The Horn...

Long ago, when Clint Eastwood’s very good Charlie Parker bioflick Bird was still in theaters, a musician who had performed on the soundtrack wrote a letter to Rolling Stone magazine. I think he’d gone uncredited for his work somehow, and just wanted to point it out to the magazine, perhaps to a specific writer or reviewer.

And I swear, he wrapped up his letter with something like, “If one doesn’t blow one’s own horn, sometimes one’s horn doesn’t get blown.”

***

I liked the way it read, but every time it’s occurred to me since then to use it I couldn’t shake the notion that it’d sound like a bad masturbation joke.

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Which is all a circuitous and fairly meaningless way to introduce my paper results: I scored 28 out of 30 points (that's about a 93 to you and me), being cited only for a handful of APA style transgressions.

Dr. Kerr’s comments included:

“Congrats. You earned the highest grade in the class on this assignment.”

and

“Brian, wow. You are a very strong writer. A joy to read. Thank you for such a thorough job.”

***

In my frequent moments of worry about this, I could almost hear the consolation from the wife, from anyone: “Hey, she’s a hardass, man. I guess it wasn’t meant for you to go to grad school…”

I worry too much.

***

And I am GLAD to have that bloody thing done and graded!

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Meeting my boy Mike Llorca for lunch. Will be nice to catch up in person for a change. We usually just rely on 200 emails a day.

***

By the way, I'm kinda stunned to get the highest grade. There's a woman named Ruth in the class who is just a terrific writer. From reading her postings on the discussion boards I thought surely she'd be the ace in there.

Funny, in a post I praised her writing, thinking maybe I'd found a kindred spirit. She never replied.

Oh wait, that's not funny at all...