As with everyone else, tons of different emotions confront THEODORE HUXTABLE'S PROTEGE upon coming back to Duke from Winter Break. Instead of grappling with these feelings, though, I am completely ignoring them.
Each winter break has a defining moment for the entire Duke student body, such as last year's Matt Christensen three-point-play to beat Kentucky in overtime. That was an event everyone could get into, no matter how disparate their economic backgrounds or ZIP codes. This year, it was the Carson Daly-hosted "New Year's Eve Pajama Party" on MTV. Wait, no it wasn't.
A common connection can be found, though, in the season's blockbuster films. While the latest entry in the nine-hours-of-film-consisting-almost-entirely-of-white-male-actors series, The Two Towers, was critically lauded, the biggest film news of the break was the reappearance of Leonardo DiCaprio. No longer will he be known simply as that guy who did The Beach back in 2000. He can also add Catch Me If You Can to his credits, which could be Steven Spielberg's best movie since Hook, as well as Gangs of New York, a film that makes up for its historical inaccuracies by not having a Celine Dion song.
It is generally thought that there are some actors that can carry entire movies. Maid in Manhattan tests the theory that there are some a--es that can carry entire movies. Unfortunately, director Wayne Wang simply did not include enough shots of star Ralph Fiennes's behind to make this film work. Instead, he spent way too much time on the questionably talented Jennifer Lopez, with the thought, "This movie may suck but at least my name is Wayne Wang; that pretty much makes me really cool no matter what."
As far as Lopez, her bid to have a number one movie, in Maid in Manhattan, and a number one album, in This Is Me. Then, simultaneously, was unsuccessful, due to the unfortunate bad luck of her not really having very much ability in either field. To her credit, though, This is Me. Then has a much better title than her previous effort, J to tha L-O, which might be the worst name of any work of art in the history of time. Except for maybe Caravaggio's Boy With Basket of Fruit or Van Halen's opus OU812.
An entity that has been successful in topping two charts at once, though, in a pun-less but still wretched segue, is the Duke basketball program. Duke currently has the number one men's basketball team and the number one women's basketball team in the country. Virginia is the latest team to lose to the Duke women, on Thursday, but they did manage to hold Alana Beard to 41 points. Way to go.
Either way, the men are 11-0 and the women are 14-0, which means that, even though they have already combined to play 14 more games than our warriors on the gridiron, the ratio of losses by the football program this year to losses by the basketball program is 10 to 0, which comes out to, well, about infinity. Actually, I can't even think of a number that big. Maybe that explains why people give much more support to basketball than football here. Unless the causal effect works the other way. I'll have to ask Ross Ulmer about that one.
Anyway, the biggest issue to deal with upon returning from break is the ubiquitous question of "How was your break." Speechless, you stumble for some sort of quick answer that will kill this dull conversation through euthanasia. The upperclassmen have the edge here, having honed their intellects on the old evaluation forms that asked students to pick "one word" to describe the class they have just completed. With those skills, you can pick a quick response to the break question such as "orange" or "limber" that will leave the asker befuddled enough to stop asking you dumb questions (actually, the most common response to that question in the course evaluations was "crossword puzzle," which resulted in that question not being renewed with the new forms) (it's two words).
Unfortunately, some will persist with the second question of "What did you do?" Here, the competition in the interrogation is quite transparent, so the pressure is on to come up with something exciting. Even if the actual answer is, "hung out with two of my high school friends," you're best contriving something more eventful, so you don't seem like a schmuck. Call upon a muse, Sy-(Snootles)-and-the-Ramblin-(Root-Beer)-Gnome or otherwise, to come up with something really exciting, such as, "I went to Sierra Leone to fight in their civil war," or, "I bought some automobiles."
Another semesterly part of college life is the buying of textbooks. While waiting in line at the bookstore just to shell out 375 bones for some class materials can be stressful, fortunately the kind chaps in the basement have sought to relieve your stress by playing The Best Hits of 1999 on constant repeat. I really settle down when the Britney Spears release "Crazy" is followed by the ditty "How Bizarre" by New Zealand hitmakers OMC. Well, I guess they gotta compete with the Phil Collins pumping out of the Armadillo Grill just a few yards away.
THEODORE HUXTABLE'S PROTEGE would like to emphasize that, despite the pre-calculus calculated above, he/she, as a huge and endless supporter of the football team, has never missed a home game in his/her Duke career, nor will this ever occur, nor has he/she ever used a fake name to gank a free T-shirt off the credit card people.
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