Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Apr 05 2003

I rented Orange County a couple of days ago; I wat…

I rented Orange County a couple of days ago; I watched it twice today, once this afternoon and then again this evening at Dean’s, as he hadn’t seen it. I quite like this movie, it’s a lot of fun. The writer, who appears in the film as the English teacher, is Jack Black’s next-door neighbor, and everyone is someone famous’s son or daughter. Colin Hanks is good, though, as is everyone else for the most part. It really brought back the feeling of being in high school, the anxiety of college, SAT’s, etc. I got something like 1380 on the tests, with a much higher verbal than math score, and I applied to several schools, including Wake Forest, Oberlin, Washington & Lee, Yale and Cornell, plus Florida State as my ‘safety school’. W&L, located in Lexington, VA, was the best school I could afford with my scholarship, but I had decided on Wake Forest until I actually visited the campus and then compared it to W&L’s, which seemed much better. My parents wanted me to go to FSU so badly they said they’d buy me a new car if I agree to do so, but one look at the campus in Lexington clinched the deal as far as I was concerned. My junior year in high school went poorly, though it seemed worse than it actually was due to the angst-colored glasses I was wearing at the time. I don’t remember my GPA but it couldn’t have been too much higher than a 3.5. I think my overall college GPA was about the same, come to think of it. Damn, but watching that film brought back the time when those numbers seemed so important, so all-encompassing in their ability to measure us all. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and give myself a good slapping around. Of course, in 15 more years I’ll probably want to come back to now and do the same.

Mindcrime and I went to a tea shop to hang out this afternoon, and then to the Eslite near the Nanjing E. Rd MRT station to look at scripts. They had my book there, and I signed a few copies, but they didn’t have any scripts. So we went down to the big Eslite, where they did have scripts. I asked the ladies behind the help counter if they wanted me to sign any copies of my book, and after much debate they said that book-signings were supposed to be arranged affairs. She seemed rather apologetic about it, but I really don’t care one way or the other. Afterwards a producer from TVBS-G approached me and asked if I wanted to be on a talk show they have there. I said sure, as long as it’s not one of those variety shows where 58 “celebrity guests” stand around on a stage with big puffy microphones laughing at the hosts’ bad jokes and playing games involving plastic Hello Kitty sledgehammers. He said he didn’t think it was that kind of program. We’ll see.

Tomorrow I might go Go-karting with Graham et al, but only if the weather cooperates. The temperature’s been bouncing up and down the past few days in a manner that necessitates bringing along all possible combinations of clothing on any outing. In other words, typical spring weather.

posted by Poagao at 4:45 pm  

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