He is survived by his loving wife, children, and the hippies.

I could go on for days about the fantastic presentations, creative faculty, and stimulating atmosphere at Faculty Academy, but instead I’m going to give a little love to my DTLT family, who put in an enormous amount of work and effort to make this event as spectacular as it was. My last day as a DTLT student aide was 17 days ago, but I still wake up every morning ready to head back to the office in Dupont. And then I realize that I’m not at UMW anymore. Graduation was easy; leaving my professors and co-workers behind was not.

I won’t get to walk into the office today and see Patrick waving from behind his desk, or Andy gushing over the latest Apple product.³ I won’t see Jim‘s feet next to the plastic bobblehead dolls on his desk as he reclines, eating chips and blogging his fifteenth daily post on the Bava. I won’t be able to make contentious statements about 80′s music to Jerry just to get into another debate, hear Martha nagging us about blog posts on Stuff for Starving Students, or plotting planning projects with Shannon.

Working at DTLT has been one of the most important experiences of my life. Looking forward to work, I’m told, is a pretty rare thing. I also know that a group of people as creative and brilliant as Jerry, Martha, Andy, Patrick, and Jim is hard to come by. I know the professors value them, and I sure hope the university does too. If UMW is smart, it’ll keep them forever.⁴ I wish I could keep them forever.

And, of course, no mention of DTLT would be complete without a shout-out to Gardner Campbell, who taught me about obsession and flow, invited me to all-night Milton readings, sang Beatles songs with me, introduced me to Errol Morris, and continues to inspire me all the way from Texas. I hope I’ll always be your student.

In conclusion, I really miss you all.

1. Front page photo courtesy of the amazing George Brett.
2. My new hero
3. I’m not making this up. Our ex-PC fanboy is completely reformed.
4. Perhaps even beyond the grave! Zombie DTLT could run Faculty Academy, right?

Patrick has a much more in-depth post on this, including helpful comparisons between this New Zealand law and related U.S. ones.

(You might want to pause and wait for it to load. HD is cranky like that.)

TEASER:

UMW students are–in general–pretty apathetic, except when they get riled up about silly things like this. Most of the “news segment” is scripted, all is exaggerated.

So we made a fake Sarah Palin ad:

And then we thought, “What if we change the music?” After about 20 minutes of tinkering, we ended up with this:

We have some theories about the effectiveness of each with different types of audiences, so please let me know what you think!

DAY 1:   Word-image association

As you can see, there was quite a lot of work to be done. However, through persistence and good luck, the final results were spectacular.

DAY 3: Field Trip… Practicum in flora-related empathy

Says Jim, “This is my favorite tree. I love this tree.”

Enjoy!

There are many awe-inspiring things in this world. The icy slopes of Mount Everest, sunset over the Grand Canyon, a whole school of humpback whales leaping out of the water, the Great Wall of China, Quentin Tarantino’s ego. The sight of Jim Groom reclining in his office chair, feet on desk and glasses askew, eclipses these by far. The leaning tower of Pisa doesn’t hold a candle to Jim’s one-armed leaning glasses, the kind of glasses that only come into being after one too many violent encounters with an overzealous two-year-old.

Despite the throngs of women who throw themselves at his feet during his arduous three-minute walk from the parking lot to work, Jim’s only passion is for WordPress. Yes, Jim’s lover, his grail, his Achilles’ heel is an online blogging platform. The man is a whirlwind of typing fingers and crazed mutterings, breathing in the Internet and exhaling words on a web page.

Someone in the office mentions their morning, and Jim starts singing about it in a loud New York accent, fingers never leaving the keyboard. Clearly a master composer, he invents dozens of new songs, with lyrics like “WordPress, oh WordPress” and “Why haven’t you read my blog yet”. Jim Groom is also a wonder of multitasking. He can blog, smoke his favorite cigarettes, argue with passers-by, and eat a meatball sub, all at the same time. In fact, Jim can blog during almost any activity, and does.

Jim’s website is bavatuesdays, a treasure trove of 1950’s horror film discussions, web tutorials, and humble self-reflection. On most days, he writes around five blog posts, but has been known to break fifteen. He has the endurance of twenty marathon runners and the daring of the world’s greatest explorers, the focus of a surgeon and the smile of an angel. To keep up his energy, Jim Groom subsists on a hearty diet of New York pizza and Dr. Pepper.

Man or god? Maybe we’ll never know. Jim Groom is a cautionary tale, a joke, a trend. Jim Groom is an insult. Jim Groom is an incentive. Jim Groom is a role model, a bad influence, an ideology. Jim is pizza snobbery and alarming enthusiasm. Jim is the eighth wonder of the world.

Maybe one day you decide to see this champion, this legendary creature for yourself. You’ll sit in my office chair, with only a large Macintosh computer between Jim and yourself. You notice his beat-up UCLA Bruins cap, his yellow plaid shirt, his scruffy beard, and you can hardly breathe. And then he stares at you through those crooked, thick black glasses rims, and you think “Oh, God. Have I blogged yet today?”

“Listen you,” he’ll say. “Have you been reading the Bava?” You realize with horror that you have not, in fact, kept up with Jim’s blog as faithfully as you should have. Maybe you duck down behind the iMac, hoping that he’ll be distracted by the newest Internet phenomenon. Always persistent in the face of adversity, he asks you again,
“Did you read my blog today?”
“Um… no, sorry,” you whisper.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t have time!” You almost burst into tears, but Jim Groom does not accept excuses.
“Go read it now.” You nod obediently, and sink back behind the computer screen.
“Hippie.” Jim mutters, and eats another slice of pizza.

Photograph by D’Arcy Norman via Flickr.