publicity/surveillance

Music: VH1: I Married Sebastian Bach There's nothing quite like opening up the newspaper and seeing your face on the front page of the "Arts" section. The first book review of Modern Occult Rhetoric is in, and it's a mostly kind write-up in the Austin American-Statesman by Jeff Salamon, a well-respected and well-known arts and music writer (I remember reading something he wrote in Rolling Stone many years ago, and he used to run with the Village Voice crowd). I've been in the paper before, so, of course, I knew to expect there would be things said that I didn't like, or details that are not quite right, or that I would appear to be plagiarizing George Bernard Shaw. It could have been so much worse (e.g., he could have quoted me comparing alien abduction stories to Christ's crucifixion, which I did do to make a point about how mundane the strange can become, which could have led to picketing from the Conservative Student Coalition or whatever the junior neo-cons call themselves here). It could have been much better too (just who qualifies as a "radical professor," and why is respecting women related to cultural trauma?). So I suspect this is baby bear's porridge. The true horror will be reading book reviews in academic journals (if anyone is ever inclined to write one). Of course, I cannot stand the damn thing anymore, so it's nice to read someone had fun reading it, even if only in the "friendly" parts, perhaps even if he says it's "like the Chimera of Greek lore, an odd beast . . . ."