2012 Sherman Ave Readers’ Poll: Results

If there’s one thing Sherman Ave prides itself on, it’s follow through. That, and our stunning mastery of the entire AP U.S. History Flashcard set. So, in the hopes of amping you up to take the 2013 Sherman Ave Readers’ Poll, here are the results of last year’s 2012 Sherman Ave Readers’ Poll. Enjoy the blast from the heinous past.

Most Heinous Event of 2012

With 18% of the vote, the winner was: Evanston revoking the Keg’s liquor license. The Keg may not have survived the wrath of Tizzy, but it did manage to eke out a one-vote victory over the advent of #YOLO, followed closely by the I Agree With Markwell campaign and the notorious Vandy seal clubbing scandal. Rest in peace, old friend. We swear to hold you forever in our memory by linking to this every goddamn opportunity we get.

11 Things Only 1790s Kids Will Understand

The clothes, the music, the crazy things that happened – no decade was as great as the 1790s.  And if you’re a true kid of the 90s, you’ll have a major nostalgia attack when you see the images we scraped together off Google images in about 20 minutes:

Mayoral Sexting Scandal Strikes Evanston

Evanston, IL–In a shocking turn of events, embedded Sherman Ave reporters have recently uncovered that the mayor of the City of Evanston, Elizabeth Gertrude Tisdahl, has been involved in a tawdry sexting scandal with some of Evanston’s most elite and respected community members. And while much has yet to be discovered, the Pacemaker-nominated researchers at Sherman Ave have been able to access transcripts of several of the exchanges (below).

Disclaimer: The following information is not safe for work. Please proceed with caution.

Al Roker Sharting: The Worst Thing to Ever Happen in the White House?

Roker described the forecast as, “Cloudy, with some flecks of corn.”

Unless you have been too busy starting a new quarter and everything (oh wait that’s like all of you), you have probably been made aware in the past day that Today Show weatherman/human Labrador retriever after a Freaky Friday-type accident Al Roker came clean about the time he sullied himself in 2002.  Yes, that’s right, Mr. Roker SHARTED HIMSELF, and not just because he went on a coke binge with Matt Lauer.  Said shart was, in fact, in THE WHITE HOUSE.

This admission, mind you, was completely unsolicited, and it got me wondering if it is now the vilest event to ever occur in the White House.  To uncover the truth, I went back through American history to compare it with other acts of heinousness that went down at the executive mansion.  Let’s see who comes out on top!

Morgan Freeman To Marry Granddaughter

Warning: The word ‘heinous’ is used approximately eight million times in this article. Families with young children are advised to proceed with caution.

Marrying your granddaugher is a bad thing. Maybe the worst of things.

The problem with beautiful voices is that they are often attached to real people. And real people are not beautiful. They are heinous. This can be jarring sometimes.

Take Ross Packingham, for instance. The man has the voice of an angel, but I wouldn’t let him near your pets if I was you. Axl Rose likewise has a great voice, but I wouldn’t let him near your Lana Del Reys if I were you.

People basically fall into three categories of heinous: accidentally heinous, unabashedly heinous, and Rush Limbaugh. The first group means well. They’re nice guys; they always show up to your acapella concerts and would never fuck you without charming and dining you first. They just can’t help it that sometimes they forget to text you back, and yeah, maybe they do avert their eyes whenever they pass the hobos outside CVS. The second group, on the other hand, takes YOLO way too seriously. They often end up eating dinner at Fran’s Café at 1 am, and they have their own personal Walk of Shame route. They mean you no harm or ill will; just don’t get them drunk in Mexico because they might end up with a tattoo of an ice cream cone on their face. The third group is self-explanatory.

The members of the third group have existed since basically the beginning of the time. We’re all comfortable with dividing the world like that. Well, all of us except Morgan Freeman. In the grand tradition of great innovators and thinkers outside of boxes, Freeman was dissatisfied with the current categorical structure of the world around him and acted decisively to change it. But whereas Einstein invented quantum physics and Magellan sailed around the world, Freeman fucked his granddaughter.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you not know that? Well, then, let me repeat it for emphasis: MORGAN FREEMAN IS GOING TO MARRY HIS GRANDDAUGHTER. This is heinous and not in the fun way. This is a whole new level of heinous that not even a drunk, Adele-singing Sir Twattingworth could possibly match.

Okay, so they’re not really related by blood, but still, he’s 72 and she’s 27, and those ages should never be connected in a sexual context. According to the highly respected journalistic watchdog publication Peace FM Online, Freeman and E’Dena Hines “had a questionable sexual encounter when she was young.” (…) Now the cat is out of the bag and Freeman’s wife is filing for divorce, and an unnamed source is credited as saying that “becoming Mrs. Freeman has been E’Dena’s goal.”

Now I ain’t sayin’ she a gold digger! OH WAIT YES I AM. But can you really blame her? Didn’t becoming Mrs. Freeman become everyone’s goal the moment they first saw March of the Penguins? This whole situation is strange, but E’Dena isn’t acting any different than we would in that situation. She falls strictly into that second category of heinousness I mentioned earlier. But Freeman is inventing a whole new category, one that is currently occupied only by himself (although the potential heinousness of a war on porn means that a President Santorum could conceivably get on his level, as well as that kid from the front page of Reddit who sodomized his dog with a hair brush), which begs the question: Why?

Seriously, you’re Morgan Freeman! For God’s sake, Evander Jones has been known to use his position as Sherman Ave editor-in-chief as a pick-up line at parties. And it kind of works!* You’re telling me “hey, I narrated The Shawshank Redemption” wouldn’t make any reasonable girl melt into a pile of goo? Why marry your granddaughter when you could have, say, literally anyone and not defy centuries of anti-heinous societal norms?

I am shaking my head. The world is a heinous place.

——————————————————————————————————————————
*It doesn’t.

Revelations from the News of the World wiretaps

Don't let the jowels deceive you: This man is as evil as he is shrewd

As if the world needed further proof of Ruport Murdoch’s penchant for pure evil, the Master of Misinformation has recently become embroiled in a scandal of heinous proportions. Allegations are swirling that Murdoch’s best-selling tabloid, the News of the World, has widely engaged in illegal phone hacking over the years in order to intercept the voicemails of numerous public figures, including victims of terrorism and murder. Not that we ever held the “News of the Screws” to particularly high ethical levels, but it seems that most Brits expected the tabloid to have developed a slightly higher morality than Nixon. But now, thanks to our shady underworld connections, we have uncovered and poured over the secret trove of the results of nearly 168 years of wiretapping conducted by the News of the World, and are now prepared to share their revelations with the rest of the world:

-Thanks to a loophole in Parliamentary Procedure, Hugh Grant accidentally served as acting Prime Minister for three days in 2008 while Gordon Brown was out sick with the flu.

-Sean Connery cries at the end of Love Actually every time.

-Queen Victoria suffered from a severe schoolgirl crush on Jefferson Davis during his tenure as President of the Confederate States of America.

-John Lennon’s favorite past time during recording sessions was to prank call Scotland Yard and repeatedly ask to speak to “Mike Rotch.”

-Christopher Nolan cannot get to sleep at night without masturbating to at least one of his own movies.

-David Cameron never returns Nick Clegg’s phone calls.

-Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore was originally conceived as a rock opera chronicling W.S. Gilbert’s forays into England’s Victorian-era sexual underground.

-It took King George VI nearly four months to learn how to correctly say, “Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?”

-The England National Football Team is never as good as the expectations.

-Prime Minister John Major secretly thought that Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge was a pompous jackass.

-Oasis vocalist Liam Gallagher totally hooked up with Princess Di in the loo of at least 3 different Manchester clubs. Gallagher would later regret breaking their tryst off because it was making him an “emotional wreck.”

-Oscar Wilde spent 97% of his time rehearsing witticisms to drop while mingling in high society.

-Margaret Thatcher’s eyes emit a powerful laser, hot enough to burn a socialist alive in .67 seconds, and bring the Falkland Islands to their knees.

-Harry Potter is still awaiting trial regarding his vigilante form of justice.

-Helena Bonham Carter and husband Tim Burton engage in the strangest sex known to man.

-David Beckham is rumored to play for a soccer club known to some as the “LA Galaxy,” a supposed American professional soccer club and member of the mythical and shadowy organization dubbed the “MLS.”

-Elizabeth II was extraordinarily disappointed when Prince William decided to marry Kate Middleton, citing reports that Pippa Middleton is clearly the hotter of the two.

-Rupurt Murdoch is still a tremendous asshole.