Rant against dubbing

I just saw "No Country For Old Men", which recently came out over on this side of the Atlantic, at the Metropole theater in Lille. The movie was very good, but it was the rest of the experience that kept distracting me. Specifically, the French subtitles, which did not seem to convey even a half of what the actors were saying. I don't mean that they did not translate all the lines, just that the words used were inadequate.

Of course, this is always true of translation, and I don't want to get into a discussion of the possibility or lack thereof for a "perfect" translation. But I was very glad that we were able to see a VO, "version originale", instead of a VF, "version française". VO means that the movie is subtitled in French, while VF means it's been dubbed in French. Now, I can't remember ever seeing a movie in the U.S. that was dubbed, and certainly not a TV show, but in France and other countries in Europe, dubbing is the norm. All TV shows that are originally in English are dubbed into French, and most of the movies are, too.

Now, I suppose it is easy for me to rail against dubbing when I live in the country with the world's most significant entertainment industry. But though subtitles may be inconvenient, they are far better than dubbing. First, subtitles preserve the original dialogue for anyone who understands that language. I have seen French movies with English subtitles and even though I rely on the subtitles, there are times when the spoken words paint a better picture than the text at the bottom of the screen.

Second, acting is not a wholly physical thing, that is it is not merely a series of gestures and expressions. The voice is critical, not just for what an actor says but for how they say it. And this is where No Country simply would not have worked if it had been dubbed. How do you create a west Texas accent in French? And one of the characters has a slight accent of unclear origin. How to create that?

It turns out that not only are many movies dubbed in France, but each actor has their own dubbers. There is a man somewhere who dubs all the lines for Tom Cruise, and another for Tom Hanks. This to me is just bizarre, even more so in such cases as the Simpsons, where each character has their own French voicer. The voices, however, are all wrong. Marge's is low and phlegmy, while Bart's has none of the childish innocence that makes his antics anything other than punkishness.

And could anyone other than Tommy Lee Jones talk like Tommy Lee Jones? Like in that scene in the Fugitive where he starts barking out orders to create a perimeter and all of that. Take that away and the character becomes entirely different.

The Perfect Café pt. 1

I went to l'écart today to read (Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, which, so far, I recommend), and one of the essays describes a café in NO, and I started thinking about what the perfect café would be - both the place and the drink.

Now, cafés are important to me. They are a symbol of the community, a sort of cultural town hall. And they provide caffeine, also important. But most of all, I find they are great places for me to read/write/work. Alone in my room I tend to drift to nytimes.com or some other website, or I watch the latest Daily Show online. Cafés provide just enough people-watching opportunities to provide inspiration and some helpful white noise. Well, on to the perfect café.

First, it must have a name that evokes the place. Some of my favorites:
* Le Relax, in Lille
* L'Illustration, also in Lille
* La Mobylette, in Paris
* Le Pichet Mignon (the Cute Pitcher), in Valenciennes
* The Federal Association of Globetrotters, aka AUR aka Savezno udruženje svetskih putnika, in Belgrade
* Filter, Chicago
* Diesel, Somerville
* Bourgeois Pig, Chicago

Then, there must be books. There must be books. L'écart has 'em which is one of the reasons I like it. Books of course give people something to do, which is nice. But also, a communal bookshelf shows both a value of the written word and enough trust in the clientele to put lots of easily-stolen things within easy reach. This means there is enough sense of community in the place to have communal resources, which is good. Also, they can be great ways to discover new writers, as they offer a much more chill atmosphere than, say, Barnes and Nobles to pick up a random book and read it for an hour or two. Finally, books are just great to look at; hardcover, paperback, all colors and sizes, they are at once regular and clean-edged and random and organinc.

Third, there must be nooks. There must be crannies. Dollop in Chicago is great for this, as is Bourgeois Pig. There should be big rooms where you can grab eight friends and have a raucous conversation over coffee, and small, intimate rooms where you can lean in with someone across the table and speak just above a whisper. And, there should be semi-hidden rooms that have an air of solitude and tranquility for reading or writing. And rooms should not be arbitrary divisions of the place; there should be rooms with old paintings and rooms with edgy aggressive po-mo art, rooms with antique furniture and rooms with sleek metal-and-wood stuff.

Fourth, there must be couches. Real couches. Starbucks here is a great example of how not to do things. They are mostly filled with tables and chairs, with a few generic and overtly matching cushy chairs that are never that comfortable. A café should not look like it was built and designed all at once. It should look like things were added over the years, as tastes changed. There should be couches that once were in someone's house, and solid chairs next to scratched-up tables of all sizes. There should be coffee tables, too. Tryst in D.C. should be the model. It looks more like you walked into someone's living room than a café. After all, a café is, for me at least, part of my home.

Fifth, it must be big, but not feel big. There should always be enough seating that you don't feel like you're costing them business by sitting there for a few hours, but not so much that the place feels empty. It should feel cozy but not cramped. Quasi-industrial high ceilings are fine as long as they make the place spacious but not gymnasium-like.

Sixth, the staff should be helpful, knowledgeable, and cool. What's the difference between the Fair Trade Nicaraguan blend and the Organic Caribbean blend? The person behind the counter should know. And, they should know what "Fair Trade" means and what "Organic" means, and even better, how the coffee got from a tree somewhere in the tropics to the grinder on the counter. There should not be a uniform. Employees should not be reduced to automatons. That's fine if you're selling electronics, but your "barista", as they are unfortunately called, should know you, and you should know them. They don't need to start making what you want before you even tell them, but they should recognize you. One of the thinks I loved about Ebel in Prague was that the servers would hang out in the café when they weren't working. That's good, it means the customers and the servers are all making it a meeting-place instead of just a place of caffeine consumption.

At another time, (maybe), I'll describe what I think is the ideal cup of coffee/espresso.

Right now, my café of choice is Diesel in Somerville, MA, in Davis Square. The front has mostly two-person tables and chairs, while the back has booths, couches, and a sort of computer bar, with high stools. Though it is a bit lacking in the nook department, there is one all the way in the back, and the sort of long hallway that separates the front from the back does enough to isolate the two areas. The staff is great, and often tattooed. Plus, when I go in I often discover a new body part that, evidently, can be pierced. There is a lack of books, and the industrial theme sometimes can be too cold. But with so many students and people working on laptops, it has a great atmosphere anyway, much as Filter (at least the old Filter in Wicker Park) managed. Perhaps if you put the Bourgeois Pig in Davis square, you'd get the perfect café. But for right now, I'll take Diesel over most anywhere else.

In fact, as I told my friend Evan, if I move to Boston at some point, I'll try to live in Davis Square because of Diesel. Also, the Chipotle across the street. It's a deadly combination.

If anyone has a favorite cafe, please post a comment. I'm always looking for new places.

And...we're back!

Well after a not-at-all deserved break, Staring Through Shades is back. At least for now.

First, and update:

I am in France, "teaching" English in Lille, which is about an hour from London, Brussels, and Paris. Actually, I am living in Lille and teaching in Valenciennes, about 40 minutes by train to the south.

Yesterday I heard an interview with this guy named Eric Weiner, who used to be a foreign correspondent for NPR (*shakes fist at Eric Weiner in jealousy*) and then went around the world writing his book, The Geography of Bliss.

I have not read the book, but he said some interesthttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifing things in the interview. One was that happy places tend to be cold, not hot. His theory is that in cold climates everyone has to work together or everyone dies, and this has fostered a strong sense of community in places like Denmark, Switzerland, and Iceland.

Iceland, by the way, seems to be paradise, despite months of 24-hour darkness. Apparently, as Weiner told Stephen Colbert, in Iceland they don't drink at all during the week and then binge on the weekends. Colbert replied: "So they're all like college students?" Any connection to the fact that many people city their college years as the "happiest" of their lives?

Another study found that both lottery winners and paraplegics tend to return to their previous level of happiness, from before their great (mis)fortunes. (Though I remember this study being cited in an economics paper from, if I remember correctly, my Public Policy Analysis class, when I saw the sample sizes of this study, 22 for lottery winners and 29 for paraplegics, the economist in me winced.)

In any case, the science of happiness is one of the new things in Academe, and it's starting to be debated in policy arenas as well as those of psychologists and economics. So maybe fifteen years from now there'll be a Federal Department of Health, Happiness, and Human Services.

But thinking of happiness reminded me (of course) of Aristotle, and a Scav item from my first year: Eudaemonia. If I remember my Aristotle accurately, eudaemonia is a sort of enlightened happiness, a happiness of purpose, as opposed to, say, a happiness of ease, ignorance, indulgence, or hedonism. This is the happiness that people pay 40k a year at liberal arts colleges to receive, an educated satisfaction that comes from being educated. Now, for all it's virtues, the U of C is more about the enlightenment part than the happiness part (though that's getting better). But, there is an element, perhaps similar to Weiner's idea about cold climates, of forced community about the U of C, as well as an environment that tremendously heightens contrasts of ecstasy and misery.

An example: I took Stat 244, which is the most rigorous intro-level statistics course, and though I often describe it as one of my favorite courses, it was also probably the most difficult. I regularly worked all night on problem sets only to get a 70%. The reward for that work was that I felt I gained a fundamental understanding of the statistical theories and algorithms rather than just having memorized the equations. Needless to say the exam (which was my last of the term) was difficult, and I studied the material for days until the time came to sit in the huge lecture hall of Kent - the chemistry building was the only one with rooms big enough to fit everyone in Stat - for two hours. But then, and I can vividly remember this as one of the highlights of college, I walked out of Kent, knowing that I had finished and survived, and discovered that during the exam it had begun to snow. The U of C looks beautiful under a fresh layer of snow, with the gray and white and brown bringing out the red roofs and dark green bushes and pine trees. And I was consciously happy, aware of my own happiness, at the snow and returning to my warm room and being done with exams and then starting vacation and then going to Paris. And, I felt tremendously satisfied with my work: I had paid attention in class and struggled through every assignment and studied furiously and in the end had done rather well.

The point of this example is not just that a miserable present can turn into a wonderful past, but also that happiness is the result of the past, present, and future. It is the things we have done, the things we are doing, and the things we hope to do.

Anti- vs. Anti-Anti-

The large lecture hall is almost full. At least, it seems that way. The mood is a bit tense, which is not at all helped when one of the Student Government Vice Presidents gets up and, in introducing the event, informs everyone that members of Student Government will be going around and will ask anyone who yells or interrupts someone else to leave, and that if someone refuses to leave, an officer from the UCPD is standing by the doors. The Anti-Anti-Coke people handed out a bunch of Coca-Cola-red t-shirts, which form antagonizing clumps in the audience, like a bullfighter's cape. Still, it seems that Anti-Coke people have the advantage in terms of numbers.

The event is a "Student Government Forum" on whether or not to kick Coke off campus for not investigating alleged human rights violations at its factories in Columbia and horrible environmental practices at its factories in India. The Anti-Coke campaign has been brewing for a while - my friend Evan told me about it several years ago - and has been a major campaign in labor-rights circles. But what is new, and what is perhaps unique to the U of C, is the rise of an Anti-Anti-Coke campaign, a group of people organized, sort of organized at least, to defend Coca-Cola. How many campuses have groups that fight for huge multi-national corporations?

I was there to support the Anti-Coke campaign, though I have some problems with the head of the national campaign, Ray Rogers. The Anti-Coke people had handed out packets of information and prepared questions for when the representatives from Coca-Cola came up to speak. The Anti-Anti-Coke people handed out free Cokes.

When Ray Rogers got up, he was speaking first, all the Anti-Anti-Coke people opened up their cans at once, emitting a chorus of the unmistakable sound of a popped soda can. Rogers was a bit kooky, not quite recognizing that speaking as though he were at a labor rally was not really the best approach for the U of C. Most of the questions were softballs from Anti-Coke people.

Then the Coca-Cola representatives came up. They were, if possible, even more out of touch with the audience. They actually had a conference call with two people from God-knows-where in addition to the several people they actually had at the event. First of all, they did not recognize how ridiculous it was to have people conferencing in to a forum that was being held in a large lecture hall. They couldn't hear us and we couldn't hear them. But also, they kept fiddling with the phone, messing up who was on mute and such, and just generally bumbling. And, they kept trying to point to people who got Coca-Cola scholarships, and people they were helping in Chicago, when the whole issue was thousands of miles away in Columbia and India. We didn't care how good they were in Chicago.

At the end, there was a period of student comments. On one side, there were reiterations of the allegations, and on the other, attempted arguments with an economic basis. I think the economic arguments - the idea that if people didn't approve of Coke, they could buy less and then the school would negotiate for a lower contract with Coke - was bunk. But it was very U of C, I thought, that such arguments were even offered. And a lot of people talked about choice and freedom, and the nature of economic freedom being linked to democratic freedoms. Milton Friedman would be proud.

Terribly lovely

I've been having trouble writing lately, I don't know if it's the stress of my impending doom graduation, or just life or whatever, but all the words feel clunky and impossibly prosaic (that word choice just there, "impossibly prosaic", that'll make more sense in a bit.)

So I decided to go back to my favorites, to the things I can read without feeling like I'm educating myself or being productive or anything. Take the class out of writing. I took a trip to Myopic and picked up Franny and Zooey.

I had forgotten how much I loved J.D. Salinger. For a long time (and maybe still, I don't know) Catcher was my favorite book. The tone is so terribly grand and at the same time really neurotic in the most essential way. The whole thing has airs about it, as in the kind of airs that are put on. Reading about Franny doing all her Franny things, passively fighting and all that, and Lane being a complete scoundrel in an almost lovable way, really it's just terribly fine. I mean there's the whole Pilgrim bit and she's describing it to him and he's sitting there, eating goddam frog's legs for chrissake, and he's saying things like "I don't know if we'll even have time to get to the game" right before he orders coffee instead of just screwing the coffee and leaving.

It's all just fascinating, the style I mean, and of course the characters, too. Franny faints at the end, and it's just so Salinger - I mean who faints these days? No one faints anymore, or uses handkerchiefs, or tries to make someone "come thoroughly to" with ammonia. It's all just so civilized and petty at the same time, so farcical and serious and terribly fun.

But then it's over. Not just Franny and Zooey, I mean all of it, Salinger's work just stops dead. Bam. Like a car crash. Like Camus.

Sometimes I secretly await the day that Salinger dies, simply because I hope he has a whole bunch of novels just tucked in drawers somewhere, waiting to be published posthumously. I know that's really morbid and everything, and probably immoral , too. But it would just be so lovely to read a new work. So terribly lovely.

The Zen/Flow of Scav

Aside from the obvious road trip items, I only really got to do one item this year. Last year for the party we had used a strobe light, and the strobe light had been given to me for safe keeping until the next Scav. How convenient, then, when one of the items turns out to be a contraption that uses a strobe light to make a stream of water seem to freeze in midair, little droplets suspended in space.

I arrived back from road trip at 4 in the morning (the judges always do the complete road trip themselves ahead of time to make sure everything works just so, and they disclosed that on their dry run they got back at 6 a.m.) I had been planning to sleep and things, since we needed to be at judgment at 10:00 to get our items judged. Of course, though, the spirit of the night - the last night before judgment the next day - drew me in and I ended up not sleeping at all. Instead I focused my energies on the frozen water droplets.

I knew exactly what they were going for - I had seen it on one of my many trips to the local science museum. Luckily this year they had basically emptied out the Searle chemistry laboratory, and Scavvies quickly took up all of the supplies. So there were stands and flasks and tubes. I got a box - darkness was going to be needed - and a plastic water bottle and started putting holes in things - holes in the box, holes in the bottle, eeerything. I nailed tiny nails into plastic bottle caps, seeing if they created the disired effect when water was poured in, and then tapping the nails more when the wholes weren't ever big enough.

It was a simple project, really, emulating something I had seen a million times before. And we had all the materials; getting the right materials is often the hardest part. But for an hour or so, I drilled and hammered and cut and twisted and tested. Over and over again, I tested, trying to get the water to break up into droplets but still flow freely. And during that time I didn't notice anything or anyone. I walked into people, stepped over friends on the floor. I had achieved what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called "flow", where the passage of time is distorted, where self-consiousness melds into the activity itself, etc. That's what Scav is, it's flow. It's a timeless endeavor with clear goals - to win - and relatively immediate feedback that gets people immerse themselves in that kind of embarrassment. It is about blending the ego and the self with the work itself.

Quicksand Part 2

Once Thursday (and thus my official responsibilities) was over, having not slept since Tuesday night, I collapsed into my bed. Only I couldn't fall asleep. I kept going over the list in my mind. But I needed to sleep; I needed to fly out to Mass. in the morning. Nevertheless I tossed and turned, ruminating on the items one by one.

Eventually I gave up and just got out of bed, heading to the computer. I looked for some items that had not been done (according to our team's website) and started Googling. The item I found was: "Eudaimonia." I can't remember how man points it was or anything, but that didn't matter. See, as any U of C student learns sometime in their first or second year, eudaimonia is the term for what Aristotle saw as the highest goal in life: a sort of enlightened, active, and virtuous happiness.

Now almost everything on the list is a reference to something, so I was looking for what, precisely the judges were referring to by "Eudaimonia." After maybe half an hour of Googling, I found that there used to be a group of obscure German philosophers who put out a journal in the late 18th century called, that's right, "Eudaimonia." Ok, a lead perhaps, but it was missing something necessary for me to be convinced that that was what the item called for.

It turns out that the journal Eudaimonia is not at all easy to find; only a handful of libraries in the world have it, and the U of C was not one. U of I was, and...so was Princeton. Dressed only in boxers, sitting in the dark before the blue glow of my computer screen, all the pieces started to fall into place in my mind: journal, Princeton, road trip eudaimonia...clearly the judges wanted us to take the journal out of the library in Princeton and...bring it back? That part was a bit unclear, but I ran downstairs to the war room (in my mind, I went downstairs still in nothing but my boxers...though I might have put some pants on or something) and told someone of my discovery. They were then going to get some ally on the Princeton campus to take it out of the library, give it to the road trip team, they would drive it back to Chicago, present it at Judgment, and then we'd Fed-Ex it back to our ally in Princeton who would dutifully return the rare volumes. My inspiration finally dispatched and my responsibilities complete, I returned to bed and fell asleep.

I had about an hour to kill before my flight, so I naturally studied the list. Quicksand. How do you make quicksand, I wondered. The answer: look on the internet. I found that you need to get water to flow up from the bottom. I started the project, coming up with some vague plans, and passed if off as I = left with my bag for Massachusetts.

The speech in Mass. went well, though I had known from the start that I would lose. But I couldn't wait to get back to Scav. Items went in and out of my head. Most were things I had no idea what they were even looking for. Some I knew exactly what they wanted but could not fathom actually producing such an item. After less than 48 hours at home, I got back on a plane early Sunday morning to fly back to the U of C.

When I came back there was a large blue barrel filled with sand, sand which I later learned had come - under somewhat extralegal means - from the 57th street beach in the middle of the night. There was a hose duct-taped to a water bottle which had been cut to fit the size of a whole in the bottom of the barrel. Interested, I asked them to turn it on, which they did. I stuck my hand in and it stubbornly, until the water was cut off at least, refused to come out.

Quicksand Part 1

The secret to quicksand is a flow of water that comes from the bottom. Well, there's another option: if a sand-water mix is shaken just so, like in an earthquake, it'll spontaneously devolve into that liquid-solid trap so frequently featured in movies and adventure stories. But that, the shaking option, wasn't feasible. The best way, clearly , is water flowing from underneath.

It was my first Scav, and we had to present to the judges working quicksand. My official position had been "Thursday Czar", meaning that I was in charge of the various events that need to happen on the first day of the Hunt. In my case, it meant organizing a hot dog stand complete with a grill, an electric hot dog maker (think toaster with round slots - it was mostly for decoration), and Mia, a fellow team member, dressed in a hot dog costume in the middle of the Quads.

Although the road trip - that year it was going out to Princeton and doing all sorts of Ivy-league themed items - also left on Thursday, I had minimal responsibilities for that. In any case, they were gone by 10 a.m., so I focused all my attention on the hot dog stand. We were supposed to give away 100 hot dogs over the course of two hours each on Thursday and Friday. The thing to keep in mind is there were going to be 5 or 6 teams, each selling hot dogs. So even if demand was high, there was no guarantee our hot dogs would go fast. In the end, though, we "sold" all 100 on Thursday.

I was Thursday Czar because I had to leave on Friday to fly back to Massachusetts in order to run to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. I had signed up for it before I knew when Scav was. I had worked for Kerry the summer before, in New Hampshire, and I was going to work for him again the next summer in DC, so I was pretty tied to the campaign. Still, I'm not sure if, had I known the two things would conflict, I might have chosen Scav over the DNC.

Let it Ride

Item #203. If Flamin’ Harry McGonigal can entertain 500,000 at Sturgis every year, surely Clan Costner can draw a crowd of at least 10 with their performance of BTO’s “Let It Ride”. [26 points]

None of us new "Let it Ride" - a little before our time - but we had a CD and we listened to it over and over again on the drive across South Dakota. James was the beat box, Veronica and I were back up, and Bob was lead singer. We practiced the chorus, and the progressions, and then we practiced them again.

James, who had the most musical talent of any of us, said that he had never seen four people singing in different keys before. "We start out at around the same place, but then somehow we end up all over the place."

Eventually we arrived at Sturgis, South Dakota. Sturgis is home to one of (if not the) largest biker conventions in the country. There were signs everywhere still welcoming bikers, even thought the convention was at the end of the summer. First, we had to do Item 224:

Photos of the Mariner with the youngest, Criminelvis with the oldest, Ray Kinsella with the burliest,
and Robin Hood with the girliest bikers in Sturgis. [4 points per photo]

So we went from biker bar to biker bar, looking for our requisite bikers. By the time we were done, it was after 10pm on Friday night, and the bars were just starting to fill up.

Veronica had the idea of us asking to perform in one of the bars. Certainly there would be more than 10 people there. We went back to the first bar, which had a live band, and asked the owner, whose name I think was DJ, or JD, or something like that.

As we waited, James thought to ask the band to back us up. There was some negociation - we ended up having to go on with the Max team because the owner didn't want groups of badly-singing becostumed college students going up on stage one after another.

The band was great - they seemed really excited to do it, and the owner, too. But they needed to learn the song. I never realized how they learned the song, but somehow they picked up the beat and the tune. And we were ready to go.

Now, I have never sung on stage. Certainly not in a biker bar. And normally I would be terrified of such a situation. But, there was something about having two guitarists behind me, and a bassist, and a drummer, something about the microphone in front of me, and of course, something about the Elvis costume I was wearing, that made the whole thing only wonderful, and not embarrassing at all.

It went great. We all stumbled a little bit, trying to find when we were supposed to come in over the backup, but after a few bars we were rolling. Or...riding.

Pond Him!

Some of my favorite items this year that I wish I'd been back in Chicago for:

71. A Gingerbread House of Ill Repute. [16 points]
45. Part a fool and his money. [30 points]
74. Enter a lecture class in street clothes. Receive loud phone call. Shout “I NEED TO GO, THE CITY NEEDS ME!” Remove street clothes to reveal superhero apparel. Run out for the good of the land. [18 points]
285. Man, this lecture class is so boring. If only a giant pitcher would burst in to distribute fruit punch! [21 p-OH YEAH-ints]
321. Stage the cafeteria scene from High School Musical in one of the UofC dining halls during a mealtime. [15 points]


Road trip was certainly a lot of fun, but I am a little sad that I didn't have a chance to just be in Chicago, without responsibilities of a captain or anything like that. Driving in the middle of South Dakota, reading the list, wondering how things were going, I couldn't help but feel disconnected.

Of course, I was going to feel disconnected anyway, that was inevitable. I hardly knew any of the first years, and they made up the bulk of the team, as they always do. But there were rites, one Wednesday, that made us all a team. We went over the rules, and then the speeches came. Mark adapted Genesis chapter 1 ("And the Judges looked at the Hunt that they had made and they saw that it was good."). Ramya imparted some maternal wisdom in the form of song. Pranks offered a puppet show. A first year, who I didn't know, got up and gave the traditional first-year rep. speech, but his was far more serious than any others I had seen. He seemed to really recognize what Scav was, which is in a way seriousness that shuns seriousness.

Then we ponded him.

See, Hitchcock, which is right on the main quads, has a tradition of throwing the people we love into what is somewhat ironically called "Botany Pond." It is a fake pond that exists within the confines of concrete, though there are real ducks and turtles who live there. But the emphasis really is on botany: there are unknowable forms of plant life lurking in the murky waters and coating the shallow bottom. Which makes it the perfect place to throw someone, like a new RA, or a new House President, or a first-year rep.

The upper-classmen started fidgeting as soon as they felt his speech winding down. I involuntarily and prematurely stood up, ready to grab this kid I didn't know, or a part of him. Finally, he was done, and a spontaneous chant of "Pond him! Pond him!" arose from the crowd. The first years quickly caught on. We removed the victims valuables, phone and wallet and such, and his shoes, and let him out into the hot evening.

There is a giddiness that always accompanies a ponding. People are jumping up and down, running to the pond and back, taking up a calf or an elbow of the pondee. we chanted and rejoiced until he was being supported by only two people who stood on the edge of the brown-green water. They started swinging him over the water, then back, and we all counted: 1...swing...2...swing...3!

Then he was in the air, never rising very high, and suddenly hidden beneath the water. There was a moment of silence, as everyone focused on the surface of the water, until he rose, almost like Halle Berry in that Bond movie, shaking his hair, disgusting drops of water falling through the air, making little splash-circles in the then-turbulent water.

Like all forms of religion, Scav relies on sacrifices, and once that sacrifice was made, we truly became a team.

Scav Road Trip: NE

It was amazing that the things balanced. They were 10, maybe 12 feet tall, long, dull gray objects. Mostly there were two standing vertically, with a third on top resting horizontally. Some of them, however had fallen over, but even that seemed to be in a planned way. The whole thing was arranged in a circle, no doubt aligned to the sun or something like that. And it did seem mystical, in the middle of nowhere like that, with nothing but plains for miles.

Who had built this, I wondered. Who had put in this effort, dragging the heavy blocks from who-knows-where just to build this structure, a sculpture, or perhaps a religious monument, or whatever it was.

Item #112. Carhenge! It’s Stonehenge, only made out of cars! Don’t you understand? [10 points]

We were not in England, we were in the opposite of England: Nebraska. Alliance, Nebraska, technically, but Carhenge was at least 3 miles out of town. It was in what seemed to be the backyard of a small, abandoned, and somewhat dilapidated white house.

When we got there there were several bikers in the small parking lot, drinking coffee. We thought we had left all the bikers in Sturgis, but apparently not. Then, as we got out of the car, two more bikers drove into the lot, driving bright red and yellow restored bikes with sidecars and puny mufflers. They did figure eights for a while, showing off. Meanwhile we went out to investigate.

We had a number of items at Carhenge. We had to find a grave for foreign cars: “Here lie the bodies of foreign cars. They served their purpose while Detroit slept. Now Detroit is awake and America is great!” and complete the equation: Randi + Cindy = ? (the answer is "BFFs"). Then we had to take a picture in an old station wagon, and use a steering wheel that stuck up out of the ground to drive the Earth into the Sun (the item was worth "[1,000,000,000 points; 2 points for effort]"; since we remained alive, we assumed we got 2). Then Robin Hood/Veronica had to slay a random dinosaur skeleton that was there. And we had to eat cheese balls. Always, it seemed, we were eating cheese balls.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to ponder the greater meaning of Carhenge, perhaps gain some new wisdom from the ancient constructors of it. We had to get to Colorado, to find the best Rocky Mountain Oysters and the Swedish Parking area of Julesburg. And eat cheese balls.

Scav Road Trip: SD

Item #249:
Criminelvis plays the Palace, joining the ranks of Raven-Symone, LeeAnn Rimes, and that dude from Riverdance. [5 points]

I was dressed as Kevin Costner's character in 3000 Miles to Graceland, which the Judges referred to as "Criminelvis."

"The Palace" was the infamous Corn Palace, the World's Only, A-Maize-ing, Corn Palace. It's in Mitchell, South Dakota, maybe 30 miles west of Sioux Falls. Certainly it's a feat; they replace the corn every year except for this past year, because of the drought. Inside, though, there's little reason for it to exist, other than a large auditorium. I was expecting some kind of celebration of corn, or corn museum, but really there is one wall with a series of pictures and captions.

Now, the auditorium was why we were there, at least. I had to sing (I chose Hound Dog, since it was the one I knew without having to listen to it again) on stage. I have no ability to sing. I have less ability to dance. I have even less ability to dance like Elvis. So, it was with some trepidation that I got up on stage, aware of the tiny red light on the video camera that one of my team mates was holding.

The good news was the place was empty. Except there were a few maintenance workers I noticed on the way out. They gave me quite a look.

Item #233. The Clan Costner loves cheese balls. Loves ’em so much, they’re going to try to eat them in as many states as possible. [5 points per state, maximum 8 states]

It took us a while to find cheese balls in the first place - we had to go to a grocery store in La Crosse, WI. Once we found them, though, we had to get out in each state we could and take a picture with the orange puffs in our hands and big grins on our faces.

Which is why we were going to Wyoming. Well, there was one other item we needed to complete there:

53. The Mariner: IN WYOMING!!! [20 points] (The Mariner being Kevin Costner's character in Waterworld)

But also we needed to eat cheeseballs.

It was late when we left Kevin Costner's casino in Deadwood, SD, so we decided to get food in Spearfish, SD, a couple miles from the Wyoming border. We stopped at a Quizno's sub, arriving at 8:40, 20 minutes before close.

When we got there, the chairs were already up on the tables, and the two people who were behind the counter were packing up the veggies and sliced meats. It was Spearfish, SD, after all, so it was not that unreasonable to not expect anyone else to come in after 8:30.

But not only did people come in, people came in dressed like Robin Hood, a Chicago Black Sock, the Mariner from Waterworld, and a criminal Elvis. Which the two kids behind the counter clearly did not expect. As we looked up at the menu boards, trying to decide what to get, they moved into the back and started laughing. Theoretically they were trying to get out of our field of vision, but they were laughing so loudly we couldn't possibly not hear them. One of them came out to take our order, and immediately went right back again, unable to hold it in.

Scav Road Trip: WI

Item #248:
“What would you say if I told you that your nickname was The Boat?” These must be the first words you say to a random traveler at the Van Galder bus stop in Madtown. Said traveler must be waiting for the 14:00 bus to Chicago. The Clan Costner must convince this traveler to carry a receipt and a book from Booked før Murder to Union Station in Chicago, where he/she will give up the receipt and his/her nickname to the mysterious stranger with a corncob pipe and a captain’s hat. [40 points]

It was a hot, sunny day in Madison. We got to the bus station early, so we waited for a bit, suffering glances of countless Madisonians. I can't blame them; if I saw four people dressed like Kevin Costner characters, I'd stare too.

We had the brilliant idea to go to the ticket counter (which was in the book store) to wait for people to buy tickets to Chicago. But, it turns out most people buy their tickets in advance, so we went out to the bus stop, looking for people with baggage.

One woman was already carrying a book. We stood around, undoubtedly sketchy, and tried to pick our mark. Then, a girl with pink hair (I think). She was sitting on her bag, looking a bit glum.

James did it. "What would you say if I told you your nickname was The Boat?"

"Go away," she said, not moving her gaze. Immediately we started groveling. "Please, it's for a scavenger hunt, we go to the University of Chicago, we just need you to carry this book, there'll be a guy at the station, corncob pipe,..."

She acquiesced. "I guess I'll do it for the U of C." Somehow we had lucked upon a sympathizer, though she never revealed the nature of her connection.

***

Item #61:
Don’t disturb the dead, even if the dead disturb you. Clan Costner always calls ahead. [25 points]

What the hell is this?, we wondered. Somehow we learned that we were supposed to go to a funeral home in Tomah, Wisconsin, maybe 45 minutes out of Madison.

We arrived and were immediately invited downstairs by a manager, or owner, or something. She was friendly and cordial, and interested in us as young people. A sort of "Oh, isn't that just lovely, what you kids are doing" kind of way.

Downstairs, in this funeral home in Wisconsin, we found a large taxonomy museum. Deer were coming out the walls, birds were flying overhead, and ferrets were chasing each other around a tree. Then there was the squirrel room. They had been arranged like dolls in various poses. This one's cooking dinner. This one's relaxing on the beach. This one's storing nuts. And there was a bar, with a little squirrel bartender and little squirrel regulars drinking little squirrel-sized cocktails from little squirrel-sized glasses. There was one who was hitting on another one by the bar, and another who was leaning over his drink, as if he'd been broken by years of misery.

To complete the item we needed to fill out a worksheet, counting antlers, finding certain figures, etc. One of the tasks was to count all the fish in the museum, so I started. Then, after 120 or so, I lost count, and started again. Then, after 150 or so, I lost count, and started again. Then, I had all of them except for those that were in the back room, which was filled with fish. And I lost count. And I started again. In the end, there were over 200 fish in that basement museum, including several who were mounted on motorized carousel so they looked like they were being dragged in circles by the lures stuck in their mouths.

The owner was very nice, though, and gave us directions to get back on I-90. Funeral home directors always seem to be nice.

LB Who?

I saw Tim O'Brien yesterday at Columbia College. He's one of my favorite writers, and I've been looking forward to it for a while. When I got there the room - a movie theater really - was packed with students, professors, and people from all over Chicago. The image of the fliers for the event - pictures of the Vietnam memorial with the words "An Evening With Tim O'Brien" - were projected onto the screen.

An evening, I thought. Wow, a whole evening.

There was an empty chair at the front, one of those directors' chairs made of cloth. It looked as if anyone sitting there would be perpetually perturbed by the large flower arrangement that was placed next to it.

In the end, O'Brien didn't sit in the chair, though, he spoke at the podium. He looked oddly frail. Odd because he reminds me a lot of my teacher Mr. McGraw - they were both veterans and writers and O'Brien's book-jacket photo has him wearing a baseball cap with sort of unkempt hair, and he looks very much like Mr. McGraw - but Mr. McGraw was undoubtedly vital, coaching JV baseball and pacing around the room, dancing in flurries of arm movements at the board. During the reading, O'Brien kept his hat on the whole time - a sort of nondescript beige hat - which made his eyes look sunken.

He spoke at length about the distinctions of what he calls story-truth and happening-truth, an idea I find very interesting, so I was listening intently. The two girls behind me, however, were not listening so intently.

At one point, O'Brien mentioned passing a statue of LBJ somewhere in Texas. "What's LBJ" one of the girls behind me asked.

"I think it's Lyndon Johnson."

"Lyndon Johnson?"

"Yeah, the president."

"Oh. [thinking] What's the 'b' stand for?"

Then, when the talk let out, I waited in line for some of what seemed to be really delicious food. There was spicy chicken satay, stuffed mushrooms, peach-brie quesadillas, and sliced-tenderloin tarts with carmelized red onions. The only problem was that the dishes were so fancy they only had one of each, so after ten minutes of creeping though the line, there was nothing left. Not even a diet coke.

I left without getting my book signed.

The Ballad of Einstein's Bagels

Culture is not passive at the U of C, it's a force.

For years before I came there had been a tradition in the C-Shop - a coffee shop on campus - called Shake Day. Every Wednesday milkshakes were $1. This certainly didn't do wonders for kids trying to avoid the Freshman Fifteen, or the Sophomore Six, or the Junior Jellyroll, or the Senior Spare Tire. But, as I understand from my predecessors, it did do wonders for psychological health on campus.

Then Einstein's Bagels decided to take over the C-Shop. A fine idea, to have bagels on campus (which are hard to find in Chicago, good ones at least) and actual good cofee and such. Except Einstein's doesn't do milkshakes.

So they got rid of shake day. The students protested. "But we're a bagel chain," the Einstein's people said. Didn't make a difference; the students wanted their shake day damn it, they wanted their $1 shake. I wanted it, too, even though I'd never had it, because it was advertised in all the admissions materials.

Einstein's acquiesced - sort of. They started offering tiny shakes in little plastic cups - the kind you see at a water cooler. "Here," they said, "we have reinstituted Shake Day."

"Not good enough," the students said,"these shakes are puny."

"But how are we to make money? We are a business, after all."

"No, you're a campus coffee shop at the University of Chicago. You're on our turf, not live by our rules."

Einstein's protested, but we got our way. And now I'm sure we have the only Einstein's Bagel franchise that serves milk shakes.

Also, we sure as hell don't call it "Einstein's." We call it the C-Shop.