The hour badly spent

Friday afternoon, servicey tipster Sean Trolinder let us know the wheres and whens of the English department’s super-secret final soiree this semester (Beach Museum, 6pm). Believe me, I really wanted to bring someone with me but let’s face it, you’re all pretty lame, so I went alone.

Upon arrival, the head of the department took my coat, which felt like a little bit of awkward because I also have a class with her (Not for long! End of semester! To be honest I’ll kind of miss it. I’ve been feeling weirdly nostalgic lately. Let’s not talk about this any more). Upstairs, the thing was in full swing. Everyone was dressed to the nines and I hardly knew anybody. And the people I did know had already gone off into grad-student cliques. And I needed a drink.

I spent a few minutes doing that thing where you circle the periphery of the party, gaping stupidly at the people who know what they’re doing but not quite knowing how to approach them and start talking. Largely because, as I’ve suspected all long, they all look pretty fucking sexy and that shit is distracting. What, are you gonna go up to Naomi Wood and tell her "hot dress!" That’s okay, because she came up to me.

"This might be the last of these parties for a while. The English department budget’s getting drastically cut," she said. Oh noes! Then we made fun of the Collegian. With which I acquired a new teacher-crush.

Some professors performed a short reading of ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales,’ a short story by Dylan Thomas. It is fascinating to watch certain people read out loud: Naomi, Michael Donnelly, Wendy Matlock, Liz Dodd, Donald Kimball, Alyssa Dawson; they all had this incredible ability to inflect the sentence just so the humor comes out just so at the end of it. Fun fun fun (yes, I am a huge dork).

I finally gave Wendy Matlock a piece of my mind. Specifically, she is brilliant and enthusiastic, which makes class with her amazing. But! The students, so christianey; sometimes class feels like church, and when it gets like that, my eyes glaze over and my mind shuts down, not to return until someone says "may I get freudian for a moment?" I was afraid you’d never ask.

Phil Nel, by the way, is massively cooler than you. Just ask him anything about music. I dare you.

Tim Dayton is also massively cooler than you. He only listens to punk rock made between 1976 and 1984. We know this from talking to the head of the women’s studies program, Angela Hubler, Dayton’s wife, who wasn’t afraid to zing him. "Does he ever let one else speak in class?" No, he doesn’t, but we don’t mind. We never have anything important to add anyway.

Then we went to the Kathouse, where I flirted with a bunch of grad students. Happy Festivus!

When the Claremont Trio — a violinist, a cellist and a pianist — played in McCain Friday night, I faced a special kind of angst: that of writing about musicians without actually knowing anything about music. Fortunately, though, an Expert Vibrato Analyst came along to help clarify the finer points of…well, vibrato and shit. Now we know what a "movement" is! Sort of.

The first piece, Haydn’s Trio in G major, was… well, I don’t remember much of it. The second piece was more modern; Schoenberg’s "Cafe Music." It was faux jazzy; it sounded like a dude in a suit sneaking through dark hallways. I kinda liked it but kinda also thought it felt like a cheap trick? Added just to please the youngs in attendance. The Expert Vibrato Analyst articulated the misgivings perfectly: when jazz isn’t performed by tried and true hep cats, it just sounds funny.

We both enjoyed the third piece: Antonín Dvorák’s Trio in F minor. And the encore — Gallop, the fifth movement of George Bizet’s composition, "Children’s Game" — was an excellent follow up, being that it was (1) upbeat, and (2) short.

Asking people about the music was awesome, as those who weren’t completely comfortable talking about chamber music struggled to sound like they were. "They’re definitely virtuosos," said one kid, adding that he enjoys pieces when they’re "played in minor keys" (ha ha ha, I have no idea WTF that means. I’m dumb. My biggest reason for attending was that the performers are hot). After the show I caught up with Professor AND Mrs. Donald Hedrick: "The playful virtuosity of the encore was fun." He added that he "liked the Dvorák the best. It speaks to my Slavik spirit. It reminds me of Prague (??)," he said (I caught him off guard). Professor Donnelly and his satanic eyebrows hit the nail on the head: "Chamber music scares people."

[Claremont On Tour]