My favorite way you died, Jack, was trying to draw your gun on the Joker, who blasted you full of holes in a very creative manner. That was, what, seventeen years ago? The way you died today, Jack, sucked ass. (Well, particularly so for you and yours).

Palance died of natural causes at his home in Montecito, Calif., surrounded by family, said spokesman Dick Guttman. He was 87.

Bah, bah, sis-koom-bah!

Maryland’s Metropolitan University is the subtitle on my brand new — as in, I finally got around to getting it today — student ID. I don’t get that. Towson — the city, not the U. — is a metropolis now? It doesn’t seem that … big. I compared my new ID to the one I got in the fall of 1999. Woah.

My worries about Roots of Rock & Roll evaporated today. A very apologetic prof finally returned to us our papers and midterms — as he explained to us, “I graded my lower-level classes first … but it worked out for your benefit.” I didn’t do so well on the midterm, particularly the essays (when he said he wanted dates, he wasn’t kidding), but I got a respectable 74. That’s not so bad when you figure that out of fifty pages of notes, he asked for ten IDs and two essays. Seriously, it’s like studying a stack of hay looking for a needle, if that makes sense.

The paper, however, turned out considerably better — a solid A (I need to do some math here — midterm is 25% of the grade and the paper is 15%, but attendance/participation is also 5% and I should be scoring all 5% points there…), but I’m pretty sure this means I’ve got a B so far for the class). I was very worried about the paper, particularly considering the opening paragraph. Imagine my relief to see his note at the bottom of the first page, “Great Opening!” And, since you asked, here that opening is:

My friend Jason is a huge fan of anything even remotely related to Johnny Cash, so when I told him I was reading a biography of the Carter family – into which Cash married – he made me promise that I would lend him the book when finished. Waking up the other night after a nightmare in which a quack doctor replaced my testicles with those of a goat’s, I don’t know that any book, no matter how interesting, is worth the imagery that still, several days later, makes me cringe before going to bed.

As I told the prof after class, “I wasn’t sure if this opening would fail me or not” (I didn’t add, “particularly since I essentially have an introductory paragraph just following that introduction”). Anyway, going by his response, I’m going to have some fun with the second paper for this class. I mean, y’know, I’m going to take it seriously, but I’m not going to be as stodgy for most of the paper, y’know? I hope so because I sure don’t.

If a semester has “humps”, and midterms are the first, the second is quickly approaching. I’ve got my big Chaucer paper due on Tuesday: The Knyght & The 14th Century Christian Warrior. I’ve been spending time at Cook gathering resources and links to research papers. I hope to have an outline done over the weekend, then spend most of Monday in one of those rocktacular study nooks typing, quoting, and MLAing.

Also? Apparently, a pen burst in my backpack, so my laptop’s case is smeared with blue ink. Joy.