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga.” To me, that description would suggest a very short seminar rather than a semester-long course, but I am not an academic.
The instructor believes the course is the only full-time college course in the country dealing with this matter. No doubt. Even modern college professors have some standards, dude.
ETA: A description of the course may be found here.
Either way, the good folk of South Carolina are helping subsidize an exploration of fame and celebrity via a study of the 24-year-old's career. According to the course catalog, “The central objective is to unravel some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga.” To me, that description would suggest a very short seminar rather than a semester-long course, but I am not an academic.
The instructor believes the course is the only full-time college course in the country dealing with this matter. No doubt. Even modern college professors have some standards, dude.
ETA: A description of the course may be found here.
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