These songs alternate between a sort of shiftless urban malaise and a midwestern harvest-time sturdiness.

Today I get my Masters degree in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA. It’s been a quick but rigorous two year program, and for the most part totally worth my time. This is my third graduation in seven years (the others being high school and Wheaton College), and I have to say that I love putting on that cap and gown every time (and this go ‘round I get a special hood!). There’s something nice about inserting yourself—even for just a few hours—into the centuries-old lineage of academic decorum that is represented in the four-point hat and gown regalia.

Growing up, Easter was Cadbury eggs and pastel ties. It was The Ten Commandments on TV. It was hymns like “Low in the Grave He Lay” and “In the Garden.” It was Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the grave. And it was Cadbury eggs.

T.S. Eliot once said “April is the cruelest month.” I don’t know about that, but I do know that March is one of the best months there is. We have Spring Break vacations, St. Patrick’s Day, and, most importantly, the NCAA Basketball Tournament. For college basketball fans, March is one big, energy-filled party. It’s madness. And hopefully this year it’ll be Jayhawk madness.

On December 3 (today) I turn 25. Now normally I steer very clear of these sorts of diary-esque, stereotypically “blog” type entries. I find the whole “publicizing the personal” thing rather annoying, actually. But since it’s my birthday, I’m going to indulge.

Every weekend in America, from August to January, there is a cultural phenomenon that binds millions of us in passionate spectatorship: football. On Friday nights it is high school, Saturday is when the colleges go at it, and then Sunday—the climactic moment in the pigskin orgy—we have wall-to-wall NFL action.