Quidditch, Xylophone, Yorgos Lanthimos

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Quidditch- A sport from the wizarding world of Harry Potter which has since been adopted by Ivy league campuses in order to offer an athletic pursuit that computer science majors and satire writers may participate in without fear of taking a high-speed football to the back of the noggin or getting crossed out of one’s shoes by an overly cocky Asian transfer student with a Steph Curry fetish. The sport involves little string bean twinks riding around on household cleaning objects and throwing dodgeballs through hula hoops. “You’re a wizard, Harry!” “No, I’m just an asthmatic python coder from Dartmouth. The scar on my forehead is actually from a quidditich incident though. A club hockey player on his way home from a darty pelted me with a Busch Light can just as I was about to throw the quaffle through the rainbow diddly-bop hoops.

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Xylophone- They teach you the xylophone in elementary school music classes because it’s easy to learn, but you never see any grown adults still playing the xylophone. I wonder what it would look like to actually shred that little rainbow percussion kit; to really tear shit up, to let your nuts hang as you bang out a David Gilmour solo. No way, I just looked it up and there’s adult versions of the xylophone that cost thousands of dollars. I just assumed anyone playing the xylophone past second grade had a touch of the special needs and couldn’t graduate onto a more impressive instrument. Boy, was I wrong. Not only do you need serious talent to play a real xylophone, you also need seriously deep pockets. “I went to my son’s school concert and you’ll never believe what they played on the xylophone—hot cross buns!”

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Yorgos Lanthimos- A director known for hits such as The Lobster, Poor Things, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Yorgos Lanthimos is praised for his dark humor, intense themes, and the distinctly European nonchalance with which he displays sex and gratuitous violence on film. He directs his actors to not convey a lot of emotion on their faces, adding a sense of inhumanity and cold distance to the on-screen relationships. A lot of times you’ll leave his movies asking yourself, “What the fuck was that?” and with a much bleaker outlook on the human condition. Thanks a lot, Yorgos! “I tried to wind down by watching a Yorgos Lanthimos film the other night, but instead of putting me to sleep, I got out of bed and went outside to use my slingshot on the neighborhood squirrels”