New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii isn’t nearly as impressive as Super Mario Galaxy was. SMG delivered true innovation. NSMB is only throwing new power-ups and multiplayer capabilities at us, leaving me wanting.

Finally, the Wii Fit is giving us what we’ve been craving in the form of Wii Fit Plus. Being able to customize your workouts and put together a plan is what we’ve been asking for, but they have also added the ability to track calories burned—a good motivator.

The MotionPlus is an add-on to the Wiimote aimed at making it more precise. While the presentation itself is impressive, the job it does isn’t. It amounts to a hardware bug fix, bundled with another family game. Wii Sports Resort uses the Wii MotionPlus to add another level of realism to games like archery and basketball.

Casual gamer 3, core gamer ?

As Evan said, “It’s nothing different. it’s just doing it better.”

These presentations are so scripted and awkwardly acted, it’s damn near painful to watch.

Announcing Red Steel 2 isn’t exactly a good thin, considering how the first one turned out.

New RPG games: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Mario & Luigi (where they fight Bowser, literally, from within), GoldenSun.

Author James Patterson giving his work over to the gaming world.

Ugh. The “female gaming for preteens and the 20-something set” vote comes in the form of a fashion design game for the DS. Christ almighty, this is one industry that sure as hell hasn’t caught up.

It’s the same formula.
First, women aren’t considered at all.
Then, they’re pandered to, both in the games created and live competitions.
Eventually, there won’t be any distinction between female Halo gamers and male in competitions, just gamers.

Once I’m done with women in rock, I’m moving on to gaming as my source of scholarship.

Back to the presentation…

More info on the DSi, including games with user-created content and the addition of the camera and interwebz.

Now, this is my first time watching E3, so I might not be hip to the purpose or lingo. However, about 95% of this presentation can be reserved for a shareholders’ convention at the local Marriott, not the big stage of E3, much less being featured without commercial interruption on G4TV.

Me? I’d rather be Wiebe Watching.
http://e3.g4tv.com//e32009/g4onthefloor/wiebecam/

Nice little sneak peek at the Wii Vitality Sensor: a sensor that measures both pulse and other electronic impulses your body sends. The applications? Nintendo Global President Iwata seems to think that it can bring an element of stress relief instead of excitement brought on by traditional gaming. meh. We’ll see.

Holy crap. They just announced another Super Mario Galaxy title: now with more green dinosaur.

Fuck. YES. Thank. GOD. Took them long enough to get to the “wow.” The applause heard in the showroom was a mix of excitement and relief. Yoshi is an old friend that’s been gone far too long.

Reggie’s moved on to talking about other publishers’ games for the Wii: The Conduit, a new Resident Evil game, Dead Space: Extraction. They want to cater to the more hardcore gamers that look for blood and dismemberment. Nintendo has an offering of its own: the OG bitch herself, Samus, is back in Metroid: Other M, for release in 2010.

Evan: “Meh.”

Me: “I want Super Mario Galaxy 2. And to paint every Mario character in the presentation.”

I’ll reserve judgment until I see what the other conferences today have in store. As a dilettante, I’m more of a relative judiciary.

I did it!

Yep. I finally got my graduation on.

I’m getting more and more used to the idea of not being in school, but it hasn’t stopped me from looking. So far, my doctoral prospects are mostly in the northeast. Moving is a daunting prospect, something that Evan and I probably don’t need to think about just yet.

We have work to do.

As luck would have it, we both got phone calls from the same venue looking for Crimson to play a show. Thankfully, they had a date available in the small period Brian would be back in town. We had a rehearsal last night without him, and it felt fun to just play the tunes. No pressure, joking all the way, finding it hard to sing angrily with all the smiles.

…it MFing pours.

I crossed everything off on the list in the previous post, mailed things out, and felt free.

I then got an e-mail titled “thesis issue.” Apparently, my advisor thought I was using MLA format and gave me revisions as such. I was working with APA format from the online databases I used. In the bibliography, then, there was a mix of styles, which I had to fix.

$20-$30, some ink, and a barrage of e-mails later, a new and revised edition is now in somebody’s Cambridge office, hopefully getting approved.

In other news, I am teaching my College Survival Skills course in the summer, and Intro to Women’s Studies in the fall. I’m trying to schmooze my way into some other teaching scenarios. According to Evan’s handy budget Excel spreadsheet, I’d need to teach 3 classes a semester at the Miami Dade rate in order to quit my secretary position.

Once I get my transcripts reflecting that I actually have a Master’s degree [see above], the schmoozing will be a tad bit easier.

As for the band? Well, the lean period’s almost here. Our drummer teaches drumline for a touring group during the summer, which leaves us without a drummer from May-August. In previous years, this would be when Evan and I would do most of our writing. Since our keytarist (and super-close friend) is staying behind, we might take the opportunity to do some light gigging if we can. I’m one song away from a full-length album, and it would be nice to have the money ready to go when the time comes.

The logical next step is to get a doctorate. It just is. And it has been for a while. Unfortunately, the offerings are not what I had imagined, and the more I thing about it, the less comfortable I feel with settling. A Ph.D. is not something I should just settle for.

That being said, I’m incredibly squeamish about not being in school in the fall. Other than the spring between undergrad and grad school, I haven’t had a break from courses or research since I began this educational journey at 4 or 5. It’s scary to me, but I have a feeling that many things will benefit from this respite, and I’m trying to see nothing but good things ahead.

• Early rock women PowerPoint <—I totally feel like I’m going to phone this in.
• Women of today PowerPoint
• Final exam (50 questions)
• Copies of the feedback forms <—Nixed this part from the final project
  
• Revise thesis context paper <—In progress
• Burn all files to CD<—Tomorrow
• Print all PowerPoints<—-Tomorrow
• Get them bound at Kinko’s<—Tomorrow or Monday
• Mail out with CD to Lesley U. <—Monday, Monday, Monday.

On the to-do list of things left for my thesis submission…

• Early rock women PowerPoint
• Women of today PowerPoint
• Final exam (50 questions)
• Copies of the feedback forms
• Revise thesis context paper
• Burn all files to CD
• Print all PowerPoints
• Get them bound at Kinko’s
• Mail out with CD to lesley U.

In spite of all this, I managed to add one more thing to my plate: An audition to be in a Broadway musical. My 8th grade self is totally squealing on the inside, and my 23-year-old rock self is totally psyched. What show, you ask?

Try this on for size:  SpiderMan. On Broadway.

The audition is this Thursday, and I’m pretty excited. it’s not just the idea of auditioning, but the idea of driving four hours in the middle of the night to do something completely self-serving. I plan on having fun regardless of whether or not I actually have a shot.

Back to work.

And one to go sometime in March. With enough documentation, these four lectures will be more than enough for the directed study. So far, the evaluation sheets I’ve received from the students have been positive and constructive. The historians want more history, “um” is my favorite vocal filler, and I apparently “rock.”

I’d say I did pretty well.

I already typed out my bibliography for my thesis. It’s a step that would’ve nagged at me later, and I’d much rather focus on content than minute front and back matter details by the end of the month.

Which reminds me. Anyone know how to cite a syllabus I found online as a source in APA format? Kthnxbai.

I send out my first draft on March 15. All 25-30 pages of it. Because of the lectures, I haven’t necessarily started on my creative component yet. I have the entire history of women in rock outlined on my dry-erase board at home, but I’m having a hard time synthesizing it into actual Powerpoints and course material. At first, I had tried to divide it up by lecture, with each lecture meriting its own presentation. How do I start it? How do I know where to end it? How long are these classes going to be, really, with things like attendance and project explanations taking up class time?

I decided to divide them up by week. 15 Powerpoints instead of 30, and it gives me more flexibility for discussion. If I don’t cover something completely on Monday, I can pick up right where we left off on Wednesday.

Knock off lecture times for solo presentations, the midterm, and the final, it’s actually more like 12 Powerpoints. That helps.

I entered school with the fear that this wouldn’t be considered valid work. The monstrous task laid out before me, plus the feedback I’ve received, are making me think much, much different.

Crimson just added two more shows to the calendar: Thursday, Jan. 29 and Thursday, February 26.

We also added a new guitar player. Welcome, D-Torr! I’m looking forward to the band sounding a lot fuller.

On top of the new gigs and guitar player, we have a new schedule. It looks like Mondays are good times for both bands (Crimson and The Big Tasty) to rehearse. We’ve decided that each band would rehearse every other Monday. This will not only make the bands more solid, but it might just get the creative juices flowing. I know I definitely need to write a couple of more songs before we get the full-length album started.

As for grad school, I’ve gotten a little head start on things. I have two classes this semester: my thesis, and my directed study.

For my directed study, I am guest lecturing in four FIU Women’s Studies courses. For each lecture, I am adapting the topic of women in rock to the course it’s in. For example, in the Gender and Technology course, I’m going to concentrate on the idea of how Pro Tools and Auto-Tune have affected the music industry (and whether there’s a gender discrepancy).

Because I only have four lectures booked, I wasn’t sure if that would be enough to warrant 3 credits. I decided to volunteer as part of the Young Women’s Committee for Diversity and Empowerment for the first ever Miami Beach Women’s Conference. This thing s, in a word, a clusterfuck. There’s too much to synthesize right now, but I’ll give you all the dirty details and scathing e-mails soon enough.

Then, there’s my thesis. Depending on financial aid, I’ll decide whether it’ll be a 3 or 6-credit thesis. That affects the number of pages and number of sources. I’ve gotten a head start and outlined it, as well as acquired enough sources for the 6-credit thesis, just in case. I’m actually going to have fun with this—it reassures me that this is the right path for me to follow.

After a discussion and some tamales at the Cheesecake Facotry, we decided, as a band, to become a band. Not that we weren’t before, of course. Now we’re going to talk the talk, since we’ve been walking the walk all these years.

Elisa Meléndez is now the lead singer of Crimson, not a solo artist.

It feels good, and I think the guys are a lot more into it now. It saves a lot of space on the flyer, as well as that pesky mispronunciation issue that got us to having this discussion in the first place.

I’ve grown to calling ourselves “the lady and her gentlemen,” and it’s sticking.

As our first act of band-ness, we’re having a photo shoot tomorrow. This couldn’t come at a worse time in my monthly cycle, as I’m bloated, irritable, and want to eat everything in sight. Unfortunately, any latent body image issues are instantly magnified because of all of the above.

I tried on a shirt I wore about three years ago, and I could see where my lower stomach protruded underneath. No amount of sucking it in or creative leans could hide it. Same with the matching pants.  I have to try hard to tell myself that it’s the erogenous areas–the supposed good stuff–that has expanded over the years. My breasts and ass have gotten larger, but I always blame the stomach as the source of the weight gain.

I am torn. If I accept this fate, and purchase new clothes to accomodate my expansion, I fear turning lazy and growing increasingly out of shape. What’s the use? I can just keep buying bigger sizes to hide it. If I do not accept this fate, I use these clothes as a reminder of once was and as inspiration to get back to that. But what if I can’t?

As soon as school hit, it really hit. Something’s due every week, and it’s a mixture of dealing with the present and preparing for the future (thesis and directed study).

There’s good news, though. For my directed study, I’m going to present sections of my Women in Rock course in some Women’s Studies classes at FIU. I’m really excited about it and can’t wait to begin. With some creative networking, I may be able to eventually be a visiting professor once I get my M.A.

As for the music, things are really looking up. Played a show a month ago that turned out pretty well. Playing a show tonight on a nice, big outdoor stage. People are forced to listen to me as they walk into the bar, and I hope I can make a couple of people stick around instead. It’s a show featuring our new sub for the drummer. It was weird when he showed up to the rehearsal with drum charts. I never really thought of my music as worthy or complicated enough to warrant writing down on paper, so it was an odd feeling. I wonder what the drum parts look like all written out.

He’s working out, thank goodness. He’s diligent and very no-nonsense when it comes to rehearsal. Time is precious, and he’ll start clicking the drumsticks while we’re in mid-sentence sometimes. It’s good, though. Makes me feel like this is not just fun, but something worth working towards.

Between CD sales and ticket sales for tonight’s show (as well as a very generous donation by a coworker), we have enough for a photo shoot. Evan insists on getting a second guitar player beforehand, but I don’t exactly see him rushing to put up flyers at UM anytime soon.

We have no other shows booked for now, so we’ll probably have a break until next year. It’ll be nice, though, since we’re planning on moving into a new apartment. Fun times.

A few things go into show prep that can easily be construed as playing into my stereotype.

What Evan calls “advancing the show” takes place, which is when I call the promoter and ask about any last-minute details that need to be worked out (guest lists, how the band is played, what time we go on, what we need to bring, etc.). Depending on the gender of the promoter, I tend to shift my voice and mannerisms in order to seem more appealing. Unfortunately, it gets me a lot of “sweetie,” baby,” “hon,” and the like.

I’ve come to let it roll off of my back. The more I learn about gender roles, the more I see my own personal political pendulum shift. I started at the first extreme of denial, then swung to the other extreme of absolute offense and over-sensitivity. At the moment, I have swung back to center, which I consider a heightened awareness of gender roles without getting easily offended.

I find that I shift into my stereotype, just as they are shifting into the role of big, strong, powerful promoter. It’s a game we play, and I have come to excel at it. When it comes time to step on the stage, the layers are peeled back to reveal the warrior woman within. Then, it’s back to schmoozing, seeming sexually available and approachable. Then, it’s back to being a wife, friend, and grad student at the nearest Denny’s.

Other than “advancing the show,” there is promotion. I’ve made a generic flyer for my cubicle, and all I do is put a piece of paper with the next show on it. There’s MySpace and Facebook, where I post daily bulletins and update my status, respectively. I remember the good ol’ days when I lived at the dorms and had multiple classes a week. I fashioned a sandwich board out of two styrofoam boards and duct tape, painted with , “Rock Star Elisa Meléndez Has a Show!” on the front, and “Ask Me About My Show” on the back. Those were the days. Some FIU alums still remember me as “the girl with the sign.”

When it comes to promotion, I also tend to dress a little different the week of the show. I supplement my usual work look with bigger hair and heavier make-up, something that can signify that I’m more than an average secretary.

…I also need to touch up my red. That’s partly show prep, partly because I’ve noticed my tips getting orange on me.

Sometimes I tend to think that I have an overdeveloped sense of self-analysis.

It’s probably because I’d rather spend my therapy money on make-up, snack foods, and things to feed my geekdom.