So on the way to Pirates of Penzance rehearsal this morning, I find myself waiting for the elevator at the studio with Vanessa Redgrave. She had just walked up and seen me checking my phone for the time, and so she asks me what time it is.
Now sometimes, I'll just check my phone absent-mindedly, without really noting the time, which is what I had just done. So I pull my phone back out, check it, and tell her the time. Instead of saying thank you, she just looks at me. And when Vanessa Redgrave looks at you with those blue eyes, believe me, you stay looked at.
So as my brain is scrambling for something intelligent and/or witty to say, my mouth just starts talking. I smile and say, "sometimes I look at my phone, but I forget to remember what time it is."
She keeps pondering me. "You forget to remember what time it is?" she muses. "That's a very interesting..."
"Yes, confusing, I know," I blurt out.
Finally the damned elevator arrives, and we get on with another of the actors from my show. We ride up in silence, and Ms. Redgrave gets out on the 3rd floor. As soon as the door closes, my friend says, "Oh my God, that was Vanessa Redgrave! I can't believe it! I thought I was going to poop myself!"
I just look at her and say, "yeah, that would have been embarrassing..."
24 January 2007
I Paid $120,000 for an Elite Ivy League Education and I Can’t Even Read My Diploma
I have a story to share. I'm sharing it because I think it's cool, and because I stayed up way too late last night researching this to keep it to myself.
You may or may not know that Yale University’s diploma is written entirely in Latin. It's very cool, in an oldskool kind of way. Very oldskool, in fact. More like ancientskool. There's no decoration, no color and no punctuation; just black text in caps in a font that looks like it was taken from old Roman scrolls. The only ornamentation is the Yale seal embossed at the bottom, but it's not painted; if you stood ten feet away, you wouldn't be able to see it at all. The diploma is a masterpiece of basic, matter-of-fact Ivy League elitism that says, "If you don't know what this is, you obviously didn't go to Yale."
Unfortunately, even though I did go to Yale, I still had no idea what I was looking at. So ever since I graduated, I have from time to time attempted to translate my diploma into English, using my knowledge of French and Spanish plus some educated guessing. I had gotten the gist of most of it, thanks to the fact that if you've read one diploma, you've basically read them all: To all who read these letters... confer upon you... etc. My only hangup was the date. The date is written as follows:
A.D. IX KAL. IUN. ANNO DOMINI MCMXCIX
MCMXCIX? Easy, of course. 1999. My brain isn't so addled from 5 years of college alcoholism that I can't remember the year I graduated. But wait: I know that Anno Domini means "Year of Our Lord." So what does the A.D. stand for? And then there's "IX KAL. IUN." June? June 9th? That can't be right. I graduated in May, on a very rainy Monday morning. And again, unless I drank way too many cups of Mory's punch, I'm pretty sure that no Monday in May will ever fall on June 9th. The light dawned on me when I searched online for that phrase: "IX KAL. IUN." It turns out that the Yale diploma is even ancienter-skool than I thought, because they reckon the date according to the Julian calendar.
The Julian calendar is the calendar of ancient Rome. It is very similar to the Gregorian calendar, which is the one we use today. They both have the same months, and the same number of days in each month. Where the Julian calendar differs is how it counts those days. Because it was originally lunar based, there are three very important days in every month. Kalends corresponds to the new moon. Nones falls on the first quarter. Ides comes on the full moon. After coming to power, Julius Caesar decided to standardize this system. The Kalends thenceforth would always be the first day of the month. The Ides would fall on either the 13th or the 15th day of the month. The Nones would fall on the date nine days before the Ides.
It's important to note that last bit, because the remaining days of the month are denominated not, as in our calendar, by their relation to the beginning of the month, but by their relation to the next of those three fixed points. So, for instance, March 15 is the Ides of March. The previous day, the 14th, is called PRIDIE ID. MAR., or "the day before the Ides of March." To make things even more complicated, the days are counted inclusively. That is to say, if today is March 12, you would count the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th. Four days before the ides of march = A.D.[ante diem – ha ha!] IV ID. MAR.
So with that new knowledge in hand, let's take a look at the date on my diploma. We can now deduce that A.D. IX KAL. IUN. means "nine days before the Kalends of June." Starting on June 1st and counting backwards 9 days, we get May 24th, which just happens to be the day I graduated from college. I find this all to be nipple-hardeningly cool. Thus intellectual curiosity trumps ignorance, and here endeth the lesson.
Postscript: Once I had pieced all this together, I found a page on the Yale website that offers to print, for a fee, an official copy of the diploma translated into English. They have the text of the translation right there on the page. Right there, for anyone to see. But is there a single word about those frickin' Kalends of June? No sir.
You may or may not know that Yale University’s diploma is written entirely in Latin. It's very cool, in an oldskool kind of way. Very oldskool, in fact. More like ancientskool. There's no decoration, no color and no punctuation; just black text in caps in a font that looks like it was taken from old Roman scrolls. The only ornamentation is the Yale seal embossed at the bottom, but it's not painted; if you stood ten feet away, you wouldn't be able to see it at all. The diploma is a masterpiece of basic, matter-of-fact Ivy League elitism that says, "If you don't know what this is, you obviously didn't go to Yale."
Unfortunately, even though I did go to Yale, I still had no idea what I was looking at. So ever since I graduated, I have from time to time attempted to translate my diploma into English, using my knowledge of French and Spanish plus some educated guessing. I had gotten the gist of most of it, thanks to the fact that if you've read one diploma, you've basically read them all: To all who read these letters... confer upon you... etc. My only hangup was the date. The date is written as follows:
A.D. IX KAL. IUN. ANNO DOMINI MCMXCIX
MCMXCIX? Easy, of course. 1999. My brain isn't so addled from 5 years of college alcoholism that I can't remember the year I graduated. But wait: I know that Anno Domini means "Year of Our Lord." So what does the A.D. stand for? And then there's "IX KAL. IUN." June? June 9th? That can't be right. I graduated in May, on a very rainy Monday morning. And again, unless I drank way too many cups of Mory's punch, I'm pretty sure that no Monday in May will ever fall on June 9th. The light dawned on me when I searched online for that phrase: "IX KAL. IUN." It turns out that the Yale diploma is even ancienter-skool than I thought, because they reckon the date according to the Julian calendar.
The Julian calendar is the calendar of ancient Rome. It is very similar to the Gregorian calendar, which is the one we use today. They both have the same months, and the same number of days in each month. Where the Julian calendar differs is how it counts those days. Because it was originally lunar based, there are three very important days in every month. Kalends corresponds to the new moon. Nones falls on the first quarter. Ides comes on the full moon. After coming to power, Julius Caesar decided to standardize this system. The Kalends thenceforth would always be the first day of the month. The Ides would fall on either the 13th or the 15th day of the month. The Nones would fall on the date nine days before the Ides.
It's important to note that last bit, because the remaining days of the month are denominated not, as in our calendar, by their relation to the beginning of the month, but by their relation to the next of those three fixed points. So, for instance, March 15 is the Ides of March. The previous day, the 14th, is called PRIDIE ID. MAR., or "the day before the Ides of March." To make things even more complicated, the days are counted inclusively. That is to say, if today is March 12, you would count the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th. Four days before the ides of march = A.D.[ante diem – ha ha!] IV ID. MAR.
So with that new knowledge in hand, let's take a look at the date on my diploma. We can now deduce that A.D. IX KAL. IUN. means "nine days before the Kalends of June." Starting on June 1st and counting backwards 9 days, we get May 24th, which just happens to be the day I graduated from college. I find this all to be nipple-hardeningly cool. Thus intellectual curiosity trumps ignorance, and here endeth the lesson.
Postscript: Once I had pieced all this together, I found a page on the Yale website that offers to print, for a fee, an official copy of the diploma translated into English. They have the text of the translation right there on the page. Right there, for anyone to see. But is there a single word about those frickin' Kalends of June? No sir.
16 November 2006
An Open Letter to My Next-Door Neighbor, Who I Can Sometimes Hear Through My Bathroom Wall Having Sex
Dear Neighbor,
Please let me begin by reminding you that the walls in our apartment building are very thin. I am not a voyeuristic person, or at least I imagine that I’m no more voyeuristic than the average person. But you’ll have to admit that when one lives in a city like New York, where so many people are living in such close proximity, one gives up a certain amount of privacy. So I have to admit that sometimes, yes, I can hear you through my bathroom wall having sex.
If you’ve read this far, you may be asking yourself, “who is this pervert and why has he written me a letter?” Let me assure you that I am no pervert. That is to say, I am no more perverted than I am voyeuristic. It just occurs to me that if I can hear what goes on in your bedroom, you can probably hear what goes on in my bathroom. So please accept this letter by way of an apology.
I’m sorry if you’ve ever been awakened or disturbed by any rude noises coming from my bathroom. I can only imagine how embarrassing it must be to be privy to someone else’s ablutions, especially if you’re trying to get “in the mood.” I flatter myself by hoping that my shower singing compensates in some small way for the intrusion. Indeed, if you ever wish me to switch to something more romantic, please just knock twice on the wall. I’m willing to help in any way I can.
Thank you very much for your understanding.
Yours truly,
gms
p.s. I am not a pervert.
Please let me begin by reminding you that the walls in our apartment building are very thin. I am not a voyeuristic person, or at least I imagine that I’m no more voyeuristic than the average person. But you’ll have to admit that when one lives in a city like New York, where so many people are living in such close proximity, one gives up a certain amount of privacy. So I have to admit that sometimes, yes, I can hear you through my bathroom wall having sex.
If you’ve read this far, you may be asking yourself, “who is this pervert and why has he written me a letter?” Let me assure you that I am no pervert. That is to say, I am no more perverted than I am voyeuristic. It just occurs to me that if I can hear what goes on in your bedroom, you can probably hear what goes on in my bathroom. So please accept this letter by way of an apology.
I’m sorry if you’ve ever been awakened or disturbed by any rude noises coming from my bathroom. I can only imagine how embarrassing it must be to be privy to someone else’s ablutions, especially if you’re trying to get “in the mood.” I flatter myself by hoping that my shower singing compensates in some small way for the intrusion. Indeed, if you ever wish me to switch to something more romantic, please just knock twice on the wall. I’m willing to help in any way I can.
Thank you very much for your understanding.
Yours truly,
gms
p.s. I am not a pervert.
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