Month: August 2003

1) The impression I have of State College from my wife is that it’s a dreary, cold place where the landlords are psychotic, the winters are bitter, and the main arteries clogged with football-watchers. How does this mesh with your experience? If you asked me this question in the winter, I might be inclined to agree. This past one was almost more than I could take. But I genuinely like it here in the summer (and those few weeks that are laughingly known as “spring”), weather-wise, and I don’t know that I’d ever categorize the town as dreary or bitter. It approaches both, and it’s much too cloudy — and football season can be a little annoying — but I do like it here. I’ve never had trouble with landlords, but I’ve only had three, and I’ve never attempted to live downtown. I don’t like it here enough to settle down permanently (and certainly not with my current job), but, for the most part, it isn’t State College itself that has me looking at other places to live. But again, ask me again in the winter and I might have a different story to tell.

2) If you could live anywhere you wanted and maintain your current standard of living, where would you live? That there is the question, isn’t it? I don’t know. New York looks appealing because the writing/editing jobs I want are there — not growing on trees but definitely easier to come by — and so is my family. Everywhere else is…I don’t know. Appealing, interesting, but also terrifying. If standard of living and a better job were my only concerns, I would move back to New York. I’d have moved back to New York four years ago.

3) Monty Python’s fourth season: Andy Kaufmanesque joke on the audience or just a group of guys sick of dealing with the Beeb? Hmm. The fourth season probably is the strangest. For one thing, John Cleese had left by that point, and the sketches grew less loosely connected and more part of a whole (e.g. “Mr Neutron” and “The Golden Age of Ballooning”, which were basically episode-long sketches). Granted, it’s an odd year compared to the earlier three — DVD Verdict even asks “Is there any truth to the rumor that beleaguered President Richard Nixon secretly funded a fourth season of Monty Python in 1974 to distract America from the Watergate scandal?” — but I wouldn’t call it Kaufmanesque. Not least of all because I don’t consider Andy Kaufman a comedian so much as an occasionally hillarious performer. (Keeping in mind, of course, that my exposure to Kaufman is mainly through watching Man on the Moon, an NBC special, and a small handful of Taxi episodes.) I just think they’re on different levels of absurdity. And, for all their jokes at the BBC’s expense, the Pythons rarely had troulbe dealing with the Beeb. I think the fourth season, however strange and different, still contains some extremely funny material.

4) Tori Amos: Fairy-inspired lyricist from another dimension or someone badly in need of an editor? I dunno, I just think she’s a talented musician. I don’t worship her or even own all her albums, and I’ve only seen her in concert once, but I would certainly characterize myself as a fan. I’m not sure I’ve ever completely understood any of her songs (and I do prefer her earlier albums like Under the Pink and Little Earthquakes to newer stuff like Scarlet’s Walk), but I continue to listen and enjoy. I know I’m looking forward to her “Greatest Hits” CD.

Like Dave, I, too, don’t have much personal experience with this sort of thing — I dropped, almost immediately, the only literary theory class for which I ever signed up, and I can’t recall a professor ever discussing semiotics, even in passing — but I am inclined to agree with Ebert’s assessment, however well-intentioned its practitioners and professors, and however important it may actually be “to understand how film exists in relation to our lives.” Rather than teaching their students to understand film and its power as a medium (their professed goal), the film theory classes described in the article, it would seem, prepare their students for little more than reguritation of the same inane elitist psychobabble.

1. When was the last time you laughed? The last time I remember laughing is last night, watching an episode of Whose Line is it Anyway? before going to bed.

2. Who was the last person you had an argument with? Um… hmm. I don’t know that I have had an argument with anyone in recent memory. This is partly due to my somewhat passive nature and somewhat due to the fact that I’ve had no one with whom to argue. There was a recent disturbance in the caption gallery, where a long-time capper (well liked by most everyone) had really lame insults hurled at him for his slightly-left-of-center political jokes. Those of us who tried to defend him (or at least his right to make them) had similar insults hurled at us. We retaliated. That’s about as close to an argument I’ve come lately, though.

3. Who was the last person you emailed? A quick check reveals that it was actually Tom Tomorrow, to let him know an official transcript for that Joe Scarborough quote was online. Not that I expect a response, and even though I’m sure many other people e-mailed him with the same information.

4. When was the last time you bathed? I showered this morning, less than an hour ago. I bathe every day, whether I need it or not.