Did you ever see their movie?

Nope. But I've enjoyed their schtick.

They sit around drinking Yoo Hoo and listening to the Velvet Underground. They do an expose on "psychic surgery" and then they get killed.

Don't forget the "All Shemp" Three Stooges festival.

Saw that movie in a theater with a bunch of like-minded friends (and none of us at the time could afford a ticket to actually see their act) and we were laughing harder than anyone in the theater. Sadly, the movie tanked BO wise.

Hard to believe it's the same Arthur Penn, but I guess he kept his hipster credentials flying in the long run.

So, I missed most of last season of HIMYM, is there a semi-reasonable hand-wavy reason why Ted could possibly be teaching at Columbia?

There actually is! [link]

If you're Ted Mosby, isn't bad enough to be standing there in the rain -- holding a bright yellow umbrella -- the first time you run into the person who left you at the altar. Oh no, if you're Ted, your ex- is going to have her baby-daddy, Tony, with her and he's going to pity you. After their chance encounter, Tony comes to Ted to makes amends. His family is influential, and he wants to set Ted up with a job as an architecture professor at Columbia.

BTW, is that our Cindy writing that?

Given the number of people that (while I was looking for a tenure-track job) said to me in all honesty "Why don't you just teach at Columbia?", I suppose that explanation seems reasonable enough.

Indeed it is. Edit -- it is our Cindy. It is only a reasonable explanation in TV-land.

It is only a reasonable explanation in TV-land.

Quite.

Do Americans really call *all* college teachers 'professor'? Our lecturers don't get that title until they've published ridiculous numbers of books and done a bucketload of other academic stuff over many years. Ted doesn't even have a doctorate, does he?

Yes, that was my only gripe about the episode. Loved the 'having the talk' thing. I continue to be a Robin/Barney 'shipper. I feel like they're going to break my heart with that storyline eventually, but hey ho.

Those conventions depend on the school, in my experience, but it's not crazy that a lecturer without a Ph.D. would call himself "Professor." I don't know how they roll at Columbia.

I went to a tiny undergrad, and we called all the professors with Doctorates "Doctor" and all the ones without "Professor" and the nuns "Sister".

Where I work, you are only allowed to be called professor if you are appointed in a tenure track professorial position. Which leads to problems, because most teaching faculty in our nursing school are non-tenure track, but the students tend to call them "Professor" anyway and then they get in trouble.