Keg Week 2013: The Eulogy

Tonight, we’re popping popcorn in your honor.

One week ago Sunday, The Keg of Evanston closed its doors for the very last time. Tonight we conclude our Keg Week 2013 with what may–for better or worse–be the very last article we ever post about TKOE.

At this point, more words have been spilled over that shit-hole Evanston bar than Bud Light out of a big cup. Don’t worry, this epitaph will be about as brief as a dance floor hookup, and hopefully a shade less awkward.

Think of all the geographic locations pertaining to Northwestern. The Arch. The Rock. The Frat Quad. The Black House. Willard. Searle Hall. The Lakefill. Tech. Norris. Ryan Field. The Steam Tunnels. Deering. CVS. The Howard El Stop. That One Bench You Totally Made Out On With Your PA.

Magic Underpants: The Mitt Romney Story

Experience “trickle-down” like you never have before!

Obama always threw the best parties in town. Liberal with the booze and democratic with the music, it was the perfect place to get socialized, but America wasn’t having much fun. She felt like she’d been here for four years now, and though the energy was still high, Obama’s party hadn’t quite lived up to expectations. It didn’t help that she had just come from G.W.’s party, and so threw up pretty early into the night, and Obama had to spend most of his time cleaning up the mess. GM got pretty sick too, and a lot of other people had go home early, even a couple guys who everyone swore were too big to fail. America suspected the unregulated punch bowl.

But even still, now that she was back on her feet and mostly recovered, America couldn’t help but feel a bit out of place at Obama’s party, and the music was giving her a headache. Setting her drink down, she went to look for some place quiet where she could rest for a while.

After turning down a few halls, she found a small guest room, mostly insulated from the constant music. Assuming it to be empty, she flipped on the lights.

And there, on the bed, she saw him: his hair perfectly coiffed, his smile rigid and semi-lifelike, his tight temple garments highlighting his impressive fiscal policy.

“Oh, Governor Romney, I’m sorry, I thought this room was empty,” America stammered.

“Please, no need to be so formal. Call me Mitt,” said Romney as he gestured America to come sit with him. “What brings you here?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just getting a little tired of Obama’s party, and looking for a place too cool down.”

“Mm,” Romney nodded, “I know the feeling. You know I’m planning my own party soon? Much more tasteful and conservative. I think it’ll be a grand old party. I’d like it if you were there with me.” America only now realized how close Romney had gotten to her. This close up, he almost looked human. “You know America, I’ve got binders full of women, but I always had eyes for you.”

“Oh Mitt you’re joking with me.”

“I actually like jokes as well as things that are sort of fun. But right now I want something a little more spontaneous.”

America watched in stunned silence as Romney pulled out his fiscal policies. She had seen Obama’s stimulus package before, but this was something completely different. She was a little afraid it might hurt her. “Oh Mitt, your tax cuts are so… so big!”

“That’s just the 1%, babe.”

“But, don’t you think we need a safety net?”

“Nonsense, my dear. A friend told me that your body has a way of shutting that whole thing down.”

And thus, with some reluctance, America let Romney take her.

The End

-Dolphintail Espinoza

How to Not Give a Fuck About Valentine’s Day and Still Get Laid: A Beginner’s Guide to Accidental Pussy

Aw, you and Marcus didn’t work out?

It’s that time of the year again. No, not Black History Month, though props to my dogs. It’s that time of year when it seems like everyone you know is either:

a) in a relationship with a human
b) in a relationship with a cat
c) in a relationship with their hand

But with Valentine’s Day finally behind us, everyone seemed to be able to put aside their differences and focus on one thing and one thing only: SEX. Fornication, coitus, nooky, whoopee, boinking, taking a roll in the hay. Whatever you call it, it’s probably disgusting. I’m gonna go ahead and assume that you, like most of Northwestern’s population, fell into the third category. Fear not, peasant! As always, I am here to help in times of crisis. Stick to my rules and in no time your dick will be sure to be worming it’s way inside many a skank.

New Year’s Eve Checklist

So Christmas is over and the time for relaxing is behind us. You have only one week left before you need to go back to Evanston. While you probably don’t have your New Year’s Eve plans set yet, follow this checklist and you might make it out of the night with some dignity and a few new friends. At the very least, you’ll have a couple good stories and no less than three inexplicable bruises.

Bonus points if you nail that one dick from Junior Year English Class with the cork.

1. Drink
Going home can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It can mean relaxing, watching TV, losing the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas, and even reading (as dark as that may sound). However, to most, it probably means raging and drinking with friends and making bad decisions like you’re right back in high school. While most nights on break can feel more casual and laid back, New Year’s Eve is the night where you get to show all your friends and the randos at the party what you’ve learned at a higher learning establishment, primarily your newfound raging capabilities. An innocent bystander at the party might say, “Oh you go to Northwestern? I go to UC Santa Barbara and party on the beach because it’s 70 degrees year round. You must…like…do a lot of work and stuff.” Just wait, person who I’ve never met, because by the end of the night I will not only be blackout and ghostriding down Market Street, but also in the midst of a heinously deep conversion with a cop about the futileness of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and probz will get a fb friend request from him/her in a few days. Where did you say you went to school again, some, like, state school or whatever?

2. Hook Up
Go for it. You’ve been eying her for this whole party. She wants you. Just try to keep it classy and remember you’re not in the keg anymore, and there’s a decent chance that she actually knows where you live.

Nobody said it would be easy.

3. Wake Up the Next Morning
If you wake up the next morning, no matter where that may be, don’t worry, you made it. You made it through another year alive and you’re still raging like there’s no tomorrow. Now try to act like you have an idea of where you are, find your car, and drive home before your parents start assuming you’re dead and rent out your room.

4. Do Not Black Out Before the New Year
Even though counting down New Years may not be the ultimate highlight of the night, it’s up there. Blacking out before New Year’s kind of puts a damper on your memory of the night and it also makes the previous point a little more traumatic. If you can make it to midnight with a little consciousness and the ability to maneuver your two feet then you’re doing well: feel free to do whatever you please for the rest of the night. And remember that only on New Year’s Eve is the saying “nothing good happens after 2 AM” completely null and void. If you go home before 5am you’re doing something wrong. If the party is at your house, then congrats on having wonderful parents, can I like come over? I’ll have Mario Balotelli bring some fireworks too.

You'll always have your bros.

5. Get All Sentimental About Home
Since we’re on the quarter system here at Northwestern, we go back to school only one day after New Year’s. That not only makes this party your last chance to go hard before you head back to school and snow and total heinousness, it also reminds you how much you love being home and how awesome your friends are. So make about 50 toasts over the course of the night, reminisce over past debauchery, and even cry if that’s your thing. Everyone is blackout so they won’t even remember those two guys crying near the champagne.

–Andy Shartwood

20 People Who Accomplished More Than Me Before They Were 20

This cupcake symbolizes the defeat of teenage pregnancy

So this weekend I turned 20. The celebration was excellent, and the weekend was replete with friends, family, Lupe Fiasco, inexplicable football victories, a seemingly insurmountable stockpile of baked goods, and innumerable abuses of new Sherman Ave writers-to-be. But at some point during the frivolities, somewhere in between heinifying the Shakespeare Gardens and shouting Taylor Martinez-related obscenities on the El, I was struck by the realization that I had suddenly graduated from being merely a teenager into the vaunted world of the 20-something.

Now, I’d like to think that I fit into the 20-something club quite nicely. I publish self-indulgent blog posts, live in dire fear of missing a party, and am woefully unemployed. I vote Democrat and laugh at the word “clitoromegaly.” I buy records on vinyl, wear flannel, and spend an obscene proportion of my income at either BK or EV1, which suits me just fine. I fervently and irrationally believe that Steve Kerr was one of the most important guards in NBA history, and will be a drain on society in general for the next five years or so. Needless to say, I play a good deal of Sporcle and Civilization IV.

This 20-something is a Starbucks barista and staff writer for Thought Catalog

Besides being a great excuse to drink Andre and treat my friends as dutiful subjects to the Birthday Boy for a day, turning 20 is also a good milestone to size up the accomplishments and failures of my life. Even if I never played first base for the White Sox or fronted a touring rock n roll band, I’d like to think I’ve accomplished a fair deal, including roadtripping to LA and founding the most atrocious blog known to the greater Chicagoland area. But no matter what I’ve done, here are the 20 people who accomplished so much more than I could ever dream of before they were even able to legally drink in Japan.

1. Beyoncé’s Unborn Baby
That fetus was still only 5 months old when it garnered 8,868 tweets a minute at the MTV Music Video Awards. To be honest, the only time I can ever hope to gain that much recognition in social media is if Ross Packingham mentions me in one of his status updates. The progeny of Ms. Knowles and Mr. Z will almost certainly emerge from the womb with more talent, beauty, and hedge fund investments than five generations of Rees’ will be able to amass. If this kid doesn’t have a hit single by the time she’s 7, Amy Winehouse will turn over in her grave.

Jesus getting hammered, like a proper 20-something

2. Jesus
Although by the time he was 20 the God the Son incarnated hadn’t quite gotten around to teaching the word of God, performing miracles, or founding the Church, he was at least gainfully employed, which is much better than I can say for myself. You can rest assured that the Messiah was a really fucking good carpenter, as evidenced by his prominent position on Wikipedia’s “Notable Carpenters” list.

3. Harry Potter
Defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? Check. Graduate school? Check. Bang a butterface ginger? Check. The kid did it all, which is even more impressive considering that he never once succumbed to the distraction of working alongside Emma Watson.

I'm going to grow up to do WHAT???

4. Michael Jackson
Despite being born in the eternal hellhole of Gary, Indiana, MJ quickly rose to prominence. At the age of eight, a time when I was mostly concerned about training my Bulbasaur and watching The Bachelor when my Mom wasn’t home, the kid was opening for stripteases with the Jackson 5. If the vocal talent wasn’t enough, he also sported the greatest afro any prepubescent boy ever possessed.

5. Koko the Gorilla
It took me nearly two years to master elementary Spanish, but this adorable ape mastered American Sign Language and English in a few short years. She also had a kitten, and apparently assaulted more women than Herman Cain, both of which prove her superiority to me.

Morty as a child

6. Morton “Morty” Owen Schapiro
The man could grow a full grown beard in first grade in the same time it took me to read a page of Good Night Moon. But for a more complete examination of his exploits in the early years of this man’s life, I suggest you reference Chloe Woodhouse’s expose on the legend himself.

7. Macaulay Culkin
This kid was uglier than what I imagine Steve Buscemi to have looked like as a child, and yet he was still fucking boss. Not only did he single-handedly defeat Joe Pesci in the highest grossing comedy of all time, he also got to live the life of the richest boy in the world as the son of the founder of Rich Industries. The icing on the cake: Mila Kunis.

She also accomplished scaring the living shit out of me as a child

8. Matilda
So smart she could develop telekinetic abilities with the unused part of her brain, she was able to defeat Miss Trunchbull and form a happy, loving family with Miss Honey all before graduating elementary school. Although I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive her for the nightmares I suffered after watching the chokey scene.

9. Willow Smith
This video has over 64 million views. The most popular video I ever starred in was of me doing the “Single Ladies” dance in my senior year econ class. Either there’s something wrong with America, or I just got my ass handed to me by a 10-year-old. Or both.

He also managed to get arrested before me.

10. Bill Gates
By the end of sophomore year, the nerd had set a record for the fastest algorithm produced in his Harvard combinatorics class that stood for 30 years. Then he founded Microsoft. By the end of my sophomore year, I intend to have decided upon a concentration and get Sherman Ave to generate enough revenue to pay for beer.

11. Jane Austen
The woman had written most of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice before she turned 20. Not that I really care about the morals, scandals, and marriages of the early 19th Century landed gentry of England, but I’d just about die if Colin Firth ever portrayed one of my characters. Just saying, he’d make a great Sir Edward Twattingworth III.

12. Peter the Great
Dude was 10 when he became Tsar. During his reign he transformed Russia from a freezing, backward, and destitute rural society into a 5,000,000-square-mile freezing, backward, and destitute society. All while suffering from epilepsy.

Despite a lack of physical presence, he still dominated in the paint.

13. Air Bud
That golden retriever probably scored more points in one season than I did in my entire rec league basketball career. Second only to Michael Jordan’s role in Space Jam for convincing kids that they were better than basketball than they actually were, the only downside of Air Bud was the experience of overwhelming disappointment when you own dog couldn’t drain a three-pointer.

14. Lindsay Lohan
Herbie: Fully Loaded aside, The Parent Trap, Freaky Friday, and Mean Girls are some of the greatest acting performances I’ve seen in my lifetime. I’m pretty sure most guys my age have harbored a life-long crush on her ever since she valiantly challenged herself to a fencing match.

15. Michelangelo
Probably one of the best artists in Florence by the age of 14. No big deal.

16. Eliàn Gonzàlez
Not only did Gonzàlez cross from Cuba into American waters in an aluminum boat with a faulty motor, he also survived a sea storm while floating on nothing more than an inner tube. He also accomplished more in politics than any MTV Rock the Vote campaign ever has, quite possibly costing Al Gore the 2000 presidential election.

17. Madeline
The girl got her appendix removed and acted like it was no big deal. She also survived a fall off a bridge into the Seine River and ran away to join a group of traveling gypsies before she learned long division. That’s all there is; there isn’t any more.

18. Beethoven
Sure, as a child his father made young Ludwig stand at they keyboard until he cried. But it all worked out, right? He was seven at the time of his first public performance, and was publishing original compositions before most kids his age had mastered the art of five-paragraph essays.

Adorable

19 and 20 (tie). Eng Seng Ng and Cheng Yen Ng
Eng Seng Ng is a 19-year-old grad student at Stanford. Most people that age are busy playing National Treasure drinking games and sleeping through 11:00 am discussion sections, not completing their master’s in mechanical engineering at the top school in the country. Ng’s sister Chenny is just as amazing. The renowned master of the Hoedown Throwdown, Chenny is also an internationally-acclaimed practitioner of all things heinous, not to mention the most adorable member of Sherman Ave.

Honorable Mentions:
Adele, Kain Colter, Sasha Obama, George Harrison, LeBron James, Achilles, and Charlie Young.

Sherman Ave Freshman Guide: Dorm Life

The legendary Tupac Shakur once famously stated, “I didn’t choose the thug dorm life, the thug dorm life chose me.” For several reasons, surviving dorm life can certainly be one of the most difficult challenges you’ll face your freshman year. While some things (ex: People vomiting outside of your room and covering it up with printer paper) are out of your control, the proper knowledge and expectation of what lies ahead can help equip you for a successful year.

Sherman Ave Freshman Guide: The Keg of Evanston

If you're 20, you're probably too old to go in here.

The Keg of Evanston, referred to fondly in some social circles as merely “The Keg,” is a fine establishment that will undoubtedly be an integral part of every freshman’s awkward array of gruesome events. Located only a few blocks off campus (close enough to be convenient, far enough to facilitate some of the most trying late-night walks in recorded history), the KOE is consistently ranked as one of the nation’s top college bars, inaccurately giving validation to Northwestern’s lamentable social scene. The Keg is like Mount Doom – at first, the thought of it is very intimidating, but if you can manage to get inside of it, you run the risk of having a ruefully unattractive creature bite your finger off.

5 Ways to Cope With the Heat

Balls all over, is it hot outside or is it hot outside?! It’s a sad day when a mere 10-minute walk turns into a Hero’s Journey-esque adventure in which one must face great adversity and discover their true self. With this weather, the immediate instinct is to spend every day standing naked in front of your $15 air conditioning unit, but unfortunately, summer is also the time to have fun. Fear not! We have compiled a list of ways you can bypass the heat and still enjoy the season.

Java the Hut knew what's up

5. Invest in Slaves
Obviously the word “slave” has acquired somewhat of a stigma in the last few hundred years, but trust me, you will not regret this decision. Whether it’s getting your groceries or carrying you to a friend’s place, it will be exceptionally relieving to have your daily menial tasks performed by others. Worried about being controversial? There are still ways to be a slave-owner. For example, most college students are willing to enter in a contract of servitude, asking for nothing but free alcohol. Furthermore, your neighbors wouldn’t ever be suspicious of forced labor – they’d just assume you were getting a lot of action. If you can’t catch yourself a college student, try a younger child. Granted, child slavery is discouraged in many social circles, but the best part of slave children is that they’re your slaves and your children, and thankfully, our society rarely protects children from their parents.

Caution: Some drinks will make you look like a massive pansy

4. Drink
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my freshman year of college, it’s that drinking solves everything – macroeconomics finals notwithstanding. Russians notoriously consume copious quantities of vodka to cope with their frigid climate, so why can’t we do the same for our scorching climate? Worst case scenario, you drink yourself unconscious and earn yourself a trip to the cool, air-conditioned emergency room. Besides, if you drink enough, you can take the heat on headfirst and emerge victorious. The doucheriffic Heat Lords think they’ve got you beat, but they won’t know what hit them when you and your friends spontaneously skip to Burger King despite the outrageous temperatures. In this case, it’s about more than just surviving the heat, it’s about vanquishing it. If you’re looking for more pointers in this area, I’d consult the Dallas Mavericks; they know a thing or two about making the Heat their bitch.

Watch out for the Comm Majors

3. Skinny Dip
In most cases, the feeling of ice-cold water on the genitals is something that can only be likened to the Dementor’s Kiss. However, desperate times call for desperate measures, and desperate measures call for pelvic coolage (surprisingly not the long-lost brother of our 30th president). So next time you want to take a shower, kick it up a notch and go balls-deep in Lake Michigan. Don’t live near Lake Michigan? Not a problem, just go balls-deep in the nearest body of water. Caution to our readers in South America: If you choose to skinny-dip in the Amazon, for the love of God, be careful. Just be careful. Dear mother of God. Don’t urinate. Just don’t do it. Think of the children. No level of heat is worth sacrificing your junction (junk’s function). I don’t even want something of that horrific magnitude to happen to those taint-lovers in Brazil and Uruguay.

We hear she also has a thing for bloggers

2. Stalk Attractive People
For registered sex offenders like myself, the last few months have been absolutely clutch in that they have uncovered some of the world’s most attractive people. Think about it – a mere 6 months ago, the world was unaware of stunning babes like Pippa Middleton, Hope Solo, Casey Anthony Michele Bachmann Rebecca Black and anyone else who plays on the U.S. Women’s Soccer team. What better way to spend your summer than lounging in an air-conditioned place and learning every minute detail about the lives of these slampieces? For example, I have learned this summer that Pippa Middleton has admitted to being attracted to average-looking half-Jewish left-handed kids from Colorado – a category in which I fit into quite nicely. See, these are good things to know. You may call me things like “weirdo” and “rapist,” but…well never mind, you’ve got a point.

We're also pretty sure that this little bastard is responsible for U.S. Debt and ever single Haitian natural disaster

1. Blame Minorities for the Heat
As has been proven time and again throughout the annals of history, the best way to resolve any problem is by making it someone else’s problem. And the best part of this tactic is that any minority can work! Responsibility for any unfavorable happening is always easily placed on the backs of the Irish, Germans, Irish, Italians, Canadians, Irish, Latvians, or even the Irish. It may not lower the temperatures, but it certainly makes it easier to cope with when you can just angrily shout something like “GOD DAMN NEW ZEALANDERS MAKING EVERYTHING SO DAMN HOT!” Actively discriminating against said minority would be even more satisfying, but since it’s so stupidly hot outside, discrimination might tire you. However, if you heeded my first piece of advice, you should already have a whole army of slaves to go discriminate against minorities on your behalf.