Wilkinson’s tireless actions, she hopes, will make the world better for “all my really hot skinny male gay friends.”
EVANSTON, IL – Local student Jessica Wilkinson, who yesterday posted a Facebook status reading “GAY MARRIAGE IS LEGAL IN ILLINOIS! Awesome day for this nation #GayRights”, is being hailed as the next great American civil rights visionary by peers and political pundits alike. Continue reading
“Slash and Cut” isn’t always what you think it means…
“Nebraska, I love you.”
-Lady Gaga
“Holy fuck this place blows.”
-Everybody else
There’s a gentle wind rolling over the Nebraskan prairie. If you stop and listen long enough, in between the roar of an engine escaping the state on I-76 and the soul-crushing desolation echoing over endless fields of corn, you can sometimes make out what the wind is whispering. Would you like to know what the wind says?
Get fucked Nebraska.
Yes Nebraska. The time has come once again for your beloved football team to get shucked in the cornhole.
Come Saturday evening, the Northwestern Wildcats will fuck you in the Lil’ Red. And we don’t mean your mascot, who happens to have a lower BMI than 78% of your state.
The game will be even more of an embarrassment than Bill Callahan’s tenure. Don’t say we didn’t warn you when Taylor Martinez gets obliterated like the 15 Plains Indian tribes indigenous to your shithole taint of a state. And your blackshirt defense? Expect for Venric Mark to obliterate it like the Kansas-Nebraska Act decimated national unity.
To be honest, we’re kind of surprised that you’re coming back for more after we fucked you so spectacularly last year. We would have thought Husker coach Ron Brown would have said something about the Kain Colter-induced sodomy he had to witness in Lincoln.
Having spent multiple hours in absolute hell the municipality of North Platte, Nebraska, I feel fully qualified in saying that your state deserves what will be it’s greatest disappointment since, well, last year. Seriously, any state that has a unicameral legislature and repeatedly lost to the University of Colorado has this coming. Especially when your greatest claim to fame is being the source for the title track of the eighth best Bruce Springsteen album.
Have you ever slapped yourself in the face with an Omaha Steak? Because the resulting bruise is a pretty decent approximation of what Chi Chi Ariguzo’s saltstick will leave on your collective backfield tomorrow.
Prepare to be fucked like William Jennings Bryan in… everything really. We understand that your two main exports are tumbleweed and flatness, but hopefully you’ll be able to scrap enough money together to get drunk and listen to Bright Eyes to help you feel better about getting so entirely fucked by the real NU.
Get fucked Nebraska.
Shit I’m high.
There’s nothing like college to remind you that your childhood is dead and gone.[1] A lot of people spend their time fighting this realization like I fight the societal norm of wearing pants when I go to Confession. To counter-balance the horrifyingly disenchanting reality of adult life, college students often blend their adult pleasures with their childhood loves, like getting high while watching Disney Channel original movies, drinking gin at playgrounds, or documenting which absurdly sexualized cartoon characters were your favorite. For me, though, there’s no better way to come to grips with reality than by having a very real, very adult celebrity read me a classic bedtime story.
But the truth is, you can only hear Christopher Walken analyze Where the Wild Things Are so many times before you start playing Russian Roulette in Vietnamese cockfighting dens. Similarly, I’m not exactly sold on Samuel L. Jackson’s reading of Go the Fuck to Sleep. It’s like he’s simultaneously trying to entertain me and NOT entertain me, which coincidentally sums up SLJ’s performance in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. And Drew Bledsoe’s promising It’s Not Going to Get Any Better When You Grow Up is another reminder of the many ways I’ve disappointed my father (not being an athlete, not getting into Yale, not closing the garage door that one time he asked me to- NO WONDER YOU NEVER HUG ME DADDY.)
We need more celebrities to step out of their comfort zones and read us children’s stories while hinting at adult themes. Northwestern alumn Stephen Colbert just wrote his own children’s book, I Am a Pole (and So Can You!),[2]so the children’s book market is obviously about to hit a bubble. But we don’t want the Morgan Freemans and Liam Neesons of the entertainment world reading to us — their voices are so smooth and tender that they’d put us to sleep. As young adults fighting responsibility and normalcy, we’re probably going to be smoking crack and arranging cross-dresser strip poker while we listen to these audiobooks. With those circumstances in mind, I present to you these children’s book/celebrity mash-ups.
And then there was a high speed car chase that somehow managed to make Mini Coopers look cool.
Go Dog Go, as read by Mark Wahlberg
Go Dog Go is a great book for those just beginning to read, so Marky Mark, who failed to graduate high school, is a perfect fit. Ideally, Mr. Wahlberg will avoid a tangent about how he would’ve prevented 9/11. Mark’s ability as an actor will complement his description of Go Dog Go’s illustrations: “And ah, here’s a feckin’, ah, feckin’ blue dawg, drivin’ a cah, how tha fuck’s he do that? He’s a dawg! And oh hey there red dog, whadda you up to? Say hi to your bitch of a motha fo’ me, okay? And why the fack are all these dogs in a tree? They don’t got no thumbs, how tha fack do they climb a fackin’ ladduh?[3]”
The Very Hungry Caterpillar, as read by Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga has made herself the spokesperson for the disenfranchised, so a story about a morbidly obese insect that transforms into a narcissistic and self-absorbed glory hog is right up her alley. ‘Baby, you were born to eat that apple! And that pie. And that buffalo chicken sandwich… Just be you! You’re on the edge of glory gluttony!”
The Giving Tree, as read by Woody Allen
The author’s familiarity with Mr. Allen stems from watching the first 20 minutes of Midnight in Paris as well as several impersonations of the famed director-cum-statutory rapist. The man seems to be wracked by guilt, so a story about a boy who takes literally EVERYTHING from his best friend without saying thank you, and then dismembers his friend, and then sits on his friend because he can’t figure out what more harm he can do to his friend, is PERFECT for ol’ Woody.
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, as read by Robert Downey Jr.
Who better than Iron Man to read a story about a series of escalating dares, about living on the edge, about pressing the envelope and doing coke off said envelope and using that envelope to flag down strippers? No one. Fuck Charlie Sheen. “And then the mouse asked for “milk” to go with that “cookie,” if you know what I mean. And then the cops came to the mouse’s house with a warrant, and then the mouse turned out to be really fucking high, and then the mouse got his shit together and became really cool. The end.”
The Little Engine That Could, as read by Carly Rae Jespen
Ms. Jespen’s life is so fraught with uncertainty, her dramatic reading of this classic would feel incredibly organic and emotional.
The Polar Express, as read by Tom Hanks Chet Haze
Mr. Hanks is a little too hung up playing World War II with his buddy Stephen Spielberg, but his prodigal son is a perfect fit to read the book that inspired the movie that starred his father in like, seventeen simultaneous leading roles. Knowing Chet via his twitter feed, The Polar Express would likely become The Bang Bus to Miami, complete with shirtless pics and metaphysical discussions about materialism.
You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Oh The Places You’ll Go, as read by Nicolas Cage.
Just think about it.
Author’s note: Toni Morrison was asked to read The Kissing Hand but refused because the story involves raccoons. THAS RAYCESS. Additionally, Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro offered to read their co-authored story The Day Daddy Came Home Covered in Blood, but their submitted audiotape consisted only of the two Goodfellas actors saying “How am I funny?” and “You talkin’ to me?”
[1] Immediately after writing this sentence, the author broke down crying, clutching his blankie and Fuzzy Wuzzy bear. He only hopes you do the same.
As a nonsarcastic person who is truly grateful for all that is sacred and pure in the world, I have compiled an anthology of joyous occurrences in our day-to-day lives for which we should occasionally praise the Gods Of Modern Innovation. Remember: your life could always be worse.
Unfortunately, walking through a cloud of febreeze is not an adequate substitute for doing one's laundry
1. Antibacterials
Judging from the state of your bedroom/bathroom/kitchen, you should be making blood sacrifices to Alexander Fleming’s ghost in thanks for saving your life from everything that’s been lurking in the dark crevices of your home since three months after the last time you cleaned it (whenever that was). If it wasn’t for Penicillin and Febreeze, 1 out of every 3 Northwestern students would have died after moving out of the dorms.* So as long as your housemates don’t find out that the lovestains on the couch probably pose more of a public health threat than Miley Cyrus’s bubonic-plague-infected pubic lice, you’re in the clear to keep up the sanitation substitution.
2. Drunk Sex
Not only are you getting some (however mediocre it may be), you have an excuse for absolutely anything that goes wrong: STDs, ugly partners, impotence, birth control malfunction, commitment, name amnesia, or being a shitty lay.
3. You’re Not a Music Major
Do you want fries with that?
4. Man Nipples
They’re useless and goofy-looking, but amusing all the same. Kind of like Furby.
A Motherfucker
5. Motherfuckers
If it weren’t for people unjustly treating you like shit, you’d have nothing to complain about. How could you play the martyr if that douchetard hadn’t cut you in line at Starbucks this morning? It took a whole extra five minutes to order your lowfat caramel soy frappalatte, and by the time you got home you’d missed the first five minutes of Gossip Girl, and everyone knows if you miss the first five minutes you might as well have missed the whole goddamn show.
6. Motherfuckers Who Have to Wait on You
Next time the almost-middle-aged hippie taking your order at BK starts snarking, put on your best holier-than-thou attitude and consider yourself well off. Nothing will make you appreciate life more than knowing that an asshole observably nearby is significantly unhappier than you, and there’s only a 1 in 17 chance of improving their pathetic present situation.** They will be dealing with drunk Evanston kids at 2 AM for the rest of their lives. Schadenfreude, bitches.
7. Prostitutes
You’ll never be that slutty. See previous sentence.
8. Lady Gaga
Most of the time, she’s doing her best to make you feel normal. But then there was the night you needed fashion inspiration for your pre-Rocky Horror shopping trip, and Johnny Depp wasn’t going to cut it.
9. You’re Not Anne Frank.
Finish your hot cookie bar! There are starving children in Somalia.
10. The Freshman Fifteen
To you, “Ethiopian cuisine” means skipping the dining hall buffets for Addis Ababa, not half an ounce of stale flatbread and a leaf of rotten cabbage with the occasional Vitamin Beetle protein supplement. Struggling with your muffin top is infinitely better than struggling out of the dumpster behind your local Denny’s. Then again, your weight problems could also be correlated to your NU-student-loan-related inability to afford anything but the McDonald’s dollar menu, in which case, there’s always prostitution. See #7.
Now zip up your pants, you goddamn ego masturbator, and get back to your finals. They’re the only thing you have left to bitch about.
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*2010 study by John Michael Bailey.
**2011 study by John Michael Bailey.
To be fair though, there were also a lot of overweight women wearing nothing but pasties.
But there’s no point in dwelling on the past. What matters is that we’re here now to thrust into you with our journalistic prowess. We’re more than prepared to insert our firm, powerful take on current events into your docile, yearning hands. So get ready, dearest audience, because in the words of the immortal pop culture icon Ke$ha, this summer “we goin’ hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard.”
Evanston in April
I didn't fight a goddamn war for nothing, you know.
Pre-gaming breakfast with a keg full of mimosa
It’s difficult to give a valid account of Dillo Day, because Dillo Day experiences are like snowflakes; they are all unique in their own various ways, but ultimately, they all come together to form one giant clusterfuck that deeply frustrates the Evanston community.
After Dillo Day, we had ahead of us only a measly two weeks. That being said, it was a two weeks of final papers, final exams, final projects, final straws with TAs (I mean really, why the hell would a grad student studying political science be the TA for a Russian literature class?), and final goodbyes for the summer. And that was it! Now it’s time for a summer full of serenading you, our readers, with our brilliance. Prepare yourselves, because Sherman Ave is putting on its skin-tight leather pants and blasting Katy Perry’s “Firework”, and when that happens, God knows what will follow.
Sherman Ave 
