(First off, I wanna get something off my chest: I'm currently wearing headphones and listening to music while typing up this post, mainly so I'm not distracted by my 5-year-old niece who's playing the Wii right in front of me in the living room. Yes, I'm cheating but you know what? I'm okay with that because I didn't listen to any music whatsoever yesterday. Heck, I wasn't even tempted, which was something of a discovery for me. Anyway, onto the blog...)
After a late night with friends (and sleeping in till after noon at a buddy's house) I got home around 1:30PM and went straight to my room. I didn't listen to the radio at all on the way home, so it was a nice, quiet drive, which can be good for the mind every once and awhile. But I conveniently forgot to turn off my mobile notifications for Twitter and ESPN fantasy sports, so I was still getting updates on my iPhone, which was totally breaking the rules, I know. After sending a few tweets (Hey, it was just a few!), I turned off my Twitter notifications but I still forgot to turn off my ESPN fantasy ones, which turned out to be a good thing (more on that later).
I spent the next five hours or so cooped up in my room reading my online students' discussion posts, which centered on Mark Bauerlein's "The Dumbest Generation" book, the same discussion that I conducted with my face-to-face students earlier in the week. As you would imagine, the discussion was heated but in a good, productive way. If anything, Mr. Bauerlein's book, however flawed and misguided it may be, really gets the discussion juices flowing with my Mass Comm students. During that whole time I didn't listen to any music on my laptop, nor did I check my Twitter or Facebook. I did take recreational breaks by reading magazines that I had bought the previous day at the bookstore. In fact, I loaded up on some novels, too, as I plan to do some more leisure reading since that's something I just don't do as much anymore. I will admit, though, that I didn't turn off my notifications for "Words With Friends," so the eight games I had going were also providing me with the occasional "digital diversion" as Mr. Bauerlein would say. What can I say? I'm as weak as any other "digital native" or "digital immigrant" out there.
Getting back to the reason why I was glad I didn't turn off my ESPN fantasy sports notifications: I would've never known that Detroit Tigers pitching ace Justin Verlander was throwing a perfect game against the Toronto Blue Jays! I had to watch such a historic feat since perfect games are so rare. Perfect games are when the pitcher not only doesn't allow a hit but also doesn't walk or hit a batter, thus retiring 27 straight hitters in a row. So I tuned in to the MLB Network for live coverage and saw Verlander lose his perfect game by walking a batter BUT he still was able to throw a no-hitter, his second (!) of his major league career. What's sort of ironic here is that last year his teammate Armando Galarraga had his perfect game taken away from him by a bad call by the 1st base umpire in the 9th inning. Even the umpire, distraught and fighting back tears, said he blew the call to reporters after the game. Anyway, I would've been kicking myself if I hadn't been able to watch the no-hitter unfold. Besides, I didn't see any of the NBA playoff games that day, so at least I deprived myself of that particular "digital diversion."
As for the nightcap, I decided to have the Pacquiao/Mosley fight at my house and I invited my family and friends. To help subsidize the cost to buy the PPV fight, everyone pitched in some money. I mean, PPVs these days set you back $65! I remember when they were around $45-50, which is still a lot but $65?! Yikes! So there were about 20 people here at my house for the fight, which was pretty good despite there not being as much fireworks as everyone would've liked. Mosley had never been knocked out before (and that stat still holds, by the way), so people shouldn't be too surprised that there weren't a lot of knockdowns. Pacquiao won in an unanimous decision over Mosley who seemed to fight to not get knocked out and was on the defensive the whole fight. After the fight I went over to a friend's house just down the road for a going-away party and ended the night there before returning home and going to bed.
In sum, the thing that struck me the most about my experiences Saturday was that I didn't give in to listening to any music whatsoever. I didn't even forget to turn off my radio whenever I was in the car, which also surprised me since that's usually the first thing that pops up when you start your car. Not me; as soon as I started my car I immediately made sure the radio didn't come on. And when I was on my laptop reading and commenting on my online students' posts not once did I listen to my iTunes or Last.fm libraries, which was very surprising, believe me. That's the "discovery" I made of myself on Saturday: That I wasn't as tempted to listen to music while grading and reading, which is something I do all the time and trust me, it's usually the most difficult type of mass media for me to go without for an extended period of time; well, that and my social media addictions such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, et al.
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