...behind Tresidder, just outside the Treehouse. On a picnic table. Wearing his trademark black mock-turtleneck and jeans. The first thing I thought when I saw him: "Wow, he's got to be burning up in that outfit." What is it, 89 degrees outside? (That is, indeed, what my Dashboard widget says.)
Actually, my first thought when I saw him was, "Oh my God!! It's the iWitch!!"
My second thought was, "Damn, I wish he was my commencement speaker. Wouldn't that just have been the perfect counterpoint to Bill Gates' incredible commencement speech at Harvard?" It's better than that Dana Giulio person or whoever is speaking this year." Ah, well. I did get a chance to watch Jobs' commencement speech at the ceremony here in 2005... so I guess I can claim him as my own.
Comments (6)
No dissing Dana Gioia -- he's an incredible poet and extremely thoughtful person. If you shut up and listen on Sunday, you just might leave Stanford with some ideas in your head.
Posted by Anonymous | June 14, 2007 6:45 PM
Posted on June 14, 2007 18:45
Jobs and Gates would be amazing speakers. Like the previous comment said though, Gioia will be great oo.
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Posted by Matt | June 14, 2007 8:58 PM
Posted on June 14, 2007 20:58
why do people have to be assholes? posting rude anonymous comments isn't cool. if someone knows who our commencement speaker is, they should speak to his positives -- i have heard nothing distinctive about him. but of course i'll keep an open mind on sunday. everyone will -- it's our commencement and we *want* to like it.
Posted by Galen | June 15, 2007 12:08 AM
Posted on June 15, 2007 00:08
Assholes? No, "anonymous" is simply responding to another inane dismissal of someone who is a distinguished figure in his own field. Poets, I think unfortunately, do not get the kind of recognition people like Mr. Jobs do, and I think that people at Stanford, most of whom are pre-professional hacks, would not recognize an established poet unless they had to read him in IHUM. And Galen, calling someone an "asshole" is hardly polite; furthermore, eliding Mr. Gioia's actual name would also be seen by most people as pretty rude.
Posted by Daniel | June 15, 2007 10:12 AM
Posted on June 15, 2007 10:12
Yes, I 'elided' his name for comic effect; people need to understand sarcasm or this world's never going to work. As for dismissing a distinguished figure in his own field -- well, he may very well be distinguished. But as I said in my previous comment, there's no dismissing him: he's our commencement speaker and we want to like him.
Had you heard of him before he was announced as speaker? I checked with about twenty English majors on Facebook and none of them had. No one I know has ever read a poem of his. Is he really that distinguished that he's left completely out of the Stanford curriculum?
Posted by Galen | June 15, 2007 10:22 AM
Posted on June 15, 2007 10:22
No, I hadn't heard of him before he was announced. I also don't think that fame is a proper criterion for judging a commencement speaker. Maybe he'll give an amazing speech. Maybe it'll be full of amazingly shitty platitudes. But it's not like fame makes a good rhetorician. I just hope his speech is short because it's going to be hellishly hot out there. This is a pointless argument anyways, so I'll stop.
Posted by Daniel | June 15, 2007 11:44 AM
Posted on June 15, 2007 11:44