A Prairie Home Companion: October 30, 2004

English Majors script
Saturday, October 30, 2004
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GK: ...after this message from the English majors of America.

(AUTUMNAL MUSIC, FEET CRUNCHING ON DEAD LEAVES)

SS: I love the fall. The smells, the leaves, the rain, it brings back this beautiful flashback in sharp detail of school and afternoons at the library and the sweetness of teenage melancholy and the surrealism of football.

TR: What's surreal about football?

SS: Oh, you know. People getting all excited about nothing that really matters, cheerleaders in those stupid uniforms screaming, boys running terribly into each other, the pain, the sense of nothingness.

TR: Nothingness?

SS: You know—the emptiness at the heart of it, all of that effort and expense devoted to a sport that has utterly no effect on anything, it's a sort of insanity, a kind of officially-sanctioned form of child abuse.

TR: You know, I don't think you and I maybe ought to get married, Christina.

SS: I think you're right, Todd.

GK: So many women go down the road with men who turn out to be dull, uncomprehending, lacking in a sense of irony, impervious to intuitive reasoning, captive to stereotypes, unaware of subtexts—

SS: Subtexts!Did I hear you say "subtexts"?

GK: Yes—

SS: I love the way you said that—say it again.

GK: Subtexts.

SS: Say "iconic."

GK: Iconic.

SS: Say "empowerment."

GK: I'll do more than say it. I'll make it happen.

SS: You're an English major, aren't you.

GK: Yes, of course.

SS: I knew it. I could tell by the look in your eye. Why have I wasted my time with men who I was physically attracted to when I could have found a man who would understand me?

GK: I don't know.

TR: A message from the Professional Organization of English Majors.