Development Office Fail

We got a letter today about our 15th reunion from college. On the back of the letter is a Lost List - people for whom the college cannot find any contact information. A number of the names are completely new to me, but two of them are good friends of mine. They are both on Facebook, and at least one of them is also friends with the Reunion Co-Chair. A Google search of one of them turns up almost 600 references to her specifically, as well as her company and her political contributions. Google searchs of other classmates result in LinkedIn profiles as the first result.

Does the Development Office not know this? Or is there some ethical issue with them doing any kind of research to find these individuals? There are only about 65 "missing" people; one of the reunion co-chairs could make short work of this in an evening, with an open bottle of wine beside their computer. I'm tempted to track them all down, except that I have no intention of going to a reunion or contributing even in-kind to my alma mater (except for glowing updates to the alumni magazine demonstrating the superiority of my friends). In other words, I want to find them all, but I don't want to help the college find them. But if I did the research for any purpose other than for the college, it would be insanely creepy and wierd.

And those of you who are wondering who is on the list, one is a female living in Britain who has a political resume, and the other is a male living in Chicago who is from western New York, and is probably reading this blog. And wanting to stay lost.

At Least One Person Thinks He's Funny

For the Unenlightened

Non-University of Chicago graduates are probably scratching their heads slightly at the comment by Steve after the post below. What is it with these Chicago people? So proud of their nerdiness. Geesh, I was a nerd in college too. (Thought balloon does not count if you were not a nerd. But since I don't know any non-nerds, I am not sure what you people think when you read Steve's comment). Let me give you a little taste of the ambrosia that draws the nerds in. Here's an admissions essay for the U of C:

Modern improvisational comedy had its start with the Compass Players, a group of University of Chicago students, who later formed the Second City comedy troupe. Here is a chance to play along. Improvise a story, essay, or script that meets all of the following requirements: It must include the line “And yes I said yes I will Yes” (Ulysses, by James Joyce).

• Its characters may not have superpowers.
• Your work has to mention the University of Chicago, but please, no accounts of a high- school student applying to the University—this is fiction, not autobiography.
• Your work must include at least four of the following elements:
• a paper airplane
• a transformation
• a shoe
• the invisible hand
• two doors
• pointillism
• a fanciful explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem
• a ventriloquist or ventriloquis
• the Periodic Table of Elements
• the concept of Jeong
• number two pencils

I went there and I am not even sure what all those things are (but ventriloquis is not a word). However, I feel reassured that I can stop grousing that Chicago has gotten easier to get in to.

Missed Opportunities

One thing about me that has annoyed Mr. Scobie since we first met is my willingness to form an opinion about something before I have ever read or seen it. I made it through college by learning about many books in the following fashion:

1. Develop a theory about a book based on its cover, back cover, first chapter or overheard conversation in the "C" Shop.

Note: I also read whole books, but since the UofC is a Great Books school, many of those books were totally opaque and impossible (for me) to comprehend. Thus my opinion of the book or author is still based on this applied technique.

2. Confidently extol this theory to Mr. Scob (after the first week of college he was the only one who had the patience to endure my "theories").

3. Have "theory" eviscerated by listener, who cites the actual content of said book or movie as "evidence" that I am mistaken.

4. Revise "theory" based on new "evidence" and test on new listener.

5. Repeat 3 - 5.

By the time an exam rolled around, I'd have a firm grasp of the subject matter. The downside, of course, is that while I may now remark that something is "Aristotelean" or "Kantian" or "straight out of Kierkegaard", I'm in the right universe but I can't get more specific than that.

This tendency of mine is a time saver, money saver, and a shield to struggling with anything that might be intellectually or emotionally challenging. For example, in 1996, a bunch of kids wanted to see Crash, the creepy Cronenberg movie, which was basically a snuff movie. I refused to go see it on the basis that the movie would be sensational, violent and upsetting to me. B confronted me with the fact that I knew nothing more than what had been written in the NY Times about it. I said, "I don't need to see a movie to have an opinion about it." I have, to the annoyance of many, stood by that proposition (and likely will forever).

B saw the movie, hated it and has declined to confront me so directly about my cultural . . . prejudices? foresight? since that time.

Why am I going on about this? Because it turns out that instead of seeing this an annoying quirk of my personality, he should have recognized it as a money making opportunity! There is a new book out called How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read, which I DID NOT WRITE, to my consternation. (Here's a review)

Worse, I don't even have an opinion of this book yet.

5 Random Things

I have taken it upon myself to be "tagged" by tk to have to tell 5 random things about myself. At least, I think that's the exercise. Here goes:

1. I am drawn to this exercise because I love lists. I make To Do lists with things that I have already done on them, so I can cross those things off. In the movie High Fidelity, I was so distracted by the lists (and not by John Cusack's sexuality, which I felt certain was hetero), that I mentally started making my own lists during the movie, in my head. I was also distracted by the Steve Walters rock posters, which impressed me as being so authentically Chicago indie rock that I could almost ignore the geographical inaccuracies in that movie. Other lists have gotten me in trouble. When I went to college, I had a list of guys I had kissed written in a journal and my two best friends discovered it, and I still hear about it (mostly because I am married to one them - the best friends, not the guys . . . I mean, my husband is a guy, but I don't think he was on the list at that time.) I have books full of lists I have made just sitting around.

2. My decision to move to California was motivated in large part by a knee injury I had suffered the winter before I moved out here from Chicago. I was walking Flynn, and I slipped on some of that thick thick gray ice, hyper-extending my knee. Four months of physical therapy. When I got a job offer at this random place in Oakland, one of the first thoughts I had was, "No more ice, no more freezing cold." Strangely, it took a few minutes to think, "What about your boyfriend, your car, the fact you're taking the IL bar???" which I think means I was ready to leave Chicago.

3. When my mom moved my sister and I away from Indiana to New Jersey, I was so angry. In retrospect, I know I was angry about a lot of things, but the way I expressed it at the time was to be angry about leaving Indiana. "You are ruining my life!!" was a common refrain. My feelings of anger and isolation were deepened when my new fourth grade teacher in NJ made fun of me for saying, "Connect-i-cut" rather than "Connett-i-cut" (it's subtle, but say it out loud and you will realize what a rube I was).

4. I've probably never even talked to TK and yet I feel like I have known him for over 13 years, which is how long I've known JFB. Met JB in 1992 at a frat party. He was wearing a Big Black t-shirt, and I thought "flirting" was making fun of Big Black. Ahh, life was simple then. Actually it's even simpler now. JFB has also spoken highly of TK but my lasting memories include such gems as, "What's it like to be a fucking moron?" Truly brilliant, TK. I [heart] your blog.

5. University of Chicago: I went to the U of C for three reasons (another list): a) In The Bell Jar, Plath writes that she met some young men from Chicago and they were very wierd; b) It was far far away from New Jersey, and specifically my classmates at the all-girls' Catholic school I attended; and c) when I was sophomore in high school, E, a senior who I looked up to (she was one of three 'punks' that year) got into Princeton. Her mom rushed to school with the acceptance letter, but when E saw it, she burst into tears and said, "But I want to go to the University of Chicago!" (She did). Other reasons include a decent financial aid package and the rare opportunity to seem like the most socially adjusted person in the world.

Okay, that's it. I tag Seamus, T&A, M and the other M.

Multiple Choice

Who is in a three-way tie for ninth place?

A. Joe Lieberman
B. Hoops Hack over at Mock Brackets
C. University of Chicago

The correct answer is C. The University of Chicago was ranked 9th (tied with Dartmouth College and Columbia University) among undergraduate programs at national universities, according to the 2007 rankings list produced by U.S. News and World Report.

Crescat scientia, b*****es.

Ok, I Can't Not Comment

The whole thing about Yale having 15 a capella groups suggests they might be sliipping in the World Domination department. And no, I'm not one of those University of Chicago people who didn't get into Yale.

Aside: I just saw a van with "Maui Mike's Lip Balm" painted on the side. What niche does this company fill? Isn't there lip balm brand saturation at this point?

What Is Stylish?

At my alma mater, you can "concentrate" (aka "major") in some wierd things, like Big Problems* or Fundamentals: Issues & Texts. In Fundamentals, you ask a question, read classical texts concerning that question and then, I don't know what happens. You graduate with the same inchoate degree everyone else has, I guess.

Anyway, I always wanted to concentrate in Fundamentals, but never found the right question. Because my intellectual capacity has dropped off considerably since graduating from that fine institution, I have lowered my standards for what constitutes an adequate question and, in doing so, have found my question. "What is stylish?" and its correlary: how do people choose their style?**
In particular, I am curious about two diametrically different phenomena. First, the people who choose a style that has no currency in popular culture, present or past, and second, people who actually wear stuff featured in fashion magazines. To illustrate the first: the 14-year old daughter of our kids' nanny wears rubber bands around the ankles of her jeans to cinch them. Why? Otherwise she looks put together in the young soft-tough Latina style. When I was her age, I also pegged my jeans, only I folded them tightly. Why did I do that? Nowhere in popular culture are tightly pegged or rubber-banded jeans identified as cool.

To illustrate the second: some of the mothers at Liam's preschool actually wear asymmetrical felt coats. Why? do? they? do? that? I am sure that its all over the Italian Vogue or something but it escapes me why anyone would apply that fashion to their lives. So ugly and uncomfortable, but not even u/u in the skewed "fashion" sense of Berkeley. And by asymmetrical, I mean this, not this.

* "Big Problems" is a set of courses offered to fourth-year students but my experience was that most people had their "big problems" in their sophomore year.

** My classical texts would be Ways of Seeing and Color Me Beautiful, I think.
Alrighty, folks, I will be out of town this weekend at a wedding. Hopefully, I will live to tell about it, rather than becoming one of the special dead.

The Bean of Which Ms. H Speaks