THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

One of the open secrets in public education is that it's quite a chore to assess professors in a valid and reliable fashion to assist professional and personal growth. Those outside the field -- that is, usually those with no experience in the class room whatsoever -- have no problem imposing top-down assessments such as pass rate examination and post-course satisfaction surveys, but those usually aren't that helpful in "closing the loop" to elicit meaningful short-term or long-term change. And to be honest, I'm not sure what could be helpful for me as a professor at this point in my nearly-two-decade-long career; for example, peer evaluation is a nice idea, but I'm a full-time department of one, so I don't exactly have peers that do what I do in quality and quantity inside my institution. This means that we're left with things like the course evaluation rankings and comments as the most visible assessments available, and every professor knows that s...

So 2016 only has a few days left, but upon reflection, it was a good year for The Shows. Of course, it wasn't as good as 2015 -- with Prince, Ride (in Toronto!), Don Henley, Sparks (once with an orchestra, and once with Franz Ferdinand), Zombi, Little Dragon, Belle & Sebastian, and so on -- but there was still fun to be had, even in the second half of the year. John Carpenter [ 15 July, Masonic Theatre Oak Room, Detroit ] -- Now this was something special: A showing of Escape From New York , followed by a live performance by director John Carpenter of selected film themes as well as material from his two recent solo albums, all in a side room of one of the bigger and more historic live venues in Michigan. I sat in the front row of the balcony, surrounded by loud white dudes each wearing black metal band t-shirts and reeking of body odor. And while they riffed over the movie with enough volume to earn shushing from the main floor, at least they had the decency to shut the fu...

So from time to time, I get on the road and go see shows. This year, my quest for live music took me to places like Detroit and Indio and Toronto and Chicago and Detroit. The shows made my ears ring louder, my wallet emptier, and my body creakier. At times, I was beset by storms of dirt and dust and clouds of body odor and farts. But on occasion, I had moments of sanctified joy that made me want to go through all that and more. These are some of those moments, with the first half of the year first. Iggy Pop [ 7 April, Fox Theatre, Detroit ] -- There's a famous '70s photo of Iggy Pop, clad in a T. Rex t-shirt, with David Bowie and Lou Reed standing to Pop's left and right. To say that Pop is the last man standing is a bit of a misnomer, given Pop's gnarled posture and cursive spine, but while his body has diminished, his energy -- the spark that launched the fires of punk -- hasn't flagged one bit. This show, ostensibly to promote a strong new album cut with membe...

As Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opened this weekend, it made me think about how the Star Wars Universe captivated my imagination as a young kid. I first saw Star Wars in 1977, in a Denver theater equipped with Dolby sound, and I can remember thinking it was the loudest and biggest movie I had ever seen. (Keep in mind that the majority of my movie-going experience was at the Roscommon Theater, with a screen the size of half a NYC porno theater's screen, and a floor half as sticky.) After seeing it a few times, I gorged myself on the merchandise like a good little consumer -- the light saber, the trading cards, the bedding -- with a special love of the Kenner action figures. For posterity, R2D2 (for $1.99!) was my first figure, but certainly not my last. In a word, I was hooked. So imagine my surprise in 1979 when Kenner announced a new mail-in-only figure called Boba Fett. (Boba Fett had his first appearance in the Star Wars Holiday Special , but that wasn't exactly canon...