Sherman Ave Freshman Guide: Burgwell J. Howard

Background: Originally a solemn drifter making his way across this great nation’s network of railroad lines, Burgwell J. Howard was converted to Assistant Vice President for Student Engagement in Student Affairs at Northwestern University in 2012 after hearing that his roommate and Eskimo Brother Morton Schapiro could hook him up with a real sweet gig for a few months if he needed some beer money. Burgwell, or “Burgie” as his friends and fellow teamsters affectionately call him, is now a beacon for smile aficionados and hosts the annual university-wide diversity listserv email blast.

7 Other Positions ASG Failed to Confirm

One Northwestern. One Shitshow.

In the wake of a heated Associated Student Government Senate meeting last Wednesday night, ASG President Ani Ajith is scrambling to fill numerous vacancies for cabinet positions left unconfirmed following the acrimonious session. While ASG‘s failure to confirm the chief of staff, vice president for public relations and associate vice president for diversity and inclusion positions for political, racial, and fecal reasons received wide coverage, the following seven essential positions also remain unconfirmed.

1. Smash Mouth’s slot at Dillo Day
Despite widespread support for the 1990s pop-rock band’s appointment to Dillo Day‘s traditional “Bands-You-Listened-To-In-Middle-School-Nostalgic-Daytime Slot,” the selection committee’s nomination was blocked by senate vote following a contentious floor debate. Bobb senator Biff Pemberton expressed concern with the band’s rumored appointment, claiming that the band “just wasn’t experienced enough” for the responsibility of performing for thousands of drunken college kids. Pemberton went on to filibuster the proceedings, playing Smash Mouth’s 2005 Christmas album Gift of Rock on repeat for eight-hours nonstop.

Meet the ASG Candidates: Ani and Alex

Earlier this week, Sherman Ave reached out to the four ASG presidential tickets asking to interview them. All four tickets were gracious enough to accept; this is the final of four interviews. Look for more #ASJizz013 coverage to come.

Ani, debating Alex on his pro-choice Student Life views.

What’s your favorite shitty beer, or assuming you’re not 21, what hypothetically would be your favorite shitty beer, and what does that tell us about you?

Alex: Hmm, if I had to choose just one, I’d probably go with PBR. I don’t think it would be my drink of choice for a nice Friday night, but it has the right mixture of cheap, affordability, and taste to get you through that point in life. If you choose to.

Ani: Hypothetically, if I were to be a legal beer fan, then Busch Light. That’s what I’ve heard at least. I’d assume that it tastes like you’d expect beer of it’s ilk to taste. And it comes in these large cases, that are ridiculously low-priced–as I’ve seen, and not purchased. So I can only assume as to the quality of it. I’ve seen people react to it in strange and odd ways, in basements and in crowded rooms. Something magical. What does it taste like?

So I’m just curious, Ani. How many people did you have to ask until Alex finally agreed to become your VP?

Ani: It’s funny, because I was asked by someone else to be their ASG candidate. I don’t want to reveal who. But I’ve worked with all of them before, all the other candidates. Alex and I, we were first choices for both of us. It really is about the chemistry between the pairs as well. Literally, we share calendars.

Alex: It’s kind of creepy. Buuuutt, it’s necessary.

Ani: There’s always that thing, ‘Where are you!? Oh wait, I already know. Never mind.’ But you’re working for the next year with this person. You’re working very closely. It’s not just about sharing an office, it’s about sharing calendars, it’s about sharing a mission in life, oh God it sounds like we’re getting married.

Alex: My girlfriend kind of thinks so. But…

Ani: It’s also about the shared values. Alex and I, we’re from two different worlds. Like literally two different worlds. I’m a guy, I was born in Bangalore, India. I’ve lived in Vietnam and the U.S., in Arizona  and North Carolina and Texas.

Alex: And my family has been in Ohio since the late 1700s. So… pretty different.

Ani: But it’s amazing. We’ve been brought together at Northwestern, we share similar values regarding what this community has. We’ve met amazing people. We have relationships with many of them, many of whom are listed on our website. People who we’ve actually worked with and not just, you know, pretended to.

Meet the ASG Candidates: Aaron and Henry

Earlier this week, Sherman Ave reached out to the four ASG presidential tickets asking to interview them. All four tickets were gracious enough to accept; this is part three of four. Look for the final interview to come later in the day.

Aaron and Henry: Befriending popos and pitbulls

What is your favorite shitty beer, and what does it tell us about you?

Henry: Do I have to answer this question if I’m not 21?

So assuming you were hypothetically of-age, what do you think your favorite shitty beer would be?

Henry: Natural Light for sure. No question.

Aaron: I’d say PBR. Now that I’m 21 I like to go to Wob.

But you can’t get PBR at Wob!

Aaron: No PBR there. So I get whatever’s on tap. Like a Dark Ale.

Henry: So there’s a way that I want to answer this question, but I feel like it’s incriminating. But I would go on to tell you some stories.

Aaron: I don’t think that’s a good idea.

The Sherman Ave 2012 VP Debate Drinking Game

If you have the wild misfortunate of following The Ave on Twitter, you may have noticed that we enjoy the presidential debates. There’s nothing that livens a weekday night up more than seeing Jim Lehrer bound and gagged in his chair while Mitt Romney beats one of The Poors with a sock full of gold bricks and Barack Obama pukes up on himself.

So when we heard there was another debate this week, we were thrilled. “Golly gee,” we though, in our best Tagg Romney impersonation, “what a swell chance this shall be to hear two esteemed gentlemen engage in the art of intellectual disagreement.”

Then we heard Joe Biden was involved.

Power hour if they make out.

It turns out that Thursday night’s debate is the VICE presidential debate. Never to be dismayed, we excitedly began waiting for Sarah Palin to wink at us in that special blend of “come hither” and “come any closer and I’ll shoot you from a helicopter” that only she can manage. Once again, we were brutally disappointed to discover that some bloke named Paul Ryan will be giggling at Uncle Joe instead.

See, apparently the GOP candidates is NOT required to pick Palin for veep after all! (Crazy, right?! Slike, why did Mack-daddy even acknowledge her heinousness then?) Our excitement thoroughly destroyed, we turned to America’s most favorite and least advisable coping mechanism: drank.

Sherman Ave is proud* to present the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate Drinking Game:

Take a sip if…

When he heard the debate would be on ABC, Paul Ryan thought it meant a different “ABC”

• Paul Ryan discusses Medicare or entitlements (that means Social Security or Medicaid too, you fucking engineers).
• Joe Biden mentions his upbringing (that means childhood, you goddamn pre-meds).
• Moderator Martha Raddatz manages to effectively end discussion of a topic when time expires ONE FUCKING TIME.
• Biden gives Obama credit for the fact that GM is alive but Osama bin Laden is now one of the dead people.
• Paul Ryan blatantly contradicts himself (that means on the Simpson-Bowles debt commission plan, saving $716 billion in Medicare from overhead costs, rape exceptions on abortion, or like half of the shit Mitt Romney says he kind of supports but might not if other people don’t like it).
• Biden says “consecutive months of job growth,” “5.1 million new jobs,” or “7.8% unemployment.”
• Ryan says “fiscal responsibility,” “failure” or “Nancy Pelosi.” Three sips if he cannot bring himself to say Pelosi’s name.
• Biden forgets someone’s name, gets a date wrong, doesn’t realize he was asked a question, asks Ryan to get him some coffee, makes a joke about “a cup of Joe for Joe” after he asks Ryan for coffee, asks if he’s president yet, or reverts to talking about his wife because he can’t remember what the question was.

Take a gulp if…

• The moderator challenges Ryan to substantiate a claim.
• Ryan leaves Biden crying on his podium and asking if he may leave now.
• Biden forgets to wear a shirt.
• Ryan “forgets” to wear a shirt and starts rubbing his abs at the camera.
• Biden openly flirts with Raddatz.
• Ryan name drops Janesville, Wisconsin.
• Biden name drops Scranton, Pennsylvania.
• Biden and Ryan have a fistfight over whose blue-collar upbringing was tougher.
• Ryan mentions Ayn Rand.
• Biden says “you were a lot more ladylike in our last debate.”
• Ryan uses words that Biden doesn’t understand.
• Ryan says the middle class has been “buried” the last four years. Two gulps if he credits Biden with coming up with the line.
• Either candidate uses a clearly pre-prepared zinger.

Finish your drink if…

Big Bird jokes are NEVER gonna get old, rite??

• Obama comes onstage to redeem himself.
• Bill Clinton comes onstage and euthanizes Biden.
• Ryan announces his 2016 candidacy.
• Biden points out that it was rude of Ryan not to ask if he could call him Joe.
• Ryan messes up an answer and just yells, “Yeah, well this bitch invited Obama to her wedding she probably like loves him or something I bet she kept an old Kleenex of his and is gonna do some weird African voodoo on it to make him like her.” Word for word.
• Big Bird eats Ryan alive on national television.
• The handshake at the end of the debate lasts more than 3.5 seconds.

*Horrified, ashamed and embarrassed.

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ForMITTable Opponents: Rejected Romney Running Mates

Sexxi can I?

After months of vetting potential running mates, presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has finally selected Paul Ryanas his partner on the G.O.P. ticket. Here are some of the potential nominees who couldn’t quite make it through the Vice Presidential vetting process.

Tony Horton
Like Paul Ryan, Tony Horton is committed to the P90X home fitness program. Unlike Paul Ryan, Tony Horton probably doesn’t want to eliminate all social programs in America that have been enacted since the Hoover administration. Also, between instructing both Usher and Pam the Blam, Tony Horton has worked with more black people than Paul Ryan has ever met in Janesville, Wisconsin.

A Cardboard Cutout of Ronald Reagan
Although deemed to have more personality and charisma than Vice Presidential contender Tim Pawlenty, the cardboard cutout never made it out of the vetting process due to rumors circulating that the 40th President had once been a Democrat. Instead, the Romney campaign intends to use the cutout as a portable beer pong table to be installed in the back of the bus for the “The Romney Plan for How We’ll Gut the Shit out of the Capital Gains Tax a Stronger Middle Class” tour.

Vet this, bitch.

Jesse Pinkman
Originally vetted as a pugnacious businessman who is willing to take on the establishment and appeal to youths nationwide, Pinkman, like Marco Rubio, was brought down by allegations of his connection to organized crime. Also, Mitt’s waiting to watch Season 5 of Breaking Baduntil it comes out on Netflix, and doesn’t want to accidentally overhear any spoilers.

Benjamin Netanyahu
It would be much easier for Romney to Likud Benjamin Netanyahu’s Knesset (if you know what I mean…)* if the Israeli Prime Minister was just a short walk away from the Oval Office. Seeing as Romney and Netanyahu worked together at the Boston Consulting Group in the 1970s, and the leader evokes more respect from Congress than the President of the United States, Netanyahu’s rejection — Article II of the Constitution notwithstanding — was one of the worst defeats in Israeli politics since the breakup of the Tribes of Israel with the death of King Solomon.

Morty Schapiro
Nobody’s quite sure why the Romney campaign passed Morty up, but rumors persist that it had something to do with Morty, a $10,000 bet, and Ann Romney’s horse.

Mitt Romney circa 2004
A moderate Republican willing to compromise with his political opponents in the name of good governance, the Governor of Massachusetts was hampered by his commitment to reform health care and cover virtually all of the uninsured, as well as his willingness to provide basic civil rights to women and homosexuals. The raging gay feminista-socialist Romney, who had the audacity to sign legislation requiring individuals to obtain health insurance, was deemed too radical for a Romney 2012 campaign trying to shore up its conservative image.

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*Bill Clinton sex.

The 5 Least Smangable First Ladies in American History

With no official duties, salary, or elected position, the First Lady of the United States is first and foremost the hostess, or ho-stess, of the White House. Nevertheless, the First Lady of the United States plays an important role in the Executive Branch, handling everything from official ceremonies of state to the Senate Majority Whip, if you know what I mean (looking at you, Lady Bird Johnson). Sometimes, Presidents’ wives will even be entrusted to handle such politically divisive issues as child obesity and literacy, at least when the Vice President is too busy.

Yet for all of America’s Mrs. Presidentress’ accomplishments as powerful women, celebrities, activists, and interlopers, some of the First Ladies in the annals of history were just downright dogs. What follows is the list of the top five First Ladies that not even JFK would bang.*

Florence “The Machine” Harding

5. Florence Harding
Popularly referred to as The Duchess, Florence “Flo Rida” Harding was quoted as saying, “I know what’s best for the President. I put him in the White house. He does well when he listens to me and poorly when he does not.” Although the circumstances of President Harding’s sudden and untimely 1923 death remain unclear, rumor has it that Warren’s balls had been irreparably busted by his wife. That’s what you get, after all, when you ask your wife for some Teapot Dome after a long day of corruption work in the Oval Office.

4. Ida McKinley
What else can you expect from a woman who’s main devotion in life was crocheting slippers? After losing two daughters in childbirth and a devoted husband to an assassination, Ida most certainly was not DTF. The epilepsy didn’t help either.

Not terribly interested in her husband’s “Old Rough and Ready”

3. Margaret Taylor
Described by others as “a fat, motherly looking woman,” Margaret Taylor’s physical appearance wasn’t nearly as bad as her demeanor. After praying for her husband Zachary to lose the Presidential election of 1848, and still smarting from Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren’s political smear campaign that Zachary Taylor’s wife “Haveth a Total Butterface,” the First Lady spent much of her time cloistered in the second floor of the Presidential mansion, composing erotic fan fiction about the exploits of Whig Senator Daniel Webster. She did, however, once accidentally walk in on Millard Fillmore’s “personal time” in the mural room, an event that subsequently ruined all men for the First Lady.

2. Pat Nixon
Surprisingly, Pat Nixon never really caught on to the whole “deepthroat” thing.

Surprisingly, “Mary Todd Lincoln” is only the third least appropriate name of a First Lady to shout out during coitus.

1. Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary Todd was crazy. Not the good kind of crazy — the kind of crazy that results in Abe trying to explain away how he was found blindfolded and handcuffed to William Seward in the base of the Washington Monument — but rather the “I had to endure a marriage through the most stressful period in American history and witness my husband’s assassination and I buried my son Tad and I’m addicted to chloral hydrate and I think there’s a wandering Jew trying to steal my purse and now I’m pretty sure my son Robert is trying to kill me” kind of crazy. Abe Lincoln may have been the Rail Splitter, but he certainly wasn’t going to tap that any more than necessary.

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*LOL JFK

10 American Historical Events That Totally Should Have Been Pregamed

For those of you out there in blogosphere who aren’t familiar with the up-and-coming trend of “pregaming,” it is a term that refers to the act of consuming alcohol before any event; it could be a football game, a musical, or even a 250-student lecture. Unfortunately, this trend of pregaming has only become a common cultural activity in recent years. We must wonder: How would history have been changed if previous generations were clinical alcoholics like ours is? Here are the top ten historical events that would have been infinitely better had all parties involved drained several shots of Jose Cuervo beforehand.