[Kitsa]

lies, you don't want more. But I'll give you more to punish you for being a bastard about it.

"Tonight, on Dateline NBC...": When I had my first class at the med school (think it was medical anthropology), I was all prepared for some really high-intellect stuff. Instead, however, the professor simply wheeled in an AV cart and played a tape of the previous night's Dateline NBC. Every single class, that's literally all we did. No tests, no papers, just watched Dateline NBC.

Which is why I was so confused...I never missed a class, was never late, always paid attention in case he was waiting to spring a test on us (never happened)....I got a C in the class. The fuck? Maybe he gave everyone Cs.

Thanks for the Internship, Asshole: I did a summer internship with one of the professors when I was going for my performing arts degree. I was supposed to be learning how to house-manage a theater, and the class cost about $1000 for 3 months. Instead of doing anything useful, though, I spent my internship catering the professor's fundraiser parties. Seriously, that was all I did, put cocktail meatballs in crock pots and arrange flowers. I still don't know shit about house-managing a theater.

Getting Kicked out of the Art Institute: One of my Art History classes took place at the Art Institute of Chicago, where our professor was doing grad work. Because it was more convenient for her, we had to spend $20 on train fare a week and lug our huge books around with us (she insisted on us bringing our books to every class, and it's still the heaviest book I own). Even back then Chicago was fucking expensive. Anyway.

I was friends with this woman who used to be a guard in a women's prison. She was a giant, imposing black woman named Jamelba, and she was awesome. Her job in the prison used to be to escort inmates through an underground tunnel to court, and she'd drag them by their hair if they put up a fight. She just looked like she could unload a world of shit on you if you gave her a problem. Anyway.

Jamelba and I were bored one day, wandering around, supposed to find an artist from X period to do one of our many reports on. We would go from one painting to the next and try to pull stuff out of our asses about what was going on in them. Pretty soon we noticed we had a growing group of people around us who were writing down the absolute bullshit that was coming out of our mouths. Either they thought we knew what we were talking about, or it sounded good to them, I don't know. Anyway, Jamelba and I were having fun going from painting to painting, spewing nonsense to an audience. Jamelba eventually began acting as if she were a professional art critic, and I think some people in the crowd actually bought it.

Anyway, we ended up in front of this huge canvas, I can't remember the name of it. It was all black, at least 10 feet high, and had this trickle of red paint dripped down from one side. Jamelba started going off on how it represented black power, and she got pretty worked up. Even I didn't know if it was still theatricals or not. The frightened white people behind us started scattering when this scary-looking black woman started ranting about black power, and I didn't know if I should try to calm her down or what. She got so worked up she started yelling, "Kill whitey, kill whitey, kill whitey!" and pounding her fist into her hand.

The next thing I know, we were seized from behind by two guards and escorted down the big staircase and out the front door, with everyone staring at us. We were told curtly that we would not be welcome in the Art Institute again. We didn't know what to do, so we had lunch across the street at the Artists Cafe and went home.

A couple of years later I tried to get in, and I was nervous thinking they might actually remember me. But they didn't, I got right in.