All posts by Brooke Biederman

Dean’s Date

We know we’re all media junkies, but what about Princeton’s fearless leaders? Does running a university keep them busy around-the-clock, or do they still have time to binge-watch the latest season of Breaking Bad?

The Buffer editors decided to find out and made a date with the Deans, inviting three university administrators to join us in a conversation about their film and television likes and dislikes: David Dobkin (Dean of the Faculty and Phillip Y. Goldman ’86 Professor of Computer Science), Valerie Smith (Dean of the College and the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature), and Tara Kinsey (Associate Dean at the Office of the Dean of the College and the Office of the Vice Presidentfor Campus Life). Their candid answers to our questions about their viewing habits may surprise you, as they did us!

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Buffer Oscar Predictions

With the Oscars so close, the Buffer editors love nothing more than to debate the outcomes of each category. Here are our predictions for the winners of some of the top categories for this year’s Academy Awards.

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Autobiographical Comedy: The Good Kind of Reality TV

Lena Dunham, Tina Fey, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K., Mindy Kaling: Notice any similarities? We do too. As creators and stars of television shows modeled after their own lives, today’s comedy heavyweights suggest there might be some truth to the old maxim: write what you know. Of course, television comedies that straddle the gap between fiction and autobiography have been around for a while (our favorites: The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, The Cosby Show). But in the past few decades and in recent years especially, an unusually high number of America’s best-loved and most syndicated shows have drawn heavily on the real life experiences of their creators. Below, we take a look at some different ways the writers of these shows have managed to turn personal foibles into comedic fodder.

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