Everyone's a Critic

In between presidenting, washboarding, bicycling, tricycling, clowning, prestidigitating, radio hosting, ........ Graham watches movies and pens reviews. Penn State student blogger Ha-mace found this a bit troubling.

What did you do between Thanksgiving and the end of December? Well, apparently if you were the president of a Big Ten school in Pennsylvania earning $545,000 per year you watched movie after movie after movie. Penn State Live just gave us Graham Spanier's annual holiday movie review, a review and and brief description of 25 movies that Spanier says were available in theaters "from Thanksgiving through the end of December 2007." We only saw one movie over that time, maybe it had something to do with the fact that there's only ONE theater downtown. But we like your assessment of "No Country for Old Men." Awwww, see we can agree on something.

Maybe it's being a little too picky, but should the president of Penn State really have the time to watch 25 movies over what appears to be about a five week span? Sure, the guy needs some downtime, but 25?! How about 15, and you spend the other 20+ hours finding a way to lower tuition Graham? You know, maybe like Penn did.

But, if you were looking to go watch a movie and don't quite trust Roger Ebert, now you can go with President Spanier's list. No Alvin and the Chipmunks, huh Graham?

Now, while I agree with Ha-mace on this, I found the explanation which Graham offered in defense of his time management priorities even more disturbing.

“I do them usually right after Christmas,” Spanier wrote in a separate note. “Because of my impossible schedule during the year, I don’t get to see many movies until Thanksgiving. Thus, I am unable to do a top-10 list for the year, for example.

“But over the long Thanksgiving weekend and through the holiday break, I try to see almost every movie out, many at odd hours like the 10 p.m. show on a Sunday night,” he said.

The tradition stems from a couple elements, one being Spanier’s love for movies. “I like many movies others don’t, and I see many movies others won’t,” he wrote.

Beyond that, the Spanier family spends the holidays in Des Moines, Iowa. The city “has a very high per-capita number of movie screens and not an abundance of other things to do over several days (other than sleep and eat).

“On some days, I will see as many as three or four movies,” he wrote.

This is a very odd man. Presumably his family is visiting someone in Des Moines, yet he prefers to spend somewhere between roughly four and half and eight hours in a movie theater on a given day. Who is this man hiding from? Himself?


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