I stood in line in front of the house with the others. It was a little too cold outside. On all sides of the quad, there were similar lines to get into similar houses. The houses along the sides of the quad were long and white. The railings were coated with frost and the awnings sagged under the weight of the snow. My RC brought me into the house.
“This is Ernest,” she said, introducing me to a sister.
“Hi Ernest! Welcome to Pi Gamma Tau. It’s nice to meet you.”
Unless you live under a rock or something, you know that Christmas is right around the corner: the time of year to enjoy moments with you family and friends, to tweet pictures of glasses of eggnog, and, most importantly, to play Christmas classics over the radio Spotify.
Now, I think we can all agree that there is a “Mount Rushmore” of Christmas songs, a mountain which contains “The Christmas Song,” “White Christmas,” “Sleigh Ride,” and “Winter Wonderland” (although you could also make an argument for “Let It Snow,” “Jingle Bells,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You” if you’re really feeling progressive.)
A song undoubtedly not on this mountain, however, is Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad.” I’m not saying that “Feliz Navidad” is a bad song, of course. That would be racist[1]. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t really hold up to other Christmas classics.
But I can be swayed. And that’s why the editors made me I decided to study the lyrics of Feliciano’s holiday classic in full, in order to get a better idea of why this song is such a holiday classic…and maybe decide to include it on the Christmas song Mount Rushmore after all. Continue reading
Where Pintos are almost as rampant as cigars and political repression.
In lieu of the ”OH EHM GEE you guys look at all these pictures of my summer abroad, oh my gawd I’m having the most incredible adventure” Facebook album, I’ve opted to express my feelings on Cuba, a truly beautiful country, through a more heinous medium (wait let’s be honest I’m still posting Facebook pictures. The only reason there aren’t more is that the internet is slow as balls).
Cuba is incredible and different from anywhere I’ve ever been. I learned a shit-ton in five weeks, but I’m still very much an outsider. But my Spanish is better and I have an increased penchant for rum. My salsa moves, however, are still a work in progress. The hope is that after three more weeks I’ll look less like an epileptic chicken.
Want to come back to my place and finish our discussion on Freudian Theory?
Recently, I was at a party with my gals dancing the night away, celebrating being done with yet another quarter of my godforsaken Spanish class, when a sweaty guy from my class came up to me and started a conversation. It went as so:
Boy: Ammonia$ta?! [puts an arm around my shoulder and drunkenly leans on me] Totally didn’t recognize you! You’re like, actually attractive!
A$: Uh…thanks?
Boy: Yeah like…how come you don’t come to class looking like this? Totally would have hit on you.
A$: Oh uh… [trying to get out from under his arm without making him fall over] I’m just lazy I guess.”
Boy: [Laughs because he thinks I was joking and walks away]
LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT HOW FUCKING ADORABLE IT IS!!!
This list is for those of us like TV too much, but need a quick video in between that Orgo class and your accelerated intermediate Spanish course. Seriously, why did you take Spanish 125? Anyway, that’s where Youtube comes in: your internet salvation from boredom! Here’s a list of some not-all-that-mainstream channels that I promise will entertain you. And if they don’t, you can get fucked like Iowa.
1. Jessie Jay
She’s a new vlogger on the scene with only a couple of weeks under her belt, but her humor is getting much much better and she offers a different style than a lot of the mainstream youtube comedians/-ennes out there. She’s a fun girl from Brooklyn, just out of her undergrad. This is what every Comm Studies majors’ lives will look like in 5 years if they specialize in “New Media.”
2. CiaranObrien89 / FunnyCatVideos
This guy is probably the most awkward person I have ever seen in a Youtube video and it makes him awesome. He’s a personal friend of Charlieissocoollike, who is a pretty established British vlogger. Ciaran’s style is awkward-funny, and though he has less than 5 videos, he’s got comedy gold, and he’s sure to upload more. Basically he’s just everyone in Plex.
3. MattMattMaryMary
Matt and Mary are a couple from Brooklyn who write sketch comedy, usually with Mary playing the part of a mannerless and uncouth crazy. They also have a low video count, considering they have other lives and their filming isn’t vlog-style (meaning little improv). They’d be NSTV meets that freshman from your history discussion section that whispers under her breath that Sporcle was wrong when she mixed up Macedonia and Malta.
4. Shep689
Shep689 is Will Shepherd, though by extension, his boyfriend RJ Aguiar and their roommate Kasey. Though Will started out doing regular vlogs, he started vlogging every single day of 2012 on Jan. 1st. Though not necessarily funny all the time, Shep689 (in conjunction with their site notadamandsteve.com) strive to show that LGBTQ couples are just as normal as hetero couples and deserve the same rights as others. Also Will is a raging nerd (Zelda, Pokemon, Harry Potter). They’d be rainbow alliance and the quidditch club. (Duh)
5. TimWillDestroyYou
Tim Helbig is the younger brother of Grace Helbig of DailyGrace fame. He had an awkward and rocky start to the vlogging world, and some mocked him for leeching off his sister’s fame. However, Tim has come into his own and is starting to establish his own style of humor which is usually awkward and strange. Also he has a teddy bear named Pooky that hates him. If Grace is Willard, Tim is totally Chapin.
6. TeaPartyReport
Susie Sampson heads the Tea Party Report, a mock reporting and street-pollster channel that uses the guise of a conservative viewpoint to deride Romney supporters. She’s obsessed with Stephen Colbert and totally doesn’t get caught every time she blatantly ridicules a fat WASPy man on a Midwestern street. She’s clearly Sir T-Worth, amirite?
7. Vihart
Vi Hart is a self-proclaimed “mathemusician.” Her videos are all educational, but strangely entertaining and fascinating and revolve around recreational mathematics. Honestly, it’s just the nerd in me that likes her. I can’t help myself. She’s anyone that has ever been inside of Lunt ever. EVER.
8. YouDeserveADrink
Mamrie Hart stars in YDAD, which is a pun-filled, built-in drinking game and instructional video on how best to get yourself shitfaced. Grace Helbig edits and shoots it in her apartment in Brooklyn and together they make heinously inappropriate references to ovaries and shitting. They’re probably Sherman Ave if we’re honest.
9. KoreanMommySays
Though finished now, Korean Mommy Says, starred and directed by Vicky Toro of Comediva, was an advice series by a stereotypical Korean mother. Pretty sure this can only be KASA.
10. Coffeychat
Because we needed ANOTHER FUCKING BROOKLYN VLOGGER, MyDamnChannel brought to Youtube Shannon Coffey, a young and new comedienne that gives outrageous and impractical advice and how-to videos. She’s probably more hipster than anyone that says they’re a hipster on campus, which makes her nobody at Northwestern. Or maybe that group of kids that all smoke weed off of Ridge and Davis and you can’t tell whether they’re a theatre or Perf studies or RTVF major. Or they could be HDPS. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THAT IS?
ALSO, Follow Sherman Ave on Youtube by subscribing to LiveAtTheAve! What we lack in copyrights we make up for in heinous!
This cupcake symbolizes the defeat of teenage pregnancy
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
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
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???
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
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
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.
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.
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
Honorable Mentions:
Adele, Kain Colter, Sasha Obama, George Harrison, LeBron James, Achilles, and Charlie Young.
Sherman Ave 