rebeccakuder

The Buckaroo Banzai Principle

“The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension” is near the pinnacle on my list of my top favorite movies, ever, of all time. It’s got everything a girl could dream of: brain surgery, aliens, a cornet solo, an unexplained watermelon, Rasta aliens carrying bubble-wrap glasses to view their leaders’ video-letters, a kid named Scooter who outsmarts the Secretary of Defense, John Bigboote… I could go on.

Those of you who know, know.

But for those of you who don’t know: In the film, Buckaroo Banzai and his band, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, are also stars of a very popular comic book. Early in the movie, Buckaroo and one of his entourage, a hot 80s blonde guy named “Perfect Tommy,” are walking down a cellblock, looking for “Penny Priddy” (played by Ellen Barkin) to bail her out. Someone from another cell reaches toward Perfect Tommy, he dodges the hand, and you hear a female prisoner’s voice say, “Oh my Gawwwwd, Perfect Tommy!”

There’s no room for doubting this world; we just accept that everyone knows who Perfect Tommy is. Of course we hear a woman calling after his tall, handsome, bleach-blonde self as he walks down the hall, because she’s probably just read the latest comic. We trust that someday, “Reno” will tell us later about that mysterious watermelon in the lab.

Meanwhile, NEW JERSEY and RENO NEVADA are searching another lab. They pass
racks of equipment, including a large watermelon clamped into some sort of
apparatus.

NEW JERSEY:
Why is there a watermelon there?

RENO NEVADA:
I’ll tell you later.

My husband and I refer to this phenomenon as “The Buckaroo Banzai Principle.” When a work of fiction is so confident in itself that the reader just enters the world and goes with it. I aim for that in my work, and hope, someday, to achieve it.

(Recently, one of my students informed me of something, so I should probably stop waiting for the sequel, billed at the end of this film thusly:

WATCH FOR THE
NEXT ADVENTURE
OF
BUCKAROO BANZAI

BUCKAROO BANZAI
AGAINST THE
WORLD CRIME LEAGUE

because, among other things, Peter Weller, who played Buckaroo, is getting his PhD in Renaissance Art at UCLA. Oh my Gawwwwd, maybe he really IS Buckaroo!)

rebeccakuder

Who are you this time?

(Quoting Tom Waits before coffee is always good. I could do it in my sleep. Sometimes I dream about Tom Waits; it’s always some sort of message about myself as an artist. But that’s not what I was going to write about.)

I’m teaching this academic writing and discourse class at Antioch University McGregor and yesterday was the in-person kickoff. It’s filled with an amazing, inspiring group of students from several disciplines and programs, but the beauty was in how they found common ground, talking about an address given by Paulo Freire. The address was called, “The Importance of the Act of Reading.” (It’s great, you should read it.)

After the first part of the session, where I’d done a little spiel about Lynda Barry and my academic writing demons, this student asked me, “Rebecca, are you actually Tina Fey?”

I don’t know what prompted the woman’s question, was it because I was being amusing and silly? Was it my eyeglasses? My purple silk disco shirt? Or because I look like Tina Fey? (Do I?) Or maybe because I come across as anxious and neurotic? (Am I?) Whatever the reason, I will take it as a compliment. Tina Fey cracks me up; I think she’s pretty brilliant, though some episodes of “30 Rock” seem to be a bit like the creators are playing with their food, but I will forgive that. Everyone needs to play with their food sometime. And by the way, I wouldn’t mind Tina Fey’s salary.

But I said, “No, I’m Sarah Palin.”

I thought it was a funny and somewhat sophisticated comeback, which I’m not usually known for, but the student just looked at me. Which proves it: I am not Tina Fey. Tina Fey would have gotten a laugh.

rebeccakuder

If men didn’t have a choice…

I am a strong proponent of natural childbirth. This is, in part, because of my own experience as a first-time pregnant woman of “advanced maternal age.” I was 41 when I had my first pregnancy and birth. My daughter was breech. I was able to have a vaginal breech birth. There were several reasons I was able and “allowed” to do this: my supportive husband, my supportive doula (Amy Chavez of Bhakti House), and my supportive (and highly unusual, and old-school) obstetrician (Dr. Stephen Guy in Dayton). And more than all that, which was huge, was the fact that women, if well supported and encouraged, and barring other medical complications, are perfectly capable of giving birth to babies in breech position.

I am working on an essay about the birth, and it’s a subject I’m always interested in. I just read excerpts from an interview with Dr. Stuart Fischbein, a California VBAC-and breech-supportive doctor, who, according to blogger The Well-Rounded Mama, “is in trouble with his hospital for supporting Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) and vaginal breech births.”

Here is an excerpt from her post, his interview:

“There’s a study that came out in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology last December that found the morbidity of a repeat cesarean section is higher than a successful VBAC.

A successful VBAC occurs about 73% of the time. If a hospital bans VBAC, they’re basically telling 73% of women that they have to undergo a surgical procedure that carries more morbidity than if they had a vaginal birth. That’s outrageous to me. It leaves me speechless, and for me that’s no small thing!

The same model applies to breech deliveries. Some women are being told to have a procedure that carries more morbidity than a vaginal delivery. But they are never being told the numbers or given the option.”

I know many women have truly necessary medical interventions to birth healthy babies, and I’m grateful that there are many options for birthing. I’m not saying that everyone must or should have natural birth. But it’s incredibly unfair that so many women aren’t informed or given a choice, and that so many pregnancies end in C-section (a major surgery) for the wrong reasons: because doctors are not trained, because home birth is not legal or accepted, because the medical establishment is more frightened (or motivated) by lawsuit than by the idea of all the secondary problems that can result from unnecessary surgery.

If there were any major surgery like this that was de facto mandatory for men, Congress would be coming up with solutions. There would be legal home birth in every state; midwives would be the norm, and doctors would be schooled in how to support various birth positions.

rebeccakuder

Antioch Writers’ Workshop and Antioch McGregor partnership

There’s a nice article posted in the American Chronicle about the partnership between Antioch University McGregor and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop (AWW). You can read it here.

For my part, the work of the summer course was challenging and exhilarating. I hope to teach it again next year. It’s a really good workshop, too, even if you don’t want academic credit. You can read more about the AWW here.

rebeccakuder

The best place to write

My favorite place to write is Emporium Wines/Underdog Cafe, at 233 Xenia Avenue in Yellow Springs, Ohio. My friend Kurt owns the place, and it’s really the heart of our little hometown. There you will always find coffee and muffins and wine and art and music. It’s like the place in the song from Christopher Guest’s Mighty Wind, “Eat At Joe’s” but it’s real.

I love it here. I write here; I blog and procrastinate here. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by. Be nice to the people here. They are wonderful.