Reasons number 67 and 82 why I don’t have a girlfriend

By Drew Millard

Today’s is a double-faceted column, concerning two seemingly unrelated thoughts, but I think that in conjunction with each other, they adequately explain why I have no girlfriend.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Barnes and Noble to buy a book, and spent 20 minutes internally debating which book to buy, only to decide to save my money for a later date. One week later, I got a speeding ticket, and that 20 dollars I saved by not buying a book could now be spent paying back the government of South Carolina. I’m almost one hundred percent sure that I have vaguely psychic powers, in that I can tell whether I should do something or not, only to find out why I should or should not have done it later.

I stand by this ability, regardless of any situation that may arise, regardless of whether my dull ESP presents me with a favorable situation or not, and regardless of the actual reliability of these semi-psychic powers. They just make me special. I know not whether I shall use them for good or evil, but I’m leaning towards evil, as the bad guy is always cooler than the hero, except when the hero is Sean Connery.

Even when everything seems bleak, my semi-psychic powers tell me what to do, though I know not why they tell their weird little thoughts. Perhaps it’s like that one John Travolta movie where he’s a psychic, but then he dies at the end, and everybody cries. But I hope not.

I was once a great man. I was once proud. I once had hair on the top of my head. If you noticed, the picture that accompanies these columns has recently changed, and what was once a full-on mop-top has been replaced by the shortest of buzzcuts. This was not a stylistic choice on my part.

My hair was cut as part of a necessary retooling that my life required, because I need to get a job, and people with hair that looks like it belongs in a rock band don’t land jobs very easily. Rest assured, I’m never getting a haircut again, and hopefully, soon, I shall replace that picture with another of me and my full mane of head-fur.

My beautifully coiffed hair represented all that was jobless and free. With it, I had Sampson-esque strength: I could lift pillars, I could construct houses with my own bare hands, I could take Chuck Norris in a fight… but now, I am nothing. Nothing, I say! I’m just a sarcastic little kid with broken dreams and a cold head.

So you see? This is why I don’t have a girlfriend.

In review, I’m indecisive, obsessive about my hair, and I think I have secret powers.
If you as a female were also looking for more reasons not to date me, I also own a pair of genuine longhorns that hang above my bed, have problems with commitment, do not drive, and own a shirt with some Spanish written on it that translates into, “Where are my pants?”

So yeah. Take a number.

One nonpolitical fact about every president ever

By Drew Millard

Look: this column is actually a list, in column form. Every little note about these Presidents is true, or at least widely accepted to be a fact.

George Washington: Had wooden teeth.

John Adams: Suffered from bipolar disorder.

Thomas Jefferson: Fathered several children out of wedlock with a slave.

James Madison: Was short, talked like a girl, and had a wife inexorably more famous than he was.

James Monroe: Didn’t actually come up with Monroe Doctrine.

John Quincy Adams: Swam in the Potomac River whilst naked.

And
rew Jackson: His wife’s mother ran a brothel.

Martin Van Buren: Was known as the “Little Magician” because he managed to just make things happen.

William Henry Harrison: Died four weeks into office because he gave a four-hour long speech in a blistering snowstorm and subsequently caught pneumonia.

John Tyler: Was first President to marry whilst in office.

James K. Polk: Served only one term as a result of severe diarrhea.

Zachary Taylor: When in battle, wore a straw hat.

Millard Filmore: Had the coolest first name EVER.

Franklin Pierce: Was an alcoholic who was the first President born in the 1800’s.

James Buchanan: Lived with a man for most of his life.

Abraham Lincoln: Wife was later addicted to opium as a result of his assassination.

Andrew Johnson: Showed up drunk to Lincoln’s second inauguration, and though it was one of the few times he ingested substances, the incident earned him the reputation as a drunk.

Ulysses S. Grant: Had a reputation for great personal integrity, though his entire administration was extorting money behind his back.

Rutherford B. Hayes: Actually lost the popular vote, but won the Presidency anyway.

James Garfield: Was assassinated by a crazy man who was denied a government job in his first few weeks of office.

Chester Arthur: Had the most impressive facial hair of any President ever.

Grover Cleveland: Was the most boring man on earth.

Benjamin Harrison: William Henry Harrison’s grandson. The way his term went, it might have been better if he’d have caught pneumonia.

William McKinley: Always wore a white vest.

Teddy Roosevelt: While serving in the army, always had his uniforms tailored by Brooks Brothers.

William Howard Taft: Has the distinction of being both the fattest President ever, and the only man ever to serve as both President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Woodrow Wilson: A highly religious man, he worked as President of Princeton College to “take the sex out of Princeton” and focus its young male student minds on only knowledge.

Warren G. Harding: Was the worst president ever. The level of his badness cannot be described by words.

Calvin Coolidge: Had an aversion to talking.

Herbert Hoover: Often confused for J. Edgar Hoover.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Had an affair.

Harry S. Truman: Was born without a middle name, only an S.

Dwight Eisenhower: After serving as President, re-entered the Armed Services.

John F. Kennedy: One-upped FDR by having an affair…with Marylyn Monroe.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Often considered the most lewd, vulgar President ever.

Richard Nixon: Biggest regret: tape machine in Oval Office.

Gerald Ford: Liked to fall.

Jimmy Carter: Lusted in his heart.

Ronald Reagan: Was the Gipper.

George H. W. Bush: Vomited on the Prime Minister of Japan, hated broccoli.

Bill Clinton: Played golf.

George W. Bush: Gave C-Students everywhere hope.

The death of art

By Drew Millard

Everywhere I look at Governor’s School, there are art students, with their tortured souls, unique personal quirks, and realizations that in ten years, they’ll be penniless. These people love art so darned much, and it’s going to break their little sensitive hearts when they read what I have to say. Care to know why? Because I hate art.

Art is dead. For those of you keeping score, my vendetta against art begins now.

People like to claim that art is pain, but in my opinion, art is just a lazy person’s way of avoiding a real job. Now I know that I’ve made an exaggerated, bold (and undeniably ignorant) assertion, but undeniably, the concept of art oozes pretension and exclusion.

My thesis statement, for those looking for more concrete arguments than generalizations, goes something like this: People use the term “art” as a blanket statement to cover anything so perplexingly avant-garde that it becomes boring, from urinals to wheels on chairs to a photo of pandas defecating on the Burmese flag. Proponents of this type of art stress the importance of appreciation; “appreciation,” if I may opine, is code for “rationalization.”

Suppose I cut out the corner of my bed with a chainsaw and proclaim it ART. Now suppose you look at my art, and say that it’s no good. I can retort by simply saying that you don’t appreciate its esoteric nature inherent in the underlying metaphor of the motivation behind the art, and are therefore not intelligent enough to truly understand my tortured soul. This happens every day in the world, and it seems that the people who submit corners of beds are winning the argument more and more often.

And don’t get me started on performance art. Essentially, the claim is that anything can be performance art, as long as it is performed and has a message that should be understood by the viewer. When Yoko Ono debuted “Cut Piece” — a piece of performance art that essentially involved her cutting off all of her clothes with scissors — in 1965, that wasn’t art. It was a striptease. There is no way, other than through the consumption of very powerful drugs, that a woman, however homely and/or untrustworthy, disrobing in front of a crowd could be construed as anything other than this. And yet people paid to see this woman get naked in the name of art, and astonishingly, they didn’t throw dollar bills at her. I don’t know what her stated message was. I don’t think it matters, because she ended up with John Lennon and broke up the Beatles.

There once was a time when art had standards. If da Vinci ever turned in a painting of blue, naked, deformed women like Picasso did, they’d send him out on his ear until he could display something that showed some effort. The Last Supper. Now that’s a painting I’d buy. A little expensive, but still.

But now, it seems that society has grown bored with aesthetic perfection. These days, we feel compelled to look to the more abstract notions of human thought. Artists are expected not just to pour paint onto their canvas, but to pour their souls as well. Brush strokes now represent suppressed anger. When art wasn’t insane, brush strokes represented the fact that the artist was using a paintbrush and not, say, a Magic Marker.

I’m not calling for a cessation of all artistic activity, but I am calling for a return to artistic design. I want art to recall to the days when buying a piece of art meant buying something beautiful. I want the obvious brilliance of artists focused towards improving Art, not undercutting itself through unintentional self-parody.

I guess what I’m really saying is that I’m probably the least-cultured person at Governor’s School East, and kind of proud of it.

Three thoughts

By Drew Millard

Here at Governor’s School, everyone is better than me. They’re smarter, more mature, better looking, more cultured, and they would never make the same decisions that I would. Well, maybe that’s a bit of exaggeration, but that’s what most of them would have me believe. While there’s nothing wrong with having that kind of condescending, warped self-confidence, I’ve noticed three aspects of the place that equalize everyone.

1. Everybody here is, at their base, just a teenager. It doesn’t matter that the kids who study science can comprehend quantum mechanics or that the drama students can recite Henry VIII in its entirety or that the art students have pieces on display in a major New York gallery — they still bleed. That is, to discard the metaphors, everybody has the same feelings and problems, regardless of their self-perceived maturity. I know a girl here who is one of the best poets in the state. She is an art lover, the smartest girl at her private school, and, as somebody who knows her put it, “The Queen of Downtown Wilmington.” Yet she still can’t tell the boy she likes how she feels. Learning that the other night made me realize just how young we all really are. Maybe we’re not adults. I’ve been lying to myself for the past four years.

2. I’m not worth squat. When I was in Polk County, there was a fairly reasonable chance that I would be one of the smarter people in the room. (Well, I’d like to think so — it’s probably only true in my twisted psyche.) Not the case at G-School. The thing that worried me the most about leaving home was how different I thought this place would be. Ironically, I’ve been surprised at how many people here are exactly like me. And while it’s a comforting notion to realize that you’re not alone in the world, I’m kind of disconcerted by the fact that I’m not as unique and as incredible and as superlative as I thought I was. And the worst part about this place, I guess, is the realization that there are people who are better at being me than me. I guess that once I get out into the real world, I’ll have some kind of competition. And I thought that everything was going to be handed to me on a platter.

3. Everything is negotiable. Here, the system works like this: if you don’t like something, then you should change it. At Governor’s School East, we have boundaries for visiting the outside world. These boundaries end just before Arby’s — we’ve been denied curly fries much too long. So somebody talked to the Man (or as his wife calls him, Dr. Grymes), and a deal was made: if everyone at GSE completed the student survey, we would get to go to Arby’s. Which happened. Now I know that the only problem with my example is that the Man clearly uses Arby’s as a bargaining chip to keep us in line, and every year, he lets people go there as long as they ask for it. But the point is that you should ask for things in life without actually knowing whether you will receive them or not. So we’re kind of in the real world here, but not really — Governor’s School is almost a Stepfordian façade of college (which is in and of itself a facsimile of life), filtered through rose-colored glasses.

But I have learned one important lesson: I don’t know jack.

Maybe this whole “real life” thing isn’t that easy.

Breeding ground?

By Drew Millard

Hey, it’s Drew here, and I’m still at Governor’s School. But I’m getting a little paranoid, and when you read what I have to say, remember that I am not joking: I’m kind of convinced that I am staying at a state-sponsored, free breeding camp for rising high-school Seniors.

It’s a known fact that North Carolina is trying to produce the best workforce in the world through its vocational programs at every public school. But what about those who don’t want to be a blue-collar worker? Has North Carolina made us the children left behind?

Well, yes and no. If you’re a High School student in North Carolina who wants to go to a good college, you have a challenge. Here in Polk County we have an extremely limited number of Advanced Placement classes to choose from, which are exactly what we need to be taking to get into college because they prove proficiency at a college level.


There is, however, an intellectual oasis where North Carolina teenagers can go and be free: Governor’s School. Here is a place where kids can go into a room and realize that everybody else in here is pretty much just like them — smart, quirky, and interesting enough to get chosen to attend a prestigious summer program in Raleigh.
This place is completely free, paid for by donors and the State. As far as I know, this isn’t a totally regular thing throughout the entire nation.

Which brings me back to my original point. What if, in addition to wanting to produce the best vocational workforce in the world, North Carolina also wanted to produce the smartest children in the world? A popular urban legend around the Governor’s School campus is that approximately twenty percent of every class ends up marrying another Governor’s School alumnus. If my calculations prove me correct, a 20 percent marriage yield every year produces (in the future) 80 marriages per year, which, using the classic assumptions, also yields (in the distant future) approximately 200 very smart kids per Governor’s School alumni household. Also, one must take into consideration the fact that the girl-to-boy ratio here is roughly three-to-one, meaning that somebody probably wants the males to have as many choices as they need to pair off at some point during the summer, in the hopes of that pairing resulting in a marriage.
Now, my facts and figures are probably begging the question: Is Drew having, umm, unauthorized relations at Governor’s School?

Well, friends, the answer to your question, for better or worse, is a resounding No. For one, girls aren’t allowed into the male dormitories, and for two, if they catch evidence of somebody doing it, they both get kicked out.

See, if that were going on here, it would completely defeat the purpose of the secret Governor’s School agenda: to produce stable marriages which produce super-smart kids raised in an academically stimulating environment. They don’t want anybody getting pregnant right now, because that would mean that some couple would be having a super-smart baby as opposed to the super-smart couple attending college.

Point is, North Carolina is sponsoring a camp where we will all find our future life-mates. This is absolutely a conspiracy, and I think that at the end of the summer, there will definitely be some future marriages, and the requisite 2.5 kids and a dog will be forthcoming. We’re all doing our jobs, Governor Easley.

Pam Stone, I just want to say, ‘Hi’

By Drew Millard

I don’t know if you’re reading this, Pam, and I don’t know if my sentiment will make you feel old, but wow, I’m honored. I am thoroughly amazed that I get to share the same newspaper with the same woman who I used to watch on TV. Coach. Radio.
Comedienne. Wow. Again, she was on Coach. I’ve never been on the news. I don’t know if this drags her reputation down or pulls mine up — I think that she is quickly becoming a vastly more popular columnist than I am, though.

That said, Pam, if you think that my generation is doing fine, you’re kind of wrong. We have no idea what we’re doing. To give us any credit otherwise is to flatter us, and we’re young — we don’t need flattering, seeing as we know everything anyways.

It honestly astonishes me that I share this space with her. I’ll stop sucking up in a moment, but let me both plug my blog and her existence in the same paragraph:

The link to my blog on the Tryon Daily Bulletin website is right above the link to Pam Stone’s, which makes me one degree (if one were to operate within the universe of the board game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon), which makes me probably at most four or five degrees away from anyone you can name/shake a stick at. I guess the point I’m trying to make is this: Hi, Pam. I’m Drew. We might not ever meet, but I feel like I know you, probably because I’ve seen you on TV. You’re much more famous and much funnier than I am, but maybe you’ll make me better by osmosis, I guess, if somebody picks up the wrong edition of the Friday paper, and hoping to see your column in there, instead sees mine. Hell, it could happen. Either that, or you’ll inadvertently force me into a very early retirement.

I can say the h-word in the paper, right? I mean, Pam got to swear in her column, so I don’t see why I wouldn’t be able to. Oh gosh, I’m turning into a prima dona. Sorry, I’m rambling.

But anyways, if you’ve wondered where I’ve been all summer, I’ll tell you where I am right now. I am currently sitting on a bed in room 306 or Brewer Dormitory Hall at Meredith College in Raleigh North Carolina. The occasion is Governor’s School East, and I am attending in the field of English. This is the first in a series of three columns dealing with life at the Governor’s School, and even though I’ll probably be back in town by the time these hit the news stands, my hope is that it’ll be a nice little retroactive tale from the world outside of Polk County.

I realize that I’ve kind of used up all of my allotted space at this point, so I’ll just leave you with this: I love it here. I love getting up at 7:30 in the morning when none of my friends have thought of going to bed. I love having to sometimes walk to another dormitory if my water gets shut off as a result of construction work. I love having a roommate — it makes Governor’s School almost like going to a six-week-long sleepover, only you can’t go and spend the night with anybody else.

I love my classes here; they challenge my mind and the way I view the world — they literally are expanding me as a person. I kind of even love the fact that the food here is worse than low-grade dog food, which means everyone pigs out in their room at all hours. I love the fact that there are only about ten places in the outside world that we can go to, and I love even more that at least half of these establishments are owned, operated, and run exclusively by hippies.

But most of all, I love the people here, and I love the lesson that Governor’s School is teaching me: the journey is paramount; the destination is secondary.

That said, if Pam’s still reading, I really want her to know that she should probably give my generation a chance. We’ll all come out of this alive. You did.

A smart aleck’s view of immigration

By Drew Millard

I feel slightly silly being a seventeen-year old and writing about political issues — I can’t even vote, you see — but I feel that since everyone in the entire world has an opinion on immigration, I should throw my two cents in, at the risk of losing my hard-earned credibility as your favorite farcical bimonthly columnist.

I have a policy of trying to take the long view on every political issue, and to remain stoically without an opinion on many matters. To illustrate my point, I quote pop-culture guru Chuck Klosterman: “You want to have an abortion? Fine; take my car keys. You think abortion is murder? Well, you’re probably right.” Both sides of an issue have valid points, or else they wouldn’t be presenting their argument. I just try to see these points, and then make judgment as I see fit.

Right now, there is what the pundits call a “crisis” regarding immigration. People are coming into the country in droves illegally from Mexico, and people in America are getting extremely angry about it. Some are even taking the law into their own hands by camping out and watching out for those durned Mexicans, possibly out of nativism or racism, or just good old-fashioned xenophobia. The Department of Homeland Security said in an official statement that “illegal immigration threatens our communities and our national security.” Now I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a little alarmist — I’ve never seen with my own two eyes an illegal immigrant commit a crime, other than being in America when they weren’t supposed to be. Our own U.S. Senate went so far as to officially declare that our national anthem was to be sung in English, which may show that racism, or at least nativism, is not dead in this country, especially in Washington.

Now that I’ve written that and lost my credibility as a columnist, I think that the issue as a whole is much, much too complicated to hold a concrete, partisan opinion on; as I hinted previously, both parties present partially valid arguments.

On the conservative side, I agree that we cannot just let anybody into the country who wants to come in, and the fact that people are coming into America and probably taking jobs from average, hard-working Americans, somehow tweaks that quintessentially nationalistic nerve that everybody has. I think that we need to have more strict enforcement of our borders to protect us from the drugs that are brought into America every day from Mexico, and I think that if someone is living in America, they need to pay taxes on what they earn.

But on the other, more liberal hand, for the most part, illegal immigrants take jobs that traditionally have been taken by, well, illegal immigrants. Undeniably, America is the land of freedom, and I also believe that if somebody wants to get in here, we should let them in, unless they give us a reason not to let them in, like having killed somebody or having ties with organized crime. We don’t need a fortified border to protect us from somebody who just wants to get a job, and in addition, many immigrate to America for the sole justification that they need to support their families, and in America, even working for a nominal wage can support a family in Mexico just as well as any middle-class American could support theirs. Just because somebody is trying to illegally enter a country does not automatically brand them a bad person — I know some illegal immigrants, and they are some of the most honest, hard-working people that I have ever met, and I do not see why we should be stopping people like that from entering this great nation of ours.

Now that I’ve stirred up some ire, there is one position that all Americans do agree on: something needs to be done. Right now, we don’t even know how many people live in America because there are so many undocumented illegals here that we can’t take an accurate census count. The government eventually issues green cards for many, but the only problem with that system is that it can take months to apply for and receive one of those magical green cards. What would probably need to be done is a DMV-type system of issuing Green Cards where you just show up, fill out a couple forms, smile for a picture, and in ten minutes, get one and get on your way. I think that this, however improbable it might be (being 17, I have no knowledge of how the logistics of such as system could be worked out), could, you know, be kind of a good idea.
But I’m just a kid, and this is just a newspaper, so feel free to write to them and tell the world why I’m wrong, which no doubt I am.
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A plea from a thin man

By Drew Millard

Well, I’ve been at this for three months or so now, and I’m sad to report that, no matter how many people think that having one’s own column in the paper is mildly impressive, I still have not gotten one date as a result of this column. Crazy, eh? Who wouldn’t think that a six foot tall skinny kid who can’t bench press his own weight, plays golf and thinks that the movie Zoolander is the highest form of art couldn’t find a female to take out? Beats me.

And yet the problem persists. I am as yet unable to get a date. In fact, since the incipience of this column, I have not been alone in the presence of a female, even casually. Of course, I’m writing this about a month before it will get printed, so there is a distinct possibility that I’ll find a date in the time between now to this column’s publication, therefore rendering its entire existence moot; however, I’ll chance it, as I’ve got a good mood set.

More importantly, I haven’t a prom date. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of a prom date, it is essentially this: you go and take a person of the opposite gender out to get some food, then back to a predetermined location to dance. And that’s it. Oh, and you’re wearing some fancy clothes, and your date is most likely wearing a way-too-expensive dress. Fun, eh?

So in case you’re a prom-dateless high-school girl, here are my qualifications in the prom date arena. I don’t look bad in a suit. I’ll be a gentleman, making sure to compliment your surely radiant dress. While we won’t be traveling in a limo, whatever vehicle we’d be traveling in will surely have some darn good music in it, as I have impeccable musical taste. I won’t care if you dance with other guys once we get to the prom in and of itself (Aside to those not intimately familiar with the concept of prom: there are two usages of the word "Prom." One being the entire experience of Prom — the going out to eat, the ride there, the dancing, going out afterwards — and the other being the prom itself, being "the place where there will be dancing in fancy clothes.").

On the other hand, I shall utilize what little manhood I have left and admit that while I may be perfectly smart, athletic, mildly proficient at golf, and semi-good-looking, I cannot, have not, nor never will be able to dance. This, being augmented by the fact that I’m not man enough to ask someone to prom, is the principle reason that I cannot find a date. My legend as a bad dancer has risen throughout the years so that nobody even tries any more. I can’t keep a beat, I can’t follow time, and I sure as heck can’t attempt to do the two with a partner whilst simultaneously trying to look cool. This will just not happen. But this could somehow be construed as a good thing: being unfettered by such constraints as the threat of my rampant jealousy, my date will feel completely unobligated to dance with me, instead freeing herself up to work the room and have fun, because trust me, I wouldn’t want to be seen dancing with me either.

So all you females out there between the ages of fifteen and twenty, I need one of you to take to the prom. I have laid myself out on the line, outlining how I’m adequate and inadequate, and now I’m asking you to pass judgment on my worth. This is an open invitation for one of you to be my prom date. There will be eating, there will be dancing, there will be singing, there will be music, there will be carousing, and there will be happiness. But only if you come to prom with me.