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Why Bo Pelini Must Go

Bo Pelini is the current head football coach at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  I say “current” because I do not believe his tenure there will last much longer.  In the long history of the football school, the head coach of the team has always been a major center of attention and a major campus star.

Bo Pelini never really fit in at Nebraska.  He was proud of being Northeast crass and rude in the middle of the mild Midwest.  He didn’t respect the fans, tradition, or the media.  He loved to throw embarrassing fits of purple rage on the sidelines during nationally televised games.  His teams have played unevenly and unpredictably.  He is incapable of getting his coaching staff to make in-game changes in response to how the other team is adjusting.  Pelini has always appeared lost, and adrift — and furiously angry about being stuck in Nebraska.

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Cancer Kid Jack Hoffman Scores the Winning Nebraska Touchdown!

Today, the University of Nebraska held its annual Spring football game. There’s a mix-and-match of talent on both sides of the football.  Red Team vs. White Team.  The Spring Game is a Lincoln ritual, and everyone loves it because Nebraska, playing Nebraska, means Nebraska always wins!

GO BIG RED!

There were over 60,000 people today at the Spring game in Lincoln, and the highlight of the day was when seven-year-old brain cancer patient Jack Hoffman came off the bench and into the game to score, what turned out to be the winning 69-yard touchdown, for the Red team!

GO BIG JACK!

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Willa Cather and the Lesbian Letters that Were Not

Willa Cather is one of the greatest American Artists to ever set words to paper.  She wasn’t a “Gay Author” as some are wont to claim — she was a public writer who didn’t seem to care much for sexual definitions in her private life away from the page.

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How to Teach a Film Course

Teaching a course on film can be one of the major joys of the educational process as long as both instructor and student are on the same page of expectation.  You cannot spend class time watching the assigned movies.  You must use that precious class time together to discuss and dissect the films frame by frame — but you cannot do that unless and until the students have watched the movies on their own time beyond the classroom.

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Huskers.UNL.edu and Alumni Email

One of the newer chits college and university alumni associations offer to former students is “email for life” even if the former students attended the school in the Dark Age Before There Was Email.  The University of Nebraska-Lincoln — clearly because of their new email deal with the Microsoft devil — now finally offers a university email address that is both worthwhile and valuable.

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Albert Herring: Especially Bright and Pleasing

Years ago, after my stage debut in — The King and I at UNL — I was asked by Roger L. Stephens to pay the cameo role of Harry in the silly Benjamin Britten opera, Albert Herring.  Here’s a brief plot synopsis of the show:

Lady Billows is organizing the annual May Day festival and desperate to find girls for the coveted position of Queen of the May. However, it turns out none of the girls in the village are virgins – disqualifying them. Thus, Lady Billows and Superintendent Budd decide to select a May King instead of a May Queen. Albert Herring, a virgin, is the perfect candidate. Comedy ensues when after winning, Albert disappears. Everyone assumes he is dead when in fact Albert simply took the prize money and went to look for trouble!

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Texas Mud and Racism in The King and I

When I was in grade school at Brownell Elementary, our music teacher was married to a University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Music professor named Roger L. Stephens.  Roger died in February of this year, and his death propelled me back to the fourth grade and his direction of The King and I at UNL’s Kimball Recital Hall.

Continue reading → Texas Mud and Racism in The King and I