Before I go
I'm about to begin writing a paper concerning Thoreau, Rand, and Libertarianism. But first I have a story that was told in my History of Jazz class yesterday. It made me think of Tad. So, the professor of the class is a bass player who has played with many different fellas including Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington. It goes that a friend of his looks a lot like Thelonius Monk. That friend was playing in the opening act for Monk a while back, and people kept going up to Thelonius to tell him that there's a guy that looks just like him. Finally, after enough people telling him this, Monk shows up early to watch the opening act with my professor's friend playing. At the end, Thelonius walks up to the guy (who he'd never met before) and says "I guess there's some resemblance," then walks away. My professor wasn't there for this but his friend told him about it. Then, about twelve or thirteen years later my professor is at a jazz festival that features Thelonius Monk among others. The friend goes backstage to say hi to some people (my professor saw/heard this happen) and Thelonius Monk walks up to him and says "but the difference is, you're uglier." The guy went hysterical with laughter and eventually explained to everyone what had happened. Think of all the people Thelonius Monk had met, all the things he'd done, over the span of thirteen years. Nonetheless he remembered to finish his joke (like Tad's DDT), probably not knowing whether or not he'd meet the guy again. That is a serious jape.