Well, to begin any proper description of this last weekend, when I joined some other prospective grad students in being flown out to Miami to be wined and dined and check out the Philosophy Department, you have to cue up that Will Smith song, "Welcome to Miami," in the background. It's a silly song, but (like the city itself) it has a good beat and it sets the mood nicely. Anway, Miami is in many ways a very silly, over-the-top location, and therein lies much of its charm. (Hell, coming straight from a Michigan winter, all the dumb parts of Miami--the tackiness, the traffic, the concentration of hysterically right-wing Cuban exiles--just seem fun and picturesque.) Plus, people semi-ironically-but-happily refer to the song title all the time there whenever, basically, anything cool or Miami-specific comes up in conversation.

OK, here we go:

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah/Miami, uh, uh/Southbeach, bringin the heat, uh/Haha, can y'all feel that/Can y'all feel that /Jig it out, uh

I left Lansing late Thursday morning. As my friend drove me to the airport, the roads were covered with ice and snow was billowing around the car. I was wearing three layers ad I was freezing. On the plane, when they rattled off the local weather conditions in Miami, they started out with cloud and wind conditions and I sat there thinking, "goddamnit. Just my luck. It's going to be the one weekend all year when it isn't nice out in Miami." Then they got to the temperature: 81.

If I had known, I would have tried to request a seat on the left. I was sitting at the window seat on the right side of the plane. When we passed Cape Canaveral, the captain announced that on the left there was a pretty good view of the space shuttle launching pad, which would have been a nice little science-fictional thrill. Anyway, when we came over Miami, I was just blown away by the tropical lushness of the place. I mean, I had been to Florida twice before (though never to Miami proper and never by airplane), but its been a long time. My archetypal "warm place" is southern California, since my gradnparents used to have a lemon farm there and my grandmother still lives in the area and I've been there so many times, so warm=dry in the landscape of my imagination. It just seems to go without saying that places blessed with sunny, beautiful weather are only going to be habitable by humans by extreme measures. Coming down from the sky, you just notice all of this water *everywhere,* little inlets and huge pools and beaches and everything as far as the eye can see. It's kind of amazing.

Along with the lushness, the thing that you notice not too many minutes after you hit the ground is how totally and uniquely multi-cultural the place is. Again, even the rural parts of southern California have a decent Mexican population, but its to put it ismildly not the dominant culture. I remember a Spanish phrase book sold there where the questions were things like, "were the children good today?" The assumption being that business, politics and culture are conducted in English, but the nanny probably speaks Spanish. By the time you've rolled pass the Miami welcome sign--"Mayor Carlos Alvarez welcomes you to Miami" you should have realized that Miami is very different. The dregs of the old Cuban ruling class, of course, for better or for worse have a big impact on local politics (although of course there's also a huge population of relatively apolitical Cubans who migrated more recently and for more mundane reasons), but it goes beyond that. Given the huge and socially dominant Cuban concentration among other factors, the place is a magnet for people from all around Latin America. You hear people switching langauges in all sorts of casual social interactions--e.g. the guy in front of you in line at the restaurant will have trouble communicating with the waiter, so they'll both switch to fluent and rapid-fire Spanish.

OK, we need a litttle bit more Will Smith for describing the first night there:

Here I am in the place where I come let go/Miami the base and the sunset low /Everyday like a mardi gras everybody party all day

On Thursday night, after a few hours of happily vegging in a very nice hotel room I finally met up with a few of the existing grad students and another of the prospectives (the other two prospectives didn't get in until later) and we all went out to an ultra-nice Indian restaurant in South Beach. One of the little ironies of all of this is that the purpose of the weekend is to entice their first-pick grad students to go to the program there so they don't have to tap the wait list, but we spent the weekend eating at places (since the Department paid the bills for both the prospectives and the existing grad students who were eating with us) that grad students could never afford. Anyway, from the Palak Paneer to the Sangrias to the home-made pistaccio ice cream, no complaints, and we did get a good chance to field our questions about the program and the city and housing and all that. I got to hold my own conversationally with that easiest of stock-in-trade for WMU philosophy MA program grads, "funny Quentin Smith stories." Quentin is a brillinat philosopher who lives a sort of larger-than-life absent-minded professor persona, down to the point of forgetting about completed book manuscripts buried in the debris of his office floor. I love the guy, and without him us Western people would have nothing to talk about.

After that, they took us out to the Clevelander, a sort of paradigmatic South Beach bar: huge writhing crowd, everything outdoors, swimming pool beyind the dance floor, etc. The band was doing sort of crappy-but-fun remixes of late-90s hip hop and, this is the key point, *it was warm enough to sit outside and enjoy it.* As I got fronted for the first round of Rum & Coke, the buyer said, of course, "welcome to Miami" as we clinked glasses. That was a frequent refrain. like the following conversational sample (inevitable, me being a provincial from a state where the law mandates that bars have to close at 2):

Me: "When'se closing time here?"
Miami Person (MP): "I think maybe 6 in the morning."
Me: "Well, when's the universal closing time?"
MP: "Never."
Me: "Never?"
MP: "Hey, welcome to Miami."

Anyway, the two other prospectives whose flight had been delayed (both from Lewis & Clark College in Portland) finally showed up at midnight, and it ended up being a pretty fun night.

"No work all play okay/So we sip a little something lay the rest the spill/Me an Charlie at the bar running up a high bill/Nothin less than ill when we dress to kill/Everytime the ladies pass, they be like (Hi Will)/Can y'all feel me, all ages and races/Real sweet faces/Every different nation, Spanish, Haitian, Indian, Jamaican/Black, White, Cuban, and Asian/I only came for two days of playing
But every time I come I always wind up staying/This the type of town I could spend a few days in/Miami the city that keeps the roof blazing"

On Friday, the seduction-into-Miami was actually interrupted long enough to visit the University (-:. Although, come to think of it, they probably figured they could do both at the same time: the campus looks like a botanical garden, full of exotic plants and palm trees and honest-to-God parrots. (We saw several on campus, and I'm told that sometimes when you get a big flock of them coming through its actually pretty disruptive for class.) There was also a Cuban culture festival going on so the whole time we were walking around campus there was up-beat music going on in tthe background.

We met Dr. Thomasson (the Director of Graduate Studies) for lunch at the Faculty Club, then had individual meetings with her, and then we all met with Dr. Siegel, the Department Chair. We got the usual pep-talk, but more so: they got twice as many applicants this year as last year, some very impressive new faculty hires (true enough, see below) and the place is moving up, plus (for about the twentieth time already) we got grilled about what specific questions we had about the program. I remember coming up with some, but to be honest its all kind of a blur.

We went off to a Colloqium (which is what they call what we called a "brownbag" at Western, a visiting speaker coming in and giving a talk and having a long q-and-a) by Dr. Octavio Bueno, who--again, I think this is a wonderful little Miami touch--is a pretty up-and-coming guy (twelve journal articles published last year, etc.)--but, coming from Bolivia and having a pretty relaxed atittude, looks about as far as possible from a chliched philosoph professor: almost-shaved head, top couple shirt buttons unbuttoned, some medallion-looking necklace thing, etc. Looking at the list of past speakers, it looks like they pull pretty big-names in all the time, since for obvious reasons, every one wants to fly into Miami for a weekend to give a talk. Anyway, it was an interesting talk, and after that the propsectives and a couple grad students went out to dinner at a Thai restaurant in Coral Gables (only one vegetarian-acceptable entree, but it was great). After that, it was off to Dr. Thomasson and Dr. Lewis's house for the welcome party for Colin McGinn.

I should back up and say a few words about Colin McGinn. A few weeks ago, I was reading the New York TImes book review. They had had a not-terribly-flattering review (which I had read at the time) of McGinn's book on Philosophy and Film. The next week there was a letter to the editor from him responding, and I noticed at the bottom of the letter it said, "Colin McGinn, Miami." In shock, I said, "Colin McGinn is teaching in Miami now?!?" I looked up his Wikipedia entry and, sure enough, he is. This is big for me since I actually read his autobiography a few years ago (well, much of at least...I must admit that I read it in the bookstore.) Anyway, he was at Oxford forever, and then Rutgers briefly and--being a water sports nut--came down to Miami for what was going to be a one-semester visiting professorship while he was on leave from Rutgers and, as he tells it, more or less begged them to let him stay. This being one of the biggest academic coups of the program's history, they said, you know, "yes," and the snowball effect is looking good.

Anyway, after the formal toast at the welcome party for him on Friday, Dr. Thomasson, glint in her eye, played him the "formal welcome song," which was, of course...

"Party in the city where the heat is on/All night on the beach till the break of dawn/Welcome to Miami (bienvenido a Miami)/Bouncing in the club where the heat is on/All night on the beach till the break of dawn/I'm going to Miami/Welcome to Miami "

Talking to him later, McGinn (whose in terms of facial features and stuff one of the most stereotypically had a nice line about how people always ask how any one gets any work done there, and "you've just got to remember...you don't have to go out just because its nice out. It'll be nice out tomorrow too."

Back to Will:

"Yo I heard the rainstorms ain't nothin to mess with/But I can't feel a drip on the strip, it's a trip/Ladies half-dressed, fully equipped/And they be screaming out, (Will we loved your last hit)/So I'm thinking I'm a scoot me something hot/In this south-sea meringue melting pot Hottest club in the city and it's right on the beach/Temperature get to ya it's about to reach
Five-hundred degrees/In the carribean seas, with the hot mommies
Screamin (ay, papi)/Every time I come to town, they be spotting me
In the drop Bentley, ain't no stopping me/So, cash in your dough
And flow to this fashion show/Pound for pound anywhere you go
Yo ain't no city in the world like this/An if you ask how I know I gots to plead the fifth"

Well, it was nice the next day. After lunch at a Mexican/Cuban/seafood place in Cocunut Grove, we went out to a beach party. (Dr. Lewis had a nice T-shirt: "What part of quantum theory don't you understand?" He said that he was afraid if he wore it to the Phil of Physics conference he's going to in the spring, people would take it literall and let him know.) At the end of the day, I went back out with some of the grad students (the other prospectives had early morning flights) and, what can you say, hung out. It was fun. I like these people (the gender ratio isn't even quite as skewed as Western, which would have maybe one or two female philosophy grad students a year), and I liked being able to sit outside in an outdoor bar in South Miami at two in the morning in the middle of the winter. I feel like personally and academically, I'd fit in nicely, and it seemed to be mutual. I should add too that, whatever impression might be given by these scattered recollections, a substantial section of the weekend really was spent talking about philosophy. (Being all philosophy grad students, people are obsessed enough that even while sipping marg's by the dance floor, people still end up spending a fair amount of time talking about philosophy. It's just more fun that way.)

Anyway, having gotten a few new responses from grad programs waiting for me when I got back, the current tally is:

Acceptances: 2 (Miami and Syracuse)
Rejections: 2 (Notre Dame and, randomly, New Mexico)
Wait-listed: 2 (Ohio and Wisconsin)

So, since Syracuse hasn't decided whether to offer me an assistantship yet, Miami's looking better than ever (although I'm still waiting to hear back from Carneige-Mellon, U of Pennsylvannia, UC-Berkeley and UC-San Diego...if I got into Berkeley with a good assistantship, I'd definitely go, since its probably the best place I was applying too and the location doesn't exactly suck either. Carneige-Mellon, Pennslyvannia or San Diego I'd have to seriously weigh against Miami.) New Mexico is very random, since Miami and Syracuse are both top-50 programs and New Mexico most definitely isn't. Still, it's not that surprising--part of the calculation behind applying to such a ridiculous number of places was that the competition's so intense that at any even half-way decent philosophy grad progarm only a statistically insignificant fraction of people get in, and its hard to predict, so the scatter-shot thing is the best way to maximize your chances of getting in somewhere good w/good money.

Anyway, as I sit here typing, looking out at the snow and thinking about how much fun the weekend was, I'll let Will take it away for the rest:

Party in the city where the heat is on
All night on the beach till the break of dawn
Welcome to Miami (bienvenido a miami)
Bouncing in the club where the heat is on
All night on the beach till the break of dawn
I'm going to Miami
Welcome to Miami

Don't get me wrong, Chi-town got it going on
And New York is the city that we know don't sleep
And we all know that L.A. and Philly stay jiggy
But on the sneak, Miami bringing heat for real
Y'all don't understand
I never seen so many Dominican women with cinnamon tans
Ya know this is the plan
Take a walk on the beach draw a heart in the sand
Gimmie your hand
Damn you look sexy
Let's go to my yacht in the West Keys
Ride my jet skis loungin in the palm trees
Cause you gotta have cheese for the summerhouse piece on South Beach
Water so clear you can see to the bottom
Hundred thousand dollar cars, every body got em
Ain't no surprise to see in the club to see Sly Stallone
Miami my second home

Party in the city where the heat is on
All night on the beach till the break of dawn
Welcome to Miami (bienvenido a miami)
Bouncing in the club where the heat is on
All night on the beach till the break of dawn
I'm going to Miami
Welcome to Miami
-repeat-

Party in the city where the heat is on!