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Concerning Philosophy and Los Pitufos

January 15, 2008 4:05 AM

or various reasons, not the least of which is that I didn't really do a lot of interesting things today, I don't have anything interesting to write about concerning what's currently going on. I did, however, see an interesting story on CNN.com that reminded me of an interesting character I met in college, and I thought it might make for an interesting post.

As I've said, I was a philosophy major in college, and, as such, I took a hell of a lot of philosophy classes. As it turns out, there was a small group of people that took a lot of philosophy classes and, since there weren't that many philosophy professors, we ended up taking a lot of the classes together. Since the classes involved at most forty people, we got to know each other to some degree.

Me being the boisterous--some would say obnoxiously loud--person that I am, I was fairly well known in that crowd, I think. I mean, I think that people knew who I was. But I don't think I was the most interesting character in the pantheon. Some of the people that I met in these classes became some of my best friends.

First, of course, there's Lauren. I took several classes with her, including Philosophy of Physics, but I don't think that's where we met. I remember sitting across from her in the class we met and next to her in Philosophy of Physics, so I'm not sure what class we met in. Whatever, Lauren was really cool and would go on to be a central figure in my latter college years. Two of my other friends, who are now married to each other, met in one of our philosophy classes. They were collectively referred to as Philindsay. Dee too some philosophy classes, too, but we never took any together. And besides, we met each other way before all of this. But as awesome as all those people are, they're still not the most interesting characters.

No, for that, we have to go to people that I'd consider acquaintances rather than friends. First, there's Battery-Ear Boy, so named because, well, he had AA batteries in his ears. It was gross. I actually met him in a non-philosophy context as he was fucking one of the roommates at The House. I immediately hated him. He was a giant fucking douchebag who thought that the Doors--a band I hate--made, in his words, "three absolutely perfect albums." He also felt that it would be funny to reenact Jim Morrison's famous penis-displaying maneuvers--only Battery-Ear Boy had the good sense to stick his finger out of his fly and not his cock. In any event, the guy was a douche. I actually almost got in a fight with him at a party once for no reason that I can remember. What he failed to realize at the time was that everyone there hated him and had my back. Nothing happened, though.

Anyway, Batter-Ear Boy disappeared for a while. The story was that he got so fucked up on shrooms one night that he freaked the fuck out and called the NAU police on himself. I've heard that story from several sources, but I'm not completely sure it's true.

About a year later, I met this guy named Ryan at a philosophy club picnic. He seemed cool, and we talked about music and movies and shit. And he didn't say stupid things in class. And he came to House parties and wasn't a douche. Then, the male half of Philindsay said to me "You know who that is, don't you?" And I was like "Yeah, he's Ryan." And my friend said "Dude, that's Battery-Ear Boy!" I was floored. What the fuck do you mean? I mean, yeah, Ryan's kinda dirty and he's got a bunch of tattoos, but he's bigger than Battery-Ear Boy and not as douchey. You can't dedouche, can you? Apparently you can--although not really, because Battery-Ear Boy was still slightly douchey, but it just wasn't as obvious.

Anyway, there were a bunch of people in these classes that just had some crazy ideas, or who were just crazy themselves. Anyway, one of the people who was potentially completely crazy or just eccentric was a guy called--by me, anyway--Dan Max.

Dan Max's name was Dan. I knew that Dan Max's name was Dan. And everyone else knew that Dan Max's name was Dan. But invariably, when the professor would call his name on the first day of class, he'd say "Here. But please call me Maxamillion." The professor would say something like "oh, is that your middle name?" and Dan Max would respond "No, I just prefer being called Maxamillion." Yeah, and I'd prefer to be called Supreme Chancellor of my Bedroom, what's your point?

Despite his nominal issues, Dan Max was a really nice guy. He was obsessed with Go, and claimed to have taken a ceramics class for the express purpose of crafting several new Go boards every day. I never saw these alleged Go boards, so I have no idea if he actually made them. But he sure talked about them.

By now you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with any article that I might have seen on CNN.com. Well, this is the article I saw that reminded me about all of this. It's been fifty years since some obscure cartoonist invented the Smurfs, known to me in childhood as Los Pitufos. How does this related to Dan Max?

Dan Max claimed--and I say "claimed" because I have no idea if Dan Max ever told me the truth; I don't have a real reason to think he was lying, but I have no confirmation, either--to be from California. He also claimed to be extraordinarily wealthy. He claimed that this money came from his stepfather. And he claimed that his stepfather's wealth was the result of importing the Smurfs from whatever country they were created in. Dan Max claimed that the Smurfs were so profitable that he and his children were set for life.

I have no idea if any of that's true, but seeing that story made me think of all the wacky people in those classes, and especially Dan Max.



2 Comments


Batter-Ear Boy said:

Dude - Got your back!

January 15, 2008 10:10 AM



Dee said:

oh man. how could i forget about that crazy maxamillion. you'd have to ask philindsay to verify, but i'm pretty sur we took modern philosophy with him.


hahaha--batter ear boy? is that you, ben stiller?

January 15, 2008 7:55 PM



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