Heyyyy Thurrr, It's Been a Month!

So, another month goes by and another Torch article comes out and, like the Backstreet Boys so immortally put it, that's basically all I have to give right now. Really, my life is boring anyway (I'm literally listening to "Total Eclipse of the Heart," drinking Cherry Coke Zero, and resting my elbow on Shakespeare I don't want to read. Thrilling! Scintillating!)

But, on the bright side, it's another Conservative Living Guide and it features, once again, my making fun of conservatives / myself for 1200 words, and a little mocking of the Liberals. So, onto "Giving of Thanks: The Conservative's Guide to Thanksgiving." (If you want to see a list of the obscure pop culture references, go to the full post.)

Winona Ryder films: The Crucible (featuring her as a more heinous bitch than anyone found in Heathers) and Little Women, which doesn't actually concern the pilgrims, per se, but it does concern really white people in New England, who certainly wouldn't have been there without the pilgrims.

Sydney Poitier and Katharine Houghton: Guess Who's Coming Over to Dinner...please, check out this Designing Women clip for further jokes.

Colors of the wind: Obvious joke. I apologize.

"We must give thanks for Macy’s rampant consumerism and for its true embodiment of the American spirit: the ability to make giant balloons shaped like Garfield and fly them down the street." This was Douglas's joke. I give credit where credit be due.

Hmm, this one was a little sparse on the pop culture references. This is probably because I wrote it the morning we sent it to the publishers.

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Liveblog: Vanderbilt Theatre's 'Keely and Du'

So, I'm an assistant editor for the Life Section of the Vanderbilt Hustler. I had to review the Vanderbilt production of "Keely and Du" the other night, which you can see here (sadly, a few jokes got cut). If you'd like to read a very thoughtful piece on the play, check out Kate Snowden's Torch article this month.

Anyway, the play's actually very well done. The objectivity was refreshing, but because I would probably liveblog a trip to the grocery store, I thought I’d toss this up here.

7:28- Really intense, like, bluegrass horror film music plays. Jasper knows he done Ella Mae wrong…but does Jasper know where the kitchen knives are?

7:44- After a good fifteen minutes of “Fried Green Angst: A Bluegrass Tribute to Linkin Park,” the lights dim and I get a fun PSA about not texting during the show. I’m also reminded to familiarize myself with the exit (already there).

7:46- Oh, no. Masks. What is this: Phantom of the Abortion Clinic?

7:49- “I’m easy to know.” Me too! I’m very easy to know.

7:51- After a solid two minutes of screams of “Let me go! Help! Please!” with tears and hysterics and hand cuffing to beds and phantom masks, I have already had enough.

7:57- “WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?” Keely, darling, WWJD Zorro just blabbered on about it for like five minutes like he was Lex Luthor or something. They’re not really Andrew Lloyd Webber fans, they’re crazy pro-lifers who kidnap pregnant women like you. This is fun, isn’t it?

7:59- WWJD Zorro: “You will fall in love with your baby.” Just like a fall fashion!

8:00- Um, fantastic, y’all. I so needed a detailed description of abortion right after dinner at Rand.

8:04- “DON’T TOUCH ME.” Keely, enough with the screaming. You’re not pleased with being handcuffed to that bed, I understand. For the sake of my eardrums, change tactics, champ.

8:05- Ah, yes, the obligatory college theatre screaming of “FUCK YOU.”

8:07- It’s like Keely and Du are in a contest to drive me towards insanity first. If it’s not the screaming, it’s the folksy Great Depression stories.

8:09- “I’m a Bible Christian.” …Okay? Perhaps the Torah Jews and Qur’an Muslims can weigh in. If we’re lucky, we may get a Constitution American to jump in.

8:10- WWJD Zorro pops with: mouthwash, oranges, ketchup, and emery boards. Sounds like a man went grocery shopping. And, ew, he bought her underwear. Sounds like a sexual harasser went to Wal-Mart.

8:15- Ah, yes, a good ol’ abortion pamphlet from the Phantom Phanatics Club. I’m sure it’s entitled something atrocious like “Commonly Senseless: Abortion and You.”

8:17- Tiny baby shoes! Even if you don’t like small children, your heart has to melt just a tiny little bit when you see a pair of baby Nikes.

8:18- Starbucks bag: even religious fundamentalists will overpay for their coffee. The old lady’s husband got arrested attacking a clinic in Louisiana. It’s seriously freezing in this theatre, I would overpay…a lot for something hot right now. A hot beverage, that is.

8:21- Keely, make up your mind. Either stop screaming or don’t, just pick a side. “Tammy Wynette, [cough] somebody else’s choice, obviously.” Keely, you just lost some points with me. Also, Tammy Wynette has been dead for almost a decade.

8:27- The ballad of August and Du, here. He used to be boring until he was a born again Christian, and EW. OLD PEOPLE SEX. GAH. NO.

8:30- Gratuitous cursing.

8:31- Keely and Du are touching. I half expect Keely to scream “NOOOOOO.”

8:35- Keely: “I have such black moods, you know?” Trust me, I know.

8:40- More screaming. Seriously, make it stop.

8:43- It’s Keely’s birthday and she gets: warm beer. Du: “Oh, one won’t hurt the baby.” Wrong. Even one warm Natty Lite could really hurt the baby.

8:44- NOOOOOOO! The Jesus Death Eater’s name is Walter. That’s my imaginary husband’s name. He even lets me drive to Woolworth’s!

8:51- “To really be alone up there on that mountain, what a feelin’” FLASHDANCE!

8:54- Keely’s sick of always being around people: “Always hearing other people talk, other people cough, other people sleep.” Yes, those sleepers are just deafening.

8:56- The Antarctica metaphor for being alone and or dying apparently exists about three feet above my head. I look around helplessly like I can just stop being Antarctica if I just believe that I’m not.

8:58- Aw, hugging.

8:59- Not!Walter has come a-knockin’ in the post-birthday celebration. Keely and Du give it the old college try to hide the beer in that “Just a minute” routine that happens at least once a night in every dorm building.

9:03- “It would be difficult for two women in your position to not become complicit.” Well, thanks for the update on what being a woman is like Not!Walter, but I can think of more than a few women I wouldn’t get complicit with no matter how handcuffed I was to a bed. Wait, that didn’t come out right.

9:06- Creepy Cole, Keely’s ex-husband who raped her, brings up her body and Jesus within seconds. Creepy Cole, Keely’s a bit touchy about Jesus right now. Also, not so big on the touching.

9:11- Oh, God. Creepy Cole, the RAPIST, starts talking about how he worships her body in front of Not!Walter and Love Me Du, over there. Now there is screaming, of course.

9:13- Screaming, screaming, screaming. Aaaaaaaaaand, she bites him.

9:14- The stage goes dark as Keely starts, in her one moment alone, bending some wire. I'm sure there's a Mommie Dearest joke to be made somewhere in there. But really, when isn't there a Mommie Dearest joke to be made?

9:18- Role reversal! Poor ol’ Du’s up in the joint, getting robbed and on Prozac, and Keely’s come to visit and cry.

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Ronald Reagan! in Reagan and The Night of the Prius!

Watch as Ronald Reagan! takes on La Madame, Tits Magee, an anime John Edwards and fights the DNC Hall of Doom's plan to make us all drive Priuses. Yes, Priuses. Also, get prepared for the preppy Elephanteers and the obligatory "White People All Look the Same" joke. It's a full length comic and it is prepared to do things that few comics have done before.

See it here. The comic was written and drawn by me, using Adobe Illustrator for the September 2007 issue of the Vanderbilt Torch.

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Vanderbilt Frontpage II: Stalker's Revenge!

In this space, I have discussed the prevalent stalkerish vibe the Vanderbilt frontpage sometimes contains before. Well, the table have been turned, friends. The stalkers are now the subject matter:

JESUS.

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Vanderbilt Frontpage: Daily Crazy

As a constant, compulsive email checker I am confronted with the Vanderbilt website and its illustrious frontpage pictures daily. Conceivably, the pictures are intended to be gently alluring, in the typical college admissions tradition of subtlety, like "VANDERBILT: WE LEARN. WE HAVE FUN. COME HERE. FUN FUN FUN." But Vanderbilt's front page excels at making one question why one goes to Vanderbilt in the first place. The front page photos are like a parade of crazy, boring, and uncomfortable.

These photos have included:

1. Two nursing students administering a shot to a dummy wearing a hospital gown and staring out at the viewer with terrifyingly empty, soulless eyes.
2. A, presumably, Vanderbilt student sitting in the cafeteria laughing hysterically in a manner that was vaguely autistic.
3. At least a dozen classroom shots where indifferent students stare mindlessly in different directions, implying that either they have an extremely boring professor, or their prof is God and is therefore all around them.

Sadly, these images frequently change and I rarely have the presence of mind to save them, except for one glorious day when I felt it necessary to email my friend the atrociousness that was parading around on my screen everytime I check my email. A caveat: remove sharp objects from the close vicinity. Here it is:

There are so many things wrong in this picture, that I'm not really sure to begin. The Borat moustache, the barefootness, the ridiculousness of the pose, the fact that these people aren't actually synchronized but are gazing off in varying directions. These photos are not supposed to be a paen to sketchiness. I can't dwell on it much more.

Anyway, moving on to my point. In the past few days, the photos have been changed again with the traditional set of disinterested summer students, photogenic graduates, and the typical Everybody Walking Around on Campus Shot. Keeping in mind that this photo should make people want to come to Vanderbilt, I was confused by the new Everybody Walking photo:

Wait a minute:

So, we've got three people talking on their phones, possibly more. Not one person, out of the twenty pictured, excepting the three on their cells, is talking to another human. VANDERBILT: WE WALK IN SILENCE.

Next, we've got the girl in the black with the sunglasses on. Now, I'm sure she's lovely, charming, and a sparkling conversationalist but in this picture? She looks like a bitch. Her fists are balled and she's staring straight ahead at the camera. She's the girl, who when the girl in the white polo walks aimlessly talking on the phone, she blows by and mutters in that nasty whisper voice about paying attention to where one's going. Of course, she's centered. VANDERBILT: WE ARE BITCHES.

There's also only one guy in this photo. At first, I thought this was a problem, but upon further reflection, I realized that: any guy looking at this photo would be perflectly fine with stepping into a landscape that contains 19 girls and one other guy, even if that girl in the black would nonchalantly and coldly turn any date down. And, most girls looking at this photo, would go back to the cellphone thing. VANDERBILT: GENDER RATIOS MAY BE IN YOUR FAVOR.

Finally, we've got the caption. There's always one image in the new sets informing us all that Vanderbilt was designated a national arboretum in 1988 (a year of immense, tremendous grace). But this one has the distinction of combing the caption, with the unfocused yellow plant. The more I saw the yellow plant- which appears to be something similar to an azalea- it appeared to be some sort of yellow disease creeping out towards the students. Obviously that's not the case (...or is it?). But, once you get past that issue, you have to look at the perspective. Where is the photographer? ...In the bushes? ...Taking pictures of college aged girls? VANDERBILT: STALKERS WELCOME.

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