• X is talking. I have something on my leg.
• What’s that smell?
• Look at the fool. Buying frozen garlic bread.
• I wonder if B bought the “special package” we discussed. Or was it C I asked? And did we say “special?”
  
• Again with the Styx! Why!
• Making mashed potatoes. Drinking water.
• No one sings like Michael McDonald. No one, I said.
• Is she buying frozen scrambled eggs?
• Of course I said potato.
• The door is unlocked.
• Round and round. Round and round. Round and….uh oh.
• That person is buying seventeen frozen pizzas.

The New York Times is always ready with a Dylan story. Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric is a collection of once again lost photographs paired with Dylan’s prose-poems. If most of Dylan’s work is available, there always seems to be a chunk of work lost, waiting to be found. Sometimes, the importance of the archive seems to be losing it for awhile, and then refinding it. In this sense, archives are religious spaces. Lost. Found again. Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric as a found again archive is interesting in that it mirrors the basic writing assignment (write a caption to this photo). But why prose-poetry? I would rather not be bound to the literary (Dylan always seemed to imagine himself as poet and not just song writer). In place of prose-poetry, annotation. In place of poetry, Creem styled mockery. In place of prose, commentary. In place of Hollywood, Columbia, Missouri (or your own hometown). In place of. The art of substitution. Cut and paste culture makes such gestures the norm.

Google is our largest archive where everything is already lost until it is found. This photo, found via Google and hosted in Flying Shoes’ public gallery (alter ego names the norm in online photo storage) is of Columbia, Missouri, I-70 rest stop, May 27, 2007. It is metaphorically cut and pasted into this blog space (links acting as pastes).  Like a Barthes-ian punctum, my eyes settle on the car. Parked in some lot. Away from the McDonald’s. Hubcaps missing. Inside, either someone is dead or in a fight. A drug deal forgotten. The buyer waits and waits. And waits. NPR station fades in and out to the sound of Daniel Shore on a Sunday morning. A cigarette ash falls into the torn upholstery.

Maybe I can’t get away from the prose after all…..All captions are stories. All archives are captioned. Commentary sometimes is too much prose to resist.

Me: Oh boy. Look at this post linked to from InsideHigherEd’s Around the Web. It’s our old crazy buddy. Oh boy. Yet another “Don’t people realize how hard professors work in the summer?” bit. I’m going to attack her.

Wife: Give it up. That schtick is old.

Me: What schtick?

Wife: The attack shtick. You got to get some new material.

Me: But she’s calling “correspondence” work. Correspondence? I exchange at least 50 emails a day. Who cares?  She’s fretting over a couple emails sent over the entire summer. Oh boy. Professors work hard in the summer. Right. I’m on 12 month contract and I’m not complaining. “I wrote an article.” Wow. One article. I’m going to attack.

Wife: Let it go.

Me: (Looking down at keyboard). Dawg. You’re right.

A few mintues later.

Me: I really want to attack….

A relationship that has always been online. . . . We are media beings.

• Friendster. Bob Graham was my friend. Howard Stern was my friend. Jenny’s real life friend Joey was a victim of our Friendster mocking. I reported everyone’s profile as “abuse.” And I reported his as well. Eventually I was kicked off. I never found out why. Maybe for all those reports.
• Blogger. I must have made fifty fake blogs. All with fake pics and profiles. Hesaidshesaid was my favorite. Thomas went there and clicked on “interests.” He then emailed us with some comments about what she was interested in.
• Leach blogging. My partner invented this one. She’d take over a blog’s comments and leave little narratives of her day. I left a few at Steven Johnson’s blog. He never responded. She was The Grim Leacher. I was The Leach Boyz.
• Facebook. All the faculty were late to the game. Thomas wrote us: “Get on Facebook, I’m on now.” One time I logged in as Jenny and sent a friend request to a person we often mock. Then Jenny quit Facebook for several months after that. I tried to jam it with 1,000 applications. It didn’t jam. I added people with dirty names. Then came the thread from the Facebook crew to stop posting fake ads in the marketplace (”For sale, rock, roll not included”). Lately I’ve been forming Groups that say “Don’t Join this Group.” People keep joining anyway.

I kind of miss Kwame. He is, after all, the hip hop mayor. And I am, after all, the author of “Hip Hop Pedagogy.” If we had enjoyed a sit down in Detroit during my five years there, I’m sure we would have found plenty to talk about. Madlib. Wu Tang. Or any record that just dropped.

But now Kwame is in jail. And I have missed my chance to chat. Most likely he will be out quickly - if he isn’t already - but should I be seen hanging out with convicts? I am, after all, a writing program director. I try to avoid scandals. And wear sandals.

Kwame violated his bond by going to Canada. When I would go to Canada (Windsor) it was for pizza. The Detroit Metro kids go to Canada on Friday night because the drinking age is lower than in the U.S. Kwame was trying to sell parts of the tunnel to Canada. Do you need to show up in person to sell a tunnel? I think we all know what it looks like and where it can be found. I have driven through it many times and I find it to be a fine tunnel. A little crowded on Friday night, but fine nonetheless. If I had the money, I’d buy the tunnel. It’s a good tunnel.

Poor Kwame. Nothing goes right for this guy. Car scandals. Affairs. One earring. He played for a minor college football team better know for its marching band than its on the field performance. You got to give this guy some love. He is, after all, under “tremendous strain and scrutiny.”

After all.

• Ted Nugent
• Gene Simmons
• Jack Kerouac
• Captain Beefheart
• Bert (from Bert and Ernie)
• Jessie Ventura
• Allen Ginsberg
• Billy Joel

The Florida School collection is on its way to a book store near you. Order your copies at Parlor Press!