Tuesday, February 24, 2009

My major.

Currently
Songs for Silverman
By Ben Folds
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Yesterday, I was listening to a professor give a lecture about what he did after he got his English degree. He served coffee at a coffee shop that rarely had any customers, and he read Moby Dick. Eventually, he developed a fascination with the book, and spent 15 straight years (so far) reading it extensively.

Last night, I was listening to This American Life, and they had a story about an English major who became the Jose Cuervo man after he graduated. He had people drink tequilla shots out of a shot glass balanced on his bald head and danced around with free t-shirts sticking out of his speedo. Now he is doing commercials for razor blades. Most of the ads feature him jumping into fountains or being sprayed with fire hoses.

I learned that, after playing Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years, Fred Savage pursued an English degree from Stanford. After his graduation, he appeared as a womanizing professor on Boy Meets World and a serial rapist on Law and Order: SVU. He played in the World Poker Tour. He then won the award for Worst Director at the 28th Golden Raspberry Awards for his work on Daddy Day Camp. Now he directs kids' shows on Nickelodeon.

Vin Diesel was an English major. Enough said.




Basically, all these things made me wonder:
what have I gotten myself into?

I've always thought that I had some stories to tell--that I hopefully have enough inspiration to make telling stories a career. But I just looked over my past blogs and realized that since last year, I have written around 3. That is 3 times that I was motivated enough to write something. That means that as far as motivation goes, I basically died when summer came around.

So, this is an attempt at a revival. This is me taking those chest shocker thingies and rubbing them together and going all out.


Bzzzzzt!

love always,
jim.