At Barnard, I’ve never really had to worry about getting to class on time. The only buildings I’ve lived in were 600 or Elliott, and, since most of my classes have been on our side of Broadway, that means I really haven’t been more than 5-10 minutes away from any of the buildings. Even during my year-long stint at Northeastern, I was a 10-15 minute walk from where I needed to be at any given time.
In other words, I have been totally and completely spoiled. Oh, how I’ve come to rely on those extra minutes of sleep I can squeeze into my morning. Studying at King’s College London this semester, I wasn’t expecting to be able to roll out of bed and be in class in 5 minutes, but I was thinking something along a 20 minute walk. That wouldn’t be terrible – would be more than manageable, really.
King’s has three campuses: Guy’s, Waterloo, and Strand. I knew I lived a 10 minute walk from Guy’s and a 20 minute walk from Waterloo. Ok, great! Sounds perfect. As it turned out, however, I had 0 classes at either campus. All four of my lectures and all three of my seminars were at Strand Campus, and, you probably won’t be too surprised to hear, Strand Campus was not particularly close to me. It was a 40-50 minute walk from my dorm and could be anywhere from 25-35 minutes away via public transportation – depending on the time of day and traffic.
If I’d managed to get up on time and it was nice out, I always tried to walk. At first I listened to music, but it gets annoying constantly reaching into my pocket to switch songs or listening to several of the same playlists. I stuck with it though, until a visit to my older sister. I was telling her how Zac Efron is playing Ted Bundy in a new movie (bit of a departure there, eh?), and she started telling me about this podcast she listens to, called “My Favorite Murder”.
Apparently, they had done an episode talking about Ted Bundy, and it was very funny, and if I was at all interested I should check it out. I’ve never considered myself a True Crime fanatic, and the only Dateline I’d ever seen was Bill Hader’s impression of Keith Morrison on SNL. Though, in hindsight, there is something fascinating about those cases in spite of – or maybe even because of – how horrible they can be. I decided to check it out.
Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark are the two women commenting on these cases, and, even if you don’t like true crime at all, they somehow make the horrifying palatable and, even, funny. That there is humor is not to say they are disrespectful or tasteless towards the victims in their commentary, in fact the total opposite is true. What I particularly enjoy is how they lay into the murderer, a person who is usually, let’s just be honest about it, a white male. It provides really interesting insight into how, while there may be some mental issues at play, there is a larger issue of socialized violence influencing that demographic.
My favorite commutes are the ones where I listen to “My Favorite Murder,” and I’d highly recommend checking it out – even if just for the ‘meow’ of Georgia’s cat Elvis at the end of every episode and the catchphrase ‘Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered!”