[HN Gopher] Tom Lehrer and Santa Cruz: the trail of one of Ameri...
___________________________________________________________________
Tom Lehrer and Santa Cruz: the trail of one of America's premier
satirists
Author : samclemens
Score : 45 points
Date : 2024-07-17 14:13 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lookout.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (lookout.co)
| dang wrote:
| We had a Lehrer thread just a couple months ago
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40439810) but this one's
| pretty interesting too.
|
| (Lots more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40459107)
| tomcam wrote:
| One question posed by the article is why Santa Cruz. I assume the
| implication is that he could have chosen MIT (where he taught for
| 9 years), Harvard, Cal Tech, etc. He answers the question
| himself. ... decided that I was too old not to
| have fun, that I needed to go someplace that was fun, and Santa
| Cruz was set up for fun." He decided to buy a home
| in Santa Cruz on the beach just south of Pleasure Point.
|
| Santa Cruz is one of the most beautiful places in the world. If
| you visit, it's easy to understand his decision. While the
| university itself is pretty good, it's no MIT. Totally worth the
| tradeoff ;)
| ghaff wrote:
| If you don't want big city life but don't want to be really
| rural, Santa Cruz is certainly one place that seems really
| attractive.
|
| CROSS at UCSC is also very involved with open source in the UC
| system generally.
| blululu wrote:
| I've always thought that Santa Cruz is a great place to spend
| three months and a terrible place to spend three years. The
| place has a certain energy and but you can get sucked into the
| vortex and spend every day bicycling to the local surf break
| and back without doing realizing that you have none little else
| for the past 6 months. Makes you appreciate how lively San
| Francisco is and how nicely it balances the more sensuous
| aspects of Santa Cruz's culture while having some sense of
| grandeur and purpose beyond sitting in a hot tub.
| greyk47 wrote:
| the vortex is called 'the Mystery Spot'
| ghaff wrote:
| I think you're basically saying that you want to live in a
| big city longer term--which, for all its problems, SF is a
| pretty good example. I almost certainly find Santa Cruz more
| attractive than most of Silicon Valley generally.
| some-guy wrote:
| I did my CS degree at Santa Cruz with both UC Davis and UC
| Irvine as choices, and it was simply the redwoods that drew me
| in. I'm doing well in the field among people with much more
| "prestigious" college resumes.
|
| Obviously an undergraduate experience vs academia is a
| different conversation.
| salgernon wrote:
| There was a TV miniseries/movie a few years ago called "DEVS"
| that was shot in part at UCSC - science hill and the
| engineering library emerging from the mist was unmistakable.
| (Not defending or promoting the show.) That coastal morning
| fog...
| jltsiren wrote:
| I've lived there long enough to consider it a home, but not
| long enough to become a local. From my point of view, the words
| that best describe Santa Cruz are "a missed opportunity".
|
| You see a place that could be nice but isn't. It's rough, there
| are too many cars everywhere, and the locals don't care. (Or
| they pretend they care, but they don't bother making things
| work.)
|
| And because it's a small city, you can't avoid facing how
| remote California is. Pretty much everyone else is at least
| three time zones away.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Also, in the winter, it's not full of tourists from the other
| side of the hill.
|
| Santa Cruz: where the 60's never died.
| kylestlb wrote:
| I'm from here and still live in the mountains. The 60s spirit
| has waned. I wouldn't say SC has hippy vibes anymore. Just
| take a walk down pacific avenue and look around, compared to
| 20 years ago.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| Having grown up in Santa Cruz, the place kind of died for
| me after the Loma Prieta Earthquake. The Santa Cruz
| downtown merchants/city council really screwed up with the
| rebuild. Took the beautiful Roy Rydell botanical mall and
| turned it in to little San Jose...
| linguae wrote:
| As a resident of nearby Capitola (and not far from Pleasure
| Point where Tom Lehrer bought a home), I absolutely love the
| winter in Santa Cruz County. I can enjoy the natural scenery
| and many of the tourist attractions without dealing with the
| crowds and the traffic.
|
| I've been living in Santa Cruz County for 12 out of the past
| 14 years; 1 year living in graduate housing at UCSC, 4 years
| in Capitola, two years away in the East Bay, and then the
| past 7 years in Capitola again. UC Santa Cruz brought me to
| the county, but even after graduating I stuck around for
| quite a while. I enjoy the tranquility of Capitola, and I
| feel it's a nice retreat from Silicon Valley while being
| close for meetings and events. Hybrid work helps a lot; I
| wouldn't want to drive over Highway 17 every day, though.
|
| I'm going to miss living here; I'm preparing for a move back
| to the East Bay since I will start a full-time tenure-track
| teaching position at Ohlone College in Fremont. No more
| hybrid work; I will be in the classroom at least four days
| per week. I'm looking forward to finally engaging in my
| passion for teaching full time after nine years in industry,
| but I can't do Highway 17 every day, so I'm going to need to
| move from Capitola. I'm sad I'll have to give up the nice
| weather and the soothing morning coastal fog, but I will
| always have great memories.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| Any idea of where his house was? "just south of Pleasure Point"
| is odd for a "house on the beach". There are a bunch of houses
| on the low cliffs looking directly out at Pleasure Point, then
| the O'Neill house, then the house bordering perverts perch by
| the Hook and then it's opal cliffs cliff houses down to
| Capitola. A bunch of cliff houses in back of Depot Hill and
| down Grove Lane and then you are on New Brighton Beach and a
| little down from there are the first real "houses on the
| beach". Seems a bit far for "just south of Pleasure Point".
| There are beaches below the cliffs but tiny unless it's low
| tide. But then I grew up in a Santa Cruz beach house so maybe
| I'm jaded and his description more metaphorical than literal...
| CalChris wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240717143924/https://lookout.c...
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| A key rule in show business is:
|
| _Always leave 'em wanting more._
|
| Imagine if he'd stuck around and gotten repetitive, like Weird
| Al.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I grew up listening to Tom Lehrer. My father (a physicist, taught
| at UC Berkeley) loved listening to Tom Lehrer so my whole family
| got to enjoy such classics as "Sliding Down the Razor Blade of
| Life" and many other very funny songs.
|
| BTW, search for "Tom Lehrer" on YouTube Music - they have a lot
| of his stuff.
| dllthomas wrote:
| > "Sliding Down the Razor Blade of Life" and many other very
| funny songs.
|
| "Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life" is a lyric
| from "Bright College Days", rather than a song of its own. I'm
| not sure that you intended to imply it was a song, but it was
| unclear.
|
| > BTW, search for "Tom Lehrer" on YouTube Music - they have a
| lot of his stuff.
|
| (And/)or check out his website, with all of his music (which
| he's placed in the public domain): https://tomlehrersongs.com/
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| You are correct! That was a lyric in a song. Thanks for
| correcting.
| dekhn wrote:
| I loved listening to Lehrer on Dr Demento when I was growing up
| so I jumped at the opportunity to take his class, "Nature of
| Math", when I was an undergrad at UCSC. It was great- I learned a
| bunch of interesting things about math (cantor diagonal proof,
| pigeonhole principle), all delivered by a witty fellow. Alas, he
| never sang for us in class.
|
| The other math classes I took were History of Math by Ralph
| Abraham (a chaos mathematician), which was held in the quad
| (basically an old stone quarry turned into an amphitheatre),
| making it a lot like hearing a lecture in ancient greece. And
| Cybernetics with David Huffman, which kicked my ass but I never
| forgot the lessons I learned.
| jfengel wrote:
| Landless Theatre in DC is doing a show right now called "Tom
| Lehrer Is Alive And Well And Has Given Away All Rights To His
| Music". Definitely the best title of any show at Capital Fringe
| this year. Reviews are very positive.
|
| https://capitalfringe.org/events/tom-lehrer-is-alive-and-wel...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-17 23:11 UTC)