By trade, I guess I am an academic. For some 25 years I have taught at various colleges and universities in Southern California, e.g., USC, Scripps College, Occidental College etc. I teach a number of things, lit courses, film history, media studies, theory & philosophy, etc. I received my Ph.D. in English Lit and Literary Theory; that and most of the other three and a half degrees I have came from UC Irvine. Before I went to college, I was drafted into the Marine Corps; in 1968 I was in Vietnam. A number of the articles, lectures, etc that I have written and delivered here and there over the years have been involved with the ways films, TV, novels, poems etc. have represented the American war in Vietnam. I think politics is a contact sport.