An Open Letter to my Unborn Grandson Explaining the Sport of Football

Dear Unborn Grandson,

Still waiting for the Houston Texans’ upcoming “Divisional Round Dubstep.”

If you are reading this now, two things must have happened. Apparently, a) I have lived like I died, drunkenly paddling a canoe in the buff down the Chicago River, and b) President Malia Ann Obama has outlawed the sport of football in our once-proud United States of America. Luckily for you, I predicted that such travesties would happen — mostly because canuding through the poisonous sludge that is the Chicago River while belligerently intoxicated can have adverse effects on your health — but also because the sport of football was pretty damn dangerous. What follows is all the important knowledge you will ever need to know in order to preserve the memory and history of the sport of football and ensure that you never ever fall prey to the allure of its metrosexual European cousin.

You see, Unborn Grandson, football was the greatest sport ever invented. The perfect combination of brawn and strategy and cheerleaders. Good God, don’t ever let us forget the cheerleaders.

Speaking of God, Yahweh fucking loved football. Just fucking loved it. Loved the sport so much that members of both teams would pray to God, asking for strength, fortitude, a sturdy offensive line, and a guaranteed contract plus incentives. God rewarded good Christians who couldn’t throw a spiral with an impregnable defense, while punishing other franchises with the likes of Cade McNown and Rex Grossman.

God loved football because football fucking ruled. In America, pro football was more popular than if Justin Bieber and cholesterol teamed up with all other major sports combined. No other game combined savage violence with cunning tactics and celebration dances quite like it. The game induced grown men in Philadelphia to throw D-batteries at Santa Claus, wear slices of cheese on their heads as they froze their asses off in Wisconsin, and even every once in awhile travel willingly to Detroit (this, after all, was before the city was overtaken by the mole people).

The athletes who played the game were revered as gods among men. If, you know, the gods were really great at running hitch and go routes and sending pictures of their junk to women they weren’t married to. Even the kickers, whose sole purpose in life was to — you guessed it Unborn Grandson — kick a ball still got laid, an impressive feat for somebody like Sebastian Janikowski.

Back before Google installed screens in all of our heads, we used to watch this magical sport from early Fall until February on things called “televisions,” which showed us the game and expert analysis of the game and hot women drinking shitty beer during breaks in the game. Sidenote: One day, Unborn Grandson, you might think that drinking Busch Light is “hip,” and “retro,” and “ironically hilarious,” but let me tell you, it’s not. All of your little hipster friends in the year 2063 might think it’s really cool to ironically drink your old man’s beer while you listen to Skrillex mp3’s and wear skinny jeans or some shit like that, but those kids have no idea how painful these things were at the time. Just be advised that my will specifically strips you of all rights to my Pokemon card collection if you are ever found Tebowing.

But yeah, TV was pretty great for football, and at the very end of the season, America held a special sacred holiday called Super Bowl Sunday. For one day the entire nation turned its eyes on the two best football teams of the year, who tried very hard to win the championship game and the ensuing confetti and the pretty metal trophy and the rights to wear rings the size of diamond-crusted nuva rings and to cry into Chris Berman‘s microphone. Halftime entertainment featured the very best aging classic rock stars had to offer, and even the occasional rogue booby or floating Usher.

The only thing better than professional football was college football. The college game was as passionate as Sicilians, and its governing body was as corrupt as, well, Sicilians. The rivalries were intense, and the pregames before a noon kickoff were unseemly in the best possible way.

Now, I’m sure grandpop’s alma mater has made quite a name for itself in the future, thanks to alumni like Ross Packingham (Beer Pong Olympic goldmedalist, 2024, 2028) and Chet Haze (Bratz 3D, Forrest Gump 2: Gump n Grind), but we were once a pretty respectable football institution too. We’re talking, like, the 7th most feared Big Ten team.

College football had things called “bowl games” instead of the Super Bowl to commemorate the end of its season. It worked kind of like youth soccer, where almost everybody got a trophy. I can still remember the thrill of victory when Northwestern won its first bowl game since the Rose Bowl, defeating the South Dakota State Jackrabbits in one of the most thrilling Overstock.com Money Grab Bowl in years. Those were the days. Half of the school erupted into celebration while patiently explaining to the other half what a first down was.

But I can only assume that the goddamn liberals and the socialists and the gays and the concussed NFL retirees will collude together to pressure President Malia Obama to ban the sport from America altogether in the near future. I cannot express how tragic of a mistake this will be, on par with our future decision to defrost Walt Disney or replace football with children fighting to the death for our entertainment.

Alright, Unborn Grandson, I hope this letter has reached you well. Please understand how important the sport of football was to all Americans, and don’t judge us too harshly for our cultural transgressions during the YOLO era. Things like twitter and Four Loko seemed like pretty great ideas at the time.

Well, that’s about it. I hope things are well in the future for you and your Roomba overlords. Are they still making teenage fiction about vampires? Has Christopher Nolan won an Oscar yet? How does your generation feel about the Black Keys?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a river to canude down.

Sincerely,
Evander

Where to Find Your NU Love

With any luck, one day you'll make a heinous rock all of your own.

If you’re like me, a socially awkward alcoholic, you haven’t found your NU love yet. This is probably because the venues you most often frequent have three Greek letters in their names and smell vaguely like Four Loko and urine. Haven’t found any keepers while projectile vomming in the Beta Kappa handicap stall? Keep looking, young freshmen. Take my hand on the magical road of dating: from the painful first encounters and sloppy make outs to the time your suitor hangs your bra on your locker after you left it in his car. Oh wait, this isn’t high school anymore.

It’s time to look for some more obscure places to find your future lover and/or tonsil-hockey teammate. Here’s where to start.

1. A Swanky Restaurant
I suggest Bistro Bordeaux on Church St. Nothing can ever go wrong with a good French meal. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Bristol, I need to find a future lover before I can go to a swanky restaurant. Wrong! Go alone, but inform your waiter that someone else is joining you. Wear a red rose. Pray to God that someone mistakes you for their exponentially-cuter-than-you-looked-online blind date. If no one shows up, cry to your waiter about being stood up. Pray to God the waiter feels sympathetic/gives you their number/accompanies you back to your sex lair for the night.

Too forward for you? Work your way in slowly then. (That’s what she said.)

Yes, I'd like an overnight package please.

2. The Post Office
Guaranteed to generate the best pickup lines:
“Wanna be my priority male?” (Punny, right?)
“I’m here to pick up my package.” [Cast eyes down to genitalia]. (Classic.)
“If you liked it then you should’ve put a stamp on it.” (Because Beyoncé is a goddess.)

3. Dark Parking Garages
Ever feel uncomfortable introducing yourself to a girl in a bar? Wait until she’s walking back alone to her car! Explain that you saw her walking in a dark parking garage that may or may not be chock full of rapists or flesh-eating Republicans and decided to walk with her to protect her from said travesties. At first, she’ll probably pepper spray you, SING at you (solar plexus, instep, nose, groin),* or force you to watch a video of Michelle Bachmann eating a corn dog. But as soon as she realizes you’re just a creepy motherfucker with good intentions, she might just give you the seven-digit password to her pants.

Trolling for some bitches

4. Dog Shows
It works, believe me. It’s like a Cincinnati Cyclones game on $1 beer Wednesday nights, but with wine and trust-fund dog owners on Sundays at high tea.

Perhaps just as important as the places you should go, are the places you should NOT go.

1. University Place or Ridge Avenue
Unless you want to fall in love with a punk in a hoodie who steals your smartphone.

2. The Showers at SPAC
Unless you’re into watching/performing/assisting in self-gratification. Then balls-to-the-walls, young harlots!

3. The Sauna at SPAC
You are not into naked old Jewish women who look like sweaty beached whales. So don’t go in the sauna for love. In fact, don’t go into the sauna at all.

4. Find your NU love/ Flirting for Nerds
I attended both the speed dating event “Find your NU Love” and the seminar “Flirting for Nerds,” more out of irony than desperation. I did not find my NU love, nor did I learn how to flirt anymore heinously than I already do. So unless you want to wince every few minutes when the girl knitting a pair of Eskimo slippers snorts loudly, avoid NU dating events.

You know where to go. Now go and get ‘em, you sexually frustrated bastards.

——————————————————————————————————————————
*Miss Congeniality

Morty Schapiro: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

You lookin' at ME?

It is well known amongst Northwestern students that the University’s president, Morton Owen Schapiro, is, for all intents and purposes, a god among mere mortals. Those who admire and fear his clout often whisper his name in secluded corners of the sorority quad or the bowels of the Technological Institute or the basement of Norris, questioning if the legend is true. Did he really spend a summer translating ethnic slurs to Portuguese refugees in Angola when he was 10? Is the wildcat sound effect during Northwestern football games actually a recording of him yawning? Did he actually find Waldo AND Carmen Sandiego? As surely as Francis Church affirms the existence of Santa Claus, I am here to tell you, reader, that yes, Morton Schapiro has accomplished all that you’ve heard. And more.

Grew that beard in 27 seconds after pounding back 3 whiskey shots

After receiving his driver’s license when he was 16 days old, Morty Schapiro kicked the dust off his baby booties and decided to take on the big world. By age 3 he became the world’s youngest professional contortionist while living in an original Adolf Loos house in Austria. During his time there, Austrian tourism shot up by 348%. He was quickly relocated to the United States to serve as a consultant for the Federal Bureau of Investigations and took part in several covert operations with the Mexican government. Four months later he canoed to South Africa with only a can of Cheez Whiz and a ping-pong paddle as an oar. He made it in one day. After tutoring Steven Biko in public speaking and political activism, Schapiro made his way to Angola, and then to Tanzania, where he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Twice.

When he was fifteen, he worked in conjunction with the United States 56^th Rescue Squadron in search and rescue missions throughout North Africa and southern Europe. Years later, his expertise in the field allowed him to single-handedly devise a plan to rescue the trapped Chilean miners, which he explained in a single text message. In his spare time, Morty traveled back to the United States to take the SATs, which he got a perfect score on after drinking two Four Lokos.

No kidding, 8-inches

During his years in college and graduate school, Morty spent his free time wooing women with his sensuous oboe and saxophone playing, though he was first chair violinist in the Philadelphia Orchestra on the weekends. In the same night he built a telescope in his dorm room (which was later used as a prototype for the Hubble Telescope), cooked 10-minute rice in 5 minutes, and drew a doodle, which would earn him an honorary degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.  He got a perfect score on three exams the next morning. He read the Count of Monte Cristo and the Divine Comedy in an hour and was the only student in the history of University of Pennsylvania to earn a 4.8 GPA.

#24 even totally let his girlfriend spend a night of mind-boggling pleasure with Morty, just to be a nice guy

While studying abroad in France, he visited every exhibit of the Louvre in a day, and still had time to cook a four-course meal, using only a blender and toaster. He first discovered his love of economics after working with Benoit Mandelbrot on his paper, Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension. The day before his return to the United States, a parade was held in his honor and he was awarded by President Valery d’Estaing “The Only American Loved by France.”

Morty Cat

In the years since, Morty has never ceased to amaze those who surround him. He has been nominated for two Oscars, a Grammy and every Nobel Prize. He was the source of inspiration for the Old Spice commercial character, plays tennis with Rafael Nadal every Wednesday, and knits onesie pajamas for needy children. He is impervious to Rickrolling. He’s never lost at Risk, is in perfect physical condition, has designed floral arrangements for several celebrity weddings, and makes a mean apple pie. Students revere him, Evanston aldermen cower in his presence, and the weather fluctuates according to his mood.  He is mighty, he is kind, he is refined.

He is Morty.