December 2009
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I was all alone for a week or so. I'm not what you would call a spiffy dresser, even on the best of days, and perhaps, solitary, I was even less attentive than usual to my presentation. It is possible that I had neglected to comb my hair and it is also possible that I…
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To decide upon the language's silliest word, many would steep themselves into the gallimaufry that features such sesquipedalian monstrosities as mollycoddle, liripoop, and kinnikinnick, but in my view such words are no more than flagrant tomfoolery. (In point of fact, almost every word seems silly, if you just say it over and over again, especially…
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A friend of mine was teaching a course in life drawing and was having trouble finding models. He asked me if I'd be willing to donate an hour. Hey, it was the drug-crazed 1960s (or perhaps early 70s) and I had long since put modesty behind. So I agreed. It was odd to be naked …
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I've been reading the novels of Edith Wharton. It's been one heck of a thrilling experience. The Age of Innocence is a world-class masterpiece, as subtle a novel as any that I've read in years, and The Buccaneers, which Wharton left uncompleted at her death, is almost as good (fortunately, she left behind a plot…
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Ordinarily, I'm skeptical when supernatural images magically appear on everyday objects. To me, such manifestations are perfectly explicable run-of-the-mill instances of pareidolia. [Pareidolia: the tendency, inherent in the human brain, to discover patterns (e.g. faces) in random markings.] No matter how intently I peer and squint, I simply cannot find the blessed virgin and her…
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A: Do you remember Walter Peter, used to teach history at the university? B. Yes, he had quite the reputation. A. Lazy as sin, among other things. I was his grader in the late 60s. He never looked at a paper or at an exam. When a girl would complain about a grade, I'd tell…
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English teachers are such colossal jerks, at least whenever they appear in movies. A case in point is Smart People (2008), which is the second-best academic movie ever made in Pittsburgh (Wonder Boys is superior). Smart People offers us a Carnegie-Mellon Professor of English, played by a shambling Dennis Quaid, who is a depressed, angry,…