Friday, March 26, 2010

I'm in the ENS video of George Steiner!!

This morning, my philosophy class was at 8:00 instead of the usual 9:00. It was a great class - we talked about Pascal and his thoughts and how he was a great writer. Apparently we should always beware of philosophers who are good writers. That comment really brought me back to George Steiner's discussion on philosophy and the poetics of thought. Anyway, Alexandra's friend from the BU program who has been dying to go to some real French classes decided to come since I told her no one would notice in such a huge lecture. She came late, but so did almost everyone else since I suppose. The most horrible part was when this girl walked in at nine and the professor said: "Okay, see you next week." I felt so bad for her.

Afterwards, Paola (Alexandra's friend) and I went to get some Berthillon ice cream (she hadn't had it before) and walked around the Saint-Michel area where I showed her all the stuff from the last visit of my literature class. She loved the stories and everything and decided that I would make a great tour guide. Good to know my education is useful for something. I guess I'll be able to get a job!

Nothing else interesting happened today. I wrote my interactive story for my writing workshop. If you pick the interesting choices, you could end up saving a guy trying to commit suicide on top of Notre-Dame, have all your money stolen by gypsies, steal a dog from a homeless person, or get arrested stealing all the computers from the library - and all that before you get your test grade! But, since it's a "conte à votre façon," there are also boring choices that will lead you to a perfect grade. I didn't plan it like that, but I think that if it's the reader's choice, there should be a way to get boring endings. That makes sense. Oh, and I saw l'Arnacoeur again. It is just the most adorable movie ever. It's like the other Nathalie (with an H) at CUPA said: "It's an American romantic comedy à la française." If it were in English, I probably wouldn't have liked it so much. I think this time I caught a few more of the really quick parts. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels reference (not sure if they knew it was, but it definitely was) where he said he had no feeling in his left leg (because Vanessa Paradis' character had that problem with her shoulder) and the best friend said: "So, if I plant this fork in your leg, you won't feel anything?" and Vanessa Paradis said: "Nope, he won't." and she planted the fork right in his leg twice!

And finally, the best part - in the videos of George Steiner on the ENS website, I'm in the last one at the very end! It's during the question and answer where this kid asked what Steiner's answer to the question he had posed the first lecture was: "Can music lie?" Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! It's the kind of question that they'd ask on a philosophy dissertation. Not mine - maybe one of the seven hour l'ENS concours ones. How would one come up with a problématique for that? Anyway, here's me in the video and I'll post the links to the videos too. For any of my blog readers who speak French (not sure who's reading this, let alone who speaks French...), it's a great lecture!

<=I'm right there!

http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/video_stream/2010_03_01_steiner.mov
http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/video_stream/2010_03_03_steiner.mov
http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/video_stream/2010_03_05_steiner.mov

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