I usually manage to juggle the various commitments in my life rather well. Last night, however, while trying to fall asleep, I made the mistake of confronting my schedule for the next week five weeks. Three conferences, the end of one quarter, the start of another, a special lecture for the book project, hosting an amazing author, bunches of writing, bunches of grading, and all the rest of life. I’m fearing that something’s going to give–sanity, sleep, something . . .

And that’s why I haven’t had the time to write everything I want to here. I want to write all about my adventures at AWP and about being the nerd queen.

There isn’t really time to do it all justice, but I want to give it a few minutes.

Margaret Atwood was the keynote speaker at AWP this year. I got VIP seating due to my Atwood history and ties.

Atwood is my hero and I wish I could just transcribe the whole talk for you. The highlights: she mentioned the Atwood Society (of which I’m the former President). She was warm and funny. She made one of the best observations about the state of some young writers today: “If you want to be a writer, but you don’t want to read, then you don’t actually want to be a writer. You want people to come sit near you while you tell your sob story.”

Denise and I were able to go see Tiffany, Ben, and the new baby (Jack) while I was in Chicago as well. Now, I’m not really a baby person. I loved my own baby, of course, but I can resist the charms of others most of the time. Jack is different. I had an annunciation dream at the moment he was born. He’s also a particularly adorable and good-natured darling. Thus, I held him for so many hours that my pecks hurt when I got home. Denise kept having to demand him from me. I would post pictures, but a) I haven’t transferred them from the camera and b) I somehow look awful in every shot. Denise looks awesome, though, so I’ll eventually get around to sharing the pics of her holding him.

Finally, I’ll be heading to WonderCon this week. I’ll be giving a talk on The Simpsons on Friday and a talk on Buffy comics on Sunday. My consequent nerd/geek queen status has been verified and immortalized here: http://www.comicsbulletin.com/main/interviews/karma-waltonen-geek-queens-tale

Remember to catch up with me at my column at matchflick.com. I’m also on Twitter now (@KarmaWaltonen).

Also, be sure to check out The Simpsons tonight–Homer’s going to say my first name (and call me names, too!).

17 classes taught

1 rear-ending while in Vanessa’s car by Vanessa’s student, who later became my student (Davis is small)

2 trips to LA with Denise to visit the wonderful people at The Simpsons, where we got to tour the animation building, watch them record the music, and watch them record the voices. 

1 amazing day watching Alexander’s robotics team (of which he was President) win the regionals, so they could go on to the International FIRST competition

1 conference in London, where I got to see Liam and Courtney and Chaz, to meet Carmen, who has offered to marry me when I get serious about moving to England, and to present on Octavia Butler

1 magical conference in Alcala, Spain, the birthplace of Catherine of Aragon and Cervantes, where the University was founded in 1499, and where I spoke on Buffy comics and found Duff Beer!

1 endoscopy, 1 MRI, 2 neurologists, 2 ER visits, 5 allergy shots every other week

1 summer of dead electronics: 2 computers, 1 DVD player, 1 phone, 1 car, 1 watch

1 day at WonderCon with April and Alexander (with 1 meeting of Berkeley Breathed)

2 students who said I kept them from dropping out; 3 students who said I saved their lives 

2 plays at The California Shakespeare Festival

1 viewing of John Leguizamo’s amazing new show                                                  

2 cats (Osiris and Mahahes) after Isis ran away

1 wine-tasting afternoon with Rae

1 taking over the editorship of Prized Writing

1 Tim Burton exhibit

1 trip to Ashland to see 4 amazing plays with Dan

1 getting to hug Scott Thompson after seeing him with Kevin McDonald

2 trips into San Francisco, to see Stuffed and Unstrung and Richard III with Kevin Spacey

1 Driving Miss Daisy with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones

2 Grandparents who renewed their vows

1 giant (several pounds) application for a three-year contract at Davis

2 visits to Davis by Zach Weiner, author of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

1 replacing Mindy (temporarily) as friend to Vickie (due to computer literacy)

3 websites that regularly feature my writing, though I’ve just quit one: www.dr-karma.com; www.matchflick.com; www.examiner.com

2 Christmas trees (one taken down in time for Martin Luther King Jr Day; one put up the Saturday after Thanksgiving)

1 month of time travel dreams induced by the writing of a soon to be published paper on Time Travel in Star Trek

1 surprise party thrown for me on Father’s Day by my friends who wanted to celebrate the successful parenting of my beloved child (and yes, I was surprised)

40-something weeks of book group (which has been running about 8 years)

4 movies at the French Film Festival                       

1 Doctor Who Experience!

4 university committees & 3 journals served on

1 Christmas in Florida

12 months of teaching, with nary a break

52 weeks of great friends, new and old recipes, and wonderful reads

1 completed child, turned 18 and sent to college

1 2011 list completed, to be sent to you with my love, Karma

Today is one of The Simpsons‘s anniversaries. I say “one of” because while this is not the day the full-length show first aired in 1989, it is the day the family first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987.

I was there. I saw it. I was hooked.

I’ve written a lot already about the cultural impact of the show, so for today, I’ll focus on another aspect of the show: its prescience.

Somehow, all of the things I love, Margaret Atwood, Science Fiction, The Simpsons, etc. are great at seeing where our cultural trends are going to go.

The Simpsons has both commented on and anticipated many aspects of American culture. Our current political season is reflected eerily in Season 11’s “Bart to the Future.”

In the episode, Bart sees a vision of his future. He’s a loser, but Lisa is President. The beginning of her administration is plagued by a debt: “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”

At the time, the line was funny–of course we would never be so stupid as to elect the Don. Now, the line evokes a sick feeling in my stomach as candidate Trump illustrates his lack of genius by siding with the birthers. A reality TV star courting the lowest common denominator? And winning? Yes, it could happen.

Lisa has to raise taxes to balance the budget, but doesn’t want to say that that’s what she’s going to do. Milhouse, her advisor, says that if she wants to “out and out lie,” she could call the “painful emergency tax” a “temporary refund adjustment.”

Doublespeak in politics is nothing new, but Jon Stewart was struck by Obama’s doublespeake last week enough to comment on it. Specifically, raising taxes (or, rather, allowing some tax breaks on the super rich to expire [did you know the richest 400 households pay 17% while I pay 30 something %?]) was “spending reductions in the tax code.”

This is why I love The Simpsons; they are us!

Happy 24th!

I’m sure you’ve seen the news that some countries, like Germany, are refusing to air reruns of The Simpsons that feature problems at Mr. Burns’s nuclear power plant. This is supposed to be a sensitive response to what’s happening in Japan.

The Simpsons people have said that this decision is fine with them. I’m fine with it if they are, but I can’t really see the need for it.

Might someone watching The Simpsons be reminded of the sadness of Japan? Yes. But viewers of The Simpsons know where Homer works already. And The Simpsons isn’t making light of the potential for disaster. In fact, The Simpsons has long been one of the few reminders in popular media about the dangers that this type of power pose, especially when combined with corporate greed. Many of the problems with Mr. Burns’s plant occur because he won’t spend the money to ensure safety (an emergency exit is merely painted on the wall, for example). The company that owns the plant in Japan has been hesistant to use seawater to cool down the plant for one simple reason–it means more money in repair costs afterwards (if I’m remembering correctly, that company is American).

So what are we supposed to do? Wait until this crisis is over, when we’ve all gone back to being complacent about the inherent problems that arise when safety and profit butt heads to see a cartoon satire of nuclear power?

Fine, but I’m still bothered by the censorship for two reasons.

One, the focus is narrowed in a strange way. When I watch The Simpsons, I am likely to see alcoholism, car accidents, and other common traumas. Am I so fragile that I expect the government or television stations should make sure that I don’t have to see these things? After all, in any given day, my life is likely to be ruined by a car accident. The legacy of many people’s alcoholism is ever present in my life–must I be protected from reminders about reality?

Second, if we censor for a certain amount of time, the implication is that there will be a time when we are over the crisis. After 9/11, many stations refused to show “Homer vs. The City of New York” because the twin towers are visible in the episode. The episode wasn’t about terrorism or death, but some felt that the factual depiction of what had been in that space at that time was something people couldn’t/shouldn’t be expected to deal with. It’s ten years later. I still think of 9/11 when I see that episode. I still like that episode.

While the wound isn’t as new and raw, it’s still there.

When the twin towers were referenced in a recent episode of The Simpsons, “Homer the Father,” there probably wasn’t a single viewer who didn’t think about 9/11, who didn’t gasp a little bit at the towers being mentioned (in a moment that reminded us they were gone now), and who didn’t wonder, “too soon?”

If it wasn’t okay to air depictions of the towers ten years ago, it’s not now, which is why I think it’s okay at all times, especially in comedy.

I know that I tend to be over-protective of free speech issues in comedy, but it’s because I know that comedy is what saves us, what keeps us whole, what allows us to get through the bad times. I don’t want the bad times to be what ruins comedy.

Last week’s episode of The Simpsons, “The Blue and the Gray,” featured Marge getting her first gray hair.

I turned to the boy: “what are they talking about? Marge has been gray as a mule since she was seventeen.”

Luckily, the episode explained that the hair dye Marge uses affects her memory. In this episode, however, Marge decides to go gray.

I found my first gray hair when I was sixteen. Or, to be more precise, Miranda Hoy found my first gray hair while sitting behind me in Spanish class. I discovered it when she yanked it out without warning me first.

I didn’t really worry about it. And then I proceeded to not worry about the other grays that came along. They were few in number and easily camouflaged by the rest of my mane.

Until a few years ago, when they increased in number exponentially. At first, I told myself that they didn’t bother me, and I believed I had earned them. I mean, I had a teenage child and a PhD–surely I had reasons to go a bit gray.

Unfortunately, people started reacting to me the way people started reacting to Marge when she decided to let her real hair color show. That is, people started commented on my bravery–usually people who did not really know me or who had just met me.

That really bothered me for some reason. I’m used to my hair being the first thing that people notice, but I wasn’t ready for my gray to be the first thing that they noticed. I wasn’t ready to be “admired” for letting it show.

There was only one thing to do–dye the very front and top of my head. You see, there’s way too much hair for me to completely cover all the gray–it’s too long and thick. And I hate spending time or money in a hairdresser’s chair, so I do a little root coverage every now and again for the parts that are most visible.

Is there still some gray, then? Yes, but it’s still mostly hidden in the curls. And should you chance to play with my hair and to discover that I have lots of gray in the back, as my lover has, you can ponder what happens when vanity meets impatience.

As many of you know, I don’t have a twitter page, but Denise, social goddess that she is, made one for our book, The Simpsons in the Classroom–you can follow us under Simpsonology. It is through this apparently fabulous entity that we got in contact with some of the heavy hitters at THE SIMPSONS: David Silverman, animator & director; Josh Weinstein, producer & show runner & writer; and Chris Ledesma, music editor. The latter invited us to see a recording of the music for the show if we were ever in LA. This year’s MLA happened to be in LA, so down we went last weekend.

Walking on to the Fox lot, we were nervous. As Denise had explained to our friend Kathy, our excitement was extraordinary because the circumstances were. How many people have loved one thing and been obsessed with one thing, since 1987? How many people then teach it and write about it? How do you expect people to react when they get to meet their obsession after over twenty years? (I think we held ourselves together very well, all things considered.)

Getting our passes from the guard seemed surreal; I think we were both expecting to be turned away, like it was all some sort of mistake, but the passes were given and we set off down a fake street that they use on BONES and HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER toward the FUTURAMA trailer to meet up with Josh. Josh used to work on THE SIMPSONS, but now is on FUTURAMA, which Comedy Central will hopefully renew (it’s been really good lately–check it out!). The two nice people in reception were expecting us, and Josh was summoned.

We started with a tour of the Futurama building–his office, the revision room, etc. Josh offered us some Matt Groening doodles that were on post-its in the revision room. Apparently, Groening can’t sit down without doodling something and we now have our own proof of that.

Then Josh took us on a brief tour of relevant parts of the lot. The recording stages in one building are named after three famous Hollywood women–Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, and Marge Simpson. We couldn’t access Marge’s studio because they were doing some dubbing for BONES. “You mean Angel from BUFFY might be in there?” quipped Denise.

The old SIMPSONS‘s building itself looked like a motel–it was small and two stories and all of the rooms were accessible by the outside. When you look straight on to it, you see a fountain with koi (and netting to unsuccessfully keep feral cats out) and bathrooms. Groening’s office is behind a nondescript door to the right of the bathroom doors.

Along the way, we met Ian Maxtone-Graham (who wrote, among other things, “24 Minutes” and who is very tall), Rob LaZebnik (“Homer vs. Dignity”), and Michael Nobori (“To Surveil with Love”). Due to Denise’s description of my love for Weird Al Yankovic, Mr. Nobori has probably banned me from the lot from now on.

Josh then took us for coffee at Moe’s Bar on the lot. We talked about working with his old writing partner, his brief stint on SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, Groening, and the behind the scenes stories of some episodes.

By this time, it was 11; we’d been there for an hour. Josh had to hand us over to Chris, which is where I’ll continue with the next post.

(Relevant pictures are being uploaded to Facebook; I can’t get them to post here . . .)

Last night I saw MacHomer for the third time. It was at the California Shakespeare Theatre in Orinda. We headed up for a picnic before the show, which was interrupted briefly as I went to talk to a documentary crew about the show–they’re apparently producing a DVD version of the show to be used in schools and I was called upon to talk about the educational potential of the show, as the Simpsonologist I am.

I had gotten front row seats, only to find that two of those seats had been accorded to the DVD crew; the solution ended up being to move all of the seats down by two.

Rick Miller’s performance was, as usual, amazing. The show is fascinating and funny. Most people have heard that it’s a Simpsonizing of Macbeth, but not everyone knows that it’s full of other popular culture references, self-referentiality, and even political jokes (the newspapers have Quebec separatist jokes). The show routinely incorporates that week’s news and local names as well.

It demonstrates Rick’s mastery of voice work, body work (each character he portrays in the one man show has a distinctive body posture), art work (he does all the music and art for his shows), understanding of the Bard and The Simpsons and theatre conventions, and rapid wit.

Was going to add a picture of Rick and I, but I can’t get the uploader to work . . .

This week started well–Alexander’s finale concert of the year was amazing. His chamber orchestra played beautifully and their guest conductor was quite impressive.

On Tuesday, I got to pick up my very best friend in the world from the airport. That’s right–Denise Du Vernay had arrived so that we could do our book launch! We spent Wednesday afternoon putting together our power point and then, after my third class of the day, we headed over to the venue. Luckily, Ken was there to help set up the a/v system.

We drew 50 people, including a woman who was buying a book for her son–he had a Simpsons-themed wedding. Our presentation went incredibly–all the more incredibly because we didn’t rehearse–we prefer to riff. The audience was engaged and laughing and the bookstore sold out of the copies they brought to sell. For some reason, our fans decided that book launch event require flowers, so we signed books surrounded by roses and assorted beautiful bouquets. We ended up staying in the room with a few close friends drinking margaritas until way after the staff was ready for us to go. (Then I couldn’t get to sleep cause I was so happy.)

Thursday was more restful, though we decided to invite friends for dinner. Dinner led to ice cream, but then the boy said we had to go home so he could do homework. Naturally, that meant we ended up with ten people in the living room drinking and eating my famous ginger-chip cookies until a bit after midnight.

Yesterday was full–I had three classes (including the one I subbed for) and two department meetings. Then we were off to Berkeley to see Flight of the Conchords. I’d never been to the Greek Theatre before–it’s an open air ampitheatre that seats 8000 people and all 8000 were there. Many people showed up late (knowing that the actual concert would start significantly later than it was supposed to), and managed to be surprised that they couldn’t find seats on the stone concrete steppes. (The women in heels must have had a really hard time.) Arj and Eugene (two comics who appear on the show) opened. Eugene is hilarious.

The Conchords made us smile and laugh so much that our faces still hurt. In addition to all the old favorites, they played three new songs, including a lovely medieval number about wooing a lady that I desperately need a copy of now.

Denise then came up with the fantastic idea of pancakes, so we hit the local IHOP before hitting the sheets.

Today we’re about to have Thai Chicken Soup before we go gather jelly beans. Then we’re off to sushi with Matt, Melissa, and Jo.

Of course, it hasn’t all been a joy–we haven’t managed to sleep enough, my new can opener doesn’t work, not all of our loved ones could be with us, and I feel incredibly guilty that I said Brian To in the acknowledgments of the book when I meant to say Brian Wu (incredibly–I would say excessively, except that this guilt is too justified to be called excessive).

It’s been an interesting year–book group decided that this year needed to be better than the last one back in January, but it hasn’t exactly been going that way for most of us. I hit a really low spot a few months ago. Thank you to everyone who put up with me and who supported me. And thank you to the universe for friends and food and teacher award nominations and kind write ups and book events and best friends and brilliant children.

(well, not everything, but many things)
The Insight interview went well–I managed to make the host laugh and when I unexpectedly sang, I was on key!
There’s an article coming out about the book in The Sacramento Bee on Monday. It will probably contain the worst joke I’ve ever written, but I think I’ll survive.
My best friend is flying in in a few days–I haven’t seen her since December 2008, when we signed a book contract with McFarland–now we’ll be doing a book talk and signing together.
This afternoon, I’m giving a short presentation on Teaching with The Simpsons for the faculty mentoring program.
I got to ask Maxine Hong Kingston questions last Tuesday when I led a discussion of The Woman
Warrior for the Roseville Public Library.
However, the best news is that I will be staying in Davis next year & I WILL have a job!