October 19, 2010

Either CNN or Adrien Brody's attorney sucks at math

The only "D" I got in high school was for 12th grade calculus*.

Even today, I don't think the poor mark was because I was bad at calculus - which I'm sure I would have been - it was just that I literally slept through almost every class. But I had a good reason: At the beginning of my senior year, I knew that I was just months away from starting college, and I knew that college students often stay up until very late at night, and I reasoned that I should start, well, training for that particular aspect of college. Yes, I would train my body for those crazy late nights of college that were sure to come by just... staying awake until 1:30 or 2 a.m., as often as possible.

So every Monday through Thursday night, after I had finished practicing the violin and doing my homework (except for my calculus homework, of course), I'd watch the 11 o'clock news, and then the Tonight Show (this was in the pre-Leno days, when it wasn't awful), and then watch reruns of Benson and/or Cheers followed by as much as possible of the Letterman show. (Unlike other, normal cities, Baltimore in the 80s apparently couldn't handle going right from the Tonight Show to Letterman.)

That meant I was getting somewhere around four hours of sleep every weeknight. The remedy: A 48-minute power nap during calculus. The result: My beloved "D."

All of which is to say that I'm puzzled about the math in this hard-hitting CNN.com article.


The piece explains that actor Adrien Brody was to be paid $1.5 million for starring in a movie that nobody will ever see. It says that he has been paid $960,000 so far (which sounds pretty decent for a direct-to-DVD flick) and that Mr. Brody is still owed $640,000, which would seem to total up to $1.6 million - not $1.5 million. At least I think that's right - maybe there's some weird rule about adding dollar figures that I missed in calculus.

* Actually, it's possible I got a D in trigonometry, too. But there's no idiotic story behind that one.

7 comments:

bugs said...

maybe it's tax?!

(and did you really stay up that late senior year? is that why i always had to go out in the snow 1 hour before we left to defrost the car? scrape the windows? shovel our car out? SERIOUSLY? YOU'RE SUCH A BAD BIG BROTHER!!! well, at least you were. now you're just the best (aside from jacob)! guess you're making up for all the crap you put me through while you had to catch up on your beauty rest!)

Your escalator operator said...

B - I like your tax idea. I hadn't thought of that. And, yes, that's why I couldn't wake up.

OneZenMom said...

I became a journalist so that I would never have to do math. Maybe this journalist did, too?

bugs said...

and one more thing...is simple addition really calculus?! did you sleep through like 6 - 8th grade, too?!
(i guess that's 2 more things)

Your escalator operator said...

ZM - I think you're on to something. (PS, thanks for coming back!)

B - Clearly, YOU have no problem with addition.

Maxim said...

Hey! didn't get the whole idea of your post, but it's cool to see that someone is writing about it.

Autumn Eads said...

This blog is actually really interesting. haha.