A Belated Review of Coach

It's no secret that many of us in the infamous blogging class were in turns intimidated, impressed, and bemused by our celebrity prof, Coach. No doubt, he's a funky and intriguing guy who fell for us despite his best efforts to remain aloof.

It was thus with a certain amount of pride that I watched him moderate "Our Favorite Authors" at the Bushnell last Saturday night. For those of you who couldn't make it, Coach was witty and urbane, with his self-deprecating humor, and he skillfully moderated an awkward mix of authors: the blinding funny but slightly awe-struck Jennifer Weiner; the crusty, doomday-speaking Kurt Vonnegut, who clearly was playing at being a curmudgeon; and the smart, bristly Joyce Carol Oates, who repeated skewered Vonnegut's role-playing and displayed a sense of humor so dry it crackled.

Coach kept the pace going and did what he could to prevent open warfare between Oates and Vonnegut (I had to go with Oates on most of the pickering, as Vonnegut was just plain nasty at points). You could also see that he trying to be protective of Weiner, who took a couple jabs from Vonnegut right on the chin.

The whole night was amazing, listening to two of the great intellects of our age verbally spar, although Weiner held her own and kept the audience laughing. She probably is laughing all the way to bank, anyway, as they say, because her books sell like wild. I haven't seen Cameron Diaz in any Vonnegut movies recently, have you?

I felt like a proud little sister. I told pretty much everyone within earshot that Coach was my professor last semester, although I did comment to my companion that he wasn't nearly this funny in class -- he definitely brought his A game to the event.

Fellow blog-classers, you would have been proud, too. And lest you think our star has faded, when I mentioned to someone that I just met that I took a blogging class with Coach last fall, she said, "Oh yeah, I heard about that." Turns out that she had received the survey one of us sent out in connection with the final paper. So I guess we're famous, too.