Sherman Ave Goes Global!

We would like to cordially invite Greenland to suck the fattest dick on the planet.

This is a map of Sherman Ave’s global reach. The countries that are filled in with color have viewed Sherman Ave at least once (obviously, it is the country as a whole viewing it together as part of a ceremony, and not one single person arbitrarily browsing the Internet for fucksaw videos). The color-coding isn’t especially relevant to viewership; it represents the general greatness of the country, judged on the traditional scale of 1 to 32,524.

As part of a marketing effort, we’re making attempts to analyze these global trends of viewership to figure out how we can broaden our appeal, and in all our gratitude and kindness, we’ve decided to show our strategies to you, our dickholders shareholders (remember the other night, when you had one too many and bought $50,000 worth of stock in a blog that doesn’t yet run its own advertisements?).

Let’s start with North America. We’re clearly getting a considerable amount of views from Canada, United States, and Mexico. This is probably due largely to a few shady deals we made in the 1990s when NAFTA was being drafted, shortly after Al Gore invented the Internet.

Even in Central America, some of the rural fruit farmers have found their way onto our joyous blog.* Yes, it may have something to do with the fact that we’ve been actively trading arms to the Sandinistas over the last few years to cover Sherman Ave’s fixed production costs (Miller High Life and Flaming Hot Cheetos), but we also like to think that we’ve managed to score some views in Costa Rica by casually ranting about how much we hate their country.

One of our Brazilian readers, vicariously feeling our sadness at the revocation of The Keg's liquor license

In South America, you may notice that all countries have some level of viewership of Sherman Ave. I know, you might be thinking, “What about French Guiana, Suriname, and Guyana?” In response: Those piece-of-shit countries are not real countries. French Guiana is a territory of France (If the UN Security Council was the Jackson 5, France would be Tito), Suriname’s primary language is Dutch (apparently Dutch is a language?), and Guyana is known best for mass suicide. Although we didn’t get a high quantity of views from countries like Argentina and Brazil, we feel safe in assuming that the views we did came from hot Brazilian models, the Argentinian soccer team, and the corpse of Eva Peron.

Moving onto Europe, you’ll see that we have almost absolute viewership in Europe. This is quite a shocking insight for us; we didn’t realize our writing style crafted such a strong appeal to metrosexual chain-smokers who do nothing but listen to house music and get bailed out by the United States in world wars. Strangely, though, it does seem that there is a small void in Moldova, where the few Internet users are presumably brainstorming ways to make their country relevant and/or dying in abject poverty.

Asia provides arguably the most surprising statistics. Judging from the fact that a) we’ve had no viewers in Yemen or Oman, and b) we’ve gone 1 for 7 with countries ending in “-stan,” our sweeping campaign to appeal to Muslim Internet users has failed unequivocally. We hope to remedy this by expanding our content to be more culturally friendly; in the future, expect continuations of current article series, such as “Point/Counterpoint: Qu’ran vs. Koran,” “Freshman Guide: Finding A Mosque in Evanston,” and “An Open Letter Non-apology to American Automobile Owners.”

Our efforts in Africa, on the other hand, appear to have been successful beyond our wildest dreams. As you can see, we’ve gotten views from every Internet user on the continent.**

No luck with Papua New Guinea, though. We’re discussing the launch of a subsidiary blog called “Pygmy Ave.”

 

*“Rural Fruit Farmer” is incidentally the name of Clay Aiken’s next album.
**We’re assuming the penguins from the movie “Madagascar” haven’t yet figured out how to use the Internet.

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.