Comments on Re: There’s Something Wrong with the X-Files Movie

Best of luck in Chicago! Thanks for all your wonderful work at the Stranger!

A loss for the Stranger indeed. Good luck.

Congratulations! (And, uh, good luck arguing that Andersen was wrongly decided at the U of Chicago.)

That is such good news for you! You will love Chicago, and it will love you. U of C folks get treated really awfully terribly respectfully there!

Best wishes Annie, but I too am sad to see you go, you are entertaining and thoughtful to read. I hope you "emeritus" us from Chicago sometimes.

About Dark Knight, which I just this minute got back from seeing (minor spoiler alert) am I weird that no matter what you do to Aaron Eckhart I still think he's "smokin" hot looking?

U of C is a great school, and you obviously have an aptitude getting in there. It's going to be relaxed because there is no worrying about a job after graduation so disregard the Paper Chase. You will have lots of doors open to you, and a choice of what to do with the degree (likely hamstrung the first few years by the fact that you have to pay for the darn thing, but that's why everyone has law firm horror stories). Just go into it with an open mind, a commitment to see it through and you will make it through with some interesting friends.

See you in Chicago, Annie!

What excellent, happy news!  What excellent, happy, rotten, unwelcome news!

This is a real loss for us as readers, and not just in the Film section.  Like a working class Republican, though, I'm somehow excited for you against my own interests.

Have fun saving the world!

So, does this mean we can expect you to run for President in 2030, annie?

Best wishes, and remember to keep your wonderful sense of humor intact!

Dear Chicago and declining print media: screw you both for taking Annie from the Stranger.

And Annie, congrats and good luck. Your awesome posts will be missed.

psst - The image is Hong Kong. :)

SLOG will be a smaller, lesser place without your presence. Thanks for all the great writing and commentary.

Thanks particularly for your words of encouragement when I was depressed about Clinton's situation early on in the nomination fight, particularly given that you were a vocal and articulate Obama supporter. It made my eventual switch over to Obama more positive and organic, moving *to* something exciting and hopeful rather than *away* from something.

Congrats Annie! U Chigo Law is a very prestigious, albeit incredibly conservative, school. I'm glad there will be one more progressive there. On a side note, my proudest moment in law school was when I caused Richard Epstein to freak out and go on a 30 minute long, incomprehensible rant, because I suggested that employment discrimination laws might be necessary and that the job market, if left by itself, might not get rid of racism, sexism, etc.

@11: The only one I could find in something approximating the actual aspect ratio, unfortunately. But thanks.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see such positive comments on the Slog. It's unusual, even in a context such as this, for people to say nice things around here. Of course, Annie has been such a great aspect of the Slog, it's not that surprising.

Good luck in law school. I'm there now (between 1st and 2nd years) and I love it. Hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Oh, Annie, this is a terrible loss for us, but a great thing for you. I think your brilliance is a wee bit wasted here, and the U of C is exactly what you need -- as you are exactly what it needs. You're going to go far. Congratulations, and good luck.

Hey Annie

In case my brother hasn't already offered, please feel free to get in touch. Glad to help you find decent housing, and to advise about how to deal with the cold (layers, and whiskey, and heavy-meat-and-potatoes oriented diet). We can discuss it at the next Slog Happy, when I will be in lovely Seattle. . .

Bill

Perhaps after being in Chicago a while you could tell us what you have observed comparing Chicago to Seattle.

And do tell: is this your choice of school based on Obama?

Dan?

Richard Posner?

toss one more on the great news / terrible loss pile. bestest wishes to you.

@18: No, my choice of school is basically the best place I got in, with scholarship money as an additional consideration. I like the fact that it's small, in a city, and fairly interdisciplinary (Martha Nussbaum would figure more prominently than Richard Posner). I do, however, enjoy arguing with conservatives.

Hilariously, UofC does list Obama as a faculty member "on leave, currently running for president" in all its propaganda materials.

Annie

Please, from the depths of Academia, I must tell you: it's not "propaganda materials": it's "recruiting." Only governments issue propaganda, and the U of C is not the government. Yet.

Bill

Annie

Please, from the depths of Academia, I must tell you: it's not "propaganda materials": it's "recruiting." Only governments issue propaganda, and the U of C is not the government. Yet.

Bill

Hmm. The posts from Bill and Annie today are motivating me to ask if either of you know of a Chicago equivalent of Slog? I enjoy my time here on Slog, but I scroll past all the local politics and such... i don't know of any Chicago blog whose quality is up to snuff with Slog...

Anyways, welcome to Chicago, Annie. May to October is phenomenal, the rest of the year is survivable.

Best of luck in the Windy City, Annie. My great-great-grandpa's family made oodles of money just east of the city in Hammond, IN. Meatpacking, don't you know. We grew up going into the city on a regular basis. Chicago is still the one thing I miss about living in the midwest. Sigh.

But back to the movie--I had no idea Batman was filmed largely in Chicago until I was sitting in the theater. It made me very happy. Chicago's a wonderful, toddling, town where one can dance with one's own wife! Enjoy!

Congratulations!

1. Chicago isn't that conservative, it's evenly split, which makes it conservative relative to most law schools.

2. Here are my favorite professors:

Douglas Baird
Randy Picker
Lior Strahilevitz

They are all great teachers, and they're all nice guys too. Picker tends to be a little busy, but the other two are great, you can walk into their offices and chat with them. Picker, though, is just unbelievably awesome.

You will like Nussbaum (I liked her too, but it wasn't a law class), and you will like Sunstein if he comes back.

Epstein is actually a great guy, and not a doctrinaire conservative. He gave a talk at our graduation that was basically 100% Bush-bashing.

3. Vanilla milkshakes at the Medici are fantastic. Gelato at Istria is pretty good. The morning rolls at Bonjour Bakery are great.

4. Keep your eyes out for monk parakeets - little green birds that build huge nests and don't look as though they could survive in Chicago. They are awesome.

5. Living in New Grad is sort of all right. If you have the money, live in the area east of Ellis, west of the tracks, south of 55th, and north of the Midway. Do not be one of those people who lives downtown or in the Regent.

6. Don't miss the latke-hamentashen debate a few days before Thanksgiving every year.

our loss, their gain....are you really sure you want to be an attorney?
...and I was just this past weekend recommending your movie reviews to friends....you do a magnificent job! you will come back for SIFF so we can give yet another PR person a hard time in the VIP tent, ok?...I will go back to lurker status.

Best wishes in Chitown; we'll miss your witty, incisive, occasionally bitchy reviews. And if you do decide to run for President, make sure you run in 2028 or 2032 - unless Will knows something the rest of us don't.

South side intellectuals represent!

Place kicked my ass and made me a student who could string together a reasonably coherent argument (some days). At the risk of sounding condescending, here are some things to watch out for:

1. Assuming that you're not vegetarian, when you go to Harolds Chicken Shack and they ask whether you want hot sauce or barbeque sauce on your white/dark/regular half, the best answer is "both".

2. Careful of your diet. I'm convinced that if I had stayed there much longer, I'd weigh 30-40 pounds more and my life expectancy would be 8 years shorter.

3. Minderbinder's absolutely right: Don't miss the latke-hamentashen debate for anything. Also try to latch onto a scavenger hunt team at least once.

4. Try to get to the other Powells on 57th. Don't expect to find a place to sit.

5. See your food.

6. Please keep writing. David Brooks is an embarrassment as a public "intellectual" from the U of C, and the alumni community deserves better.

All right. I'm done.

Congratulations Annie!

U of C Law is great. The student population is plenty diverse (ideologically speaking), and it makes the intellectual environment very interesting.

Just make sure you get some study guides for the main first year subjects (e.g. the "Examples and Explanations" or "Understanding" series), to supplement the casebooks--they help fill in the black letter law that sometimes gets lost in all the theory.

Nice to see all the other UCers here, too.

Darwin Roberts

I just graduated from UChicago's Humanities MA program. Having lived my entire life in the Northwest, I was really afraid that the cold would be overwhelming, but I was also looking forward to the challenge it might present. What I experienced was apparently the worst winter Chicago had seen in years, but it really didn't seem all that bad to me. Sure, there were some mornings when it was -5F outside, but I just stayed inside or wore a comfortable coat. I actually think that the winter here has been more enjoyable than the Seattle/Northwest winters I'm so used to because Chicago doesn't have these unending, drizzly days. More often than not, it's sunny or partly cloudy, and on a cold day with the snow, it's nice and bright out.

P.S.--Getting out of/into Hyde Park can be annoyingly time-consuming, and after 1:30AM, forget about coming back on public transit unless you want to catch the Red Line to 55th/Garfield and hope that a cab passes by (which it won't--not there). Also, even though she's in English and Gender Studies, try to take a class with Lauren Berlant. Holy crap is she an amazing professor--one of the few people I've ever met who is not only brilliant (and I rarely use that word), but is also inspiring in her ability to transform what might be a semi-coherent idea into something that makes sense (well, at least that's how I felt when I took a class from her). Anyhow, good luck!

I am so goddamned angry that Annie is leaving, I could spit. I love Chicago, and I love the University of Chicago (go secret Straussians, go!). But the paper I love and the city I love and my life in general will be a sloppier, dumber, more anemic thing without Annie Wagner's careful, intelligent guidance. Plus: She would have improved the previous sentence. Annie, as an editor, *is* the Invisible Hand that keeps many of us from sounding as stupid as we actually are.

Godspeed, Annie Wagner. You leave tears in your wake.

(And remind me to tell you about the secret library in Ida Noyes Hall, where the student film series happens. It's a gold mine.)