Okay, so last week I told you about the lecture series where we learned all about the Xenaverse. Here was a guy who wrote for the A-Team and is a cult-like figure for Xenaholics, if you will, talking about the insanity of the entertainment business.

Then, the other day, Annenberg offered the ultimate bizarre juxtaposition to end all bizarre juxtapositions.

So there I was, sitting in almost the exact same seat as I did last week, except this time, instead of hearing about heroic tales of scantily clad warriors in days of old, I was quite literally surrounded by octogenarian freedom fighters from the 1956 Hungarian uprising, an uprising I quite frankly didn't even know had happened.

As I sat next to people who physically shot at Soviet tanks as they rolled into Budapest, trying to break themselves free from Soviet tyrrany, I was truly overwhelmed. These old men were as feisty as ever, pointing fingers at one another, loudly questioning the veracity of the statements that other Hungarians made, speaking in thick Hungarian accents about where they were on the evening of October 23, 1956 at 7:00 in the evening, and how nobody else in the room knew what had really happened because they were there and the rest of us were not. Evidently they believed that the United States was going to help them, but such reinforcements never arrived. And ultimately they failed.


So it's just another week at Annenberg. Frankly I have no idea what this uprising had to do with communication. But hey, I met my first freedom fighter. Will it be my last?