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Now with “classically trained.”

Training

[From an old text file.]

“Training” is an element in a rhetoric of academic professionalization: “our training prepares students to,” “our graduate students are trained to,” and so on. In humanities study, I’d suggest, there’s no such thing as training. Training is systematic, rigorous. Reading and learning are haphazard and unpredictable matters, with courses taken for all sorts of reasons, and works read (and resonating) in no uniform sequence.

Speaking of the haphazard: in The Seven Storey Mountain Thomas Merton tells a story of walking into the wrong classroom and ending up in a great class with Mark Van Doren:

It was when I had taken off my coat and put down my load of books that I found out that this was not the class I was supposed to be taking, but Van Doren’s course on Shakespeare.

So I got up to go out. But when I got to the door I turned around again and went back and sat down where I had been, and stayed there. Later I went and changed everything with the registrar, so I remained in that class for the rest of the year.

It was the best course I ever had at college.

*

As I remembered only when I asked Elaine to read this post, she wrote in 2008 about cringing when she hears the words “classically trained.” My text file dates from 2012.

[I’ll grant that graduate students are trained in the forms of hierarchy and deference that operate in academic life, but that’s hardly what’s meant by “our graduate students are trained to.”]

Manolo Villaverde (1936–2026)

“A Cuban émigré who had a central role on ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? — believed to be the first bilingual sitcom in the United States”: from the New York Times obituary.

In 2020, when the Times listed ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? as one of fifty PBS shows that have made “a lasting imprint” on American culture, PBS had a handful of episodes available. Today it appears that nearly all episodes are online.

I watched ¿Qué Pasa, U.S.A.? as a student of Spanish back in the day. I still consider it one of the funniest sit-coms I’ve seen, full of Lucy-esque lunacy. The series was funded by grants from what is now the Department of Health and Human Services. Impossible to imagine that happening today.

Dol

Elaine has shared what’s been happening in our lives: Dol.

[If you’d like to say something, please leave a comment on Elaine’s post so that she’s sure to see it.]

Young-woo likes dad jokes

From the episode “Mr. Salt, Ms. Pepper and Attorney Soy Sauce,” Extraordinary Attorney Woo (2022):

The owner of the pub where Woo Young-woo (Park Eun-bin) hangs out with her friend Dong Geu-ra-mi (Joo Hyun-young) disgraced himself on a blind date with an attorney from Young-woo’s firm by making dad jokes. Geu-ra-mi, who works at the pub, is furious: “When’d you turn into a dad?” So the pub owner, Kim Min-shik (Im Seong-jae) aka Mister Hairy Boss, explains: “Obviously, I’m not usually like that. But I guess I was more nervous than usual.”

Young-woo, a young attorney with autism spectrum disorder, asks, “What are dad jokes?” So Min-shik shares what he said:

“Orange you glad to see me?”

“I asked if adding Parmesan was cheesy.”

“Do you find bananas appealing?”

Young-woo: “Oh! Are these the type of jokes with words pronounced similarly? I think they’re quite funny.”

Geu-ra-mi thinks that Min-shik should have told attorney jokes. She gives an example:

“An airline company got sued from a guy recently. It happened after they lost his luggage. Guess what happened.”

Young-woo: “Mmm, what?”

Geu-ra-mi: “The man who sued them lost his case.”

Young-woo: “His case? [Pause.] Ah!”

And Min-shik joins in: “Eight vowels, five consonants, a comma, and an exclamation mark appeared in court because they — they were all due to be sentenced soon.”

Young-woo: “Due to be sentenced? [Pause.] Ah!”

After general laughter, she calls for more.

Geu-ra-mi: “There’s no more. There is no more.”

I highly recommend Extraordinary Attorney Woo, sixteen episodes, available from Netflix. There is no more, at least not yet, though there were plans for a second season to arrive in 2024.

You can see a condensed version of this scene at YouTube. I would love to know what’s going on in the Korean. I even tried scanning the subtitles at Netflix, without luck. But here’s an explanation of one of the Korean jokes. The English jokes are, of course, not translations.

[“Whether it’s read straight or flipped, it’s still Woo Young-Woo. Kayak, deed, rotator, noon, racecar, Woo Young-Woo.” Here’s an explanation of what’s going on in the Korean original of that repeated bit.]

A joke in a neo-traditional manner

An eight-year-old at work:

What kind of car can’t you ride in?

Notice the eight-year-old perspective: ride in , not drive.

No spoilers; the punchline is in the comments.

Related reading
All OCA jokes in the traditional or neo-traditional or non-traditional manner

[“In the neo-traditional manner”: from a later generation and à la my dad, who was making dad jokes long before they were called dad jokes.]

Dryer January (no Wi-Fi)

When we shopped for a new dryer last week, I wondered why some machines have Wi-Fi. Wi? What for?

The salesperson told us that you can use Wi-Fi to troubleshoot. Okay. (But then you’d still need to call for service.) She also mentioned that you can check where the machine is in its cycle, so if your machine is, say, in the basement and you're upstairs, &c. And as she explained this stuff, she couldn’t keep a straight face. Nor could I. Elaine mentioned an old joke about a refrigerator that could do children’s homework.

Suffice it to say we bought a dryer without Wi-Fi.

Bringing out the crazy

If you think the current occupant’s letter to the Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Store is the height of crazy, you haven’t read the letter to the Belarusian president (read: dictator ) Alexander Lukashenko offering a seat on the occupant’s as yet imaginary Board of Peace. The letter begins:

It is my Great Honor to invite you, as President of the Republic of Belarus, to join me in a critically Historic and Magnificent effort to solidify Peace in the Middle East and, at the same time, to embark on a bold new approach to resolving Global Conflict!

The cost of a permanent seat on the board of this ersatz United Nations, a cost not mentioned in the letter: $1 billion. And Vladimir Putin has been invited.

Seeing the letter itself (I’ve found photographs only on X and Instagram) really brings out the crazy. I found myself most unnerved by the all-caps first-name-only signature, followed by a jumbo-sized full signature. We are long, long past Twenty-fifth Amendment time.

The current occupant, sulking

Or pretending to sulk. Who knows his mind?

From The New York Times (gift link):

President Trump is now claiming that one reason he is pushing to acquire Greenland is that he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, according to a text message he sent to Norway’s prime minister over the weekend.

Jonas Gahr Store, Norway’s leader, received the text message on Sunday, an official in the prime minister’s office said on Monday.

“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Mr. Trump wrote in the message, which was first published by PBS.

Nothing about Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the occupant’s social media. Of course not.

MLK

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929.

I’ll repost (for obvious reasons) a sentence that I posted in 2020 and 2025. From Why We Can’t Wait (1964):

Perhaps the most determining factor in the role of the federal government is the tone set by the Chief Executive in his words and actions.

And I’ll add a passage from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963):

You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I don’t believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don’t believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys, if you would observe them, as they did on two occasions, refusing to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I’m sorry that I can’t join you in your praise for the police department.

And now it’s not a city force but a federal one, ICE, terrorizing protestors and anyone who doesn’t look like a so-called “heritage American.” And now it’s not the city jail; it’s internment camps and foreign prisons. What would Martin Luther King Jr. say about our country in 2026?

Related reading
All OCA MLK posts (Pinboard)