American Association of University . . . blah, blah, blah

Another weekend, another conference. After my friend Jim Rogers attended this same conference some years ago he told me the crowd was the bloodiest boringest group of navel-gazers he had ever tried to party with. Or something like that.

So here we are at the Newcomer's Reception and I've agreed to be a mentor, or newcomer greeter, so I'm trekking around with our smart new intern with the new PhD in American Studies, greeting people, blah, blah, and I tell him about a sister press that might be a perfect place for him to look for a job come this fall. I introduce him to an acquisitions editor from there and that editor tells the intern they really don't hire people with PhDs because usually they're the kind of people who have no idea what to do when they get out of grad school so they fall into publishing.

Then we're at the plenary address dinner--of course, they're serving chicken--and there is more posturing and people looking at each other's chests where the nametags fall and someone from Florida yells out, "Hey this hotel doesn't have Bravo. Did anyone see Top Chef last night?"

Alrighty, then. New friends. Now we're talking.

It reminded me of how my daughter, who knows my stern or ticked-off'ed looks all so well, will try to catch me up with a warm comment or a hilarious story just to see my tense face break out in a smile.


(said daughter hamming it up!)