Class Note 1992
Several months ago I got a lengthy e-mail from Aisha Tyler that was filled with tales of whimsical trips to France, visits from friends and classmates and news on her various projects as she continues to dominate Tinseltown. I never did a thing with it. The other day I got another e-mail from Aisha. This one was also filled with her inimitable humor and wordsmithery (is that a word, by the way?), but it was far less informative. So here’s what you need to know: she has a new e-mail address. Obviously I’m not putting it in here, but it was pretty clear she was proud of that old address—why else would you label the e-mail with the subject “I am retiring my number?” She was eager to point out that the previous e-mail featured not one but two “coms.” If that’s not a reason to be proud, I don’t know what is. Here is a quick rundown of her e-mail from many months ago: She and her husband, Jeff Tietjens ’91, celebrated their 15th anniversary with three weeks in France; she was on tour most of 2009 supporting her Comedy Central special, now on DVD; Molly Phinney visited; Katherine Aires Byrnes caught her show in Chicago; Nick Mourlas and his wife came to Jeff’s birthday party in December. Then there’s my favorite line: “While at a business lunch I overheard two people say that Jason Venokur has moved to Israel and changed his name to Shalom. That’s all the news I’ve been able to glean about J.V., but maybe that’s enough.”
She also quickly plugged her new show, the animated Archer on FX, where she is the voice of Lana Kane. While I can’t picture a young Aisha answering the question “what do you want to be when you grow up” with “I want to be the voice of a snarky secret agent who kicks a** in lingerie”—or can I?—that’s basically what she is. And I can tell you that my friends and I think it might be the funniest show on TV right now. Although as Aisha said, “Yes, it’s animated, but it’s definitely not for kids. Unless you’re fond of fielding a lot of discomfiting queries from people too young to drive.”
Speaking of entertainment, the Playwrights Realm in N.Y.C. sent me a flyer about Christopher Wall’s new play, Dreams of the Washer King. Unfortunately for those of you in the metropolitan area, the show runs June 4-26, so by the time you read this it’ll likely be too late to see it. According to the flyer, the play goes as such: “Caught in the space between the past and present, four characters revisit one life-changing event in Christopher Wall’s powerful, mind-bending drama. Wall’s unique vision unfolds among a field of capsized washing machines and a rainstorm of grass to reveal a haunting story of lost love and childhood dreams.”
Lots of stuff going on in Jeff Strabone’s life: “Until last summer I was president of my neighborhood association in Brooklyn and vice chairman of Community Board 6, a planning advisory board in New York. Then in August I moved to Tampa, Florida, to be a postdoctoral fellow at the University of South Florida. Beginning this fall I will be assistant professor of English at Connecticut College. Meanwhile, I am waiting for the U.S. Patent office to register my application to patent a new voting system of my own invention. I will be back in New York this summer.”
—Mike Mahoney, Penn Athletic Communications, 235 S. 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104; (215) 898-9232; mahoneyw@upenn.edu
