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It’s everyone’s favorite time of the year: commencement address season! “I pushed you off a cliff because I’m kind of a dick about stuff, but then you flew, so it worked out OK phew that was close! Good luck finding a job in THIS ECONOMY!” Rousing stuff. Liquid inspiration. There are literally 150,000,000 colleges in this country, all of them teaching students the proper usage of the word “literally,” and that means a lot of commencement addresses, but every year there are a few that stand out. This year we’ve already heard about Mitt Romney’s powerful speech to the graduating class of Liberty University, which it turns out is a real place and not just a throw away joke in an Andy Borowitz Shouts and Murmurs piece. And now people are reporting on Aaron Sorkin’s commencement address at Syracuse University, which is particularly notable because according to one relentless nerd, he plagiarized himself, repeating many choice anecdotes from the commencement speech he gave at Syracuse University in 1997. This is actually a pretty good illustration of how college works: you spend a lot of time and money learning whatever and at the end of it someone much more successful than the majority of your graduating class will ever be shows up and shares some pre-fabricated and often borrowed wisdom, and afterwards, like, ten years later, if you’re very very lucky, you can spend your adult life nitpicking what they said as your job because who cares. Congratulations! Life isn’t fair, obviously, and the commencement address is just another one of the reasons. Some people get Hilary Clinton, and some people get Aaron Sorkin, and some people get the bassist from the Fleet Foxes (probably). My commencement address was delivered by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Halberstam, who has since died (R.I.P.) so I’m not allowed to tell you what I really thought of it. It was gracious and beautiful and guided me through all the rest of my days, I’m sure. If you could have or have had anyone deliver your commencement speech, who would it even be? It definitely wouldn’t be whoever actually did it. It wouldn’t even be Aaron Sorkin. Who?! I think my dream commencement speech would be delivered by Hugh Jackman in his Wolverine costume and the actor in him would definitely take over during his anecdote about the oyster who was secretly a pearl or whatever. Or maybe Frieda Pinto. But weirdly none of the other graduates could make it, they all got stuck in traffic, and so I’m just sitting on a fold out chair in the middle of this giant stadium and she’s talking only to me about the seedlings of hope that grow in the soil of experience, and even the deans couldn’t make it so I have to be the one to present her with her Honorary Bachelor’s Degree in Communications.
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If I ever have kids I hope that their commencement speaker is Gabe from Videogum. Sorry, Gabe, but you have to keep writing Videogum for at least a couple more decades.
Packy’s graduation is this weekend, and his speaker is some little known actor who used to go to go there. He wants to skip his graduation. Fine with me.
omg I’ve developed a stutter
Is it Nick Stahl?
lol I’d make him go to that. Patrick Wilson??
Patrick Wilson is hot and talented! Can I go to your son’s graduation?
seconded.
You can have all of our tickets!
Goooooo Packy! Is he going to college after this? Tell him that he should go to college! They’re all awful, overpriced places that are only important because people think they’re important, but that’s not going to change the fact that people DO think they’re important.
This is his college graduation FT. The high school graduation is in a couple of weeks. No famous speakers at that one.
Well then EXTRA congratulations! Tell him he should use his education for good! Get ahead in the corporate world and abolish stupid rules that require people to have degrees before they can advance in their careers, regardless of the area of study, because apparently somebody with a degree in art history is more qualified to be a supervisor than I am with my 75% complete degree in management & supervision.
It’s a racket for sure. A debt inducing racket. This’ll cheer you up. After the “diploma ceremony”, we’re all going to the comedy club to see Wayne Brady.
That sounds fun! Tell Wayne I said hi!
We got US Attorney General Eric Holder for law school graduation this year, which isn’t bad…. but I was pushing for Jason Segel in character as Marshall Eriksen from How I Met Your Mother.
I had the one “laptop for every child guy” for our commencement. He treated it like a promotional event and was terrible.
That’s pretty good. When I graduated law school our speaker was a justice from the Canadian version of the Supreme Court. It was electrifying. Notice how less than 3 years later I can’t recall her name.
Ugh, yeah, I had some federal district court judge who kept saying, “I’m gonna keep this short,” over and over for like 2 hours.
That was probably Louise Arbour. Shes kind of a big deal in the prosecuting of war criminals scene. I had the chairman of ICI paints at my MBA graduation.
I want Snooki speaking at my commencement, so she can extoll the virtues of wearing sunscreen.
My commencement speakers were George H. Bush and Bill Clinton with a cameo from Ellen DeGeneres. I graduated from Tulane in New Orleans the spring after Katrina. The ceremony felt almost like a variety show. This year’s commencement speaker at Tulane is Lisa Jackson. So lesson is, graduate the year of a horrendous tragedy and famous people will come. (Bush and Clinton were not that great; Ellen was awesome, but short; the best speeches were from students)
Woah. We were in the same class at Tulane. Hi!
I didn’t go to my own, but I went to my friend’s because her speaker was the always-perfect Jean Chretien. And he, like always, was perfect.
Jean Chretien is way more exciting than ours! We had Rudy Wiebe, an Alberta author whose work is very important to Canadian Literature (and which I therefore have little interest in reading). He was fine, but not electrifying.
I work near Rock Center and it’s graduation time for High School classes all over NYC. I can tell you two things about this: 1) people think it’s really smart and fun to take pictures RIGHT in front of the subway entrance and almost nowhere else and 2) and the parents look like they have all been drinking and taking a shit ton of Valium.
a metric shit ton?
He said, NYC, not COMMIELAND.
It wasn’t commencement, but my brother went to the Naval Academy and somehow was responsible for finding a speaker for some event. His friend was dating Tom Clancy’s daughter, so he managed to get Clancy to be the speaker. Apparently, he spent the entire time talking about himself, and said that the best thing the military does is to give him material for his novels.
The guy who was dating his daughter also said he went over to Tom’s house once, and he was watching The Sum Of All Fears with his own commentary playing. Basically, Tom Clancy sounds like the best.
My brother and I want to get a cat and name it Tom Clancy, because then we’ll sound like we’ve kidnapped a terrified Tom Clancy every time we talk about the cat.
“Tom Clancy woke me up at 3 in the morning crying to go out!”
“Tom Clancy is in the bathtub again, staring at the toilet.”
“Tom Clancy was mad we went out of town, he puked in my shoes.”
My family named our cat Greg Kinnear, because obviously, and there is a well of comedy to be found everyday, much of it similar to the examples you’ve just listed, ie “Greg Kinnear jumped into his cat food bag and now he can’t get out!”
Oh Lord, I bet putting Tom Clancy and Nicholas Sparks together in a room would be a fun experiment. (Also, this reminds me of that story Aziz tells about how when he went over to Kanye’s house, he was listening to his own music VERY seriously.)
Sometimes it’s a good idea to listen to yourself
I would like Three-6-Mafia to do it and Craig Venter as a back up.
I would get Paul Rudd to do the commencement address for my graduation from my pants.
You’re graduating from your pants? Does that mean you’re moving on from pull-ups to big girl underpants? Or are you way past that stage, and now you’re graduating to Depends?
You see, FT, when a movie star and a stalker love each other very much…
I would have said Josh Hutcherson, but he’s speaking at the celebration when I get out of jail, so…
And if he can’t make it, movie dad Robin Williams will be there.
They’d really have to lower that podium or give him a stack of, like, 5 phonebooks.
You and Teach just LOVE to point out that he’s short. I’M SHORT! SHORT IS FINE BY ME!
I guess unless one of us needs something off a high shelf. Then we’re probably screwed.
I think he has a tiny idea… But will ultimately be relieved that he no longer has to dress up like a young baker in a dystopic hellscape.
“You win some, you lose some.” — Teach.
I need to go to school to learn the proper place to hit reply.
A TINY idea? Tiny like Josh Hutcherson?
Isn’t that what Teach is for? To get stuff off shelves for you and Josh? That was my understanding of the whole point of marriage — you are nice to them and they bring you stuff.
Poor Teach. He has no idea that his main function is to be available for reaching high places when I finally meet my soulmate.
When do you go in, by the way? I found a lovely cake pan that has room for a file…
Ironically, I’m probably going in the day after I meet ol’ JHutch.
I’ll start baking multiple cakes for practice!!
I had Yanni. I got hosed.
I read that as “I ghost hosted,” and then thought, “Oh, lilbobbytales missed the T in ‘hosTed.’ Now it says hosed… Oh, she GOT HOSED. That makes a lot more sense.”
My reading comprehension is steadily going right down the toilet. This is like the fourth or fifth time in the past couple weeks where I’ve had to write a comment about my poor reading skills.
with memories that will last a lifetime
I didn’t finish college because I loved napping too much, but Dustin Diamond came and did a horrendous stand up show. When my friend asked him to say “zoinks,” he got very angry. You’re welcome.
The speakers at my two (yeah, that’s right FELLAS) college graduations were both high ranking politicians running for governor of my state that year. They both lost. FUN.
Dream commencement speaker?? Colin Firth, probably? He could make a King’s Commencement Speech joke and we’d all laugh and he’d be generally charming. And then I’d try to get the chance to talk to him about Pride and Prejudice and also the time he danced around in tight leather pants in What a Girl Wants. And then I’d walk away sadly knowing that he’s happily married to a pretty Italian woman and also old enough to be my dad.
I had the P&P miniseries on VHS and my friends and I watched the lake scene so many times that we wore through the tape. Good call on Colin Firth, is what I’m saying.
We had it on VHS too! Did you have the crazy set with 6 VHS tapes? With each episode on a separate tape? Good times.When I went away to college I got it on DVD, but now it’s at my parents’ house and I keep forgetting to grab it when I go home. Sadness.
Here are two things about that lake scene that you’ve probably seen, but are still fun:
1. Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth mostly about the lake scene.
2. Lost In Austen’s Amanda makes her Mr. Darcy get in a pond.
Yes, with the 6 tapes! I hadn’t seen either of those thing, I’ve been quite elightened…
Or else I’ve been enlightened.
Susan Sullivan from Dharma & Greg and Castle was our commencement speaker when I graduated. Stellar booking, Hofstra University. Stellar booking.
We had an insurance guy whose wife was sometimes on NPR. The new president of my college had just started after being president of a law school at a university with a very similar name. He called my college the university’s name five times during his speech then started making jokes about Ithica, NY… Home of the glorious school we were NOT graduating from.
I was the only person in my class not hungover enough to notice, which was highly ironic at the time, but now makes me even angrier because my friends think I made it up — I did not! I wrote a livid letter to the alumni group demanding his resignation… Which became the first of many angry letters I would write that year.
The point is… never try.
My commencement speaker this Saturday was the Commandant of the Marine Corps, who is an alumnus of my school. His speech mostly consisted of talking about how his Pentagon office was destroyed on September 11th and saying MURRCA.
James Franco (or Andy Serkis in a James costume)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-franco/on-commencement-speeches_b_1521338.html
James Franco gave our high school commencement speech (he went to my high school). I don’t remember any of it, which kind of proves his point, I guess.
The president was my commencement speaker.
“You guys, the president was my commencement speaker.” (Blows on fingernails. Cleans them on shirt.) – Bookface
That is an inefficient way to clean your nails.
Of the United States of America, or of the university?
America.
Show us your full form graduation certificate or it didn’t happen.
I was lucky enough to have President Bop Bop Perano for my graduation at Michigan a couple years ago.
i had Tavis Smiley who was fine. Eugene Mirman did a great high school commencement speech [on YouTube. why don't you go find it!] so I’d say I’d want him.
Maya Angelou would be fun… Mostly because of the pranks.
I think you mean “acts of whimsy.”
“I would like to order 50 pizzas for this commencement. It is for a prank.”
I graduated from Syracuse LAST YEAR, so I am super pissed about the Aaron Sorkin thing. I think ours was some guy that did something with DNA? I skipped it and went to get waffles instead. But ugh, aaron sorkin! why didn’t I stay on an extra year?
Jon Hamm because the day you graduate from college all you really want is something pretty to look at because, hey, you already listened in school and damn you’re hungover. plus he’s really funny.
This is correct.
Guys, these are all fine suggestions (where there suggestions?), but when considering dream commencement speakers I think there is only one correct answer here: Coach Eric Taylor. Not Kyle Chandler. Eric Taylor. And of course it would start off with “Let me tell you somethin’…”
Instead, I think we got the Assistant Ambassador to Mexico. FALLAR!
I’ve already graduated from college, but I’d want Elle Woods to speak at my ceremony.
My great regret in life is that MAGNUM, P.I. gave the speech the year before I graduated, and my class got some Republican senator who used to play baseball for the Tigers.
My commencement spaeker was James Franco. Oh no, wait… He bailed because of his 1000 projects. It was the dude with the headphones from Linkin Park.
PS dream commencement speaker would be Hologram Tupac.
I elected not to attend my commencement ceremony because I already know how Websters defines “commencement” and who cares.
Brian Williams is speaking at my commencement Sunday!
My brother had Oprah – her niece was graduating, too. She talked about how awkward it was to walk into the ladies room and everyone went silent when she peed.
My brain screamed a very quick, panicked ‘AH!‘ as it registered your sentence into comprehension.
I only graduated from a little 3-year comic book art school (got myself a ‘Certificate of Completion,’ I did), and so there were no gowns or caps or anything like that. Just a banquet hall full of us graduates (all 50-ish of us), our families, and the instructors and administration of the school and we were all drinking. The only person who spoke was the school’s namesake, comic book artist Joe Kubert. So I guess he was our commencement speaker by default. He is a very nice man with an insane work ethic.
If I graduated somewhere else in a different field of study with a bunch of other graduates with their own majors (unlike the Kubert School where we all graduated with a Certificate of Completion in Illustration) and the commencement speaker was supposed to have universal appeal to a diverse audience or whatever, I would want… Foghorn Leghorn, POSSIBLY accompanied by that bulldog he teamed up with occasionally.
At my commencement, we had Avon Barksdale. Out of everything he said, what I remember most was, “Yo, I know University seems like it goes on forever, but when you’re finished you can look back and realize that you only spend two days in here; the day you get in, and the day you get out this mothafucka.” Our Dean wasn’t very happy with the swearing.