“Lily” and the prof: the distance between two lovers

Professor Emlyn Hughes, physicist, casual stripper, and current lecturer for Frontiers of Science, couldn’t help but return to his roots at today’s lecture on nuclear weapons. Only this time, he opted for a less jarring performance (instead of getting down to his boxers as images of 9/11 and Nazi Germany played behind him, which was his last act of notoriety). This makes sense, because, as he noted in his previous lecture, “Last time it was about sex. This time, it’s going to be about love.”

The crowd realized something was up once he started his presentation and his iMessages played alongside the slides, especially when the messages (from a girl named Lily) got increasingly personal. Basically, Lily was clingy and in bed and wanted Hughes to trust her. And she would never reveal their relationship to the world, even though she was mad that he had unfriended her! People shifted their weight and squinted at the messages in frustration, but Hughes didn’t betray himself by a muscle. He kept talking about nuclear annihilation as this unstable girl continued to smear his name on screen. A light moment came when she asked him about clicker questions—why didn’t he have them, so we would have a reason to come to lecture?? Very valid.

The grand finale came at the end of the lecture, when “Lily” (seemingly a student) came onto the stage. She and the professor locked eyes, they strode to one another, and she threw a(n empty) Starbucks cup at him, along with her books. He shook it off and pursued her after she ran out. Our immediate reaction: WTF. We still haven’t quite moved past that stage and have to admit that for a moment, the students around us got incredibly quiet and serious during the standoff; it was too real, too much.

We have to applaud Professor Hughes for his daring, especially when we found out that his wife (who seems so normal!) was in the room. In the end, we admit that (1) we wonder what he would’ve done if he hadn’t gotten into hot water before and (2) we have no idea what this had to do with nuclear physics.

The lovers themselves via Vivian Casillas-Algorri