Back to School at George Mason University

Nursing a damaged tongue – for which I sought treatment at the local ER on Wednesday and was discharged the same day – while staying home from work, away from my office manager, Nancy, and secretary, Jane.   I went into work briefly, just to make sure there was nothing crucial that needed to be done.  Then I went home and watched “Back to School”.   What a hoot to see Robert Downey, Jr. as Derek, much younger than he is these days.  Terry Ferrell is also nice to look at.  :D

The only mail was the GMU newsletter, with a picture of the undergraduate campus from 1969, back when the school had just begun.

My intro to GMU came in July 1986 – probably around the time we saw “Back to School”, released in June 1986.   I came back from Paris to start college at University of Maryland, College Park that fall.  My best friend, Phil, had moved back to the US two years earlier and finished high school at Park View HS in Sterling, Virginia.  When we arrived in Virginia, we called his parents, who told us he was off on a camping trip with his buddy Jeff, and that he’d be going to “George Mason University” – which I’d never heard of.   Soon enough, I found out where it was – right in Fairfax.  With the University of Virginia located down in Charlottesville (southwest of Richmond), what passes for the University of Northern Virginia is a former community college which finally got bumped up to four your status with graduate schools, including a law school.   George Mason himself was one of the founding fathers, who helped write the Bill of Rights.  Apparently he's not around anymore these days, except in name.

For his freshman year, Phil was living in Dominion Hall, switched to the apartments on campus for sophomore year – during which time I met his comrade Greenside, who became my comrade through law school.   By junior year Phil was living off campus, but he graduated on time from GMU his senior year, on schedule.  I also wound up meeting Victor and Mariano, Phil’s GMU comrades from Costa Rica, so the GMU angle resulted in a good expansion of circle of friends. 

When it came time for me to go to law school, my LSAT scores were lower than I’d hoped, dooming my plans to attend a top tier law school – and be a top tier lawyer.  Around spring break of my senior year, when the “we wish you luck somewhere else” letters from Harvard, Georgetown, etc. came in, my father advised me that a second tier law school might be a good back up plan.  On his advice, I applied to, and was accepted to, George Mason U. School of Law, Catholic, and American, ultimately deciding to go to GMUSL.  Nowadays it’s called the Antonin Scalia School of Law, and it’s in a new building; during my three years it was still in the former Kann’s Department store in downtown Arlington.  Phil’s friend Greenside went there was well, and remained my best friend in law school for those three years.  We even went down to Roanoke together for the bar exam in July 1993 after graduating in May.   Nowadays he has a successful practice in Virginia Beach, with a wife and son.

Mason had a somewhat more conservative political outlook than UMCP, no Frat Row, and was considerably further away from DC.  However, I did enjoy my law school professors, including Robert Bork, the guy who narrowly missed getting nominated to the Supreme Court.  For our graduation ceremony, the speech was by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wound up on the Supreme Court about five minutes after sending us off to practice law. 

“Call me when you have no class”.  Might as well finish talking about this movie:  Rodney Dangerfield plays a businessman who runs a chain of Big & Tall clothing stores and decides to finally get his college degree when his own son is attending the local state university.   RDJ plays his son’s roommate, Derek.   Sam Kinison plays a history professor, Oingo Boingo play their party, and even Kurt Vonnegut has a brief cameo.   Overall an entertaining film, even if it wasn’t filmed at GMU or UMCP.  

Shaggy Dogs and Lawyers

The Shaggy Dog (1959).  This was actually Disney’s first live-action comedy, in black & white.  A young teenage boy, Wilby Daniels (Tommy Kirk) discovers a mysterious Italian ring with a Latin inscription, “in canis corpore trasmuto” (“I change into the body of a dog”) allegedly an artifact of the Borgias, the famous medieval Italian family.  He turns into a sheepdog several times.  As a dog he overhears bad guy discussing plots to steal weapons plans (Cold War, remember?) but manages to foil the plot.  The movie is based on an older novel, The Hound of Florence, by Felix Salten, who is better known for having written Bambi (yes, the story about the deer).  Without having read it, though, I can’t comment on how much the story is changed.  It is entertaining.

I did watch the first episode of “The Borgias”, the recent miniseries with Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia, aka Pope Alexander VI.  His daughter Lucrezia does NOT turn into a dog.  Sorry, no magic.  So much for that show.

The Shaggy D.A. (1976).  This is actually a sequel.  In fact, I recall seeing “The Shaggy Dog” in the US around the time this movie came out.  Before VCRs and cable, the most likely explanation is that the 1959 film was broadcast on TV to tie in with the release of the sequel in the movie theaters.

            Daniels is grown up now, played by Dean Jones, with his wife played by Suzanne Pleshette (most often seen on “Newhart”).  He’s a private attorney but strongly encouraged to run for district attorney (D.A.) because the incumbent, John Slade (Keenan Wynn) is not merely incompetent, but corrupt: in cahoots with local gangster Roshak (Vik Tayback, aka “Mel” from “Alice”, plus “A Piece of the Action”, etc.).  The magic ring gets discovered again, so Daniels starts turning into a sheepdog again – apparently at random, but at the most inconvenient times.  Tim Conway plays the local ice cream man whose dog he turns into, and his would-be fiancé is a roller derby chick.  Here he can actually talk, even as a dog.

The Shaggy Dog (2006).  My initial impression of this was, “oh no…Tim Allen is going to ruin this.”  Not quite.  Despite the title, it’s more of a remake of “D.A.” than “Dog” because the character is a grown man, not a teenager, and he’s an attorney, Dave Douglas.  He’s actually an assistant D.A., hoping to take over the top position from Danny Glover’s character – who presumably is getting too old for this.    

            This time around the cause of the transformation is not a magic Borgia ring, but rather a serum derived from another dog, Po, who is 300 years old.  Douglas is prosecuting an animal rights activist, Forrester, accused of vandalizing the lab of Grant & Strictland.  G&S is trying to extract Po’s essence to cure aging.   Po bites Douglas, which makes him somewhat of a were-dog.   Too bad for Douglas, in this film he can’t talk as a dog, but he does figure out how to deliberately change into a dog (though he never figures out how to change back).  His wife is played by Kristin Davis (Charlotte from “Sex & the City”), and I recognize Shawn Pyfrom (Alex Van De Camp from “Desperate Housewives”) as the teenage daughter’s boyfriend. 

            The bad guy here is Tony Stark himself, Robert Downey Jr, playing the #2 scientist at G&S, Kozak.  Everything comes to a climax at a “Liar, Liar” type trial scene.