Skip to main content

Life is funny

A friend of mine is getting a PhD in astrophysics and she now plans to pursue a new career in film. She is currently dating a really cool guy who is also a fairly famous director (I really like his movies, no matter which of my friends he dates). We went over to their place for their joint birthday party last night, and we got to talk with a bunch of normal people who also happen to be famous Hollywood insiders. It was a very enjoyable experience, especially given how much time I've been spending around astronomers lately.

We had great food, conversations about casting in St. Louis vs casting in Omaha, talked about the differences between a white dwarf and a brown dwarf, all while the boys splashed in the hot tub.

After saying farewell to the hosts, one of my conversations on the way to the door may or may not have gone like this:

Lady: "Have we met before?"
Me: "Honestly, probably not. I've only hung out with [famous director] once, at an astronomy conference in Seattle of all places."
Lady: "Interesting. I take it you're an astronomer."
Me: "Yup. What do you do?"
Lady: "I'm an actor. My name is Laura."
Me, looking closer: "I'm John. Are you Laura Der..."
Lady: "Yes, I'm Laura Dern."
Me: (awkwardly attempting to come up with a movie of her's other than Jurassic Park.) "Oh, I enjoy your work..."
Lady: "I was in Citizen Ruth."
Me: (not having seen that movie) "Oh...so..."
Lady: ...
Me: "So, in Jurassic Park. They had a dinosaur trainer on set, of course. But did they have a separate trainer for the velociraptors?"
Lady: ...

Comments

mama mia said…
I imagine this may happen to you more than once in your locale :)
did you do Brian's velociraptor impression for Laura?

Popular posts from this blog

back-talk begins

me: "owen, come here. it's time to get a new diaper" him, sprinting down the hall with no pants on: "forget about it!" he's quoting benny the rabbit, a short-lived sesame street character who happens to be in his favorite "count with me" video. i'm turning my head, trying not to let him see me laugh, because his use and tone with the phrase are so spot-on.

The Long Con

Hiding in Plain Sight ESPN has a series of sports documentaries called 30 For 30. One of my favorites is called Broke  which is about how professional athletes often make tens of millions of dollars in their careers yet retire with nothing. One of the major "leaks" turns out to be con artists, who lure athletes into elaborate real estate schemes or business ventures. This naturally raises the question: In a tightly-knit social structure that is a sports team, how can con artists operate so effectively and extensively? The answer is quite simple: very few people taken in by con artists ever tell anyone what happened. Thus, con artists can operate out in the open with little fear of consequences because they are shielded by the collective silence of their victims. I can empathize with this. I've lost money in two different con schemes. One was when I was in college, and I received a phone call that I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. All I needed to d

Reader Feedback: Whither Kanake in (white) Astronomy?

Watching the way that the debate about the TMT has come into our field has angered and saddened me so much. Outward blatant racism and then deflecting and defending. I don't want to post this because I am a chicken and fairly vulnerable given my status as a postdoc (Editor's note: How sad is it that our young astronomers feel afraid to speak out on this issue? This should make clear the power dynamics at play in this debate) .  But I thought the number crunching I did might be useful for those on the fence. I wanted to see how badly astronomy itself is failing Native Hawaiians. I'm not trying to get into all of the racist infrastructure that has created an underclass on Hawaii, but if we are going to argue about "well it wasn't astronomers who did it," we should be able to back that assertion with numbers. Having tried to do so, well I think the argument has no standing. At all.  Based on my research, it looks like there are about 1400 jobs in Hawaii r