Media Alert: L.A. Times hearts UCR + Student Blog Links

Bear in a Highlander outfit! OK folks. I'm gonna try to force myself to work with short form here as other "true bloggers" do, and post a few links to keep y'all amused until my next dispatch from Inlandia. In fact, the next installment is most likely to be a brief review of the new anthology of writing from and about the smogtastic empire called Inlandia, edited by Gayle Wattawa. For those of you still waiting for a review of Laura Dern's twitchy half-lit face in David Lynch's Inland Empire, you're going to have to wait, since I can't quite motivate to see it. The guys in bunny-suit heads--yes, just the heads--are throwing me off. (For the curiosa, a trailer is embeded in a comment on one of my previous posts, "Show Me the Mizithra" thanks to the original mediashepherd and a former HighlanderBear himself, Alex W).

I also want at some point (apropos last week's "Valet of the Dolls" post on the L-Word) to address Alice's search for "papi" pronounced in true white grrrl fashion like "Pappy" of Poopdeck fame. Alice winds her way through the seedy, travesti and drag king infested clubs, dive bars and taquerias of what seem to be Echo Park or East L.A., or whatever their equivalents are in Vancouver. Lots of neon palm trees, and oh-so Jack Twist in "Brokeback." But I digress...

MEDIA ALERT: Actually, the Kangagi alerted me to this news item, since I've been too busy workin' workin' day and night. The venerable "Los Angeles Times" published an article on MLK day about UC Riverside as the choice institution for many Latino and Black students in California. Here's their lead, and the link (just click on the title):

For many minorities, UC Riverside is the campus of choice -
By Richard C. Paddock, Times Staff Writer
January 15, 2007
When it was time for Woodrow Curry to decide where to go to university, he had several choices. An African American with good high school grades and test scores, he was accepted by UC Berkeley, among other schools.

But Berkeley is not where he ended up. Spurning one of the nation's premier public universities, he picked UC Riverside. Although Riverside is sometimes scorned as the lowliest of UC campuses, it offered Curry something that Berkeley did not: a place where he felt welcome.

Lots to say about this piece and its tone, and lots of love to spread to the folks I know at UCR who make it such an amazing, if ridiculously underappreciated institution. But I'll refrain for now. On to more links...

In the vein of letting others do the talking/blogging, I've assigned "blog reading journals" to my students in the undergrad English seminar I'm teaching this semester on "Race and Sexuality in the Suburbs." Thus far they've been great fun. Here are links to some of the more loquacious of the bunch.

The Boy from Glendale
Nuclear Sluts Have Thoughts Too
Victor's Tree of Knowledge
Uffish Thoughts
The Sexy Suburbs
Rhuminations
Confessions of a Token

And finally, another Riv-uh-saiiiiiid! shout-out to my Inland Empress sistah, J-Sto. She's going to do the hetero thing and get married, even though I always thought she'd pull a Charlize or Brangelina and wait until "everyone who wants to marry in this country can." Keep your eyes peeled in Riverside's very own "Press Enterprise" for the announcement. I'll be the big lezzie "bridesman" wearing "summer formal" seersucker. Above is a preview of the bridezilla-to-be rocking the mic with Starship's "WE BUILT THIS CITY" at Virgil Village's Smog Cutter. (Let's hope she doesn't retaliate with any Sierra Middle School yearbooks of shame).