I am slowly developing an unhealthy obsession with my film professor.

Who decided that mornings should be manic? There is not one morning radio show that is not devoted to comedy routines, funny noises on call and ridiculous circumstances. Personalities with varying levels of obnoxiosness and/or hilarity blare out from every single station in the pre-11am slot.

I'm not against this, really. I mean, certain choices still remain better than others. I'm speaking, of course, of Kevin and Bean vs. Mark and Brian (or, God forbid, Danny Bonaducci), where Kevin and Bean clearly are the victors. The point is this: why do I need wackiness at nine in the morning? Why didn't someone decide we need classical music when we first get up? If wake-up-factor is a consideration, why not speed metal or straight-ahead punk rock? For that matter, why can hilarity in a talk format only be explored before 10am? Why not during the drive-time?

Who makes these decisions?

Again, I'm not complaining. If all KROQ played was Kevin and Bean all damn day I wouldn't be complaining. They're hilarious. Throw in a little Loveline here and there, and I think you'd have a vast improvement over the current broadcasting they have going on. I can't listen to another Staind. I just can't. I'm just curious as to why they decided or who decided or why it was necessary to decide and then universalize the concept of the wacky morning show? It seems... arbitrary.

One of the pontificators at the ol' Alma Mater compared a scene in which a man was stalking this couple as seeing: "Bird... cat!" What he doesn't seem to realize, as vivid as the metaphor may be, is that any noun at all could work in place of bird and still, playing off the feline situation, make perfect sense. Bird... cat! Mouse... cat! Peice of string... cat! Human hand... cat! Entire person... cat! Shadow of a passing car... cat! The right to vote... cat! Cats don't care what ther hell it is in front of them. They'll attack anything they feel they should, which is everything. Cats are insane. They are hardly subject to any rules.

My film professor (I'm-a gonna call him Dr. Windrush, here) is not giving me the respect I attribute to myself. Let me be more specific. He's not lauding me as the most intelligent filmic genius he's ever met, and it's bothering me.

Let me explain, rather than be more specific.

I consider myself, horn being tooted, above the capabilities of and, infinitely more importantly, possessed of a greater passion than the average film student. Average, hell. I think I'm a better film scholar than most every film student I've met so far. True, I use it mainly in order to further my production, but my study and theory is so important to me, and I spend so much time on it and do so well with it and address it so earnestly that I think someone would notice and be impressed with my efforts. Perhaps even the person who is bestowing me with scholastic achievement, A after A, demonstrating for himself my more-than-average sensibility.

And yet, here I am, unrecognized to any extent by this professor whom I have come to admire to a great degree. Sure, I get great grades, sure he comments sparsely on the papers I read in class... but I require solidarity. I require the immediate acceptance by my peers, and I require recognition as a peer of a doctorate. Dammit.

In his class, recently (this doesn't necessarily involve him, as he wasn't there at the time and was already aware of the pertinent facts), we filled out evaluations for the term and, in filling out which course it was I was taking and subsequently which perspective I'd be evaluating from, I was ousted as an underclassman in a room full of graduate students. I had been flying well under the radar up until that point, avoiding the issue and holding my own with the big boys. I was accepted by them, even by the widely accepted genius among them. I was their equal and, in many-if-not-most cases, their superior. I was ecstatic.

But now this. They know my dark secret. Never again am I to be taken seriously (which, luckily, happened after I made my last actual presentation to the class), never again to be welcomed into the fold. I am an unaccomplished attemptee going for my abyssmal B.A.-don't-make-us-laugh.

I will show you, film students. I will become the greatest of you all. I will rise up and rule you, and when you look to me from your seats of attrition and compromise, you will crane and squint, for my chair will be high and well-built. My day will come. Yours will end. I will champion my cause and your own, for I am as merciful as I am powerful, and it is because of this that, once I assume my throne, you will beg for my mercy, lest you be offered the other attribute.

I have to wear a yellow film reel on my lapel. So they can SEE ME.