The Last Supper

This just in: I am not dead. Even better, I am finally riding an inland wave, away from the whirlpool of end-of-semester activity. Aside from grading, my last big obligation before tying a bow on the term is a dinner I am hosting tonight for my graduate students, which is doubling as our last class. It's my first gig at making food for 12 people at once (so I'll be channeling Dr. S, findfinishfreedom, The Boyfriend, and the other accomplished kitchen wizards who frequent these parts). There's also a certain poetic symmetry to the event, since we're gathering to discuss our last book for the course, Reading Lolita in Tehran, which itself is about a group of graduate-age students who convene regularly at a professor's house to discuss literature. So now I have to cook, clean, and (um) finish the book.

I'll be back, though, to resume the favorite films countdown, and to report on my recent reimmersion into the moviegoing world: most recently with the jazzy street politics of Dave Chappelle's Block Party, the outré pleasures of Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, and David Jacobson's promising and yet intensely frustrating Down in the Valley. Stay tuned!

Image reproduced from the website for Sugar's Uptown Cabaret in Austin, TX.