All in all, you are just a blogger on the wall
I went to the reception after Janice Radway’s lecture for six reasons.
- Free booze.
- Erica Hateley said I should go socialize, and I always do what Erica Hateley says.
- If I couldn’t find someone to socialize with, I’d just skulk along the walls, gaping stupidly at the goings-on, and post my gawkings here for the web-savvy to stumble upon when they google themselves the next day.
- I always hope each party will be the party where some professor drinks so much port that she starts quoting James Joyce until all her grad students feel uncomfortable and leave early. And I hope that "someone" is Karin Westman.
- Uh, five reasons.
I did end up drinking all of James Machor’s white wine. After that I found myself face-to-face with Janice Radway, who followed a long K-State tradition of being an extremely gracious guest.
"Hi. I’m Jan." She extended a hand.
"I’m the only undergrad here," I said, and sat down.
Jan was intensely interested in the small circle of professors around her (Naomi Wood, a well-dressed Donald Hedrick, and two others whose names I forget). As none of us were Kansas natives, she asked what we thought of the place (the consensus is that it sucks JUST a little bit). Then we talked about movies or something.
True to form, Donna Potts and Tanya Gonzalez left for a better party at around 8pm. Wendy Matlock’s cookies were gone. Only one critical issue remained, and Han Yu was the perfect person to raise it. To paraphrase: why do Michael Donnelly’s eyebrows look like they were grafted from a comically overeducated cartoon supervillain?
As it turns out, he does not style or trim them in any way. Which means that until the X-Men step forward, the world is doomed.
