Grim Huffing and Puffing

Eggers writes again.

Despite Miss Bates' attempts to move the date to Thursday (it now sounds like we're watching Pi on Halloween instead), we ended up going to The Ring last night, with one more person than we should've had. I could have been pulled over, in a more hypothetical Appleton.

Bill, Jonas, Andy, Mino and I did, in fact, find occasion to visit that hypothetical world, when Jonas' wanton disregard for the rules of Shotgun set us arguing about said rules.

Andy and Jonas, for some unfathomable reason, think that you can call Shotgun the moment you leave a building on your way to the car, or, worse, "whenever you're done with whatever you were doing". Bill and I, representing here the voice of reason, use the real rule, one we learned independently of each other: You have to be in sight of the car in order to call shotgun, regardless of whatever you were doing. In fact, Shotgun doesn't care what you were doing or when you finished. Go tell someone else.

That argument went too far and too long; we were taking The Deathtrap, so we ended up using the real rules anyways, and I think some of us just kept arguing for the sake of argument. This seems to be one of those things that I for one can't easily let drop.

But back to The Ring. I really liked the movie -it actually played off the audience's low expectations, especially in the first and last few scenes. Had we not understood the cheesy conventions of pop-horror, we wouldn't have been so affected by the abandonment of those conventions.

Or something equally pretentious… sorry, I've been writing papers lately and I still think I can get away with that kind of language: It was good.

Tonight I saw Lewis Black perform in the Lawrence Chapel. I've seen him do better on The Daily Show, but his bit was still pretty good. A little repetitive, and at times prone to Carlinesque sermonizing, but as entertaining as it was free.

My Milton midterm came back with a well-deserved bad grade. I hadn't studied and I paid for it: finally, I'm learning something.

Prof. Goldgar was a bit disappointed with the entire class, I think. He was confused and upset, in class, and afterwards… I saw him at The Grill and he was still thinking about our lack of preparation.

Prof. Fritzell was giving away free books outside his office (I just finished the overreaching "Roses, Rhododendron" by Alice Adams), and even with Lewis Black, I needed that mote's weight of good to keep my entire day from being ruined.

(Such snobbery, as Adams might say!).

Later.