On my bike-ride home from school today I saw: an old VW campervan next to an old VW bug at a stoplight and they were both the same shade of orange, a portly middle-manager looking fellow in khakis and a blue button-down shirt skateboarding up a hill, a couple of people riding tall custom-built leisure bicycles, and a woman wearing high heeled boots for biking. They were kind of awesome and I told her so. She said “They do the trick.”
Yesterday in class I had a great interaction. We’ve been introducing ourselves a lot this past week, and in the 8am class we did it again. “State your name and something about you.” At 8am I said “I’m Justin and I think Joss Whedon’s best work was on Astonishing X-Men.” Nerd talk, but fine. Going around the room we got to Corey, who is a big guy from Houston, who served in Afghanistan (I don’t know which branch of the military) and then got an MA and now is getting this degree. He says his bit, but tacks onto the end, “And Justin, Joss Whedon is overrated.” I’m mock outraged and we all laugh and life is good.
In the afternoon class, we’re doing basically the same thing, going around the room saying our names and what our undergrad was in and whatever. This time I’m near the end. Corey has already introduced himself before it gets to me. I say “I’m Justin and I have an anthropology degree and then I was inspired to go get a journalism degree by Transmetropolitan, the graphic novel by Warren Ellis. And if Corey,” I say, theatrically gesturing to his side of the room, “has a problem with Warren Ellis, we may have to step outside.” Everybody laughs. Someone asks, mock incredulously “Are we going to see a fight?” Everyone immediately puts their money on the big black man who’s been trained to kill people, and I’m mock-outraged and life is good.
In the class break I find Corey to talk comics (we agree that Neil Gaiman is a genius and that the way Whedon brought back Colossus might not have made complete sense) and another classmate tells me/us how freaked out our prof had looked as that exchange had happened, like he was going to have to break up a fight. So that was even more fun to know after the fact.
