Features

Beers with Ben

By Ben Fields ’15

October 24, 2014

This is my first two-person interview, so we’ll see how it goes?

OO: Why are you interviewing us together? I barely know her.
BF: I’m doing couples now.
OO: We’re going to be outed this way. A lot of people don’t know that we’re a couple.
SC: We once taught a course together, we were co-teaching a course and the students didn’t know we were together.
OO: For quite a while they didn’t know…
SC: About halfway through the course, Onno said something about “our dogs,” and everyone went, “Oh!”…so it’s a little known fact that we’re married.

What is your least favorite thing about humanity?

SC: Least favorite thing about humanity? Or least favorite thing in the humanities? Least favorite thing, whoa, that is a dark question.
OO: You’re not looking for a pet peeve.
SC: What is evil in the world?
OO: Like how can you not say genocide? If you don’t say that isn’t there something wrong with you? The propensity to kill each other in large numbers.
SC: All the stories about ISIS…you read these stories and you think, ‘I didn’t think such pure evil existed in the world.’ I’m sure that’s what people thought in the second world war when they confronted the Nazis, I’m sure that’s what happened in Rwanda and throughout history. You are surprised that such evil can exist. You think, ‘How could these be humans?’

What is your favorite thing about humanity?

OO: Favorite thing about humanity?
SC: Other than me.
OO: We like to sing. How can you not go with that? That seems like a good answer. Music is cross-cultural, we all do it, we all love it. That we sing. I’m gonna go with that.
SC: That we sing is your favorite thing about humanity?
OO: All humans sing, they don’t have to sing well, but we all like it. It’s kind of bizarre, it does nothing for us evolutionarily, but we all like it.
SC: Okay, I’m going to totally beat you. I think the best thing about humanity is how hard it is to pin it down. That our understanding of what we are, how we work, what we’re doing here, is sort of unanswerable. So everyday you can figure out new ways of thinking about it, new ways of adjusting it. It’s a question that’s never completely answered, it’s this big mystery. Wasn’t that a better answer than his?
BF: It’s a little deeper.
SC: A little?
OO: No, I think if you think about it.
SC: I like the pumpkin coffee, that’s my favorite thing about humanity.
OO: They’re always coming up with new iPhones.

Do you believe in aliens?

OO: No.
SC: Aliens? We used to be aliens.
OO: That’s true.
SC: We used to be resident aliens, but now that we are no longer resident aliens, we don’t believe in them.
OO: So I guess we have to believe in aliens. Yeah, we were aliens.
SC: We ceased to be aliens three years ago.

Did you have to give up your Canadian citizenship?

SC: God no!
OO: Well you have to say, when you become an American citizen, that you give up all citizenship, but they don’t enforce it. We’re continental citizens, we’re working on Mexico.

If you weren’t professors what would you be?

SC: Well if I hadn’t been an alien, I would be justice of the Supreme Court. I love the Supreme Court. What would you have been? A singer right?
OO: No, a wildlife photographer.

Do you have a favorite Disney character?

SC: Disney character? Wall-E!
OO: That’s not Disney though.
SC: Oh, it’s Pixar, that counts though.
OO: Let me think about that. I’m gonna go with Bambi.
SC: That’s a real tough guy answer.
OO: No, no, it’s an anti-hunting story right. I felt for Bambi.

If you could have any celebrity as your best friend, who would it be?

SC: Celebrity? And we’re taking Elena Kagan off the table?
OO: No that counts.
SC: I don’t know if I’d want her as my friend. You go first on this one while I think about it.
OO: I think Ellen would be fun to hang out with. Or Margaret Atwood.
SC: How about George Clooney?
OO: He just got married.
SC: Doesn’t matter, it’s just a friendly thing. Just friends. You should put George Clooney cuz that’ll make sense to my students, they’ll know the inside joke there.

How much did you drink in college?

OO: Hardly at all.
SC: Total nerds. We were total nerds. No.
OO: I got really drunk once in high school and threw up, and then I sort of decided I never wanted to get drunk again. I mean it’s not that I didn’t drink in college, but I never got drunk.
SC: This one thing that we did. I think there was one time that we decided we’d make martinis, and then we recorded ourselves singing a song. And we played it back, and I said ‘who’s that person singing so off-key.’ And it was me. And that was it. That’s what happens when I drink a martini.
OO: It’s amazing we still got married actually. Given that singing is the thing I think is most impressive about humanity.
SC: Yeah, and I cannot sing to save my life. So that was it, if martinis make me sing, no more martinis for me.

Describe each other in three words?

OO: In three words? Smart, moral, beautiful.
SC: Wow! Hot dang! Those are my words for him. Wow, hot, dang.

If you had to pick any Hamilton faculty member to sing karaoke with, who would it be and why?

SC: Not me. [laughs] I’m a really bad singer, I think that’s been established.
OO: Dave Bailey. He’s in a rock band.
SC: Once during Convocation I was standing beside Brian Collet in Physics, I didn’t have to sing, I just listened to him. So I think he could really kill karaoke. Cuz he can sing anything. So I wouldn’t sing it with him, I would watch him sing.
OO: You would mouth the words while he sings.
SC: Cuz that man can sing.
OO: But Dave comes with a higher cool factor.
SC: Yeah, the classics from the 70s, that’s pretty cool…

Do you have a favorite superhero and would you dress up as them for a day of work?

OO: You go first.
SC: I don’t think I know any superheroes.
OO: Sally’s anti-superhero.
SC: I’m not a superhero person. So it’s like being vegan. I’m anti-superheroes and I would not dress up as one.
OO: I’m gonna go with the first American superhero, and that’s Hawkeye from Last of the Mohicans.
SC: Egghead.
OO: I know it’s a total egghead answer.

Have you ever graded drunk?

OO/SC (simultaneously): God no!
SC: It would be impossible, I can barely understand what I’m doing when I’m fully conscious. Math is hard.

If they were to make a biopic about your life, who would play you?

OO: [looks at SC] Robin Wright.
SC: [laughs]
OO: Don’t you think? She looks just like you.
SC: People often ask me if I’m Robin Wright. Well then it would be Ethan Hawke for you.

Favorite word?

SC: You’re the words guy.
OO: Darkling. It’s a word in a Keats poem. Or maneuver, because I can never spell it.

Least favorite word?

OO: Oh come on. Those are dirty words.
SC: Yeah, those are dirty words.
OO: I know, here’s one: relatable. I hate the word relatable, every time I see it, it makes my skin crawl. And it would be good for students to know that.
SC: My seminar students invented a new word: precession, it was supposed to be precedence. So that’s my current word, because it doesn’t exist.

Favorite curse word?

SC: Canadians don’t curse. It’s the difference between Canadians and Americans.
OO: Asshat. I like asshat.
SC: I’ve never heard you use it.
OO: I save it for very special occasions.

Three things on a desert island?

SC: Are we there with each other? Cuz you know we kinda have to say that if we’re not. Then our three dogs.
OO: Yeah, okay.
SC: You were thinking your three bikes weren’t you?
OO: No, because there are probably no roads. Is there electricity? The iPad so I can read.
SC: You want a genie who will grant you all wishes.
OO: Sailboat, if you’re going to be on an island you might as well sail.
SC: So he gets the three dogs that I brought. That’s why he gets to indulge in all this stuff.
OO: I would also bring my cello. I’d really play the cello a lot.
SC: And I can’t outlaw that. Can I bring a soundproof chamber?

Have you ever killed a man just to watch him die?

OO: No.
SC: Not yet. But I may.

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