xtcian

3/31/03 Chapel Hill, NC We

3/31/03 Chapel Hill, NC

We came down to Chapel Hill this week to teach Dr. Peter Kaufman's scholarship class at UNC, seemingly titled "Truth, Proof and Madness." I always loved Kaufman's classes they were the equivalent of an über-intellectual Donahue show, as he loved to run up and down the aisles of a boisterous (and gigantic) classroom drawing parallels between D.H. Lawrence and St. Catherine of Azila. At lunch today, I told him that he – along with religion professor Bart Ehrman – had the profoundest effect on me as a UNC student. While we were talking, Bart Ehrman actually showed up at the coffee shop, and my first thought was "where's the goddamn camera"?

When I say "we" were down to teach class, I actually mean "Tessa," who was fabulous. The class was about 65 people, all of whom had seen Five Wives, the Project ALS short, and the improved Pink House trailer. She kept things intelligent without ever lapsing into boring, and the students seemed way into it. Maybe this generation of earnest college-goers actually gives a shit (although this class was mostly freshmen, which means there's still time for them to stop caring and start drinking Jaegermeister).

A few of the class met afterwards for a Q&A session in Vance Hall, which is also the place where you get grants and loans for school. Thus, I helped give a lecture on having success as an artist, right next to the room marked "Loan Collections," the irony of which was not lost on me.

As a side note, I have to say the government really fucked up when they dealt with my student loans. First of all, the statements were all sent to my mother, who never lived anywhere long enough to actually receive mail. Also, I was led to believe that my loans were actually grants, and therefore I didn't owe anybody anything. By the time I knew what was actually going on, I had already defaulted for over a year. They destroyed my credit, and then asked me to pay up. I would have done so much sooner had they given me a few options that didn't include "you're screwed until you're in your forties."

Anyway, by the time we had been to both classes, we were pretty cotton-mouthed, so we met Chip, played pool, and watched The Core at an empty multiplex, eating disastrously bad popcorn. Ah, the pleasures of small-town livin'!

Chip Chapman: They dont call him Minnesota Fat for nothing.