Sherman Ave Freshman Guide: A&O Blowout

This Friday, A&O (which stands for something, but literally no one knows what) is hosting a concert featuring a black musical act preceded by a white musical act that guy from Community, and some band that you don’t listen to, but that one girl from your dorm who ironically wears the same glasses as your grandpa listens to.  It’s at some time, probably at night.[1]  There will also be Morty Schapiro a special guest.  They actually do this concert every fall, they host it at our basketball arena (Welsh-Ryan), and they call it A&O Blowout.

The site of what will certainly be the greatest experience of the latter half of one of your Fridays.

Now, you’re a freshman, and the only concert experience you’ve ever had is that one time you went with your mom to see John Mayer and had to uncomfortably listen to her sing along with “Your Body is a Wonderland”.  You’re in college now, and after almost four weeks on campus you think you’ve pretty much got everything down pat.  So since there’s this concert being held very close to campus that’s like super cheap, you’re probably thinking, “fuck yeah, let’s go!”  And you should go.  Attending Blowout is a freshman rite-of-passage; you go your first year here, realize it’s kinda meh, and then never go again.[2]  That being said, it definitely doesn’t have to be meh; you can have a great time, as long as you know what to do and what to expect.  So let Sherman Ave fill you in with the deets.  You trust us, right?

My “Review” of a “Relevant” Punk Band

Some say that the Cuban Missile Crisis was a huge source of inspiration for these old dudes.

We entered the train and almost immediately got in trouble. My roommate talked me into going to a concert at the Metro, where we would be seeing the Zero Boys, a punk rock band that was big and influential for about half a year in the early 80’s. With a deep devotion for one-hit wonders, she is a devotee of the early punk rock scene, an enthusiasm she refers to as “a curse.” Her excitement was contagious though, and we got on the El while gabbing about our respective summertime occupations. We sat down behind an old man who looked like he’s hit a few people with belts back in the day, and she loudly groaned that all of her coworkers were fucking up. This made the old man to turn around gruffly and give her a scorching look that said he knew exactly where we’re going when we die. This made me feel really really punk, and I was now ready for the show.

Walking up to the venue, I realized we were the only people there not wearing all black, and for the most part the youngest. A guy in front of us in line for 21+ bracelets was wearing a cool vest and had sweet tattoos (Krusty the Clown without skin and Cthulhu were on either elbow), but my roommate called him a “fashion punk” with disdain. These scenesters apparently got gussied up for punk shows, which my roommate could not abide, but he seemed alright to me in a sort of friendly rockabilly way.

An Open Letter Apology To Attendees of Last Night’s Hannah Montana Concert

To everyone who attended last night’s Hannah Montana concert:

After spending some time thinking about my actions last night, I have no doubt in my mind that I owe the most sincere and heartfelt apology to everyone who suffered the grave misfortune of seeing my behavior. Boasting a blood alcohol content presumably over .4, I acted in a manner that was immature, unruly, and worst of all, wholly unfit to be seen by the many children who were there.

It's probably a good thing I was not allowed to constitute a leg of Hannah's heinous throne.

I truly wish I could even give an explanation for my presence at the concert. To be perfectly honest, yesterday was a bit of a whirlwind – I woke up this morning in the arms of a homeless person on Michigan Avenue, and only came to discover the nature of this incident through a series of hardly comprehensible text messages, a police citation I found stuffed in my boxers, and a rather unflattering article on the third page of the Chicago Tribune. Needless to say, I was horrified to learn about the magnitude of my heinousness at last night’s show.

I suppose I must begin this apology by acknowledging the abject inappropriateness of my attire. According to a slew of picture messages sent to a wide variety of ex-girlfriends, I chose to arrive at the concert clad quite scantily. The teal, sequin-covered top was hardly something to which the eyes of young females should be subjected, especially considering the unnecessary reveal of my midriff, and with it, my neon-orange-dyed happy trail. Moreover, I showed an unreasonable lack of foresight in choosing to wear a three-sizes-too-small pair of hot pink running shorts. I’m sure you’ll agree that they didn’t look especially becoming with my knee-high black army boots. I hope that the future mothers of America weren’t terribly haunted and scarred by the image of an out-of-shape twenty-year-old dressed like a whorish cheerleader at a Belly-dancing class in South Jersey.

Regrettably, my ill-advised attire wasn’t the extent of my behavior last night that warrants profuse apology. My general display of social unawareness is made quite obvious in a video uploaded to YouTube shortly after the concert. Apparently, in my altered state of mind, I was under the impression that “Party in the U.S.A.” was a jingoist musical manifesto, and treated it as such. It was completely unpardonable of me to strip off the few pieces of clothing I was wearing and run laps on the stage, waving an American flag and provocatively touching Miley Cyrus every time I passed her. I am genuinely thankful that a few upstanding members of the Chicago Police Department took this as their cue to pin me to the stage and savagely beat me with clubs; I shudder to imagine how I might have acted if I had still been in the audience during “Hey Now.”

The looks she shot me while I screamed at her "TAKE IT OFF DIRTY GIRL" weren't quite this seductive.

However, it does seem that I found my way back into the concert, though I can’t explain how. This is probably the part of the night that calls for the most pronounced apologies. The way I accosted young female tweens was simply unacceptable, and I can make no excuses for myself. To begin with, it is in no way fair to assume that they “would all grow up to be back-stabbing whores who only want to use me to get closer to my older brother Mitch.” Additionally, use of the words “underdeveloped” and “flat-chested” were absolutely unjustified. Most of all, I must apologize from the bottom of my heart for screaming that I wished for them to all die in childbirth.
I assure you all that I am usually an upstanding young gentleman, and that this is an extremely isolated incident. I guarantee that I will never again come to a Hannah Montana concert and drunkenly heckle young girls. Please accept this apology; I can only ask humbly for your forgiveness for the unspeakable atrocities I committed.

Cordially,
Ross Packingham

2011 Sherman Ave Reader’s Poll: Results

With 122 responses and a wide variety of exceedingly gruesome responses,* we were absolutely thrilled with the success of this year’s poll. So, after much anticipation (drumroll please), we present to you: RESULTS!

The hanging chad of our generation

Most Heinous Event of 2011
With 24% of the vote, the winner was: Rebecca Black’s “Friday” Strikes Youtube. This is undoubtedly the most atrocious non-majority victory we’ve seen since November 2000.

Best Place to Find and Enjoy a Hookup
Also with 24% of the vote, the winner was: A Frat House. Notable write-ins include “Baby Bash ski trip concert” and “Deer season in Indiana.” Surprisingly enough, nobody mentioned Sherman Ave HQ…

Favorite Sherman Ave personality?
With 30% of the vote, the winner was: Sir Edward Twattingworth III. We at the Ave have not a shred of doubt that this will result in a power-trip of unprecedented magnitude, but with Sir T-Worth, we’re used to it. Anything less than Putin-esque levels of self-aggrandizement would be a disappointment.

Best Song of 2011
With 15% of the vote, the winner was: “Someone Like You” by Adele. This can easily be understood by anyone who has ever been within a 5-mile radius of any intoxicated Sherman Ave writer. Or felt love.

Most Mouthgasms per Bite
With 33% of the vote, the winner was: Hot Cookie Bar. Notable write-ins include “your mom” and “Pippa Middleton.”

DAMN YOU HIPSTERS FOR RUINING THE BEANIE FOR ME!!!!

Best Coffee Shop
With 52% of the vote, the winner was: Kafein. This would probably not go over well with one of the respondents who wrote in the answer, “Hipsters are sub-humans.” Ross Packingham intends to use this landslide victory as a clear mandate to bring his Buddhism-influenced beat poetry to Kafein’s stage, supported by Brother Jürgen and Eleanor Kinkervoss on the bongos while Evander Jones attacks the chastity belt around his waist with a chain saw. Sadly, it will only the fourth-most heinous act on stage at that week’s open mic.

Best Place to Get Intoxicated in Public
With 27% of the vote, the winner was: Cozy Noodles. Among the many notable write-ins were: “Barnes and Noble,” “10am MENU class,” and “sidewalk.”

Best A Cappella Group
With 26% of the vote, the winner was: There is no such thing as a good a cappella group. A ruefully valid statement indeed.

Best Movie of 2011
With 29% of the vote, the winner was: Harry Potter 7.2. Notable write-ins include Twilight: Breaking Hymen and Pippa Middleton, both of which feature Morty Schapiro and Kate Upton in starring roles.

Best TV Show of 2011
With 17% of the vote, the winner was: How I Met Your Mother. Apparently people identify with drunken assholes frittering away the golden years of their lives chasing after unsatisfactory one-night stands. Far and away, the most heinous write-in was: “Is The Hills still on? I pick The Hills.”

Please Describe Morty Schapiro in 10 Words or Less
This one was actually too much for us to emotionally process. Top answer: “Why limit it to fewer words than his penis length?” Maybe once Ross Packingham’s poetry career takes off, maybe he’ll compose a sonnet using only these responses and youtube video comments.

What’s Up the Evanston City Council’s Ass?
With 35% of the vote, the winner was: a 14-inch dildo made of molten gummy bears. If that’s not already true, it can certainly be arranged.

Ever wonder how I got the name "Packingham?"

What is your Gender?
With 58% of the vote, the winner was: Female. AWWWWWW YEAHHHHHH!!!! Hey ladies, how’d you like to spend the night with the fourth-most popular Northwestern-centric blog? No?** Haaaaaaave you met Manua?

What Brings You to Sherman Ave?
With a staggering 70% of the vote, the winner was: Facebook. Needless to say, notable write-ins included “Pippa Middleton” and “all of your fucking Facebook posts.”

In conclusion, a huge thank you goes out to everyone who took this poll. We couldn’t do it without you. We hope that you were pleased with our unnecessary heinousness in 2011, and we will do everything in our power to take it to the next level in 2012. Most importantly, we’re comforted to see in the responses that the people who read Sherman Ave are just about as fucked up as the people who write for it.

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*Allowing for a standard error of approximately 69%.
**Fun Fact: The first time Sherman Ave was ever used as a potential pickup line occurred in line for the bathroom at an off-campus party. It was not successful.

5 Reasonable but Merciless Alternatives to the Death Penalty

This past Wednesday, millions of Americans were outraged over the execution of Troy Davis, a man convicted – with inconclusive evidence – of murdering a police officer in Savannah, Georgia. As the fairness of the death penalty is really drawn into question, we begin to ask ourselves: what other alternatives might there be to execution?

Watch yourself

5. Compulsory Residence in a Fundamentalist Conservative Colony
One possibility worth considering is the establishment of a prisoner colony. The automatic choice for location would be Georgia, given that it started as a prisoner colony, and has arguably been one ever since. The colony would be governed by an entity known as “The TetraDouche” – a council consisting of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Perry. While prisoners would not be executed in the colony, they would be forever subjected to other atrocious fundamentalist policies, such as mandatory readings of the Gospel each time a prisoner gets an erection.

Fortunately, a week with Justin Bieber was ruled far too inhumane

4. Court-ordered Jonas Brothers tour
This option would force the convicted criminal to follow the Jonas Brothers on a national tour – not only to sit through their inconceivably rancid concerts, but also to travel with them on the tour bus. Some investigatory research has indicated that more Americans fear a Jonas Brothers tour than fear death, so not only would this alternative be more humane than execution (okay, that’s debatable), but it would be more effective in crime prevention. Furthermore, there is a decent chance that it would result in said criminal physically assaulting the Jonas Brothers, an outcome no one can deny secretly desiring.

They're the same fuckers responsible for Wiz Khalifa too

3. Lifetime Season Tickets for the Pittsburgh Pirates
I can only begin to imagine how inexplicably atrocious it is to be at a Pittsburgh Pirates home game. No one would willingly spend an entire evening sitting in a hot stadium seat while the raging cocklord sitting next to them drunkenly heckles the unsuspecting Blue Jays fans on the grounds that “Canadians can’t partake in America’s pastime.” What’s worse, it’s the Pittsburgh Pirates, so there is literally no chance that you’ll ever get to see the home team win. Ultimately, the only positive aspect of this punishment would be the opportunity to feast on the woefully sub-par concession stand food, which is only sold for 15-20 times the amount it costs to produce. And to put the icing on the cake, you’re living in Pittsburgh, so the likelihood of getting dateraped by Ben Roethlisberger is substantially greater.

Wait, is this a Wildcard?

2. Community Service at The Keg of Evanston
You might be thinking, “But the KOE is a jolly place! I love going there!” However, imagine being at The Keg and not being allowed to consume alcohol. Or popcorn. Suddenly, your run-of-the-mill Monday night fuckshow has turned into a night full of unmitigated self-loathing whilst observing others in their endless debauchery. On top of that, you’d be forced to engage in community service – picking up empty cups, preventing multi-generational couples from hooking up, politely asking obese Hispanic men to remove themselves from the stripper poles, etc. After 10-15 years of spending every Monday and Saturday performing these tasks, there’s no doubt that a criminal would truly regret the crime they committed.

A life sentence of beer pong and using Snickers wrappers as condoms

1. Pledging Sig Ep
Although it has been ruled unconstitutional on the grounds of “cruel and unusual punishment” by the Supreme Court, many still support this method of alternative castigation for perpetrators of heinous crimes (OH MY GOD WE JUST MADE LEGITIMATE USE OF THE WORD HEINOUS! HOLY BALLS! IT FUCKING HAPPENED!). Yes, engaging criminals in this form of punishment would involve activities that, under certain definitions, qualify as “torture,” but the long-term penalty would be much worse – a 25 to life sentence of unchecked doucheification. This result, while being worse than death for many criminals, is indisputably more just from a moral standpoint. Even Julie Andrews, a role model for many, firmly asserted that the fairest punishment for murderers and rapists is “an inevitable lifestyle of supercalifragilisticexpialidouchiness.”