It's not yet noon, and I have:
What I haven't done? More than 17 pages of actual reading for my papers. Let alone writing. I may not get better at writing or allaying my anxiety about writing, but damn do I get better at strategies of deferment all the time!
- Looked through every single Amazon.com and MLA bibliography entry for "American Idol" and "reality television."
- Okay -- side note. What is up with there being no publications at all on American Idol? This is still really freaking me out. The show has been on the air since 2002 -- how is it even remotely possible that no one has written an academic book about it? How??? Am I somehow looking in the wrong place? Am I typing in the wrong search words? That's why I did the Amazon search -- it occured to me that maybe, for some crazy-ass reason, I just wasn't turning these books up on MLA or ABELL, but would if I went to the popular press -- but no. No academic books on American Idol there either! And precious few on reality television in general either place. Why on earth would this be? Surely the cultstudies establishment (ha! you are establishment, cultstudies. accept it) couldn't possibly be neglecting such an obviously important phenomenon to such a degree!
Most of the articles I can find are either on Big Brother (a phenomenon in the UK and Australia, but far less so in the US) and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Now, I love Queer Eye, but I also recognize that it is primarily broadcast on Bravo...the network for FancyPants Hipster Intellectuals. That fairly clearly separates it from the kind of SuperPopulist mainstream phenomenon that American Idol is. I'm also really not interested at all in examining reality shows as re. identity politics -- how "good" of a representation of queer culture is Queer Eye; how heteronormative is The Bachelor, etc. Yes, I guess some people need to do that work, but that's not at all what I'm looking for. If somebody out there has some idea where all the work that I should be turning up is, please let me know! Apparently there've been some papers at Media Studies conferences, but I can't find them in published form either.
(Also, if there really isn't any, that's pretty damn exciting. For me. )
- Okay -- side note. What is up with there being no publications at all on American Idol? This is still really freaking me out. The show has been on the air since 2002 -- how is it even remotely possible that no one has written an academic book about it? How??? Am I somehow looking in the wrong place? Am I typing in the wrong search words? That's why I did the Amazon search -- it occured to me that maybe, for some crazy-ass reason, I just wasn't turning these books up on MLA or ABELL, but would if I went to the popular press -- but no. No academic books on American Idol there either! And precious few on reality television in general either place. Why on earth would this be? Surely the cultstudies establishment (ha! you are establishment, cultstudies. accept it) couldn't possibly be neglecting such an obviously important phenomenon to such a degree!
- Finished raking and bagging and curbsiding all the leaves in the whole yard including the nastynastysideyard which is basically just a bunch of mud.
- Run two miles.
- Showered
- Played "Sing a Song" and "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game" on my ukulele. (I love this so much! Love it! As soon as I get really good at these two I think I will record them with my digital camera and post me playing and singing them. That is how much I love playing them on the ukulele.)
- Vacuumed the study and my room.
- Fixed a funny napped spot on the rug where Bunny snatched at it with her teeth.
- Done laundry
- Changed my sheets.
What I haven't done? More than 17 pages of actual reading for my papers. Let alone writing. I may not get better at writing or allaying my anxiety about writing, but damn do I get better at strategies of deferment all the time!
Labels: quotidian, the_profession, tv, ukulele
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