Typewriters in Lecture Halls

From Ronny Cheng's "Internationl Student" on ABC TV's Comedy Showroom.

It's an Olivetti Lettera 32. Other similar images on this post are from YouTube, of US students really using typewriters in lecture halls.

I was once extremely tempted to take a typewriter into a lecture hall, take it out of its case and start to use it. It was at Xavier University in Cincinnati and Richard Polt was giving a lecture on Plato's The Republic. I'd gone to the hall from Richard's office, which was back then full of typewriters, so it wasn't as if I was short of ammunition. Yet I feared it would have been unjust of me, and that I would distracted Richard's students from their contemplations on the just man.

A scene from "International Student". It's called a Boat Race.

Nonetheless, this stunt remains a bucket list entry, though one that's very well down the order. The temptation did rise just a little bit off the bottom of the bucket a few weeks ago, when I watched New York-based Australian comedian Ronny Cheng in a show called "The International Student", part of the Comedy Showroom series on ABC TV. Ronny wrote the episode, apparently basing it on his own experiences at Trinity College, Melbourne University. But I suspect the typewriter-in-the-lecture-hall idea came from YouTube, not real Victorian life, as mixed-up as that is.

Ronny Cheng, front and centre

In my post on Canberra's Secret City the other day, I mentioned that we don't "do" comedy very well in Australia. Most Australian male comedians are complete boofheads who think screaming at a TV camera ensures that viewers will laugh at them. They should all be sentenced to watch Jerry Lewis non-stop for 96 hours.

Olivetti Dora

Ronny Xin Yi Chieng is one exception. He actually understands subtlety in humour. Chieng, of Chinese descent, was born in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, and was raised in Singapore and New Hampshire in the US.

It might be a Brother

This is a Brother, I think

A Smith-Corona?

An Underwood

A Facit?