Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

writing poetry is fun when you have free time; however, you might not take it seriously when  you have bills piling up in the corner, when  you have a pile of stacked midterms, when you have an article due with the editor breathing down your neck, when the editors are not responding to the lengthy e-mails you send them, or when you find that editors and readers want  a different style than you are selling, and students want a different grading system; you cannot pay the bills without the CVV number, the QR code, or  whatever that thing is; you cannot pay the bills without an exorbitant convience fee that ain't so convenient; editors don't care and students don't care that you have bills due, and creditors don't care that you are done  with their codes and numbers just like you are done  with the numbers on the midterms, or the unreturned phone calls to political campaigns; it is October  in an election year; however, you should take that seriously. wri...

This theme is a dream was my first thought when I started writing about the Phenomena theme because Goblin's style (Simonetti is the keyboardist and one of the primary composers) has become intricately connected to Dario Argento's mise-en-scene. This connection is especially concrete in  Phenomena stemming   from the film's narrative arc to how Argento utilizes music. In this case, the film does not use the complete Goblin score but instead opts for distracting metal songs by Iron Maiden and Motorhead, which I hated the first few times I watched it. They seem out of place, but on subsequent watchings, I started realizing that they add to the film's disorienting effect. In fact, there can never be enough Goblin/Claudio Simonetti tracks because they bolster the narrative so effectively.  Simonetti's theme for Dario Argento's Phenomena includes everything great about Goblin's music. It starts with repeating keyboard patterns that sound like they could also fit ...

Sometimes when you work too much, you achieve a level of clarity that allows you to step back and take stock of your life and the choices you have made. Other times you just feel exhausted and want to take naps and sleep in every day. Of course, you force yourself to get out of bed and go to work because that is the adult thing to do and you have responsibilities. If you are anything like me, your sense of self-worth that is intricately connected to conscientiousness bordering on insanity. Your Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) leads to the strangest behaviors like getting to work early and taking on extra work to maintain a sensible sense of identity.  During these odd days of COVID, I find myself doing less work than usual or struggling to maintain my usual level of obsessive-compulsive writing and grading. I have new habits of grading a few papers a day instead of my standard marathon sessions; however, if I do decide to embark on a marathon grading regimen, I have graded for ...

I used to see myself as an all-too-serious writer when it came to writing fiction. I always tried to write what in the past would have been considered the Great American Novel or those very serious stories that people would read in The New Yorker or The American Mercury . Apparently, I thought of myself as a modernist 1920s-1950s writer telling stories about characters in the vein of Gertrude Stein or J.D. Salinger, exploring the foibles of normal people. I slowly realized that my writing style is close to this vision but not in the way I thought. I am improving my process by writing earthy stories full of humor and straightforward storylines, covering the daily adventures of normal people. I really have no ambitions to write the Great American Novel anymore because I would rather write for myself and the average fiction reader. I am becoming more comfortable in my skin as a writer.  The narrative structures I was creating in more fiction were far different; in fact, I was dabbling...