Month: November 2010

I slog through another day at the Daily Show. I edit word documents. It’s very tedious work.

Then its evening. I’m in the hotel room of Stuart and Colbert doing some menial tasks. Occasionally, they wisk in and out, busy with the show.

Then, I’m in a large airport mall, very posh. I must be on the fifth floor. I look at a new phone to buy. I pick one out, looking at my own phone to view the opinions. Colbert is in the ads for the phones. He talks of the 4th dimension and I crack up because I get the inside joke: it’s a dig a 3dsi, doing one dimension better.

I swipe my card on my own phone to pay. The authorization screen indicates Claudia Anderson. Something is wrong. I tap on the authorization pad. It takes this as a signature.

I’m dismayed. A new saleslady gets a different model phone, one I really want, and takes my card.

“I work for the Daily Show,” I say.

“Oh, is that so. You know Jon Stewart was just given a commendation by the Pope.”

“Well, I used to work for it… not directly, through an office in Fairfax.”

In my parent’s basement (simultaneously on elementary school grounds), I’m teaching a football class. At first, we just play football for a couple downs, which goes pretty well. Then I get a clever idea: I’ll have each student contribute to teaching the class about football between downs, the least knowledgeable teaching the basics (they can be assisted as they teach) and the most knowledgeable teaching the interesting details.

The first forced teacher is one of a couple of Latina women. She can barely speak English. I tell her we are talking about football. Then I realize that that’s confusing because she might be thinking of soccer when she hears football. I say “American football”, but I’m not even sure she understands that. Meanwhile other students — the young, strapping men all ready to play — are getting bored and antsy. They just want to play. Everyone just wants to play and are just stifled being forced to play parts as teachers, especially when fun and the independence of simply playing a game is so close at hand, especially when this little teaching idea is so not working.