conference cooing and other crap

Music: Wolfsheim: Casting Shadows I’m hailing from my hotel room at the Peabody in downtown Memphis. I’ve stolen way (or hidden) just to decompress and relax without name-tagged people milling about. The first day of such socialization is enjoyable, but after a while, you sort of go into this “zone”: withdraw to the hotel room for a “breather” or leave the conference for some alone time with a friend. I was musing about how hotel rooms at conferences become decompression chambers . . . .

I’ve re-engaged some dear friends and have been having a marvelous time just catching up. Last night a number of us went to Pat O’Brian's, which is an exact replica of the New Orleans establishment. It was a very strange feeling being there, for many reasons. Shaun pulled out the Baudrillard theory hammer and went to town, which encouraged us to start thinking critically about the Beale street scene . . . it is definitely Disney-fied. Creepy, sort of sad. The Bourbon street imaginary has traveled up the Mississippi and state-i-fied too: Beale street is exactly (scarily) like Bourbon street, only cleaner and with dozens upon dozens of cops policing the scene with naughty stares. As we left for the evening there was a barricade where people coming into the street were padded down and/or scanned with a metal detector. We agreed that if New Orleans gets rebuilt (they say little to nothing has been done), it will come to resemble Beale Street. It’s really sort of sad.

Well, I must head downstairs for the Grand Ho-Hah Luncheon. There is going to be a speech by Patricia Bizzell on “Rhetoric and Religion.” A good topic, though, she’s done some talks before at RSA that were not so good. I wish it was Kirt Wilson. Last night his talk was sold out, so I didn’t get to go, but reports were of the “best keynote I’ve ever seen” variety. Anyhoo, will blog next week (I must remember to report on Hank III: god was THAT a weird show). . . . UPDATE: Ok, I left the Bizzell talk before it ended because it was so unbearable and I had to document my agony. A dreadful speech about contemplative mysticism, basically, but it went on too long, and the cadence really make it hard to focus on what was being said, and this was the wrong audience . . . it was indulgent and awful.  Gotta love conferences.  Now to prep for my panel here in an hour.