Like a Cold Compress for a Basketball Fever

O pen invitation: If you're reading this, you're in time to join in this year's NCAA pick'em fun. Prepared to fill out a bracket against the best in all blogspace? For the third year, I've set up a tournament group at Yahoo! for the upcoming NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship Tournament. You are invited to join the Bloggers' Mad Dance III (ID# 37991). It's all free, no $ involved (but do bring your braggadocio). Flip me an email behind the back if you have any questions: dmueller at earthwidemoth dot com. All are welcome, bloggers and non-bloggers alike. Group capacity: 1 winner and 49 losers "champions at heart." At stake: admiration, glory, etc. And of course you can promote this to anybody you'd like to join (on your blog, via email, whatever); pass it on, in other words.

Yahoo! Tournament Pick'em
Group: Bloggers' Mad Dance III (ID# 37991)
Password: ewm
Set your picks after bracket assignments on Sunday, March 12. Sign up before the start of round one, five minutes before tip-off this Thursday, March 16.

Phonographies

B ut that's not what I went to the bookstore for. I stopped down there to purchase a copy of Weheliye's Phonographies (a late arrival, absent from the shelves when the semester started). It's assigned for Afrofuturism in two weeks, and as I've been trying to maximize break for getting a jump on the end-o-sem workpile, I read through the library's copy of the book, finishing it last night. But it's good enough to own. In fact, if the "DJing is writing, writing is DJing" plug in Miller's Rhythm Science resonated for you, Weheliye has an entire chapter on the mix (c. 3). His opening chapters (the Intro and c. 1) also have a few good pieces on the record's function as an inscribed sonic medium. There's much here to elaborate up the uncanny ties between writing and phonography, to extend them, etc. The second chapter, "I am, I be," links sound to identity, working across issues of opacity and "sonic conjuring" to categories and constellations of the subject (also echoes W.'s article on black subjectivity, the optic/phonic and posthumanism in Social Text). The third chapter: DuBois and the mix. c. 4: sound's construction of space, read through Ellison's "Living with Music," and Darnell Martin's I Like It Like That. And c. 5 reads the circulation of the diasporic motif in songs by The Fugees, Advanced Chemistry, and Tricky and Martina. The "Outro" has a bit to say about about his methods and also, drawing on Massumi briefly, makes a case for affirmative methods: "'techniques which embrace their own inventiveness and are not afraid to own up to the fact that they add (if so meagerly) to reality'" (208). Chapters 4 and 5 stand out from the others as places where Weheliye gives readings; his approach in those chapters is somewhat less theoretical than in the others, aligning with more literary studies or cultural studies re-presentations of sources. And yet, I expect to return to c. 4 for his arguments about "sounding space/spacing sound" and the issues of space remade by music, noise. For a more careful review, read this.

Overstayed

I just returned from the SU bookstore. They have tables heaped up with Orange t-shirts; the place is all a'bustle with game-day celebrants grabbing up enough tees for the family. The two shirts: (in white) 2006 Big East Tournament Champions and (in orange) Overrated. I'm all for Jee-Mack putting on one of the 'Overrated' shirts after SU won the conference title last weekend, but I can't say it's a shirt I'd feel confident wearing during tonight's game against Texas A&M. I think SU will win the game, but the 'Overrated' shirt is a jinx of all jinxes, if ever a sporting jinx could be proved, that is. The thing is, Jee-Mack was brilliant in the Big East tourney, and Boeheim might've been right about SU not winning ten flocking games this season without him. Just to keep things in perspective, however, SU didn't have the greatest of seasons until last week. Granted, like my coach used to remind us (after those rare wins), you're only as good as your last game. I'd wait until the end of the NCAAs to boast about Jee-Mack's rating. He's one of the best SU players for his career, and he had an astounding streak of success last week, but they still have games remaining. And if he's awf against A&M or LSU, I can't say I'd want to be wearing an 'Overrated' shirt when their season comes to wraps.