At the gala: grading on the sly, wearing a sign that says HAT

texture · 8 Nov YDAU, evening

• When: 8 Nov YDAU, evening, at the dining-hall gala screening of Mario's film.
• What: At the I-Day gala, while the academy watches Mario's puppet film in the traditional festive headwear, "Mary Esther Thode is grading midterms on the sly" — and her contribution to the hat custom is the catalog's driest entry: "a plain piece of cardboard propped on her head that says HAT." Hours after yelling at a student about hats, her own is a category-label — the book's best single joke about her literalism (the hat-to-hat link is a same-day juxtaposition, noted as synthesis).