Reading and Thinking

I'm in a coffeeshop in a little town two hours south of where I live, and I'm eating an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese. It's the first bagel I've eaten since July of 2007, when I left grad school. That town had the best everything bagels I'd ever had, and it spoiled me on them. I would only shop at coffeeshops that sold the bagels made by the local bagel shop, owned by an old Jewish family, not out of loyalty so much as addiction. When I interviewed with my university in February of 2007, I asked them all the usual questions about tenure requirements and teaching loads, but at the end I also asked, "So, where can I get a decent bagel in this town?" I was disappointed when they told me I couldn't, and while I never told my wife this, if I found another university offer that was nearly equal in various ways, that they had a decent bagel shop in town would've been the clear deal breaker for me. So here I am in a coffeeshop, early morning, working on my talk that I'm giving at noon, eating an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese and a large coffee. It's nice. Of course, the bagel probably came from Costco's, but you do what you can with what you have.

NPR reports on the painful stereotype of Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles. Caption says, "Every bad Asian stereotype rolled into one." The actor who played him is still haunted by the role that became a fixture in the popular imagination, for good or bad. It is a funny character and movie, without question. It's strange how much damage humor can do, though.