I am supposed to be at a recital (here on campus) of songs by Purcell, Haydn, Beethoven, Vaughan Williams, and others, sung by the baritone Peter Lightfoot, a colleague from USC's Thornton School of Music faculty, who I met when we were both new here. He was a neighbour in the excellent faculty residence complex in which you can rent a house when you're new to the city. The TAs are working hard on grading the midterm we set earlier today (see here) and so as I have to stay on campus until they're done (we try to get everything done immediately after the exam has been taken, and finish it all and announce the grades the same night) it was an opportunity to relax for a while and listen to some wonderful singing, before coming back to work on entering and analyzing the grades, etc. Well, I went to the recital hall and found that it was cancelled. Drat. So I've come back here and thought I would blog for a bit instead, since it is so much more attractive than having to write my Annual Activity Report, which is due tomorrow.... So last Friday I seriously needed cheering up, and so decided to go and see the newly released film by the often excellent director/writer Michael Winterbottom, "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story". I was excited about this film when I saw the trailer, because many years ago I started reading the book "Tristram Shandy", by Lauwrence Sterne (I never finished...I will one day). A dear friend, Richard Lee, who is the father of Zoe, who I tutored in Physics when I was a graduate student, insisted that I have his copy and that I should read it. It was around the time of writing my thesis, and focussing on that (among other things) meant that I never finished.... The book is well known in England, although not many people have read it. It is just well known, for some reason. It is quite bizarre, and pretty much unfilmable, which is why I wanted to see the film, especially when I heard who had made it. From the trailer, it was clear that they decided to build in the unfilmability of the book into the film itself, and the cast was so excellent (Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon), it was bound to be a treat. Where was I? Oh, yes, so went to see the movie. It was clearly going to be a better "performance" of the film if one went along to a place that had a good audience (the Arclight, of course) and maybe with some like-minded friends, so I took some students along on a sort of "field trip", like I did for Proof last semester (see post here). Admittedly, the connection to mathematics and physics is a bit harder to argue for in this case, but what the hey.... So there was Arnab and Rama from Team cvj, (that's a sort of in-joke...see Wes Anderson's wonderful "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou") , and Amy Cassidy from the Condensed Matter Theory group, and she brought along her friend Sam, who is not a student, but a web page architect. (Yes, she did use the word "architect".... not a mere "designer", I gather.) Anyway, Sam is probably way hipper than any of us, but she didn't seem to mind being seen with us for an evening, bless her.
It turned out to be a more significant evening than I'd anticipated, since the three students had never been to see a film at the Arclight before, which I find incredible. So it was high time that they did so. How was the film? Brilliant. Just Brilliant. You know that sort of situation where you're laughing and it hurts, and then you just want the source of laughter to stop for a minute to allow you to breathe, but it continues and there's nothing you can do? Well it was like that in several places. I actually was hurting on one side from laughing when we left the theatre. I suspect that part of the reason it was so funny to me, and possibly Arnab and Rama, who are from India, is that there is a sort of British way of being (also known in India) which was so well portrayed and sent up in several places.... but Amy and Sam (not infected with that sort of British influence) found it very funny in several places too so rest assured that you're not excluded, by nationality, etc, from liking it a lot. I found it especially enjoyable because of it's self-referential "knowingness", which was done well with several winks...... and there were at least three or four levels of "meta"-ness to it, which was fun. (Film of the film-makers making a film of the book, etc....but that itself was the film....)
So we left in giggles and with lots of chatter about the film, which was good. Since we had no youngsters in the field trip this time, we could go to a place where they served something a bit stronger than milkshakes, and they also wanted some not-too-pricey food for a late dinner. So I took them to one of my nearby haunts, the Cat and Fiddle, which on a Friday night is just good plain fun (recently described here). Good traditional British pub food was had, and I had a much needed pint of Guinness as well. Hmmmm....once again, this has turned into a really long post, so I'm going to split off the rest of it, which is about a different issue (sort of) and put it into a different post. -cvj
