The Lair

Most stages of my life have a few defining works associated with them. When I joined the workforce a good few years ago; I obsessively read Joel Spolsky, related to a lot that was being said. In my more cynical moments, I’d nod knowingly at the themes covered by Dilbert. If there is one defining work that describes my graduate student era perfectly, that’s probably PhDComics.

So, yeah. Last night I attended a talk by Jorge Cham (he pronounced it Hoar-gay); a guy who does a comic about graduate students. Crikey. The allegedly monstrous training and skills development budget actually produced something useful. Huzzah!!

Can a (gloriously funny) comic strip could ever be topped by a live speaking engagement? Probably not. I don’t think that happened yesterday. What I did discover though, was that Jorge is as funny in person as in the comics… He rounded out the humour in the comics nicely, added another dimension, made it that much more believable. It wasn’t all down to careful rehearsal or prepping of the funnies either – he did demonstrate that he can adlib jokes. We were repeatedly interrupted by people who wanted into the lecture theatre thinking it was auditions for some newscaster thing that was also happening in the Physics Department. Each time the lost soul hurriedly backed out of the room (to laughter), he’d shake his head and mutter “Undergrads”. He got the tone and delivery absolutely perfect. (Yes. Postgraduate students feel a certain sense of superiority over the ignorant, noisy undergrads. Why do you ask?).

He had a few pithy observations about life while doing a Pee Aitch Dee. He mentioned the suicide attempt statistic. Everyone else was solemn and silent. One person (who shall remain nameless) guffawed loudly. We all looked across at the guy (there’s always one, isn’t there?) and then had to stifle our own sniggers at the inappropriate laughter. This set more people off. Obviously, Jorge had a takehome message that Yorkies are an insensitive, uncaring bunch. He probably got it right too. Yorkies clearly don’t care about suicide.

Since I’m amusing like that, I also indulged in a mini-game of spot-the-brown. Yeah, there were plenty of Central and South Americans in the crowd. A few Spanish and Greeks. Others? Umm. Not so much. Just sayin’.

So I got my signed copy (had to spell my name out to Jorge, obviously) and got free food into the bargain. Pity I didn’t have more time for a long natter (although he seemed quite willing to chat) because there was a long queue forming and I had another party to get to… But it was an awesome evening, all the same.

This is the point where I’d list all the comics that I can point to and say “yeah. That’s me.” but its probably easier to just tell people to read the entire archives instead.