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.

Who You Shouldn’t Be Buying Christmas Presents For

Christmas is the time of giving, as we’ve been constantly reminded by incomprehensibly cheerful Salvation Army bell-ringers and incomprehensibly bothersome commercials. (We get it, he went to Jared. Whooptee-fucking-doo.) However, there are times when giving is taken too far, and things just become awkward. To remedy this potential issue, we have drawn up a list of people for whom you definitely don’t need to buy gifts.

The greatest gift of them all

Your Last Hookup
Okay, so she was a good kisser. That’s fantastic. And she wasn’t as clingy as the last person with whom you hooked up, who you are pretty certain hired a private investigator to follow you. That’s even better. But this doesn’t mean your hook-up (let’s just refer to her from now on as “Jessica”) deserves a gift. With hook-ups, it’s just a slippery slope; one day you’re buying Jessica a moderately priced necklace, and the next day, she’s pregnant with your child. And not only do you now have to deal with that mess, but the necklace itself will only ever remind you and Jessica about those four and a half minutes of ominous, unemotional penetration. When it comes down to it, it’s just a waste of money.

Your TA
There’s no way to emerge victorious from this situation. I’m sorry, but a relationship built upon a foundation of discussions about GATT (or the Global Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, bitch) leaves no room for a thoughtful holiday gift. Besides, how would one ever know what gift to buy for their TA? The only thing I know my TA likes is asking incredibly vague questions and letting an inconceivably awkward silence simmer for 5 or 6 minutes until someone finally conjures up a bullshit answer. And that’s not something money can buy.

The Keg Bouncer
If you buy a Christmas present for someone, it implies that you have, at some level, a personal relationship with that person. Last time I checked, a “personal relationship” entails more one-on-one contact than seeing someone’s Wildcard on a bi-weekly basis. Otherwise a Keg bouncer would have more personal relationships than Herman Cain at a Victoria’s Secret.

Mitt Romney
The guy flip-flops so much you’d never have a clue what to get him. A pro-choice policy? A pro-life policy? You just don’t know. Besides, do Mormons even celebrate Christmas?

What do you get the man who owns every possible color of purple ties?

Morty Schapiro
This is a tricky one, because on the one hand, there is no one in the world that doesn’t owe Morty a gift. From Libyan rebels who President Schapiro helped when he killed Qaddafi to rural Congolese citizens who he helped when he permanently cured AIDS, Morty’s laudable actions have left no person untouched. On the other hand, however, there is nothing we can give Morty that he doesn’t already have. Unless you can somehow procure for him a restraining order from Sir Edward Twattingworth III.

Sir Edward Twattingworth III
We encourage all readers to avoid sending Christmas gifts to Sir T-worth because it will only perpetuate the unchecked power-trip around which he has modeled his life. Besides, I have it on good authority that he is already getting everything he wants – a Pippa Middleton blow-up doll and a beginner’s pole-dancing kit.

That Guy You Met in the SPAC Showers
This guy clearly does not need gifts from others. Remember that timeless holiday song? Twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a-self-gratifying.

Sherman Ave Freshman Guide: Burger King

Tendercrisp sammiches never tasted as delicious as they do at 2 o'clock in the morning

Outside of Evanston, most people know Burger King as a run-of-the-mill fast food joint that exclusively employs cracked-out high school dropouts. At Northwestern, however, Burger King (colloquially known as “BK” or “The BK Lounge”) is the place to go if you want ruefully sub-par food (although it may not seem so at the time), the experience of seeing a security guard power-trip more than was previously conceivable, and the guarantee of a drunken encounter with that hot girl from your Global History discussion. Rumored to be the highest grossing Burger King in the United States, this sacred building on Clark Street is familiar to all Northwestern students. To help ease your transition into the student body, here are some insights into this legendary establishment.

Famous Moments in Hook Up History

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for two consenting parties to get their mutual rocks off, mankind has resorted time and time again to the perennial spectacle of the “Hook Up” in order to satisfy its carnal needs. From casual make-out sessions to all-out boot knocking, humans have been engaged in the barter of sexual favors pretty much ever since we evolved to develop the capacity for euphemisms, and at an increasingly rapid pace since the invention of alcohol, Cosmo, and the internet. But despite the interminable nature of this miraculous form of erotic consortium, there are some moments in hook up lore that truly stand above and beyond the rest of the fray. These aren’t just your run-of-the-mill regrettable one-night stands, but rather moments of extraordinary courage and fervor, where the libido of two humans changed the course of human history forever.

The evolutionary process enables humans to complete the walk of shame faster than any other mammal

48,000 BC: Caveman and Cavewoman
Historians have concluded that the first hook up in the history of man occurred approximately 20 minutes after Homo sapiens reached full behavioral modernity. The inaugural event, commemorated on cave walls and cave chat rooms everywhere, is rumored to have taken place at the annual Festival of the Woolly Mammoth, when a noticeably intoxicated caveman of the local Sig Ep tribe managed to seduce a female, forget her name at least three different times, and engage in a brief and thoroughly mediocre tryst with her. The next morning, the proud male reportedly never even considered hunting breakfast for her the next morning, and neglected to send smoke signals her way after a three-day waiting period. During their next encounter at a cave party in Lascoux, France, the two cordially greeted each other, but then quickly separated to avoid the shame and awkwardness that was to forever plague the human race.

Alright, my roommate's gone for the next 30 minutes. Let's see how fertile the Nile Delta really is.

41 BC: Cleopatra and Mark Antony
The inventor of the “power trip,” Cleopatra was never quite satisfied ruling over one of the greatest civilizations in the world or bearing Julius Caesar’s child. Instead, she cooped up in her love den with Marcus Antonius (the most tantalizing triumvir in all the Roman Empire) in what became one of the most geo-politically significant coitions of all time. Using highly sensitive facial recognition technology, archaeologists have determined that Cleopatra was approximately 56,000 times hotter than a combination between Brooklyn Decker and Pippa Middleton, which goes a long way to explaining why Antony preferred to get his freaky on in Alexandria than return to Rome and his wife Octavia. Pascal once that “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed,” which means that, had Cleopatra been less of a slampiece or Antony less of a gallant philanderer, Octavian might never have risen to power as Augustus, and the world never would have inherited such valuable cultural contributions from the Roman Empire as corrupt politicians, togas, and lax sexual mores.

"If I were casting for a modern film interpretation of our romance, I'd totally get Claire Danes to play you."

1591 AD: Romeo and Juliet
In a now classic move, two adolescents met each other for the first time at a lame party and fell instantly, nay noxiously, in love with the first person to ever requite their affection. This hook up practically wrote the template for horny teenagers using make-out sessions to rebel against their family, and imbued western society with a healthy dose of suspicion towards drug-dealing Friars that hang out with 15 year old girls. That, combined with the fact that any male who can recite the balcony scene is instantly guaranteed to get some at any time he so desires, makes Romeo and Juliet’s horrifically saccharine relationship qualify for a position amongst the masters of the art of the hook up.

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1788 AD: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
Jefferson’s 38-year relationship with his slave Hemings that produced 6 children born into slavery was not just one of numerous blights on American Presidential history and convoluted racial past, but also a testament to three of the most important aspects of most hook ups: lying, hypocrisy, and shame. It took major cojones to write that all men are created equal and born with unalienable rights, and then to turn around and use those cojones to knock up a slave. Like most other men, Jefferson never divulged the truth about his affair, and the shame of his duplicity still hangs over the nation even worse than the memory of that one time with those two theater majors and a bottle of rum.

You have no idea what's hidden beneath those robes.

1928 AD: Harry Blackmun and Tiffani Brooking
During Justice Blackmun’s junior year at Harvard, the Lambda Chi brother experienced a regrettable one-night stand with his Con Law study partner. The episode turned far more distressing, however, during the ensuing pregnancy scare. It is said that the tense period when Blackmun wondered if he would become a father at the age of 20 greatly affected the future Supreme Court Justice, eventually playing the deciding role in his authoring of the Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. The American hook up scene would be a much different world without Blackmun’s passionate advocacy of abortion rights, earning this jowly Minnesotan the distinction of having partaken in one of the most important hook ups in all hook up history.